Bad nuns

Of all the elements that make up the Catholic church in the US, I am most sympathetic towards the nuns. In their modern incarnation, they seem to do genuine good works among the poor and needy and seem less interested in pushing the church’s official positions against contraception, abortion, and homosexuality, for which lack of zeal they were reprimanded and placed under investigation by pope Benedict though pope Francis has quietly shelved that process.
[Read more…]

On wasting food

I hate wasting food. I really, really hate it. And it really sticks in my craw to see the amount of food that is thrown away in the US. Sometimes it is due to people just buying more than they can eat but at other times it seem just willful. For example, I am appalled by people and events that go out of their way to waste food, such as those contests involving butter sculptures and food eating contests and those all-you-can-eat buffets that seem to be designed to induce people to eat more than they would normally do.
[Read more…]

Medicaid expansion slowly expands

The Affordable Car Act or Obamacare consisted of two parts to assist people getting affordable health insurance. For those who earned above a certain income level, they provided a subsidy in the form of a tax credit to reduce the effective cost to the consumer of the insurance premiums that they could purchase on the insurance exchanges. Last month’s Supreme Court decision settled the issue as to whether federal–run exchanges were also allowed to provide such subsidies by saying that they were.
[Read more…]

Employment discrimination based on sexual orientation outlawed?

Although the legalization of same-sex marriage is a huge advance, it has been pointed out that one is still allowed to discriminate against members of the LGBT community when it comes to employment, housing, and others areas of life where it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sex, race, or national origin. This was seen as the next frontier in achieving equal rights.
[Read more…]

2014 was the hottest year on record

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that 2014 was the warmest year on record.

In 2014, the most essential indicators of Earth’s changing climate continued to reflect trends of a warming planet, with several markers such as rising land and ocean temperature, sea levels and greenhouse gases ─ setting new records.
…

The report, compiled by NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate at the National Centers for Environmental Information is based on contributions from 413 scientists from 58 countries around the world.
…

The report’s climate indicators show patterns, changes and trends of the global climate system. Examples of the indicators include various types of greenhouse gases; temperatures throughout the atmosphere, ocean, and land; cloud cover; sea level; ocean salinity; sea ice extent; and snow cover. The indicators often reflect many thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets.

[Read more…]

Republican party struggles with how to trump Trump

The conventional wisdom on the 2016 presidential race seemed to be settling into the media narrative of a romantic metaphor, that what we are seeing is the supporters of each of the two major parties having a fling with the one who has swept them off their feet with his dashing attitude (Donald Trump for Republicans, Bernie Sanders for the Democrats) before they settle down later with the more boring, sedate, and reliable partner (Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton). Parallels are being drawn to Herman Cain and Howard Dean to suggest that Trump and Sanders will also fade away.
[Read more…]

How could I have missed all this in Goodnight Moon?

Like many a parent, when my children were little, I must have read the book Goodnight Moon to them about a million times. As with all such books that required multiple readings, in order to stave off the boredom of repetition, over time I developed a dramatic style and became so absorbed in the theatrical effects that I never noticed all the major problems with the room that The Ugly Volvo points out regarding the nursery room.
[Read more…]