What exactly is happening with Brexit?

A little over two years ago, in June 2016, the people of the UK voted in a non-binding referendum to leave the EU, what is now known as Brexit. I have been following the fallout off and on but have to admit that my eyes glaze over when I read articles about Brexit, because the issues seem so complicated and technical. None of the major British political parties seem to like the idea of leaving the EU in general, though significant factions within them are pushing for it. There is talk of a hard Brexit, a soft Brexit, and things in-between. There are so many possible directions in which it can go, each of them having major problems.
[Read more…]

Why no women in the list of people we would be shocked by?

In my post and the comments about people whom I would be shocked by being charged with sexual abuse, Crip Dyke asked the following interesting question about the names given by me and other commenters.

I find it interesting that Tabby is the only person to name any women. Are there really no women who would shock the commenters on this post? Or is it that it doesn’t even occur to you that women might be perpetrators, so you didn’t imagine being shocked at an accusation because you can’t even imagine the accusation?

[Read more…]

Misapplying the protocol for the death of private figures to public ones

Larry Sabato is a political analyst who is frequently quoted in the media, usually in the role of prognosticator about who is likely to win seats in Congress. Following the death of John McCain, Glenn Greenwald highlighted a tweet of Sabato’s that has become a routine sentiment following the death of well-known establishment politicians.

Put me down as one of the ‘bitter and vicious’. It is extraordinary how it is mainly with politicians that we are expected to suspend criticisms upon their death and let a wave of praises go by unchallenged. You are far more likely to get an honest and balanced appraisal of the life of a dead writer or actor or musician than you are of a politician. This may be because the media establishment feels more subservient to politicians than to those other public figures. But those who claim that we should ‘keep politics out’ in the immediate wake of the death are in fact committing a deeply political act. By focusing only on the good and ignoring all the bad, they are enabling a form of historical cleansing that normalizes awful actions.
[Read more…]

Today is National Dog Day

In honor of the day, here is a little video of a dog ‘rescuing’ a child from the ocean. The dog either thought that her shrieks of delight were actually signals of distress or maybe he was acting on the general principle that children should not be in the ocean without wearing a lifejacket. He was also probably annoyed at the grownups present for not aiding in the ‘rescue’ and instead simply filming it.

[Read more…]

John McCain’s main legacy

The death of John McCain has resulted in the usual gushing tributes that are given to almost any long-serving American politician. I never bought into his self-promoted image of being a principled maverick, bucking party orthodoxy and forging his own path. McCain was in reality a faithful follower of the party line, voting with it on almost every issue and in addition being one of the worst warmongera. I wrote about what McCain was really like back in 2008. To his credit, he did discourage the crude race baiting of the Republican voters when in the 2008 election campaign they recklessly brought up the Marxist-Kenyan-Muslim tropes about Barack Obama, the kind of thing that has now become routine in the Republican party. It is because Donald Trump is so extremely awful that ordinary awful Republicans like McCain look better in comparison.
[Read more…]

Myths about human sperm

I suppose I am like most people who have a model of conception as a great race, involving a male emitting a vast number of sperm that then race towards the egg waiting for them in the female and one of the sperm, the victor, gets to fertilize the egg. Robert D. Martin, emeritus curator of biological anthropology at the Field Museum in Chicago and a member of the Committee on Evolutionary Biology at the University of Chicago, writes about the history of studies into sperm and that this idea of ‘macho sperm’ is one of the many myths that surround conception.
[Read more…]

The environmental impact of animal farming

Two arguments are advanced in favor of veganism and vegetarianism. One is the moral one, that the animals we eat are sentient beings that are similar to humans and that it is wrong for us to kill and eat them, even if we eliminate the cruelty of factory farming. The second is an economic and environmental argument, that animals are a highly inefficient source of protein, requiring the expenditure of a vast amount of resources. The rough rule of thumb is that as we go up the food chain, we lose 90% of the energy at each stage. In other words, by feeding grain to animals for the meat, we get only 10% of the energy that was initially stored in the grain. If the animals are fed a diet of animal protein, then we lose another 90%, leaving us with only 1% of the initial energy. This is highly wasteful.
[Read more…]

How money buys immunization from prosecution

The influence of money in politics lies largely in the fact that if you are a big donor to politicians, you can get immediate access to them. Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. is perhaps the best example of this process in action. It turns out that the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently considering bringing criminal charges against the Trump organization in the wake of the information released in the recent convictions and plea deals of close associates of Donald Trump.
[Read more…]