For those of you like me who do not watch Game of Thrones, here is my favorite Sesame Street character Grover to explain what the story is about and who wins the game.
And here is my least favorite Sesame Street character Elmo trying to play the role of peacemaker.
I am pretty sure there are allusions in both clips that only those who have followed the series closely will get.
The sacked defense secretary of the UK Gavin Williamson said that he was the victim of a ‘kangaroo court’ that unfairly blamed him for a leak from the National Security Council. The term ‘kangaroo court’ is so common that its strangeness slipped past me and until now I had never wondered where such unusual turn of phrase might have come from. It is only after I had made that post that the thought occurred to me: Why kangaroo? What has that animal done to become synonymous with an unfair judicial proceeding where the normal procedures of justice are perverted so that the outcome is determined is even before proceedings start?
You would think that the term originated in Australia but its first recorded use in print was in the US back in 1853. The origins are unclear but Merriam Webster has some theories.
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As if Brexit was not causing enough problems for embattled British prime minister Theresa May, there is a new row from a totally different direction because she has sacked her defense minister Gavin Williamson for being the source of leaks from a meeting of the highly secretive National Security Council. While leaks from cabinet meetings have now become commonplace as party discipline has broken down, leaks from the NSC are considered a step too far. Williamson in turn denies that he was the source of the leaks and says that he was the victim of a biased investigation. This has caused turmoil in the Conservative party between his and her backers.
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In September 2011, hundreds of protesters known as the Occupy Wall Street movement took over Zucotti Park in downtown Manhattan. It gave birth to the powerful and memorable “We Are the 99%” slogan that so succinctly and yet accurately captured the huge and growing income and wealth divide in the US. Emily Stewart looks at what that movement spawned. (Link thanks to Cory Doctorow.)
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There is something fascinatingly contradictory about carnivorous plants. This close up video by the BBC shows how one of them, the Venus Flytrap, works. I have to admit, I was fascinated to learn how the plant captures its prey but saddened by the sight of hapless flies succumbing to its wiles.
It is quite extraordinary how on the one hand the US political-media class in the US is outraged, absolutely outraged, by alleged Russian attempts to sway US elections while at the same time they are openly calling for a military coup in Venezuela to overthrow president Nicholas Maduro and install Juan Guaidó as president. This is not the first time that the US has done it. The US expressed great joy when Hugo Chavez seemed to have been ousted only to end up with egg on its face when he beat back the coup.
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The Indian general elections began on April 11 and will continue until May 19, with the results to be announced on May 23. It is an important election that will show how much support current prime minister Narendra Modi and his ruling BJP party have for their right-wing, Hindu nationalist agenda. But in this post, I want to focus on the impressive way that Indian elections are conducted. It is a mammoth undertaking since 900 million people are eligible to vote for 2,354 registered political parties and the law requires that every voter should not have to travel more that 2 km (1.24 miles) to cast their ballot. This means that election officials have to lug some of the 2.3 million electronic voting machines to the remotest parts of the country. They have to take one machine up to a height of 15,256 feet and travel 35 km with another just to get to a single resident, the temple priest in the Gir National Forest in Gujarat.
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