I wrote recently about my great distaste for the Cleveland Indians logo of Chief Wahoo and how as long as they kept the logo I was perfectly content if they never won a single game again, let alone win the World Series. I have been totally unconvinced by those who say it is harmless or even meant to honor Indians. [Read more…]
I am fascinated by the way language evolves and so enjoyed this animation from the British Open University that in just ten minutes gives a flippant but informative history of the main steps in the development of the English language and the origins of many of the words and phrases that we use. [Read more…]
Angular momentum is a hard concept to teach in introductory physics courses. This is partly because it is a quantity known as a vector that has both a magnitude and a direction, and adding and subtracting and multiplying vectors is more complicated than with scalars, like mass. Other things like force and velocity are also vectors but in those cases the directionality at least is intuitively obvious. The direction of the force vector is in the direction along which the force acts and the direction of the velocity vector is the direction in which the object is moving. [Read more…]
Religious martyrdom is an odd thing. If someone is killed because of that person’s race or ethnicity or sexuality, that death is deplored but people who share the victim’s targeted identity do not see the death as a vindication or a badge of honor of that identity. On the other hand, religions seem to revel in their martyrs, as if having someone die or be killed for their belief somehow makes that belief more worthy. [Read more…]
Bill Watterson, the creator of the iconic and much-loved Calvin and Hobbes that was syndicated from 1985 to 1995, walked away from one of the most successful comic strips in US history at the height of its popularity, when he felt that he had said and done all that he could with that particular medium. Thanks to my daughter, who was an even bigger fan of the strip than me, we now own all the C&H anthologies and they remain fresh upon re-reading. [Read more…]
I have been bemused by the efforts of Republicans to make the death of the US Libyan Ambassador and his associates at Benghazi into some kind of major scandal and cover up. You may recall that Mitt Romney tried to do so in presidential debate and got the wind knocked out of him. And yet, the search for the smoking gun continues. [Read more…]
NOTE: To see how to solve the problem, please see this later post.
Some readers are complaining that some videos are auto playing (which is of course highly annoying), even though the embedding code I use is supposed to not do that. Others say it is not autoplaying for them. Since this is not a universal problem, we need to narrow things down in order to try and solve it. So can readers (even those not experiencing this problem) please post in the comments this basic information? (I know some have done so earlier, but if you could do so again, we can have all the information in one convenient place for easier analysis.)
Once we narrow down the problem, maybe we can find a way to get rid of it, though I will likely need help since I am not a techie.
Thanks.
UPDATE:
Here are two Daily Show clips embedded differently. Can people please check and see if either or both auto play? The reason I ask is that I shifted from the second to the first method a couple of months ago when some people complained about the autoplay, hoping it would solve the problem. Now some are complaining that autoplay started a couple of months ago and I want to see if the problem lies (at least partly) with that change. If the change did not solve the original problem but created a new problem for others, then I will revert to the original embedding method.
Clip 1:
clip 2:
The Daily Show
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Kentucky senator Rand Paul apparently likes to liven up his speeches with ideas taken from film plots. That’s fine but Rachel Maddow found that he seemed to be lifting the descriptions of the films from Wikipedia without attribution. And it was not just an isolated practice but done several times. When confronted about this practice, Paul reacted initially with bluster and indignation, saying that this was the work of ‘haters’ and an insult to his honor and that he regretted that these days he could not challenge them to a duel, as if he were a character from The Count of Monte Cristo, which as many of you know is an adventure story primarily concerned with themes of hope, justice, vengeance, mercy and forgiveness, it focuses on a man who is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes from jail, acquires a fortune and sets about getting revenge on those responsible for his imprisonment. (Note: I couldn’t resist making a small joke by lifting the rest of the sentence from the word ‘adventure’ straight from the Wikipedia entry.) [Read more…]
New Zealanders Bret McKenzie and Jemaine Clement, the duo known as The Flight of the Conchords, have a frank discussion about racism with a street fruit vendor, after the latter refuses to sell them fruit because he hates Australians. [Read more…]
I thought that the Cleveland Indians Chief Wahoo mascot was bad enough but take a look at the mascot of the Coachella Valley Unified School District in California, whose team is known as the Arabs, even though the area is 99% Latino. So how did they get that nickname and adopt that mascot? The region is home to date plantations because that area is supposedly the best for growing dates. [Read more…]