You may have been following the intricate and arcane maneuvering in the US senate where the fate of key data gathering provisions of the USA Patriot Act are due to expire on June 1 unless Congress takes action before then. Dan Froomkin gives us the current state of play on the debate over the NSA’s blanket collection of data. Froomkin says that currently there are just two options available:
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As the presidential campaign picks up steam (even though the actual date is still 18 months away!), the merits of the Iraq war are being debated once again as the chaos in the region and the rise of groups like ISIS has made even many people on the conservative end of the political spectrum begin to wonder if that fateful decision to invade Iraq has not resulted in creating a much worse situation. Everyone is eager to avoid blame for the debacle that has pretty much destroyed a once modern nation.
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I am way out of touch with popular culture and so I had never heard of John Legend before the Oscars this year when the news reported that he and Common (another performer whom I had never heard of until recently) had given a boffo live performance of the song Glory from the film Selma during the Academy Awards show, where it won an award and where the two gave great acceptance speeches.
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The police would have you believe that theirs is the most dangerous job and that is why they need to be given the freedom to shoot people at will but actually, as the chart in this article shows, it is nowhere close to being the most dangerous job. Neither are firefighters and security guards.
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In clearing out some old files in my desk, I came across a single undated sheet that had the above title and the following text:
The editors of the American Heritage® dictionaries have compiled a list of 100 words they recommend every high school graduate should know.
“The words we suggest,” says senior editor Steven Kleinedler, “are not meant to be exhaustive but are a benchmark against which graduates and their parents can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language.”
I saw this photograph and it speaks volumes. This was taken in the parking lot outside the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco, Texas following the shooting between rival biker gangs that began in the restaurant and quickly spread and in which nine people died, 18 were injured, about 150 people arrested, and hundreds of assorted weapons collected.
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Although all the votes have not been tallied and there are no exit polls, the votes that have come in so far indicate that the people of Ireland have decided that it is time recognize the obvious, that same-sex couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples, including the right to marry.
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Here he is dancing to the music of Dustbowl Revival’s Never Had To Go. I hope I am as active and full of fun as he is when I get to be 89 years old, assuming that I even get to that age.
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Although I did not pay much attention to them, I had of course heard of the Duggar family, stars of a reality show called 19 Kids and Counting, referring to the number of children that the parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar had. You could not avoid reading about them. From the little bits of news that crossed my path, they seemed like a bunch of insufferable Christians who looked down on everyone who did not follow in their religious, home-schooled, sex-puritan ways. But they were feted by right wing Christian types, including politicians, as upholding true Christian values.
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A common trick by magicians is to riffle a deck of cards in front of someone so that the person gets a view of cards as they rapidly pass by their gaze, and ask them to choose one. The magician then produces that same card from elsewhere, say out of their pocket. How is that done?
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