As long time readers know, I have long had a crush on Orly Taitz, the triple threat of realtor, dentist, and lawyer whose life work is to prove that Barack Obama is ineligible to be president of America because he was born in Kenya, and that government authorities and the media have engaged in a massive cover-up to deny Americans the truth.
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A new study suggests a link between ritual circumcision and the development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The suggested causal connection lies in the great pain that the infant suffers during the procedure.
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There is something uplifting about watching creative artists like sculptors and painters at work. How they take raw materials that have no shape or beauty of their own and then use them to bring to reality the vision that existed just in their minds, is something that fills me with wonder. Just take a look at this piece of art where every single part of it is made entirely out of blown glass.
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Via that excellent website Machines Like Us I came across this article by Anne Fishel that points to the benefits of having meals together with one’s children.
As a family therapist, I often have the impulse to tell families to go home and have dinner together rather than spending an hour with me. And 20 years of research in North America, Europe and Australia back up my enthusiasm for family dinners. It turns out that sitting down for a nightly meal is great for the brain, the body and the spirit.
One of the shocking things that emerged from the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of the police was that the federal government does not have a reliable national database of deaths at the hands of the police. Allie Gross and Brian Schatz report that there are some hopes that this may change.
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Hasan Minhaj of The Daily Show looks at how Salt Lake City Utah has addressed the problem of the homeless. Why, the idea is so crazy that it just might work.
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I am one of those people fortunate to be covered by an employer-based health insurance plan that pays for an annual physical exam and I regularly schedule one because it seems like a good preventative way of detecting early problems. So I was surprised by this article by Ezekiel J. Emanuel, an oncologist and a vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, who says that large longitudinal studies show that routine annual physicals are of little value and his new year’s resolution is to stop having them.
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The above reaction was that of a New Hampshire resident quoted by Nigel Parry in his profile of Vermont senator Bernie Sanders who has been dropping hints that he might seek the Democratic nomination for president. It may be a quixotic quest but those of us who dread an election that pits Hillary Clinton against any of the Republicans, need someone to raise the flag for progressive issues during the campaign and he certainly fits the bill.
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Satirical programs like The Daily Show that use news headlines as their raw material have difficulty dealing with tragedies like the shootings at Charlie Hebdo. How can they treat such events with humor without being perceived as grossly insensitive? On the other hand, the victims were in the same line of work as them and so they cannot blithely ignore a story that cuts so closely to home.
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Scott Horton has a new book out titled LORDS OF SECRECY: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Warfare. A summary of the book states:
Forty years ago, a majority of Americans were highly engaged in issues of war and peace. Whether to go to war or keep out of conflicts was a vital question at the heart of the country’s vibrant, if fractious, democracy. But American political consciousness has drifted. In the last decade, America has gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, while pursuing a new kind of warfare in Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Pakistan. National security issues have increasingly faded from the political agenda, due in part to the growth of government secrecy.
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