Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is emerging as one of the most perceptive social critics. I have already linked to his thoughtful pieces on the 2014 Academy Award nominees for best film (I happened to agree with his choice but it did not win) and his reflections on the Ferguson shooting which he said was more than about race and was part of a broader class war.
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The predictable result of somebody jumping over the White House fence and running up to the front door has been, of course, media hysteria. Rather than the Secret Service being commended for their restraint in that they captured the intruder without killing him, some are seeing even that as a failure and saying that the intruder should have been killed. Why? Because this is America, dammit, and anyone who goes on someone else’s property without permission must be shot dead.
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On September 20, 2014, a new atheist coalition group called Openly Secular was formed to create an umbrella movement and label that all secular people can unite under, without dividing themselves along lines described by atheist, agnostic, skeptic, and the like. This article describes the movement and who is behind it.
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Defense industries make money in two ways. One is by persuading the government that the weapons they already have are becoming obsolete (even if they are not) and that they need to upgrade to more expensive systems to fight future threats. The other is by having governments use their weapons in wars so that they are used up so that they make profits by selling more. So wars are really good business
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It is astonishing to me that the US, which owes a lot of its dominance in the world to the science and technology that it produces, has on its main policy-setting body, the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, people who seem to be determined to undermine the very things that the nation depends upon. They may do this for a variety of reasons: venality because of the people who give them money, stupidity, or religious fanaticism but the end result is the same.
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Most people are realistic enough to know that they will never win a Nobel prize. But winning one of the annual MacArthur Fellows grants, the so-called ‘genius’ awards, seem much more realistic. For one thing, there are many more of them awarded annually, with the this year’s crop numbering 21. And while the awards of $625,000 are given to “to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction”, many of the winners seem to be ordinary people who have been plucked out of obscurity.
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This video of a road accident in Russia is stunning. The accident was caused by a cyclist, car, and truck all simultaneously breezing through an intersection. It is amazing that not only was the cyclist not killed by either the car or the truck, but that he recovered quickly enough that he got up off the ground and went to the aid of the truck driver trapped in the cab of the overturned truck.
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As Glenn Greenwald points out, the advent of the Syria bombing campaign marks the seventh Muslim-majority nation that the Nobel Peace Prize winning US president has bombed, and the lack of any meaningful debate on the legality, let alone the wisdom, of this latest move in noteworthy but depressingly predictable.
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Susan Miller is a very popular astrologer. She puts up her monthly horoscope predictions for free on her website Astrology Zone at the beginning of each month and has a huge readership, estimated at 6.5 million. Recently she has been running late with her postings because she says she has been sick. You would think that her readers would cut her some slack, but no. These repeated delays have apparently caused great consternation among those who apparently need their monthly horoscope fix in order to live their lives and are distressed by not being told what to do in a timely manner, and some of them have turned ugly, accusing her of a lack of ‘professionalism’.
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The media has been abuzz with the atrocious behavior of football players assaulting the women and children in their lives. As disgusting as that behavior is, what is also odious are the defenses being offered by prominent figures such as CNN’s Don Lemon and Charles Barkley for such abuse, saying that they received similar treatment from their parents when they were children and see nothing wrong with it or that it is somehow some cultural thing.
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