A few mornings ago I dropped into my neighborhood bank. I rarely go in anymore, now that online banking and ATMs are available and was courteously and pleasantly treated as always by the tellers. I was shocked later in the day to see this report (via Pharyngula) that about a third of bank tellers now depend on some form of public assistance to make ends meet. It is yet another example of the galloping divergence between the few haves and the many have-nots in the US. [Read more…]

Coming from the world of science, I tend to look at questions empirically, asking what data exists that sheds light on the problem and whether we can find causal relationships. But when it comes to political questions, while they may still be empirical questions, very often we have at most correlations and as a result there may be only political answers. [Read more…]

Now everyone (almost) sings the praises of Nelson Mandela. Sagar Jethani takes a walk down memory lane to see what some of them were saying back in the 1980’s when he was denounced as a Communist and terrorist and when the Republican party was split, with some opposing his release from prison or putting any pressure on South Africa. [Read more…]

The Chinese president on a visit to the United States told a group of people that he met on the street that they needed to challenge their government and change the status quo, and that people’s privacy must be respected if they are to breathe free. [Read more…]

Nelson Mandela died today. There is not much that I can add to all the words that will be written about him. But I thought that this old TV interview from 1961, when he was in hiding and before he was captured by the apartheid South African government and put in prison for 27 years before being released in 1990, was interesting. [Read more…]

It is quite amazing how casually some Americans can talk about using nuclear weapons against Iran, given what we know about the long-term, drastic, and indiscriminate effects of such weapons. Usually they shy away from saying so directly and couch it in terms of saying that “all options are on the table” or “no options are off the table”. [Read more…]

Apparently fearful that NSA employees might face critical comments and displeasure over the work they do from the families and friends when they got together over the Thanksgiving holidays, some higher ups at the NSA thoughtfully provided them with a set of talking points on how to defend working for an organization that has received such a black eye. [Read more…]