Two people in England have been convicted of the murder of a teenage relative whom they believed to be using witchcraft, and who drowned in a bath during a forced exorcism. The story of the boy’s final hours was so ghastly [Read more…]

Jonathan Turley has posted an update based on a statement reportedly made by the judge that challenges some of the facts reported in the original story about the assault on [Read more…]

A few days ago, I wrote about how private equity companies like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital worked. Jon Stewart adds to that story.

To get hints on how to view clips on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report outside the US, please see this earlier post. This show was broadcast on January 31, 2012.

There is a downside to following politics too closely in that it can cause you to misjudge the impact of a news story on the general public. Take the case of Mitt Romney’s taxes. It has been known for a long time amongst the cognoscenti that not only was he wealthy but that his income came from investments and [Read more…]

The archives of my thousands of posts since 2005 that used to be at my old site have been copied over here, so that they are now available at both places.

Because of the size and other complications, the work was tedious and time consuming and I want to acknowledge my deep gratitude to Jason Thibeault over at lousy canuck for carrying out this huge task so efficiently and cheerfully.

One commenter to my previous post wondered if I could write about the Big Bang model, dark matter, dark energy, and so on in a manner accessible to the lay reader. This raises an interesting issue of what to do about the posts that I wrote before I moved here and which are currently archived on my old site. Those archives are in the process of being moved over here but I am not sure when that transfer will be completed.

People are welcome to browse the old category archives where they will find that I have written on a fairly wide variety of topics. If readers would like me to address a specific topic, I may be able to point them to one already written.

New readers at FtB may not be aware that on occasion I make people suffer through a multi-part series of posts on topics that I think require careful explanation. In this particular case, I wrote a 16-part series on the topic Big Bang for beginners that addressed the topic that was requested. Posts 8 and 9 in the series dealt with the role of dark matter and dark energy.

So please keep those requests and suggestions coming.

I have chosen as my comment policy that the first comment by someone has to be approved by me but once approved that person will be able to post comments freely.

I will try to check frequently and apologize in advance if work and other pressures result in delays and your first comment not appearing as soon as you might like.

The blogging software here is different from what I am used to so there may be some rough patches early on until I get the feel of things. If readers notice anything that can be improved upon, I would be grateful for their suggestions.

I’d like to thank Ed Brayton and the rest of the people at Freethought Blogs for inviting me to join them.

I am not new to blogging, however, having done it for nearly seven years over at my old site which contains the archive of old posts that I hope to copy over here in due course. My interests tend to vary over a lot of topics, in addition to the ones listed on the banner.

I would like to express my special thanks to Norm Nason, editor of the excellent web magazine Machines Like Us, and a person of many artistic talents whose work can be seen here, for designing the above banner.

New posts will commence as soon as I get the hang of the new system here which uses a different platform from the one I am used to.

So with that introduction out of the way, onward and upward!

A new study says that people start losing their brain powers as early as 45 years of age.

The results of the tests show that cognitive scores declined in all categories except vocabulary – and there was a faster decline in older people.

The study found a 9.6% decline in mental reasoning in men aged 65-70 and a 7.4% decline for women of the same age.

For men and women aged 45-49, there was a 3.6% decline.

Since my work involves mainly words, the lack of decline in vocabulary skills may be masking my decrepitude.

The study can be read here.

… and best wishes for the New Year to all the readers of this blog.

Since my family is visiting over the holiday week, blogging will be lighter than usual. Regular blogging will resume on Tuesday, January 4, 2012.