The Daily Show had a good summary and analysis of president Obama’s speech last Friday on his proposed NSA reforms. Jon Stewart was not impressed. [Read more…]
The Daily Show had a good summary and analysis of president Obama’s speech last Friday on his proposed NSA reforms. Jon Stewart was not impressed. [Read more…]
If there is one thing about religion that really drives me crazy it is when religious people act out their beliefs in ways that harm children. If adults want to handle snakes and otherwise kill themselves out of faith, that’s one thing. But leave children out of it. [Read more…]
Comedian Emo Philips writes to express his pleasure that a joke he wrote twenty years ago has been voted the funniest religious joke of all time, even though people have forgotten that he was the creator. I have to admit that I had heard it before but that I had not even heard of Philips. Here is the joke. [Read more…]
Everyone is aware of all the reports that suggest that our cognitive powers go into decline with increased age. As a result, as some of us get into our senior years, we can’t help but identify as symptoms of that mental decline every time we do not remember some thing that we think we should, or when it takes awhile to do something that we think we used to do faster. We may joke about having ‘senior moments’ but those jokes are accompanied by a twinge of anxiety as to whether they are precursors of more serious problems to come. [Read more…]
The Lemon test to judge whether violations of the Establishment Clause had occurred is not always easy to apply in concrete cases and some justices of the US Supreme Court have often expressed its unhappiness but others have opposed outright rejecting it. This is especially true of the second ‘effect’ prong which is hard to evaluate. Furthermore, the test was formulated in a case that involved legislative actions. What about situations involving government actions such as prayer and Bible readings and religious instruction in public schools, the display of religious artifacts such as the Ten Commandments on government property, ceremonial opening prayers at government functions, etc.? [Read more…]
I have discussed before how frightening it must be for animals to learn how to go down steps, and how interesting it was to watch Baxter the Wonder Dog learn to do so when he was a puppy and how proud he was of his accomplishment. [Read more…]
Via Pharyngula, I came across this fascinating graphic from a study commissioned by the Wall Street Journal that shows how time is distributed in a typical 192-minute American football game. It turns out it is only 11 minutes or less than 5% involves actual play action. I think the instant replays (sometimes five or six at different speeds and from different angles) give the false impression of there being more action than there really is. [Read more…]
Jordan Sargent has a remarkable photograph taken by Ingolf Kristiansen off the coast of Norway. Apparently a large number of herring were swimming close to the surface when a gust of cold wind froze the water near the surface, trapping the fish in place. I found this surprising because the phase change from water to ice is not instantaneous and one would think that as it happened the fish would go lower where it remains as water. [Read more…]
On December 31, 2013, a US District Court judge in Brooklyn, New York ruled that US border officials need not have ‘reasonable suspicion’ in order to search and copy people’s laptops, cell phones, and other devices at border checkpoints. The judge’s opinion can be seen here. [Read more…]
It looks like the UK has its own share of nutty politicians who seem to think that their god is like one of these deranged people who go around randomly killing innocent people and causing havoc out of a sense of grievance. [Read more…]