Case Western Reserve University has been named one of the top ten geekiest colleges in the nation. (You can see the rankings in other categories here.) The list was compiled by HerCampus. In its description of my university, the site says: [Read more…]
Today is a federal holiday known as Columbus Day in the US because this country continues to honor the memory of one of the most horrific mass murderers in history, a greedy, vicious, slaveholding monster, someone who should actually be reviled and condemned. Having a national holiday in his name seems to put him on a par with Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr.. [Read more…]
The headline on this article in today’s Washington Post says it all: “Senate leaders’ talks on shutdown, debt limit stall as sides await market’s reaction”. Apparently, the leaders in Congress are waiting to see what happens to the stock market today to see if there is a crisis that will force them to act. [Read more…]
The series of five interviews on the afterlife with NPR’s All Things Considered host Robert Siegel was pretty good. Siegel himself does not believe in the afterlife and his questioning of his guests was gentle but pointed. He interviewed an evangelical Christian pastor (that I wrote about before), a Muslim imam, a philosopher, a Jewish rabbi, and a Catholic theologian. Each of those links has links to the transcripts of the interviews. [Read more…]
In all these discussions over the Affordable Care Act and its Medicaid provision, the Republican party talks in high-minded terms of the cost, and they sigh regretfully that any adverse consequences for the working poor are the unfortunate side effects of the sacrifice we have to make for the sake of our children and grandchildren. Those hurt now are collateral damage, if you will, and need to suck it up. [Read more…]
Martin Longman provides a helpful summary of the current state of affairs. It is pretty complicated. [Read more…]
In his grandstanding against the Affordable Care Act in particular and president Obama in general, the rhetoric of US senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been getting more and more extreme. In a speech to the Values Voters Summit, the annual gathering of all the right wing religious nutcases (take a look at the list of invited speakers), he said that Obama is seeking to void the entire Bill of Rights, facetiously including the little known Third Amendment which prevents the government from requiring people to put up soldiers in their homes. [Read more…]
Republicans have a lock on all statewide elected positions in Ohio and have comfortable majorities in both legislative bodies, with the exception of the US senate where Sherrod Brown is one of the senators. So they can do pretty much what they like and one of the things they like to do is restrict women’s health options by passing legislation that “defund Planned Parenthood, block grants to rape crisis centers that refer women to abortion clinics, and prevent abortion clinics from transferring patients to public hospitals in the case of severe complications.” [Read more…]
Spiritualists used to be quite the rage back in Charles Darwin’s day and even he was persuaded to attend a séance with one of the leading practitioners of his time. He was not impressed with the obvious theatricality and trickery involved in producing the noises and movement, but many people were duped into thinking that spirits existed. [Read more…]