Australia has seen a huge turnover in its political leadership with five prime ministers in as many years, with most of the changes occurring not due to national elections but because of political backstabbing and intrigue within parties that have unseated party leaders. (In the parliamentary system, the prime minister is not directly elected but is the person who commands the majority of party members in parliament.)
[Read more…]
If you subscribe to Netflix, you know that as soon as you turn it on, your home page will show still images for various shows that they are promoting for you specifically to watch. I knew of course that they use some kind of algorithm to determine your likes and dislikes, presumably based on your past viewing history. What I had not realized was that they are also trying to deduce whether I am a person of color or not and if they felt that I was, they would show a different still image featuring actors of color, even if they had just minor roles in the film or TV show. Here is an example.
[Read more…]
This is a documentary about three identical triplets who, in 1979 at the age of 19, found each other by chance. The events depicted are already known and some older readers might recall the case that made such a big splash in the media. The filmmaker has presented it in such a way that it is like a film in three acts, starting out in one way before somewhat abruptly revealing facts in the second act that takes the film in a different direction. The film raises some disturbing ethical issues but I cannot discuss them without revealing what the film is all about which I will do after the trailer.
[Read more…]
It appears that blasphemy is currently an offense in Ireland, even though the last known prosecution was in 1855 and the last conviction was in 1703 when a Unitarian pastor was fined £1,000 and sentenced to one year’s imprisonment for publishing a book that argued that Jesus was not equal with God the Father.
[Read more…]
That the Saudi government and its powerful figure crown prince Mohammed bin Salman are brazenly lying about what happened to Jamal Khashoggi is now blindingly obvious. There is an unbridgeable gulf between their initial response that Khashoggi had left the consulate and they did not know where he was to their most recent grudging admission that he died after he got into a ‘fist fight’ with people inside the consulate. The body has still not been produced. What we are now seeing is careful maneuvering to decide what is the most they can concede that will enable their most ardent supporters, in this case Donald Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to continue their warm relationship with both the kingdom and bin Salman.
[Read more…]
Being invited to do the Super Bowl halftime show is considered a big coup for any pop star, given the huge audience it has. Some viewers even skip the game and tune in just for this show. So it was significant that pop star Rihanna turned down the invitation to do the 2019 show because she supports Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling protest and dislikes the NFL’s stance on it.
I hope other celebrities will also follow suit.
Election day in the US is on Tuesday, November 6 and in addition to the slew of people running for political office in Ohio, there are also a large number of candidates for judicial offices and various ballot issues. One of the ballot issues is Issue 1 that is a constitutional amendment that calls for major reforms in sentencing for drug possession. Basically it distinguishes users of drugs from dealers of drugs, and treats the former as people with a health problem that should be treated medically, socially, and psychologically and not punitively. Drug addiction is better treated as a disease, not as a choice that people can be frightened away from with the threat of harsh prison sentences.
[Read more…]
In a recent episode of Radiolab, they discussed the topic of deception and at the 48:51 minutes mark, they referred to work by two psychologists about how people lie to themselves by compartmentalizing two contradictory beliefs in their minds and allowing only one into consciousness. They mentioned the work of Harold Sackeim and Ruben Gur who had developed a list of 20 questions that they would ask people to respond on a 1-7 scale with 1 being ‘not at al;’ and 7 being ‘very much so’.
[Read more…]
This week we saw the same dreary scenario played out again. The big tax cuts for business and the wealthy were passed on the claim that this would result in both groups investing more in business, which would result in huge growth in employment and wages, thus increasing tax revenues that would offset the cost of the cuts and thus make it budget neutral
[Read more…]
I have expressed before my dislike of the fact that cheating in baseball by tricking the umpires is not only not punished, but the players and media gloat over their success in duping on on-field officials. That strikes me as disgraceful. Another thing I dislike is not cheating but involves the fact that spectators can, in some instances, interfere with the action. This can happen because spectators can sit right behind the wall that designates the boundary. So if a ball is hit over the wall, you can have a situation where the fielder leaps to catch it before, or even after, it reaches the wall, while spectators, rather than moving away and giving the fielder room to make the play, also try to catch the ball and interfere.
[Read more…]