The great tax scam

I just returned from the post office after mailing my tax returns. Yes, I am an old fashioned guy who still does our own taxes and mails in paper returns, much to the delight of the post office that gets money from my doing so and to the chagrin of the tax preparation companies that would like me to pay for their services, and the Internal Revenue Service for whom it would be much easier to process electronic returns than paper ones.
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Why? Why? Why?

David Buckel, a lawyer who was prominent for his work on behalf of LGBTQ groups, died after setting himself on fire in a New York City park.

In a suicide note left near his body, Buckel said he had used “fossil fuel” to ignite the fire and wanted his death to symbolize what humans are doing to Earth, the New York Daily News reported. Buckel emailed copies of the note to several news organizations, including the New York Times.
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Thomas Jefferson on the separation of church and state

Via reader Greg, I read this article by Lathan Watts who’s bio states that he is “director of community relations for First Liberty Institute, a nationwide religious liberty law firm dedicated to protecting religious liberty for all.” That alone set off alarm bells in my mind because the phrase ‘religious liberty’ is now the sword brandished by those who would seek to have Christianity be everywhere in the public square. I have a similar reaction when an organization has ‘family’ or ‘values’ in its name, because that is a pretty good indicator that it is a bigoted right-wing group.
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Film review: The Shape of Water (2017)

Last night I watched this film that won this year’s Academy Award for best film and best director (Guillermo del Toro). I am not really a fan of the fantasy genre (the scientific implausibilities grate on me even though I try hard to suspend my critical faculties) but found this film, despite some scenes of violence, to be quite a sweet love story. For those who haven’t heard of it, it is set around 1960 at the height of the Cold War. The US military has found a strange human-like amphibian in the Amazon and brought it back to the US to study in a top-secret facility.
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The US as a rogue world police force

The US has sent missiles to attack Syria. Not only is this a violation of international law, it is also a violation of the US Constitution in that nowhere has congress granted authority to take military action in Syria. The administration claims that it has ‘secret authority’ to wage war though why it should be kept secret is not clear. The administration did not even go through the pretense of an investigation or any public presentation of whatever evidence they have. They have simply asserted that they are justified in taking the action, the same way that they have done many times in the past and later been shown to have lied. And as usual, the UK has been its craven lackey, this time joined by France, both of whose leaders seem to enjoy being part of the macho posturing by Trump.
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David Silverman fired as head of American Atheists

[UPDATE: Two commenters below Bridget Wolfe and Reginald Selkirk have given links to a Buzzfeed article about the background to Silverman’s firing.]

I just received the following email from AA:

Last night, the American Atheists Board of Directors voted to terminate David Silverman as president of American Atheists.

Board Chair Neal Cary and Vice President Kathleen Johnson will continue to fulfill the duties of the President while National Program Director Nick Fish oversees the day-to-day operations of the organization.
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Is this my Facebook-free future?

A couple of days ago, I mentioned that I had deleted my Facebook account, as well as my LinkedIn account. Is this what my future is going to look like?

Nah. Since I did not use Facebook anyway, my life has gone on as before with no change at all, except that I no longer get emails from Facebook alerting me to follow the routine events of other people’s lives. I also no longer get friend requests from people I have never heard of. So it’s all good.

The Harris-Murray two-step

An article published in Vox by Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard E. Nisbett, three academic psychologists who specialize in studying intelligence, critiqued a podcast hosted by Sam Harris, where he invited Charles Murray to discuss the question of the relationship between race and intelligence. The article (which is well worth reading for its detailed analysis of this issue) criticized Murray for assertions that they felt were unjustified and Harris for not pushing back hard enough and asserting the existence of a mainstream consensus on statements that were in fact highly contentious.
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