Mallory Ortberg at the New Yorker has discovered what the objectivist hero, who believes that selfishness is the highest virtue, thinks of the classics of children’s films. Here are some of Rand’s reviews:
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You would think that by now, after all the lies that we have been told by the US government in its efforts to take the country into various wars, we would all have a healthy skepticism when officials blandly assert without providing the evidence that some country that they perceive as the enemy is responsible for some action. And yet here we are, with the media accepting at face value the assertions by US officials that North Korea is behind the Sony hack.
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Now that the season for college football bowl games and championship tournaments is underway, raising interest in college foot ball to a high pitch, I want to revisit a college football scandal that has been bothering me. While the Penn State sexual abuse scandal was a high water mark of how big college sports programs corrupt almost everything it touches, there are other abuses that are less high profile. One that is endemic, especially at those colleges with big sports programs, is the pressure to let athletes slide by academically with lower expectations in order for them to retain their eligibility.
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The Daily Show talks about the absurd right wing and Fox News reaction to the protests against the killing of unarmed black people by the police who strain to find some way of discrediting the various forms it has taken.
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Yesterday was the ninth anniversary of the day Baxter the Wonder Dog joined our family. The first photo was taken two days after his arrival when he was just a puppy and the one below is a more recent one, after he took charge of the place.
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The Wall Street Journal has a chart of the rates of obesity by classes of professions. Kevin Drum looked at the chart and noted that the category that includes economists, scientists, and psychologists have the lowest rates of 14.2%, well below the national average of 27.7% and far, far below the highest category of police officers, firefighters, and security guards which is 40.7% He is puzzled why this should be so and asks why it might be that economists are so low in weight.
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Now that The Colbert Report has signed off, what about the show that will replace it? The Nightly Show with host Larry Wilmore premieres on January 19, 2015 and he says that it will focus on the underdog, whoever that might be, with interviews of people who are actually doing something and are not merely politicians or talking heads.
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It was thought that one source of the water that is found on Earth was that it arrived via comets. But the Rosetta probe that has been orbiting comet 67P since August (and whose lander Philae came to rest on the surface in November) had remote sensing devices and found signs of water there but scientists who studied the data say that this water seems to be from a different source than the water on Earth.
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Here are the two final clips from Stephen Colbert’s final episode. I thought it was a good ending, somewhat sentimental but avoiding the trap of being sappy. And you can amuse yourself by seeing how many people you can identify. The list unfortunately includes some of the dregs of politics and journalism and at least one war criminal. You can see a comprehensive list here.
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Religious groups are feeling their oats following their success in the Hobby Lobby case to carve out a religious exemption for themselves from following the law if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Now comes word that legislators in some states are seeking to expand that practice and allow businesses to not serve gay people if they disapprove of homosexuality on religious grounds.
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