This video of a road accident in Russia is stunning. The accident was caused by a cyclist, car, and truck all simultaneously breezing through an intersection. It is amazing that not only was the cyclist not killed by either the car or the truck, but that he recovered quickly enough that he got up off the ground and went to the aid of the truck driver trapped in the cab of the overturned truck.
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As Glenn Greenwald points out, the advent of the Syria bombing campaign marks the seventh Muslim-majority nation that the Nobel Peace Prize winning US president has bombed, and the lack of any meaningful debate on the legality, let alone the wisdom, of this latest move in noteworthy but depressingly predictable.
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Susan Miller is a very popular astrologer. She puts up her monthly horoscope predictions for free on her website Astrology Zone at the beginning of each month and has a huge readership, estimated at 6.5 million. Recently she has been running late with her postings because she says she has been sick. You would think that her readers would cut her some slack, but no. These repeated delays have apparently caused great consternation among those who apparently need their monthly horoscope fix in order to live their lives and are distressed by not being told what to do in a timely manner, and some of them have turned ugly, accusing her of a lack of ‘professionalism’.
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The media has been abuzz with the atrocious behavior of football players assaulting the women and children in their lives. As disgusting as that behavior is, what is also odious are the defenses being offered by prominent figures such as CNN’s Don Lemon and Charles Barkley for such abuse, saying that they received similar treatment from their parents when they were children and see nothing wrong with it or that it is somehow some cultural thing.
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An Oklahoma county judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of a Baptist minister charging that the 6-foot tall granite Ten Commandments monument that was placed on grounds of the state capital violated the state’s constitution. The judge blocked the lawsuit from even going to trial. The ruling will be appealed to the state supreme court and there is another lawsuit pending in a federal court that is scheduled for trial on March 10, 2015.
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Islam is one of those religions that is highly disapproving of homosexuality, forcing members of the LGBT community deep into the closet in order to avoid persecution or even death in some countries. So I was interested to read about the opening of a pro-gay mosque in Cape Town, South Africa that also treated men and women equally and where women will be allowed to lead prayers.
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There are some news items that I read and think, “This has to be a hoax”. To check, I look to see if the source is an established news outlet and that it is original reporting by their reporters and not something they have taken off some other source because these days there are many websites that pretend to be news sources but whose purpose seems to be to fool regular news operations by writing stories that on the surface look genuine.
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It is a stereotype of the current college generation that they are addicted to their cell phones. A couple of professors at Baylor University decided to ask students enrolled in their class to fill out an online survey about the amount of their cell-phone use in 24 different categories to see the degree of cell phone addiction and any gender differences, where an addiction was defined as “the repeated use of a substance despite the negative consequences suffered by the addicted individual”.
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I did not follow the race for the New York Democratic primary because the odious current governor Andrew Cuomo seemed assured of an easy win. But although he did win as expected, his opponent with the unlikely name of Zephyr Teachout made a very good showing, getting 34% of the vote, despite the fact that she had very little money and Cuomo completely ignored her and refused to even debate her.
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It is very hard for local governments to resist religious pandering, especially when it is combined with patriotic pandering. All it takes is for one elected official to propose something like putting up the Ten Commandments or starting meetings with a prayer or the Pledge of Allegiance (with the words ‘under god’ added of course) and this puts other members in a bind. Even if they think the idea is stupid, offensive, or even unconstitutional, few want to speak out against it for fear of being labeled anti-religious or unpatriotic. This is why most such practices end up having to be litigated, wasting everyone’s time and money.
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