As the US population ages, there will be many people who are retired and in nursing homes. Such people may lack mobility and risk feeling lonely and useless, not a good thing for people who have such a wealth of life experience and so much to contribute. Stephen Colbert describes a nice program where older people teach English to foreign students by talking to them over the internet.
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An op-ed in the Washington Post makes a good case as to why the use by the US government of drone strikes is so problematic
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There is a negative correlation between religious beliefs and education in that the more formal education one has, the less likely one is to be religious. But a new study suggests that that familiar pattern may be undergoing a shift, especially in the age cohort labeled as Generation X.
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When the Bush-Cheney regime went on an orgy of torture, they denied that what they were doing deserved that label and the US media became extremely coy about calling it that, although the practices such as waterboarding had been unambiguously condemned as torture when done by Japanese on American prisoners of war and the perpetrators had been executed. The New York Times was one of the worst culprits during that period, routinely using the phrase ‘enhanced interrogation’ that the Bush administration wanted them to use instead of calling it torture.
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The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution equipped an underwater drone with six cameras to observe shark behavior in the wild off the coast of Mexico. When the great white sharks thought that the drone was either threatening them or was possible prey, the cameras caught some stunning footage of their reaction.
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A group of women walkers in Georgia who wanted to end their session by forming a circle and praying in a shopping mall were told that they could not do that.
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We know that sound consists of vibrations in the air or other medium transmitting it and that it causes objects on which the waves impinge to also vibrate, even if we cannot see it with the naked eye. But in theory at least, by closely observing the vibrations of the object, you should be able to reconstruct the sound that caused it to vibrate.
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In a post on July 25, I mentioned early reports of a possible massacre by Israeli troops in the town of Khuza’a near the Israeli border, with social media providing gruesome stories. In a new report, Human Rights Watch confirms it, saying that between July 23 and 25, Israeli troops deliberately targeted civilians, killing them as they walked with their hands up or carrying white flags or were running away.
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