Today is the day when the world (except the US of course, because as the one true exceptional nation, we don’t need no stinking worker solidarity) acknowledges the rights of workers and their hard-won achievements all over the globe that have made our lives so much better, and calls for greater unity among workers to achieve yet more.
Here is a nice compilation of photographs of May Day parades and celebrations.
So it seems that pope Francis has convened an ‘urgent’ meeting of senior clerics of the church to take place this October in which they will discuss all the major issues that the church is confronting. He had earlier asked them to canvass the views of their members on these issues prior to the meeting and those results are currently being tallied, so that the discussions will reflect the actual concerns of people.
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I wrote recently about the abuse of civil asset forfeitures by over-zealous prosecutors who seize assets without even charging the people with anything.
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CNN must be dreading to watch The Daily Show because, next to Fox News, Jon Stewart seems to enjoy taking shots at them for their descent into mindless coverage of non-news. It seems like he expects them to be better than they are while he has no hope for Fox.
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Science and religion share a long history of controversy and even hostility. Mathematics and religion, not so much. There could be many reasons for this, the primary one being that there is some similarity in the way that both mathematics and theology operate. Both seek to create self-contained systems based on axioms that are assumed to be true. In the case of mathematics, the axioms depend upon the field of mathematics being studied while in the case of theology, the fundamental axiom is that ‘god exists’.
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Jon Stewart devoted three segments to discuss the issue of racism that has suddenly flooded the media.
First up, he gave his take on the Donald Sterling story, since that seems to be the topic du jour and is the third time I am discussing it today.
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Yesterday came reports of the ghastly mess involving the execution of a death row inmate in Oklahoma because states are experimenting with a new drug cocktail since the old drugs are no longer allowed to be exported to the US from Europe because of European disapproval of their use for executions.
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Most people were taken by surprise that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver handed down the maximum penalty that he had the power to levy unilaterally ($2.5 million fine and lifetime ban from the NBA) to Donald Sterling, and also called for the other owners to force him to sell his team. Most observers had expected something a little less than the maximum, say a limited period of suspension.
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I’ve been wondering how the impasse with rancher Cliven Bundy will end. While the government seems to be perfectly willing to give immunity from prosecution to the one-percenters, it cracks down hard on ordinary people who violate the law, such as the outrageous case of a recent widow whose home was seized and sold because she had not paid a $6.30 interest fee that she said she was not even aware of. That is how an oligarchy maintains control of a society.
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There have been some interesting nuances following the Donald Sterling uproar. Commenter jaytheostrich wondered in a comment on my post yesterday as to whether Sterling’s free speech rights were being violated because he was being punished merely for something he said, and whether it was legal to do so. Another commenter Suido responded by providing a link to an excellent cartoon by xkcd that seems to settle the freedom of speech issue in a pretty convincing way.
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