Another headline, another senseless tragedy. During a week full of them, this one hardly caused a blip on my radar, except that it happened here. First I read that a group of teens forced a boy to watch his mother repeatedly raped, then have sex with her himself at gunpoint.…
Last Friday, Governor Blunt signed a bill that mandates that sex ed teachers provide political affiliations and charitable contribution disclosures to the state in order to prevent any teachers possibly affiliated with any reproductive rights centers or groups from teaching about reproduction. It also prohibits schools from obtaining materials from…
I was reading about Gallium metal, and got sidetracked by a debate about math software. The point that got my attention is the contention that civilization is based on an institutionalized principle that we all are incompetent in many important fields. The item being debated was the necessity of children…
Howard Zinn, writing at Alternet: On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag,…
If you Google “Paris Hilton Jail” you’ll get 15 million hits. If you Google “Downing Street Memo” you'll get only 800,000 hits. A terrifying real-world topic, “Greenland ice sheet,” will only return 900,000 hits. I suppose it’s because there are no videos of memos or glaciers having sex. What brought…