Sam Harris has offered what seems to me to be one of the more even-handed analyses of the gun control debate. As part of his analysis, he points to a video offering training to a classroom of students who are about to be attacked by an assailant with a gun. Fascinating and it actually makes sense, though it would only work for older students, not elementary school kids.
Glenn Greenwald points out the "problem" with Hagel:
There's a reason Hagel's nomination has become so intensely controversial and such a vicious target for war-cheering neocons such as Bill Kristol and the Washington Post Editorial Board. It's because Hagel is one of the very, very few prominent national politicians from either party who has been brave enough to question and dissent from the destructive bipartisan orthodoxies on foreign policy. What plausible Democratic candidate for this job has been willing publicly to point out that the US and Israel are separate countries and American interests should trump Israeli interests when they conflict, or to advocate for direct negotiations with Hamas, or to candidly point out that America's Middle East wars are fought for oil, or to condemn the power of the pro-Israel lobby within both parties, or to harshly point out the stupidity of attacking Iran rather than cowardly mouth the "all-options-on-the-table" platitude?Greenwald points out the conservative pretense for opposing Hagel, referencing a Michael Moore article that Harpoons Bill Kristol. Not long ago, Greenwald pointed out that it's not really Log Cabin Republican money that is financing the LCR attack on Hagel.
XKCD takes the topic of electoral precedent from George Washington forward. Well executed, indeed.
There's snow on the ground outside of my house. It's thus a good time to take a look at the beauty of snowflakes, from a scientific perspective: And check out this video featuring Physicist Ken Libbrecht at Discovery TV (embedding disabled). Finally, a meditation on snowflakes with Satie playing in the background:
Here we go again. Those of us who don't acknowledge invisible sentient beings--OK, I'll say it--imaginary beings, are being accused of having causal responsibility for the Sandy Hook massacre. Mike Huckabee is one of the loudest advocates of this insanity The Friendly Atheist is not accepting any such responsibility (nor am I). A lot of [Huckabee's] critics — many Christians included — cringed at those statements because they suggested that church/state separation and not forcing God down everybody’s throats were to blame for the crime. There’s obviously no evidence suggesting that. Even if one acknowledges that non-believers (except for those of us who have advocated wacky NRA policies) aren't any more responsible for Sandy Hook than any other American, we non-believers do look a bit awkward following tragedies. Believers put great energy into their public prayer services. They comfort the mourning families by dogmatically announcing that the dead are now alive in "heaven." Many of us non-believers would like to say things like this to comfort others, but we generally choose to honest instead. That means that religious folks get lots of credit for helping the families of the dead, and we non-believers are seen as inactive bystanders. Or according to this article in the NYT, that's how it looks.
This illustration of religious belief in action, of faith expressed in extremis, an example at once so heart-rending and so affirming, has left behind one prickly question: Where were the humanists? At a time when the percentage of Americans without religious affiliation is growing rapidly, why did the “nones,” as they are colloquially known, seem so absent? To raise these queries is not to play gotcha, or to be judgmental in a dire time. In fact, some leaders within the humanist movement — an umbrella term for those who call themselves atheists, agnostics, secularists and freethinkers, among other terms — are ruefully and self-critically saying the same thing themselves.