Here are two items from recent media: Sean Spicer Walking Around White House In Sunglasses And Baseball Cap To Avoid Press “After Spicer spent several minutes hidden in the bushes behind these sets, Janet Montesi, an executive assistant in the press office, emerged and told reporters that Spicer would answer some questions, as long as… Continue reading Satire Is Officially Broken
From AP and the Washington Post, the latest on the Vatileaks story (that I mentioned earlier) MILAN — A Vatican judge on Saturday indicted five people, including two journalists and a high-ranking Vatican monsignor, in a scandal involving leaked documents that informed two books alleging financial malfeasance in the Roman Catholic church bureaucracy. I’m surprised at how… Continue reading Vatican Values
The Washington Post reported on a Pew survey of countries with a significant Muslim population, asking whether people there have a positive or negative view of ISIS: As the graph shows, in every country, ISIS is unpopular, by huge margins (and I find it interesting that according to the same survey, attitudes vary more from country to country and between… Continue reading Is ISIS’s popularity low? Hard to Tell
So I made some comment about the Republican convention being based on a lie or something, and my interlocutor made a comment about how, well, both parties lie. Well, sure. But the Republicans are worse than the Democrats. And she said no, they both lie about the same. And thus, me being the type of… Continue reading Both Parties Lie, Right?
So I saw this headline in The Washington Post: UN envoy says $5 billion malaria fight has saved several thousand lives in recent years My first thought was, “$5 billion divided by, let’s say 5000 people, that comes out to a million bucks per person saved. A noble result, to be sure, but isn’t there… Continue reading Numbers Mean Things
Cool! We got a write-up in the Post. So here we are in Lorton, at the year’s largest social assembly of Washington area atheist groups, the fourth annual Independence Day Celebration — or, as the e-mailed news release read, “Ungodly Leaders to Gather at Potomac Picnic.” If there were any major factual errors in the… Continue reading Fourth of July Party Write-Up
Today’s Washington Post: There are changes in how parents nag. In what they nag about. In frequency. Parents know more about flubbed tests and skipped homework because of online grading systems. They know more about social lives because of Facebook and MySpace pages. The Onion Video, five days ago: Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk… Continue reading Reality Catches Up to The Onion. Again.
Okay, so I’m a geek. When I saw a story in the Washington Post Maryland RSS feed with the headline “Chesapeake Beach Can’t Raise Taxon Bingo Machines” I wondered what Taxon Bingo would look like, and had to whip this up: (The headline has been fixed in the full article, but remains in the RSS… Continue reading Taxon Bingo
In the wake of Mitt Romney’s speech, the Washington Post has an editorial that makes some of the same points that I did. Where Mr. Romney most fell short, though, was in his failure to recognize that America is composed of citizens not only of different faiths but of no faith at all and that… Continue reading Atheism-Friendly Editorial in the Post
Today’s Washington Post has an article about three Christian groups who’ve come out and taken a courageous stand against equality, tolerance, and understanding: The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, meeting in Baltimore, declared Tuesday that Catholics who minister to gays must firmly adhere to the church’s teaching that same-sex attractions are "disordered." Catholics with "a homosexual… Continue reading Churches Dig In, Refuse to Be Dragged Into 20th Century
