Latest from my blog
The Birth Control Debate
It is extraordinary how far some will go to knit the random scraps and patches of events into the quilt of a narrative. So the Susan B. Komen controversy, resistance to the administration’s contraceptive mandate, a stag-party joke by Foster Friess and a cruel epithet from Rush Limbaugh somehow add up to a Republican war on women, sure to provoke the political backlash of an entire gender. American women haven’t behaved as predicted or demanded. President Obama’s job approval has risen … continue reading...
About the Knowledge Graph from Google by the BBC
This is about the feature that Oscar was talking about earlier today in the show. The feature will at first be available to US-based users, but will be rolled out globally in due course. It follows similar efforts by rival Bing to provide added search content beyond the typical list of links.Source: BBC News - Google makes search 'more human' with Knowledge Graph … continue reading...
Google makes search ‘more human’
Google makes search 'more human': "Google revamps its search engine in an attempt to offer instant answers to search questions with a new function, the Knowledge Graph." (Via BBC News - Home.) … [Read More...]
Playing the Violence Card
EVER since the culture wars of the 1980s, Americans have been familiar with "the race card" - an epithet used to discredit real and imagined cries of racism. Less familiar, however, is an equally cynical rhetorical tactic that I call "the violence card." Here's how it works. When confronted … [Read More...]
Not Enough Inflation
A few days ago, Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, spoke out in defense of his successor. Attacks on Ben Bernanke by Republicans, he told The Financial Times, are "wholly inappropriate and destructive." He's right about that - which makes this one of the very few things the … [Read More...]
Legalize it? Commentary on Drugs and Marijuana legalization.
Here are some of my thoughts about Drugs and Marijuana legalization. The human nervous system interacts in pleasing and addictive ways with certain molecules derived from some plants, which is why humans may have developed beer before they developed bread. Psychoactive — consciousness-altering … [Read More...]
Farewell, New Frontier.
As the space shuttle Discovery flew three times around Washington, a final salute before landing at Dulles airport for retirement in a museum, thousands on the ground gazed upward with marvel and pride. Yet what they were witnessing, for all its elegance, was a funeral march. The shuttle was … [Read More...]
VIDEO: Obama launches re-election campaign
VIDEO: Obama launches re-election campaign: "President Obama has launched his re-election campaign in the key battleground states of Ohio and Virginia." (Via BBC News - Home.) … [Read More...]
A Poison we Can’t Ignore
Not all overheated political rhetoric is alike. Delusional right-wing crazy talk — the kind of ranting we’ve heard recently from washed-up rock star Ted Nugent and Tea Party-backed Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) — is a special kind of poison that cannot be safely ignored. Let me be clear: I’m … [Read More...]
