Links With Your Coffee - Friday
- Pew Research Center: More Americans Question Religion's Role in Politics
Some Americans are having a change of heart about mixing religion and politics. A new survey finds a narrow majority of the public saying that churches and other houses of worship should keep out of political matters and not express their views on day-to-day social and political matters. For a decade, majorities of Americans had voiced support for religious institutions speaking out on such issues.
- Magpies are no bird-brains, mirror test shows | Science | Reuters
Magpies can recognize themselves in a mirror, highlighting the mental skills of some birds and confounding the notion that self-awareness is the exclusive preserve of humans and a few higher mammals.
- Crossword, sudoku plague threatens America! (note: I'm a puzzle person)
Try this experiment at a dinner party (if you want to ruin it). Mention a frequent obsession of puzzle people, the NPR "news quiz" show, Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me! (Or, as I call it, "Wait Wait ... Please Kill Me!") About half the attendees will exhibit violent, often physical reactions ranging from cringing to shuddering. Meanwhile, the other half will have sublime self-satisfied smiles. They sometimes get the answers before the guests! The show is so mentally stimulating!
What always gets to me is the self-congratulatory assumption on the part of puzzle people that their addiction to the useless habit somehow proves they are smarter or more literate than the rest of us. Need I suggest that those who spend time doing crossword puzzles (or sudoku)—uselessly filling empty boxes (a metaphor for some emptiness in their lives?)—could be doing something else that involves words and letters? It's called reading.
- Nader predicts Obama to pick Clinton - John F. Harris - Politico.com
- t r u t h o u t | Progressives and Obama: A Clash of Narratives
But supporting one candidate - clearly preferable to the Republican - should not require a lack of candor about the preferred candidate's defects. And progressive interests are not advanced by claiming, against the evidence, that it doesn't really matter which candidate wins.
- 'Offensive' word to be removed from Jacqueline Wilson book | Books | guardian.co.uk
- The decay of serious journalism and Rachel Maddow's new show - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com
- Authors admit falsehoods in Rushdie memoir | Books | guardian.co.uk
Does this mean we can't call him Scruffy?
- Could We Lose Weight by Injecting Fat into Our Bellies?: Scientific American
- Editorials & Opinion | Doctor's office no place for bigotry | Seattle Times Newspaper (good news)
- Bad Science » My Placebo programme on BBC Radio 4
- Great Pictures of Readers
Comments
Let it be known that the public can only forget 200 year old good ideas written into our constitution for so long before they get smacked in the face and 52% of people develop some common sense on the matter.
Another 50 years and they might realize evolution is real.
RedSeven:
Let us hope that the human being will continue to evolve, eh?
Get it? Eh? I kill me!
Either way, at least this pendulum in swinging in the right direction.
The ineffectiveness of the left is balanced by the overreaching of the right.
It all equals the status quo.
Um, "corporate centrist core"? What?
FISA, yeah, that was a bad judgment call, but what else in his policy positions vindicates this ridiculous charge? Does someone have to hate corporations and, heck, economics generally, to satisfy the far left-wing wingnuts?
OK, attacks in Afghanistan have escalated dramatically and it is a mess there. The Taliban is now roaming freely along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, doing delightful things like burning down elementary schools for girls.
Barack never said he opposed all wars but only "dumb wars," and Iraq was a dumb war to start. But we have serious security interests there, in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan, and we cannot simply have a nice little chat with the Taliban, say, about liberal values to make the problem go away, Stopping them for tormenting people and destroying lives is our responsibility after turning that country upside down, and has nothing to do with so-called "militarism." And leaving to give them free reign would be a national security nightmare.
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