Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From The Journal of Improbable Research:
If you comb your hair, you may have found yourself wondering how fast (in metres per second) your elbow moves as you do so. In which case, help is at hand – in the form of a recent paper published in the American Institute of Physics (AIP) Conference Proceedings.
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:
Recently my 13-year old was feeling nostalgic and asked to see some videos I’d taken of him as a child, so I rigged up the now long-antiquated camcorder through our TV, popped in one of the dozens of unlabeled mini cassettes from a shoebox and pressed play. It was my son’s 5th birthday, and he was first laying his eyes on the “big boy” drum set my siblings had chipped in on for him. He immediately sat down, grabbed the sticks and went to work with unbridled aplomb, and there was an explosion of laughter and cheers from behind the camera as we reveled in him. He was beaming there behind the drum heads, and I was beaming now, laying next to my son and watching this much younger version of himself.
I was lost in replaying the joy of that moment when I heard it: a sound that stopped me in my tracks. It was my father’s voice just off camera. He’s been gone for five years, but suddenly there he was, full-throated and laughing, talking to each of us in real-time. He wasn’t in the past in that scene—he was just alive. I didn’t have to try and recall what he sounded, like because he was speaking for himself. We were not a family living for years with this terrible attrition, we were whole again.
I thought I’d missed my father but I didn’t realize how much until I could hear him again.
From Infidel753:
This week I finally looked it up. It is true. According to Business Insider, fast-food workers in Denmark do make a minimum of $20 per hour, more than twice what Americans in the same job do. The article points out that the cost of living in Denmark is 30% higher, but the effective difference is still enormous.
Is Denmark an outlier for some reason? I was able to find a few other comparisons.
From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:
Well, more than two years into Donald Trump’s presidency, his ardent supporters do seem to be standing by him–not because of the pledges Trump made to them, but despite them. As his gymnastic reversal last week on cuts to Medicare and Social Security was just the latest to confirm, that many of Trump’s biggest promises would be broken was pathetically, even comically predictable when he made them.
Here, then, are the top 10.
From The Onion:
‘Who The Hell Was I Working With Then?’ Asks Russian President
MOSCOW—Saying that he had been “totally blindsided” by the revelations from the recently released findings of the Mueller investigation, a shocked Vladimir Putin reportedly came to the realization Tuesday that he didn’t conspire with Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign after all. “What the hell? I worked so hard on this—if I wasn’t colluding with the Trump campaign, who the hell was I colluding with?”
Podcast from Julian Sanchez:
Attorney General William Barr has released a brief description of the findings of Robert Mueller in his investigation into Russian meddling in U.S. elections. Many questions remain. Julian Sanchez comments.
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
A common refrain used by conservatives to defend liberty is that our individual rights are “God-given.” “God-given” is left hanging with no further elaboration necessary. This leaves the defense of freedom at the mercy of others, including other theists, who simply retort, “Oh no, they’re not.” What then?
My view is that freedom is a requirement of human life, rooted in man’s nature and his relationship to existence, and that individual rights are the principles that can be derived from the observable facts of reality. Does this leave religious people incapable of effectively advocating for rights? Not at all.
We who love liberty and Americanism need to explain WHY we have rights.
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:
OK, I read Barr’s summary. Some thoughts follow
Look, let’s see how things look after we see the report itself.
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:
The Republicans in Congress have said they want to cut Social Security benefits. They want to do that to cover for the massive tax cuts they gave corporations and rich people, and would like for people to believe the ballooning deficit and national debt (now rising by a trillion dollars a year) is caused by Social Security (and Medicare and Medicaid). Donald Trump is joining them by submitting a budget proposal that makes cuts to Social Security (and Medicare and Medicaid).
This is a LIE! Social Security has never added a single penny to either the deficit or the national debt.