Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Physics Girl:
Join Physics Girl and PBS Digital Studios’ new show SoundField as they experiment with giant $100,000 speakers and aim them at your body parts looking for resonance, at oobleck, at googly eyes, and at candles to explore the physics of sound.
From PZ Myers:
I haven’t done one of these in a while — it’s a dispiriting time to be an atheist — but I was inspired by a sign near my house. This is a truly excellent motto.
Expanding Minds & Inspiring Service
That would be a great theme for an atheist community, but of course, that sign was posted outside the Campus Lutheran Ministry Christus House, which is cause for some reservation. Religion does not expand minds, but instead narrows them. You would not go into the Campus Lutheran Ministry and find the pastor explaining how you should question everything, explore the wide world of ideas, and be reluctant to accept dogma, because their mission is to get you to accept their peculiar, limited, tightly circumscribed interpretation of Jesus Christ. The place where you’ll get your mind expanded is a few blocks north, on the campus of the University of Minnesota Morris, a secular institution.
I’m not going to accept the literal truth of that part of the sign. It’s a nice ideal, though. Too bad they don’t implement it.
The second part of the sign, though, “Inspiring Service”, is more legit. I remember from my church-going days that that was a serious and important message. Some of it was self-serving: service meant volunteering for the church or donating money to the church. Some of it was well-intentioned but horribly harmful: we were regularly exhorted to support missionary efforts in Africa. There was also, however, real good that was done. There were food drives to help the poor, visits to shut-ins, call for donations to help those who had fallen sick, requests to assist the elderly. I mowed the lawn of one little old lady who would invite me in afterwards to say a little prayer and praise the Lord. I went along with it, to be nice, and because she definitely didn’t need an argument.
From Andy Borowitz:
NORTH KOREA (The Borowitz Report)—Setting foot in North Korea for the first time, on Sunday, President Donald Trump praised that nation’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, for his efforts on immigration, telling Kim, “No one is trying to get into your country.”
After crossing into North Korea from the Demilitarized Zone, Trump remarked to the North Korean leader, “Your border is amazing! There are no people whatsoever trying to get in. You should see our border—it’s a complete mess.”
From Max’s Dad:
Out of the closets and into the streets! 50 years ago the Stonewall “riots” occurred when the NYPD did what the NYPD did best at the time, acted like assholes and raided a bar called the Stonewall Inn. Some of the patrons of Stonewall had had enough and did what others had done in other parts of the country before, they fought back. It was about time.
The Stonewall Inn is generally regarded as the beginning of the gay rights movement because every rights movement has to have a starting point. Oh I know that other gays fought back before 6/28/69, and I know Rosa Parks wasnt the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat, and I know that there were other women before Susan B that fought back, but we need a start. Lets not get too deep into the woods here. Thats the problem with people too close to movement, they know too goddamned much and cant wait to let you know. Democrats take note.
From News Corpse:
Still Obsessed with Losing the Popular Vote, Trump Babbles Incoherently About Winning It
Trump’s raging ego and self-exaltation has been demonstrated time and time again in the two and half turbulent years that he has occupied the White House. He cannot admit mistakes even when the evidence is unarguably documented. He incessantly brags on his own behalf for “accomplishments” that don’t exist. Those include “resolutions” of problems that he created himself like a firefighter moonlighting as an arsonist. And he has repeatedly forced his subordinates to sit around a table and utter slobbering tributes to him in a perverse spectacle of supplication and sycophancy.
So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Trump continues to be plagued by one particularly humiliating failure. His historic loss of the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election gnaws at him like a famished piranha. He can’t stop thinking about it, or lying about it. And that fetish reared its ugly head again in an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press Sunday morning.
From Tommy Christopher:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Rips Ivanka Trump Over Viral Video of Awkward Conversation with World Leaders
On Saturday, a BBC reporter posted French government video of a candid moment between French President Emmanuel Macron, UK Prime Minister Theresa May, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Christine Lagarde that was presented as if Ms. Trump injected herself into the conversation.
Lagarde, in particular, appears irritated in the clip, although she also tweeted praise for Ivanka.
The clip went viral, and led to a tidal wave of internet mockery, which AOC joined in on Saturday night. Retweeting the viral clip, AOC wrote “It may be shocking to some, but being someone’s daughter actually isn’t a career qualification.”
“It hurts our diplomatic standing when the President phones it in & the world moves on,” she continued, adding “The US needs our President working the G20. Bringing a qualified diplomat couldn’t hurt either.”