The following clip from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show is (reasonably) funny, but it points out something very serious, namely that a major initiative to help people in Appalachia, including coal miners that the president pretends to care about, is … Continue reading
Monthly Archives: August 2017
Saturday’s Astronomy Picture of the Day from NASA featured this fun short video from southern Germany in July. Members of a local school’s astronomy club drew a chalk sundial in a city square and took turns acting as the gnomon, … Continue reading
Donald Trump has said several times that he wants the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to fail. Unfortunately, there are some things he can do to make insurance harder to get or less affordable. He’s already started doing it. The law … Continue reading
As previously noted (see below), PBS News Hour has broadcast a series on the antibiotics crisis, that is, the appearance of more and more deadly drug-resistant germs and the lack of new antibiotics to deal with them. Here are the … Continue reading
According to National Public Radio, Purdue Farms is making efforts to raise chickens under better conditions with large windows and places for them to roost. When Leah Garces, the executive director of an organization called Compassion in World Farming, was … Continue reading
Walter Shaub, until last month director of the federal Office of Government Ethics, says he is very concerned by violations of ethical norms by the Trump administration. At a news conference on July 28 he said, “We are truly in … Continue reading
On Friday’s episode of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher the host asked how Republicans would have reacted if President Obama had said what Donald Trump says. A fair question, that. Also funny. Link: https://youtu.be/swcJzacZkWU by … Continue reading
This performance of the Ode to Joy from the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is very similar to one in Catalonia in 2011 (see link below), and as with that one, this was sponsored by a local bank. The … Continue reading
Something like the X Prize might encourage drug companies to develop new antibiotics even if they’re deliberately held off the market for a while to delay development of resistant pathogens. Link: https://youtu.be/YU5mPUF99BE Other parts of this series: The antibiotic crisis … Continue reading
A web article (with accompanying videos) from Raleigh’s WRAL television reports on efforts to persuade the North Carolina legislature to do something about its extreme gerrymandering. Federal courts, with the backing of the Supreme Court, have ruled that districts were … Continue reading