The Anti-Defamation League has for decades has tracked anti-Semitic and other hate crimes in the United States. In a report released 2019 January 23 (summarized here) the organization's Center on Extremism compiles the latest statistics on murders committed by persons … Continue reading
From NBC's Late Night with Seth Meyers last night, a brief interview with John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight on HBO. (It and Game of Thrones are literally the only things I've subscribed to HBO to watch.) I hesitate … Continue reading
In 2009 a Russian tax attorney named Sergei Magnitsky was beaten to death in prison, having been locked up for exposing corruption involving the Russian government and oligarchs, denied medical care, and tortured in a failed attempt to make him … Continue reading
I enjoyed the outtakes from Stephen Colbert's Super Bowl party skit more than the final version, but both are reasonably amusing, and anyway I need to post something... As broadcast: Link: https://youtu.be/rQBKNWiWdag Outtakes: Link: https://youtu.be/b9hGRxY6gww by … Continue reading
The most massive living thing on Earth (that we know of anyway) is a huge tree with multiple trunks. It's also described as a group of trees that are clones of each other. (Things in the real world don't always … Continue reading
About a fourth of all Medicare spending pays for medical interventions during the last year of life. A seemingly obvious conclusion is that we could save a lot of money if we cut back on medical interventions for the very … Continue reading
This is about a week old (from January 28), which in today's Robocop news cycle (to borrow a term from the folks at Red State Update) seems like months, but I think it's pretty seriously funny, so if in case … Continue reading
On Twitter, Aaron Sojurner points out that while U.S. job growth has been steady since the end of the Great Recession, Donald Trump's interpretation of jobs data underwent a drastic change when he wanted to start taking credit. That's not … Continue reading
According to a news item in the January 18 issue of Science, organizers of a scientific conference to take place in Hong Kong next June discovered evidence of apparent plagiarism in a dozen submitted papers. In only two cases did the … Continue reading
Last June 16 a mysterious very bright spot appeared in a small, otherwise not very remarkable galaxy 200 light years (60 megaparsecs) distant from us. In a matter of days it had become about 10 times brighter than the brightest … Continue reading