Monday, June 29, 2015

Is polygamy next after gay marriage? Chief Justice Roberts’ Obergefell dissent says yes.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/06/is_polygamy_next_after_gay_marriage_chief_justice_roberts_obergefell_dissent.single.html


---Steve

PressTV-Gay marriage declared legal across US


This is your company when you are on the wrong side of the moral arc toward justice:

"Not only the content of this decision, but the way the Supreme Court invented a constitutional right that does not exist, and overthrew the doctrine of the original intent of the Founders, existing state laws, natural law, and British Common Law as the original basis of American jurisprudence (British Common Law was based on Christianity)," he said.

"This was the case in the Roe v Wade decision in 1973 also. And it should not be ignored that the victories for abortion on demand and LGBT rights are reflective of the disproportionate influence of Jewish power, money, and activism in the United States, freely acknowledged by Vice President Joe Biden in Haaretz recently," Dankof stated.

"The key Jewish role played in the mainstreaming of abortion, LGBT, and pornography in the United States may be documented in Google search, especially in looking at the Frankfurt School and its Institute for Social Research," he added.

"The provable Jewish role in destroying the older Christian cultures of the United States and Europe is now a dagger pointed at the Islamic World and the revival of Eastern Orthodox culture in Russia," the analyst noted.

"I believe Russian President Putin understands this, and will resist the cultural, economic, and military coercion of the Anglo-American-Zionist Empire with all of his country's national resources and will," he observed.

"I believe Mr. Putin is a key ingredient in destroying this global threat, and restoring cultural integrity and national sovereignty to his country.."

---Steve

Sunday, June 28, 2015

‘I Don’t Believe in God, but I Believe in Lithium’ - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/magazine/i-dont-believe-in-god-but-i-believe-in-lithium.html?_r=0

It was kumquat season and I wanted to be back in New York.

---Steve

No, GOP, biblical Marriage was not between one man and one woman | Informed Comment

http://www.juancole.com/2015/06/biblical-marriage-between.html


---Steve

Women's rights around the globe: behind the data | Liz Ford | Global development | The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2014/feb/04/women-rights-around-globe-behind-data


---Steve

Conservatives should embrace same-sex marriage

https://theconversation.com/conservatives-should-embrace-same-sex-marriage-43970

The social meaning of marriage has altered dramatically over the past half-century - for the better, in my opinion - but note that Obergefell v. Hodges is the culmination of changes that had already taken place during that time. This social, and now legal, result confirms that marriage is a different, a kinder, more companionate, less patriarchal, institution from what it was in the eighteenth century or even, say, the 1950s.

---Steve

Conservatives should embrace same-sex marriage

https://theconversation.com/conservatives-should-embrace-same-sex-marriage-43970


---Steve

There Are 13 Countries Where Atheism Is Punishable by Death - The Wire

http://www.thewire.com/global/2013/12/13-countries-where-atheism-punishable-death/355961/


---Steve

More than 2.7 billion people live in countries where being gay is a crime | World news | The Guardian


Five countries – Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen – still have a statutory death penalty for homosexuality, while a further 71 countries punish same-sex couples with lesser sentences of imprisonment or corporal punishment.

---Steve

More than 2.7 billion people live in countries where being gay is a crime | World news | The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/16/countries-where-being-gay-is-a-crime


---Steve

Gay Rights, Religious Freedom and the Moral Arc | Michael Shermer

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-shermer/gay-rights-religious-freedom-and-the-moral-arc_b_7000132.html

It is no longer acceptable to simply assert your moral beliefs; you have to provide reasons for them, and those reasons had better be grounded in rational arguments and empirical evidence or else they will likely be ignored or rejected.

---Steve

CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N

https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZX.html

In a democratic society, the longstanding consensus on the need to limit corporate campaign spending should outweigh the wooden application of judge-made rules.

---Steve

Morality is the key to personal identity – Nina Strohminger – Aeon

http://aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/why-moral-character-is-the-key-to-personal-identity/

Recent studies by the philosopher Shaun Nichols at the University of Arizona and myself support the view that the identity-conferring part of a person is his moral capacities. One of our experiments pays homage to Locke's thought experiment by asking subjects which of a slew of traits a person would most likely take with him if his soul moved to a new body. Moral traits were considered more likely to survive a body swap than any other type of trait, mental or physical. Interestingly, certain types of memories – those involving people – were deemed fairly likely to survive the trip.
---Steve

Justice Scalia’s Dissent

http://freethoughtblogs.com/dispatches/2015/06/28/justice-scalias-dissent/


---Steve

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Sit. Stay. Die? Suzanne Fuqua

http://www.sfreporter.com/santafe/article-3155-sit-stay-die.html


---Steve

Consciousness has less control than believed, according to new theory -- ScienceDaily

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150623141911.htm


---Steve

Busting myths: a practical guide to countering science denial

http://theconversation.com/busting-myths-a-practical-guide-to-countering-science-denial-42618


---Steve

6 Ways to Make Healthy Chia Seed Pudding (Infographic) — Health Hub from Cleveland Clinic

http://health.clevelandclinic.org/2015/06/6-ways-to-make-healthy-chia-seed-pudding-infographic/


---Steve

Does too much porn numb sexual pleasure? – Maria Konnikova – Aeon

http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/does-too-much-porn-numb-sexual-pleasure/

Kutchinsky concluded that the available country-level data 'would seem to exclude, beyond any reasonable doubt, that this availability [of pornography] has had any detrimental effects in the form of increased sexual violence… the remarkable fact is that they decreased' – a conclusion that has since been echoed by multiple studies of country-level data, from nations spanning North and South America, Europe and Asia. If anything, Kutchnisky wrote, pornography was being used precisely as it was originally intended: as an expression of a certain fantasy.

---Steve

Sunday, June 21, 2015

FactCheck: do black Americans commit more crime?

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime/19439

Crime rates among the african american population have everything to do with poverty and low educational attainment which leads to low opportunity. it has very little to do with a deficiency of "culture". In my opinion, the deficient culture argument is simply the new stand in for the genetic deficiency argument of old. it's simply the new way of saying that there is something inherently wrong with black people that explains these social ills. First it was inherent in our genes, and now the argument is that its inherent in our "culture".

---Steve

FactCheck: do black Americans commit more crime?


analysis

It's true that around 13 per cent of Americans are black, according to the latest estimates from the US Census Bureau.

And yes, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black offenders committed 52 per cent of homicides recorded in the data between 1980 and 2008. Only 45 per cent of the offenders were white. Homicide is a broader category than "murder" but let's not split hairs.

27 bjs use FactCheck: do black Americans commit more crime?

Blacks were disproportionately likely to commit homicide and to be the victims. In 2008 the offending rate for blacks was seven times higher than for whites and the victimisation rate was six times higher.

As we found yesterday, 93 per cent of black victims were killed by blacks and 84 per cent of white victims were killed by whites.


---Steve

Friday, June 19, 2015

Christine Kenneally’s ‘Invisible History of the Human Race’ - The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/books/review/christine-kenneallys-invisible-history-of-the-human-race.html?_r=0

It's a far more plausible and evidence-based explanation for Africa's economic troubles than the one offered by Nicholas Wade's recent book, "A Troublesome Inheritance," which, with vaporous evidence, attributes weak African economies to African-­specific genetic profiles that purportedly discourage trust. Genetics gives all humans the power to create culture. Yet it appears most likely that it is not genetics but culture's manifestations, some lovely, some horrific, that distinguish and divide us.

---Steve

What Science Says About Race and Genetics | TIME

http://time.com/91081/what-science-says-about-race-and-genetics/

Exploration of the genome has shown that all humans, whatever their race, share the same set of genes. Each gene exists in a variety of alternative forms known as alleles, so one might suppose that races have distinguishing alleles, but even this is not the case. A few alleles have highly skewed distributions but these do not suffice to explain the difference between races. The difference between races seems to rest on the subtle matter of relative allele frequencies.

---Steve

Why Your Race Isn't Genetic - Pacific Standard

http://www.psmag.com/nature-and-technology/why-your-race-isnt-genetic-82475


---Steve

Dark Eyes | The Official Bob Dylan Site

All I feel is heat and flame and all I see are dark eyes.

Read more: http://www.bobdylan.com/us/songs/dark-eyes#ixzz3dXeZwEOn


---Steve

TaskRabbit connects you to safe and reliable help in your neighborhood.

https://www.taskrabbit.com/


---Steve

The Hunt for the Financial Industry's Most-Wanted Hacker - Bloomberg Business

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-06-18/the-hunt-for-the-financial-industry-s-most-wanted-hacker?utm_source=digg&utm_medium=email


---Steve

Take Down the Confederate Flag — The Atlantic

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/06/take-down-the-confederate-flag-now/396290/?utm_source=SFFB


---Steve

White extremist murders: Killed at least 60 in U.S. since 1995.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/18/white_extremist_murders_killed_at_least_60_in_u_s_since_1995.html


---Steve

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Ideology Subsumes Empiricism in Pope's Climate Encyclical - Guest Blog - Scientific American Blog Network

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/ideology-subsumes-empiricism-in-pope-s-climate-encyclical/


---Steve

Population Matters: Paperback: Nancy Birdsall - Oxford University Press

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199261864.do
In particular, evidence from developing countries throughout the world shows a much clearer pattern in recent decades than was evident earlier: countries with higher rates of population growth have tended to see less economic growt

---Steve

Population and Poverty: New Views on an Old Controversy


Using this argument, neo-Malthusians played a key role during the 1960s and 1970s in efforts to mobilize the world's wealthy developed countries to provide financial aid to support government-administered family planning programs in developing countries. Through such international assistance policies, governments and nongovernmental organizations in developing countries with rapid rates of population growth received support that enabled them to develop or expand access to family planning services.3

• Others, however, believe that economic policies determine poverty reduction and that contraception is a "private good." Not everyone agreed that expanded family planning programs would be effective in reducing poverty. Economists were quick to point out that even if high fertility and high proportions of the population living in poverty were correlated, this correlation would not imply causality. In fact, the relationship could run in the opposite direction: Poverty could be the cause of high fertility. Poor people often want more children because children represent wealth, provide household labor and are the only form of social security available to parents in their old age. 

Furthermore, economists questioned whether reduced rates of population growth actually have positive effects on savings and investment. They pointed out that even though the population in developing regions doubled between 1950 and 1985, this had not prevented many countries in those regions from raising overall living standards.4

In the mid-1980s, an influential review of the evidence on the link between population and economic development conducted by the National Research Council concluded that while demographic factors might play some role in determining a country's prospects for economic progress, they were of limited importance compared with such considerations as poor economic policies, bad governance, corruption and the lack of natural resources.5This high-level report further undercut the rationale for supporting family planning programs on the grounds that these would help reduce poverty. By 1990, few economists believed that the population factor mattered. In the view of such skeptics, decisions about family size and reproduction are a private issue, and contraceptive practice is a "private good" whose supply is better left to market forces than to government bureaucrats.6

---Steve

Economic growth and poverty

http://www.oecd.org/derec/unitedkingdom/40700982.pdf

Tweet by Matthew Hutson on Twitter

Matthew Hutson (@SilverJacket)
"both the scientific establishment and the fantasy establishment now agree that climate change is real" —@hamiltonnolan on Pope's statement.

Download the Twitter app


---Steve

Monday, June 15, 2015

Johann Hari on the War on Drugs | Five Books | Five Books

http://fivebooks.com/interviews/johann-hari-on-war-drugs

What Bruce says this shows is that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. The right-wing theory is it's a moral failing, you're a hedonist, you indulge yourself. The left-wing theory is your brain gets hijacked, you get taken over. Bruce says, it's not your brain, it's not your morality, to a much larger degree than we've appreciated until now, addiction is an adaptation to your environment.

---Steve

Johann Hari on the War on Drugs | Five Books | Five Books

http://fivebooks.com/interviews/johann-hari-on-war-drugs


---Steve

IBM and Intel: Partners in the Journey from Information to Insights | Cadalyst

http://www.cadalyst.com/%5Blevel-1-with-primary-path%5D/ibm-and-intel-partners-journey-information-insights-20919

Session 5141A (3-4pm. Oct. 28, Banyan F). In this session, Kshitij Doshi, a principal engineer in Intel's Software and Services Group, and Jessica Rockwood, an IBM senior manager for DB2 performance, provide an overview of the latest Intel® Xeon® E5-2600 V3 series processor architecture and its benefits for transaction processing workloads with IBM DB2 10.5 with BLU Acceleration

---Steve

Poetry Review: Farewell to Florida by Wallace Stevens | Welcome to

http://tigersallconsumingbooks.blogspot.com/2011/04/poetry-review-farewell-to-florida-by.html

"Go on, high ship, since now, upon the shore,
The snake has left its skin upon the floor.
Key West sank downward under massive clouds
And silvers and greens spread over the sea. The moon
Is at the mast-head and the past is dead.

---Steve

Friday, June 12, 2015

The More Loving One | Academy of American Poets


Looking up at the stars, I know quite well  That, for all they care, I can go to hell,  But on earth indifference is the least  We have to dread from man or beast.    How should we like it were stars to burn  With a passion for us we could not return?  If equal affection cannot be,  Let the more loving one be me.  

---Steve

The Most Epic Robot Fails of the DARPA Robotics Challenge

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2015/06/09/epic-robotics-fails-darpa/#.VXto4nBHaK0


---Steve

Ornette Coleman Wins Music Pulitzer : NPR

http://www.npr.org/2007/04/16/9607210/ornette-coleman-wins-music-pulitzer


---Steve

DARPA Robotics Challenge: Amazing Moments, Lessons Learned, and What's Next - IEEE Spectrum

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/darpa-robotics-challenge-amazing-moments-lessons-learned-whats-next


---Steve

Flagstaff RD - Pinegrove Campground

http://www.fs.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsinternet/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os3gDfxMDT8MwRydLA1cj72BTJw8jAwjQL8h2VAQAzHJMsQ!!/?ss=110304&ttype=recarea&recid=55024&actid=29&navtype=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&position=BROWSEBYSUBJECT&navid=110000000000000&pnavid=null&cid=FSE_003741&pname=Flagstaff+RD+-+Pinegrove+Campground


Sent from my iPhone

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Monday, June 01, 2015

Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard".

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/Elegy.htm


---Steve

Uncensored John Simon

http://uncensoredsimon.blogspot.com/

And who won the contest for naming this future champion? It's all there in the Times: Marsha Baumgartner, of Barnett, Mo., depicted in the paper with her husband, Dave, and described as "a 64-year-old registered nurse in a tiny central Missouri town."

Unfortunately, though there is a register for nurses, there is none for illiterates. If you inspect the picture, you will find two typical unglamorous Midwesterners of the small-town variety, she even, as one suspects from her chubby cheeks, overweight, but when it comes to learning and refinement, clearly lightweight.

--John Simon, on

---Steve

Our Favorite Macaroni and Cheese Recipe | Epicurious.com

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/our-favorite-macaroni-and-cheese-51255890


---Steve