MATT FEENEY – Mob Injustice

Presenting the Best Picture award at this year’s Oscars, Sean Penn did all the right things to provoke a public shaming, and only by the grace of his hyper-celebrity did he escape unshamed. He split the envelope’s seal and stood squinting at the winner’s name. Then he paused dramatically and mumbled to no one in particular: “Who gave this son of …

America’s Attitude Toward Sex and Teens Is Insane – Amanda Marcotte

Throughout the Bush years, funding for programs that refused to teach contraception in lieu of telling kids to wait until marriage–known as abstinence-only programs–ballooned [3], putting a lot of schools in a situation where the only real access to sex education funding they had was federal abstinence-only money. The programs were wildly unsuccessful [4] at their supposed goals of reducing STI and teen pregnancy …

The Beneficial Effects Of Animals On Children With Autism – Hal Herzog

A couple of years ago I asked Temple Grandin if people with autism have a special ability to relate to animals. She is, of course, widely known for both her research on farm animal behavior and welfare and for her books on autism. She believes her autism gives her an unusual ability to think like, for example, a cow being herded down a chute …

On Hitler’s Birthday, U.S. Will Begin Training Ukraine’s Far-right National Guard

On Tuesday, The Associated Press reported [3] The United States plans to send soldiers to Ukraine later this month to train the country’s national guard, which includes groups expressly espousing support for far-right and Nazi ideology. Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a Facebook post on Sunday that the units to be trained include the Azov Battalion, a volunteer force that has …

New FBI Tactic Hints at Big DC Cover-up of Saudi 9/11 Funding

In the latest indication of a rolling government cover-up of the September 11, 2001, attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is disowning an explosive internal report that suggests high-level Saudi involvement. And Washington seems only too happy to accept this latest peculiar FBI apologia. The same FBI that attempted to hide its prior relationship with accused Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan …

A Happy Life or a Meaningful One? They Are Not the Same

Americans and the American social scientists who study them are obsessed withhappiness. What gets less attention is the perhaps deeper experience of meaningfulness. The two experiences are correlated – people who feel happy often feel that their lives are meaningful. Yet, a happy life is not the same as a meaningful one. In research(link is external) designed to distinguish between a happy …

Neocons: the Echo of German Fascism

With the Likud Party electoral victory in Israel, the Republican Party is on a roll, having won two major elections in a row. The first was winning control of the U.S. Congress last fall. The second is the victory by the Republicans’ de facto party leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel’s recent election. As the Israeli Prime Minister puts together a coalition …

Atheists’ self-defeating superiority: Why joining forces with religion is best for non-believers

I’ve written before about the root causes of religious conflict — in a nutshell: it is not about what many people would like you to think it’s about — but I realized recently that I had still been missing part of the picture picture, because I wasn’t accounting for what happens when people get caught up in narrowly tribalistic thinking. If there’s …

Official Washington’s Delusions on Delusions

The chasm between reality and the U.S. political/media elite continues to widen with Official Washington’s actions toward Iran and Russia making “the world’s sole remaining superpower” look either like a Banana Republic (on Iran) or an Orwellian Dystopia (regarding Russia). On Iran and the international negotiations to rein in its nuclear program, the American people witnessed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu …

Monsanto Wants to Know Why People Doubt Science

On Twitter recently, someone asked the question “Why do people doubt science?” Accompanying the tweet was a link to an article in National Geographic that implied people who are suspicious of vaccines, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), climate change, fluoridated water and various other phenomena are confused, adhere to conspiracy theories, are motivated by ideology or are misinformed as a result of …