According to a new interview with Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, at least one line of Macs will be manufactured in the U.S. starting next year. Here’s what Mike Daisey just posted about it: Another step. I recall, vividly, how many times I was told that no one would ever adjust anything in their manufacturing ecosystem to accommodate ideas like human rights or safe and sane work conditions. And this is a gesture, and a PR move, and does not speak... Read more
Everyone with even a shred of humanity is livid with the Republican Party today, because yesterday they voted down the U.N. treaty that would have urged other nations to adopt the kinds of reforms and accomodations for disabled persons that we in the U.S. have adopted under the Americans with Disabilities Act. But I suspect we just might all be angry for the wrong reason. First, here’s what we’re talking about: The 2006 treaty, which forbids discrimination of the disabled,... Read more
First, I saw the headline. Google-Funded Drones To Hunt Rhino Poachers Badass! Now this is what technology is for! Look out, rhino-killers! Time to taste electronic death from above! Then I read the actual article. First things first: No, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is not using drones to vaporize poachers. Son of a bitch! But thanks to a five million dollar grant awarded by Google on Tuesday, the organization is expanding its use of unmanned aerial vehicles to track... Read more
Thus: I am amazed at the hatred, filth, sacrilege, anger, condescension, ignorance, triviality, & flippancy heaped upon @pontifex on #askpontifex — John Mercer (@jfmercer) December 4, 2012 Yeah, you know, the Pope has enabled and covered up the rape and assault of countless children, but guys, let’s not be so mean to him on Twitter. That’s just a bridge too far. Have we, at long last, no decency? Read more
Are you into news and blogs about gadgets? Lord knows I am. My wife often wonders at why this is so. I mean, there’s not really much real-world relevance to my day to day life in understanding what the latest gripes about Android are, or what Apple might be rumored to be working on for release in 2016. I mean, I love my gadgets. I love, love, love my gadgets like they were my children. And I have two children,... Read more
Hey, you know what's neat? Freethought Blogs now hosts me, Hank Fox, and Stephen “DarkSyde” Andrew, and we three have something kind of cool in common. We are all former contributors or denizens of the primoridal atheist blog Unscrewing the Inscrutable, founded by the mad genius Brent Rasmussen. Brent was doing godless blogging when our iPhones had rotary dials, and I was lucky enough to join his roster of contributors in its latter stages. Brent got tired of it all,... Read more
You know what dinosaur has a musical sounding name? Eustreptospondylus. Just say it out loud. I mean, if you can. It's pronounced “you strepped a SPON dull us,” which, coincidentally, is also how you say “My hovercraft is full of eels” in Hungarian. My boy Toby, who just turned 3 last week, is obsessed with dinosaurs. Not like, he's really into dinosaurs, I mean obsessed. He plays exclusively with dinosaur toys, and these dinosaurs not only fight each other (or,... Read more
Greetings, folks! I’m Paul, the one referred to in the nice banner up there. I’d been putting a lot of thought into what I might say in my first post here at Freethought Blogs, and then I put in too much, and now I have precious little to say. But let’s be honest — it’s a better idea to simply let the blog speak for itself, right? Good then. I’ll just give a quick idea of what the heck is... Read more
Spotted on Indeed.com, a “job listing” from a Texas mother looking for someone to help her transport her teenage daughters to school and activities, emphasis mine: I am a mother who is 38 years old, I am a teacher in Tomball ISD, my husband is American and I am Mexican. I need to find a woman or girl that is nice, kind, and has good manners because you would be a role model for my daughters too. Christian or Catholic... Read more
From the New York Times on the declining birthrate of stars: An earlier version of this article misstated the sound made by a black hole in the galaxy NGC 1275. It is that of a B flat 57 octaves below middle C, not 27. Read more
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