Bruce's blog

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is in hot water over his controversial claims Monday about the Civil War. The specific phrase that upset most people was his assertion that the Civil War was caused by a "lack of an ability to compromise."

Human water use is draining the world’s saline lakes

The Supreme Court Is Allergic To Math

Four of the eight justices who regularly speak during oral arguments1 voiced anxiety about using calculations to answer questions about bias and partisanship. Some said the math was unwieldy, complicated, and newfangled. One justice called it “baloney” and argued that the difficulty the public would have in understanding the test would ultimately erode the legitimacy of the court.

What Happens If the Honeybees Disappear?

Most honeybees in the U.S. today are of Italian heritage and vulnerable to a pest called the varroa mite. But Russian bees are more resistant to it, and backyard beekeepers have had success with them. The problem, says Tarpy, is that Russian honeybees don’t make as much honey as their Italian counterparts and “aren’t as amenable” to the migratory nature of pollinating large-scale farms.

A retelling of a Cherokee myth

When the world was young, the animals would often amuse themselves by having contests, awarding special prizes to the winners.

Now Deer was the best runner, and Rabbit the best jumper. The animals would argue among themselves about which of the two was faster.

A New History of the First Peoples in the Americas

Today, the emerging theory is that the people up in the Bluefish Caves some 24,000 years ago were the founders, and that they represent a culture that was isolated for thousands of years up in the cold north, incubating a population that would eventually seed everywhere else.

Dr. Jason Lisle, who really should know better, claims the consensus age of the universe is based on circular reasoning.

You were a fool to let me go

As in the disgraceful Shelby County ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act, and in Citizens United, and in every other such decision, it always just happens to turn out that it’s the “pro-life” justices who decide against voting rights for nonwhite citizens and who seek to strike down any limits on corporate power.

The writers of the Salt Collective blog seem to be a nice bunch of people, a group of "diverse writers who are shaped by and grounded in the spirituality and ethics of the Beatitudes." But the recent post The Biblical Case for Saving DACA treads on dangerous ground.

Gamergate is never going away

“So, there's a lot of people saying I'm not qualified to do my job, and then it escalates to ‘I should go fuck myself,’ ‘you're shit,’ ‘how can you be paid to play games,’ and ‘you should go kill yourself,’” Takahasi told The Outline. “Fortunately, it's never gotten worse than that.”