Events

Zack Beauchamp, writing on Andrew Sullivan's blog, has a well-argued explanation of how the Obama administration is not threatening the religious freedom of the Catholic Church by enforcing regulations on health insurance coverage: Allowing "conscience" exemptions whenever an employer doesn't feel morally clean when complying with regulations in principle neuters all regulation. The argument for allowing Catholic hospitals a pass on covering birth control has to rest or fall on the specifics of the case...

Maldives, an archipelago of 400,000 people with less than twice the area of Washington, D.C., has overthrown its government: The ex-president of the Maldives said on Wednesday that he was forced to resign at gunpoint, despite earlier claims by the Indian Ocean resort islands' new leader that there had been no coup. "Yes, I was forced to resign at gunpoint," Mohamed Nasheed told reporters after his party meeting a day after his resignation. "There were guns all around me and they told me they wouldn't...

None of the lower 48 had their warmest January ever (Illinois had its 6th warmest), but according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, January averaged out to be the 4th-warmest ever: The average contiguous U.S. temperature in January was 2.4°C, 3.0°C above the 1901-2000 long-term average -- the fourth warmest January on record, and the warmest since 2006. Precipitation, averaged across the nation, was 46.9 mm. This was 9.4 mm below the long-term average, with variability between...

Earlier today, Komen's head of public policy, Karen Handel, resigned from the organization, mischaracterizing her opponents as having mischaracterized her: Karen Handel, the charity's vice president for public policy, told Komen officials that she supported the move to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood. She said the discussion started before she arrived at the organization and was approved at the highest levels of the charity. "I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the...

A man accused of rape in Alabama got into an online argument with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office on the office's Facebook page: U.S. Marshals took Dustin McCombs into custody today in Ohio, said Chief Deputy Randy Christian. The U.S. Marshal's Gulf Coast Regional Task for in Birmingham shared information with their counterparts in Ohio who tracked down the fugitive. McComb's was featured on the Jefferson County Sheriff Department's Facebook page as its "Creep of the Week" because of an...

Writer Matt Glassman wrestles with why Bradshaw didn't take a knee on the 1 in yesterday's game: League wide, 99.4% of extra points were made this year. The Giants were 45 for 45. You think Brady has less than a 0.6% chance of leading a TD drive with a minute and two timeouts? Not a chance. According to the NFL win probability stat, the Pats had a 4% chance to win when they got the ball back. And they only had 1 timeout as it turned out. And win probability doesn’t take into account the individual team...

The Superbowl starts in a little over an hour, with weather in Indianapolis no one expected: clear skies and 9°C. In Chicago it's just a smidge cooler, but still a beautiful afternoon for February. Or for March, for that matter. Parker gets one more walk before the game. Go Giants! (For why, see Robert Wright's decision tree on the subject.)

Erin Ryan at Jezebel put together a brief outline of the Susan Komen Race for the Cure public relations disaster over the past week: We reported that the timing of Planned Parenthood's defunding seemed oddly coincidental, seeing as less than a year ago, Komen appointed a woman named Karen Handel to serve as the charity's Senior Vice President of Public Policy. Handel had run unsuccessful for governor of Georgia in 2010 on an anti-choice platform that cited as one of its central tenets the necessity of...

The international airline consortium oneworld, which includes American Airlines and British Airways, this week lost one member and had an applicant postpone membership. On Thursday, Hungarian flag carrier Malév suspended operations: Malev, the state-owned Hungarian airline, ceased flying with debts of €205 million after the government withdrew financing. The airline, which was placed under bankruptcy protection earlier this week, stopped operating all fights at 06.00 this morning. Ryanair today...

Sure, I've posted photos of the moon before, but it never gets old to me: Well, all right, at 4½ billion years it is old to me, but you know what I meant. On a side note, I just Googled "age of the moon" and discovered that many of the top results are from outside the reality-based community. For example, the second item on my results came from the Institute for Creation Research ("Biblical. Accurate. Certain."), in which one Thomas G. Barnes, D.Sc., begins with the assertion: "It takes but one proof of...