Greece, Civil Unions in Hawaii and the Huffington Post:: Ethical Dilemmas about GPFM

My twin has a piece up at the Huffington Post arguing that the veto of Hawaii's civil union bill by its Governor Lingle was not motivated by the reasons that Lingle gave. I'm having some qualms about linking to the Huffington Post. The website has had a long history of pushing anti-science and fringe medical beliefs, including homeopathy and claims that vaccines cause autism. Most recently, they've branched out into anti-evolution propaganda with a piece by David Klinghoffer of the Discovery Institute claiming that evolution was the root cause of Nazism. These issues with the Huffington Post are discussed in detail in this Salon piece and this statistical analysis. I'm concerned about driving traffic to a website which has such attitudes towards science and the scientific consensus. Moreover, it raises serious questions about their otherwise apparently good political coverage. In particular, if they cannot deal with empirical issues well, why should one think that they can deal with issues involving politics where far more cognitive biases come into play? I'm curious what readers think about this issue.

Meanwhile, I can without any concerns link to my father's recent piece at the Oxford University Press blog which discusses what lessons that the United States should take away from the Greek financial crisis. The piece gives a balanced view about the economic and demographic issues that face the United States today and how they compared to Greece.

Amazon, Internet Sales Tax, and Gratuitous Promotion of Family Members (again)

My father has a piece up at the Oxford University Press blog. The piece discusses a serious discrepancy in how sales tax is administered in the United States. Sales tax is broken down by state. However, companies are not required to add on sales tax themselves unless they have a physical presence in given state. If a company does not have a physical presence in a given state, then customers in that state are expected to pay the sales tax themselves. In practice, almost no customer pays this sales tax. Thus, in practice companies such as Amazon which engage in sales primarily over the internet don't pay any any sales tax on their sales. This gives them a competitive advantage over physical stores. The piece is worth reading. The only issue that I have is that he does not address one issue which is also worth discussing: It may be that such sales tax practices are not only economically unfair but also regressive. If more well-off people are more likely to buy on the internet then they will not pay a sales tax where poorer individuals buying from brick-and-mortar stores will. At this point, internet access and internet use is so common that this may not be an actual problem. However, it is an additional concern with the current system. In any event, his piece is worth reading. Go and read.

The Economy, Prayer, and Idolatry

There has been a long-standing argument in halachah (Orthodox Jewish law) over whether Christianity is considered avodah zara (the technical term for idolatry in Jewish law). The problem of a human being declared to be divine is particularly troubling and Jews have been debating this issue for almost as long as Christianity has been around.

However, some Christians have recently been nice enough to make the Jews have an easier time figuring out how to treat Christianity. According to Wonkette, Christian groups have gathered at the statue of the bull at Wall Street to pray for a better economy. That's right: they are praying at a Golden Calf. Really. You can't make this sort of thing up. I have tried in the past to argue against claims that evangelical Christians are Biblically illiterate, and then they go and do something like this. Between this and Reverend Jeremiah Cumming's inability to quote basic scripture I should just give up.

Hat tip to Pharyngula for bringing this to our attention.