The Washington Redskins American football team will review its name after demands from major sponsors. Its headline sponsor, Fedex, joined a fresh wave of calls to scrap a team moniker long-criticised as racist. The Washington DC-based team has faced years of pressure over a name seen as offensive to Native Americans. The latest calls come amid a fresh focus on racism sparked by worldwide protests. FedEx made the request at the behest of its own investors. Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, said: "This process allows the team to take into account not only the proud tradition and history of the franchise but also input from our alumni, the organization, sponsors, the National Football League (NFL) and the local community." At the turn of the millennium, FedEx paid $205m (165m) for the naming rights to the Redskins' 82,000-seat stadium in Maryland. The deal expires in 2025.
John Blake: "The balance of the power has shifted from the police to the populace," Donald Bakeer told me. "This is an exciting time. America is going to change." Bakeer said this 28 years ago. I was standing amid the smoldering ashes of Los Angeles' South Central neighborhood in 1992, when I was a rookie newspaper reporter assigned to cover the Rodney King riots. read more
There was a discussion about UFOs and interstellar aliens on the DR earlier this week. In my opinion, a lot of silly assertions were made by certain posters about how it is may well be possible. Please watch the attached video. In very simple language it makes clear why we can not go faster than light. Sub-atomic particles and tachyons notwithstanding. All this talk of other dimensions to byspace and quantum anomalies is just a bunch of star trekk nonsense at this juncture. read more
US universities must hold hearings on campus sexual assault claims where alleged victims and attackers can be cross-examined, according to federal guidelines. read more
1. Thou shalt not attack the person's character, but the argument [ -Ad Hominem- ]
2. Thou shalt not misrepresent or exaggerate a person's argument in order to make it easier to attack. [ -Straw Man Fallacy- ]
3. Thou shalt not use small numbers to represent the all. [ -Hasty Generalization- ]
4. Thou shalt not argue thy position by assuming one of it's premises is true. [ -Begging The Question- ]
5. Thou shalt not claim that because something occurred before, it must be the cause. [ -Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc / False Cause- ]
6. Thou shalt not reduce the argument down to two possibilities. [ -False dichotomy- ]
7. Thou shalt not argue that because of our ignorance, a claim must be true or false. Also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. [ -Argumentum ad ignorantiam- ] read more
It is because people in general defer to authority. And, related, it is generally people who are deferential to authority who volunteer to be grand jurors. And, related, it is generally people who are deferential to authority whom both judges and DAs like to have appointed to grand juries. When a DA tells them to indict someone, usually that person gets indicted. The exception often being cops, to whom grand jurors tend to be very deferential to.