Welcome to Heather’s Homilies
America’s Healthcare Problem
It's less than two weeks before election day and it's just been announced that Obamacare premiums are increasing significantly next year. In a normal election cycle this would have been the October surprise that could have sunk the Clinton campaign, but Donald Trump...
The Third US Presidential Debate
The moderator of this debate, Chris Wallace of Fox News, was by far the best moderator we've seen this season in my opinion. He largely stuck to the topics, asked good questions, kept the candidates in line, and even kept control of the audience. Wallace selected the...
Simon’s Cat Halloween Special: The Monster
Simon's Cat is back in a Halloween Special, where he confronts every cat's nightmare - the vacuum cleaner. I have heard of cats who actually like vacuum cleaners and even let their staff vacuum them, but I've never met one. My experience is that their reaction is much...
The Battle for Mosul has Begun
On 24 June 2014, a few hundred DAESH troops entered Iraq's second largest city Mosul. By the end of the day they had forced the withdrawal of tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers and taken over the city of around two million. Five days later DAESH's self-appointed...
Why Didn’t They Come Forward Earlier?
Since the second presidential debate, there have been at least eight women who have come forward with allegations that they have been subjected to unwelcome sexual attention from Donald Trump. The ongoing reports of bad behaviour by Trump hasn't made a single dent in...
The Second US Presidential Debate and its Aftermath
Note: In quoting Donald Trump, this post includes crude and sexually explicit language. Just 48 hours before the second presidential debate, the Washington Post released an eleven-year-old video in which, among other things, Trump boasts of sexually abusing women and...
Kaine vs Pence: The Thriller in Vanilla
No, I didn't make that up - the credit goes to Greg Gutfeld of Fox New's The Five and The Greg Gutfeld Show. I like it though, so I'm using it! So, one hour and 40 minutes before the vice-presidential debate even started the RNC (Republican National Committee)...
Trump is Crowd-Sourcing his Preparation for the Second Presidential Debate
After posting my opinion about whether Donald Trump should attack Hillary Clinton for her treatment of the women her husband had some form of sexual relationship with (whether consensual or not) today, I checked my e-mails. Despite not ever signing up for them, I get...
Should Donald Trump Bring Up the Clinton Sex Scandals in the 2nd Presidential Debate?
Short answer: "No." A picture is worth a thousand words, and this one sums things up pretty well: There's a lot more to it than that though of course. Everyone except Trump and his most blinkered acolytes accept that he lost the first debate. One of the reasons for...
Competition Winner
Entries for the competition closed on 30 September, and I said I'd announce winners shortly after, so here goes. You will remember there were two categories: 1. Sokal-type Essay Write an essay of an experience that led to a “personal” epiphany of the “undeniable” link...
Simon’s Cat Logic: Ragdoll Cats
Simon Tofield of Simon's Cat has started a new initiative as part of his Simon's Cat Logic series. So far the series has been about different aspects of cat care and behaviour. He's now including an introduction to different cat breeds into the mix. The first,...
It’s 15 Years Since 9/11 – Why Did Bin-Laden Attack?
The fifteenth anniversary of Al Qaeda's attacks on New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington DC, and the attempted attack that resulted in a plane crash in Pennsylvania has just passed. Almost 3,000 people were murdered that day by Islamist terrorists....