Hemant Mehta is the founder and editor of FriendlyAtheist.com, a YouTube creator, and podcast co-host. He is a former National Board Certified math teacher in the suburbs of Chicago. He has appeared on CNN and FOX News and served on the board of directors for Foundation Beyond Belief and the Secular Student Alliance. He has written multiple books, including I Sold My Soul on eBay and The Young Atheist's Survival Guide. He also edited the book Queer Disbelief.
Doug Herrmann, a father from Ohio, was frustrated that he couldn’t help his second-grade son with his math homework last week. Even though it should have been easy, the curriculum his son was using didn’t look familiar to him. It wasn’t the way Herrmann learned math growing up. On Tuesday, he wrote on Facebook: “Mental math and ten-frame cards? Common core sucks!” Then, on Wednesday, he posted a check made out to Melridge Elementary School in the amount of… well, no one was sure, because he did it “using common core numbers.” He didn’t actually send the check to the school, but the post struck a nerve. It’s been shared more than 25,000 times as of this writing and a whole bunch of articles have been written about it. Herrmann is already scheduled to appear on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning. But does he have a point? Not at all. Instead of trying to figure out what his child was learning, Herrmann did what so many parents do these days: He complained about something he doesn’t understand. I’ll be honest with you: I didn’t know what “ten-frame” cards were and I wasn’t sure what he was trying to write in his check. Then I spent a couple of minutes doing the research he couldn’t be bothered to do himself. So let me back up for a moment and try and explain this. It’ll take a second, but it’ll be worth it, I promise. Read more
In a headline worthy of The Onion, the United Nations has handed Saudi Arabia, a nation that has beheaded more people this year than ISIS, a key leadership role on its Human Rights Council. The appointment — made last June but only recently reported — sees Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN, Faisal bin Hassan Trad (below, left), taking up the chairperson role to an expert panel on the HRC. The position gives Trad leadership of the five-diplomat panel, as well as sweeping power in selecting international human rights appointees in any nation where the UN has a mandate. Yes, you read that right: Saudi Arabia, home of one of the worst human rights records in recent history, now has authority over the appointments of UN human rights workers worldwide. Read more
Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, writing at the New York Times, tries to make sense of Google trends on topics relating to God. (As much as he can, anyway, since you don’t want to read too much into that sort of data.) There are a lot of interesting tidbits in there. Like when it comes to phrases with the word “neighbor” in them, “love thy neighbor” tops the list, but coming in number two is “neighbor porn.” Also, check out what people searched for online if they were questioning God in some way: Read more
