In the comments for a Pharyngula post about online harassment of women journalists, Rachel Kiernan wrote: This insanity isn’t just levered against female writers. Female politicians receive even more vitriol than their male coworkers or females in other lines of work. Otherwise secular and liberal Germany is filled with men who […]
Read MoreAping Morality: video
As a follow-up to yesterday’s discussion, here’s Frans deWaal’s plenary talk from the 2010 American Academy of Religion conference in Atlanta. Ann Taves was president of the AAR that year and introduces him. A30-140 Plenary Address: Frans de Waal from American Academy of Religion on Vimeo.
Read MoreAping morality
Whenever I’ve been involved in a discussion of the evolution of morality, the English language trips things up a bit. Due to the fact that “morality” could mean “being good” or “the capacity and tendency to distinguish right from wrong,” it’s always important to note which, specifically, you’re talking about. […]
Read MoreUpdate on “contempt of cop” cases
People sometimes find my blog by searching for some variation on “Is it okay to be rude to a cop?” It leads them to the post Being rude to the police: dumb, not criminal, which is about the case of a Colorado man who gave the finger to a state […]
Read MoreI must have missed that part of PCU…
Yesterday in my hometown, a man received seventeen life sentences for the repeated rape of two minor girls, some of which occurred while they were as young as 11 and 12 years old, respectively. Complicit in these rapes was the girls’ mother– actually no, she was far more than complicit. […]
Read MoreSecret Agent Woman
Jennifer Shewmaker, a psychology professor at Abilene Christian University, has a blog post blaming the Steubenville rape case in part on objectification of women. You should go read it, but first read about the Steubenville matter if you haven’t already. I have some theories about what would possess teenagers to create […]
Read More“Governor brings religion into the public sphere”
KS governor Sam Brownback. Photo credit: Brent Wistrom, The Wichita Eagle Fearing terms is odd. But in terms of terms to fear I’d suggest “public square” and “public sphere.”When it comes to church and state separationthese words are oft used for equivocationof an individual’s right to express a thoughtand a […]
Read MoreFreezepeaching the WBC
Stephanie Zvan at Almost Diamonds came up with an excellent t-shirt idea: an image of a peach, half-frozen in a block of ice, with the slogan “Freeze Peach! Not sure what it is, but it’s mine.” This is in reference to the continual shouting of “free speech” in order to […]
Read MoreBusiness model
I have an idea for a business. It’s a delivery service. It delivers to hospital patients. Not flowers. Not Mylar balloons. Not stuffed animals. Not baskets of waxy fruit. Those things are all well and good, and plenty of people like and appreciate them. But that’s not what my business would deliver. […]
Read MoreMarching, not racing
Item #3, “Make you like us,” conspicuously absent. So the Supreme Court has some consideration of gay marriage coming up, in two different forms. First there are a number of cases involving the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which may be added to the docket, which specifically […]
Read More