Recent Blog Posts
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Dear bigots considering parenthood…
I have some things for you to read. First, please read about how Ashley Miller was disowned by her father for being in love with a black man. Then, please read this post by Ed Brayton in response, which describes how a friend of his came out to his parents as gay, with rather unexpected…
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I am not a cockroach– what materialism is, and isn’t
Several years ago, I bounded out of a faculty building on a university campus and, in a thoughtful and optimistic mood, joined a couple of lecturers in the pub across the street. After we’d settled on benches in the garden out back, I mentioned that in the course of my studies, I seemed to be…
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You fill in the harmony
The Atheist Experience posts that they received an email which reads: Dillahunty is off his rocker if he thinks feminism is merely the idea that men are equal to women. Feminism is a paranoid leftist ideology with a whole slew of dogmatic principles. A person can believe in equal rights and oppose feminism, without said…
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Your own kind of closeness
I promise you’ll be happy/And even if you’re not/There’s more to life than that/Don’t ask me what Happy day-after-Thanksgiving. Today I’m trying to keep my head down, my wallet secreted, and my eyes off any and all commentary devoted to either a) how to find the best deals on Black Friday and where to go…
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I’d like a glue gun, some acrylic paint, and some birth control
A federal judge denied Hobby Lobby’s request for exemption from the federal requirement to provide health care coverage which covers contraception, especially (at least, this is what owner David Green claimed to be his basis for objection) the morning-after pill. In a 28-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton denied a request by Hobby Lobby…
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Current reading and “reading”
One of the most enjoyable things about Skepticon was actually the drive there. I’m listening to the audiobook of Jeffrey Toobin’s The Oath, just as I listened to his The Nine on a long drive a few years ago. His writing lends itself particularly well to being read out loud. The former book (about the Rehnquist…