Recent Blog Posts
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Sexual harassment and TAM
No weekend web readin’ post this weekend, I think, because the majority of my web reading lately has been all about sexual harassment at skeptical/atheist conferences. I’ve been to a total of one such conference, but would be up for attending more, especially The Amazing Meeting (TAM), which is produced by the James Randi Educational…
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Pastors come up with creative ways to express how unequal gays are
Now, I’m sure that pastors denouncing homosexuality from the pulpit isn’t a new thing. It’s impossible to know how often this happens. But it’s hard to escape the notion that the recent three occasions of pastors doing so, so vehemently, are related to Obama’s recent profession of personal support for gay marriage. And for that…
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Soldiers who died by their own hands
On this day we remember and honor soldiers who have been killed. Does that include those who killed themselves? I certainly hope so, given that the stress and horror of warfare is almost certainly responsible for creating the mental conditions that produce the desire to end one’s own life as much as they are responsible for…
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Why I’m a libertarian feminist atheist skeptic
…in four paragraphs: Libertarian: I mistrust government, a whole lot. I believe that market forces are preferable to legislation when it comes to getting things done, because they are more voluntary (consent is always best) and more easily reversible. I believe that the pursuit of happiness is a personal thing and takes different forms for…
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Weekend web readin’/watchin’
From Pandagon, Rejecting the “self-discipline” framework Money quote: “Self-discipline” can’t really be extracted meaningfully in this debate from the concept of sin and punishment. Under the sin framework, gluttony is a sin, and the only proper response to sin is punishment. Therefore, if you accept the “self-discipline” framework, there is no problem here. The overeaters…
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MS legislator has supernatural fears of gay marriage
A state representative from Mississippi, Andy Gipson, posted on Facebook recently responding to Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage. Gipson first invoked Leviticus and Romans, the first of which calls for men who sleep with men as they do with women to be put to death. Asked to elaborate further, he had this to say: Why…