Recent Blog Posts

  • Clarifications on bullshit

    As you have almost certainly surmised if you read Dan Savage’s apology, it isn’t an apology for much. It’s more of a clarification– an explanation of 1) how the distinction between how you act (pansy-assedly) and who you are (a pansy-ass) matters, but not as much as we sometimes like to pretend, and 2) the…

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  • Bullshit

    In today’s news, a group of high school students were offended and walked out of a talk because they were told that they are too moral to do things like stoning women for being non-virgins on their wedding night or owning slaves. The person giving this talk called them cowards for doing so. When word…

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  • Weekend web readin’, special edition: sex work

    From Skepchick, Guest Post: IGN Agrees, Women are Whores Money quote: There aren’t many words more denigrating to women than ‘whore’. It’s the one that summons mental images of domestic violence, of the worst sort of reduction to a sexual object. That Deadwood smack of ‘disposable, beatable hole’ makes me physically cringe. When I see ‘attention…

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  • Weekend web readin’

    From Reason, Born This Way? Nature, nurture, narratives, and the making of our political personalities Money quote: The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor. Everyone loves a good story; every culture bathes its children in stories. Among the most important stories we know are stories about ourselves, and these “life narratives”…

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  • My new favorite GIF

    The Film Sack podcast discussed Dazed and Confused this week, so I watched it again…for something like the 20th time. And this GIF was the result: So many potential uses.  (What’s the Film Sack podcast, you ask? What, have you been living under a rock? Go here, and enjoy.)

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  • How to be an atheist who doesn’t hate religion

    Are you an atheist? Do you hate religion? “Well, I don’t hate it,” I can hear you say. “Or at least, I don’t hate religious people. I just think that fundamentally it’s better not to be religious, because religion isn’t true. And I do really hate a lot of what people do in the name…

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