Dog botherers

Quoth Tucker Carlson on Tuesday: “I’m Christian. I’ve made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances. Michael Vick killed dogs in a heartless and cruel way. I think, personally, he should have been executed for that. The idea the president of the United States would be getting behind someone who […]

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Who do you admire?

At The Daily Dish, Conor Friedersdorf contemplates the results of a recent Gallup poll asking Americans which men and women they most admire.  Barack Obama won out for men, whereas Hillary Clinton came out on top for women.  Friedersdorf thinks the fact that politicians make up the majority of people […]

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So the Fort Worth transit authority made a decision…

…ban all ads relating to religion.  Well, that’s one way of going about things.  I suppose this could be called an exercise in not rocking the boat.

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The ecological morality of breeding….or not.

This and the other card can be found here. When I saw Reason magazine tweet about an article entitled “Are You Now, or Have You Ever Been a ‘Breeder’?” and clicked through to see an image of the “breeder bingo board,” I expected to see a commentary on how harshly […]

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An exercise in getting the last word

So now a Christian group in Fort Worth has hired a “mobile billboard” truck to follow around the buses with the “Millions of Americans are good without God” ads on them.  The truck’s billboards read “I still love you – God” and “2.1 billion people are good with God.” One […]

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Another atheist bus ad controversy…

…this time in my neighborhood.  Well, not my immediate neighborhood, as the Dallas transit authority has refused these ads.  But Fort Worth has not, and local clergy are raising a big stink: Ministers Justice Coalition of Texas thinks in the wake of the controversial campaign, the T should get rid […]

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God doesn’t like shopping on Sundays

From CBC News: A debate over Sunday shopping has led P.E.I.’s transportation minister to suggest God had struck down the leader of the Opposition, who fell and injured herself after introducing a bill to allow Sunday openings year-round.Opposition leader Olive Crane introduced the private member’s bill earlier this week. It […]

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12-year-old girl beaten after Christian youth meeting for “having a boy’s name.”

From Change.org: What’s in a name? A 12-year-old girl at Hernando Middle School in Mississippi was beaten by five fellow students — reportedly because they said her name, Randi, was “a boy name.” “They started talking about me like I was a man,” she told local news station WREG. “That […]

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The trickiness of characterizing empathy in politics, part 1

So as mentioned, I’m working my way through Frans de Waal’s book The Age of Empathy.  On my drive I also listened to the audiobook of Michael Shermer’s The Mind of the Market, and it was almost comical to expose myself to both at the same time and read/listen to […]

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Tea Party leaders v. O’Donnell the fire-breather

Last night I couldn’t get to sleep right away, and stayed up watching Lawrence O’Donnell eviscerate some Tea Party leaders on his MSNBC show “The Last Word.”  I don’t know their names or those of the particular groups they represented, but that was one thing about which O’Donnell made a […]

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