As you may have noticed, I’ve been off the blog for quite some time, as I’ve thrown myself pretty completely into political cartooning (the results of which are posted on the main page of this site). But today I wanted to do some more writing– about political cartoons. Mine and […]

Hey, did you hear? A student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania was kicked out of class for saying there are only two genders! This is just another example of how universities in America are just bastions of social justice warriors trying to brainwash and browbeat everyone into sharing their views! […]

Recently I was listening to the Embrace the Void podcast episode “Tolerate Me Bro!” about Popper’s paradox of tolerance. Hosts Aaron Rabi and GW were talking about how this paradox plays out in the context of platforming or deplatforming speakers, which is to say, the decisions that providers of platforms […]

Ohio’s governor John Kasich has signed into law a ban on abortion performed on the basis of Down syndrome. I’m going to call back to a post I wrote last year when Mike Pence signed a similar law for Indiana: Before I go into what’s so horrible about this bill, […]

The insider-outsider problem in the study of religion entails that an insider in a religious tradition has an advantage of insight, while an outsider has an advantage of objectivity. Which is to say, the insider can tell you what it feels like to participate in the religion, what’s compelling about […]

At work the other day, we got into a discussion about names. Weird family names, bizarre nicknames, the difference (if any) between your given name and the name you have now, and how that came to be. We talked about how it’s impossible to find a name for your child […]

The manhunt for the terrorists continues. At least three mosques in various French cities have been attacked. News sources deliberate whether to repost the covers of various Charlie Hebdo magazines which were offensive to Muslims, unsure whether doing so would be simple news coverage, or construed as support for freedom […]

This Slate article has a collection of photos of “bum-free” additions to buildings and structures in public areas intended for the same purpose as the controversial “homeless deterrent” spikes in a London apartment block (the ones pictured below). Apparently they’re a pretty common thing. In Manchester I recall seeing shards […]

…sorta: I was talking to a lot of press this week – I mean a LOT of press, and most of it hostile. When I was talking to Raw Story I gave them the same pitch I’d given so many times before: Conservatism is basically divided into two parts, fiscal […]

Apparently part of the issue with David Silverman’s statements is that people think he brought up secular arguments against abortion out of nowhere. Trust me, he didn’t. Here’s how it works: 1. Silverman described social conservatism as theocratic, and he gave three examples of what he considers to be social […]