FIRE Alarm.
Meant to get to this earlier last week but had a stumble of writer’s block. If there’s one utterly important thing to learn from your four-ish years of college, it’s this: Bitches Be Crazy. Least that’s the takeaway from a recent satire – and I use that word as loosely as the last leaf on [...]
Reading The Comments.
For anyone tuning into the (U.S.) skeptical world lately, the big event this weekend was the second annual Women In Secularism conference held in Washington D.C. From discussions of race and gender in the secular community to talks on how to criticize religions like Islam without lending yourself to bigotry, it’s fair to say the [...]
Stopped.
Do you know what you call it when you look at a room or social gathering and notice the one young Hispanic man there? Personally, I call it Monday. Or Tuesday. Or Wednesda– you get the point. In no simpler terms, I’m the token. In high school, in college, in my relationships, and in nearly [...]
Oddly Dressed.
Apparently this is ‘Shamelessly Exploitative Journalism’ week. That right there was the original April 29th headline of Ohio paper,The Plain Dealer, describing the likely murder of a 20-year-old transgendered woman named Cemia Dove in Olmsted Township. Not that you’d be able to guess that, seeing as the writer, John Caniglia, originally stopped every other sentence [...]
Pagan Pervert
Oh, the New York Post. The NYC equivalent of the Daily Mail, the Wall St. Journal’s trashy cousin, and least preferred wrapping paper of salmon everywhere. For a sample of their journalistic standards, you’ll want to turn to just two weeks ago, when they occupied themselves by getting nearly everything wrong about the Boston bombings, [...]
Accidental Racism.
I gotta admit, sometimes I’m a bit thankful for the loud blaring moments of racial discrimination in our culture. Those inescapable bits of disgust at the perceived subhumans of the day that can’t help but bubble to the surface, despite all the myriad of ways we’ve evolved to avoid having the R word being lobbed [...]
The link between Creationism and homeopathy
I began my life as a Christian fundamentalist, which was poor luck. I then went to a fundamentalist school, which was very unlucky indeed, and the subject of most of my blogging. After two decades, I threw off the shackles of ‘mentalism, and celebrated with a year of intense partying. And then I lost the first [...]
Piling on.
As if this week could not get any worse, Boston tonight is again playing host to nonsensical violence; this time in the form of armed confrontation in the streets of Watertown and Cambridge, otherwise known as the home of MIT. I’m literally listening, along with at least 70,000 others, to Boston PD’s scanner as the [...]
Uncivil Discourse.
Some people often talk of disagreements needing to hold an intellectual purity devoid of emotion and steeped in reason. ‘Some’ almost always meaning those whose personal interests aren’t being bargained over by others. For them, it’s only acceptable to hash out differences with as calm a tone and as civil a posture, no matter what [...]
False Flags
It’s become old hat at this point. Tragedy strikes. Rumors, hoaxes and conspiracy theories start flying out the woodwork. No less than two hours ago today, two blasts, one after the other, occurred near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon. At least 28 More than 150 people were injured and two three others [...]