Monthly Archives: January 2015

Campus Rape and Silence

Concerning campus rape, The Hunting Ground is getting a lot of buzz at Sundance as a powerful documentary. The NYT also gave it a strong review.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Letter Writers Heart Richard Dawkins

The beloved Oxford evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, reads out representative samples of the love he attracts from those who follow his work. __________ The tone and content of the letters remind me of numerous pronouncements made by famous theologians and … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Hubble Zooms In On A Distant Island Universe

Some life perspective. In the below video released by NASA this month, the Hubble telescope does a gigapixel zoom-in on Andromeda, another island universe beyond our own. (It was Kant who first speculated that distant nubulae–tiny, blurry “clouds” visible in … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Practicing Angry

Hmm.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel: Get an Annual Flu Shot and a Colonoscopy Every Ten Years, But Skip Your Annual Physical

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, an oncologist, writes at The New York Times today that you should get an annual flu shot and a colonoscopy every ten years, but skip annual physicals. Seriously. He says there is no evidence that they save lives. … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

An Atheist Leads a Prayer at a City Council Meeting…

No, it’s not the beginning of a joke, but it made me smile. Naturally, before Preston Smith, an atheist, got started on his invocation, a number of the pious council members of the fine city of Lake Worth, Florida, split … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Thomas Aquinas for Beginners

Listening closely to theist arguments–and Aquinas. As an agnostic, I’m not sure whether God exists or not, nor whether Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics is wholly correct, but I’m also not the sort of person who is interested in practicing confirmation bias … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

The Evolution of Kindness and Sympathy

A really good evolution education video via the University of California at Berkeley. We’ve evolved to be more like bonobos than sharks, and it’s one reason why I’m not worried that the decline of religion will lead to deteriorating moral … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 4 Comments