On Friday, I had an on-air exchange that fascinated me. I had just replayed a portion of my interview with Dr. Nick Bostrom, an Oxford University professor and well-known transhumanist, on the subject of his Simulation Argument. This is the paper that spurred a serious academic discussion in 2003 on the idea that there is [...]
Things I found in my office desk
I cleaned out my desk today. Yikes. I’m not a hoarder – normally I’m a brutal junker of everything my family holds near and dear – but my office desk gets overlooked, so here it is, a list of items I’ve removed from the desk drawers today.
3 cellphones, chargers, boxes, manuals.
A gun lock.
A cap gun [...]
Avatar
Happy New Year!
I first heard about Avatar 2 years ago. No movie could live up to a two-year hype, surely? In fact, this film in many ways surpasses my initial expectations. The trailers do not do justice to the results of this new paradigm in movie-making technology. This is the biggest step forward in modern [...]
My top 5 reasons to lower the U.S. legal drinking age to 18
1) Alcohol education starts at home, and yet we have outlawed the act of learning in the average home (most people move out long before they turn 21 and therefore, under the law, parents have no chance to permit legal responsible drinking in the home).
2) When people learn from their peers rather than older adults [...]
Health care systems good at different things
I’ve experienced life with both kinds of health care system. Living in the United Kingdom, I grew up with the ‘universal’ model: government health care, paid for by taxes and free at the point of use. And, for the past five years, I’ve been in the United States with its ‘insurance’ model, paid for by [...]
Something to scare the crap out of you
Frightened yet?
NEW MOON: I don’t inhale
I have taken, but not inhaled.
This is not a movie review. I am not qualified to write a review on New Moon, which I saw at the stroke of midnight in one of two packed screens at my local quadplex. The reason I say I’m not qualified is that I haven’t read any of the [...]
Greatest Show On Earth
I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’ new book The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence For Evolution. In the United States, a surprising number of people still don’t accept that evolution explains the origin of complex life. Dawkins wrote this book as a way of bringing science to laypeople who haven’t perhaps heard it before.
I’d say [...]
Summary of Question Time with Nick Griffin
Last night’s controversial Question Time with BNP leader Nick Griffin went something like this:
Dimbleby: “Good evening. I’d like to welcome our panel tonight. Well, all of them bar one of course”
[audience laughs nervously]
Griffin: “I ..”
[audience boos, ecstatically]
Dimblebore: “That’s really quite enough from you, Mr Griffin”
[enthusiastic applause. Cries of 'quite right']
Dumbledore: “First, I must just apologise [...]
Bandwagon #3497: The Jan Moir Column
So a gay boy band member dies after he and his partner bring a stranger back to their hotel room and, without knowing the precise details of the incident, a columnist for the Daily Mail comments. In her piece she implies that the singer’s lifestyle, involving what she implies is promiscuous homosexuality, is responsible for [...]
People choose to go to hell?
In response to the evangelical Christian suggestion that people choose to reject God’s offer of love and thus have made a choice to go to hell:
This belief is held as though the Christian God has made the truth of his existence and his character easily and readily available, extending an obvious hand to everyone, and [...]
Response to Jean Kilbourne: women in advertising
This is my response to a lecture by Jean Kilbourne, made into a video documentary called ‘Killing Us Softly 3′ on the subject of women in advertising. She’s since produced another called ‘Generation M: Misogyny in Media and Culture’ and is a regular speaker at universities on these issues.
The lecture she gave focuses on advertising [...]
Response to Fake Republic on sexism
This is a reply to Shane Magee of Fake Republic, who wrote a post about continuing sexism in the world, the pay gap between men and women in the workplace, and his baby daughter growing up in such a world. In response to some who wondered how to tackle such an overwhelming problem, he writes:
complaining [...]
The False Dichotomy of Stupidity
On HBO’s Real Time this week, Bill Maher mentioned a little brouhaha he created on CNN by declaring that America is a stupid country, a sentiment Bill O’Reilly takes great offense at on his show (which may be an effort in proving Maher’s point).
I’m not too concerned with the question of where the United States [...]
My reply on the pervasiveness of American culture
This is my reply to Brian McClinton of Humanism Northern Ireland, here:
The assertion: Most of the world endures American cultural imperialism.
The truth: Most of the world chooses the products of American culture.
Nobody forces anybody to wear T-shirts which iconize American culture, or to watch Hollywood films, or to eat burgers and fries. They choose to [...]
Dude. I wrote this.
Human rights are the most important component of a sensible conclusion on a political topic; not cultural sensitivity, religious history, civil privilege, nor any of the other complicated contributing factors to a controversial issue.
There are two reasons we need to ensure that our politicians come to believe this: a) by upholding equal freedoms alone, [...]
Pastor urges his congregation to bring their guns to church
I understand that people think this pastor and his church are utterly bonkers. But this action must be seen in the context of the wider debate it represents.
I support him. I don’t expect this story to translate well to those outside the U.S., but it makes perfect sense and the only way I can relate [...]
