by Carl Howard | Jan 16, 2012 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, History, Society
I’ve been reading a lot about the Gulags lately including the monumental Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I’ll post more later but I thought it was especially important to translate a page by Shalamov that I found. Varlam Shalamov is famous for his Kolyma...
by Carl Howard | Jan 15, 2012 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Super-Abridged Bible
I’m going out of order a little but it was easier to expand my project to actual prophets with shorter books. In the Jewish Bible, these 12 prophets are called the “minor” prophets, because they form short books, and all 12 are treated as one full-length book. Here it...
by Carl Howard | Jan 12, 2012 | Blog Topics, Language, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
It’s very common to mention Orwell’s 1984 when criticising a tyrannical/repressive/linguistically manipulative government/corporation/individual. This is often followed by praise of Orwell and how wise and prophetic his 1984 was. I find these comparisons ridiculous...
by Carl Howard | Jan 9, 2012 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Science and Skepticism, Society
I thought a brief foray into cartooning (using material from other people’s hard work) would explain things better than words: I think ultimately it’s just another example of folk-Kantianism (ie. caring mostly about the “intent” of an act, quite literally an...
by Carl Howard | Jan 4, 2012 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Science and Skepticism
The news are full of cases where very religious people do extremely ridiculous or cruel things. For example, there’s Javon Thompson, a 1 year old starved to death by his cult member family because he did not say “amen” during mealtime. Or more recently, a 7 year old...
by Carl Howard | Dec 16, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Blogging the Bible, Feminism and LGBT
A story has made it to the news cycle about a week ago about an Afghan woman who is marrying the man who raped her. Via MSNBC: Gulnaz, who uses one name, has been in an Afghan prison cell for about two years. She says she only has one choice if she wants to bring...
