by Carl Howard | Feb 9, 2016 | Atrocities and Oppression, Ethics, Feminism and LGBT, Philosophy
So the Ethics Centre in conjunction with IQ2 have an upcoming debate called Sex, Gender & Indentity (Title TBC) which will be about transgender “””issues”””. Uh oh. Will it be a giant case of false balance that seeks to give a platform to TERF hate as a just...
by Carl Howard | Sep 1, 2015 | Atheism and Religion, Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
I haven’t written about the ‘science vs religion’ thing for ages, but an article caught my attention –– first because I thought it was ridiculous and later because it did force me to think about using scientific metaphors, which is always a positive. It’s The Missing...
by Carl Howard | Aug 17, 2015 | Philosophy, Science and Skepticism
It’s Sydney Science Festival this week so I’m going to 4 talks and liveblogging them. Tonight’s talk by Geraint F Lewis is Einstein’s Wonderful Idea: A Century of Space-Time, Black Holes and Expanding Universes, celebrating the 100th anniversary of General Relativity....
by Carl Howard | Apr 14, 2015 | Atheism and Religion, Evolution and Biology, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Philosophy
This is an oldie (from 2014) but a goodie. A legit science website (Science 2.0) publishes an blog post entitled Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke by Nury Vittachi. It’s a great example of what happens when you try to be so...
by Carl Howard | Dec 2, 2014 | Atrocities and Oppression, Ethics, Feminism and LGBT, Philosophy, Sex
NOTE: This post is an analogy between different kinds of discrimination. While I normally avoid these, I thought it was necessary here as I’ll explain below. Still, take it for what it is, a limited and necessarily-flawed analogy. A man and a woman hook up. The next...
by Carl Howard | Nov 4, 2014 | Atheism and Religion, Atrocities and Oppression, Ethics, Feminism and LGBT, Language, Philosophy
I have a pet peeve: the use of the term “offensive”. Ok, it’s more than a pet peeve – I think its use in public discourse is misleading and harmful. To start, here are some uses of “offensive” that are particularly cringeworthy: You don’t have a right not to be...
