by Carl Howard | Dec 4, 2012 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Charity and Philanthropy, Society
The headline is shamelessly plundered from this post by Greg Laden. The original context was indeed about ElevatorGate, so do get more detail there, not here. Greg’s title very aptly describes a certain style of argument. Basically, the idea is that when someone...
by Carl Howard | Oct 16, 2012 | Atheism and Religion, Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Blogging Jewish Law
I was recently at a Jewish funeral prayer service for a friend’s grandfather. I often heard as part of my Jewish education that Judaism’s approach to mourning is very effective to help the grieving process despite (or because of) being counterintuitive. I’m not sure...
by Carl Howard | Aug 9, 2012 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Society, Travel
In my last post on Central Asia, things got a bit cynical about just how invisible the region is on a world stage. This post was scheduled a few weeks ago, before the almost-unreported outbreak of what could be the start of another civil war in Tajikistan. Yes, there...
by Carl Howard | May 15, 2012 | Atrocities and Oppression, Biases and Fallacies, Charity and Philanthropy, Race, Science and Skepticism, Society
Kony2012 exploded just as I was leaving for overseas so I didn’t get a chance to post about it. Now that I’m back, it’s largely died off. Still, there are a few things that are important to discuss specifically now that attention has died off. And there are important...
by Carl Howard | Feb 6, 2012 | Atrocities and Oppression, Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, History, Race, Science and Skepticism
An awesome letter has been making the rounds on the internet. It’s a 1865 reply by Jourdan Anderson (a former slave) to his former master Colonel P.H. Anderson. P.H. Anderson wrote asking Jourdan Anderson* to come back to work for him. Jourdan Anderson was living in...
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...
