by Carl Howard | Dec 15, 2014 | Atrocities and Oppression, Ethics, History, Resources, Food and Environment
[Spoiler for Django Unchained] The climax of the movie is when Django comes back to the house for a final showdown. One sequence is just classic love-him-or-loathe-him Tarantino: Django is at the top of the stairs explaining how he will take revenge on the white...
by Carl Howard | Dec 7, 2014 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Ethics, History, Race, Resources, Food and Environment
Australia is now a proper rogue state, deserving universal condemnation not tourist dollars If you’re outside Australia, you’ve probably seen our Prime Minister Tony Abbott made fun of on international news (or US satirical tv). These included his promise to...
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 25, 2014 | Atrocities and Oppression, Biases and Fallacies, History, Medicine, Race, Resources, Food and Environment
The idea of Africa as a single place is common in Western countries, which has many consequences. I’ve looked at some of these before in terms of the idea of dividing countries up into first world and third world (here and here). There is a great website focussed...
by Carl Howard | Nov 11, 2014 | Atheism and Religion, Atrocities and Oppression, Biases and Fallacies, Feminism and LGBT, Science and Skepticism
There have been Deep Rifts™ within the atheist and skeptical communities [in English-speaking countries]. These have now been covered enough in the wider media that you might have heard of them even if you don’t identify with any of those groups. Just in the last 2...
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...
