by Carl Howard | Dec 12, 2012 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Race, Resources, Food and Environment, Society
A follow-up from the last post, I’ve recently had a change of mind about the idea of “first world problems”. For those not familiar, this is a hash tag on Twitter and a general internet trope that you add on to a complaint you make. It’s meant to show that you...
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 | Nov 22, 2012 | Blog Topics, Mind, Psychology and Consciousness, Philosophy, Sex
On Dan Savage’s podcast and advice column about sex, he sometimes get questions about particular turn-ons that ask about their origin. Three fake examples I made up since it’s a bit hard to go through the thousands of archived questions: “My partner has a rape fantasy...
by Carl Howard | Nov 13, 2012 | Blog Topics, Society
A while ago, the Cognitive Dissonance podcast discussed this story: Indonesian police arrest 62 over Ramadan bar attack. The group is alleged to have attacked bars that were open on Ramadan. “Good,” I thought, “arrest those assholes!” But as the podcast went on, I...
by Carl Howard | Nov 8, 2012 | Atheism and Religion, Blog Topics, Feminism and LGBT, Spirituality
Speaking of Buddhism, one thing I can’t stand is people giving the Dalai Lama a pass, and passing around inspirational images with his “wisdom quotes”. An example here: Not only are they usually deepities or Barnum statements or just trite but the Dalai Lama espouses...
by Carl Howard | Nov 1, 2012 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, Poems, Society, Travel
[The Central Asia wrapup post prompted me to attempt to say the same thing in verse.] I hate the ramblings of Those trendy travelling wankers At home their life’s a bore They’re lawyers, tradies, bankers Yet get them overseas Especially to places That they think are...
