by Carl Howard | Jun 27, 2011 | Blog Topics, Feminism and LGBT, Language, Society
If you’ve been online in the last 3 months, you’ve probably seen the SlutWalk phenomenon. If not, a quick recap: Toronto Police Constable Michael Sanguinetti said “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”. The Toronto SlutWalk was...
by Carl Howard | Jun 1, 2011 | Blog Topics, Resources, Food and Environment, Science and Skepticism
Every year, Edge.org asks the same question to about 100-150 scientists, philosophers, public intellectuals (and alas in a few cases, cranks) and publishes them. It makes the rounds on the interwebs every year and with good reason: often it’s fascinating reading. I’ve...
by Carl Howard | May 19, 2011 | Biases and Fallacies, Blog Topics, History, Language, Society
Luke Muehlhauser has a very interesting page up where he’s run every inaugural speech from every US president through an automatic reading level analyser. Here is the page for the full graph and stats. For the lazy, it basically starts off very high from George...
by Carl Howard | May 6, 2011 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Society, Travel
As I was reading Lonely Planet’s guide to Turkey, I found a few interesting things in their history section. I browsed the timeline before I read the main text and here’s what I saw: See anything interesting? I don’t — namely I don’t see anything about the Armenian...
by Carl Howard | May 4, 2011 | Atheism and Religion, Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Interesting Stuff, Philosophy, Society
Anatoly Wasserman is one of the most famous public intellectuals in Russia today. He is essentially a genius with some astronomical IQ who largely taught himself entire fields of knowledge. He first came to fame in 1989 for being an unbeatable contestant on Soviet...
by Carl Howard | Apr 22, 2011 | Atrocities and Oppression, Blog Topics, Society
You are born in a communal barracks and your parents have no time to show you any affection. Your earliest childhood memories are of constant, excruciating hunger, as food is heavily rationed. You also know work from a very early age: you and your peers work in a...
