Being nice about religion: genital mutilation edition
May 31, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under Uncategorized
Nicholas Kristof has an ambivalent review of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book. Kristof got immediately trashed by PZ for it, but the review is even more clueless than PZ makes it out to be, when you remember that Hirsi Ali is a survivor of female genital mutilation, and initially left the Muslim world because she [...]
Continue Reading »Happy Draw Muhammad Day!
May 21, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
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I decided to go for a crappy MS Paint version of a famous painting. I’m not in the mood to write a manifesto about this, but Greta Christina’s is here. The Facebook page is here.
Continue Reading »Carnivalia, and off to Hitchens-D’Souza
April 7, 2010 by Chris Hallquist
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New editions of the Philosopher’s Carnival and the Humanist Symposium are up. And Symposium has a Superman comic!
I haven’t mentioned this before, but Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza are debating on campus in about half an hour, so now I’m off to that. I’ll return with a full report.
What is physicalism?
October 19, 2009 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under Uncategorized
The importance of in-principle predictability in modern science
The more I read discussions of things like reductionism, emergence, and the nature of the mind, the more I’m bugged by how confused these debates are, both in terms of different writers not connecting with each other and different writers not connecting with the major scientific developments of [...]
Standard of offense
February 11, 2009 by Chris Hallquist
Filed under Uncategorized
Hemant reports on the rejection of an atheist bus ad which read “You can be good without God.” The rationale?:
All advertisements must meet acceptable community standards of good taste, quality and appearance. Furthermore, the ads will not be considered discriminatory, or objectionable to any race creed or moral standard.
Hemant points out how ridiculous this is, [...]