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A scalp dance
It’s now fashionable at public events to begin with an indigenous land acknowledgment, usually something along these lines:
'We would like to begin by acknowledging that we are in [PLACE NAME], the ancestral and unceded territory of the [SO-AND-SO] people.' The ostensible goal of these acknowledgments is to promote a “greater public consciousness of Native…
Gay rights Gays wanted to be treated the same. Human being to human being.
If a man can fight and defend his country, then why can’t a gay man fight and defend his country?
If a man and a woman can love each other and engage in a social/legal contracts (e.g., marriage), then why can’t two women or two men do the same?
Trans rights But trans rights are different because…
Beware the parasocial relationship A parasocial relationship is a one-sided emotional attachment that a viewer or audience member develops with a media personality (e.g., a TV host, YouTuber, podcaster, or fictional character). While the viewer may feel a sense of closeness or friendship, the media figure has no awareness of the viewer’s existence.
Key Features:
Illusion of intimacy…
“Economics is an analysis of cause-and-effect relationships in an economy. Its purpose is to discern the consequences of various ways of allocating scarce resources which have alternative uses. It has nothing to say about social philosophy or moral values, any more than it has anything to say about humor or anger.”1
Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the…
Life isn’t fair We all know life isn’t fair, which is maybe why it’s so easy for us to continue using bad arguments to simplify situations into problems easily solved if only everyone else could see as clearly as we. Case in point, race relations in the United States.
Black Americans make up 13% of the general population, and yet they account for 38% of the prison…
When the Cure Is Worse Than the Disease Imagine for a moment that in the past, innocent people were unfairly given cancer. Imagine that it was bad and really unfair.
We know that if this were true, that it’s a terrible thing to do.
Further suppose that the effects of these past cancers in some way still affects society today. How best to deal with these lingering effects?
What we…
What would happen if you woke up tomorrow and discovered that the only males left in the world were cisgender1 men, and the only females left in the world were transgender2 women? What would happen to the human species?
What would happen is that our species would eventually die out. It would be the end of civilization.
Our species would eventually die out because humans are animals that…
On page two of my morning newspaper I saw a story titled, “[The famous musical] ‘Oklahoma!’ to debut after trans student reinstated.”1
The story is about a high school in Texas that was thrust into the national spotlight because of a peculiar situation created by the intersection of two stupid ideas.
The first stupid idea was the school’s enactment of a new…
Sometimes you come across an old photo and wonder, “When was that?”
“And what in the world was Sneed doing with a pumpkin?”
The short answer is: No. Gerbils are animals that have a sex, but not a gender.
Sex “Sex is a trait that determines an individual’s reproductive function, male or female, in animals and plants that propagate their species through sexual reproduction. The type of gametes produced by an organism defines its sex. Commonly in plants and animals, male organisms produce smaller gametes…
A team of economic experts recently concluded1 that the computer algorithms used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are structurally biased against Blacks, even though no racial information is contained in a tax return.
How can anyone, let alone a computer algorithm, be biased if there’s nothing to be biased about?
One explanation is that the algorithms were primarily designed to…
If I’m asked, for example, to respect gay marriage (even if it’s against my religious views) or to be kind and pay for sidewalk curb cuts for the handicapped, those requests don’t require me to change my behaviour (except for paying taxes for something I might disagree with). But asking me to ‘respect’ your personal pronouns does require me to act differently.
It…
What is your writing process? The first thing is, you’ve got something to say. It starts with an idea you want to express, or a question you want to answer.
But that’s only the beginning.
The hard part is not expressing ideas or answering questions. Or even having something to say. Anyone can fill a blank page with words. Just transcribe your train of thought, it never…
Billiard balls If free will is “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion,” then it’s pretty clear that billiard balls do not have free will.
Why? Because obviously when the cue ball strikes the eight ball, the eight ball doesn’t decide to bounce left or right. The eight ball doesn’t decide…
In these socially enlightened times it seems everyone and his brother is coming out with a new identity. We’re rife with transformations. Who knew?
But why now? Have we always had men who are really women and women who are really men, and just not noticed? Apparently so. And woe to any bigot or non-woke individual who speaks out contrariwise.
Most people agree that adults have the…
COVID-19: Hello and welcome everyone (and I do mean everyone). Covid here, along with Polio…
POLIO: Hi, folks. I don’t get out much now, it’s a treat for me just to be here.
COVID-19: We’re here on behalf of viruses everywhere to say thanks. Thanks to anti-masker-vaxxers for making this pandemic (and my submicroscopic existence) such a success.
POLIO:…
(aka A ferocious metaphysical dispute1) Some time ago, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find everyone engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute.
The focus of the dispute was a squirrel – a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the opposite side of the tree, a man was imagined to…
When You Assume When you assume you make an ass out of you and me.1 And yet, before it even makes sense to utter that statement, I assume you understand English; I assume that you can hear me, that you’re listening, that you’re not an asshat. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke — unless it’s one of those problems that if you fix…
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