Decades after the sexual revolution, many religious conservatives remain fiercely committed to preaching, if not always living, an absolute and absolutist understanding of human sexuality. Mainstream biologists, psychologists and sociologists, building on the science...
I have previously written about the water tower cross in Whiteville, Tennessee three times: here, here, and here. The story is pretty much over now. On August 8, 2012, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the...
While I was away traversing the mighty jungles of mid-town Manhattan, I had the chance to see The Book of Mormon. Even if you aren’t a theatre person, chances are you’ve still heard of...
I do love A Bit of Fry & Laurie. This is quite a brilliant sketch, whatever you make of its politics. Maybe not quite as good as their free-market-police bit, but right up there.
I’ve had this sort of nebulous notion that culture itself is a problem. Not any particular culture, mind you, but rather the entire concept of culture. The exclusivity of the group over the individual....
~by M.A. Conor P. Williams, in Conservatism Isn’t Radical—It’s “Modular”, argues that there is a certain amount of mental jiu-jitsu involved in shifting frameworks from argument to argument. An interesting test of this very case...
A certain kind of religious activist takes it as a given, and as an imperative, that the Decalogue must be displayed prominently on and in public buildings. Gratefully, these folks are rare; sadly, they have influence...
We were arguing about art at work in the lab the other day. Not the aesthetic value argument (though that *IS* a good one) but about whether art could be moral in any meaninful...
I keep trying to better understand James Poulos. I like James a great deal, though we disagree pretty fundamentally on many things. I’ve been fascinated by his discussions of the Pink Police State (a conservative...
There’s been a long and somewhat intense discussion going on in the comments over at Kyle’s sub-blog about the Obama administration’s rule requiring Catholic institutions to provide coverage for contraception in their health care...
“Who do you think made the first stone spear? That wasn’t the yakkity yaks sitting around the campfire. It was some Asperger sitting in the back of a cave figuring out how to chip...
When I published my fantasy piece in the Atlantic it was linked (reproduced?) by Richard Dawkins’ site and a number of the atheists in the commentariat had scathing things to say about fantasy literature....
Balloon Juice defines “going Galt” as: Withdrawing one’s unique brilliance from the economy in protest of tax rates which are actually abnormally low for the post-war era. Discussed and encouraged by bloggers such as...
~by Tom Van Dyke Well, the problem isn’t perhaps-GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry attending a semi-political prayer meeting. This stuff happens all the time. [His playing Pontifex Maximus for it and the potential political...
~by RTod On Wednesday Erik posted a picture of two (presumably) married costumed lesbians, kissing while holding a sign saying Liberty, a sign saying Justice, and a child that is either from the Village...
By Kyle Cupp I was born to a Buddhist father and a somewhat lapsed Catholic mother, so you could say I had a divergent and confusing theological upbringing. Essentially I heard two different stories...
The last time I checked, most Muslims in the United States were not blowing themselves up in suicide attacks against their fellow Americans. They were not issuing fatwas against Harry Potter or converting your...
~ by Sean Byrnes As I imagine is the case in many religious services, the biblical readings of a Roman Catholic Mass in any given week tend to all relate to some central theme...
At one of our excellent sub-blogs, Alex Knapp makes this commonsensical point: We live in a country where Creationists can run for President without being laughed out of the room, homeopathy is seen as...
I mentioned a month or so ago that since my engagement, I’ve sort of re-channeled the views I usually apply to politics into everyday living. “Re-channeled” might be a bit much – I can...
We had a recent outage due to ongoing problems with the latest WordPress update. We were also forced into some theme changes. Some of these changes are temporary and some are probably not. We apologize for the inconvenience.
on Weekend Plans Post: Batchin’ ItDude. That's awesome! Mr. Blue Sky is one of those that strikes me as a cheat code for "awesome". Wh… on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25This strikes me as a failure that would have been avoidable with skilled people in a handful of impo…
on Weekend Plans Post: Batchin’ ItThe chorus I sing with is having our spring shows this weekend. https://www.voicesofhopecc.org/conce…
on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25Yet another review on Snow White. She has serious spoilers for the plot. Probably the biggest tell w… on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25I would say that Trump clearly believes Tariffs are a net positive to the economy and not (at best)… on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25Above, you give a fairly insightful statement: " All he needed to do was to do nothing substantively…
on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25It's just... he just... like... it's such a blizzard of bull that I'm hesitating on where to even st… on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25He is indeed assuming that... but I wondered if what he said about China was true. I mean, if he sta… on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25If you just want to know how bad things will be bad, you can probably find a best-case scenario by l… on Open Mic for the week of 3/31/25That would be why I totally ignored Telegraph/Yahoo after looking at it and did my own thing.
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The Greatest Strike in History
March 30, 2025
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