Ryan Andresen had dreamed of becoming an Eagle Scout from the age of six and had steadily worked towards it, creating as a project in high school a ‘tolerance wall’ of 288 unique tiles is an effort to create awareness of the need to combat bullying. He was devastated when his troop leader said that he could not be made an Eagle Scout because he had come out as gay. [Read more…]
Harvard’s Stephen M. Walt, someone who belongs to the ‘realist’ school of US foreign policy analysis, writes that the nomination of Chuck Hagel for the post of Defense Secretary does not point to a significant shift in the direction of president Obama’s foreign policy but does represent a widening in the range of such discussions. [Read more…]
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about what not to say to people after they have suffered a personal loss or a tragedy, and some of you added your own suggestions. But this does raise the difficult question of what we, as nonbelievers, can and should say to such people that might give them some comfort at such a difficult time. [Read more…]
One sometimes hears that humans use only about 10% of our brains. Some have suggested that this means that if only we could learn how to harness our brains fully, we could be geniuses. Others have used it to argue, somewhat desperately, that this limited utilization is the reason for god’s ineffability, because in the unused portions lies the ability to understand how god works and what his plan for us is. [Read more…]
Yesterday, I highlighted an important article by Glenn Greenwald about how Chuck Hagel’s 1998 opposition to a gay nominee for US ambassador is one of the tools being used to try and torpedo his nomination for Defense Secretary, even though such views were much more common at that time and were similar to those held by people, like Barack Obama, who are now viewed as liberal icons. Furthermore, Hagel has rightly since apologized for those remarks to the person about whom they were made and other commentators have pointed out that his views on gay issues have progressed considerably since that time, as has been the case for so many of us. [Read more…]
I saw the 1936 black-and-white comedy My Man Godfrey over the weekend and really liked it. I hadn’t expected to because it seemed to be about the high life of a very rich but eccentric family indulging in endless rounds of vapid partying in the post-1929 crash period. I watched it out of solidarity with my visiting daughter who has developed a taste for classic films and discovered that the film was not only funny, it had a pretty good social message too. [Read more…]
One regular reader and commenter wrote in to say that her/his recent comments were not appearing and wondered whether she/he had been banned so I thought I would clarify the comments situation. [Read more…]
A group of comedians in the UK have launched what they claim is the first atheist church (though Unitarians might quarrel with the claim). [Read more…]
When I attended a K-12 school in Sri Lanka, we had eight class periods that started at 8:30 am and ended at 3:05 pm. Within the day, there was a 15-minute recess from 10:30-10:45am and one hour for lunch from 12:05-1:05pm. When he were in middle school grades and below, during the recess period we would dash out to play pick-up games of cricket or soccer or whatever, and during the one-hour lunch break we would quickly wolf down our food in order to continue the games we had started earlier in the day. These were wonderful breaks in the days. As we entered the higher grades, we did not use that time for play but instead spent it hanging out and chatting with our friends. [Read more…]