Reading Time: 6 minutes It is the easiest thing in the world to copy and paste digital content. This is why elaborate systems needed to be invented, to push back on the native capabilities of technology. Digital Rights Management (DRM) most often refers to advanced technology that locks in document content, ostensibly to protect author copyright, and certainly to […]
Deep Dive
Exploring the big questions—life, death, morality, consciousness, meaning—from a secular point of view.
Posted inEthics and Morality
More traits of a real man, according to the Bible
Reading Time: 4 minutes A conservative Christian site has a list of biblical rules for a modern man of God. Here’s a more interesting list, also well grounded in biblical teaching.
Posted inSexuality
Bleeding the church: Conservative Catholics revive the Inquisition
Reading Time: 5 minutes The Catholic church is suffering a massive priest shortage, and conservatives want to make it worse by hunting down clerical sinners so they can be purged.
Posted inReligion
When it comes to religion, what is ‘controversial’?
Reading Time: 7 minutes In a recent appearance on Drew McCoy’s Genetically Modified Skeptic, Filip Holm of Let’s Talk Religion posed an interesting question: Is McCoy doomed to Hell in every religion? To answer this, he talks to experts on each of five religions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism). It’s a great video, both educational and entertaining. And […]
Posted inClimate Crisis
The world’s still burning: IPCC’s climate report and action plan
Reading Time: 6 minutes Last week, Nature Human Behavior published “Negativity drives online news consumption”, a study that found a strong connection between negative headlines and higher click-through rates. But desensitization is also a significant risk when grim news abounds, as it has in recent weeks (and months, and years). The latest meeting between war crimes suspect Vladimir Putin […]
Posted inGen Z Rising
Gen Z is killing religion
Reading Time: 5 minutes Gen Z is the least Christian generation in American history, and as they come into their own, their influence is reshaping culture and politics. The era of the religious right is drawing to a close.
Posted inDeep Dive
Fox News’ and Trump’s pants are (still) on fire
Reading Time: 9 minutes If doctors practiced their craft like Fox News pundits do theirs, they would long ago have lost their privilege to treat patients. Which brings me right to the point: Why shouldn’t licensing of journalists be required, as other professionals, such as doctors, already are in many states? And why shouldn’t politicians, as well, be legally […]
Posted inEthics and Morality
What is a ‘real man,’ according to the Bible?
Reading Time: 3 minutes A conservative Christian site has a list of biblical rules for a modern man of God. But why stop there? Let’s look to the Bible to make a more thorough list.
Posted inWar and Peace
Did it work? Iraq 20 years after the US invasion
Reading Time: 11 minutes March 20 marks two decades since the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq. In those 20 years, it has become de rigueur to malign the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the attempt to build a free and prosperous Iraq. Such critics often tell us that the intervention was always going to fail and that this failure was utterly foreseeable, that nothing but catastrophe could come of invading. But ‘catastrophic’ is too mild a word to describe the state of Iraq since 2003.
Posted inDeep Dive
How we create truth
Reading Time: 10 minutes White women have a storied history of fabricating assault at the hands of BIPOC men. On March 14, 22-year-old Eleanor Williams became part of a small subset of people to face legal consequences for false claims of abuse, which here sparked a season of hate crimes and drove three men to attempt suicide. Her elaborate […]