Reading Time: 4 minutes How do you know how intelligent you are? Is intelligence about amassing information or knowing what to do with the information you have? Is intelligence genetic, or can you learn it? How would you measure intelligence? Would you frame a series of questions you know you’ll smash because you have the necessary life experience to win? […]
language
Posted inStrange Customs with Sasha Sagan
Amanda Montell—The Code
Sasha Sagan talks to author and linguist AMANDA MONTELL about our strange habit of making vibrations emanate from our faces in order to communicate.
Posted inOp-Ed
Islamophobia phobia
Reading Time: 4 minutes Until a few years ago, Sweden had a national Twitter account. A random citizen would curate the @sweden username for a week before passing it on. The government shut it down in 2018 after its content started leaning to the right. Inspired by the Swedish model, an @ireland account is still going strong. The Irish […]
Posted inBooks
Let’s talk humanist science fiction: An interview with writer Ray Nayler
Reading Time: 15 minutes In North American literature, strict boundaries are often propped up between fiction and nonfiction, along with “literary” and “genre” prose. These are useful for commercial purposes, but out of step with our history. Speculative fiction might even be considered our oldest literary form: a realm of play and exploration, and a way of reaching deeper […]
Posted inGeneral
The ‘Help-Rejecting Complainer’ (LSP #213)
Reading Time: 6 minutes Not long ago, I discovered a very useful term in dealing with difficult people: the help-rejecting complainer. Sure, it gave me flashbacks to my time in the trenches doing tech support, but it also gave me a framework of perception that’ll help me in the future. I thought y’all might also find it useful. So today, Lord Snow Presides over the unique way that descriptions help us frame problems — and solve them.
Posted inCulture, Education, General
The U.S. Has Never 100% Upheld the First Amendment (And Still Doesn’t)
Reading Time: 8 minutes This may come as a surprise, but the U.S. has never uniformly upheld the right to free speech, and in many cases still limits it. Once you know this history, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for people with bad ideas being deplatformed.
Posted inPhilosophy
Pro-Life Debate: Answering Criticisms on the Human/Human Being Distinction
Reading Time: 4 minutes Some time ago, I wrote a few pieces on the definitions of human and human being as pertaining to the pro-life/pro-choice/abortion debate: Abortion: The Human/Human Being Distinction In my piece, I was taking to task a set of comments from a Mark Bradshaw here, an avowedly pro-life commenter who, in my eyes, was making a […]
Posted inEducation, General
Positionality and My Writing on Dance
Reading Time: 4 minutes Pausing to reflect on one’s social positioning in regard to one’s writing is a good thing to do…preferably before publishing said piece of writing. Here are a few thoughts on my recent work on the belly dance debates.
Posted inCulture, General
Should Belly Dancers Use the Word Tribal?
Reading Time: 12 minutes Naming discussions are rocking the North American belly dance communities, especially the tribal fusion and tribal improv subsets. Apart from our usual conversations about cultural appropriation, the main question is: who gets to use the word tribal?
Posted inCulture, General
Various Meanings of the Word Tribal
Reading Time: 10 minutes There’s a discussion brewing in the belly dance community about genres that go by the name tribal and whether we (white Americans, among others) should get to use that word. What follows is some reflections on language and meaning.