Category: civil rights

  • Anti-Abortion Arguments, Including the Secular Ones, are Uninformed Drivel.

    I’ve had something of a writing block for the last month or so, so I’m thankful to Hemant Mehta over at Friendly Atheist for providing me with some fodder to dissect. I’ve always figured that there had to be some folk out there whose anti-abortion stance wasn’t built on a foundation of religion, as the…

  • Integrity: Something Catholic Schools *Shouldn’t* Teach?

    Sometimes, I read something that’s really quite awesome, like a bunch of High School kids protesting against the firing of the Assistant Principal of their school. Why was he fired? Because he was gay. I think that it’s a credit to those kids that they felt they should stand up against an injustice and a…

  • Equality of Outcome

    One of the tensions in the economic arguments about the world is whether we should focus on equality of outcome, or equality of opportunity.  The short version of each reads as follows: Equality of Outcome: It describes a state in which people have approximately the same material wealth or in which the general economic conditions…

  • Georgia Police Kill Diabetic Black Man After Family Calls 911 Requesting Ambulance

    I don’t have anything to add to this, I just want to spread the awareness around. Alicia Herron, Roberson’s fiancé and girlfriend of 10 years, says she called 911 to request an ambulance for Roberson out of concern for his diabetic condition. But police arrived at their home instead. Arguably, a simple mistake on the part…

  • The Death Penalty, The Economic Argument

    This is the fourth (and final) part of a series, dealing with topics are normally informed by a religious point-of-view, but have somehow managed to leak into some secular world-views. They’ll be collected together under the arrogantly-titled ‘Conceits’ tag. I’ve dealt with The Deterrence Effect in Part 1 and Part 2 of this sub-series, and I also…

  • Mr. Deity and His Epic Skeptifail

    I don’t typically watch Mr. Deity videos, as they’re a little contrived for my tastes, but they’re generally well-received in the Skeptic/Atheist community. They’re light, usually well-informed, and poking fun at believers is bound to raise a few chuckles. Low-hanging fruit. But clearly I was mistaken as to the quality of the skepticism at play.…

  • The Death Penalty, Deterrence in Practice

    In Part 1 of this series, I dealt with the plausibility of the model in favour of Deterrence. But let’s forget all about that for a moment. Let’s put aside all the science behind our decision processes, how the human brain works, and all of that stuff. Like Deterrence-advocates, let’s pretend that science hasn’t moved…

  • Translink: ‘screwing the poor is our business model going forward’

    Here in Vancouver, we’re serviced by a combination of light rail and buses. Both of which are fairly regular, and cheap. I’ve lived in a couple of different countries, visited many cities, and I have to say that the transit system here is easily one of the best in the world. (Do I need the…

  • The Death Penalty, Deterrence in Principle

    This is going to be the first part of a four-part series on the death penalty, There are two main arguments trotted out in favour, both of which I feel fail to be convincing. I’ll get to them, but first I need to sketch out some philosophical/ethical commitments. It helps to get these out of…

  • Single people don’t have a right to have sex

    A good default position to hold is that ‘whatever the Family Research Council says is wrong’. You’ll get a fair bit of mileage out of that, and you’ll generally be on the right side of history as things shake out. However, in this particular case, I’m going to agree with Pat Fagan, senior member of…