Category: culture

  • What Zombie Movies Can Tell Us About Racism

    A good buddy of mine, Ian Cromwell, has uploaded he did a talk a while back on racism in society, and how Zombie-ism (and zombie movies) can help us understand how we should deal with the problem as it occurs in the wild. It’s broken down over a couple of youtubes, and can be found…

  • Taking Advantage of Seeking a Better Life

    There’s no limit to the number of ‘self-help’ gurus out there, who lay claim to all sorts of nonsense. At best, these people are deeply misguided about what it is they are doing. At worst, they are intentionally running scams and swindling people out of money. I want to focus on a particular example: Psychology…

  • 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…

  • The Death Penalty as Retribution

    The next argument that is put forward in favour of the death penalty is that it’s required as part of retributive justice. The major problem with this position is that it has no basis in any sound ethical theories, and appears to be nothing more than a holdover from various religions.

  • 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…

  • Language as prejudice

    So let’s start with: I am neither a linguist, nor a sociologist, but I’d love to hear from anyone with experience in those fields. I did a quick search on Google Scholar and didn’t find anything related. I think a large part of racism is borne implicitly, a collection of attitudes and behaviour adjustments that, in…

  • Discussing Religious Beliefs

    This is the second of two dialogues I put together using xtranormal.com. If anyone happens to know of any similar websites/software out there, I’d love to heard about it. Like this article? Follow Brian on Twitter!