Love, Death, and Powerpoint

A couple of nights ago I gave a talk about love and death at SMU's secular humanist club, with many in attendance from the Dallas Fellowship of Freethought. I'm posting the powerpoint here (HERE), but first, a quick rant. It ought to be possible to convert this to a You Tube video, retaining all the embedded video, sound, and animations, but you can't do that on a Mac.  You can do it if you have

Universal Veganism?

A student in my Animal Rights class asked me several years ago whether I thought humanity would ever be 100% vegan.  Over the years, I've found myself thinking about this, but thinking about it in evolving ways.  One of the reasons my thoughts are in flux is that I've added a course on Environmental Ethics to my repertory.  This makes me focus less on the micro-level, and more on the

Grammy Highlights (says me)

Best thing, this Chipotle commercial. If a big restaurant chain wants to run commercials decrying factory farming, I'm all for it.  What a great commercial, on every level.







Nick Minaj's diabolical exorcism thing. C'mon, Catholic pundits, where's the outrage? I'm hoping to hear some today.




Bon Iver winning best new artist. I love the music, and this was a big win for the nerdy

It's Contraception for God's Sake!

So--the Obama administration is struggling to explain why it's reasonable to require Catholic hospitals and schools to cover contraception in insurance policies for their employees.  Why should Catholics  have to spend their money in ways that run counter to their religious beliefs?  Isn't that a violation of their religious freedom? Romney and Santorum want to think so.

Background fact:  we

Is this Opposites Day?

I hope democrats aren't going to let Mitt Romney get away with this.  It seems he finds it a terrible assault on freedom of conscience that the Obama administration will be requiring religious hospitals to include contraception coverage in insurance for their employees.  What, is this opposites day?  If there were no one trying to purchase contraceptives, there would be no issue here.  Employees

Atheism in America

Julian Baggini traveled around the US interviewing atheists for this article in the Financial Times.  The general picture: not pleasant.  If you live in small town America, you'll most likely want to keep your non-belief to yourself.  Being unreligious will make it hard for you to be part of the community, since so much socializing and volunteer work is organized around religion.

Academic city

Cosmogony

So good, so weird, so beautiful....






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The whole album is cool. Next thing--must have the app that goes with it.