On Monday October 14 I attended what was advertised as a movie about homeopathy.  It was listed in the email that goes out to all staff, faculty and students at NUNM, the National University of Natural Medicine.  I was one of two staff present, the other one being there because she was required to for her job.

I attended this event because I am ( Read more... )

...Glib, facile solutions stand at the very heart of the populist appeal.  Voters do not like to think that the world is complicared.  They certainly do not like to be told that there is no immediate answer to their problems.  Faced with politicians who seem to be less and less able to govern an increasingly complex world, many are increasingly ( Read more... )

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the ( Read more... )

To learn which questions are unanswerable,
and not to answer them:
This skill is most needful in times of
stress and darkness.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”

"A single dot on a canvas is not a painting and a single bet cannot resolve a complex theoretical dispute.  This will take many questions and question clusters.  Of course it's possible that if large numbers of questions are asked, each side may be right on some forecasts but wrong on others and the final outcome won't generate the banner headlines ( Read more... )

Contemporary Western postural yoga projects an authenticity and unbroken ancient heritage onto the yogic tradition, while mourning the commodification, secularization and denuding of that tradition by the West. Such lamentation belies the fact that modern postural yoga is a creature of fabrication and reinvention.
--Farah Godrej

Randy Blazak is a PhD from Emory University with a specialty in hate crimes. Specifically he studied racist skinheads (he doesn't say just "skin heads" because you can shave your head without being a racist). He's a professor of sociology at PSU where his intro class is opening people's minds, and a professor of criminology at OU.

His talk for ( Read more... )

Democracy is based on the belief that people are more good than bad, that we are more curious than controlling, more playful than violent, and more kind than selfish.  I am not so sure anymore.  If the ways of a democratic society are based on the common denominator, and humans at base are horny, greedy and cruel, then society will be the same.

I ( Read more... )

You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt ( Read more... )

For all of you who aren't sure, it is possible to be gay and Christian. It's also possible to believe in God and science. It is possible to be pro-choice and anti-abortion.

It is equally possible to be a feminist and love and respect men. It's possible to have privilege and be discriminated against, to be poor and have a rich life, to not have a job ( Read more... )