Remember you can vote once per day for the About.com Atheism Awards. I’m one of five nominees for Best Atheist Blog. More details here. Brian S. had a couple of questions after reading my post yesterday about my plans for Lent. He wrote: I disagree, or at any rate don’t feel that you’ve demonstrated that sufficiently. I could make the argument, as you almost do, that “getting one over on someone” is a natural human feeling, and you’re finding a... Read more
Ok, I know that sounds weird, but there’s method in my madness. I try to be on guard against my Kantian-to-solipsist tendencies, and I think I’ve noticed another spot festering. I’m lucky in that, within walking distance of my office there’s a delicious cupcake place that, once a week, gives away free cupcakes if you come in and do a talent. And right across from my building is a restaurant that does free wine and cheese tastings twice a week. Like... Read more
I’ve returned from AAAS (jet lag and all) and I’d like to take a crack at one of the questions you guys posted in the Marriage Q&A post (if you’ve thought of a new question, I’m still watching that thread). Gilbert asked: As far as I get it covenant marriage rests on the state refusing covenant-violating divorces. Otherwise it would be exactly like ordinary civil marriage: a promise of life-long commitment that can easily be broken without repercussions. So I... Read more
My time at AAAS has come to an end, and today, I just want to feature one session. (The post on the Dialogue on Science Ethics and Religion panel will be up later this week). Julio Montaner: Toward the Control of HIV and AIDS: Comprehensive Treatment as Prevention We think of the mark of success for a new medical treatment as scoring a significant result when all the data are in. That’s pretty good, but there’s an even better prize: having your... Read more
Day Two at AAAS Conference… Data to Knowledge to Action: Computational Science in a Global Knowledge Society I’m taking Sebastian Thrun’s Programming a Robotic Car class starting this week, so I was particularly excited for Peter Stone’s talk “Intersections of the Future: Using Fully Autonomous Vehicles” and boy oh boy did it not disappoint. Behold the future: What I found particularly interesting about his system is that it depends on the human passanger not overriding the autodrive. Most proposed regulation... Read more
Heck yeah I am! Here are some quick highlights from my first day at the AAAS Annual Meeting: Fifty Years of the Pill: Risk Reduction and Discovery of Benefits Beyond Contraception How could I skip this session given the topic’s recent prominence? According to the panelists, the non-contraceptive side effects of the pill are varied. It is prescribed to women with certain risk factors for ovarian cancer, because it lowers their chance of incidence. It’s also used as treatment for... Read more
— 1 — I’m off to Canada for the annual meeting of the American Association for Advancement in the Sciences! WiFi and leisure time may be in short supply, so be patient if a comment gets caught in the spam filter. Besides the Friday links to tide you over, don’t forget to post in the Marriage Q&A thread if there’s a question you want me to address as followup to the gay marriage debate I wrapped up with Matt this week. Allons-y!... Read more
Now that the gay marriage debate with Matt has come to an end, I’d like to give you commenters a chance to ask me any questions about my position on marriage and its ties to tradition and the State. Basically the same thing we did after the post on bisexuality. I can’t promise I’ll get to all of them, but I can guarantee I’m not going to be able to pick all of the questions addressed to me (as opposed... Read more
I’ll be back with a longer post on the actual substance of the contraceptive mandate and my ideas about the reasonable limits to the idea that religious mandates exempt you from the law, but I can’t pass up the chance to geek out about social science statistics and methodology. You’ve all probably heard the “98% of Catholic women use contraception” statistic cited by now, and people have started to take a closer look at the relevant study. Let me chat... Read more
Sorry this is late, but what could be better on Valentine’s Day than pouring kerosene on a fight about marriage? This post is part of a debate on gay marriage. In the last installment, my friend Matt argued that endorsing gay marriage means endorsing the foundations of divorce culture. So now it’s my turn to be prescriptive about marriage. To start with a recap of what kind of marriage Matt opposed, let’s go to the videotape (John Barrowman in Company):... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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