Due to a convoluted sequence of events, I spent about half an hour in an Adoration chapel last night. For the non-Catholics, Eucharistic Adoration is the act of spending time in a chapel with a consecrated communion wafer, believed to be the real presence of Jesus Christ. A friend had felt a calling that I should go, and since I could spare the time and didn’t want to be accused of being a bad sport, I went along. (Not to... Read more
I don’t know how many of you use Google Reader, but the ones who do are probably as upset as I am about Google’s decision to gut the social RSS reader. In an effort to boost Google+ (which kinda sucks), they’re not letting Reader users use Reader as a social forum anymore. You can still read the RSS feeds you’ve subscribed to, but you can’t follow people’s shared items or comment on them. Here’s the best outline of why Google... Read more
I spent the weekend at an alumni event for my college debating group. In the wee hours of the morning, a fellow transhumanist and I were arguing with a rather tipsy post-modernist. PoMo guy was arguing we couldn’t justifiably wish to live forever or even to live too long, since, without death, there could be no need to leave a legacy after us, and, thus, the drive to create would be annihilated. (If people are interested, I can write up... Read more
— 1 — Some time today, BoltBus WiFi permitting, I’m going to take one last look at the statistics you need to know to parse the link between the Pill and breast cancer that Marc of Bad Catholic alluded to in a post earlier this week. The first post went through some common misunderstandings of the ways risk and percentages are used by epidemiologists. Today’s post will go over some of the questions and objections that came up in the comments. If you’re... Read more
Yesterday I made a case for authority among atheists and today I’m addressing ritual without religion. In the big discussion about Greg Epstein’s humanist chaplains and the twitter forum on #humanistcommunity, PZ Myers claimed setting up atheist rituals that paralleled religious tradition was “a cheat and a waste.” At their essence, Myers claimed, ritual is just another world for “waste of effort, feel-good displacement activities that take the place of thought.” It’s easy to think of fairly harmless secular rituals... Read more
Yesterday, a bunch of atheists tried to talk about the future of atheist communities on Twitter. It didn’t go so well, and though I think the overlapping, abbreviated medium didn’t do us any favors, I was still able to suss out some points of contention I’d like to address. Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard got some coverage for hosting weekly gatherings of atheists that are meant to supply some of the community resources we miss out on by not... Read more
The Bright Maidens (a blogging network of young Catholic women) are writing about scapulars this week, and I figured I’d poke my nose in. A scapular is a piece of cloth worn around the neck. It is a sacramental (an instrument of grace, like holy water or some blessed medals). The one all the bloggers seem to be focusing on is the Scapular of Our Lady of Mount Carmel (also called the brown scapular). The virtue of this scapular was... Read more
Some friends of mine invited a bunch of us to spend Sukkot with them this weekend and I had a lovely time. They miraculously managed procure a lulav, despite the shortage, and gave a thorough exegesis of the holiday and the symbolism of the lulav components. Some of the conversations I had at or after the party highlighted the fact that I don’t know very much about Judaism. I’m from New York, so I know plenty of Yiddish, but I’ve known very... Read more
Comments are still a little bit in flux here. Because Disqus was causing problems, it’s been stripped off and we’re back to plain old wordpress comments until things get sorted out. On the plus side, this means that all the previously vanished comments are back! Oh, and speaking of comments, today I want to point you to a conversation that’s going on over at Marc’s Bad Catholic blog here at Patheos. Marc wrote a post called “10 Reason the Pill... Read more
This is a follow-up to my post on National Coming Out Day and the subsequent Bisexuality Q&A. Several comments asked why I thought it was necessary to be out as a bisexual if I’m currently dating a guy. After all, I admit that although bisexuality is part of my identity, it’s certainly not the most important thing to know about me (that identifier is: giant geek). And isn’t it all kinda moot if I’m not currently single? Let me run... Read more
Unequally Yoked
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