How can atheists be good without God? Heard this one before? Maybe you’ve even asked this of others, or of yourself. This criticism targets the moral relativism of unbelievers. Without absolutes as anchors, aren’t skeptics cast adrift on a sea of moral decision-making? My first response is that most believers are relativists as well. Any [...]

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While I was cleaning my office last night, I found a stack of TA evaluations from a comparative politics class I TA’d for in the mid-90s. It was a fun class–I gave the lectures on Japanese politics and ran every Friday as a monster discussion section (there were 100+ students). I kept all the evals [...]

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I did not know anything about Credence Clearwater Revival (or “CCR” as they are affectionately known) until I took a road trip a few years ago with my sister. We had, as the only CDs that were acceptable to all members of the van (my sister, her husband, myself, and their 4 children), two CCR [...]

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As a rule, I try not to overlap with my partner’s posts, but this one needs elaboration.  I have a number of weird art festishes.  One is that I love reinterpretations of Da Vinci’s iconic Last Supper (esp. in pop culture).  I’ve written about this in the past, and I have a small collection of [...]

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Quorum of the Twelve Janas., originally uploaded by mind on fire. I do so love this woman.

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This is absolutely priceless. A comic & blog post about Cheney (who, incidentally, “is as ancient as he is evil and he is large amounts of both.”).

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It’s Blog for Choice Day and I encourage everyone to visit the blogroll of bloggers taking part and to visit their blogs, if only for this one post. Also, feel free to revisit my posts from ’07 and ’08. This year’s topic is “What is your top pro-choice hope for President Obama and/or the new [...]

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I hope you don’t mind if I share a few of my favorite pics from the past couple of days: I’m totally fascinated by Rahm Emanuel for some reason.  Here he is at the inauguration, gesturing with four more fingers than he typically uses (at a roast for the earthy politician, Obama joked that Emanuel’s [...]

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All right, fellow Americans in the crowd, ready for a throw-down?  Here’s a civic literacy quiz (by way of Briandy)–try to beat my score of 32 out of 33 (97%). [corrected from my earlier 36 out of 37--thanks, leisurely viking!] I have some good excuses: I’m a poli sci grad, I studied years ago for [...]

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When I was a kid, we had the story of Rindercella taped to our refrigerator. I loved reading it. I grew up in a family where the dominant form of humor was puns, including Spoonerisms. While I was first discovering teh Intarwebs, I looked for Rindercella, a candidate for being somewhere online if ever there [...]

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