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On GM foods.
I thought Mark Lynas‘s New York Times editorial about genetically-modified foods was quite good. Well worth a read, if you have a minute. And it inspired me to jot down something that I’ve been meaning to write for a while: I wish the concepts “grown without pesticides” and “not genetically modified” weren’t so intertwined in this…
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On secular humanism.
After no more than three pages of Philip Kitcher’s Life After Faith, a sentence gave me pause. “Secular humanism begins, after all, with doubt.” I had never heard the phrase “secular humanism” before arriving at college. The first time was two months into fall quarter my freshman year, sitting in the dining hall near the…
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On justice (an essay for Z).
“In Egypt, we are all about justice. Justice, justice, justice. Where ever you go, people are in the streets. There are tanks.” I was crouching in front of a swingset, gently pushing my daughter back each time she arced forward to nearly kick me in the head. Z was standing beside me, talking politics. It…
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On names (specifically, my own).
What’s that thing Shakespeare wrote about roses? Something about thorns, right? Drat those awful thorns! We live in a pretty small town, where there are 30 or so grocery stores, maybe 10 or so “good” ones, and whichever we pick there’s a decent chance somebody shopping or working there will recognize us and stop to…
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On minotaurs (and whether or not mothers are the root of all maladies).
While reading Eula Biss’s On Immunity, I was often reminded of Rebecca Kukla’s Mass Hysteria. Both works analyze the permeability of bodies, especially mothers and children, while drawing from literature, philosophy, and medicine. Their major divergence is in tone; Kukla’s work can veer academic (which I enjoy, being a pedantic fuddyduddy myself); Biss’s writing is…
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On autism and vaccines.
Let’s get one thing out of the way first, shall we? Vaccines don’t cause autism. If you’ve got a kid with a standard operating immune system, you oughta get that sucker vaccinated. If you yourself have a standard operating immune system, and you’re considering living in a place where certain diseases that you aren’t immune…
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On violence against women (part three): rape, evolution, and the dangers of partial truths.
This is third in a series. Read Part 1 and Part 2. Were you sired by a jerk? Don’t worry! You can still be good! I’m mostly familiar with two theories addressing the question, “Why do men rape?” One comes from feminism, like the thesis put forward in Brownmiller’s Against Our Will: violence against women…
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On Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth (until devolving into senseless tangents about cash transfers as medicine, the U.S. criminal justice system, work as exercise, and flawed science).
As long as you think feeling angry is fun (does it say awful things about my personality that I do?), Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth is a fun little book. Unlike Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed, Tirado’s main focus isn’t analyzing why people are poor — she states, bluntly and in my opinion correctly, that the…
academic doublethink, academic science, Alia Crum, An Investigation of Exercise and the Placebo Effect, at-will employment, bizarre data interpretation, court fees, Dixie Stanforth, economic injustice, Ellen Langer, Emily Willingham, Evil Dave versus Regular Dave, Exercise and the Placebo Effect, flawed science, Hand to Mouth, hotel cleaning as exercise, John Oliver, Linda Tirado, low-wage work, Mindset matters, municipal fees, On the Run, overcriminalization, police abuses, poverty, psychology, replication crisis, scientific studies that can’t be replicated, speeding, The New Jim Crow, Tirado, traffic laws, Walter Scott, work as exercise, worker protections
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Frank Brown Cloud 