oppression
-
On the ethics of eating.
It took violence and oppression to create our world … which we can recognize without perpetuating.
autotroph, carbon cycle, carbon uptake, chaos machines, diet, energy, ethics, ethics of eating, ethics of veganism, evolution, evolution of intelligence, evolution of life, evolution of neurons, food, food web, gene duplication, gratitude, heterotroph, human diet, legacy of oppression, legacy of violence, life, moral philosophy, oppression, origin of intelligence, origin of neurons, philosophy, plant competition, plants, prehistory of intelligence, prehistory of violence, the cost for us to be here, thermodynamics of life, trees, utilitarian, utilitarianism, vegan, veganism, vegetarian, why we can think
-
On ‘The Ravanayan’ and women traveling alone.
It’s bad enough that our thousands-year-old myths feature women attacked for traveling alone … why are we still letting this happen today?
A. K. Ramanujan, comic books, comic review, comics, did Shoorpanakha deserve to be punished, did Shurpanakha deserve to be punished, fate, fear curtails liberty, female desire in the Ramayana, freedom to travel, gender violence, gendered violence, graphic novel, graphic novel review, graphic novels, Holy Cow, Holy Cow comics, Indian mythology, Mohanty and Goel, monkey battle, mythological violence, mythology, oppression, oppression of women, Rama, Ramanujan, Ramayana comic, Ramayana variants, rape culture, Ravana, Ravanayan review, retellings of the Ramayana, review of the Ravanayan, Sexism, sexual impropriety, Shoorpanakha, Shoorpanakha mutilated, Shurpanakha, Three Hundred Ramayanas, toxic masculinity, Vijayendra Mohanty, violence, violence against women as terrorism, violence against women in the Ramayana, violence against women to instill fear, Vivek Goel, why was Shoorpanakha attacked, why was Shurpanakha attacked, women traveling, women traveling alone
-
On the value of religious misinterpretation.
We’re liable to misinterpret old stories when we look at them with modern eyes … but it’s worth knowing what myths might mean in a better world.
Abraham, anachronism, anachronistic crtique, Ants Among Elephants, Bible, can God save us, caste, caste system, Christ, Christian theology, colonialism, conquest, covenant, creation in Genesis, dalit, David Kishik, DK, Dravidar Kazhagam, forgiveness, forgiving god, Genesis, God, God saw that it was good, God’s insecurity, Goldman, grammar, hebrew, Hinduism, human sacrifice, human sacrifice for good harvest, imperialism, incarceration, incarceration crisis, incarceration in the U.S., incarceration in the United States, jail, Jesus, Jesus’s sacrifice, Job, John-Michael Bloomquist, mass incarceration, merciful god, mercy, Noah, Old Testament, oppression, poetry, poetry in jail, rainbow, Rama, Rama threatening ocean, Ravana, Ravana worship, religion, Rudyard Kipling, sacrifice, sacrifice of Jesus, suffering, Sujatha Gidla, Tamil, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, textual analysis, The Book of Shem, The Flood, The Iliad, The Prodigal’s Return, theology, Translation, untouchable, why did Christ have to die, why did Jesus suffer, why does Rama threaten the ocean, why is God jealous, Yahweh
-
On gene duplication and oppression, a reprise.
Maybe horrific oppression helped get from our past to the present, but it’s certainly not the only way forward.
aristocracy, bacterial evolution, citrate metabolism, cultural evolution, DNA duplication, DNA polymerase, DNA replication, evolution, evolution in a laboratory, evolution of culture, global wealth tax, guaranteed basic income, history, history of violence, landed gentry, mutation, natural selection, oppression, Richard Lenski, taxation, taxes, theft, wealth
-
On Syria, and the complexity of causality.
Syria was in dire straits before the drought — climate change made a bad situation even worse.
Abdullah Al-Udhari, Abu Al-Ala Al-Ma’arri, Assads, Birds Through a Ceiling of Alabaster, civil war, climate change, climate instability, drought, extremism, food insecurity, George Wightman, global warming, ISIL, ISIS, jihad, Lindsey Hilsum, misogyny, oppression, paradise, plough, plow, poetry, protests, refugee, refugee crisis, Syria, Utopia, violence, War of All Against All, Yassin al-Haj Saleh
-
On Colson Whitehead’s ‘The Underground Railroad.’
In Colson Whitehead’s new speculative fiction, he condenses a century of racial injustice into a single fugitive’s journey. I hope readers realize the reality was even worse, that some of these crimes spanned the century and reverberate still.
alternate history, animal welfare, Blood at the Root, Carol Anderson, Colson Whitehead, curses, Douglas Blackmon, emancipation, evil, Forsyth County, fugitive slave act, graduate school, Harriet Washington, incarceration crisis, Lewis Hyde, Medical Apartheid, Michelle Alexander, oppression, Patrick Phillips, police brutality, review of The Underground Railroad, science fiction, slavery, Slavery By Another Name, speculative fiction, Stanford, The Gift, The New Jim Crow, The Underground Railroad, Thirteenth Amendment, trust, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, vegan, vegetarian, whose pain matters, witchcraft
-
On witchcraft and mass psychogenic illness.
Because she is N’s best friend’s grandmother, I recently had the pleasure of meeting the researcher who first proposed that the Salem witchcraft trials were inspired by ergot poisoning of rye crops. And that, of course, is one of the papers I read while researching mass psychogenic illness / conversion disorders / violence against women. Does…
bistable switch, Caporael, conversion disorder, dancing sickness, did drugs cause the Salem witch trials, did PTSD cause the Salem witch trials, ergot, ergot poisoning, history of women not being taken seriously by medical doctors, how to explain complicated mathematics to people without a math background, hysteria, Intoxication, Le Roy, lysergic acid, mass psychogenic illness, oppression, ordinary differential equations, pop psychology, post traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, Ronald Siegel, Salem witch trials, self-reinforcing behavior, stress, tarantism, the tipping point, tics, witchcraft
Frank Brown Cloud 