Archives for 2012/08

• Aug 17, 2012, 1:47 AM -04:00

  Church, State, and Culture

  Have you ever wondered why the separation of church and state is good idea?

  I'm assuming, of course, that most everyone in my immediate social circle actually thinks it's a good idea, though since I read about that fiasco involving the mayor of Saguenay, this assumption is perhaps on shakier ground than I would have liked.

  But, assuming that I'm correct, have you ever sat down and actually thought about why you think it's a good idea?

  I've noticed at least two schools of thought among my friends. Some of them are simply anti-religion. They look at, for example, the Catholic Church's history of child abuse, or the practice of sati, and they conclude that the separation of church and state is a good idea for much the same reason that the separation of murder and state is a good idea. Religion is bad and the less it has to do with public life, the better.

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• Aug 6, 2012, 1:37 AM -04:00

  What Free Speech Isn't

  I can never seem to blog in a timely manner. Lots of things in the world happen which I feel are deserving of comment, but my comments always seem to come a few months after the fact.

  Take that recent Daniel Tosh incident, for example. He makes a rape joke during one of his routines, gets heckled by a female member of the audience for it, and then proceeds to suggest (jokingly, I can only assume) that some males in the audience rape her in retaliation.

  So far, all we have here is a guy being a dick, which is nothing new. What makes this particular example of extreme dickery somewhat different, however, is that the woman in question complained to friend, who then proceeded to voice her displeasure via her Tumblr account. The whole thing snowballed from there, ultimately resulting in a public apology from Tosh.

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• Aug 5, 2012, 3:22 AM -04:00

  YAWT Lives!

  I started this blog 4 years ago, got a few entries in, and then promptly shut the whole thing down when it got overrun with spam. I have now resurrected it, using a new version of YAWT written in python which, for lack of a better name, I shall call YAWT 2.0.

  At some point, I hope to write an article on the features of YAWT 2.0, but for the moment I'm just happy this thing is working again. Somewhat working, anyway; comments are still deactivated until I figure out how to do it properly.

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• Aug 5, 2012, 2:18 AM -04:00

  Religion Versus Culture

  In the past, I've commented on France's ban of the niqab, noting in passing that the distinction some people make between religion and culture (emphasizing, for example, that the niqab is a Middle Eastern cultural tradition rather than a specific Islamic law), is irrelevant to question of whether a woman has the right to wear whatever the hell she wants in public

  At the time, I more or less glossed over what I thought the actual distinction was between culture and religion, so with that in mind I'd like to expand a little on these thoughts and make the further claim (not so very controversial, I think) that the line between religion and culture tends to be blurry at best and, at worst, damn near non-existent.

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