Category: Right and Wrong

  • Man Held at Gitmo…for owning a cheap Casio watch!

    After William Glaberson’s excellent wrapup of improper detentions in Gitmo, I took a review of the wiki articles on Gitmo prisoners.  (This is one of the distributed knowledge tasks for which Wikipedia does excel). I skimmed through several of the profiles of Gitmo prisoners, spending a little bit more time on Abdullah Kamel Abdullah Kamel…

  • How to Make a Movie Ridiculing a Person (and avoid getting sued)

    Last weekend I watched Borat, a film with funny moments, but has way too much crude humor. One thing that crossed my mind: why didn’t anyone win their lawsuits about Sascha Cohen for invasion of privacy? Of course, the Borat people made these people sign release statements. (Here is a copy of the actual release…

  • Arguments about Gay Marriage

    Colin Anderson at TheNonsequitur has a fascinating argument about the logic against gay marriage.

  • Dating Tips from the Pros (but not from me!)

    Sometimes I read sites with dating tips. I always find them fascinating.  One subtext of these male-centered sites is that it is ok for a man to hook up with strangers once in a while. It’s a necessary part of growing up (so the argument goes).   Once you lose your naiveté about romance and detach…

  • Please DIGG this post!

    If you are a DIGGing kind of person, I strongly encourage you to digg this story I wrote about Megan Crouch.  Thanks.

  • Ascension Parish DA Screws up a Child Abuse Case..and a 13 year old girl dies

    Last week, I made a post about the 13 year old girl named Megan Leigh Crouch who committed suicide. Here is the video that the mother made about her: Apparently Megan Crouch’s mother has made a website about the injustice surrounding Megan’s case. Apparently, Megan was abused sexually at an early age by her stepdad.…

  • The Perils (and Benefits) of Sad Knowledge

    Today has been one year since  Haley Paige’s death. (I wrote an obituary to her a few months ago–warning NSFW photo). Over time, the father has provided more details of her tragic ending (which I reprinted in full). The father has provided remarkable insights into the nature of the tragedy and has put up with…

  • How to Spot a Man who is an Asshole

    i hesitated about linking to this article titled "16 Commandments of Poon", but I think the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. (Btw, don’t bother reading the comments).  Occasionally I stumble upon pages about how alpha males should behave. I don’t know how seriously to take  well-written  nonsense like this. Perhaps it was written ironically. To my…

  • Horray for George W. Bush! (and to hell with poor sick people)

    A sad shocking story.  (Discussion here and tastefully done CNN video here). An indigent  patient is checked into the publicly-financed psychiatric ward in New York.  She lay dead on the waiting room floor for 48 minutes before a staff member notices what happened. She had been convulsing on the floor for 30 minutes unnoticed. (the…

  • Non Sequitur (Again)

    Have you ever loved a blog to death and then completely forgotten about it? Then, months (or even years) later, you pick it up again and say to yourself, “Dumbass, why did you ever stop reading this blog?” I feel that way with Non Sequitur, a blog by two  philosophy profs (mainly John Casey)  about…

  • Flattery and Validation: Professors who Seduce

    William Deresiewicz notices that mass media tends to stereotype  professors as lechers (especially those in the humanities) Why is that? In the popular imagination, humanities professors don’t have anything to be ambitious about. No one really knows what they do, and to the extent that people do know, they don’t think it’s worth doing —…

  • Which charities to support? (Give your recommendations).

    Very soon I’m going to give $500 to various charities. It’s something I have wanted to do for some time. Last year I gave nothing to charity, and in 2006 I gave almost nothing.  (Probably after this year I’ll give a more regular sum). Over the last few months I’ve contributed $25 each to John…

  • RIP, Maryam Irene Haley (Haley Paige, Miriam Haley)

    This post is not going to be work-safe, because it is about the death (and possibly the murder) of  a woman who starred in porn movies.  The woman’s stage name was Haley Paige, but her real name was Miriam Haley (or Maryam Haley).

  • God and Amputees

    I don’t claim to be an atheist, but I found this logical dissection of God from the site Why Does God Heal Amputees? to be razor sharp: Assume that God is imaginary. The beauty of this explanation is that it fits the facts perfectly. In the case of amputees, it is a valid way to…

  • Human Rights….Again

    New Human Rights Report on US military abuses. Tom Tomorrow covers something even more horrifying: nowthatsfuckedup.com No doubt this is reprehensible and says a lot of bad things about the American military. I wanted to mention that the perpetrator of this website doesn’t sound like a jingoist but an opportunist who is merely milking soldier…

  • One More Liberal Out!

    Add one more to the list. While we’re talking about fearless Catholics, here’s Mario Cuomo’s commencement address to Notre Dame on public morality and religious belief. Unfortunately, I could not locate his far more important address to American bishops a few years later.