How to debate effectively within the online inferno

Most of us tend to engage in on-line discussions these days, and the rather common pattern you will often observe in that context is as follows: Somebody posts something, and a vigorous debate ensues within the comments, usually one it which people are speaking over each other’s heads and not really engaging at all. At the end, nobody … Read more

I agree with Pat Robertson … (A story about creationism)

Pat Robertson is perhaps seen by many as an incarnation of complete and utter lunacy and so you are more or less granted an iron-clad guarantee that anything and everything he ever says will be either weird, bizarre or utterly absurd. But hey … that thought turns out to be wrong, because he has in fact said … Read more

Anti-Gay rhetoric rollback – sometimes things really do get better

When several well-known individuals were asked to comment on specific issues today (on other topics I’ll not get into now), a response I heard several times was, “Well, I’m feeling very pessimistic about the current outlook for that” (or similar). Upon hearing that, and the associated justification for the opinion, I did think to myself, “actually, … Read more