*spoilers obviously* Films, books, comics and so on are important topics to look at critically. You use the evidence presented in the medium to see whether the action depicted stands up against the light the plot provides: if it does not, it's inconsistent and probably bad. You, as an audience ...

Jonah Lehrer’s new post at The New Yorker details some worrying research on cognition and thinking through biases, indicating that “intelligence seems to make [such] things worse.” This is because, as Richard West and colleagues concluded in their study, “people who were aware of their own biases ...

When we think of those opposed to homosexuality – which still sounds weird to me, like opposing left-handed people* – or stem-cell research or euthanasia, we tend conclude they’re justifying themselves because of religion. But, as with almost anything underpinned by religion, the pendulum swings ...

Something is wrong in the world when a real organisation is undermined by fictional comics characters with superpowers. A group inaccurately called One Million Moms or OMM (their membership is only about 50,000 I think) is attempting to take on the two giants of the comic book world, DC and ...

Many things are offensive, if not very offensive, but there are many that we allow for the sake of individual liberty’s continuation in Western society. Thus, a joke, a cartoon, a certain book, or painting might personally offend us, but that is not sufficient cause to warrant an arrest or ...

One benefit of writing on subjects most – including myself – find distasteful is the amount of opposition you regularly and consistently acquire. I want to argue about why I find this essential for reasoning, in keeping with a previous post on why we must not silence (almost any) other viewpoint. I ...

In Voltaire's book Zadig, Or Fate, the titular character says that time “consigns to oblivion whatever is unworthy of being transmitted to posterity, and it immortalises such actions as are truly great.” In Midnight's Children, time is central as the title itself indicates. Salman Rushdie describes ...

South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, was recently portrayed with his penis hanging out, by the very talented satirical artist Brett Murray. The piece, entitled The Spear , features President Zuma standing proudly, reminiscent of the famous Victor Ivanov poster Lenin Lived, Lenin is Alive, Lenin ...

On this blog, I often write about so-called controversial topics, which test people’s moral convictions: If you agree about abortion, you should agree about infanticide; there are no good reasons to have children; there’s nothing wrong with consensual incest or necrophilia; and so on. Recently ...

One consistent theme I’ve found of investigating outrage is how often those who are outraged demand that legality align itself to their morality. Consider for example New York State’s non-criminal status of child pornography. In The Atlantic Wire’s mildly outraged article, Adam Martin writes ...

The United States of America murdered an innocent man. But this is not the main reason we should be against capital punishment. Carlos DeLuna was put to death in 1989 for a murder in Corpus Christi, Texas. The victim, Wanda Lopez, was stabbed once through her left breast with a lock-blade buck ...

As we’ve noted, there are very few and very restricted reasons to prevent a rational person from harming herself. After all, we’ve come to accept adults drinking, smoking, and mountain-climbing and do nothing politically to prevent such actions completely (each, though individually allowed, come ...

If we have access to the same facts and evidence, we ought to reach the same conclusions about any topic. What does it mean when we don’t? We’ve all encountered situations where we believe we are right and someone else wrong. Indeed, by our very nature, we hold beliefs that we think are true ...

A South African model, Jessica Leandra, took to Twitter recently, expressing her anger at being accosted by a man in a store. She said: “Just, well took on a an arrogant and disrespectful kaffir inside [the store]. Should have punched him, should have [sic].” Many people are upset by her use of the ...

That we still need to be making arguments for why gays should not be executed, denied marriages, or treated as lesser humans, would have, in the past, worried me. However, as with all attempts to dictate how rational, competent adults should conduct themselves according to some arbitrary ...