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I’d be happy to make a bet with real money that Marx was just plain wrong about immiseration, and will continue to be proved wrong.

Most atheist writers in America have encountered the phenomenon of “fatwa envy“, where Christian apologists sneer that we wouldn’t dare criticize Islam in the same way we criticize Christianity. (This […]

This essay was previously published on AlterNet. The death of Christopher Hitchens in December sparked an outpouring of tributes. Most of them praised his best qualities: his ferocious courage, his […]

Earlier this week, Penn Jillette posted a link to this essay by Mallorie Nasrallah on his Twitter account, concerning her experience as a woman in the skeptical community. To sum […]

Just when you think a contemporary art megastar such as Damien Hirst has done his worst to make a mockery of the modern art world, he finds a new weapon […]

Who owns the Twitter followers you accumulate while working for an employer? This is the question under consideration in new lawsuit filed by Phonedog.com against former employee Noah Kravitz. Whether […]

In the car, I listen to country music. Country has an ideology. Not to say country has a position on abortion, exactly. But country music, taken as a whole, has […]

After being created as a text-only destination nearly twenty years ago, the Web has increasingly become a visual destination, where images, photos and videos have replaced text as the new […]

After our last go-round, Peter Hitchens has posted a further reply. I encourage you to read it in full before reading my response, which follows below: Once again, Peter Hitchens […]

News that Helen Frankenthalerdied yesterday at the age of 83 after a long illness is making a lot of people recall just how important a figure the self-described “saddle-shoed girl […]

Like many urban rivers, the South Platte in Denver is not always easy to get to. City officials have done a fair job of creating walking and biking paths along […]

Jay Cost, one of our best politcal bloggers, told us at Berry College a few weeks ago that what’s wrong with the current system used by our political parties to […]

One of the traditions of my old site was, at the end of each year, to choose a selection of my favorite posts from throughout the year and highlight them […]

Today, I would like to share some thoughts on social media, particularly about Facebook with you.  I started using Facebook in late 2007 but did not get much out of […]

The fascinating billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel (a Facebook guy, the PayPal guy etc.) seems to be carrying the day against the educational establishment in answering this question negatively. He’s teamed up […]

Oh how I wish David Foster Wallace had been my English professor. The University of Texas has recently posted the syllabus from the English 102 class he taught at Pomona […]

“Why do men marry mean girls?” Rebecca asks me. She’s almost in tears, and my heart aches for her. Rebecca’s a beautiful, talented single New Yorker in her mid-30s who, […]

My previous post, “The Blinding Fog of Religious Moderation“, drew some criticism from people who felt that I was unjustly lumping moderate believers together with fundamentalists. So, in this post, […]

If there was a sanity test for leaders who wanted their own nuclear weapons, would these guys pass?

While the Obama Administration was busy foiling yet another terror plot yesterday, the GOP presidential candidates at the debate sponsored by Bloomberg TV and the Washington Post looked like they […]

            That Herman Cain allegedly had a long term extramarital relationship, and deluded himself into believing he could keep that secret while running for President, raises once again that ever-puzzling […]

Several years ago I was chatting on an online dating site with a man who claimed to have a graduate degree. When I asked him what his degree was he […]

Are today’s climate change deniers waging a war on science? A new book by James Lawrence Powell spills the dirt on the new war on science.

I got this e-mail from a reader, which I was asked to pass along in the hope of getting some advice: I was raised in an Evangelical household and most […]

So I saw MONEYBALL.  It’s a fine movie.  Brad Pitt has exceeded Robert Redford in his capacity to convey brooding and ironic depth—while adding envy, resentment, and parental love.  Jonah […]

So far we’ve concluded, following Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, that most of what we call higher education is really technical education.  It’s the acquisition of indispensable skills for […]

To be fair, Dan Savage wasn’t talking to me. I was just listening in on this fight he’s having with some people he calls the “monogamusts.” I think a monogamust […]

When I tape a radio segment for WEAA’s AFRO/FIRST EDITION with Sean Yoes, I usually gather more information than we have time to cover. Yesterday was no exception, when I […]

What should scare us the most is the danger that arises when we get risk wrong, when we’re more afraid than the evidence says we need to be, or not as afraid as the evidence says we ought to be.

Love is an epiphany. Maybe that’s the sweetest romantic dream of all. By the big bang theory of mate selection, our soul mate is out there somewhere, and they’re going […]