Jim

Yeah. Interestingly, Americans often seem so spoilt by the level of freedom of speech that they enjoy (which these days is about as free as any place in the world has ever been) that some think that freedom of the government telling you what to say (or being discriminated against by what you say) is equivalent to freedom to not pay a price for…[Read more]

Europeans/Canadians/Aussies/NZers/Japanese have a notably different approach to freedom of Speech than America does. Europe has never ever had “free speech” like in the US and there isn’t even much of a movement asking for it.  In the United States the protection of individual speech is so extreme that someone can be nasty…almost to the point…[Read more]

“Diversity is code for white genocide.”

This will be a long one…but it cannot be said in a short text. I think the word privilege is used way too much (another case of overusing a word until it loses its meaning and impact). Especially when it comes to checking people’s privilege, dismissing any criticism of the the marginalised or world eve…[Read more]

As well…a Tim Hortons opened up in Madrid…and has turned out extremely popular! Canadian food…que es eso? Now they all think Canadians diet consists of sandwiches, vegetable soup and donuts.

Actually Jade…appart from Nanaimo bars…my favourite Canadian sweet/dessert are Turtles. I’d kill to have one!!!

i was in belgium for 5 years and came to try the major chocolate houses. i looked online to see which you can order cheaply in America for those living there. I checked them all on amazon and a few luxury supermarkets…but most of them like Galler, Godiva and Leonidas are insanely expensive. Luckily…my favourite…Neuhaus…is really…[Read more]

Daniel W. wrote:Also, in Imperial China, gay men were called “rabbits”.  Again, it’s a hate crime to bite off their ears and tails.

unless you are a gay man in china…in which case biting the ear off a choloclate rabbit…is empowering!

If you took a 10×10 chess board and randomly decided which squares were black and white (you can have more of one color than another if you want) … the amount of possible chessboards you could create is so large … we cannot possibly comprehend the enormity of that number. From our limited human experience … the number might as well be…[Read more]

@daughter

An atheist Spain has a remarkably different life than those in conservative religious America. To be honest, people of my generation or younger are often embarassed to admit they believe in God and go to church. The religious are the minority, the practicing religious is a very small group and those who are actively religious are tiny…[Read more]

re:daughter of karl

You are not a rarity. The majority of atheists hold some kind of spiritual or hocus pocus beliefs (the majority of atheists come from Eastern Asia (China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam). And despite years of secularism or even the chinese cultural revolution…belief in ancestor spirits and other kinds of fluff-talk is very real.…[Read more]

Steve wrote:
Could a ghost be a pattern of energy that does not dissipate fully after the body that held it together ceases to live? Could reincarnation be a pattern of energy that merges with a newer body?

No. There is not even the slightest evidence which demostrates that people have an essence, an immaterial being separate from our physical…[Read more]

There most certainly is a level of evidence that skeptics would accept. Ghosts appearing in public, immune to any attempt to explain them (trickery with light and smoke or holographic technology or some other deception), doing things that are impossible to explain. Behaving in the same predictable way in many different places…all recorded…[Read more]