This serves as a kind of followup to this post where I described an experiment I did with a group of students. I recently did a similar version of this experiment but with some modifications based on suggestions I received… Read More ›
science
Drugs, War, and Nazi Germany
Last night I finished reading Norman Ohler’s fascinating and best-selling Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich (2017, translated by Shaun Whiteside). Ohler describes the relationships between Adolf Hitler and drugs, Nazi soldiers and drugs, and German society and drugs. In addition,… Read More ›
Mark Zuckerberg, Rhetoric, and the “Huge Healthy Glacier”
Rhetoric always matters. Just days after scientists (science is real!) announced that a trillion ton glacier broke off of Antarctica, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg made this calculated post: From a perspective of intertextuality, it’s only real purpose can be to falsely… Read More ›
Biological Determinism and the Trans Debates: Gender, Sex, Race, and Ability
People increasingly attempt to use biological determinism (or essentialism) to lock people into identities, identities that are actually assigned and determined by cultural mores. While people who are transgender or transexual (often abbreviated as just trans) are increasingly accepted by… Read More ›
Confirmation Bias, Privilege, and Prayer (or, How Prayer and Discrimination Can Be Connected)
Recently, I read a powerful essay where the author, a Person of Color, describes their childhood and explains that “God always answered the prayers of White children but never answered our prayers.” This statement has been on my mind off and on since… Read More ›
In Defense of Bill Nye The Science Guy
Last week one of my students at the University of Houston emailed me to recommend an episode of Bill Nye’s new show Bill Nye Saves the World. This student said he watched an episode on the gender and sex spectrum similar to… Read More ›
Key Facts About Trans People
Cis (i.e., cisgender) refers to people who identify with their assigned sex and gender at birth. If you’re not trans, you are usually cis and have cis privilege. A trans man, for example, is usually best seen as someone who was… Read More ›
