opinion

On Love

January 18, 2010

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of research about love, relationships, marriage, and divorce. I’m still mystified  – and so are the experts. But new technology (fMRI) allows us to look inside the brain in new ways, so perhaps we are finally on the road to explaining the great “mystery of love” which has puzzled [...]

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Who’s a Guy?

July 30, 2009

One session I (and many others) attended at the Community Leadership Summit was on women in technology/communities. Frankly, I lost patience very quickly. As I said then, we all have horror stories; I’m more interested in discussing fixes. (Which, with Sara Ford to get the ball rolling, we did.) One meme that came up repeatedly [...]

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SxSWi: Is Privacy Dead, or Just Very Confused?

May 9, 2009

I attended this session because : danah boyd (one of my heroes) and Judith Donath of MIT Media Lab and Harvard’s Berkman Center (whom I happen to know personally) were speaking. Also on the panel (and interesting in their own right): Siva Vaidyanathan (author of the forthcoming “The Googleization of Everything”), who said (among other [...]

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“It takes a while…”

November 12, 2008

Beh, truth be told – not that long.

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Why I’m Volunteering for Obama

October 18, 2008

Today I asked campaign volunteers in Westminster, Colorado, why they are dedicating so much time to getting Barack Obama elected. Here are their answers.

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The Streets of Colorado

October 17, 2008

Last Sunday, a cold, dreary fall day in this part of Colorado, I went out canvassing to find out who’s going to vote for Obama. I arrived at the local HQ (a storefront in a strip mall near a Costco) around noon. A guy explained to me at length what I was supposed to do, [...]

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Americans’ Phobia of Socialized Medicine

October 11, 2008

I am baffled by the people I encounter in this country who think that “socialized medicine” is evil. I’m not sure how they arrive at this conclusion. It seems that, for some, anything they can label “socialist” is automatically frightening. But we have state-run fire and police departments and military (among many other things), and [...]

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On the Phone for Obama

October 10, 2008

I spent an instructive couple of hours this evening making phone calls on behalf of the Obama campaign. Yes, I am one of those annoying people who interrupts your dinner to ask who you’ll be voting for. (I’m in Colorado, one of the few states where the answer actually matters.) I’ve had a fear of [...]

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Conversation with My Daughter

August 28, 2008
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Popular: Barack and Hillary

July 17, 2008

My first foray into political satire. What do you think? download for iPod

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The Humanist Symposium

January 28, 2008

To my regular readers: Not too long ago, I (and thousands of others) stumbled across an article titled Atheists and Anger, an articulate, well-thought-out piece which I highly recommend. It had the welcome side effect of introducing me to the wonderful writing of Greta Christina. (Whose themes range far beyond atheism and are not for [...]

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The Lawsuit Society

October 29, 2007

Americans seem to have a very legalistic approach to life – the polar opposite of Italians’ very relaxed attitudes towards the actual law, let alone life in general. Boarding the CalTrain to go back to San Francisco, I had no idea where to put my big suitcase. On the way down I had put it [...]

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Religious Belief vs. Health Care – Tolerating the Intolerable in Italy

October 10, 2007

Britain’s Telegraph carries an opinion piece titled If Muslim doctors are intolerant, let them go, according to which a few young Muslim medical trainees have been allowed to refuse to see female bodies or to treat alcohol-related problems, on religious grounds. Sainsbury’s, a UK grocery chain, allows its checkout staff to refuse to scan alcohol [...]

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Raising a Non-Believer

October 3, 2007

A reader has just written to me: “One was on an essay about “Religion as a Cause of Strife in the World” – you can bet she went to town on that!” this is a comment you wrote on Ross’ India Diary and i have always wanted to ask you why you believe that Ross [...]

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My Potter Predictions

June 25, 2007

^ Hari Potter aur Paras Patthar – Harry Potter in Hindi Like most of the reading world, I await with bated breath the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final Harry Potter book. In a moment of pure self-indulgence during my last US trip, I bought Mugglenet.Com’s What Will Happen [...]

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Shut Up or Go Home – No Culture Likes a Kibitzer

April 17, 2007

I was recently interviewed for an article about third-culture kids, to be published in the Christian Science Monitor. In an hour’s taped phone conversation, Erik Olsen asked many questions, including: “Being an outsider in all cultures, how does that make you feel?” I thought for a moment, and said: “Superior.” No doubt that statement will [...]

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The God Delusion

March 17, 2007

Richard Dawkins is laughing up his sleeve. I wasn’t in any hurry to buy this book. I had already read and admired every other book of Dawkins’, and had read enough in the press to have a good idea of what this book contained, and to know that I would agree with it, as I [...]

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Immigration and Identity in Europe

January 28, 2007

(originally published in 2002) The assassination of Pim Fortuyn, a Dutch politician, provides food for thought. Fortuyn was “a politician who rejected multiculturalism, called for an end to immigration and excoriated Islam as a ‘backward culture’ for its intolerance of homosexuals, attitude to women and more” and “argue[d] fiercely that immigrants should integrate more wholeheartedly [...]

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Coming Out

January 5, 2007

Dec 27, 2006 – revised and expanded Jan 12, 2008 I grew up in a household without homophobia: one of my dad’s childhood friends was gay (and had known he was since age seven), a fact which never bothered Dad, who had other gay and lesbian friends in high school and college. No one ever [...]

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Oh, Lord, It’s Hard to Be Atheist

October 18, 2006

I have just read Daniel Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. It’s a great book. Unfortunately, I doubt that it will be read by the people who really need it, though the author tries very hard to preach to them, rather than to the choir of convinced unbelievers such as myself. [...]

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