Animals

• Need to have your dog walked but don’t have time?  There’s an app for that.

Books

• How to publish a philosophy book.

Economics

• Most American poor aren’t unemployed, but have low-paying jobs.

Euthanasia

• A young Belgian 24-year old woman has been depressed all of her life and has requested to be euthanized.  She was granted the right to die.

Guns

• An excellent, cogent essay on why Dylan Roof’s attack was racist.

Incarceration

• President Obama has tackled the health care system and gay marriage.  He now says he will concentrate on reforming the criminal system.  To start that off, he will visit the El Rene federal prison in Oklahoma.  Obama will be the first sitting president to visit a federal prison.

Linguistics

• Could the word “fuck” be inflated to the point where it loses its obscenity, which then means that racial or sexist words could replace the word “fuck”?

Marriage

• If Obergefell v. Hodges does open the door for plural marriage, it won’t be a bad thing.

Philosophy

• If an idea is too dangerous to consider, we shouldn’t discuss it nor take it seriously.
  • David Benatar responds.

Pornography

• How to be an anti-porn campaigner.  (Somewhat NSFW)

Race

• Really good essay on the difference between individual racism and structural racism.  “I, Racist.”  This best sums it up:To my aunt, the suggestion that “people in The North are racist” is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person says “Racism still exists. It is real,” and a white person argues “You’re wrong, I’m not racist at all. I don’t even see any racism.” My aunt’s immediate response is not “that is wrong, we should do better.” No, her response is self-protection: “That’s not my fault, I didn’t do anything. You are wrong.”

Relationships

• Five tips for relationship happiness from existential philosophers.
• Stephen Macedo makes a very weak case for monogamy.  Basically, it comes down to, “it was patriarchal in the past, so we should not try it now.”  He even acknowledges that it doesn’t mean that it can’t be reformed.  True, he admits, but then again, we don’t have empirical evidence that it could work now.  So in other words, let’s use evidence of the past that it doesn’t work.  When that doesn’t work, claim that we don’t have evidence for it to work now.
• Good advice on what to do if you need to stay connected with an ex.

Religion

• Many black churches in the American South have been burned in late June.  Many Muslim groups have raised $52,000 dollars to have those churches repaired.

Sexuality

• Colorado did an experiment that lowered teenage pregnancy and abortions by 40%.  What did they do?  They offered free birth control.  “If we want to reduce poverty, one of the simplest, fastest and cheapest things we could do would be to make sure that as few people as possible become parents before they actually want to”…
• How does sex before marriage make the sex impure, but sex after marriage make it pure?  There doesn’t seem to be any change.