Pages

doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2013.05.030

Despite public perception to the contrary,12,46,47 when all types of injuries are considered together, rural areas, not urban, bear a disproportionate amount of injury-related mortality risk in the United States 


---SPSmith

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Rationally Speaking: Democracy: the Egyptian conundrum

Contra what many of my secular humanist and atheist friends seem to think, it is not necessary for religious discourse to be sealed off from the public square. It is perfectly all right — indeed, inevitable — for politicians, say, to be guided in their thinking by their religious faith. What is not acceptable is the advancement of religious arguments when it comes to policy debates. Rather, the religious person needs to translate his objections (or positive proposals) into neutral language that can be debated on secular (in the sense above, not as in "secular humanism") terms.

---SPSmith

Victor J. Willi: Letter From Cairo


Once again it showed the Brotherhood's limited understanding of democracy, which is restricted to the mechanics of voting, elections and ballot boxes, while showing precious little appreciation for the values that make up the essence of a democracy, such as the rule of law, citizenship, equality and human rights

---SPSmith

Rationally Speaking: Theories of truth


"morality is a biological and cultural adaptation for increasing the benefits of cooperation in groups. No big surprise there."

---SPSmith

Paula Deen's Ugly Roots : The New Yorker


The controversy stems from a suit brought by a former employee, who claims, among other things, that Deen presided over a culture of racial and sexual impropriety, particularly at Uncle Bubba's Oyster House, the Savannah restaurant Deen set up for her brother, Bubba Hiers: pornography in the workplace, racial insults, nostalgia for the antebellum South. (In planning Bubba's wedding, the employee asserts in the complaint, Deen allegedly said, "I want a true southern plantation-style wedding.… Well what I would really like is a bunch of little n-----s to wear long-sleeve white shirts, black shorts and black bow ties, you know in the Shirley Temple days, they used to tap dance around.") In other words, we now have "Kitchen Confidential: Georgia Edition," with an inverted power structure and markedly un-Vassar politics.

---SPSmith