Your humanist community for scientific, skeptical, secular, and rational inquiry
by Christjahn Beck Hi, my name is Christjahn Beck and I’m an alcoholic. This very familiar greeting formula is the way that I introduced myself to rooms full of strangers for a short time in my life. I am also a recent transplant from the United States to Canada, the child of two ministers, and…
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By Diane Bruce Gender dysphoria, also known by the terms gender incongruence and transgenderism , is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its International Classification of Disease as “a marked and persistent incongruence between an individual’s experienced gender and the assigned sex.” In North America, the term gender dysphoria is more common, and is used in the latest version of the…
A traditional ammeter shows the intensity of an electric current with the angular position of a pointer on a dial; in other words as a ratio of two lengths. A mercury or ethanol thermometer shows ambient temperature by the length of the column of liquid. A balance shows two bodies have different weights via the…
By Allan Carter NB Power, the province of New Brunswick’s power utility, has been raising some eyebrows over a decision to invest in a technology with unproven claims that it will produce clean energy through a new hydrogen-energy process called Hydrogen 2.0. According to CBC News, NB Power has invested $13 million in licensing fees…
In each month’s Critical Links, I will pose a “funny problem”. Some will be paradoxes; some will be weird things to think through. Generally they will have a popular science and philosophy feel, though some are taken from undergraduate-level discussions as well. Feel free to write back with comments, questions, and any feedback you wish….