[Occam's Razor Rash]

  Do you find it offensive that the American government put a Judeo-Christian symbol outside of its embassy? Doesn’t that violate the first amendment? Matthew Bates (on Quora) “But wait,” your’e thinking, “that’s not a Judeo-Christian symbol. It means something else.” The rainbow has long been a sign of God’s covenant with humanity, specifically to never flood the Earth again. At least, it’s been a symbol of that to people who believe in the God of the Bible. The fact that a different group came along and attached a different meaning to the rainbow doesn’t matter. The meaning of a flag, or any other symbol, comes from the person who put the symbol there in the first place.  Just because someone may see that rainbow flag and assume that it’s a symbol of God’s promise to Noah doesn’t mean that the person putting that flag up meant for it to mean that. So it is with the Confederate battle flag. If someone sees it and thinks it’s a symbol of racism, that’s their prerogative. But p...

  The Atlantic slave trade started a lot earlier than you think. The Portuguese began trafficking African captives in the 1440s. In England, the Wars of the Roses had yet to begin. It wasn’t initially a transatlantic trade. In the early days, enslaved Africans were brought to Portugal or to Atlantic islands like Madeira to work in agriculture. The USA was not a significant destination for slave ships. When we picture slavery we habitually draw upon images of the American South. In fact, less than five per cent of the victims of transatlantic slavery were landed on the coast of the present-day United States. Most enslaved Africans were carried to the Caribbean (45 per cent) or to Brazil (45 per cent). The ‘triangular trade’ wasn’t always triangular. We commonly think of the Atlantic slave trade as a three-leg affair. Slavers sailed from European ports carrying manufactured goods. Slavers traded those goods for captives on the African coast. Slavers then sailed to the New World, sold...

  Nev Anderson  ·  Sat Name one perfect thing on Earth. Fully 999 of every 1,000 species ever to have existed, are now extinct. Does THAT sound “perfect”? Multiple times between 75 and 90% of all life on Earth was killed off in a major extinction event. Does THAT sound “perfect”? 99% of the livable space on Earth is water volume. Of all this water, less than 3% is fresh, drinkable. Of this 3%, less than 1% is accessible to humans. We can survive only a few days without fresh water. Contaminated water is common, and can kill. Does THAT sound “perfect”? Of Earth’s land area, only 17% is habitable to humans, and even that 17% is actively hostile. The weather is capricious and natural weather events can kill us in short order, humans are unable to survive exposure to extremes of temperature. A slow drawn out death due to persistence of extreme conditions causes many fatalities. Does THAT sound “perfect”? Many landforms present potentially fatal hazards, but must be negotiated...

  David Minger BA, MA Linguistics, PhD Education, love science Updated 1y If Earth is round, why are there so many conspiracy theories about flat Earth? Originally Answered: If the Earth is round, why are there so many conspiracy theories about flat Earth? I very much like the answer from  Greg Scott . I think that hits the nail on the head for many flat Earth believers. For others, the problem may be an inability to visualize the very large scale of the universe and how a big-enough spherical body is going to of course look and feel “flat” at the relatively small local scale. To that I would add a failure of critical thinking and analytical reasoning. The arguments in favor of a flat Earth are pitifully flawed and the lack of thinking things through is profound. A couple examples: Flat Earth proponents have the amusing belief that an aircraft would have to continually keep pointing its nose down to avoid flying off into space — yet they fail to see that in the disk-...