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Lately we've seem to hit critical mass on the transgender issue. As usual, the usual factions have aligned themselves with the usual sides, and not looked back. Unfortunately, even among people who, after a fashion, support transgender individuals, there are a number of problems. In the long and proud tradition of white straight cis men explaining things about persecuted minorities, I am here today to clear up a few things about those transgender folk we keep hearing so much about lately. ...

Columbus was a product of his times... ...

"Cultural appropriation" is a controversial topic^{[Citation needed]}. It's one of those topics that cause many people to roll their eyes, and many others (on both sides) to lose their goddamned minds. But, there are (at least) two kinds of cultural appropriation: a silly one and a useful one. ...

A few weeks ago I spoke with a mom at a playground. She mentioned that our library does a toddler storytime on Mondays. So the next Monday, when I checked the library schedule and saw nothing about it, I was confused. A quick call confirmed that they weren't doing it this week, or all summer: school is out, so most of the events are geared towards older kids now. ...

Recently I had a revelation. My wife was doing a pharmacy internship for a month at a downtown hospital. Because it's downtown, parking is tight, so most of the hospital staff is required to park at a remote parking garage and take a 20 minute shuttle ride to the hospital proper (I assume surgeons and high-ranking doctors are exempt from riding with the commoners). However, my wife gets terrible motion sickness if she's not the one driving. Not "I feel yucky", but nausea so severe it induces a panic attack and reduces her to a puddle on the floor, shaking and shivering for hours. ...

I stumbled across the list Top 10 Most Common Atheist Arguments, and Why They Fail and thought "I've not written about atheism for a while! Why not?!" ...

I recently realized that I had been doing a science experiment! Ok, I haven't recorded any data, and there are no controls, but work with me here. The experiment is on people's expectations of gender essentialism. What's gender essentialism? Gender essentialism is the belief that certain behavioral traits are gender-specific: Men like sports, steak, beer, and fighting. Women like shopping, salads, wine, and gossip. Men are aggressive, women are passive. Etc. ...

I have a little story. Once upon a time, I quit my job so my wife could go to pharmacy school and I could be at home with my daughter. We'd live off our ample savings, but quitting my job meant losing our insurance, and we went without for several years. Then I began to get nervous, and found a cheap "disaster plan": it had a highish deductible, but everything after that was covered at 100%, so if I had a heart attack, go cancer, or got hit by a car, we wouldn't have to fork over every penny we had. The plan was about $130 a month for me and my daughter. (My wife was covered through school at about $100 a month.) We rarely went to the doctor/hospital, so it didn't matter too much. ...

My little family had a bit of a bummer of a March this year. ...