Nirmukta’s Bangalore chapter, the Bengaluru Freethinkers, participated in this year’s Bangalore Pride Walk on Sunday, 24th November. The Pride Walk was the culmination of the three week-long Karnataka Queer Habba, which included events like protests against the Hassan arrests, a transgender day of remembrance, film screenings, theatre performances, a marathon and a diversity fair. This was the sixth pride march in the city, and saw attendees not just from Karnataka but other states as well – this news report puts [...]

The aim of this post is to explain deductive reasoning in an easy to understand manner, by using the example of the popular board game, Cluedo. It touches upon inductive reasoning also. It assumes some familiarity with the concept of validity of an argument. The primer How to Argue Online offers a quick explanation of this. Some good further reading for this is Coursera’s enormously popular course Think Again: How to Reason and Argue, and the book Understanding Arguments: An [...]

Twenty-three people showed up for our May 2013 meet, held on the Cubbon Park grass outside the State Central Library. Twenty three (and four of them were bang on time)! On the agenda for the day were the Bangladeshi atheists, and parody religions. We did talk about that, but it became hard to manage in such a large group and discussion veered into other atheist subjects, like strategies for activism, experiences of coming out, and the upcoming Hug an Atheist [...]

If you spend any amount of time online, chances are you have been involved in online debates and arguments. Sometimes these things go well, but more often than not it’s a “comment trail war” where multiple participants say all kinds of things and no one is clear what the other person is saying. A hundred-plus comments and several hours later, you’re sitting at your computer dazed and angry, wondering – what’s happening? How did I get here? What time is [...]

The March 2013 meetup of the Nirmukta Bengaluru Freethinkers was held at the Coffee Day Lounge on M.G. Road on a hot Saturday morning. There were eight of us present, including two newcomers. We also had a surprise attendee from the Chennai Freethinkers group, who was in the city for the day. The agenda for the meet consisted of a structured discussion on a particular topic, followed by free discussion. The specific topic for the day was the documentary “Prostitutes [...]

A photo-essay examining the lack of accessibility for people with disabilities in shops and buildings in Bangalore.

CAM proponents need to realise something – vices like greed, corruption and incompetence exist in every human endeavour, not just medical science. Scientists are finding problems with their work, and finding ways to fix them – this is what people mean when they talk about the “self-correcting” nature of the scientific method. Dr. B.M. Hegde is noticeably not doing this, despite his protestations to the contrary. Instead, his articles undermine science and sow seeds of fear in people’s minds, and they offer as a replacement remedies that are orders of magnitude less scientific and less proven.

Summary: This article examines a form of victim blaming, where the “spotlight” of discussion and the “burden of change” are placed on the victim instead of the perpetrator. Doing this has the subtle effect of altering discourse to be about the victim – what they did in the lead-up to the crime, their past history, how they could have avoided the crime, and so on – when it should in fact be about the perpetrator. Introduction I’ve written about the [...]

Privilege is an unearned advantage – an advantage that one has due to the circumstances of one’s birth, or by being a member of a certain social category.