What is Speciesism?

This is an ethical dilemma similar to the famous “trolley problem” featured in the television show The Good Place. Like other ethical thought experiments, it is designed to help us analyze the underpinnings of ethical ideas.

Here, I want to criticize the idea of Speciesism, which consists in “treating members of one species as morally more important than members of other species in the context of their similar interests.” […] “Notable proponents of the concept include Peter Singer, Oscar Horta, Steven M. Wise, Gary L. Francione and Ingrid Newkirk” (Wikipedia).

Although the accusation of speciesism is more often held against…

Does a spanking produce pain or just sensation?

Some people say that they are into spanking, but not into pain. Because, you know, if they were into pain that would mean that they are (gasp) masochists! So they say that they like gentle spankings that are just “sensation”, not pain.

What does neuroscience have to say about that?

Pain is not just a strong tactile sensation. Believe or not, this was strongly debated for some time among pain scientists. Nowadays, it is clear that pain and tactile sensations are carried by different neurons, from the body all the way into the brain.

In just a few days, on February 23, it will be the 40th anniversary of a coup (known in Spain as the 23-F) that tried to reverse Spain’s transition to democracy and bring the country back to a Fascist dictatorship. Given the ongoing debate about whether the January 6th assault on the Capitol was a coup, it is interesting to reflect on what happened in Spain that day.

A chess game that I never got to finish

The entire government, the Senate, and the Parliament was taken hostage. The country was effectively decapitated.

On the evening of February 23, 1981, I was playing chess in the army barracks near…

First shot

As I parked in Lot 8 at UCLA, I was a bit of a nervous wreck. That’s unusual, I am normally a very calm person. However, getting the vaccine so early was an unexpected perk from UCLA and I didn’t want to miss it for anything. So I drove there early to make sure everything would work fine.

When I try to open the Parkmobile app, my iPhone went to download it from the cloud. Weird, I thought I had downloaded it just before I left home. When it finished downloading, I clicked on it again. It started downloading one…

BDSM stands for Bondage, Dominance-Submission, and Sado-Masochism, which are alternative sexual practices also called kink. Bondage consists in tying people up in exposed or provocative positions. Dominance-submission occurs when one partner becomes subservient to the other in a sexual or romantic way. Sadomasochism means using pain and humiliation as a source of pleasure and joy. There is considerable overlap between these three practices. Many people use them all to a certain degree, but there are also people who practice just one of them.

One of the most fascinating aspects of BDSM is its ability to induce altered states of consciousness…

The fast development of several vaccines against COVID-19 is one of the greatest successes of science. I have no doubts that the vaccines being distributed in the USA, the Pfizer-BioNTech and the Moderna vaccines, are efficacious and safe. That is not what this article is about.

Precisely because the vaccines are efficacious and safe, being vaccinated is a huge privilege. It’s like being in the sinking Titanic and being offered a spot in one of the lifeboats. A life or death question. Without the vaccine and with the ongoing increase in the infected population, you may eventually get COVID-19. …

My father just died

My father died last night in Spain, thousands of miles away from me. Because of the travel restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic, I had made up my mind that I would never see him again. I wrote most of this article several days ago, so it was never intended as an obituary.

I don’t feel sorry for him. He was 92. I am the oldest of his 9 children. He was president of one university and founded the largest university in Spain. He was elected to the Spanish Parliament. …

A cautionary tale way more scary than it should be

In the winter of 2019, I drove up to the ski resort of Mammoth, in the California Sierra Nevada, with my polyamorous lover Nancy. I had recently introduced her to BDSM and she was really looking forward to spending the long winter evenings being spanked, tied up and fucked senselessly. She was well into her sixties and had been widowed for a few years. After expending some time grieving her husband, who she loved dearly, she had decided to explore all the sexual things that she couldn’t do with him. …