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Why is a suicide by older people "tragic" and helping somebody (eg., older person) to die NOT a tragedy? There are not a lot of statistics on the matt...
August 04, 2019 at 18:58
Maybe. Allow me to wade into deeper water that is even farther over my head. Whether a discrete event is determinative or irrelevant would depend on w...
August 04, 2019 at 03:41
Oh, dear. I though it was a Greek custard wrapped up in philo dough, baked, and served with strong coffee. No wonder so much of this site doesn't make...
August 04, 2019 at 00:07
I don't know what @"FDrake" is up to here. One should really not rain on other people's parades unnecessarily, spoiling the floats, filling the tubas ...
August 03, 2019 at 19:10
My apologies. One should really not rain on other people's parades unnecessarily, spoiling the floats, filling the tubas with water, getting the horse...
August 03, 2019 at 18:49
I think we all know, Mr. Wallows, WHICH animal you will be reincarnated as. So, why stop with Buddhism? Why not try a whole smorgasbord of ancient and...
August 03, 2019 at 16:38
@"FDrake" & @"BrianW" seem to have been affected by the same energy spike bouncing around the solar system. Hopefully they will recover soon.
August 03, 2019 at 15:55
I don't like the way this article was constructed. I don't own a gun but I don't object to other people owning guns, but if 1/3 of the population owns...
August 03, 2019 at 02:58
Oh, I wasn't offended. And. I agree that more education tends to equal less likelihood of pro-gun right views. I think that one of the background proc...
August 03, 2019 at 02:04
Well, I don't think you have to worry about gun confiscation or a massive gun buy-back. Too expensive, too much effort, takes too long, etc. You know,...
August 02, 2019 at 05:45
Hold, on there. I grew up in a rural community (and got the hell out asap) and am related to a number of people who also grew up in that sort of place...
August 02, 2019 at 00:39
I have not heard whether sardines are individually unique, but researchers have found that honey bees can differ slightly. Some individual bees that f...
August 01, 2019 at 17:04
More positively, the Amish are preserving a "green" way of life we might need to emulate, one of these days. They don't consume excessively; the succe...
August 01, 2019 at 02:57
The NRA hasn't always been powerful. At some point, less than 70 years ago, they decided to pursue a strong political program to insure that "gun righ...
August 01, 2019 at 02:40
Pinker's claim is certainly debatable. He based it not on crime stats, but on archeological evidence of the number of found skulls that showed signs o...
August 01, 2019 at 00:55
I admire the Amish lifestyle, though I'd probably choke on their theology. But Lord have mercy, they are not hearkening back to a long distant past. M...
July 31, 2019 at 22:51
Your trimmed statement, as I quoted it, summarizes the human situation. The human species has difficulty living together when many share close quarter...
July 31, 2019 at 22:40
England experienced a 'tragedy of the commons' in the form of the common agricultural land being enclosed and made private. The commons had been maint...
July 31, 2019 at 22:25
Chancy events, like one’s phone battery finding itself empty at the most inopportune time, can lead one to nihilism. Life begins with a chancy, quite ...
July 30, 2019 at 17:47
Logos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Another take on words. We are but some of us less badly program...
July 30, 2019 at 17:28
Conservatives spend plenty, and all they have to do is divert a few billion from weapons systems to Central American Reconstruction (or some such moni...
July 28, 2019 at 03:55
“The identity that matters most is one's identity as a human-being-becoming-a-person. We can be grouped into pairs, families, clans, tribes, interest ...
July 28, 2019 at 02:10
“I don't want to debate about whether there was or wasnt a Big Bang. Instead I'd like to ask you all to talk about, before the Big Bang“ RK There can’...
July 28, 2019 at 01:10
Whether I am anti-state, pro-state, indifferent or deferential depends very much on the state.
July 27, 2019 at 19:37
Just a personal tick, but I am beginning to wish people would just shut-the-fuck-up about all their alleged differences. Yes, it is true we all have d...
July 27, 2019 at 19:29
Proud to be a member of the anti-Boris tribe.
July 27, 2019 at 19:13
It wasn't as if Europe had a lot of choice. The refugees from the Syrian state disaster just "arrived". Hungary was excoriated (or praised) in the pre...
July 27, 2019 at 19:11
What are Grab, Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, et al if not corporations listed on stock exchanges? The first food chain stores disrupted the locally owned food s...
July 27, 2019 at 18:52
I had intended to say that very thing, but didn't. Quite so: For various purposes we can define a person as an object, and we do. From the POV of the ...
July 27, 2019 at 18:27
Very true. If you are criticizing the New York Times, it makes sense to criticize not only authors, but editors and owners. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr....
July 27, 2019 at 05:40
You think keeping up a sharp critique of the status quo, analyzing the way thinking is warped and/or controlled by major institutions (government, pre...
July 27, 2019 at 04:29
Chomsky's contributions are immense. If he had wished to lay out a political program, reflecting his political philosophy, he would have. I have found...
July 27, 2019 at 01:59
When do we begin to have personhood? Somewhere between zygote and the grave, I suppose. I view "personhood" as a continuum. All that a zygote 'has' is...
July 27, 2019 at 01:43
It makes a difference what kind of war we are talking about. There are a lot of wars around the world (quite a few long-running wars in various shit h...
July 26, 2019 at 16:59
Boris's Boy Sajid Javid bears a remarkable resemblance to Fester, one of the ghastly Addams Family. https://66.media.tumblr.com/bf21af10ac3798df9d676b...
July 26, 2019 at 01:48
In: Brexit  — view comment
Boris's Boy Sajid Javid bears a remarkable resemblance to Fester, one of the ghastly Addams Family. https://66.media.tumblr.com/bf21af10ac3798df9d676b...
July 26, 2019 at 00:18
I'm not sure, but my guess is that avoiding adjuncts would require one to attend very expensive private schools. An excellent PhD adjunct instructor i...
July 25, 2019 at 23:48
Oi, the Union of Assassins -- I had overlooked their student loan repayment needs. Well, alright -- needles between the toes, accidental attack by a d...
July 25, 2019 at 20:45
I'm all in favor of NOT taking myths literally. Corinthians 13:11... When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like...
July 25, 2019 at 19:10
Hubris Alert clang clang clang clang clang
July 25, 2019 at 19:00
You are fixated on "the government". The government wasn't growing tobacco, making it into cigarettes, cigars, snuff, or chewing tobacco. They weren't...
July 25, 2019 at 18:39
They don't need to hide behind needles between the toes. A bullet through the head (faster, cheaper, better) and the coroner's report will still say, ...
July 25, 2019 at 17:54
We live in a kleptocracy, or a plutocracy, or an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. We (the western industrialized countries) can rid ourselves of...
July 25, 2019 at 05:19
We need both. Screaming fear is what gets our asses in gear when a clearly visible existential threat appears -- the big crocodile about to eliminate ...
July 24, 2019 at 18:34
The history of brains is quite long -- about 5 hundred million years. Animals (like us) rely on emotions to provide the impetus to act, to give the 'f...
July 24, 2019 at 18:25
Congratulations! You are the first person in the history of Philosophy to connect smashing toilet seats with broken shoe laces. How was this crucial c...
July 24, 2019 at 18:14
1. The typical human is already an idea machine, but people make only a few "quantum leaps". Most of the time we make little leaps. If you are lucky, ...
July 24, 2019 at 18:09
A bomb? Yes, in so many ways; a heat-seeking missile... Donald and Boris are both too much the lard ass to soar. They roll and crush. In America, each...
July 23, 2019 at 22:26
Fish will bite if you've got good bait, and that is definitely attractive. So, on the coinage issue: The phrase "in god we trust" on money was first p...
July 23, 2019 at 21:34
Right. Well, many of us truthfully said the same thing about one Donald Trump, and it seems quite possible that he could get re-elected. No one every ...
July 23, 2019 at 20:48