For all we know, the Lord of all Creation may have been micromanaging the affairs of every last bacterium since the beginning. The problem with positi...
That's the opposite of what I believe: I believe our gods are actually a reflection of deep thinking and depressed (neurotic) humans. The gods didn't ...
I don't find her philosophical views appealing; however, there is no reason not to enjoy reading her novels. When I read them I thought they were OK--...
Rationality has nothing to do with it. Single cell organisms have been, and remain, tremendously successful. No doubt about that. Multi-celled organis...
True, interacting with people in the way that this forum operates is not quite the same as sitting down for lunch together. But then, neither is writi...
It's a good poem. I am familiar. That midwestern boy has pretty much disappeared, not by his own choosing. Banished and erased, more like it, by the m...
Perhaps in the land of Oz, but I've never seen language build, construct, or set up a damn thing. "English and Swahili are languages." They do not sow...
It is a perplexing paradox that "time and space" is in the box we call the universe, but that the box is all there is. There is no larger box. There m...
Our ancestors -- from hunter gatherers to 20th century immigrants getting off the boat at Ellis Island -- all survived the crises of identity formatio...
People have been contending that one thing exacerbates something else for a long time: the deleterious influences of cheap pulp novels on youth in the...
"I don't think it really needs to spelled out" but true enough, the Internet is not a very helpful tool for the adolescent to use for their self-devel...
Social media and cyberpsychological behavior: Comparison and low self-esteem, Depression, Social isolation and ostracism, Negative relationships, Fear...
In the late 1950s (my adolescence) I was exposed to 'pornographic' pamphlets from an anti-communism organisation; maybe it was the John Birch Society ...
What promotes disinhibition on the Internet is positive feedback (or feedback period) from other humans. If nobody responded to one's gut spilling, on...
It is unlikely that the Internet plays a significant role in personality development, identity formation, and so forth. Why not? The Internet is not a...
There is a simple enough solution to the problem of the AI-managed automated world of the future where we are all watched over by machines of loving g...
I'm shocked that you could make a suggestion like this. People make TERRIBLE pets. They cost way too much to feed, clothe, house, and in general take ...
College tuition at public colleges and universities is largely a state issue, not a federal issue, since states decide how much their public colleges ...
Fake news from Donald Trump for me or you may be dangerous, or just stupid, but far more dangerous is fake news from sources we respect. I would not b...
Maybe the form was more important than the content for the Martian invasion panic. However, this was 1938. While radio wasn't totally new (regular bro...
"A post office called Finland has been in operation since 1915 and a cooperative general store was established in 1913, which is Minnesota's longest c...
User-driven new media (smartphones, FaceBook, Twitter, the Internet, etc.) pick up and amplify whatever shrill sounds a noisy group emits. Feedback ma...
I exist; I like it, more or less. What do I need a purpose for? 50¢ and a purpose will not get me a cup of coffee. You were probably thinking people h...
If there was, is, or will be a crisis over "fake news" it will be less the fakery and more the refusal of the public to evaluate what they hear and si...
The content of education matters, as well as its free availability. Free education is quite beneficial, but... At no time in secondary school did I ev...
We do, basically, share the same viewpoint. BUT, "IF the Nordic model was brought to these communities" is a very big IF, indeed. It's a big IF especi...
When I was a high school back in the 1960s in small town US, classroom decorum was quite a bit more civil and reserved than it is now. Of course there...
What stopped was court-ordered busing, or at least it was greatly reduced. Open-enrollment is pretty common now, replacing rigid school assignments. S...
"BUSING" were 1960s-70s court-ordered solutions to civil rights litigation over de facto segregated schools. How did schools get so segregated? Segreg...
The United States does a good job educating the top 20% of students. They do well in school, graduate from the top universities, and generally perform...
There is a pop culture Buddhist saying: Don't just do something; stand there! Another version of the idea is "An idle mind is the devil's playground."...
Some men make a BIG distinction between receiving a blow job from another guy or getting fucked. Receiving a blow job is "getting serviced"; one is on...
Re: smoking & drinking... Smoking tobacco, particularly, has been a public health catastrophe in terms of deaths, disability, and illness during the 2...
This is (as you know) a difficult topic to discuss because the range of behaviour covered by the term "sexual predator" is so heavily freighted. Then ...
In America there is ONE political party, the Redemocans. It's a big tent, housing a a large number of slightly differing opinions. The "American syste...
But what if Betty and Bill did not have free will for belief formation? What if deterministic factors caused Betty and Bill to think the way the do? F...
I'm in favour of maintaining the capacity for anger when it is needed. The emotions are not all or nothing, and they are often alloyed--anger and fear...
I have some idea what an 'American' is; I don't know what a "true American" is. Adding "true", "perfect", "absolute", and like adjectives to nouns gen...
Males tend to be viewed as more expendable as well. There are many reasons not to join an army, but expendability is certainly one of them. "It's a so...
The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped An Age by Leo Damrosch The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by C...
WELL, I don't really disagree with you, up to a point. But "any social animal has a culture" is a bridge too far. Lions and wolves, porpoises and bees...
Right you are; the world is in a bad situation. The world has usually been in a bad situation from the POV of at least a plurality of people, if not t...
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