BC

I know, it's such a drag that nicotine and its associated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and ethanol should have such negative effects on us. Just t...

I don't know whether we have absolute free will or not. My suspicion is that we can not know whether we are perfectly free to choose. If I say I freel...

We'd all be better off if we carnivores limited our meat consumption to 3 oz. of meat per day, on average--including fish and eggs (or 68 pounds a yea...

It's a long ways back, but agriculture was a major innovation, if not a discrete invention. Presumably it began inadvertently: proto-agriculturists st...

If we are going back as far as agriculture, what about the atlatl -- the spear thrower? It enabled the North American aboriginals to hunt mastodons su...

Obviously, and obviously not what was meant.

A description isn't a condition, in the sense that "if you don't pay the overdue rent, you will be evicted". A description isn't an "if/then" statemen...

Of course, Men's Liberation isn't very concerned about women's suffering either.

Try this; think of it as a 12 step program. These will put you well on your way to unconditional love. I Corinthians, 13: Love is patient love is kind...

An old time socialist identified certain party members "who liked games of uproar". They liked to start disputes they weren't especially interested in...

Since you are living in "The Cold and Snowy Part of The Heroin Addicted Rural Rust Belt" I'm sure you've seen the tragic consequences of people who ar...

I wouldn't expect unconditional love to occur in a 3 month (or 30 minute) romance begun in a bar unless, of course, I happened to pick up Jesus. Would...

Thanks for responding and don't go away, unless you really want to. Hanover likes sarcasm which is good, because a fair amount is aimed at him. NOBODY...

BTW, if you smoke and drink a lot you should also plan to be a cancer patient--probably oral or gut cancer. It would be a shame to die early on your 1...

My guess is that most children arrive in this world through the good offices of sexual pleasure and not through the fine reasoning of philosophers. I ...

I don't think you have shown that unconditional love DOES NOT EXIST, let alone that it CAN NOT EXIST.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djSbNzZGV6Y

Yes, there is always hope -- the blade of the guillotine begins it's rapid decent. Let's see... why would there be hope here? Oh yes, an explosion a s...

Your body might do anything to stay alive when it is healthy and merely being chased by a long-legged ferociously angry feminist wielding an already b...

Thanks. It's philosophy instruction just the way I like it: Short and to the point. Audio only is an underrated media style.

I am in sympathy with anarchists, through anarchy-syndicalism, a combination of industrial unionism and anarchism -- represented in the Industrial Wor...

A god, or logos, some kind of transcendent spirit is wanted. When one contemplates the immense complexity going on in 1 cell, never mind the biosphere...

Death is certainly closer for me than it used to be -- I'm 71. I'm not afraid of death, I just don't want to be there when it happens. (full disclosur...

They did in the early 1900s -- the Progressives were fed up with graft and corruption. They elected reformers to the presidency (Theadore Roosevelt), ...

You are (of course) not the first person to assign God the task of supervising the atoms so that they eventually become the Acme, Zenith, and Crown of...

Two things. #1, pressure from wealthy individuals and businesses. How do wealthy people pressure congress? They underwrite their campaign costs, they ...

Because defense spending has followed a pattern first pioneered by the railroads back in the late 19th century. A handful of extremely avaricious rail...

Actually, they did do that. While the US, like every other society, has always had hierarchies and inequality of wealth, there were two episodes of ex...

The view that everything is determined is not assailable, because one can say that whatever happens was determined. You think you have free will? No. ...

Why all this defense spending? Obviously, there is the self-perpetuating military-industrial complex which lobbies hard to keep all sorts of contracts...

On a smaller scale than great civilizations, organizations (like non-profits) often begin with a very bright flash of innovation, energy, and accompli...

Damned if I know what's going on with the universe. But... No one can "see" the universe in its entirety -- we are part of it, of course, or at least ...

You did an admirable job of rounding up and corralling a herd of connected phenomena (aka, problems) in your OP. Solutions? Well, sure -- we could hav...

Rather than resign your membership, why don't you try simplifying the language of your posts? Some things you might try: Get acquainted with the perio...

Yes, it does. Quite a bit, I would think. There's the left brain/right brain, then there are the lobes. Then there the sulci and gyri -- hills and val...

Donne can spread a coverlet of ambiguity over his poems' presumed meaning. Is it the case that "Good is not good unless a thousand it possess, but dot...

We like narratives. We like stories that unfold and have surprises. Dreams sometimes are organized narratives, of a sort, which is pleasant, provided ...

That is certainly true in many cases. A new pope steps into a very old, rigid power structure. Most prime ministers step into structures and roles tha...

You know it was very close -- Clinton won the popular vote, but Trump luckily won the electoral college, which "trumps" the popular vote. Clinton shou...

I'm going to disobey the rule and judge your book by its cover. Do people get power from a structure (here a pyramid of power) or do people who have p...

People think that "unique spellings of ordinary names" will give their children something "special". So Jane is twisted into Jaynne; Mary is converted...

I think you are playing word games--the delight of getting people to agree that something unconditional must have conditions. It's an empty exercise. ...

Hmmm, I don't know about that. Didn't the Nazi's in Germany hang together pretty well? Also the fascists in Japan? The KKK (ku klux klan) is derived f...

So many different kinds? There are only two kinds of people: Those who think everybody is different (with innumerable gradations) and those who think ...

Of course I was implying no such thing. I was making a joke along the lines of "You'd have to be blind not to see what was going on..." My comment was...

Was he in the fraud detection unit of Wells Fargo?

Maybe they did; it depends how one counts up the total--it could be fewer or more than 50 million. But the point I wanted to insert here is that their...

Humans distinguish themselves from other species the same way crows, cats, and bees distinguish themselves from other species. We are no more the cutt...

Our brains are made of neurons, among other types of cells, and their language is chemical and electrical. Neurons to do not communicate between each ...