BC

The phantasy of the numbskull or bureaucratic brain is compelling: Control rooms, warning lights or bells, teletype printers or LED screens, lots of p...

The placebo effect seems to work across the board with illnesses--in a fraction of cases. Placebos have been reported giving beneficial effects on can...

The hell it's not!

The universe didn't provide us with meaning, but it DID provide us with the means to provide meaning. Absurdism is as much your imposition on a meanin...

When you get caught, for starters. I can't say that I have 'lucid dreams', or maybe I have but don't recognize the experience as such. It seems to me ...

Good article. Thanks for posting it. It is possible that a UBI would benefit those who must remain at work full time in two ways: first, it might redu...

I'm the urban spaceman, baby; I've got speed I've got everything I need I'm the urban spaceman, baby; I can fly I'm a supersonic guy As stated in the ...

When were the old days?

Agustino, light of my way, love of my heart, where have you been?

I don't know a lot about "social anxiety" per se, but I do think we run self-defeating tapes in our minds that get in our way. Of course, the tapes do...

It's understandable that teenagers chase love like they do - hormones and all that. True enough, many people in relationships (and not just those spon...

You are equating existentialism and nihilism?

I read a lot of Bukowski back in the early 1970s. Not much since. I enjoyed him.

Everything and anything will end up leaving us dead. The trick is to enjoy life before that happens. The worst way to find love is to pursue it too ea...

Wahhabism is described as "ultraconservative" "austere" "fundamentalist" "puritanical" or "puritan" and as an Islamic "reform movement" to restore "pu...

Problems, like pronounced hostility of Arab nations towards the U.S. and other countries, generally have a source. A lot of the problem comes from our...

Nihilism is the great non-starter.

Bukowski also said "Politics Is Like Trying To Screw A Cat In The Ass". One doesn't have to take his book, poem, and story titles literally. His "dog ...

Good question, I don't know. Because people feel more military threat now than... maybe 50 years ago? Or... Because stabilizing organizations like the...

I am not familiar with a period of black southern progress in the late 19th century. I thought that white resistance to black autonomy was pretty much...

I wouldn't rank any of the major powers as a leading threat to world peace--such as it is. The countries that give me the most worries are those which...

"" It seems like "purely local reasons" is something of a strained euphemism. "Attacking the west" entails more than a slight difference in cultural e...

This might be a personal tick, but "homophobia", arachnophobia, and "islamophobia" are not equivalent terms. In Freudian theory (as far as I understan...

"That's really helpful."

Yet that is done fairly often even on The Philosophy Forum. I've read that the United States is a racist country in its entirety. Hubris just comes na...

The difference between white immigrants and black people in the USA is that most white people came here voluntarily (more or less) while black people ...

That seems about right. Figuring 20 years to a generation (off the cuff average), that's 2.5 to 5 generations. If one's great great grand parents were...

That's because homosexuals are not "a people". Gays do not beget gays. Instead, we are created and grow up in heterosexual families -- and keep up the...

The United States is a multicultural nation -- partly by design, partly by accident, partly over the strenuous objections of earlier arrivals, sometim...

The US is a case study in mixing religion and politics, which usually doesn't end well, and the French would be risking values they hold dear if they ...

I see. These nuns are not wearing the pleated wool habits that nuns around here wore when they were still wearing habits. They've switched up to cotto...

Just what, exactly, were the nuns doing at the beach? It sounds as inappropriate as a pole dancer working outside in a sub-zero blizzard. Hanover has ...

As well it should have padding, since the guys who would wear such a thing likely need all the help they can get.

Bah! Humbug. It isn't specifically a question of what is too much clothing and what is too little, aside from personal preference. It is about cultura...

Did you write for the Harvard Lampoon when you were there?

France is right to ban the burkini

This looks interesting. Maybe I'll sign up for the streamed coverage, though It would be nice to spend some time in NYC. The Kennedy assassination and...

And there's the rub: What IS the appropriate measure that will end injustice and barbarism at minimal cost (cash, lost lives)? A lot of people are imp...

If it is acceptable for Islamic/Arab, Islamic/Persian, Islamic/Asian, or Islamic/African states to define for themselves what an appropriate culture i...

Be aware that you'll have an emotional reaction to this too... and not always a positive one.

:: Generalized label - Dream on :: Form of economy - socialist; production for need and social enhancement :: Power expressed by the people through di...

This discussion is irrelevant in places where the government is unaccountable to the people. Where governments do whatever they want, there isn't much...

Designing a computer to learn things is an advance on our part, for sure. I've been using computers of one kind or another for the last 36 years, and ...

Emily Howell is a computer program created by UC Santa Cruz professor of music David Cope. Emily Howell is an interactive interface that "hears" feedb...

All very good questions. "The media" mostly lead us into the wilderness of images where we get lost. People who pay attention to "the news" can get a ...

The question of whether A.I. is here, or will be here, when, how, what and where... Two things: First, electronic (dry) equipment that can produce the...

Thorongil?

Gentlemen: I don't see what the hostility is about here. Both of you post quality comments, neither of you are morons, so... what's the problem? You d...

The world is over-stuffed with 360 degrees of tragedy. Pick a place, any place, and there is a ghastly tragedy of some kind unfolding. Go out and look...

everything you said is true. The upper, ruling class -- before the very first colonial governors on down -- have always loathed the poor, and have not...