You are right. The contradiction flitted through my brain as I described these two countries as ancient. It didn't find a perch. But the component par...
Oh, it wasn't just you -- a Google search showed that some "critics" thought they were similar. Personally, I don't know why anybody would think they ...
True, the NRA is a major contributor to the reelection campaigns of Senators and Representatives. But they are only one of many. It takes a lot of mon...
The sacraments of the Conservative Church of The Gun are buying guns, shooting guns, and voting for reactionary Republicans. The First Church of The G...
There's no shame in having not read her in the past, but there is in not reading her in the future. Help is at hand! Free! Everything That Rises Must ...
Reviewers, and MOS, think Means is similar to Flannery O'Connor. Here's the opening lines of A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND: THE GRANDMOTHER didn't want t...
"Quasi-state" - neither fish nor fowl. "State" in Europe has the heavy substantial meaning that "state" in the United States doesn't. Germany, France,...
No, it's not. But any given sample of text prefaced by the question "Is this good writing?" is doomed to unfriendly and close analysis, which isn't th...
Coming down to the vote and polls are either too close to call, with maybe an edge for BREXIT. It seems clearer to me, not that it matters, that BREXI...
Violate forum etiquette? What might that be? Beats me. I agree 100% with what you had to say. A. Nobody can know what God/god is like, especially beli...
Theoretically, I agree: the null position is not having a belief. Practically, under what circumstances could one not have a belief (one way or the ot...
Is there any way we can determine whether the mind is an illusion or not, and is there any way to tell whether "feels like" is or is not representativ...
If all the people in the US who don't like Trump and Clinton were to vote for a third party on the ballot as a protest, we might end up with a Sociali...
You are right (of course). I was conflating the term hate "crime" with hate "speech". What the Supreme Court thinks is or is not a crime, is or is not...
Suppose I set up some objective criteria for landscape paintings. A successful landscape can include scenes of rivers, lakes, mountains, prairies, oce...
There are a host of issues in hate-crime statistics, arising from loose definitions. If you and I went to a bar together, and I grabbed a guitar and l...
Here are two graphs from the NYT regarding race and hate crimes. Not pointed out in the accompanying article, but shown in the graph, is that there we...
I don't know where you live, but the exterior appearance of the Pulse Bar struck me as entirely normal. In many parts of the country, straight and gay...
I would resign the chess board and recognize your victory IF one condition could be met: IF I could show that your view of life was entirely and objec...
A previous mass murder of gays, 1973 in New Orleans, has either been forgotten or people didn't know about it to forget. I can't remember whether I kn...
because... and I not only find each of your statements to be true (rearranged slightly) but taken together they are also true. Does that make me a cry...
Not quite that simple, no. The philosophical stance one takes is a combination of the cultural resources the culture makes available, one's personalit...
Well, I don't know, of course. It's a very good question, though. My view of philosophical pessimism is that it is a creature of neurological or psych...
An interesting book you might enjoy, if you can find a copy: Keep the River On Your Right by Tobias Schneebaum, 1969. (Check out on line used book sto...
Anyway, getting back to islamic jihadis shooting up gay bars... Should there be more of such events, (and there might well be) all sorts of targets ar...
I understand. Actually, I'd be surprised if there even was such a thing as a pedophile forum, these days. One of the areas I would like to research as...
certainly includes radical islam, but I think the elephant also includes Christian and Hindu conservatives too. A plague comes from all their houses b...
I don't know that Omar Mateen was a madman. So far I have heard that he was volatile and violent (that according to his ex-wife). Even if he suffered ...
Right. As soon as an African mother has a pot to piss in, she starts reading Schopenhauer, wondering why she bothers to have children, and doesn't jus...
It depends on which country is up for consideration. Congo? Kenya? Namibia? Mozambique? Africa is a very, very large continent; too big to be written ...
Had I come to this same discussion 20 years ago I would have found your position consistent with both my experience and philosophical view. Life seeme...
It's the same in the midwestern part of the United States -- well, most parts of the US. Corn (maize), wheat, soybeans. On some fields, the energy inp...
As well you should be. :) Look, is it any different claiming enough authority to say that life is generally good, than saying life entails too much su...
A wise policy. I understand that suicide here is a "gesture" not a concrete plan to end it all. That's what makes it romantic. Were it a serious plan ...
Look: People who are suicidal and just barely living, don't write books about it. They are beyond caring whether the book gets written or not. Your su...
I was definitely thinking of healthy psychodynamic systems. I will grant the possibility of suicide serving as a relief valve in extremis. "If it gets...
Two things (at least) save our human lives from not being worth starting and not being worth continuing, should we suffer the indignity of being born:...
A life does not lose value because one loses one's memory. Henry Gustave Molaison, 1926-2008, was a young man who lost his capacity to form new perman...
In one sense, a life is valuable from the very beginning and does not become more valuable by the achievements of the person. In another sense, a life...
Well, Japan and Germany did a good deal more than attack Pearl Harbor and annex the Sudetenland, obviously. Eventually they had much of Asia, the west...
Austin is a small town - maybe...25,000, if that. It's a one-company town--Hormel. One does not see many (any?) explicitly left/labor murals in a larg...
This mural was painted on the exterior wall of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Union hall, local P9, Austin Minnesota, 1986. Mike Alewit...
It could very well be that being a self-absorbed megalomaniac is a requirement to run for the highest public office in the US. This is certainly true ...
In a drive to suppress graffiti on utility boxes that are located next to sidewalks and bikeways, local telecom and electric companies have offered so...
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