BC

I'm opposed to publicly funded popcorn. But otherwise, I agree with you 100%. Actually I don't think very many American politicians dueled. Hamilton a...

Indeed, but the sorry state of affairs has been brewing for quite some time. There is a long tradition of political debate being closer to a brawl tha...

The Luddites are irrelevant here. Talking about the limitation of techno-optimism has nothing to do with Luddite-ism. I'm not a Luddite. I'd love to h...

I have always been opposed to gambling, nor do I like to gamble. I would imagine that gambling has always operated pretty much the same way -- make be...

Semantics. Nobody said anything about human ingenuity having run it's course. What I said was there have been revolutions in human activities that can...

Absolutely, voluntary contributions above and beyond non-voluntary contributions help. Bleeding hearts of all makes and models should definitely contr...

Isolation might help embalm an accent (sort of like what happened in appalachia with the various British Islanders who first settled there), but accen...

Pet Peeve: I am sick and tired of the statement "...and changed forever." "Roosevelt, both lion and fox, was in office during the depression and the S...

Did you go to Ash Wednesday services? Where the priest dips his forefinger in a mixture of oil and ashes (burnt palm leaves from the previous years Pa...

So Darth, how are you doing with your ever-present terrified fear of death these days? "It's getting late, so I'll take a crack at the text at the lin...

There are several heroes in the Middle Earth Trilogy. To my way of thinking, heroes have to be mortals--their lives must be subject to loss. Gandalf, ...

Well, some people are dead ringers for "inevitably selfish pricks", as they repeatedly demonstrate. SOBs. Trying to steal my inestimable glory, they a...

"I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that anything I might say in response is likely to be seized upon and deliberately misconstrued by de...

That is a problem I can fix. I wasn't trying to weasel government-managed redistribution of wealth out of Christian theology. The very early church sh...

Quite interesting. Accents continue to evolve, the linguists tell us, becoming regionally distinct. Some people can hear a distinct accent in Chicago....

A search for "philosophy forum" brought up THE PHILOSOPHY FORUM 8 entries from the top on page 1 of the results. Progresso. However a search for philo...

Many Christians like to focus on intention, or contemplated but not completed actions. For instance, if you are thinking about screwing your neighbors...

This from The Guardian about the discomfort of a meritorious tech unit, Justin Keller, an entrepreneur, developer and the founder of some measly start...

If you liked The Very Hungry Caterpillar you'll love it's sequel, The Very Busy Bee.

Just finished a book on Charlemagne.

I was going to say that "the question is a matter of how terms are defined", but then, no. It isn't a matter of how terms are defined. Fairness, merit...

Trump is too volatile, too 'full of shit', too much a comedian to know what exactly he would do as president. Most of the other candidates, R and D, a...

Mithraism seems like the most competitive of the bunch. The Gilgamesh epic was as remote from Jesus as Jesus is from you (about 2000 years BC). Orpheu...

Suppose there is no precedence of a second term POTUS appointing a JOTSC. I don't know if it ever happened before or not. I don't care, either. Had Ge...

Haven't read the book, so can't really say too much about his theory. The theory you are presenting, however, is open to fairly sharp criticism. Did B...

I am feeling the Bern, decidedly, Photographer, but I must say, Cruz's ad is one of the best pieces of poli-advert I have seen in years. It should win...

So what? Even if a second presidential term is coming to an end in 10 months, there is PLENTY OF TIME for a nomination, confirmations hearings, and a ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FECIYlo3KRY

Pray that they lose -- big time. While you're at it, pray for more GOP chaos. Well, actually, while you're at it, pray that they all follow their belo...

There's a lot of that going around these days.

The world is indeed screwed up, and your list of diagnosed conditions is on target. I'm not quite sure that any of that is explained by quantum realit...

My guess is that the Republicans in Congress will do everything they can to not confirm whoever President Obama nominates. They are the party of obstr...

Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle took Dante's Inferno and recast it, somewhat, I guess. Title = Inferno. Hell is nothing if not interesting. There are ...

I thought it was an interesting take on heaven / hell, and the state of being damned. Various authors have posited a hell quite unlike the cartoon hel...

The difference between a computer and a human is flesh. Flesh and computer metal are both matter, but flesh has the biological characteristics that pr...

Perhaps, perhaps not. Actions sometimes (maybe quite frequently) and properly precede positions. How could that possibly be? You may have a very frigh...

Here's the addendum you all need: The war of A-natalism vs. Anti-natalism was fought round and round the teapot, up the spout and dumped into a dozen ...

Just an aside, priests and nuns vow not only to be celibate (not have sex with partners) but also, as I understand it, to be chaste, which means no ma...

This is what Freud said -- everybody ignored my deeply penetrating insight in mentioning Freud, which makes me just that much more of a bitter crank. ...

There is another aspect to the sacrifice of literal sexual activity which celibacy can entail: Sublimation. In psychoanalytic theory sublimation is th...

I have a problem -- I am pro-natalist, BUT in the light of global warming and over-population various species, including us, may require a lot fewer p...

The kerning of characters in the edit box (or composition box... whatever you call it) is slightly greater than in the posted area. The space between ...

Maybe machines will calculate the ideal society and distribute accordingly. I'd like that. I fear that such a happy outcome will probably not occur. W...

At Last!!!! North Korea did something truly imaginative and possibly useful: They have been sending balloons southward across the DMZ carrying payload...

I'd appreciate your saying more about setting up a non-labor-exchange money system. Do we, for instance, just give ourselves money to exchange for arb...

Hanover, your response would be appropriate if this were a therapy group. You're right -- people do sometimes disown what they can not do, can not get...

When the richest 62 people (in the world) have more wealth than 1/2 of the world's population, and when the richest 1% have more wealth than 90% of th...

My question wasn't about what Marx thought motivated everyone. My question was, "What happens to people who labor when machines take their place (when...

RCA Victor is having problems with the 78 rpm master of "Transcriptase Gets In Your Eyes" (it has to be played in reverse). When they do that the nuku...

Automation involves a question to which I haven't heard a satisfactory answer. Marx maintained that "labor creates all wealth". Metals are dug up, ref...