There is a difference between engaging in the (just barely) feasible and legal right to strike for better wages, job security or other desired ends an...
QUESTION from the New York Times: Does day-old, leftover kale salad have less nutritional value than kale that is fresher? MY ANSWER: Oh... a little l...
Context, context, context. A 3 hour Tea Party Rally, as subversive as that might actually be, is less threatening to public order than a 3-week or 3 m...
Yes. MY life has been examined. Yes, there are lives that are worth living which have not been examined, either by 'feeling' ok about it or by taking ...
Point of information: How does the Yeehawist National Front differ from the Yahooist National Front (think Gulliver's Travels, not has-been internet c...
If the person whose life-worth is under discussion (whoever that person is) does not know that their life is worth living, doesn't feel their life is ...
I agree - a life does not require examination to be worth living. First, one may hold that a life, as a unique existence, is inherently worth existing...
Oh dear... I do object to being called "flap eared" -- did they have beagles back then? Some of the insults are a bit obscure, and then they pile up s...
Like... You peasant swain! You whoreson malt-horse drudge! or... No man's pie is freed From his ambitious finger. or... A knave; a rascal; an eater of...
Indeed. God came from the fecund ground of the human imagination. God is ours. If you find deficiencies in god, look to the creators. God, of course, ...
Believed in or not, God is a great mystery and difficult to explain. But then, so are homo sapiens difficult to explain and mysterious. People are may...
Quite. I think we have brought clarity to the fact that we don't think alike about morality. On the other hand, my guess is that we are more or less e...
Oh, one other thing: Happy New Year. Auld lang syne and all that Robert Burns. We twa hae run about the braes,---We two have run about the slopes, and...
There is something wrong with a moral system that allows too much slipping and sliding - rationalizing our way around moral failures, as you put it. T...
Right. When radio and television became significant cultural influences, it was predicted by some observers that Americans would lose regional differe...
Marshall McLuhan, who coined this phrase "global village", didn't actually like some of the stuff he wrote so exuberantly about. I'm not sure what he ...
I suspect "citizens of the world" of attempting to evade their local responsibilities — Bitter Crank I like the idea of cosmopolitanism; I don't think...
Oh, I quite agree with everything you say here. By my own guidance, everything about it was as wrong as you say it was. So, why do we turn from the st...
Practice makes perfect? It takes balls to be a success? I would say more, but one of the principles of successful crime is "Keep your mouth shut." Don...
A few years ago a woman left her purse on a bench near where I was reading on campus. When I got ready to leave, I noticed it, and picked it up. It ha...
My take on homosexuality is a bit different than WOD's. Maybe my views are a a bit old fashioned. Personally, I don't have a problem with deviance. Wh...
True enough, we all do have a string of things we can't tolerate. So be it then. Sign a prenuptial agreement when or if you get married, specifying th...
What's for dinner? Beef, you say? In that case, we're going to beat you to death right now. Anti-beef-eating Hindu zealots killed a Moslem man for all...
Haven't you resolved the problem already? "...helping others become happy tends to make me happy." There you are. Your hypothetical egoist's obligatio...
Given that "the world" consists of many communities, each having its own committed citizens, different values, interests, strengths, weaknesses, langu...
One of our problems with marriage these days is that a lot of people are entertaining VERY STUPID IDEAS about it. Like... - Single women who think "I ...
Damn right I am, and proud of it. Now, now; let's not get carried away here. If at least 10% of men are gay, who has been getting my share all these y...
This is rank nonsense. Real, bona fide geniuses are always rare (at least, that's a characteristic I like to apply to "genius". But even when they are...
Nobody does this behind closed doors -- neither the bourgeoisie nor the communists, because the millions of recipients know what is happening. (It's l...
I have always read that section of the Communist Manifesto as a criticism of bourgeois hypocrisy about the family, and not as a proposal to emulate th...
Agustino, If you didn't like Stalinist/Marxist/Soviet/Eastern European style of oppression, believe me, you really shouldn't like the old fashioned, w...
It may be that the morality that has been imposed upon one is something to be overcome. For instance, a gay person may need to overcome the morality w...
Some thinking rational minds might settle on selfishness as a wise policy, maybe even a virtue. Actually, quite a few people settle on selfishness as ...
What Marxist hate for the family are you talking about? What passage in Karl Marx's writings leads you to think that Marxism hates families? Are you t...
Being the pessimist you are, you surely hold to the idea of a profoundly flawed, lying, cheating, stealing, sneaking, and conniving humankind whose ve...
The Agreement which defined the modern Middle East is a century old, now, but it had absolutely nothing to do with the people who lived (and live) the...
Agreed. There are some bad actors in the middle east who are high on our list of allies. Saudi Arabia is, IMHO, a lot more trouble than they are worth...
What would help Tunisia or Lebanon, for instance, is economic vitality. A liberal democracy requires a minimal level of prosperity (seems to anyway). ...
True enough, the options proposed are options in action. BUT... what about an ethical judgement? My own sense is that we are damned if we do, damned i...
The implicit "relative values" that you ascribe to the right seem more appropriate to the "left" and the narrow, single pattern of values seems more a...
The state of the family as it exists in 21st century America is not good. Many children are conceived and delivered by breeding pairs who are thorough...
Sites like Grindr or Ashley Madison and a million other sleazy sites exist because pointing-and-clicking adults wish for them to exist. And then too, ...
On this night before Christmas, the stores are all dead; Hardly a creature is stirring from houses or sheds. I passed on the pudding for brief yule rh...
Neither you nor the Independent have convinced me one wit that Hitler was a socialist in anyway more than having that one word in his party's title. I...
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