Sirens of Titan.
All 50 comments by...
barkless1
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In Those Times
Posted to The Spychopath Who Loved Me
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Schmookler's Illusion of Choice: How the Market Economy Shapes Our Destiny(1993) puts the frosting on the market-theory cake.
Posted to Chávez Consolidates Power
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Testing prophesy: if leading scholar, then prophesy valid, else continue testing prophesy.
Posted to Chávez Consolidates Power
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Quality entertainment.
Posted to Chávez Consolidates Power
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The fig was the first domesticated plant, not so long ago. People started gardening when population pressure denied them adequate nomadic hunting and gathering territory. A few more English words both noun and verb: kill, fight, forest, clam, and share.
Posted to Seeds of Hope: Gardening in Barren Times
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OK, maybe not forest.
Posted to Seeds of Hope: Gardening in Barren Times
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Cycle. So gardening is born in defiance, and assumes a starring role in the theatre of denial.
Posted to Seeds of Hope: Gardening in Barren Times
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Read in the Guardian that Saddam was gardening weeds in captivity before he was harvested.
Posted to Seeds of Hope: Gardening in Barren Times
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Better wording: tended weeds before himself weeded.
Posted to Seeds of Hope: Gardening in Barren Times
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Burn. Seed. Water. Hunt. Fish. Camp. Vote.
Posted to Seeds of Hope: Gardening in Barren Times
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Try. Hope. Wish. Want. Need. Will. Time. Quiet. Force. Focus. Comment. Note. License. Pardon. Affect. What is soon? Soon enough? For whom?
Posted to Seeds of Hope: Gardening in Barren Times
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Where are you on the political compass? And speaking of taxes, does Scotland mean Taxland? Who named it?
Posted to We Are All Waiters Now
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What, so there should be no taxes? How is government going to raise money? No government? RIch people buy insurance, insurance companies provide free ride to the public, like Spinrad's "Child of Fortune"?
Posted to We Are All Waiters Now
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I see a much simpler explanation for voluptuous clay figurines. Nowadays we have the Internet.
Posted to White Progressives Don't Get It
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The author avoids smug reason and blind faith by embracing contradiction, ambiguity, and compromise. Why? Because neither the english bright nor the religious right are sufficiently polite.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Science is the polar opposite of faith with the majority occupying the middle ground. Morality is independent. What ever you need to believe that results in you behaving in a good and decent fashion, go ahead and believe.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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nobody is advocating the strong dominate the weak, blessed social retard. the son is saying i wish you would act like a decent human i could be proud of, blessed afgantstand-you. some dogs get up AND avoid traffic without reason or faith. how is that, blessed dim bulb? why do we behave as we do, how can we change, and what should we try to become?
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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imagination + applied social science = good and decent people
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Felt, not just imagined, like gravity, etiquette is nonnegotiable. See posted by blondemike on Dec 14, 2006 at 11:20 AM, or Karen Pryor(1999): "[The] strength of the aversion can only be judged by the recipient."
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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FIrst, our implicit beliefs and assumptions cannot all be made explicit. There is no neutral viewpoint from which we can see our beliefs as things, since we always operate within the framework they provide. Second, practical understanding is more fundamental than detached theoretical understanding.---Dov Dori(2003) paraphrasing Heidegger More fool me.---Phil Collins
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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You mean faith is water, essential to life, good to have a secure supply, easy to dismiss until it is gone. Wrong. Faith is expansion on the delusion that we are spared personal annihilation. It is simply fear of death-inspired nonsense. Proselytise and pray all you want, but when it comes to real life saving technologies, we all turn to the products of science. Religion perpetuates phobic behavior, but science is honing in on curing phobias. All us pound puppies can be rescued to happy life.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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heroin for some. religion, "the opiate of the masses", for most. skeptical inquiry for a few. science is not a god that answers prayers with pills. science is a process engaged in by people not completely paralysed by their fears, who are willing to reject nonsense, recognize reality, ask questions, do experiments, record failure, and make a difference. but since everything is a product of god, the religious do not see the hypocrisy in taking full advantage of technology. it is a lifeboat. a few of the occupants are passionately making repairs, fishing, catching rain, and paddling to safer waters. but …
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Asking the polymath. "It is all anxiety and arrogance," he replied. "Exactly," I said. "That is exactly how I feel, all anxiety and arrogance." He summed it up. "Plan A is destroy the world. Plan B is save the world. We are still on plan A." Talking with the big man. "We should get the artist to tell them what for," I said. "The artist would make them cry," he said, and we both laughed. Maintain a nice distance from those nearest and occasionally deviate in a direction that feels right. There is flocking, conditioning, fractal logic, holistic systems, and who …
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Interesting idea on the "what to do?" question: A political system based on empathy
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Neither a form of the other, both perfect doubt and profound belief are performance art. To wit: The polymath and I stood talking with the guide. I kept dropping my pen with one hand and catching it in the other, enthralled. "That is gravity for you", said the guide. "Yes, gravity," I said, mystified. "Gravity," murmured the polymath. "Gravity," I repeated, wondering why the pen insisted on falling every time, like a frantic puppy that never tires of retrieving a tossed ball, quitting only when you do. "It is a form of magnetism," said the guide. "Yes, magnetism!" I cried, delighted, …
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Vonnegut obliterates pretension. Reread "Sirens of Titan". And re-play Stagnation: Here, today, the red sky tells his tale But the only listening eyes are mine There is peace amongst the hills And the night will cover all my pride Winter solstice again, eh? Oh, and speaking of Dawkins, this is funny if you make it to the third paragraph: Let's all stop beating Basil's car
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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"If a leaf has fallen does the tree lie broken? If we draw some water does the well run dry?" Wasn't that said here already? "A pawn on a chessboard, A false move by God will now destroy me, But wait, on the horizon, A new dawn seems to be rising, Never to recall this passerby, born to die." I think something like that was said here too.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Thirsty for more Vonnegut, that is why I am here, too. Seems to me like any other crowd That are waiting to be saved True story: I was accompanying the doctor's roommate, who was an attorney and a judge's daughter, around the village, mesmerized by how she locked her knees before each foot plant. This is how ladies like her from Arizona walk, I thought, but what does it all mean? We were almost back to their place east of sixth when she said, "You know who that was, don't you?" "Who?" I said. "Vonnegut," she said. "Really? Where?" I said …
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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"Irony squared", that is pretty funny. Tragedy plus time equals comedy?
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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"Ad hominem"? But the person is the argument. The author made that clear by attacking Dawkins' manners, in defense of contradiction, ambiguity, and compromise.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Knowing and believing are controlling and submitting, respectively? Nonsense. Knowing is submitting to reality. Believing is controlling fantasy. The scientific method is only as good as the character of the people engaged in it? OK, fine. The author's only valid point is that Dawkins is unreasonable in his approach to promoting reason. He is a lousy ambassador for science and therefore the diplomatic masses opt out. He should apologise and heed his own advice. Stop beating the broken car. Figure out what is wrong with it, and fix it. Why do students reject (or embrace) the practice of math? Because math …
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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The learning is the knowledge.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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I not others see clearly so out of my way or as Peter Plowart at the end of Hopkins' iconic 1957 novelThe Divine and the Decay says, "I'm indestructible, you fools!"*? *see Colin Wilson, 1965, Beyond the Outsider, pp. 228-40.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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The human brain processes fuzzy logic. Partial truths and contradictory conclusions flourish.
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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What do you disagree with in The God Delusion? Everyone has guts. Try* Hardy's books --- for instance, his 1909 collection of poems, "Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses," with its ode "To Sincerity": Life may be sad past saying, Its greens for ever graying, Its faiths to dust decaying; And youth may have foreknown it, And riper seasons shown it, But custom cries: "Disown it: "Say ye rejoice, though grieving, Believe, while unbelieving, Behold, without perceiving!" *from The New Yorker
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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It is said here everybody is neutral or not. It is an inspiring observation but why so? how else? and what then?
Posted to The Godless Fundamentalist
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What about Popper? Schmookler? What about Taliaferro's "capitalism with a conscience" (see raytal.com)?
Posted to Turning Back the Tax Revolt
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The fairer the shares, the more delicious the pie.
Posted to Turning Back the Tax Revolt
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Is bigger better, or fairer finer? seems to be the argument.
Posted to Turning Back the Tax Revolt
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Make the dent! Why, for example, do dogs get depressed? Mental illness? Lack of prescription drugs? Improper diet? Cry for help? Uninspired? Purposeless? Taxation without representation? Persecution? Misleading media?
Posted to Turning Back the Tax Revolt
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Remember the Rom, the Gypsies, too.
Posted to Turning Back the Tax Revolt
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Must be why, just like you, I am older and wiser and shorter and lighter and nicer and richer and sexier and funnier and louder and darker and taller and morally superior and smarter and heavier and stronger and younger and softer and better dressed, and yet too humble and gracious to notice.
Posted to The Power of Mean
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Diverse rankings, imaginary and not, leave us equals. Unlike our animal cousins, we ignore physicality as much as possible. Society abhors cruelty. From the playground to Paraguay, niceness wins, wins nicely.
Posted to The Power of Mean
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I accept your good wishes, kuya, and your gold piece, unless you can point out someone who is better than the rest of us, in which case I stand corrected.
Posted to The Power of Mean
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OK, I apologise for lashing out. I resented the playful marginalisation and offhand dismissal of ideal empathy, which seems to me priceless. To feel like (a nasty) somebody by making another feel like nobody is oh so common, but inexcusable. Etiquette provides us with rituals to recognize each other and our differences in ways where everybody feels like somebody, wherever they stand in the hierarchies of the moment. The author has missed this point: rank without rancor. Look at the mentor who guides without correction or coercion. The novice savors their time together. The legendary bully Machiavelli claimed he would rather …
Posted to The Power of Mean
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I enjoyed this article. The list of anti-spank nations brought tears to my eyes. I do not like the author's last line though. It muddies the argument to equate the interpersonal with the international.
Posted to Corporal Punishments Hidden Costs
- Joined December 11, 2006
- Last Visit April 12, 2007
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