Secular Café Archive

This century - two massive world wars, a series of genocides (from the Armenians to the Jews), the development of nuclear weapons, almost continuous war in the second and third worlds, the normalization of colonialism into 'global economics' and the vast majority of the world's population working to...

I agree with Tom but I wish I didn't... It's hard to remain positive while looking at the bigger picture...

He did a series on Wagner recently didn't he? Is it any good?

Oh that's what I meant... that's what Google does... I don't mean it looks for an image based on text. I mean if you supply an image it then goes and looks for it and for metadata. I hadn't seen the feature before...but google has it now.. makes sense that it would but I hadn't seen it before.

Oopps... goes to show what I know...

Found a neat feature on Google Images today... you can drop an image into the search box and it will find matching information. This might be something old that I hadn't noticed yet..but it's a pretty cool feature I think.

http://images.google.com

Sweet...

Ach Meine Gott - those poor senior investment managers - does nobody understand their pains? Does nobody cry for them? Between the Lear Jets, the cocaine frenzies, the Florida fishing trips, the menages-a-vingt , the Hamptons house, the car collections, the endless stacks of options and portfolios,...

Yes and those they can't convince with their dodgy ideology. They simply buy. Why not? In a truly free market one should be able to buy a politician. It's the invisible hand....etc...everybody seemed to enjoy piling on the chap, but I like how Michael Moore in his documentary on health care showed a...

^This... I think Assange is a hero...

There's something hugely ironic about the fact that the hard arm of US foreign policy also provides some of the best conditions for US families (beyond, of course, those who are already rich)... So they enact a consistently right-wing policy in order to get left-wing conditions.... I think I'd prefe...

Being an ex-Catholic, I hold on to the guilt thing, Neil... makes sex better...

As above.. I think a way more powerful way of pointing out 'atheism' in film to people who believe film history started with 'Jaws' might be to point out how little religion and belief feature in films and how little importance they have to film heroes of theirs. Show me even a momentary discussion ...

Great if it's a good movie but to claim that it's the first movie with an atheist hero is a bit much. There are movies from the very beginning of film history with 'atheist' heroes. That it wasn't emphasised is probably not a bad thing either. Bit of a shocking claim from their marketing people who ...

Heh... yes... it's not the kind of text you'd leave lying around... I find myself fascinated with De Sade though and not the least because he doesn't fit into any convenient category of contemporary fiction. His writing is not simply erotica, as there's a political element, not simply a moral warnin...

Interesting... I think it depends on how you read it and how you watch the film. I'll agree that revulsion and disgust are part of the process but, in a sense, both stand as studies of those states. Why are we revolted? Why is the spectacle so horrific? Why is De Sade so very specific about the soci...

Not really David... what I mean to say is that I don't think winning arguments in the sense the author of the theory means it is even one of the more important features of reason. When I think about the faculty of reason, sure, I think about the idea of understanding an argument but, actually, under...

David... it depends what he's saying... he seems to be saying that reason evolved to win arguments... now it depends on how you interpret him... either he means reason only evolved in order for us to win arguments... which is, you'll own, one valid interpretation... or he's saying that 'one importan...

I don't disagree... but the OP said that reason evolved to win arguments which implies that evolution in the faculty of reason happened merely to win arguments.. or, at least, seems to imply such... which seems a bit hairy to me...

The 120 Days Of Sodom is set in a remote medieval castle, high in the mountains and surrounded by forests, detached from the rest of the world and not set at any specific point in time (although it is implied at the start that the events in the story take place either during or shortly after the Th...

Yeah but isn't there a sort of reasoning which occurs before speech and before interaction which is busy 'figuring things out' as development occurs. It seems to me that calling this function (which I would call 'reasoning' or 'developing reason') has nothing to do with argumentation.. unless we sta...

I don't understand what neuro-linguistic programming is or is supposed to be. So I can't help you... if it's in a sales/advertising context I'd imagine it's just a set of techniques for getting people to buy/do things.

Wassit?

I would have thought that reason, similarly to language, for example, is an innate faculty that is generative and, as such, is subject to evolution or, at least, development over time within a species. So that when we talk about the evolution of reason we are, in fact, discussing the development of ...

Kissinger is a f£$king war criminal and nothing about him is human... If you're wondering why you need to find a good (and objective) history book about the Vietnam war during the Nixon presidency... That people like him get to walk free tells you everything you need to know about justice for the po...

What if Greece declared bankrupcy? There is something sad, as one commentator pointed out, about the fact that economic problems cause a downgrade in credit rating which, in turn, causes economic problems... which seems to mean that the slightest notch off a credit rating can send a country spiralli...

I read about it but didn't watch it. To be honest I was a little afraid of being upset by watching somebody die. I do, I must say, support assisted dying... I think it should be regarded as a right rather than subject to this absurd debate which has been generated around it. Plus... in practice, at ...