john may

The photographs taken last week speak volumes about our inability to improve as a species.

You always have the hope, of course, that humanity can (and with some lasting stability) overcome many of our serious flaws, but I certainly wouldn’t bet a lot of money on it. I frequently wonder what kind of life there is on other planets. Did intelligent…[Read more]

WTF Enco? You just accused our rational and unemotional responses as being a “meltdown” by starting your own post with an emotional theatrical outburst? You have a very strange concept of meltdowns as well as “rights”.

Enco you have a really bizarre idea of what rights are and they bear little relation to how rights actually work. The idea that rights must only bequeath privilege to people and require no compromise to them is truly bizarre and not remotely how rights were conceived nor work in practice.

The bill of rights place all sorts of limits on people (in…[Read more]

I don’t think the distances between stars really matter considering the even larger scales of time (for example the time it took for humanity to go from putting the scientific method into rigorous practice to landing a person on moon). That amount of time (let’s say 500 years) would be a microsecond of time if the universe was 24 hours. If life…[Read more]

My parents baptised me solely because it meant soooo much for their best friends to be my God parents. They chose the least religious protestant church in the Black Forrest and had the service done. Last te they ever set foot in a church appart from other people’s weddings and the first time they had since they were children. I doubt they’d…[Read more]

A Belgian friend of mine asked to be “de-baptised” which means she will be struck from the records as ever being a member of the Catholic church. Luckily in Belgium the whole process has been made extremely user friendly. You just have to send off a form letter to the church you were baptised in, with a copy of an identity card and a signature. It…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!

Again, the plastics and CO2 output that go into making the windmills and maintaining them are absolute bloody peanuts compared with fossil fuel plants (including “clean gas”) and nuclear power plants. Nuclear plants require tons of toxic materials, labour hours (and all the driving to and from work), resource deliveries and the very power that…[Read more]

Enco,

Windmills produce more than 99% less CO2 emissions than fossil fuel based energy and create a LOT less polution than nuclear energy (this figure includes everything from fabrication, installation and running of the mills). That is green if green means anything. While everything you brought up are issues that aren’t trivial in terms of…[Read more]

Windmills aren’t green?  Could you elaborate on that?

LOL. So funny. Yeah my Grandmother was Scottish. Absolute force of nature. She was every cliché you could imagine. Super cheap (penny counter but splurged on the important things), tough, ironic humour, said the rain was good cause it made the grass green, didn’t tolerate complaining and would come down on you hard if you treated her poorly or…[Read more]

Ah Davis, that weather is infamous!

Two Scotsmen go to Hell. A demon approaches the devil and says “Dark lord! Two men from Glasgow in Scotland have been sent here. What should be done with them?”

The devil says “Glaswegians? Their kind are normally very friendly, helpful and honest, so we do not see many such men in my dark domain… Hang them…[Read more]

Scottish people are extremely friendly…so it hasn’t been a tough transition. The weather on the other hand……..

So I’ve moved to Scotland. I have to say it’s been a bit of an adjustment living in an Anglo-Saxon country (you guys and a couple other websites have been my only outlet for the English speaking world for the last couple decades). It makes me a little dizzy speaking English with native speakers every day 🙂

Anyhoo…one of the biggest benefits of…[Read more]

Thanks Reg!!!

I’m hearing “free will of the gaps.”

Nice try Unseen. I’m not biting. But nice try.

I see more books and philosophy journal articles arguing for free will than against it. 99% of philosophers arguing against free will is one of the most ludicrous statements I’ve heard about what philosophers believe in a long time. It is simply not true. It is one of the most contentious topics in philosophy at the moment. The claim:

Free will…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!

What is at the root of all of this…do you suppose?

Religion plays a notable role (let there be no doubt). Obviously this is the case when secular humanist societies show less (and only less) racism, homophobia, money worshipping, war aggression etc. But the ugly side of human nature plays as much of a role. All of our primate relatives are c…[Read more]