Edward

Indeed Kristina is totally right. I would say the biggest threats by far would be the emergence of a political party that chips away at features of democracy and more importantly corporate and online elements that have always forever been trying to do that. Some countries have introduced strong limits to how much money an entity can donate to a…[Read more]

There used to be a website but I think it’s offline now. Basically you had to decide whether a sentence was a fake quote generated by the Chropra generator or if he actually wrote it himself. It was actually pretty difficult to guess and I only got half of them right.

Thanks, Reg!

One of the reasons I don’t have to post a lot is because @davis puts points I’ve thought of, so much more eloquently than I could. This perception of the position of Royalty is spot on.

a) most of us like the royalty and love the Queen. She’s been the Queen all my life – and I’m Dunkin Donuts senior discount eligible.

b) the Royalty sits as a ly…[Read more]

Also the royal family doesn’t really divide most british people. They are generally supported throughout the political spectrum and no political party (except some in a few regional parties) quesiton the monarchy, so I don’t see how that would “unite” different parties. Nor do parties in a multi-party democracy need to unite. They have different…[Read more]

No that’s not necesarily true encoginationer. Constitutional monarchies would have to replace the head of state somehow and it is not straight forward obvious how to do that. Canadians/British/Spaniards etc. don’t want to have a President in the style of the US. The amount of political problems that come from having an elected president are…[Read more]

I’ve lived in four countries with monarchies (well three and a half because Canada’s monarch is never in residence). In all of those countries the monarch is popular. They serve a political function (they act as the only executive/legislative check and balance). In those countries there is only one effective legislature (there is no president and…[Read more]

I was 16 when I first had real access to the internet (a regular connection and not just the text based internet). I used AOL which was a truly fantastic place to discover the online world. There was a large selection of chat rooms and back then chatting was really fun. There were very few trolls (they were quickly kicked out of the rooms).…[Read more]

More likely it’s that oppressed people stick together. The women, being the oppressed, were able to get together once a week or more, for church duties where they knit blankets for the poor whilst bitching about the men and working out better ways to ‘manage’ their husbands.

Any woman who truly believes the man is the head of the household, a…[Read more]

Indeed compared with some Western European countries (certainly not all) the U.S. seems to have a whole bunch of religion fused with politics. The near complete non-representation of non-religious politicians at the National level, the number of prayers and prayer groups and the use of God in phrases, motto, the constitution, oaths, your money,…[Read more]

Thanks Reg!

They may or may not be outliers.  I can understand people making a fuss about things.  But it depends how they do it.  These outliers love trouble.  Sometimes it just turns off the people they’re presumably hoping to convert.

Simon it seems to me that you are being as ridiculously over-outraged over the very over-outrage you are criticising.

If somebody is screaming into somebody’s face, metaphorically or otherwise, purely because they disagree – nobody is going to take seriously what they have to say

No Simon. I would say that decades of inaction (nobody caring to change harmful oppressive cultural norms) and then people getting loud bringing about actually change would show that you…[Read more]

And yet, it seems to indicate a wider culture of self-righteous rudeness and incivility as a response to disagreement.

It’s a pity you continue to feel this way.