We have not even got the basic elements with which to gingerly approach this issue, and while all the pundits dive into the maelstrom of debate, lining up in a strange consensus that unites odd bedfellows and produces the predictable reactions and antinomies, who is there to point out that our vaunted democratic institutions have …
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A meta-opinion
What exactly are the media for? They are for perpetuating the idea that opinions matter. Some knowledgeable people define opinion in this sense as a sense of certainty arrived at without knowledge. Thus it is by definition ignorance itself, but with the added and very dangerous element of an unjustified feeling of certainty. What might …
The exception
How extraordinary! The very essence of physical science is that scientists insist that things have causes. They are utterly dedicated to this simple rule, with one exception, however: they regard the universe – or the sum of all existent things – as the only exception. It alone is completely uncaused and simply popped into being …
Mesopotamia
Yesterday, my family and I were approached by a couple of girls who are art students, in a cafe. They apologised for intruding, but asked us to say the first thing that came into our heads when they mentioned Iraq. I said, Mesopotamia. They were nonplussed. They had never heard of it. I said the …
The End of Money
Am grateful to Yusuf in København for this: http://cphinterpretation.blogspot.com/2007/10/end-of-money-as-we-know-it.htmlÂ
Sanity
Fighting against madness is mad, and produces ever more madness. The only radical act in a mad age is to be sane and to be with those who are sane. But what is sanity and how do we know it? It is that on which you were created. However, the collusion of your parents and …
Definition
After science, knowledge.
Antecendents
Seeing them was proof enough; they did not say, “So-and-so from so-and-so.”
Chalmers Johnson on US foreign policy
For people who don’t know it, Tomdispath.com is often worth keeping an eye on, and the articles of Chalmers Johnson are usually interesting.http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174852/chalmers_johnson_12_books_in_search_of_a_policy
More on the new religion
Atheists are all cock-a-hoop these days and conceited about their self-proclaimed rationality, and yet clearly atheism is equally as religious as any other religion, and perhaps more so, since it depends on belief in an unseen matter: the belief that there is no god. And anyone who believes that the universe exists without a cause …