Babysteps in Belief-Building
“The richness an enshrined contradiction gives to a belief system and world cannot be understated.”
gods & monsters
-
-
Dick’s Golden Man & LLMs
…Out of the countryside came a great golden, godlike youth whose extraordinary mutant powers, combining the world’s oldest and newest methods of survival, promised a new and superior type of mankind…
-
How are we not talking about the corpses?
How are we not talking about the corpses? It’s not like you haven’t seen them – you can’t miss them. When I take the kids out, I see them constantly. Every minute another one, battered or slumped or swollen with gas or smashed apart or flattened. Large and small, old and young. When I’m looking
-
Faithless Priests
“The leadership of the congregation has been unbelievably amazing, supportive, wise, patient, loving, and encouraging. They have offered to stand by me as heresy trials have been threatened…”
-
Stupidity's Unpopular Cousin: Intellectualism in the UK
“to be an intellectual is to be someone motivated by ideas. That doesn’t mean that you’re simply interested in ideas, or that you enjoy the abstract reasoning associated with chewing through logical problems. It means that you’re someone who thinks about ideas and then changes their life on the basis of those ideas.”
-
I Asked Atheists How They Find Meaning In A Purposeless Universe
Dan Griliopoulos, games journalist: “There’s no inherent meaning in life, but that doesn’t mean that it’s meaningless. First off, you’re raised, deliberately or accidentally, with an array of beliefs, values and prejudices by family, school, and society, that mesh or clash with the things you biologically like – that is, nature and nurture shape your
-
Heart On Sleeve: On the virtues of public disclosure.
My past errors bear testimony to a tendency to public disclosure; this doesn’t always seem the wisest thing to do, but I have a sharing preference. It’s probably the same reason I’m a liberal – all things being equal, I’ll do something rather than not; I’ll share, I’ll change the system, I’ll take the red…
-
Planescape Torment: Retrospective – What can change the nature of a fan?
Amidst the dusty annals of video gaming, there are games only mentioned in hushed tones. There are games that are traded in back-alleys, games where the few extant copies are guarded in by hooded, pale-faced men who worship the old gods Mintah, Ammygah and Com O’door. Games where only one person has ever played it,…
-
McGoohan, McGoohan, McGone.
Just remembered that Patrick McGoohan died yesterday. Farewell childhood hero, our rebel without reason (but not without a cause), now you’re Number Zero. I’m currently listening to “I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape” by The Times. S’alright.
-
I Won A Book!
http://londonist.com/2008/12/prizewinning_medical_trivia.php Congratulations to Dan Griliopoulos, winner of our Medical London competition. We asked for a piece of trivia connected with medicine in London, and Dan provided this: “The premier London medical story has to be that of Samuel Pepys’ stone. Not the actual operation – which was long and painful (without anaesthetic) or highly dangerous