I'm not a nitpicker ... well, maybe at times ... in fact, maybe a lot of the time ... come to think of it, probably most of the time ... or even, all of the time. [video=youtube;AKXlhpeb6wI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKXlhpeb6wI[/video]
Not a bad effort, however, points will be deducted for the omission of the mandatory " lennons yellow teeth ".
Good points and no forgiveness needed, although I would be disappointed and surprised if there was anyone at all on this site who didnât, in some way, enjoy the benefits of âsufferingâ from a dissociative identity disorder - and so you may be acting in some haste to imagine that Mick is the one on the couch in the course of our transactions. I wouldnât really put it past any of my multiply fractured personalities to act snootily intellectual and all âoooh, look at me, Iâm educated up to my eyeballs and right proper clever â love me, please, just love me and respect me, itâs all I askâ in order to gain some attention and credibility on a football forum and, through manipulative conversations with unwitting strangers, some craftily elicited therapy, as well; whilst all the time giving the impression of being in control, in demand and in the know. In fact, if I were a betting man â which Iâm not, although Iâm sure one of me must be â Iâd put her money on it. Hmm. If Der Administratör has a âfragile, evolving belief systemâ then heâs probably well ahead of the game. Most of us simply have a (surprisingly small) collection of words we bark out at any given time because â for reasons that often remain shrouded in pointlessness â we wish (or need) to make ourselves heard by other people. Itâs not thinking, as such, more the vocalisation of a non-sequential jaunt through the dictionary. I have spoken, Espania, and so shall it be. Word.
I remember BH. I like to think, however, that I included the cultural input from a broad spectrum of posters in an affectionate montage of some of the many wonderful things and new ideas Iâve been exposed to on this site. And for the last time: Iâm not a nit-picker, Iâm merely inquisitive and relentlessly keen to learn. (Although, I accept that by nit-picking over the use of the term ânit-pickingâ I now find myself in an incredibly weak position.) Your book sounds good, by the way, I love stuff like that. (Incidentally, you might like the Julian Baggini book:The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: And Ninety Nine Other Thought Experiments. Nothing is gone into in enough depth, but it's a good way to spend time and an easy enough way to get thinking about stuff.) We should start a philosophy club round these parts, you know? I think loads of people would want to contribute. You, me, Espania Celt....the list is ended. Thanks for the critique, RL, appreciate it. That was an elementary mistake to forget about the teeth, Iâm kicking myself. I take it you feel justified in casting your critical eye over my work after the attractive deconstruction of your gag on the Aberdeen forum? And quite right, too. Nightmare. Only myself to blame. I may have opened up a real Pandoraâs can of eels here, a plaice weigher every mist ache is ponced upon. (No, no, put your wallet away â that one was on the house.)
BH is called Clunge Beater these days http://www.not606.com/showthread.php/157931-The-Nick-Of-This-Website-lt-lolapalooza-gt I can't believe you were not in the least bit inspired by this. Wasn't bad for a layman's (which I am) introduction although I get the feeling there is better stuff out there on the ideas it presented. It's the first book dedicated to philosophy I've read btw - I went that way after finally getting round to reading (your recommendation) Harris' The End of Faith, which was heavy on the philosophical arguments against faith (I think... the philosophy was not always completely relevant, but entertaining enough to get me interested in the subject). A philosophical club is not a bad idea, but Espania's observations of you giving me psychiatry sessions has made me all self concious over making my inside thoughts outside these days
Good morning. BH is Clunge Beater? Nice one, thanks. Unless someone directly tells me that theyâve changed their name, the information doesnât tend to register (or stay) in my head. Itâs all a bit confusing. That was a terrific thread you linked to, though, a socially vital addition to Le Genre de la Taig avec Brow Solitaire. Iâd say you were probably right to start with a book that gives a general overview (unless youâre under the guidance of a tutor), rather than jumping straight into Heidegger, say - excruciatingly dense text and often horribly written, although at times just outright beautiful (Sieg Heil) - or Schopenhauer (one of my favourites, especially his Studies in Pessimism) or one of the ancients from Greece (who may, rightly or wrongly, be classed as being almost irrelevant to present day thought, unless youâre specifically interested in the history and development of (philosophical) thinking, of course â which I happen to be, luckily enough, so Iâm always going to recommend âread everythingâ, which is hardly very discerning, specific or helpful.) But anyway. Iâm obviously not sure what sort of thing may interest you or of what you might hope to gain from any book (nice one for reading The End of Faith, by the way â marks out of ten?), but The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten is probably a reasonable enough next step and Iâve got two copies if you want me to send you one. (Iâll need your address, which may cause you to feel understandably queasy, or maybe itâs still possible to send stuff to be picked up at a post office?) Failing that, you could dive straight into a book by the same author (Julian Baggini) called Making Sense: Philosophy Behind The Headlines. This is a middle of the road kind of book, not too taxing and yet fairly in-depth and also pretty readable (which a dispiriting number of books about philosophy fail to be, as the authors fall in love with the concept of making themselves appear clever whilst disappearing straight up their own behinds in a ****ery of self-congratulation.) The title of the book is a clear description of its content. Itâs not at all bad. On about the same level, although a lot more âlook at meâ, John Grayâs book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals is a belter. Or it was when I read it, but, as ever, once Iâve had time to get over being moved or impressed by something, the doubts begin to creep back in. Well, thatâs what it says on the back of the book, anyway â and youâd better appreciate the fact that I had to transcribe all of the above, this was no copy and paste job â but these things are very often deeply unreliable (and, of course, entirely subjective). Plus, Will Self is Will Self â which is a self-contained crime, innit, Self? (Sorry, couldnât resist. I'm trying to intimidate Rogue Leader with my dexterity.) All I know is that I loved Straw Dogs whilst reading it, however, which is usually enough to be getting on with. I also know that I subsequently read another book of Grayâs - Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern - that hurt me with its pretension and unremitting dullness. Itâs such a slim book and Iâve still not managed to finish it (and I need to finish every book I start â including reading any and all isbn details, footnotes, reviews, bibliographies, forewords, copyright proclamations etc. Agony. But the isbn remains the highlight of that particular pamphlet.) But there we are. Donât worry about EspaniaCelt, heâs one of the good people â and Iâm sure heâll have his reasons for tormenting you. Itâs not like you donât deserve it, either, letâs at least be clear about that.
The End of Faith I'd say maybe 8/10. I'm not a book reviewer, haven't even written an Amazon review yet but... It seemed very heavy on philosophy, which I enjoyed, but was not always relevant - take the moral question he posed on whether torture was worse than collateral damage: the reality being that collateral damage actually causes much more physical pain and death than torture, yet on an idealistic level we may excuse the former and abhor the latter. In the end I wasn't even exactly sure of Harris' own views on whether or not torture was ever justifiable - he made a discomforting case for it being so but didn't quite let us know how the question had been settled in his own mind - which, as I'm learning, is a common trait of the philosopher. Anyway Some very good thought provocations but not really that relevant to the question of whether or not god exists. Also after previously reading Dawkins' criticisms of Mysticism, Harris' delve into semi-praise of this brand of faith at first felt a little strange (I think I done it wrong in reading Hitchens > Dawkins > Harris - Dawkins maybe sat back and watched the world critique Harris then made sure that all of those critiques were addressed in his own effort). I can at least see where he is coming from on Mysticism though, on my recent excursion to Thailand I had a drunken conversation with some Buddhists on their beliefs and it opened my eyes a little - after about 30 mins of conversing I can remember stating something like "well this doesn't really seem like a religion at all, there is no god, just treat everyone else how you would like to be treated yourself?" which seems, as a layman, like a better version of what we've got going. I was a bit confused over how they have no deity yet still manage to idealise these big Buddha statues - but I decided to excuse them that one on the account that they, evidently, have no dogmas barring things such as staying out all night consuming copious amounts of alcohol - and ping pong shows. So yeah 8/10 for going a bit off track and maybe not being as comprehensive as later efforts (which is understandable). ------------------- I'll definitely give The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten a go - I would take you up on the offer of a loan as well, but I've a problem with physical books these days - living between locations I travel often and very light and I always leave the physical books in the house in favour of a Kindle - have you went Kindle yet? It may seem a bit wrong to someone who loves their literature, as there is a great feeling of accomplishment watching that book shelf in your house fill up (and you get to show off to your dinner party guests how evidently clever you are for reading so much) - but once you go Kindle it's hard to go back - it's the fact that you have a catalogue of books with you at all times, after getting bored trying to get your head around the concept of Schrodinger's Cat you can take a mental sabbatical on something less taxing - if it wasn't so carefree I would never be dragging the Physics book with me onto the aeroplane either - so it's just very practical while on the move. Oh and with a Kindle Touch you can highlight and add notes to chunks of text in seconds, then when you are finished the book you can easily browse through all the sections you have highlighted - this is very useful for me as I tend to forget half the things I found interesting in a book almost immediately after reading it. Oh, again, there is also the dictionary, touch a word and it tells you what it means - very useful for heavy reading. But yeah thanks for the kind offer of a book loan - for the reasons above though I am afraid I might not read it, and I want to read it, and I don't want to feel guilty for you going to effort to send it to me and not reading it - the 6 quid download on Amazon is probably not too far off the cost of effort + postage either. (My addresses are very public with domain whois, so that bit doesn't annoy me.) I'll do the Pig one first then I'll look into the others. I've still about five half read (heavyish) books yet to still get through and I'm trying not to kick on too far before I finish what I've got.
Thatâs a pretty good score (and review!) for a book, though, canât complain. Iâd probably give it about the same, 7.5-8/10. And just in case youâre labouring under the misapprehension that it might somehow be brilliant, Iâd give the book The Pig That Wants To Be Eaten 4.75/10, an enjoyable and occasionally gently thought-provoking distraction all the same. Making Sense: Philosophy Behind the Headlines = 6/10. Straw Dogs = 7.25/10. Does it annoy you a bit when someone doesnât clearly state a settled conclusion (or final belief) either way? I can see why it might, I suppose, and youâre certainly right to say that philosophising types may sometimes be seen to have a habit of this. I canât remember the specific thing you refer to (about collateral damage versus torture), but Iâm generally okay when people fail to come down firmly on one side or the other of such ethical dramas, just so long as theyâre not needlessly fannying about or trying to have it both ways simply because itâs easier to do so. Is the question of whether or not God exists something that interests/bothers you? Do you feel that such a question in itself is important? (Stripping away the distraction of organised religion for a moment) I wonder, purely out of interest â and itâs not some dastardly trap, relax - if you would you be able to say any (or all or none) of the following and remain true to your atheist self: I think itâs safe to say that God exists, although I donât necessarily believe that he exists. Orâ¦. I think itâs safe to say that God exists in the minds of those people who believe that God exists, although I donât necessarily believe that he exists. Orâ¦. I think itâs safe to say that God exists in the minds of those people who believe that God exists and that he also exists in my own mind as a recognisable conception, although I donât necessarily believe that he exists. Orâ¦. I think itâs safe to say that Rangers still exist in the minds of those people who believe they still exist and that the club still exists in my own mind as a recognisable conception, although I donât necessarily believe that the club still exists and yet feel no compulsion to browbeat others into sharing my way of thinking, least of all those poor misled souls who mistake their needs and desires and all of those lies theyâve been told for reality. Sorry, got distracted. Topical. (Iâm like one of those trendy vicars who, through the medium of tortured analogy, disastrously tries to make discussions about a cloyingly matey God relevant to soccerball mad kids off the street â Iâll be pulling out my guitar next â whilst all the while gently rubbing my thigh and wondering when itâll be alright to get to the bit where I start telling the girls that theyâre dirty, just like their mothers and their mothers before them. Dirty, dirty, dirty. Kumbaya.) Aye, I got carried away and wasted a bit of time there, sorry. Back to the rest later. (Rebelbhoy â if youâre looking in: I clocked your response on the Aberdeen board. Good man. Iâll get back to all that once Iâve finished my response to the Administrator.)
Continued from (very roughly) here: Good point, you could be right. I hadnât thought of it like that. It is perhaps one of the wonders of the world that anyone might ever need to be told this by a third party. One of the most insulting things the religious may sometimes say â and one of the few things that may see me lose my preternatural levels of permanent (and deeply attractive) calm â is that without religion (or religious observance) there would be no morality and nothing to stop people indulging their most hideous urges. This probably says more about certain believers themselves, I feel. But yes, youâre right, treating other people as we would like to be treated ourselves seems as good a place to start as any. Whilst remaining as polite and restrained as possible, I would just add that any religious decoration hung around the outskirts of such an obvious and instinctive moral sentiment feels superfluous, to say the very, very least. I donât know anything much at all about Buddhism, unfortunately, although I seem to have an inkling that itâs often quite pleasingly philosophical, but I can see why you might have been slightly perplexed by the veneration of man-made statues. (People often feel like aliens to me. I just donât get them.) Iâm sure that in common with most religions, however, there will be lots of good things about Buddhism that your everyday Joe will â or might in the future â instinctively factor into his own life without ceremony, costumes, in-group thinking or dogma. Ping-pong shows? That sounds terrific. I love table tennis. Jesus. Need to get a move on here. Letâs seeâ¦. Iâve resisted Kindle, for all the reasons you so insightfully presuppose (spooky). You sell it well, but Iâm not sure that Iâll ever succumb. And even if I do, Iâm not sure I would be able to properly admit it to myself â which feels stupid, but there we are. I canât see it, though, and Iâm hopeful that I have an ally in my wife (a voracious inhaler of fiction, which I almost never read â when set comparably against my non-fiction consumption). I need books around me â in the kitchen, in the loo, going up the stairs (new shelves need to spring up all the time and one room has already been entirely turned over to books) â and I need to be reading stuff almost permanently. If there are no books to hand, Iâll agitatedly read the ingredients on a packet of biscuits or the words that cover the bottle of a domestic cleaning product (Original Parazone Thin Bleach, Kills all germs, whitens and cleans: replace cap and twist clockwise until tight. When properly closed, cap will turn anti-clockwise without opening.) So, yeah, just you watch it, mister. No worries about the book, by the way. Do you understand anything you read in the physics book(s)? Unless it's exceptionally clearly written, I find that my head begins to melt with that stuff. (And the Schrodinger's Cat thing may very well serve as a useful analogy for the death or non-death of Rangers, incidentally, depending on one's view - I'm just not quite sure how to do it at this point in time of the evening.)
My laptop packed in at home last night and I won't (shouldn't) get time to reply properly in work, so I may take a wee while to get back. But briefly, this one needed an immediate response... Back of a bottle of Domestos bleach: Each cap full = 15ml, mix 20ml with 5 litres of water for bleaching your whites, mix 120ml with 5 litres of water when washing floor and do not mix with other products as may release dangerous gasses (Chlorine). My only shelf in my IOM bathroom is at head height when standing above the toilet bowl.
Ha. This stuff is important. Fact. No worries. I'll be away this evening and all of Saturday and half of Sunday and I'm never in a rush about these things, anyway. Take weeks, if you like, where's the hurry?
No-one should knock such a habit - in fact everyone should take it up ... my command of english (questionable as it may be at times) was helped immensely by watching hours of TV programmes I didn't understand, as well as reading any english version I could find on the labels of grocery products.
English is not your first language, Espania? I know, I know, there is maybe a clue in your user name - âEspaniaCeltâ - but I just imagined that you were a Celtic fan living in Spain. Which you may very well be, of course, but I also had you down as being Scottish. Now I must throw the possibility into the equation that youâre Spanish and living in Scotland or Spanish and living in Spain, in fact, with an affiliation towards Celtic either way. Or half-Spanish, half-Scottish (or half British/American/Antipodean, perhaps), living in either Scotland or Spain or pretty much anywhere else in the world that you fancy, with an affiliation towards Celtic (why?) either way. Did I get any of it right? Total agreement, however, on the reading of grocery packaging and the watching of âforeignâ TV. I spent the first two months of living in Portugal glued to the TV every night â in the interests of broadening my cultural understanding and helping me along with the language, to be clear, and not simply because Iâm despicably idle. (It helps if there are English subtitles, quite naturally, and in Portugal this was â and is â often the case.) Your English is immense, deeply impressive.
Dichotomy in the EBT DUAL CONTRACTS issues but also the media have been unfair to the SEVCO fans by not admitting that this is NOT the same club. D&P letter of 15th Feb 2012 showed clearly that the club and company are one and the same, similarly the letter from PLUS STOCKX. The media have failed to point out that if SEVCO and rfc are the same club, how they managed to hold membership of the SPL concurrently with membership of the SFL. If the media had been open and honest about the death of the old club and the formation of this new club, then many misunderstandings by SEVCO fans would not arise. It is understandable that due to self interest and self preservation the Scottish media present such duplicity, however honesty should have been to the foremost. The fact that SEVCO have the membership of the former rfc means that the history of the latter transfers to the former and so they could happily follow what is the SEVCO fans minds at least, the same club. The fact that the media have put self preservation in front of honesty means that SEVCO fans mistakenly believe that they have been relegated, banned from Europe etc. Even Clyde Superscoreboard has just repeated this dishonest belief. Brings Scottish football totally into disrepute. Shame, pity that it is like this.
You sound like a hard man to please - I suppose I am quite used to the IMDB style of rating, where the worst movie I have ever watched (Date Movie) gets a rather generous 2.5, despite being an abomination. When I go to the cinema or even to download a movie I wouldn't bother with anything below a 7.5 - and given that my rating system is anchored in such a manner I find it strange that you would recommend a book which you only rate at around 4.75 yourself - which in my head is now the literary equivalent of a bad American Pie spin off http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436058/ I do struggle to form a settled opinion on some tough issues and I maybe let myself down by coming out with what appears to be a settled or strong opinion, for the sake of having an opinion. As life has progressed I do more regularly find my mind in a state of: 'I'll settle this one later when I have enough time to properly judge both sides of the argument'. An example of where I am pretty close to sitting on the fence in such a manner is our current (un?)ethical system of Abortion. Without going into a huge amount of detail (as I've argued this in more detail before) I struggle to weigh up the moral differences between terminating a 23 week old pregnancy - or strangling a newly born baby with your bare hands while it is lying in an incubator at 24 weeks. One is completely legal and the other is murder - even though the intent is exactly the same with both. In saying this I don't believe a fertilised egg becomes a human at the moment of conception while at the same time accepting that there is some sort of cut off point where we need to bestow humanity upon this clump of cells - 23 weeks seems intuitively too late though, considering the viability of a human outside the womb at 24 weeks - but then where is the cut off point? It's just such a moral cliff and I don't have the answers - while leaning to one side I'll still have to park this one until later when I find more evidence from both sides Well if a God did exist it would surely be of interest to everyone, but I've got fairly generic atheist views in finding it interesting that human beings can be so illogical - or that they can be so trusting in ancient incoherent babble - or that they never wonder how their babble can be more right than the other person's babble when that other person is just as convinced about their babble as you are about yours. To answer the question in a more direct way though - if Religion did not exist and insist upon itself then I would find the existence of God no more interesting than the possible existence of a Unicorn. This is not to be taken as a sign that I am not interested in how we got here, I'm deeply interested in this stuff - I just want to base my interest on what we already know through the scientific method, which feels important to me. There is still a massive gap in knowledge but that doesn't give us an excuse to fill the gap with God. When starting with "I think it’s safe to say that God exists" I don't feel that I can agree with any of those (apart from the Rangers one). Unless you want to drag me into some Philosophical debate about whether or not God can be proven to exist as a concept - because a concept is a thing, God is a concept, therefore God is a thing which exists... I don't think I'll ever be a Philosopher because I very quickly get tired of such arguments - there could always be another derivative which drags you away from the original point of whether or not an actual being created us, to waffle over the differing meanings for the noun prescribed to this creator: "Ah maybe God is Mother Nature, who through evolution created us?" - Nah, we were talking about that big guy in the sky, with the beard, who has no issues indiscriminately murdering the first born children of an entire people - if you wanna talk about evolution let's discuss it in the context of evolution. If we didn't have this preconceived idea of God, if we wiped the theistic slate clean and started afresh with our current level of Scientific knowledge - and the idea that we know of nothing until we have evidence of it - then there would never be such arguments in favour of trying to shove the faith square in the round hole of logic - there would only be logic, which may or may not lead us to the how and why answers that we seek. You never know, as unlikely as it may seem (to me personally anyway) it might even lead us all the way to a creator.
