Philosophy
Paul Root Wolpe – Ethical Boundaries For Bio-Tech
by Nick Glossop on March 29, 2013
Paul Root Wolpe, of Emory University, does not spend much time making an argument for clear ethical boundaries for the conduct of bio-technology, rather he just lists off some of the more startling greatest hits of the field, and the argument more or less makes itself: bio-luminescent monkeys, bug-bots, robo-rats, animals as donor part farms (mouse ears), computer chips comprised of self-aggregated rat neurons, creatures with neural implants that …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 369 – Greetings, Conqueror!
by Marty Schwartz on January 6, 2013
Congratulations! You just discovered a brand new island, enslaved its native peoples, and now you’re set to start your very own country! The first thing you need to do is pick out a system of government that will maximize your new nation’s wealth, support its security, and best serve its people, or at the very least, those people who are in charge.
You could opt for a democracy, a constitutional …
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Zen ~ Bigger, Longer and Uncut
by Nick Glossop on July 15, 2012
While Alan Watts, author of Way of Zen does the talking, Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park provide the visuals.
The problem of life
Love the phrase ‘intellectual procupinism’.
Via Open Culture…
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TEDx Summit 2012 On Now, In Doha
by Lorelei Loveridge on April 17, 2012
I am. Emerging from this overwhelming sense that there is nothing else to talk about in the Middle East but Syria, which frankly nauseates me and is more than I can handle at present (I mean…insert expletive three letter acronym with exclamation and question mark). Yeah, I went into hiding, I know, sigh, again. I just could not find the words, though surely someone else has been talking about …
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Fists Of Negation (Boots Of The Qualitative Leap)
by Nick Glossop on April 5, 2012
Trained Sinologist René Viénet was expelled from China in 1966 for his anti-Maoist sentiments and so, perhaps, revenge was on his mind when he paired the pulp martial arts film Crush with dialogs of New Left critique-speak and radical bafflegab, but the results are hilarious. Can Dialectics Break Bricks?(1973) is a Shaolin détournement of epic contortions. Will the sadistic bureaucrats prevail, or can a lone proletarian hero defeat them, …
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Backdoor Broadcasting Company
by Andrew Loewen on April 1, 2012
The Backdoor Broadcasting Company is a two-pronged mobile recording and podcast operation based in Oxford, England. The “Academic Service” records lectures, symposia, and conferences throughout the UK and makes them available as free podcasts. The “Sound Experiment” wing does the same with new and experimental music, sound art, and “sonic events.” Archives for both are extensive, ranging from such topics as religion in 18-century Norfolk to Islam’s influence on jazz, …
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“The Only Way To Be In Love”
by Craig Elliott on February 14, 2012
Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Letters of Note has this flowery response from Ayn Rand to a fan who had a question about a particular line in The Fountainhead – “To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I’.”
Any person who wants to live for others — for one sweetheart or for the whole of mankind — is a selfless nonentity. An independent
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“Whose idea was it anyway?”: revisiting M. Nourbese Philip
by Michelle Lovegrove Thomson on February 13, 2012
Several years ago I read a moving piece by Toronto-based poet and writer Marlene Nourbese Philip, entitled Whose idea was it anyway?.
The nine-page text is a meditation on—-can you guess?—-an idea so excruciating, awful, gargantuan… One tries to evoke the man who hit upon the task first; one attempts to imagine the moment, the bristling of hairs on his neck…
Philosophy, medicine, jurisprudence, economics—no discipline would
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Saudi Arabia Opens Its First Ever Interfaith Centre…In Vienna
by Lorelei Loveridge on January 17, 2012
Though the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has opened its first ever interfaith dialogue centre in Vienna, there will always be naysayers who scream that Saudi Arabia is corrupt at its Wahhabist core. Women still do not enjoy the basic right to drive or travel without consent of the senior male member of their family, and Islam is the only religion granted any public freedom of expression. Let’s make that Sunni …
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The Roots of Austerity
by Andrew Loewen on January 2, 2012
In the midst of 2011′s transition from the Great Recession to a global economic slump, this site has highlighted lucid and accessible analysis from Steve Keen, David Harvey, Costas Lapavitsas, Nouriel Roubini, and Richard Wolff. Capitalism Is the Crisis is a feature length documentary that synthesizes such analyses, using short interview clips with leading critical thinkers such as Naomi Klein, Chris Hedges, Leo Panitch…
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