2008-04-04 13:19:42: Does a mastery of something unpleasant make it more reprehensible, or subvert its reprehensibility, or both?
.. or none. Art is not about pleasing, neither is beauty: it's about moving. "Unpleasant" is part of human experience, so emotions based on unpleasantness are part of any artist's range: sadness, suffering, anguish, ...
2008-03-13 17:58:45: It is possible to believe that "Good" is in the overall direction of evolution and "bad" is just random, statistical grinding, part of the price to pay for the machinery to work.
Nature is incredibly wasteful and messy. Only one in 200 million sperms will reach an ova, not even counting ...
2008-02-16 09:34:04: Thanks, Josh: I have been playing for a while with the idea of posting my language peeve on AskMe or MetaTalk but it doesn't fit either. Here is the perfect venue for futile language peeves:
"Hive mind": I hate it, it's disgusting and misleading. There is no hive. When you are ...
2007-12-19 12:58:30: One of my possible answers is already in there.
It's a scenario based not on faith but on a possible outcome of scientific facts. Outside the box, sure, but why not?
With this scenario, they are around right now and have been for quite a while.
In the parameters of this scenario, it's ...
2007-12-12 15:28:36: From our point of view, extra-terrestrial life or a divine being are more or less the same. (Arthur C. Clarke's "A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".) If aliens "land", it's a miracle: the only way for them to come here is faster than light and we have not ...
2007-12-09 07:46:09: ND¢ is right: we have been at the top of the food chain for more than 100 000 years and we have already eliminated all potential threats, including the most likely candidates, Neanderthals. There are no threats in the animal kingdom on the foreseeable horizon.
We already are the best ...
2007-11-30 11:36:10: A friend of friend died recently because two successive liver transplant failed.
Selling or buying body parts is messy and very sad.
It's just about desperation and fear of death on the buyer side, about desperation and abject poverty on the seller side. The fact that it is happening doesn't make it ...