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Al wrote:Not quite 4000.

Interesting. It was exactly 4000, when I posted.

I wonder if some of your old posts have been junked.

He says, casually dropping his 4000th post.

I hope to finish my PhD thesis before Christmas, which might, should, be possible. However, I feel I have wasted four years of my life. My supervisor has a heart of stone. If I am appreciated, she keeps it to herself. Feeling low during the last tiring run of any big project is common. Keep going, ...

The most depressing thing for many of us who were around for the birth of the commercial internet, is that those early days of the web, and the rise of Napster, may well be our Summer of Love. It was a brief period in which we believed we could make the world a better place, before the worst of huma...

It's like usenet without the binaries.

more links: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/dec/14/students-standrewsuniversity http://www.thesaint-online.com/2012/12/shocked-saddened-and-deeply-regretful-champagners-issue-apology/ Even assuming that it actually was champagne, and that it was all wasted, the reactions are silly political...

And what's wrong with critiquing racist attitudes? Not a damn thing, in my opinion. Getting someone's article taken down and then proceeding to publically tear them to pieces for the content... that I'm less comfortable with. EDIT: Here was the URL http://www.thesaint-online.com/2012/03/africa-trav...

I think the worst thing is that the person posting the objection got the original article(s) taken down from the Saint, leaving most people no opportunity to see for themselves if the piece was as bad as stated, or if the critical response has merely cherry picked things out of context. I think it's...

Look at those two societies and tell me which is better. If you can't agree on something as simple as that, the rest of what I have to say need not be said. Well, of course I agree that the second society is better. You’ve told me that it is , and you’ve indicated that everyone gets along, and nobo...

Why? Give sound and valid reasoning why I should expend even more time explaining my position. To you. Normative should as in 'ought'? No reason. But if you want to improve your viewpoints, there have been some fairly decent criticisms levelled so far. I've made a few of them in a new thread, to av...

I’ve started a new thread to take a look at RedCelt’s take on Humanism, specifically focussing on its presentation as a superior alternative to Feminism. As I said earlier, I don’t think I’ve properly engaged with RedCelt’s actual argument, and I probably do owe him that. RedCelt, although I think i...

Our society is also stacked against young, straight, white men in one important way - they have far less opportunity to consider their place in the world. They have fewer chances to come to understand minority issues. They are not constantly caused to think about what they think, and what others th...

RedCelt, this really *isn't* going anywhere. I feel like you've painted yourself into a corner, but I also feel like you've got a lot of paint and don't mind adding extra coats, and meanwhile everyone else is just watching it dry. And, for what it’s worth, I agree that it’s reached the point where I...

That isn't what feminism is. Feminism is predominately defined in terms of the equality of the sexes. Not just ‘slightly concerned with’, but predominately *defined* in those terms. As such, it is *necessarily* concerned with the rights of men. Don’t believe me? Go check any major dictionary. I gua...

My birth could have been avoided, if the Catholic sisters that educated my mother's village had also educated them about the practicalities of condom use. But they didn't, because a man who lives far away in a palace of marble and gold says that condoms are unnatural. I initially wrote a couple of ...

How free was I or is anyone in that situation? Mortal sin requires full freedom of action, I'm not sure whether a suicide victim had that. To be quite fair to RC for a change, despite my baiting you slightly on the topic of Mortal Sin, Catholic doctrine does recognise the point you make. (No surpri...

None of which are sufficient leverage to explain (yet again) why feminism isn't about egalitarianism. Go read that thread again if the concept still baffles you. This is everything you needed to say. It shows that: a) You know exactly to what I'm referring: your own views on feminist theory, and th...

Last year was the most difficult of my life hitherto. It was when I could no longer pretend to myself that I did not have same-sex attraction. I fell into a awful depression and came very close to suicide. But that's a mortal sin, too. And it's worse, because you don't get a chance to say sorry: yo...

I've always quite liked the way that the political compass separates economic and liberal values out. In that respect I come across as strongly libertarian - which is something I'd never really thought of myself as before, but I suppose it makes sense - but economically I'm a lot more central.

If they were scientific, their own political tendencies would be irrelevant. Any result would have had scientific interest, surely? Possibly. There are some things to which it's almost impossible to apply the holistic scientific process, and I wonder whether this is not one of them. The list of pap...