If thou gazest long into the Pit, the Pit will also gaze into thee

NECSS lost Dawkins, but got this crank dipshit instead: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/dear-skeptics-bash-homeopathy-and-bigfoot-less-mammograms-and-war-more/ Arrgh, that's really annoying, I've occasionally enjoyed his articles in the past, shame to see him Saying the Right Words.

Basically the Clinton administration could not have a coherent internal or foreign policy. The resulting indecisiveness and inefficiency could have severe effects on the economy. Recession fears are growing: the Chinese economy is slowing down, the manufacturing sector is already in recession, and ...

Hembling has made two claims: a) the feminism is "in the tradition" of Rosacrucians b) that the founder of feminism was Helena Blavatsky. Both claims are incorrect. ... Your mirror-climbing efforts remind me of when the SJWs bent over backwards to justify Myers' "haven for rapists" claims as not im...

Interesting analysis of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council from tl;dr. A couple of old friends crop up in unexpected places (i.e. not just where they're officially at as members of the council):-

It went from bad to worse, and did lead to to some form of dogmatism that resembles at times religious fundamentalism. I disagree that post-modernism is a carbuncle on the Left, as a classical liberal I'd say it's a pretty inevitable logical outcome of the Left's support of failed things . After al...

I miss hedge porn. I swear kids nowadays don't know they're born. All they have to do is type in whatever they want to see and there it is. They're spoilt as fuck. They'll never know the sheer joy of being 12 and seeing a distant page poking out of a hedge or blowing forlornly across a field. No ot...

I agree with you. It's more of a matter of respecting each other's individual rights than of acting towards an abstract "greater good". Yeah, this is really the kind of crux of it. It's not that greater good questions aren't relevant, it's that individuals and their rights are logically more fundam...

And she's basically done. Artists like Ke$ha are like bananas. They have a very short shelf life if they are not constantly performing and releasing hits and making the scene, which she has NOT been doing for years. She's up against hitting her stale date. If she were supremely talented, then she m...

Mary P. Koss was the author of the 1980 research published in Ms. Magazine, which concluded 1 in 4 college women had been raped. Koss arrived at this number by disregarding the vast majority of those women's own assesment-- that the sex they had while drinking, or while 'held down', etc.-- had been...

Yet another NUS (National Union of Students) plonker turns out to be a massive retarded regressive lefty, with a hate-on for Maajid Nawaz. Obviously, Nawaz isn't a "proper Muslim" - i.e. an Islamist who wants gay people dead and women subjected, etc. Maajid is one of those strange Muslim liberals w...

I'll just leave this here:- Atheism is not a modern invention from the western Enlightenment, but actually dates back to the ancient world, according to a new book by a Cambridge academic – which challenges the assumption that humanity is naturally predisposed to believe in gods. http://www.theguar...

I'll just leave this here:- Atheism is not a modern invention from the western Enlightenment, but actually dates back to the ancient world, according to a new book by a Cambridge academic – which challenges the assumption that humanity is naturally predisposed to believe in gods. http://www.theguar...

Communists in general have often been queasy about the theory of evolution by natural selection. It's likely a reaction to the Social Darwinism promoted by the extreme right (which is pretty stupid in its own way). Well, isn't it also because the implications of natural selection are often that man...

SJWs will crumble when some of them will get older. The core of the SJW support comes from college-age people. Give the current generation five years and they'll realize how the world works. In 20-30 years' time, we'll have a thick layer of bitter, disgruntled PZs in the lower strata of academia. T...

Shut up about philosophers, bunch a' fuckin' yahoos.

I've typoed worse things. :/ You know the Sargon thing has got me thinking about the origins of the SJW. I've been online since 1991/1992 and part of forums and chats. I don't remember anything SJW-ish until the introduction of trigger warnings in fanfiction (which are the online equivalent of code...

There's a difference in saying that SOME parts of society or the law are matriarchal or even downright GYNOCENTRIC (They aren't the same, anymore than Patriarchy and Andrarchy are the same though feminists love to mix them up) without making it some sort of UNILATERAL plot throughout all society an...

So he's right. And if rape wasn't such an abhorrent crime (not as bad as murder, but STILL) and perhaps if I didn't have a family member who was raped I might agree with him about the Jury Nullfication thing. But it really is the only big thing that I"m aware of that I disagree with his stance on (...

So does this We wish to use this incident as an opportunity to have a frank and open discussion of the deeper issues implicated here, which are causing conflict both within the skeptical community and within society as a whole. mean they are going to address the fact that they are a bunch of asshol...

Yes, gurugeorge, there's always a kernel of truth, isn't there? Or, even if not a kernel of truth, at least something worth thinking about, worth contemplating, and maybe worth trying to refine philosophically, or knock up into a more scientific, falsifiable hypothesis. But they never get to that s...

Enjoyed the Sargon livestream, nice to hear voices. Some ramblings arising therefrom:- I thought it was quite appropriate for Sargon to draw Gamergate parallels. It seems that you guys and gamers have been two examples of somewhat successful major resistance to the SJW Zombie Apocalypse, so it's ins...

Expressing the wish that someone "get well soon" has the same actual effect as praying for them. Most people know this, but do it anyway, as a way to signal to others that they have positive feelings about the ill person (who is almost always a person in good standing within the community) and that...

...present both "sides" to the argument as fairly as possible. If you were previously of that parish, you know how unlikely this really is. I think you'll be surprised. There's a trailer for it floating around somewhere. She's been interviewed by MRA folks - it's pretty obvious that she was moved b...

I'm comfortable with aligning with MRA/MRM. There are legitimate questions about whether some laws are skewed too much towards women nowadays. Also, circumcision is a a thing, and domestic abuse by women is a thing, and almost zero support for men who suffer from it is a thing. I don't see anything ...

2) AFAICT, gurugeorge has determined that alien races do exist, so we should follow creativity_lebensborn33's lead and start outbreeding the aliens before they get here. They're never going to get here, nobody's ever going to get here. There's no Singularity, there's only the Great Filter. There's ...

A couple of mornings ago I woke up in a cold sweat exclaiming: "HOLY SHIT!!! THIS IS THE GREAT FILTER!!!!" (If there are any here who don't know what that is, it's a hypothetical X that's the hypothesized cause of why we don't see the kind of evidence of advanced alien civilizations we should see al...

Btw, many of you guys probably know about this book, but if you don't, I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend Roger Scruton's book Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left. I found the original version of this tremendous book in a bookstall back in the 80s. Scruton is a super-sharp philoso...

So what's the answer? I'm sure it's partly all the factors we're talking about. But I have an odd suspicion that the bizarre, disproportionate Islamic outrage against Muhammed cartoons (and maybe going back to the original version of it, the Salman Rushdie phenomenon) was some sort of trigger or ca...

Eh, quite frankly that, all of that has less to do with Obama himself, and more to do with the aftermath of Rovian red meat politics, the rise of the Tea Party and everything that ensued after that. In short, the issue is actually with the GOP, not the Dems. Actually saying that, let me just say th...

Your next point is boiler plate sound bites. "Divider not uniter, no hopey changey" = greater racial tension in the US today than there has been for a long time, greater political tension in the US today than there has been for a long time (civil-war-ish feeling on the horizon), mild abuse of presi...

Your next point is boiler plate sound bites. "Divider not uniter, no hopey changey" = greater racial tension in the US today than there has been for a long time, greater political tension in the US today than there has been for a long time (civil-war-ish feeling on the horizon), mild abuse of presi...

Lsuoma wrote: The length is verging on Carrierosity here: hmmm....

*rips off gurugeorge disguise and gives finger while disco-dancing off into the distance*

The Left is demoralized at the moment. It has to be quite difficult to come to terms with the fact that a) golden boy Obama's screwed up badly at home How? It's the economy, stupid :) Plus he's a divider not a uniter, has offered the opposite of hope and change, and his flagship legacy thingie, Oba...

I remember him saying he had been big into Ayn Rand back in the day and became enraged after being defeated in debate by someone who really knew their stuff. He knew he needed to work on epistemology, get down to foundations so he couldn't be mislead again. Well, I've been in similar situations whe...

"which means America is ready for a socialist president." Nah, not going to happen, Sanders' vote is skewed towards the very young and very old, which isn't going to be enough. The Left is demoralized at the moment. It has to be quite difficult to come to terms with the fact that a) golden boy Obam...

Carrier does exactly the opposite: first he stakes a position, then he selectively sifts through data he doesn't understand in search of anything he can use or abuse as supporting evidence—typically by quote-mining or misinterpreting it—and then he claims victory. He will never modify his position....

[Dicky mode on] Before I was even an adult, I was out there, delivering much needed supplies under the cover of darkness to desperate people in need. But oh no, I only say this impress the ladies. Yeah. That's the ticket. [Dicky mode off] When I was a teenager I had a weekend job as a milkman's hel...

PZ's mad "I can’t take no more" Blocks and unfollows Richard Dawkins. Richard must be devastated. I've responded to Myers' post that you linked with the following:- It’s not in appropriate at all. If “feminism” were a logically consistent movement based on the principles of reason, individualism an...

The lid is getting blown off regarding immigrants in Europe, though. I'm starting to think we're about to witness a rather sudden shift in politics as liberal policies are resoundingly repudiated. I agree, I think Cologne, rather than Paris, was the turning point. It's just impossible for a liberal...

Hi folks, thanks for the registration. I'm here because of Sargon's passing mention of this board on his youtube vid re. reactions to the Dawkins thing. I spent a good while last night enjoying old and new posts here. I'm 57, a musician, rationalist, amateur of philosophy, classical liberal/libertar...

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