02 MAR 2019 by ideonexus
Logic as Magical Thinking
These battles over definition are not taking place in the same universe as the one in which men throw around these terms online. But for the Logic Guys, the purpose of using these words — the sacred, magic words like “logic,” “objectivity,” “reason,” “rationality,” “fact” — is not to invoke the actual concepts themselves. It’s more a kind of incantation, whereby declaring your argument the single “logical” and “rational” one magically makes it so — and by e... 1 
notes
notes29 NOV 2016 by ideonexus
Earthseed 66
66. Adulthood
Earthseed is adulthood.It’s trying our wings,Leaving our mother,Becoming men and women.
We’ve been children,Fighting for the full breasts,The protective embrace,The soft lap.Children do this.But Earthseed is adulthood.
Adulthood is both sweet and sad.It terrifies.It empowers.We are men and women now.We are Earthseed.And the Destiny of EarthseedIs to take root among the stars.
∞ = Δ 1 notes
notes30 MAY 2016 by ideonexus
Rebuking the "Good Old Days"
When you hear someone longing for the "good old days," take it with a grain of salt. (Laughter and applause.) Take it with a grain of salt. We live in a great nation and we are rightly proud of our history. We are beneficiaries of the labor and the grit and the courage of generations who came before. But I guess it's part of human nature, especially in times of change and uncertainty, to want to look backwards and long for some imaginary past when everything worked, and the economy humme... 1 notes
notes19 NOV 2015 by ideonexus
Reza Aslan's Eloquent Dismissal of Generalizations
REZA ASLAN, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE: Well, I like Bill Maher. I have been on his show a bunch of times. He's a comedian.
But, you know, frankly, when it comes to the topic of religion, he's not very sophisticated in the way that he thinks. I mean, the argument about the female genital mutilation being an Islamic problem is a perfect example of that. It's not an Islamic problem. It's an African problem.
(CROSSTALK)
CAMEROTA: Well, wait, wait, wait.
(CROSSTALK)
CAMEROTA: Hol... 1 notes
notes30 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
The Bible is One Long Celebration of Violence
Like the works of Homer, the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was set in the late 2nd millennium BCE but written more than five hundred years later.12 But unlike the works of Homer, the Bible is revered today by billions of people who call it the source of their moral values. The world’s bestselling publication, the Good Book has been translated into three thousand languages and has been placed in the nightstands of hotels all over the world. Orthodox Jews kiss it with their prayer shawls; witn... 1 notes
notesAlso mentions King Solomon and how his solution to carve a baby in half was horrific. The prostitutes must have known he was capable of doing it.
18 MAY 2015 by ideonexus
How Gender Bias Impacts Men
Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.
Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by society despite my needing his presence as a child as much as my mother’s.
I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make them look less “macho”—in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49 years of age; eclipsing road...
1 24 DEC 2013 by ideonexus
Turing's Two Great Insights
Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer, began by thinking about the highly conscious and deliberate step-by-step calculations performed by human “computers” like the women decoding German ciphers at Bletchley Park. His first great insight was that the same processes could be instantiated in an entirely unconscious machine, with the same results. A machine could rationally decode the German ciphers using the same steps that the conscious “computers” went through. And the uncons...
1 Alison Gopnik on how the father of the computer realized machines could do the work of women "computers," and how much of hte human brain was like a computer.
30 NOV 2013 by TGAW
Elridge Cleaver on Prison's Effect of Sense of Self
You may find this difficult to understand but it is very easy for one in prison to lose his sense of self. And if he has been undergoing all kinds of extreme, involved, and unregulated changes, then he ends up not knowing who he is. Take the point of being attractive to women. You can easily see how a man can lose his arrogance or certainty on that point while in prison! When he's in the free world, he gets constant feedback on how he looks from the number of female heads he turns when he... 1 notes
notesElridge Cleaver talks about how prison has a detrimental effect on one's self esteem
18 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
Gender is Not Binary
he gender binary is the artificial division of the world into things that are "masculine" or "for men" and things that are "feminine" or "for women". One of the starkest ways to think of this is to consider the phrase "opposite sexes/genders" (as opposed to "different sexes/genders"), when both men and women are human beings with fundamentally many more commonalities than differences.
The division is artificial in several ways:
much of it is very clearly socially constructed. For example,...Interesting concept from feminist and homosexual literature. The scientific point of view on this is that human males and females are dimorphic to various degrees.
28 MAY 2013 by ideonexus
Beginnings of Speciation in Romantic Paintings
She wandered on her own, looking at the portraits. The big crowd scenes were too much for her, like epic movies all jammed into a single frame. The subjects of the portraits, on the other hand, looked at her with expressions she recognized immediately. “I am always me, I am always new, I am always me”—for eight centuries they had been saying it. Nothing but women and men. One woman had her left nipple exposed, just under the curve of a necklace; in most periods that would have been tran... 1 notes
notesCharacter walking around an art museum.
