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Daily. So much world, so little time.

It's a fairly cheap argument, in my opinion. One can simply claim that the laws of logic and morality hold independent of God, i.e. that omnipotence is not absolute (see, for example, the Euthyphro Dillemma and discussion on the omnipotence paradox). A more sophisticated kind of argument (which...

Only if we accept a psychiatric vocabulary with an imperialistic conception of rationality (note also that the current DSM allows for culturally appropriate delusions).

On Decarte's Cogito: I'm not entirely sure what Tolle is saying, especially in the latter half of the quote, but I will make a few comments. The quote reminds me, in part, of Heidegger's critique of the Cogito in Being and Time in which he suggests that Descartes spends a great deal of time...

(And eventually led me to mythical filicide).

True, my old avatar was le pimp, but I felt it was about time to depict its consumption. For some reason gigantomachy played upon my mind.

Heh, you leave a rather large relativistic domain if 'cogito ergo sum' is the only certainty. I agree that the general competing approach is the attempt to derive moral claims from 'cogito'-like premises whose logical force is hard to deny, e.g. Levinas finds a call to ethics in the alterity (=...

The Lions are kept here.

Anxiety. Quoth Heidegger (Being & Time, H. 265-6): "[T]he state-of-mind which can hold open the utter and constant threat to itself arising from Dasein's [= the existing world-bound being's] ownmost individualized being, is anxiety... Being-towards-death is essentially anxiety." Loose...

Some other options: (1) Paint the problem of the absolute as fundamentally meaningless within the relativist frame Relativist: "There is no one, singular truth" You: "So there are no absolutes?" Relativist: "Mu" You: "Wut?" --- (2) Restrict the domain of relativist claims...

Heh, case in point. The dominant economics tends to be that which legitimizes political/power structures, not that which best fits the facts or describes reality (of course, I say this while lacking an adequate metatheory with which to judge which economic theory is 'the best').

Economists wish they dealt in facts (*insert physics envy*).

Some people dig the maxilofacial stuff, but for me dentistry is a less interesting subset of medicine proper (it makes use of anatomy, physiology, pathology, microbiology, pharmacology, etc... in a similar, but more limited, way). If you find dentistry vaguely interesting then, by extension...

I do conceed that Asian (females) are the proportionately dominant demographic and Caucasian (males = me) are least common, but it nonetheless feels relatively balanced. Do note that ~ 20% of the UNSW intake is rural, the majority of which I would judge to be Anglo-Celtic/European. If anything...

It won't answer the 'why' question, but the findings are interesting nonetheless: Gene Expression: Traits of men who prefer breasts, booty, or legs

Speaking of occupational cancers and academia... Also, on word roots, mesothelioma does arise from mesodermal tissue - i.e. tissue derived from the 'middle' layer of the embryo (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Cell_differentiation.gif ).

We have similar changes taking place at UNSW. Most degrees require a small number of general education units. Arts majors are bringing in 'capstone' units and units offering moral indoctrination and vocational skills (e.g. UNSW Handbook - ).

Moral brainwashing from a young age.

Ran seems to have missed the dinstinction (sketchy though it may sometimes be) between positive and negative liberties (/rights). Even reading his essay as a polemic against positive rights it comes off as a rant. More than that, I find it hard to take him seriously: e.g. "Being out of balance...