A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: ‘What is there?’ It can be answered, moreover, in a word—’Everything’—and everyone will accept this answer as true.
Willard van Orman Quine, “On What There Is”
I was reminded of Quine’s famous opening line by the following.
“I believe that [...]
Posted on March 30th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: religion | 6 Comments »
I rarely discuss religion or politics with anyone I don’t already know well. I save it for this blog, or shut up altogether. It took me a long time to develop that discipline.
I remember an incident that took place while I was an undergrad at USF, Tampa. It was a Sunday night and I was [...]
Posted on March 29th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General, politics | 1 Comment »
Polish author science-fiction writer Stanislaw Lem died Monday in his home city, Krakow. He was 84 years old.
I preferred his short stories to his novels. My favorite Lem story, The New Cosmogony, is found in A Perfect Vacuum. The story presents a startling theory concerning the universal silence, the total absence of signals indicating intelligent [...]
Posted on March 28th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: books | Comments Off
Here’s the theory.
There is nothing wishy-washy about Islam. The essence of the faith as propagated by Muhammad, (Peace be upon him), is radical and revolutionary. Stripped of the time-serving interpretations of theologians (theologians being the bane of Islam) it stands for the empowerment of the weak, the humbling of the mighty, the liberation of women, [...]
Posted on March 28th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General | Comments Off
What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and [...]
Posted on March 27th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General | 13 Comments »
I upgraded WordPress from version 1.5.x to version 2.0.2. My old theme, Borderline Chaos, does not appear to work with the latest version of WordPress.
I have looked at the site using four different browsers (Firefox, Opera, Camino, and Safari). I am not seeing the same theme on each browser, even after flushing the caches. I [...]
Posted on March 26th, 2006 by pwyll
Filed under: General | 3 Comments »
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