To be acquainted today with the results of the public opinions on both sides- Palestinian–Israeli -, is a necessary and valuable attribute to the long term viability of the whole peace process. When both public opinions, Israeli and the Palestinian...
Either greed belongs in a war zone, or it doesn't. You can't unleash it in the name of sparking an economic boom and then be shocked when Halliburton overcharges for everything from towels to gas, when Parsons' sub, sub, sub-contractor builds a polic...
There is a lovely feature of the American psyche which rejects the notion that there are victims. In America, attitude is a magical elixir that cures everything. People are supposed to believe that they create their realities, and are solely responsi...
Present global culture is a kind of arrogant newcomer. It arrives on the planetary stage following four and a half billion years of other acts, and after looking about for a few thousand years declares itself in possession of eternal truths. But in a...
Thirty years ago [written 2009], over-regulation, over-taxation, mis-regulation, statism, state corporatism, and economic folly, cosiness and regulatory capture, and a crescent ideological enemy without, who were assisted by enemies – both fifth co...
[first lines] Helinger: Mathematicians won the war. Mathematicians broke the Japanese codes... and built the A-bomb. Mathematicians... like you. The stated goal of the Soviets is global Communism. In medicine or economics, in technology or space, bat...
It was Dostoevsky, once again, who drew from the French Revolution and its seeming hatred of the Church the lesson that "revolution must necessarily begin with atheism." That is absolutely true. But the world had never before known a godlessness as o...
Justice requires not only the ceasing and desisting of injustice but also requires either punishment or reparation for injuries and damages inflicted for prior wrongdoing. The essence of justice is the redistribution of gains earned through the perpe...
the freedom of individuals has – we may presume – an anthropological foundation. This is admittedly a doctrine which cannot be proved or disproved in the normal sense of the word ‘prove’. And yet our hope that freedom is not going to be ultim...
I have been taunted on various platforms recently for becoming a neo-conservative, and have been the object of some fascinating web-site and blog stuff, from the isolationist Right as well as from the peaceniks, who both argue in a semi-literate way ...
Philo of Larisa, head of the Academy in Athens....inspired Cicero with a passion for philosophy, and in particular for the theories of Skepticism, which asserted that knowledge of the nature of things is in the nature of things unattainable. Such ide...
According to Teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired straight at a mark; according to , organisms are like grapeshot of which one hits something and the rest fall wide. For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made for the ...
It is only rather recently that science has begun to make peace with its magical roots. Until a few decades ago, it was common for histories of science either to commence decorously with Copernicus's heliocentric theory or to laud the rationalism of ...
The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called “engaged withdrawal,”mass defection by those wishing to create ...
Yes, sir, but the Librarian likes bananas, sir." "Very nourishin' fruit, Mr Stibbons." "Yes, sir. Although, funnily enough it's not actually a fruit, sir." "Really?" "Yes, sir. Botanically, it's a type of fish, sir. According to my theory it's cladis...
Truth is always stranger than fiction. We craft fiction to match our sense of how things ought to be, but truth cannot be crafted. Truth is, and truth has a way of astonishing us to our knees. Reminding us, that the universe does not exist to fulfill...
I don't really remember making a decision. I don't remember thinking to myself, "Yes, I will do this," or, "No, I will not do that." They tell you what to do, and you do it. You don't reflect on it. You don't ponder its meaning. You don't explore its...
Let’s face it: suffering discredits goodness. I’m agnostic in practice though faith-based in theory. I used to pray but now know he’ll do what he darn well pleases when he darn well pleases. Will he listen? Maybe. We have a book that says so, b...
Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intellige...
I perceive that it is far more practical to begin at the beginning and discuss theories. I see that the men who killed each other about the orthodoxy of the Homoousion were far more sensible than the people who are quarrelling about the Education Act...
It remains to mention some of the ways in which people have spoken misleadingly of logical form. One of the commonest of these is to talk of 'the logical form' of a statement; as if a statement could never have more than one kind of formal power; as ...
