sumbloke

All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing will be well. And if that don't make you fell better I'll resort to quoting Bette Midler songs... did you ever know...

Chag Sameach for 5766! I thought of posting a dreidle song, but then I thought I'd post a song that really is about Hanukah. Hanukah celebrates the liberation of Jerusalem from the Syrian Greek Seleucids by a liberation army lead by Yehudah Makkabee. Holday Of Lghts Eight candles shine for the Maccabees Eight candles shine for the Maccabees Down from the mountains with Liberty's sword They came like the flame of the Lord Dance the Horah, light the Menorah This is the time of joy The road to freedom With the Maccabees leading the way Eight candles shine for the Maccabees Eight candles shine for the Maccabees The tyrant was routed with all of his men And the temple made holy again Dance the Horah, light the Menorah This is the time of joy The road to freedom With the Maccabees leading the way Eight candles shine for the Maccabees Eight candles shine for the Maccabees Chanukah's children will never forget The glory that shines for us yet Dance the Horah, light the Menorah This is the time of joy The road to freedom With the Maccabees leading the way

Eek! Sorry! How does one delete a comment? pushed the wrong button!

Give em space if they're friends. It's a shock for some people and it takes them time to work it all out. Sometimes it seems like people just can't process the information. If they turn out to be real phobes and bigots then you may have to let go but give them a chance and let them know that you are giving them a chance. I hope it turns out ok bro - big people will generally come round when they think things through. xx sumbloke

One of the things I had to get used to when I started going to a gay youth group when I was 14 was simply that not all gay boys are like me - not all gay boys are alike anybody after all - and also that if I was honest I didn't really like all the gay boys I met (I dunno why but I used to get on better with the gay girls - story of my life). The fact is that I did think for a while that I'd never find people I liked and would fit in with but that was really missing the point. What I got out of going to youth groups was mostly confidence and that confidence really allowed me to start being more outgoing in the wider world - not to hang out more and more with exclusively gay people. I have lots of friends who are like me in one way or another - whether it's music, religion, skateboarding or films - and most of them are straight: that's the way the world is and to be honest it doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is not being with gay people but loving myself and wanting to be around people who accept that I'm gay without bigotry. I fit in lots of places and not all or even many of them are gay. While you - for good reasons - are very focussed on the problem of your own sexuality you probably won't feel you fit in anywhere but if you start to accept your sexuality unconditionally then you'll be able to make friends honestly and without reservation; without worrying if they are gay or not. You're not the rarity you think you are - trust me. There are lots of gay men out there who have similar feelings about flamboyantly gay people or about promiscuity (me, I'm not that concerned about flamboyance but promiscuity pretty much leaves me cold). I think that the confidence to go out in the world and open yourself to the possibility of meeting them will only come though when you recognise your own self-worth and reject the judgments of your sexuality that cause you so much anxiety. So, please, start to love yourself. If you can't feel it in your heart at least try acknowledging with your head that gay is good - as good as straight anyway. You've heard people's philosophical arguments against suicide and their retelling of their own experiences and feelings, so I'll just add one thing: suicide is a very permanent solution to what is probably a temporary problem. peace and loving kindness, sumbloke

How shall I tell you this....Latin is easy. I know that's partly because I've been doing it forever but it's still easier than Greek and it's way easier than Pali. (I'm not supposed to say this stuff because we're supposed to insist that all languages are equally easy - well whoever decided that didn't have to choose between Latin and spainish). The fact is dude...there's only five declensions all you have to learn is five standard declensions and then remember which nouns are in which...it's easy! The problem with the tenses is not really remembering them all - they aren't hard since most are actually derivable from earlier compound forms so if you don't know one you can work it out (amabo from amare habeo etc), what is more difficult is getting the sequence of tenses right. Once you're used to it reading Latin or translatin into English is child's play the only dificult things are translating into Latin and construing. I don't really understand why they make non-specialists do that stuff since they'll never ever need it - all they really need is to read a Latin text.

Right. Well. OK. Libbonobo has demonstrated pretty clearly that there's no meaningful way to say that anyone is better off - because for example their pain has ended - after they kill themselves. It's not easy to grasp the nettle since the argumentation about what seems to be such a very substantive issue is largely technical (or formal if you like). I hadn't been meaning to argue that the "surviving" body was free from pain - though I thank you for offering what would have been an elegant face saving exit! Although I'm a materialist of sorts I would claim that sensation/consciousness is only identifiable in living bodies (including brains of course). So, where does this leave me. I wanted to say that suicide might be allowable in some circumstances and that even if you required that an act bring about some good, then you might still allow it. My problem is that I still want to say that! Let me think on 't.

Apologies to HiCollegeGuy. Libbonobo is quite right. I didn't read the original post with enough care and responded both too quickly and also way beyond my competence. I shouldn't be offering advice about the therapy that anyone is or isn't receiving. Yes. Agreed. I was just kind of shocked by the image that I created of HiCollegeGuy in a moral philosophy seminar when he wanted to be in therapy! First, I really did mean absolute - that is not relative to any particular circumstance. Without an external source of moral authority I'd find it difficult to conceive of an absolute proscription against suicide. Your point about identity and suffering makes some sense to me but one - it relies on a notion of subject that is divorced from object - of a consciousness or agent without any object of consciousness or goals of agency. This "disembodied" subject exists without suffering or any other experience. You see, I don't think it is just vacuously that things that don't exist don't suffer - I think it's a very important perspective especially for a suffering being. If your suffering is bad enough then maybe ending it at the expense of your identity is a desirable outcome. The counterfactual arguments you give really do seem to me to vacuously true though and I'm not sure they have any practical moral import. If the devil were elected president of the US it would be a very good thing for the country is true in just the same way (but you have to notice it's the conditional itself that's true, not the consequent!). Again, I don't think the comparison which requires a persisting subject - someone who is identifiable for comparison before and after death - is relevant. What is relevant is the ending of suffering. Sure, and the a proscription against suicide becomes relative to whatever you decide is the good life. I certainly agree with that. We disagree. I don't think that it requires that any individual in particular exists in order that we can say that some situation is good or less good. I think it conceivable that a situation where some individual ceases to exist may be less bad if on their ceasing to exist they cease suffering. We mustn't conflate the nonexistance of an individual with the anihilation of the whole context - nor should we limit moral judgment to determining what is positively good - what is less bad is also morally relevant. So, for me, my coming to non-exist can plausibly end my suffering which is less bad for me, even if as a consequence I don't experience any positive good so to speak. Anyway, I have to get back to reading Kant. HiCollegeGuy - I know indirectly that depression can be overcome - and Libbonobo is right on the mark. I saw someone get over it throught a combination of anti-depressants and cognitive behavioural therapy. It's well worth staying the course.

I don't think you're meant but...I think Einstein would have a lot to teach about philosophy. Outside of his technical work in physics he contributed a lot to the debate around the philosophical implications of non-classical physics. He corresponded with Bertrand Russel (who wrote a book about relativity and like Einstein won a Nobel prize but for literature) and he took positions on questions around determinism, uncertainty and so on. OK. A lot of what people hear about philosophy is the speculative, discursive stuff but philosophy also concerns science and mathematics. Philosophers use example from Cantor's work example to discuss whether or not there are infinite objects, whether abstract objects (like the natural numbers) are real. They use Curry and Turing's work to discuss the nature of intelligence and whether artificial intelligence is possible. Lots of work in logic (Herbrand, Heyting, brouwer) is probably done as much by philosophers as by mathematicians. Penrose is a physicist who writes about the nature of consciousness and enters into debate with philosophers of mind. Popper was a physicist. Wittgenstein was an Engineer. Philosophy isn't just hot air - it's just that the technical and formal stuff isn't of much interest to non-specialists. sumbloke (off to reduce an argument to conjunctive normal form and then rewrite it in the lamba calculus)

Just to confuse matters...if you want an alternative biography to Feynman then i recommend Alan Turing: the enigma of intelligence which is really well written, is about a fascinating man who was also gay and written by a guy who's gay and also a mathematician. I couldn't put it down.

Pat Mastroianni who played Joey (the hat wearing guy) in degrassi high. I couldn't be in the room when it was on if anyone else was there!

Wishing you a fast recovery and good health Nicholas! As to grits haters...I bet they don't find grits disgusting when they're eating polenta in swanky Italian restaurants! Not sure I could go for grits with jam or jelly but cheese grits/polenta is fantastic. Hey, do americans only eat grits "wet" or do they cook them till they set like we sometimes do? Cook 'em, let 'em set, slice and grill - stupendoso!

It looks as though registration of the domain name has lapsed and Stormnation the home of Ty/SFWriter's story Storm Front is off-line. Let's hope it's a glitch.

lol...actually, we're baptists, but my dad and stepmom just fast every once in a while. I wanted to do it this time, but my dad said no My G-d Baptists are fasting? This is gonna get confusing. Next thing you'll be watching television and dancing! Hope you didn't torment the hungry too much. xx

Hey Nick! What's the fast for this weekend? Next weekend there's Yom Kippur - is there a fast this weekend too?? (Now usually I'd know because half my family would be kvetching about it...). Anyway hope you're getting better. And l'shana tova! sumluckybuddhistwhodon'thavetofastbloke

Thank you for your interest but we prefer not to talk about the cult in public forums. Now if you'd like to come and spend a weekend at our country retreat you're welcome. Just read this 700 page introduction to the FLGBT cult before Friday...

My uncles Dirk and James have been together for 17 years since they were 22. That's longer than my parents have been married!

Keep your eyes on the road your hands upon the wheel. Coz we're goin to the roadhouse gonna have a real Good time. Let it roll baby roll! James some of us younguns raid our parents vinyl regularly. sumbloke

Rufus Wainwright - In my arms Ella Fitzgerals - Midnight Sun 2pac Brenda's Got a Baby

I posted this on deweywriter but I'm repeating it here incase some of you don't read those forums. I know I'm not alone in feeling overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster in the south eastern US. Coming so soon after the Tsunami tragedy it is a terrible reminder of our vulnerability. At times like this the only thing I can think to do to overcome the grief and feeling of impotence is to give. In the past I have fasted and asked sponsors to supplement the money I save on lunch as donations to disaster relief charities. Now I'm working I've decided instead to donate this weeks wage - my last week of work - to http://www.directrelief.org/ I'm a bit shocked that I haven't been able to find any more specific charitable organisations offering relief to Katrina victims here in the UK but this organisations seems very sound. My thoughts are with all our community members in the affected states, I hope you know the world is with you. I know I'm not the only person here who is a fan of Brew Maxwell's Foley-Mashburn stories and when I saw the pictures of the devastation in New Orleans this morning I was immediately reminded of how he brought that beautiful city to life for all of us who have never had a chance to visit it. I hope that someday it returns to its former glory. Peace and loving kindness, sumbloke. -------------------- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. M K Gandhi

Came out to me? Couldn't really say. Always knew and always knew gay adults so it wasn't much of an issue. Made the announcement at 14 just coz I started dating around then and going to a gay youth group. I think it was an ok age to come out and I got to be a gay teenager which is nice. School has been ok too - never had any problems and we got a big Rainbow Alliance and a pretty strong anti-bigotry culture. My parents have never expressed any concerns about me or my little brother being gay and they did encourage me to get out and socialise with other gay teens and they have been ever so helpful and generous about my boy, inviting him to stay lots and so on. Anyway - 14 and I think it's about the right age if you have an understanding family, good friends and live in a big big city with lots of visibly gay people around.

Ok This is off-topic now so maybe a new thread? But anyway... I go to a private school in the UK so I know that our curriculum is different. We are taught to write - and for essays (and lab reports etc) we're taught an actual method of outlining where we're expected to label the paragraphs by function so things like Background Statement Evidence Conclusion and so on. They don't ask us to prove that we did outlines for work we present but they expect the argumentation in an essay to be clear and preferably sound. Peeps I know who go to different schools tell me that they get no instruction in writing - no rhetoric, little grammar and not much more spelling. If you watch them plan an essay it goes "beginning, middle, end" and nothing much more. It's strange because usually I'd say our classes are much more content heavy than theirs - there's not much on skills, it's usually all about knowledge but in this one respect I think we get the better deal.

Ye gods! I managed the first six chapters of Capital Vol I and that was only to be sure I could irritate the hell out of my philosophy teacher. We have the MECW - well my dad has it - but the whole thing is on-line now anyway. My punishment for my philosophy teacher next year is preparing Lenin's Coll. Works Vol 38 - the Philosophical Notebooks. That'll teach him to quote Simone Weill at me. We is tort to right! Its the innernet to blame for our bad writin coz we google, copy and paste.

Er...Sophocles? <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Lol, thanks sumbloke. It's what happens when you're posting on a public terminal and you're rushed. I should know who wrote it, it's not like I haven't read it before... *sigh* Greek Tragedy can be rather amusing if you're in the right mind set. Perhaps that will be my light comedy for the summer //shadows <{POST_SNAPBACK}> My summer comedy is a marvellous satire on fashion by Euripides called Imendum...