sumbloke

I answered this but it was difficult. I mean, yellow is definitely what first comes to mind but then so do red - for the stamens themselves, and purple - for the crocus itself. So I voted but...that's my real answer I think of three colours.

Keep talking. Don't go - I know that I don't have any claim on you but even so I'm asking. And I'm sure there are people who do have a claim on you who don't want you to do this thing. I'm sorry that you haven't been able to reconcile yourself with your faith, your family, your friends YET. But please, the YET is important - there will be no reconciliation unless you give yourself and them a chance. I don't recall what your faith is - but if I think seriously, I know that my answer to the question What would Buddha (or Jesus or Moses...) do? doesn't come out as "he'd end his life". Can you reconcile your death at your own hand with your family, your faith, your friends? James is right that we need you in a wider sense - after all we've lost so many. I'm sorry to lay this on you in such a personal way but I want to ask you something: if you were faced with a 14 year old boy - gay, maybe Christian, alientated form his family and afraid of his friends - would you recommend suicide to him? Or would you want to encourage him to believe that he had the power to live a life full of love and happiness if he could find the strength to endure? I'm not asking this to manipulate you but because Kant said something important: only act in such a way that you can wish it were a universal law. The most pressing course of action I urge on you it is to find some gay friends - not in bars or night clubs but somewhere supportive where you can begin to talk about your feelings and problems. It's too easy to see your identity as just a painful problem if you don't meet people who have similar problems and see how you can help them and they can help you. Against all the reasons you think you have to end your life you have to count off the reasons to live it, not least among them the possibility of love and the chance to make a difference to the world. Your biggest enemy is resignation in the face of difficulty but don't let yourself off the hook - you know you can survive this and much worse because you know that millions of people have found the hope and perseverance to do so in much much darker circumstances. Stay with us. Keep on keeping on. Survive and you keep alive the hope of thriving. peace and loving kindness, sumbloke

[sarcasm] social constructivism: society made me do it essentialism: nature made me do it personal trajectory: I did it but so what it don't make me queer missed out in the original... performativity theory: drag queens made me do it [/sarcasm] Social constructivism: identities are constructed in the context of and by means of social interactions. They have no foundation other than social context. (In extreme versions it's not even all social interaction, just "discourse" - don't ask) Essentialism: identities exist and are formed independantly of social context. They constitute part of us as natural beings. What we are determines what we do and become. Personal trajectory: who the hell knows! I don't want to be cynical but it's really a reflection of the lack of wider coherence in both politics and sociology as a discipline. Lacking the ideological foundation to assert either constructivist or essentialist accounts of identity, researchers pursue specificity to the point of impressionistic empiricism (note to self: should that be empiricist impressionism? Remember to ask Aunt Julia K next time you see her). Since the only validity there is is individual authenticity (there are no grandes narratives to oppress us anymore) if teenagers say "I'm not gay I just have sex with guys" then we all nod approvingly rather than pointing out that having sex with members of the same sex is more or less the definition of homosexuality! It's almost like a reaction to labelling - "don't pigeon hole me!". It sounds plausible until you notice that teenagers have always looked for ways to dilute their queer identity - I'm not gay I'm bi, etc.

Hmmm...so the hypothesis is true: Buddhist boys are cuter! (OK - that was bad: I'll chant later). I don't know hanzi but the hanyu pinyin "fu" (without the tone anyway...) could also refer to: fu dogs (rui shi?) the lion dogs. Or happiness, or husband (!) or mastery (in the phrase gong fu (kung fu)). The other tattoo David has between the shoulder blades is Sanskrit - sunishcitam aashcaryavat! Anyway, welcome David. The totally awesome scholastic record will fit right in with all the other brains around here - the rest of us are just (almost) decorative. sumbloke

Oh Cheez! Not another old hippy on gayauthors! I mean, James and his Doors and Yes is bad enough but now we got another one?

Let her sing. I mean, if she's enjoying herself be happy - you can listen to the song later. I dunno, young kids today.

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

I tell ya, having someone in your family you know you can tell safely is one of the best things you can have when that time comes. You're a start mate for taking that call in the middle of the night and for being such a good bro. Mega props mate.

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!