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11 votes
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The language sounds that could exist, but don't
18 votes -
Has science shown that consciousness is only an illusion?
6 votes -
Jerry Falwell’s aides break their silence - Current and former Liberty University officials describe a culture of fear and self-dealing at the largest Christian college in the world
10 votes -
How the MIT Media Lab concealed its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
12 votes -
How do people learn to cook a poisonous plant safely?
13 votes -
Ganesh Chaturthi 2019: Ten lesser-known short stories of Bal Ganesha you need to know
6 votes -
Pet dogs in Ancient Rome | How They Did It
7 votes -
Wolof: A language of West Africa
5 votes -
Denmark honours Bernhard Arp Sindberg who rescued thousands of Chinese during the Japanese imperial army's orgy of violence in Nanjing in 1937
6 votes -
Navajo code talkers: The last of the living WWII heroes share their stories
11 votes -
The Trolley Problem
An interesting thought experiment that I vividly remember from undergrad philosophy courses is the trolley problem: You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise...
An interesting thought experiment that I vividly remember from undergrad philosophy courses is the trolley problem:
You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:
- Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
- Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
A variation of the problem that we were also presented with was:
You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing on a bridge that runs across the trolley tracks. There is a large man on the bridge next to you, who if pushed over the bridge and onto the track, would safely stop the trolley, saving the five people but killing the large man. Do you:
- Push the man over the bridge, saving the five people.
- Allow the trolley to kill the five people
Which is the more ethical options? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?
17 votes -
Funerals of the future? – Sweden sees sharp rise in burials without ceremony
4 votes -
Australian government releases "exposure draft" of religious discrimination bill
A news article: New protections for Folau-like cases in draft religious discrimination bill A radio interview with the Attorney-General: Federal Government unveils religious discrimination...
A news article: New protections for Folau-like cases in draft religious discrimination bill
A radio interview with the Attorney-General: Federal Government unveils religious discrimination legislation on Radio National
Some legal analysis: The government has released its draft religious discrimination bill. How will it work?
A Christian response: Religious discrimination bill draft released
8 votes -
Icelandic government is interested in reclaiming Old Icelandic manuscripts from Denmark
3 votes -
A history of Hong Kong's contentious politics
5 votes -
The play deficit
3 votes -
The dreams of an inventor in 1420
5 votes -
Denying your history | Armenian Genocide
8 votes -
‘Like’ isn’t a lazy linguistic filler – the English language snobs need to, like, pipe down
13 votes -
Was Sweden headed toward socialism in the 1970s?
6 votes -
My first conlang - How not to make a language
10 votes -
The witchhunt that founded Liechtenstein
7 votes -
Remembering the forgotten Chinese railroad workers
8 votes -
International Interfaith Peace Gathering: ‘We must work together or we will all fail’
6 votes -
The US bought three Virgin Islands from Denmark – the deal took fifty years
8 votes -
Trump has defected to the autocrats
6 votes -
1968 Democratic National Convention Chicago police riots
4 votes -
On this day in 1791, the only successful slave uprising in history began
13 votes -
Caesar as King? (45 to 44 B.C.E.)
10 votes -
George Pell loses appeal against child sex abuse convictions, may lose Order of Australia honour
8 votes -
Sylvia Plath: "The Bee Meeting" with annotations
5 votes -
Sixty years since rising from the deep – Swedish warship Vasa's preservation still a major challenge
4 votes -
Ottoman Wars - Siege of Buda 1541 and Eger 1552
7 votes -
Nikkei secrets unearthed on the Seymour: Digging up a forgotten Japanese outpost
4 votes -
What are the ethical consequences of immortality technology?
9 votes -
Americanisms the British public can't bloody stand
14 votes -
The metastasizing cancer of the Southern Strategy
12 votes -
Inside Robert Ballard's search for Amelia Earhart’s airplane
4 votes -
Community size matters when people create a new language
9 votes -
Marxism, Buddhism and socialism
8 votes -
Agora
6 votes -
One American import we could do without: hard-right religious conservatism
14 votes -
The family that shrank France | Map Men
9 votes -
Ancient technology: Saxon glass-working experiment
5 votes -
Hajj 2019: live updates as pilgrims begin rituals in Makkah
Hajj 2019: live updates as pilgrims begin rituals in Makkah Hajj 2019: the Islamic pilgrimage to Makkah explained Every able-bodied Muslim is meant to do the Haj once in their lifetime. Why? What...
5 votes -
The ‘warspeak’ permeating everyday language puts us all in the trenches
12 votes -
Excerpt from "Myth and Ritual in Christianity" by A. Watts
... The very insistence on the one historical incarnation as a unique step in a course of events leading to the future Kingdom of God reveals the psychology of Western culture most clearly. It...
... The very insistence on the one historical incarnation as a unique step in a course of events leading to the future Kingdom of God reveals the psychology of Western culture most clearly. It shows a mentality for which the present, real world is, in itself, joyless and barren, without value. The present can have value only in terms of meaning—if, like a word, it points to something beyond itself. This "beyond" which past and present events "mean" is the future. This the Western intellectual, as well as the literate common man, finds his life meaningless except in terms of a promising future. But the future is a "tomorrow which never comes", and for this reason Western culture has a "frantic" character. It is a desperate rush in pursuit of an ever-receding "meaning", because the promising future is precisely the famous carrot which the clever driver dangles before his donkey's nose from the end of his whip. Tragically enough, this frantic search for God, for the ideal life, in the future renders the course of history anything but a series of unique steps towards a goal. Its real result is to make history repeat itself faster and more furiously, confusing "progress" with increased agitation.
—Alan Watts, Myth and Ritual in Christianity. 1954
11 votes -
Lawyer argues that Humanists — who believe in good without a God — get short shrift in Nevada prisons
5 votes -
Grenada’s revolution at forty
7 votes