Here are two of Stefan Molyneux's videos

that I think are particularly hard hitting:


An internet aquaintance has translated this into Finnish. I'm working on reading that.

Update: I just replaced that version with the one with Chinese subtitles.

Here's the other one:



Stef misspeaks Joe Stack's name a couple times. I wonder if he was making a freudian connection with Richard Speck on the first one. No guesses on the later one.

Against my better judgment,

so to speak, I'm going to post this link to Vincent Cheung's Christian Apologetics site because I think Christians need to argue their point better than they do. Of course, there's still an awful lot of this sort of thing going on there,

but he's better than the rest.

While doing the menial tasks,

of which my job largely consists today, I found myself meditating on the word "figment." Well, it was because a gal in the office said, "You don't see me! I'm a figment!" We thought she had today - President's Day - off.

I'd never heard the word used in isolation before. And it shouldn't be; at least not in that context.

fig·ment (fgmnt)
n.
Something invented, made up, or fabricated: just a figment of the imagination.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Middle English, from Latin figmentum, from fingere, to form; see dheigh- in Indo-European roots.]

figment [ˈfɪgmənt]
n
a fantastic notion, invention, or fabrication a figment of the imagination
[from Late Latin figmentum a fiction, from Latin fingere to shape]
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 6th Edition 2003. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003

Bacon!! Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!Bacon!

I'm sure you've seen that commercial.

But I mean Sir Francis. Here's the source of a couple of famous aphorisms. See if you can pick them out.

The sixth part of my work (to which the rest is subservient and ministrant) discloses and sets forth that philosophy which by the legitimate, chaste, and severe course of inquiry which I have explained and provided is at length developed and established. The completion however of this last part is a thing both above my strength and beyond my hopes. I have made a beginning of the work--a beginning, as I hope, not unimportant:--the fortune of the human race will give the issue;--such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined. For the matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human race, and all power of operation. For man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature's order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. For the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed. And so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails.

Okay, everything but the last two sentences was obfuscation on my part as far as my question was concerned, but I wanted to include that part to show Bacon's admirable humility before the task he foresaw.

That was the antepenultimate paragraph. To continue the theme of exposing proper scientific humility, let me submit the penultimate and ultimate (I just love those three words) paragraphs of The Great Instauration (all of them are on pp. 22-23 of my copy of The English Philosophers from Bacon to Mill, by Edwin A. Burtt):

And all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. For God forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may He graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the Creator imprinted on his creatures.

Therefore do Thou, O Father, who gavest the visible light as the first fruits of creation, and didst breathe into the face of man the intellectual light as the crown and consummation thereof, guard and protect this work, which coming from Thy goodness returneth to Thy glory. Thou sawest that all was very good, and didst rest from Thy labors. But man, when he turned to look upon the work which his hands had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could find no rest therein. Wherefore if we labor in Thy works with the sweat of our brows, Thou wilt make us partakers of Thy vision and Thy sabbath. Humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom Thou shalt give the same spirit, Thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies.

Some say he was Shakespeare. Not I, but some.

Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome Driven by Fructose Sugar Diet - Science Café - UCSF

Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome Driven by Fructose Sugar Diet - Science Café - UCSF

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Well, I'm caught up with Molyneux!

1578 Podcasts. I think it took me a full year - my first mention of him was March 5, '09, and it's clear that I'd already listened to quite a few of his podcasts at that point.

It's been most enjoyable and completely turned around my ways of thinking in a number of areas.

I feel like doing the math on that, but somehow it's already after midnight, and I've sworn to start getting some sleep.

Women glow and men chunder

Let's see if we can't talk the women into joining us in chundering over this abuse of the courts.

Norm Lurie is a dirtbag.