Quantcast
Channel: understanding – AbsurdBeats
Browsing all 13 articles
Browse latest View live

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Are spirits in the material world

I don’t believe in life after death. There is life, here, in this world, and death both is and signals the end of life. Now, is there something else, after life? That, I don’t know. If there is...

View Article



Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Don’t you ever get sick of being sick about it

How may I be irritated? Let me count the ways: *Irritation due to disagreement: This may be further divided into partisan (of any sort), preference-based, and personal disagreement, but it is just as...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Brave companion of the road

Is it better to be consistent than inconsistent? What about contradiction and hypocrisy: what is the merit or demerit of such concepts? Ta-Nehisi Coates has been carrying on a long conversation with...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

What are words for?

A few words about words: Privilege. I have used this word, and will continue to do so in the context of “privileges and liberties” and “privileges and/versus rights” and “privileged information”. I...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Try to see it your way

I am not, as you know, a particularly religious person. An agnostic, I believe I have called myself on severaleventy occasions. A-gnostic, as in, I lack knowledge [about matters of God]; skeptic...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

You should wear with pride the scars on your skin

Christopher Hitchens and Vaclav Havel died this past weekend. Both men were writers deeply engaged in the politics of our time; one was more in love with words than ideas, the other, the other way...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Mayan campaign mashup 2012: We belong together

Yeah, he’s pretty good, isn’t he? President Obama lacked the jocular wit of Clinton—who, despite some meanderings, pretty much killed it last night—but Obama’s got that (forgive the cliche) steely gaze...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Just sitting on your porch

So I had this post in my head about understanding and not understanding and agnosticism and religion and politics and empathic imagination. . . . It’s still there, and there it remains, at least for...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

I turn to my computer like a friend

This isn’t creepy at all: Language, [Ray Kurzweil] believes, is the key to everything. “And my project is ultimately to base search on really understanding what the language means. When you write an...

View Article


Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

O the dragons are gonna fly tonight

I. I understand the difference between unintentionally and intentionally killing someone, I do. I understand that Hamas fires off rockets with the intention of killing Israelis, military & civilian...

View Article

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Nevermind

What a dick: It should be noted that Dreher is adding this comment to a long post criticizing both Ta-Nehisi’s recent essay on learning French and on his “Blue Period” generally. I think Dreher...

View Article

Hush, hush, keep it down now

Over 8 years ago the economist Robin Hanson wrote a  post on “gentle silent rape.” It was a thought experiment, an attempt to understand why rape is punished more often and severely than cuckoldry,...

View Article

You see, got my brother down cause it’s nothing to me

I have nothing to say about the racist bag of maggots currently befouling the White House—nothing beyond curses and sputtering, that is. He’s a terrible man and a terrible president with terrible...

View Article

Browsing all 13 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images