Checking in again... any news/updates at all that I have missed over the last few years?

That Lynne Kelly episode last week was imo probably the most interesting podcast Sean Carroll has had on Mindscape... the idea that essentially all ancient man-made monuments were specifically built and maintained to be used as memory palaces was super interesting and I was surprised that I hadn't given much thought to the methods employed by ancient people to memorize everything important they needed to know. One of those podcasts that had left me with a hell of a lot to think about.

Lol Beard, I won't lie... I saw the potential for the conversation veering this way before I posted it. But all it took for me was to listen to his podcast with Murray and i was able to make a decision based on the things that were said. I don't think that it was some great idea on Harris' part to decide to trod this path, then again, I pretty much felt exactly the same when Bakker did something similar all those years ago. Sometimes picking a fight to prove a point ends up making even your best friend's look at you a little different, let alone people who are willing to make an 'informed decision' without ever being willing to look at either your body of work as with the accusations of sexism with Bakker or listen to the evidence from the podcasts in question with Harris.

I am an atheist that lives in the deep south, so I tend to find myself on the left side of virtually any real life conversation. Like Harris, I have found many of the same extremes of the left hard to defend. In the south, it is actually hard to find a household that doesn't have a firearm inside. I am a huge advocate for more responsible gun owners and even tighter restrictions on the acquisition process and mental health checks and whatnot, yet I find myself debating even more liberal people than me on whether we should totally ban guns in the US... which simply seems like the most unlikely thing to happen to me. Or some other stuff that I am not sure I would've ever been aware of if not for Harris like the Evergreen University stuff, which is also about people declaring other people racist due to their unwillingness to let the extreme left dictate the terms of what an actual racist is. And whether or not people with opposing views can speak/debate at universities without fear or threats of violence. I mean, this is the very fucking idea of free speech.

Yeah, I can't help but think he wouldn't jump at the chance either. But after watching the few videos on youtube that I have found with him, I am starting to think that his social uh 'awkwardness' is all in his head. I do think that podcasting is a better vehicle for his ideas though, for the most part. Podcasting is one of the best long-form discussion tools we currently have... at least for debate-type discussion and introducing new ideas and whatnot.

Yeah, in the last year or so, I have listened and read pretty much everything Sam Harris has had his name on and I have found there to be no real claim to the racism bs that certain people are spouting. Inviting people with different things to say about science is what Harris does. He realized he had put Murray in the "that guy's a racist" category a long time ago and ignored any work that he had produced. He had him on his podcast to admit that it was unfair and had Murray present his findings. There is nothing inherently racist about this, regardless of the findings or opinions of Murray.

Not that I think that it is impossible for anybody to be a racist or anything. I only require more evidence than someone's namecalling.

Corrected Murray's name... that's what I get for not double checking before posting lol.

So, I made an amazon.co.uk account to get the kindle version... then I remembered I don't know wtf I am doing. To add a credit card to pay you have to use your legit address otherwise it won't work right? So how do you add an UK address on the account so you can download the ebook?  Right now it says this service is unavailable to US customers.

Went to Barnes and Noble today because of this post. They had four copies in-stock and on the shelf. I am in Orlando, Florida. Paid the ridiculous in-store price ($32.00 after tax) for it so I could get my grubby fingers on it NOW. 

Hey guys, got the e-mail and decided to see what's up... Sorry for reverting back to lurker mode, but with the weather my job has been an absolute cluster-fuck since the beginning of winter (I work in the airport luggage delivery business, so snow-storms tend to directly correlate with higher volumes in business). Anyway, as long as the domain stays the same, I am all for a format change... I have finally figured out how to navigate this one properly but something still seems sort of, I dunno, illogical to me about it's layout or something. Anyway, I had never heard of discourse so I looked it up and it looks pretty sweet so it gets my vote

Hehe, I almost brought up both Avatar and Afro Samurai in my last post. Personally, although I consider them both pretty good shows, I think of them more like American portraits of anime. The biggest problem I had with Avatar was that it was more targeted toward kids than most the stuff I usually watch, but it was made for Nickelodeon and was done pretty well regardless. The only thing I remember not liking about Afro Samurai was that it felt sort of like a more immature, race-oriented ripoff of Samurai Champloo (and that is one of my favorite shows of all time). Both shows had A LOT of Japanese people in their production crew though, so I think that helped with their anime-ish feel.

Anyway, some of you need to go check out the first episode of 'Attack on titan' (like right now!) and let me know what you think. Just google it, a million websites stream it. I hadn't read the manga yet when I started watching it and it creeped me the fuck out! The music is so epic that I had chills throughout the whole goddamn show.