@BicycleMan, if you can't tell the difference between Jainism and Christianity, I don't have much hope for you. My narrative about the flowering of antislavery through Christian philosophy is correct.


Uh, what? when did I express that I cant tell that difference? in fact, I mentioned Jainism partially to point out the difference, but also to show that the teachings of Christianity and "Christian philosophy" (theres an oxymoron to remember) is by no means the best, nor the first, nor is it exceptional in any significant respects. your narrative about the flowering of antislavery is precisely NOT correct at all. The end of slavery began with the enlightenment, which is marked by the advent of questioning Christianity and its tenets, it is of course true that both sides used the bible to argue their case, but the whole issue flowered out of the emancipation from religion and introduction of a secular, humanistic, non-tribal worldview. and non-religious laws. I am obviously not denying that most people, on both sides, were religious, but when the anti-slavery movement were led by people like Abraham Lincoln, a known religious skeptic, it is an insult to the victims of slavery to claim this was some kind of Christian movement:

It was the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Bible, that Lincoln most relied on in order to oppose any further territorial expansion of slavery. He saw the Declaration as more than a political document. To him, as well as to many abolitionists and other antislavery leaders, it was, foremost, a moral document that had forever determined valuable criteria in shaping the future of the nation Miller, William Lee (2002). Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography.

Bear in mind that I am not claiming that it was an entirely secular process, I am merely pointing out the ridiculous claim that it was a religious, and Christian, movement, when proponents of slavery frequently used their bibles to defend it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Frida Kahlo, painter, surrealism, Mexico, Diego Rivera, biography' to 'Frida Kahlo, painter, surrealism, Mexico, Diego Rivera, biography, monobrow' - edited by ponceleon

I'm halfway through a great Potemkin biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore. It's really interesting and well researched. It debunks a lot of the myths concerning Potemkin and Catherine the Great and is well written. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in history.

You fscking scared me there, dude. Turns out they're only going to be charging for the radio service.

"Everything else on Last.fm (scrobbling, recommendations, charts, biographies, events, videos etc.) will remain free in all countries, like it is now."

I didn't read Gatsby until I was about 37 years old and was very surprised. Good story, but great writing. Poetic.

I flipped through that Bair bio of Anais and I'm really sorry to say that it made my hair stand on end with anger. She took a lot of really cheap shots and the whole thing seemed like some sort of personal vendetta, as if Nin had snubbed Bair at some time and Bair never forgave her.

I'm a writer/poet myself, and...I know there are two sides to every story, but Bair took the most negative slant she could about everything that Anais did and it flat out pissed me off.

Millions of people will be Anais Nin fans for generations to come.

Nobody's going to remember who the hell Bair was.

Ah, that's off my chest.

Thanks for touching base and for starting that thread. It's always fun to see what everybody else is reading.

Caio.

In reply to this comment by blahpook:
I'm glad you like Gatsby - the first time I read it was for school, the second time for pleasure, and wow is it well-written and oh so damn clever. If you like Anais, Deidre Bair wrote a huge and scintillating biography on her that I could not put down.

In reply to this comment by rougy:
1. Lolita
2. Tropic of Cancer
3. On the Road
4. Anais Nin's Diary, Vol II
5. Tales of the South Pacific
6. Sophie's Choice
7. The Spy Who Loved Me
8. The Great Gatsby
9. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s
10. To Kill a Mockingbird

*****

I really liked The Hobbit, too.

My point is that there is nothing like Creationism in most religions--Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism and Islam are the only religions I'm aware of which have this problem. Most other religions are far more sophisticated in their understanding of religious myth and scripture. It's inaccurate and disrespectful to ascribe something like Creationism to them.

Personally I don't see any interpretation of Genesis that could be considered "scientific".


What I mean to say is that they read Genesis the way one reads a science textbook. One approaches the conclusions of a scientific discourse in a different way than one approaches fiction, poetry, myth (contrary to popular belief, many ancient peoples like the Greeks did not take their myths to be straightforward fact), or even history and biography. Approaching Genesis this way is an obvious mistake on textual interpretation grounds alone, even aside from the tremendous scientific evidence that such an interpretation would clearly be wrong about the world.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Anything-To-Win-Bobby-Fischer-biography

Thought you might enjoy this since you seem to be a chess fan.

Thanks for that promote broseph

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
*promote *historical *parody

Here's Lynn's biography:

"Lynn previously served as the director for Program Analysis and Evaluation in the office of the secretary of Defense, a position he had held since April 1993, and earlier as assistant to the secretary of Defense for Budget.

From 1987 until 1993, Lynn served on the staff of Senator Edward Kennedy as the legislative counsel for defense and arms control matters and his staff representative on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Prior to 1987, he was a senior fellow in the Strategic Concepts Development Center at National Defense University, where he specialized in strategic nuclear forces and arms control issues. He was also on the professional staff of the Institute of Defense Analyses. From 1982 to 1985, he served as the executive director of the Defense Organization Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Lynn is a graduate of Dartmouth College (1976). He has a juris doctorate from Cornell Law School and a master's in Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University (1982). His publications include "Toward a More Effective Defense" (1985) as well as articles in various newspapers and professional journals."


Given this guy's CV, especially with nuclear proliferation on the verge of spinning out of control, I'd give this guy a big fucking waiver, too.

This from "Earth: The Biography". I just finished watching it on Blu-ray and it is a great 6-part documentary from the BBC. I've watched this kind of stuff for years, and there were still lots of "I didn't know that" moments.

A lot of my favorites are already mentioned here, like HHGTTG, Pratchett, Vonnegut, Simmons, so here a few others, since I don't want to sound repetitive (in no particular order):
* Winston Churchill - The Second World War
* Walter Moers - The Thirteen and a Half Lives of Captain Bluebear
* Scott Adams - The Dilbert principle
* Charlotte Chandler - Hello, I must be going
* Frederick Brooks - The mythical man-month

^Doc_M
Well my friend. I've looked at the evidence and I believe. Cook that in your oven. I'm an inch away from Ph.D. and Dawkins is so plainly a D-bag, it almost makes him the definition of such.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins#Biography

Richard Dawkins has a Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford (the wiki is very badly worded), and a Masters in Zoology.

"Dawkins attended Oundle School from 1954 to 1959. He studied zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was tutored by Nobel Prize-winning ethologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, graduating in 1962. He continued as a research student under Tinbergen's supervision at the University of Oxford, receiving his M.A. and D.Phil. degrees in 1966, while staying as a research assistant for another year.[13] Tinbergen was a pioneer in the study of animal behaviour, particularly the questions of instinct, learning and choice.[17] Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision making.[18]"

>> ^rottenseed:
also, the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" was a rip off of Rolling Stone's "The Last Time"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9QgpXhezIc


Quoted from: http://www.8notes.com/biographies/verve.asp

"The single was also very popular in the US, topping the charts at #12 (their highest position ever in the Billboards). The song, which borrows a looped sample of a symphonic recording of the Rolling Stones' 'The Last Time', was the soundtrack for many in the summer of 1997 and is considered one of the finest songs ever written."

So it seems it was an intentional rip off since it was sampled.

This is more of a blatant melody rip-off of Sat's music.

But like others have said, you can do look all day long and find hundreds of songs that have the same melody lines. These days it's pretty hard to not unintentionally rip some person or another off. Zepplin, for years has been accused of ripping off old blues artists for some of their material.

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57792

Just make sure you make it embeddable (there's a checkbox). You'll have an embed code that you can use just like a single video embed, and Bob's your uncle.



In reply to this comment by Bleedingsnowman:
How would I go about doing that?


In reply to this comment by calvados:
(upvote pending, just gotta watch it first) Y'know BSM, you can put all five parts together in an embeddable playlist.

How would I go about doing that?


In reply to this comment by calvados:
(upvote pending, just gotta watch it first) Y'know BSM, you can put all five parts together in an embeddable playlist.