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The Guarantor of The Gazelle by ~Farshchian

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Essays

TNA 3: Dawkins, The Origin of DeitiesFor me, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion is the most readable of the Four Horsemen. Then again, this isn’t his first book. Dawkins became known to the general public with that other bestseller The Selfish Gene, a book famous for popularizing the term “meme” — a unit that carries ideas which are transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech and even ritual. Memes are the cultural equivalent of genes, which are transmitted biologically.
Memes, says Dawkins, evolve through natural selection pretty much like genes do. They spread through the behaviour they generate in their hosts and if they contribute to their hosts’ welfare, they proliferate and get more and more successful. Survival of the fittest all over again. But not always. Because some of these memes may “mutate” and keep on replicating profusely even when they become harmful to their carriers.
This happened to the meme(s) that form religio

AT 4: Lakatos, The Degeneration of TheoriesIn my last essay we looked at Popper’s Falsification Principle as to discern what could be considered empirical science and what not. Popper’s view had a powerful impact on 20th century scientific thinking. But there were critics. They insisted that Popper was rather describing how science should work instead of how it did work. The real world worked quite differently.

Let us listen to one of Popper’s students, Imre Lakatos. In The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes he says: “Is, then, Popper’s falsifiability criterion the solution to the problem of demarcating science from pseudoscience? No, for Popper’s criterion ignores the remarkable tenacity of scientific theories. Scientists have thick skins. They do not abandon a theory merely because facts contradict it.”

Then what do these scientists do? “They normally either invent some rescue hypothesis to explain what they then call a mere

The New Spartans, Modern InfanticideThe New Spartans – Modern Infanticide

The Journal of Medical Ethics, March 2nd 2012: Two renowned scientists, Dr. Francesca Minerva, a research associate at Oxford University and dr. Alberto Giubilini, a University of Milan bioethicist, present an argument for… well, how to call it? I guess the most accurate term is “murder”. Infanticide, child murder to be precise.

They call it euphemistically “after-birth abortion”, but in the second sentence clarify that what they actually mean is “killing a newborn”. In their article they state that: “Euthanasia in infants has been proposed by philosophers for children with severe abnormalities whose lives can be expected to be not worth living and who are experiencing unbearable suffering.”

This is not new. It has been known to happen in dictatorial and militaristic states. In anc

SisyphosSisyphos

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” — Le mythe de Sisyphe, Albert Camus.

I feel a deep pain in my heart. It’s called “absurdity”, the ultimate realization that life has no meaning. That we exist in an uncaring and silent universe, without past, without future, only an eternally continuous and meaningless “now”.

“You mustn’t think about these things”, my friends tell me. But I cannot help it. It’s in my blueprint, this desire to know, to understand, to see all the connections and above all, the purpose of it all. Understanding the world through cognitive analysis of reality.

Of all the fundamental questions, such as: who, what, when, how and why, the last of these seems to be the one impossible to answer.

Acc

Some of my Stories

The Great OutdoorsThe Great Outdoors

My father was a great enthusiast for the outdoors. I'm not. Nor is my mother or my brother Elton. Understand, we are not against the countryside per se. In fact we love the countryside. On a postcard preferably. Or a painting. Elton and I are city people. We like shopping malls and coffee houses. A tree is good. A forest is... well, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.

But our father insisted on having this cottage in the vicinity of Aarschot (It's a Belgian village, don't bother to look it up. In fact, you best forget I mentioned it, straight away. No, that's not fair. It's actually quite lovely.) So we went

The Grin of the Cheshire CatThe Grin of the Cheshire Cat

The grin of the Cheshire cat is the last thing Alice (in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland") sees off this strange animal and she confesses that this grin is the strangest thing she has ever observed. It is strange still, because Lewis Carroll's notes on this passage have faded through the years, leaving us to wonder what it was the Cheshire cat grinned at.

One of the earliest ancestors of the common cat is Dinictis, from the Olicene, forty million years ago. This animal, which looked a bit like a civet, is not only the ancestor of our cat but also of the panther, the tiger and the lion. But there is nothing lau

Egyptian AlphabetEgyptian Alphabet

A is Anubis,
He has the head of a dog,
And guides all the dead,
To the land of death and fog.

B stands for Bes,
The god of drink and joy
He's small as a dwarf,
Not taller than a boy.

C's a Canopic jar,
That has organs inside,
Liver and heart and kidneys,
Under natron do hide.

D comes from Doeat
The land of the dead,
You get there by boat,
Steered by a dog's head.

E is the Eye of Ra,
She fell from the sky,
The lioness Sachmet,
Who let people die.

F 's for Pharao,
Considered a god
They made him a mummy,
To protect him from rot.

G is for Geb,
The god of the earth
His wife is on top,
He lies in the di

Tell meTell me…

Tell me you love me,
I need it, to hear,
Tell me you need me,
Oh, tell me my dear.

Tell me, if I hurted you hard,
I am so afraid,
If I ever made you smart,
And I will placate.

Tell me what you want me to be,
What you want me to say,
What I'm failing to see,
Tell me why, when and what —
Please, tell me the way.

MummyMummy

Do you know what a mummy is? Well, you probably have a mammy. The word may sound similar but there a world of difference between the two. Mammies are sweet. Mummies aren't. Mammies are soft. Mummies aren't, unless they've been put in some warm water for a while. Mammies can move. Mummies stay absolutely still, unless you hang them to dry by the fire.

A mummy resembles a Christmas present. That is, they are all wrapped up. But don't try to unwrap them. It makes a terrible mess and besides, they don't like it. And kids, neither will mammy (if you try this at home).

How does one make a mummy? First you need a pharaoh. That's not a cigar

Philosophical AlphabetA is Anselmus
He desperately wanted to prove,
The existence of Almighty God,
That was a very bold move.

Berkeley gives us B
“But is there ever a sound,
When an unseen tree falls down alone,
And hits the forest ground?”

Camus has the C
You can end your life,
Though a hero absurd,
Prefers still to strife.

The D is Decartes
“A man that has thought,
Cogito ergo sum,
Can banish all his doubt”.

Epicurus of E
“Enjoy it you must,
But never too much,
Indulge in your lust”.

Fukuyama is F
He’s not from Japan —
Says history has ended,
And he’s the last man.

G for Gautama
From Nepal a prince,
Walked an eightfold path,
Became Buddha ever since.

The H is for Hobbes
Life is a bloody sport —
“It’s solitary and poor,
Nasty, brutish and short”.

The I of Iamblichus
Is not so much known,
He came from Apamea,
A distant Syrian town.

James gives the J
And wa

Great pictures by a friend of mine

Holiday

Journal Entry: Sun Dec 16, 2012, 3:28 PM

Exams are over! I am free from school for the next two weeks. So I plan to do some uploading. Best wishes to you all. Hope you will have a great time.

I am also planning to upload some of my own photographs. They will be recognisable because I will add a small watermark with my name in the corner. Only those are mine, the other's are still my cousin's.

We always appreciate it when other artist use her work.

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*Rowanelle

Rowan Elle Walters
Artist | Hobbyist | Varied

Belgium

Age: 21
Current Residence: Belgium
Favourite style of art: Flemish Primitives and Pre-Rafaelites
Personal Quote: I'm different. Let that not trouble you.

Interests

...

The Life that I Have

The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours.
The love that I have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a pause.
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will be yours and yours and yours.

by Leo Marks

--- Send to me by ~richardldixon ---

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Comments

~richardldixon May 8, 2013

thanx for the fave "Dinner Time"

~richardldixon May 1, 2013

thanx for the "Lloyds bank " Fave

~richardldixon Apr 16, 2013

thanx for faving the "Burtons building"

~richardldixon Apr 12, 2013

thanx for the fave "Art Deco Elephant"

~hamundr21 Apr 7, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you very much for the fave.

~Duran74 Apr 7, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

Thanks for the favs

*LoneStranger Apr 6, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thanks for the fav.

=JophesXI Mar 31, 2013 Hobbyist Photographer

Thanks so much for the favourites!

(1 Reply)

~hamundr21 Mar 27, 2013 Student Writer

Thank you very much for the fave my friend. God bless!

~richardldixon Mar 20, 2013

thankies for the fave

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