Odracirys

Morality Morality is somehow a difficult topic for people.  That's too bad.  It's quite easy for me.  I remember taking a college class on philosophy and thinking that I was way smarter than some of the most respected philosophers.  The study of philosophy and morality seems to be the study of the history of how people got things wrong.  Every subsequent philosopher seemed to disagree with the former one which we'd studied.  However, the correct answer was never revealed.  My reason for writing this post is to reveal it. But first, let me give some more background.  In my college philosophy class years ago, I was struck by how respected Immanuel Kant was in the realm of morality, even though he had very little to show for it.  For example, he thought that "lying" was wrong no matter what.  One of the more interesting applications of this is with the "inquiring murderer".  Kant said that if you are hiding an innocent would-b...

Don't judge a place by its media portrayal. I have always been someone who has had a fascination with the world.  I've studied the world in great detail...its history, cultures, and geography. I have also traveled around...not as much as I'd like, but enough to realize one important thing.  Books, TV shows, and other media lie.  Well, it's dishonesty through omission.  When we see images of the world, it's the vision that other people want to push on us.  Many cities are ugly, and to hide this fact, they will pick the needle out of a haystack and skillfully take a picture of that needle while making sure to hide any trace of the hay. A good many cities have been destroyed through the onslaught of Modernism.  However, others have survived relatively unscathed.  This is a visual tale of two cities. The first is Kyoto.  Hailed as the most beautiful city in Japan, it was a former capital of Japan and a center of Japanese high culture.  It has...

AKB48 is the most popular group in Japan.  It's made up of 90 girls who are all in their teens and 20s, with the most popular girls making up a sub-set which is able to be the face of the whole group. Minami Minegishi is one of the original members (since 2005), and one of the main ones as well.  She is 20 years old - thus she was 13 years old (or even 12) when she was selected to be eye candy for rabid fans who like to imagine themselves being the first ones to break her hymen. The rules that every AKB48 member must follow is "no boyfriends"..."no love"...as long as you're with the group.  Thus, from age 13 to 20, she has been an innocent fruit ripe for the picking. No longer.  Recently, she was caught coming out of a boy's house.  Because of that, she risked being fired from the group.  Otaku don't like it if they have to imagine getting sloppy seconds.  Minami promptly shaved her head and sorrowfully apologized on YouTube.  Her video w...

The Most Evil Empire That Has Ever Existed In the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1911), the first paragraph for the article "British Empire" states: "BRITISH EMPIRE, the name now loosely given to the whole aggregate of territory, the inhabitants of which, under various forms of government, ultimately look to the British crown as the supreme head. The term 'empire' is in this connexion obviously used rather for convenience than in any sense equivalent to that of the older or despotic empires of history." Some might chuckle at this description while noting that the British had quite a high opinion of themselves.  Of course, in some sense, the empire was despotic...not in the sense that there was one tyrant in charge of it, but rather that only a minority of people in the empire were able to participate democratically in it. Yet with a short memory, society has pretty much forgotten about the atrocities committed by the empires that the ...

Getting Things Straight About Israel I think that Israel is one of the most divisive subjects among people, particularly because people with similar opinions on most issues can vociferously disagree on this issue.  I've wondered what causes people to come to completely different conclusions using the same evidence, and I realized that people often live in different realities.  And it's impossible to have a useful debate on a topic if people are trapped in separate realities.  So I think that it's of utmost importance that people share their version of reality.  Those with different realities can never agree, but if we come to understand the same reality, there is a chance at real understanding. Let me give you an example.  If I say, "All dinosaurs died out around 65 million years ago." and someone else says, "No, they didn't.", then we can go back and forth and argue forever and not get anywhere because  we don't know the assumptions t...

"A Defense of Israel" And "Why Are Most Liberals Always Against Israel?" In this post, I want to defend Israel's recent actions and express my thoughts on why most liberals are always against Israel, no matter what the circumstances.  First, let me say a few things: 1) I realize that there is not one "liberal" viewpoint and that not all liberals are the way I describe them.  My name for the type of liberals I'm talking about is "Chomskyan Liberals" (from "Noam Chomsky", whose opinion is gospel to these people).  However, I will refer to these liberals as "liberals" or "many liberals". 2) I do not consider myself a liberal, just like Bernie Sanders (an Independent senator from Vermont) doesn't consider himself a Democrat.  (For the record, I don't consider myself a Democrat, either.)  Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democrats, however.  He realizes that of the established groups, he...