Thanks to bright_lilim for the following, which apparently investigates my friends and lists interests which they have and I don't.

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I read it last week. Most of it.

I did not like it.

I have seen good reviews of it and I can't argue with them. I think it was well crafted; I was not disappointed in the way the story was told.

Mild spoilers follow.   ( Read more... )

Comments on Dawkins' book

The main reason Dawkins gives for writing this book is to combat the guilt pangs that established conservative religions instill in their young to preserve their membership and power.  He regards such as cults.  Many use some of the tricks of cults to maintain their hold.  The God Delusion is described in its beginning as ( Read more... )

For those few on my FL who don't already know it, the first chapter of volume 2 of Lois McMaster Bujold's The Sharing Knife - Legacy has been posted:

http://outofthiseos.typepad.com/blog/2007/06/the_sharing_kni.html

[EDIT
More is available at this link:

http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061139055/The_Sharing_Knife_Volume_Two/excerpt.aspxend ( Read more... )

Dennis Overbye has an essay on the New York Times (registration required) lamenting the prediction that soon we won't be able to see anything but what's in our local galaxy cluster.  (And that might have merged into a single galaxy.)  That will long have ceased to interest anyone around here, but he is thinking of future societies trying to figure ( Read more... )

or,
We can all be chauvinistic* if we work at it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL7uW4TYqbs

*I'm the one accused, (the video is a Vermont-themed rap) not the boys - this was shot about 10 miles, or a couple towns and several farms, away.  No, I don't know them.

Below the cut are some links to related not-locked FL discussions on Heliocentrism=Atheism and "The God Delusion", because some of the discussions are good (and related, in my mind), and I want pointers collected.

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Two posts in one day?  No, I'm not going to finish before midnight.  Well, some of you know about this already.

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These people email a quiz each week; I thought this week's might amuse some of you.

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from the LMB list

And then I was eaten by a grue