Metal Reviews

Richad Dawkins is really good talking about evolution and biology (I'm prefer Jay Gould, but that's another story) but sometimes he's very biased against religion. But usually religious people are very biased against scientific facts, so it's a counterpart.

All the religious people I've met have been down with science, actually.

Live next to the Creation Museum where science goes out the window. Frig can emphasize Islam, while looking like a FOX News crony, and I'll just continue thinking all the religions suck. I started bashing Buddhism the other day and I got some odd looks from my fellow philosophy grad students.

What aspect of Buddhism were you bashing, trapt? The misogyny?

No actually not. The whole renouncing one's self from the physical world letting atrocities be committed, assuming some hokey distance from the horrible affairs of this world, then I started getting on about Zen Buddhism taking on this Western tone giving hipsters this false sense of enlightenment and superiority. No major arguments just snide bashing.

Not to turn this into the god thread or restart our perennial debate about nonviolence, but the renouncement of the world that Buddhist monks do isn't absolute and arbitrary at all. Look at how they came out and marched with the people in Burma, for instance, a fist-pumping moment that anyone could applaud wherever they sat on the political spectrum - and they suffered terribly for it. You have a point, though, especially about hipsters and zen - like drone's sudden popularity, it doesn't spoil enjoyment of the music itself, but it does cause a bit of teeth-grinding from time to time.

Sadly, Burma is the exception, not the rule as most badass moments in history are.

Hundreds of skinheads have gone on a rampage at a festival in Russia, beating people with iron bars and killing a fourteen-year-old girl. What the fuck.

Fucking loathsome. It won't be long before someone on here defends it probably. Fuck that person in advance.

You're a fucking clown.
Who would defend such a thing?

Seriously, man up and name names.

Oh and I gotta laugh my ass off about you of all people accusing others of being close-minded,a s your Foxnews crony comment implies.
Give your fucking self-righteous and smug bullshit a rest and the rest of us a fucking break from it already. It's tedious, boring and frankly getting fucking old.

Maybe I am daft, but I thought trapt was half kidding, at the least.

The story is tragic, and speaks to the long term demographic meltdown occurring in Russia. It is terrifying to think that this will continue to get worse.

Doubtful.

You're not daft, but I think you are being to nice about the constant leftsist drivel that gets posted here. How would it look if one or two posters constantly posted the other extreme POV and smugly ridiculed those that didn't fall into line with it?
Exactly.
It would be met with opposition (rightly so) and would get old after awhile.
I don't mind a little political debate, but enough is enough.
And it's not even that as much as it is the smug "I am right, you are wrong attitude" that comes with it.

Tongue in cheek, guy.

Close-minded? 'FOX News crony' wouldn't really be a very good example of my close-mindedness. I think it's hard for one to disagree with my account of FOX News as biased and Islamaphobic. I'm sure you could've found a better example for that.

You know, trapt, I do like you, you are fairly smart and a generally nice guy, but I am in deadly earnest when I say this:
You are no different than the most die-hard Fox news addict, only on the opposite end of the spectrum.
The truth, lies somewhere in the middle, not in dogma, platitudes and absolutes.
Sorry, I gotta call 'em as I see 'em.

Well, it is true that I didn't go into any proposals for curbing the demographic trends in Russia. Because I can't see the point of getting into political debates with the left here. I'm gone here again in a couple days anyway.

That's fine. I'm not as dogmatic as you'd think. Hell, hasn't the moderate position become dogma by now? What isn't dogma besides something new and path paving?

Russia is not The West; their culture, history and sense of self is not the same as ours.
That being said, attacking people with iron bars and whatnot is absolutely indefensible.

A thug is a thug.

@emperor: would you mind elaborating on what you think of as the problem within Russia?

Without knowing much about the sociological conditions, I could suppose something and spout it off but that would be dumb. V will teach me modesty.

Pragmatism and common sense.
Taking what works and discarding what doesn't.
Working in tandem and with the flow of human nature.
Forgetting about pipe-dreams and an impossible utopian society where everybody has just what they need, shoulders their share of the burden and everybody loves one another like a brother.
Never going to happen, so why waste time and energy on fairytales?

I'm the wrong man for the job, sorry.