The Mystery of the Millionaire Metaphysician "In June 2000, the philosopher Dean Zimmerman moved from the University of Notre Dame to Syracuse University with his wife and three kids, only to see their new house catch fire the day they moved in." Months later, he received the second hopeful fortune cookie since the fire, which told him "A way out of a financial mess is discovered as if by magic!"; the next day, magic arrived in a letter offering Zimmerman a generous sum of money, which he later learned was $12,000, to review a sixty-page work of metaphysics titled "Coming to Understanding."
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posted by MCMikeNamara
on Feb 12, 2012 -
42 comments
“In the condition I was in, it assumed at the time the quality of a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk; what's more, it was proof that there was something left to express artistically besides nihilism and destruction.” Lester Bangs on the topic of
Van Morrison's Astral Weeks which began recording exactly 40 years ago today in Century Sound Studios NYC.
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posted by philip-random
on Sep 25, 2008 -
36 comments
Did the discovery of evolution lead to Darwin's agnosticism, as
claimed? Carl Zimmer
wonders. More importantly, can evolution be
reconciled with Christianity?
posted by daksya
on Aug 11, 2005 -
90 comments
What am I? Clearly the most pressing question facing the human race today.
Every individual human brain contains around 10^12 (1 trillion) neurons and 10^15 (1 quadrillion) synapses, capable of changing in milliseconds, and there are 6x10^9 (6 billion) people on this planet, all potentially capable of interacting and influencing one another. Last year alone 1.6x10^11 (160 billion) minutes of international telephone calls were made between people talking at a rate of 120 to 150 words per minute. A collection of articles at newscientist.com.
posted by mokey
on Jun 14, 2003 -
12 comments
Into the Garden of Good and Evil - Muhammad Iqbal's "THE DEVELOPMENT OF METAPHYSICS IN PERSIA" (first published in 1908 and free online courtesy the Bahai's):
"The most remarkable feature of the character of the Persian people is their love of Metaphysical speculation." Strong, bipolar Good vs. Evil distinctions, and the notion of a cosmic struggle between the two, seem to have originated in ancient Persia as Persian Dualism. See
Manicheanism here,
here (warning-spurious windows), and
here. Special bonus -
Freepers fulminate over a German theologian's exegesis of Manichean american political rhetoric!
posted by troutfishing
on Feb 21, 2003 -
14 comments
