Author Archives: Editors

‘The First New Atheist-200th Birthday of Kierkegaard’ By Morgan Meis

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Kierkegaard said “The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.”

Søren Kierkegaard was born in Denmark on May 5, 1813. He was a difficult and troublesome boy. He quarreled with his father and lived a flippant and self-indulgent life as a young man. Then he had a conversion experience. He broke with his fiancé and became an urban hermit of sorts. He studied philosophy and started to write. He believed that he had a truth to tell the people of his time. The people didn’t want to be told — do they ever? This caused him to fight with his fellow Danes and anyone else who got in his way. He became an object of ridicule around Copenhagen. The local papers made fun of him for his hunched back and clubbed foot. He wrote many books under various false names, most of which were ignored. He died in relative obscurity at the age of 42.

Thus, the short and painful life of Søren Kierkegaard. Over the last 200 years, however, Kierkegaard’s writings have resurfaced in influential places. A mad German named Friedrich Nietzsche was impressed with Kierkegaard’s writings. He helped to keep Kierkegaard from falling into complete oblivion. Another rascally German rediscovered Kierkegaard in the early 20th century. This was Martin Heidegger who, unintentionally, turned Kierkegaard into an intellectual predecessor of Existentialist philosophy. More recently the Post-Modernists rediscovered Kierkegaard, fascinated by his use of fragmentary writing and multiple narrative voices. Kierkegaard is the philosopher who will not go away.

Today, at the 200th anniversary of his birth, Kierkegaard seems as relevant as ever. That’s because there is a public discussion about faith in America today. Kierkegaard’s central concern was faith and the problems of faith. Today, the evolutionary biologist and sometimes children’s author Richard Dawkins is at the forefront of the faith debate. The philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett is a frequent contributor, as well as the neuroscientist Sam Harris. The late, great Christopher Hitchens was the angriest and funniest participant. We’ll call these figures The New Atheists. Click Link for full article;

http://thesmartset.com/article/article05081301.aspx

Posted By F. Sheikh

Infinite Energy Source- Ice You Can Set On Fire (Methane Hydrate)

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What If We Never Run Out of Oil? By Charles Mann

New technology and a little-known energy source suggest that fossil fuels may not be finite. This would be a miracle—and a nightmare.

“In the 1970s, geologists discovered crystalline natural gas—methane hydrate, in the jargon—beneath the seafloor. Stored mostly in broad, shallow layers on continental margins, methane hydrate exists in immense quantities; by some estimates, it is twice as abundant as all other fossil fuels combined. Despite its plenitude, gas hydrate was long subject to petroleum-industry skepticism. These deposits—water molecules laced into frigid cages that trap “guest molecules” of natural gas—are strikingly unlike conventional energy reserves. Ice you can set on fire! Who could take it seriously? But as petroleum prices soared, undersea-drilling technology improved, and geological surveys accumulated, interest rose around the world. The U.S. Department of Energy has been funding a methane-hydrate research program since 1982.”

“But it has also unleashed so much petroleum(Petroleum is a grab-bag term for all nonsolid hydrocarbon resources—oil of various types, natural gas, propane, oil precursors, and so on—that companies draw from beneath the Earth’s surface. The stuff that catches fire around stove burners is known by a more precise term, natural gas, referring to methane, a colorless, odorless gas that has the same chemical makeup no matter what the source—ordinary petroleum wells, shale beds, or methane hydrate.) in North America that the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based consortium of energy-consuming nations, predicted in November that by 2035, the United States will become “all but self-sufficient in net terms.” If the Chikyu researchers are successful, methane hydrate could have similar effects in Japan. And not just in Japan: China, India, Korea, Taiwan, and Norway are looking to unlock these crystal cages, as are Canada and the United States.”

“If methane hydrate allows much of the world to switch from oil to gas, the conversion would undermine governments that depend on oil revenues, especially petro-autocracies like Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Unless oil states are exceptionally well run, a gush of petroleum revenues can actually weaken their economies by crowding out other business. Worse, most oil nations are so corrupt that social scientists argue over whether there is an inherent bond—a “resource curse”—between big petroleum deposits and political malfeasance. It seems safe to say that few Americans would be upset if a plunge in demand eliminated these countries’ hold over the U.S. economy. But those same people might not relish the global instability—a belt of financial and political turmoil from Venezuela to Turkmenistan—that their collapse could well unleash.”

Click link for full article.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/what-if-we-never-run-out-of-oil/309294/?single_page=true

( Posted by F. Sheikh )

 

Preventive Measures Submitted by Nasik Elahi

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In Steven Spielberg’s sci-fi masterpiece “Minority Report,” set in the year 2054 and released nine months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, homicide-squad detectives no longer spend their time tracking down people who have committed murder. Instead, they go after people who are about to commit murder, swooping down to stop them in the nick of time. Spielberg’s police officers don’t fight crime, they fight “Pre-Crime.” They don’t catch killers, they catch pre-killers.

Click the link below for reading the rest of the New Yorker article.

http://m.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2013/05/20/130520taco_talk_hertzberg?mbid=nl_Weekly%20(53)

 

 

“Pro-Palestinian Is Not Anti-Israel But the Opposite” By M.J. Rosenberg

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Sometimes it is instructive to listen to what Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says because his way of seeing the Israel-Palestinian conflict is typical of the thinking of both the Netanyahu government and its lobby here. I say “sometimes,” because most of Dershowitz’s opinions can be found in a dozen other places — from AIPAC, the “major Jewish organizations,” neocon websites like Commentary and in statements and tweetsfrom the Israeli government itself.

But sometimes Dershowitz inadvertently provides solid insight into the mentality that enables a 45-year occupation that, even Dershowitz admits, has proven so destructive to Israel.

In a debate last week with Peter Beinart, theDaily Beast columnist and author of the bestseller, The Crisis of Zionism, Dershowitz said that, for Jews, Israel is now “an embarrassment.”

In 1967, Jews were able to beat their chest and say “wow, we’re proud to be Israel [sic], look how tough Israelis are. It was a source of pride. Today, it’s a source of embarrassment.”

And he knows why, as evidenced by his reference to 1967, the year the occupation began.

But when Beinart pointed that out, Dershowitz responded that Israel’s evolution into “an embarrassment” has nothing to do with the occupation.

No, it’s not about the occupation. If the occupation ended tomorrow, you would find the same. … It is not an embarrassment, because of what Israel is doing but because of what Israel is.

In other words, it’s just about hating the Jewish state. Click link for full article:

http://www.washingtonspectator.org/index.php/BREAKING-VIEWS/mj-rosenberg-what-alan-dershowitz-doesnt-get-about-israel.html

( Posted By F. Sheikh )