What a bunch of losers. They are surrounded by Nazis and they can't find someone to do some weird killing? That's the French for you--always talking, never doing.

Ed Yetman, III
YetmanBrothers.com

Probably belongs in the politics thread, but I just finished reading Empire by Orson Scott Card. It takes us inside the second U.S. Civil war that begins on June 13, 2008.

The premise is that politics in the U.S. have become so polarized that both extremes are just waiting for an excuse/opportunity to "liberate" the nation from the other extreme.

Savant, Marilyn Vos, The Power of Logical Thinking. St Martin's Press, NY, 1996. 203 p. ISBN 0312156278

Fun and thought provoking.

I'm pretty sure Kasparov, Karpov and the others are very glad this woman never entered competitive chess - they would never have become world champs

@Spock:

Is that an actual "political Civil War" that that Empire book talks about?

Please give us a little bit more information about that "second U.S. Civil War" that that book talks about.

Thank you, spock!


Chess Fan

Just read The Big Twitch by Sean Dooley. A twitcher is a term for birdwatchers who are a little more obsessive about their hobby. They travel extensively so they can see a bird and put a little check in the box next to its name (in North America, they're called 'listers'). Sean spent a year of his life, tens of thousands of dollars, and travelled over 80,000 km in an attempt to see 700 species of bird in Australia.

Below is a quote about twitchers...I'm sure you can see from reading it that if you replace bird terms with the appropriate chess terms the quote still works (it is tongue-in-cheek with truth in there).

Hmm, kind of reminds me of someone here at CN (arrogance, megalomania, has mastered chess better than book-writing patzers, own moral universe).

The war involves assassinations and tank-like machines used to invade NYC.

The war is politically motivated (right versus left).

Wow, that sounds a bit like what could happen during the post-Rapture, Tribulation period here in the United States!


Chess Fan

After so many number of heated debates, this may not be the best book to bring about. But still I am going to ask. Has anyone read "The GOD Delusion" by Richard Dawkins? If so, what is your opinion?

Well, yeah, but I am funny and lovable, too

Hmm, maybe I should have spock answer for me, since he seems to be an expert on how deep my knowledge of Dawkins is

But to answer the question - I HAVE read the book. I felt it was good. There are some things that were kinda weak - for example, I preferred Bertrand Russell's summary of why the supposed "proofs" of God's existence are really not proofs at all. But then again, it seems like Russell was more philosophical in his approach, while Dawkins kinda approaches things from a "common sense" point of view. So I think Dawkins often ends up not giving the best approach to certain arguments/ideas - either because he doesn't want to repeat what has been said before him too much or because he doesn't want to get too complicated for the target audience.

There were some other things that I thought were somewhat weak, like the meme theory of (religious) ideas, which was probably out of place in such a book if the objective was to have as pointed and lean pro-atheism/anti-religion book as opposed to having a mere collection of Dawkins' ideas on the subject.

Anyway, I knew the major things and arguments before (and even the very minor ones - he even mentions the "Gott mit uns"/"God with us" Nazi army buckle - and that I brought up on this forum earlier ), but the book did show me certain ideas and angles that I was not aware of, as well as some of the relatively lesser known side-stories and examples (The case study of Frumianity makes me giggle - or at least, smile- every time I think about it). I did like how he treated the agnosticism. I myself felt the same way, but I never bothered to actually articulate that because it is very rare for atheists to debate agnostics. Another big one for me was his approach to religious morality - in fact, a lot of it pretty much refutes a lot of what nfm likes to talk about in the World religions thread (namely, the "reliable morals" and whether they can be induced from scriptures as opposed to the natural world). I was probably a little dogmatic (and rather generous) when I agreed nfm had a point there a couple of years ago when we discussed it.

This could probably be a better book if certain issues were addressed another way and if certain other things were omitted, but then again, I realize that the format was such that he had to do things a certain way. But if the intention was to present a case for why no thinking individual should be religious in this day and age, the book does succeed.

Elaborate. And I mean right now, you atheistic dog! Seriously, I could use a good giggle and I'm not familiar with "Frumianity." Googled it but yielded zero results. Sure Dawkins wasn't making it up?