The Antidote by Oliver Burkeman – review
Do you see a glass that is half-full, half-empty, or that simply contains enough liquid to throw over the idiot asking you to make the choice?
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It’s not the Dalai Lama’s job to break the silence
Looking for good, wise political leadership from the Dalai Lama, or any other religious leader, is like looking for the next Jimi Hendrix on Britain’s Got Talent: you might just succeed, but you’d be a fool to expect it.
ReadWould a message from God pass these Catholic rules on revelation?
Herein contains what we might call the paradox of revelation. As its meaning makes clear, you can’t have a “revelation” that tells everyone what they already know. However, having established a religion on those revelations, the teachings revealed through them become non-negotiable, and the ecclesiastical authorities become the arbiters of their interpretation. And so that means no further revelation is admissible if it contradicts what is already believed. Revelation of radical new truths, if accepted as real, thus makes future revelation of radical new truths impossible. To put it another way, what was absolutely valid for the establishing of a religion becomes by necessity invalid once it already exists.
ReadBrain games
Be prepared for the information about to enter your brain via your retina to cause neuronal firings that will result in the raising of your eyebrows: a leading neuroscientist has declared that that we are not mere collections of atoms, nor just biological machines. According to Sebastian Seung, the self is a non-material entity. The 21st-century soul, however, is not some strange ghost in the machine. It’s information. You are, in effect, a piece of software running on the wetware in your skull…
ReadIs Osborne’s dad worth a £19,000 desk?
Why do so many people form a deep attachment to what is, in essence, no more than a level surface on which to rest a computer, some books, a coffee cup or a glass of something stronger?
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