Recent content by Ibis3

Is there some reason why, in this forum about a science fiction show on a forum supposedly populated by rationalists, the conversation devolves yet again into sexism?

That was just full of awesome. Ha! The TARDIS stole The Doctor. :lol:

I'm sure I've had many such experiences, but I can't think of any specific ones off the top of my head. But your story brought to mind something once discussed in an undergrad class I took on Myth & Symbol. The prof talked about how the frequency of "alien abduction" stories had increased over...

I'm in the middle of reading Marci McDonald's book, The Armageddon Factor. I had no idea the religious were so well organised and so entwined with the MPs on Parliament Hill. We don't have a law separating church & state, which so far hasn't done much harm to the steady march of secularism (or...

Sorry, not a lot of time to reply, but in fact, there are several gods (or god conceptions if you prefer) in the bible, supplemented by extra- and post-biblical material. Most people have been indoctrinated to think of them all as one package (or one god), but that's pretty much an illusion of...

Yes. I know. I already pointed this out upthread. That was where this discussion started. (i.e. Me: Dictionaries today are descriptive. MRaverz:they should say what a word means not what people erroneously think it means & Oxford generally does this. Me: Not always. You: Dictionaries are...

Alas, not always. For example, my CanOx defines prodigal (in the third sense) as "having returned after a long absence". This usage is wrong, wrong, wrong. It's a misunderstanding of the word's meaning by people who've taken it from the biblical parable and never bothered to find out what it...

One thing to keep in mind is that dictionaries (especially nowadays) are descriptive, which means they try to define words as they are actually used (as opposed to how they ought to be used). So as an American dictionary, M-W's definitions will be descriptive of how words are used in the US...

Yeah, AronRa's vids can be a little overwhelming. The basic idea is that modern science uses the "family tree" approach (aka cladistics) when classifying organisms. You don't "jump" from what your ancestors were, you're just more specific/more evolved. So, our ancestors were lemur-like animals...

Thanks for the reply AW. Glad to hear that you're thinking about this issue. On a related topic, (and I'm not sure exactly what you can do about it), I find that the show chatrooms are often quite full of sexist comments, often of the immature type. It's not a very welcome atmosphere for women...

Treat her like a human being and not a possession (ahem that you are in a position to judge or allow activities to) and you should be fine. Some women appreciate the "gentlemanly" or "chivalrous" touch (holding doors open, ceding your seat on the bus etc.), others see it as condescending like...

I consider myself a feminist, and I don't have a problem with your 'prime rule'. Yes, it's hard to figure out how much of the traditional gender roles are influenced by biology and how much by culture, and of course the distinctions among individuals of the same sex are probably just as...

Not that women all have the same views or anything, but it would be nice to hear a woman's perspective once in a while, especially when discussing topics that relate to them especially (for example today's brief discussion on banning the burqa). This came up in the chatroom today (i.e. the...

I studied history at uni, and took quite a bit of classical history (though my period of specialty was Late Roman, early Medieval). What I remember being told at the time was that it was believed that the builders of the pyramids were free Egyptians who were required to put in a certain amount...

If you're so intent on arguing with your family members, how about taking the Pagan gods approach. If they see the natural world as so much evidence of the divine, what makes them think it's their god rather than an Earth Goddess that's involved? Or maybe there are thousands of spirits and gods...