alkan

Sorry @Avalon, there are distinctions to be made here. North America was inhabited already (not heavily populated of course, although the inhabitants were widespread enough) and Columbus thought he had reached somewhere else entirely so I would object to the use of the word "discovery" in this instance. And after all the Vikings had a short-lived settlement in Canada several hundred years before where they seem to have traded with the locals so you can't even say Columbus was the first European to reach it. None of that should diminish the pioneering spirit of the man, though. I was taught without equivocation in school "Columbus discovered America". That is not only factually incorrect in regard to the meaning of the word, but it also encapsulates a euro-centric view of the world that is deeply unfortunate. That of course was a long rime ago and I think UK schools treat it differently now.

Yes, oral works in other cultures have been preserved in just that fashion so it is not inherently unlikely. But, while the Odyssey reads more like a collection of tales, the Iliad has a certain literary integrity (and it did found a strong literary tradition of epic poetry) to much of it, with exceptions like the catalogue of ships, that militates against the many authors scenario. One of the intriguing clues to dating the Iliad is a reference to what may be writing. (When I was at school we translated it as "secret signs" but it is often now taken to be writing.) The point being of course could Homer's generation be aware of writing while itself not seeing the need for being able to write? And that is to assume that the art or science of writing did in fact disappear with the fall of Palace Culture. Of course, if Homer was referring to hieroglyphs, he as an outsider might easily perceive them as conveying meaning without being aware that they were a representation of a spoken language.

Somewhat naively, I prefer to think that Homer made up the story, only relying on a very broad tradition of the most basic facts. If he is telling a true story, then how much of his account is someone else's work? Of course, there is some doubt that he is responsible for both the Iliad and the Odyssey because of stylistic inconsistencies, so perhaps one is original and the other is a reworking of an earlier account. In any case, a thought-provoking article for which much thanks, @Avalon.

My father had odd ideas about children, I think, but he did read to my brother and myself (although never to my sister). The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat, and Bellarion by Rafael Sabatini, were two of my favourites, albeit one of them reduced me to tears on a regular basis. I also remember various Dornford Yates books and what I take it was an expurgated edition of the Decameron.

https://dryaskulk.tumblr.com/image/176277560865

So what subset would badgers describe and would you be attracted?

I totally misunderstood where this thread was going and thought you had discovered a police force which used sniffer badgers!

Barcelona - Vigo, Carrer d'Aribau 27, Eixample. Nearest metro Universitat. Good, small, local. Perhaps not worth crossing the city for but handy neighbourhood place and always seems to be crowded. Good selection of substantial tapas. Friendly staff. For reservations (necessary for after 9pm, closes midnight), ring 934 2424 08. My information for Rome probably out of date.

I think I remember several times when this has happened before! On this occasion, though the article does not make it clear, the tomb has been found in a not-completely-unlikely-place, in north east Alexandria, near the military hospital in Sidi Gaber, if anyone knows the city.

Yes and in the nineteenth century that concealment of gender was quite usual, George Eliot (who could "write" both male and female characters with the highest level of skill and insight) being the foremost example perhaps. I wonder why Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell chose to use her name with the "Mrs" so firmly attached. And a lot of romantic novelists in the 1950's and 1960's were popularly supposed to be male authors using female names.

You said your preference was for black hair and brown eyes and that is what I was going by. I don't think that combination is unique to one race or even a group of races, but you raise an interesting point. What happens if a man has altered his appearance cosmetically and now fits one's category of preference? At what point does the "falsity" of the appearance act as a turn-off? I don't have a deep-seated physical preference myself so I don't have an answer.

No, that's just good taste.

Perhaps I am wrong but that's not how I read it. I thought he was saying (and please correct me if I am mistaken) that what you described couldn't be thought of as racist because the features you said you have a preference for are not race-specific. But even if they were, as I said, that would not constitute racism. In fact, I could quite believe in a racist wanting only to have sex with the race that he or she regarded as inferior, and even that would only of itself be racism if the sexual desire was predicated on the perceived inferiority, rather than e.g. a physical feature possessed by that race.

Agreed. And let's state it once more. Racism is the belief that one race is superior or inferior to others, not a sexual preference for one aspect. The "difficulty" arises with the way that is expressed, e.g.if it is used as a way of putting a race down, or is perceived that way.

I still think there is confusion in some of the earlier posts between racism and racial prejudice. Look at it this way. I may not like tattoos. I believe (wrongly) all skater boys have tattoos. I put "no skater boys" in my advert. I am entitled not to like tattoos, it is the prejudging and the expression of it that is wrong (and it may be to my detriment as much as to anyone else's). Racism is the belief, rightly or wrongly, that one race is superior or inferior to others. Racial prejudice is where one assumes that all members of that race share the particular characteristic that makes that race better or worse in one's own opinion. So if one is recruiting for a basketball team and advertises for "African-Americans only". one is being racist and racially prejudiced but the two things are separate. One's belief that African-Americans generally are better basketball players may be to some extent justified but it is not the African-Americanness that one wants for the team, it is the height and the loose-limbed athletic ability. If I put "no Asians" in my dating profile, what is it that I am here identifying as Asian-ness and could it be expressed in a different format? I suspect that if I examine that particular racism honestly, it will disappear under scrutiny.

The point about racial prejudice is surely that my belief in the superior characteristics of one race over another is possibly mistaken, that is to say, the person I am judging may not have the particular characteristic that I believe is shared by all members of that race. This is not the same as disliking cabbage where all cabbages (for all practical purpose) have the same characteristic (taste or texture) and that feature is essential to their nature. And I may of course "shorthand" the bias that @big-n-tall refers to by racial stereotyping eg if I find a particular skin-tone attractive, I might put "Asians only" in a hook-up advert as the practical way of expressing my preference. I agree that it is important to recognise one's own prejudices and to examine them to find out what they are based on and determine whether one is using that same racial "shorthand" in one's own head to express a more natural preference.

I don't think I agree with that, though that might be because I don't particularly understand it. (And, though he quotes it with approval, the author of the cited article rather goes against the tenour of what I take to be the Justice's meaning.) After all, the veriest slave is still free to define his captivity however he wishes.

Time is a human interpretation of observed phenomena. If previously unobserved phenomena occur, our definition of Time and what it can do, will be amended. Of course, if you and I are around to observe it, that in itself will be a phenomenon worth recording.

And, by the way, @Avalon, I don't think you can say "must" as in "must slow down" in this context. At the moment our notions of "must" are constrained by our understanding of the physics involved. Once we admit we don't understand the physics, "must" goes out the window.

Yes, the concertina effect. But what happens to Time in that context? Time is inextricably linked to the Universe and only exists, as we know it, within it and is directed by entropy. If entropy is reversed, does time run backwards?

Once again I have to say how much I am enjoying everyone's replies with their different perspectives. But can I go very slightly off-topic here although I might blame @Avalon as he brought up the subject of the speed of light? People commonly say nothing can travel faster than light (within an equivalent frame of reference). This is not quite what Einstein says and it implies there is something intrinsic to light which prevents other objects from overtaking it. What is perhaps nearer the mark is to say that there is another natural barrier that prevents faster-than-light travel but that light is the only thing we know of that can approach that velocity. This however brings up a conundrum. Either this natural barrier and the maximum speed of light happen to occur at the same velocity, or light would "like" to travel faster and is prevented from doing so by the barrier. This barrier is usually assumed to be the accumulation of mass and the concomitant distortion of time at these huge speeds.? If light is prevented from travelling any faster by these factors, what happens to the increasingly massive photons? As has been pointed out, the Universe is expanding at increasing speed and the question there is, is the space into which it is expanding pre-existing or being created when needed? I prefer to think that it is not increasing distance that separates the galaxies but Time being created in the gaps. The fanciful extension of this theory would be that there are innumerable galaxies further out already exceeding the speed of light which will never slow down and never become visible to us.

Yes, but how do you decide what "best" means in this context. If, for example, you mean the best human being you can be, which is quite a reasonable thing to strive for, you must have pondered on what it means to be human. If you aim to be the best you can be in certain specific areas, you still will have made certain value judgments about what would be a worthwhile skill to attain. Otherwise you might determine that it is better to be a highly successful bank robber rather than a mediocre musician (this has a certain painful personal application for me).

But that gets us no further than saying we find it for ourselves and introduces a whole new set of unknowns to boot.

@pepa_e_mango asks if "we" have a purpose and the answer that appeals to me most is "no" unless we formulate one for ourselves but we could still be that random accident within a universe which is itself less accidental. But how would we know? As @Avalon has said, the Universe has a "direction": outwards or away. Does that imply a destination or is it merely going towards a state of greater randomness? In that case, going back towards a pre-expansion state would seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics - not that anyone has suggested it would apply in such a case. But that would indicate that the Natural Laws as presently formulated that @Avalon refers to are local and temporal and not in any sense of the word, Universal. As for the suggestion that @beachboy makes, if we did have a purpose, I could certainly see the value in defining it, but I would ask who set the problem? I am quite comfortable in believing that we do not have an externally-imposed purpose. The idea that a powerful and beneficent god created a set of beings whose purpose is to praise their creator just seems impossible as @pepa_e_mango has said. But I think the phrase "meaning of life" may itself be meaningless. I have enjoyed all the responses so far.

Particle physics indicates that this is indeed so, eg tachyons. (But semantically, you could say that light in a vacuum travels faster than the speed of light in water!)