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on to #10!

A short time ago I read an article with the eye-catching headline: Why Female Muslim Professor Says It’s OK To Rape Non-Muslim Women, and apparently it is serious. The woman in the video asserted that women prisoners of war taken in legitimate war could be used as sex slaves. That’s rather traditional, but non-combatants cannot be prisoners of war, so it leads me to wonder what the reasoning really is. If it was meant that women taken as plunder of war could be used in any way, then the commentator ...

"The Story of a Novel" and related pieces by Thomas Wolfe.

This matter has come to mind several times recently. It isn’t that I am altruistic, but some people have mistakenly taken me as such. There are advantages in helping others, and that is true of most animals, not just for humans. Most animals live in herds, packs, or family groups, because it is helpful to have others of one’s kind around who might be helpful sometime. Even if they don’t specifically assist, they might give some moral support.

Most recently the idea of altruism ...

I recently thought of the Piso Christianity Conspiracy again. This is one that hasn’t caught on, yet, but it is as silly as most conspiracy theories are. I first encountered this in the early or mid-1990’s on Prodigy Services bulletin boards. The author of this, Roman Piso, claims that his ancestors invented Christianity in an attempt to avoid more rebellions by the Jews, and to some degree they seem to have been successful, because after the Rebellion of 70 CE the Jews didn’t start another war ...