Is having a good time the point of life?
Christopher Martin | 26 November 2004
Some people would say that it can't be that the point of a person's life is having a good time because it would be selfish, or unsatisfying. I think both those answers are correct, but I want to give another, or a set of others. Having a good time, having pleasant experiences, can't be the point of your life because it wouldn't be a life, because it would be pointless, because it would be self-contradictory.
The mystery of the Indonesian hobbits
Carlos Marmelada | 26 November 2004
An Australian research team, led by paleoanthropologists Peter Brown and Mike Morwood, recently announced the discovery of a new human species, different from us, but co-existing with our species, Homo sapiens (1). The specimen found on the Indonesian island of Flores measures a bit over a meter tall, and has a cranial volume of 380 cm3, similar to that of a chimpanzee. However, it appears to be an intelligent species based on the stone instruments associated with it. If this information is confirmed, we have here an extraordinary discovery.
Bush’s family edge
Michael Cook | 19 November 2004
The most striking map of the American election was the distribution of blue Kerry counties and red Bush counties. What it shows is a fringe of blue within a few miles of the West Coast beaches, a ribbon of blue along the Mississippi and a stub of New England blue, along with a few Kerry counties in the immense Southwest. But basically there was a vast hinterland of red, stretching from East to West. Even in states which Kerry carried easily like Pennsylvania, Illinois and New York, specks of blue float in a sea of red.
Revisiting the man who invented tolerance
Christopher Martin | 19 November 2004
This year marks 300th anniversary of the death of the English philosopher John Locke in 1704, an event which has been commemorated by several conferences. Locke is important for a number of reasons. He was the first considerable figure of the empiricist school of philosophy, which sought to find a secure foundation for our whole system of knowledge in our sensations. As a political philosopher, he articulated the importance of the division of the three powers of the state, the legislative, the judiciary, and the executive, a distinction which is enshrined in the US constitution and in the constitutional practice of all respectable free countries.
The health of American marriages
Social Action | 19 November 2004
If you take your evidence from television shows, then young men are not interested in marriage. But a US national survey of young men aged 25-34 shows that most men are "the marrying kind", although men are delaying marriage until older ages. Those from traditional, religiously observant family backgrounds are more likely to be married, or to seek marriage and to have positive views of marriage, women and children than young males who come from non traditional and non religious family backgrounds. However, around twenty per cent of young men are personally averse to marriage.
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