Metal Reviews

Very well written. While it is not the most effective of the New Atheist books (I'd give that honour to Sam Harris' The End of Faith), it's the most enjoyable to read.

I have my copy of 'The End of Faith' sitting here on my bookshelf awaiting to be read immediately after the Dawkins book. I'm also curious to read Harris' follow up 'Letter to a Christian Nation' as well.

Letter to a Christian Nation is (obviously) a lot shorter, and a lot more precisely aimed at a specific target, therefore it's a lot more direct and to-the-point, although The End of Faith deals with more topics. Harris is a very good writer in general though.

Now that I'm finished with A Brief History Of Time, I have two options right now: The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe (part two of the "Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy" saga) and Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban. I'm not sure yet which one I want to read first.

currently reading: a collection of Hal Draper writings on the internet.

Oh, and From Hell.

Adams, absolutely.

Then it's decided.

Louis Althusser - For Marx

This is totally unreadable. Sentences read like they are constructed using a random long word generator, and invariably feature the same word several times except sometimes capitalised, in which case it means something slightly different. Seemingly every fourth word is italicised, for no apparent reason.

Trapt, have you read this person? If so, wtf is he talking about?

Althusser basically says fuck the economic and focus on the superstructure. Zizek bases a lot off him. I haven't read him but that's what I know about him. Is that the Verso edition? They usually choose solid translations. The capitalizing is a common philosophical thing and he may be addressing someone else's work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Althusser

Yeah, the Verso Radical THinkers series.

I came into it sort of knowing the deal; I am trying to get to grips with epistemology at the moment for my project. I read a lot about Althusser, mainly the ideas about how theoretical knowledge shouldn't be tested empirically, but instead can only be tested by its own internal logical consistency. So, something about trying to decode the logic of the structures governing society, but without actually testing ideas practically within society, which he sees as of very limited use.

But people writing about him never seem to go much deeper than that synopsis, so I thought I'd turn to the man himself. His ideas are strange and I want to see how he justifies them. It's too hard to read though

Don't really have much background in philosophy so it's quite new to me.

i was reading an article about MAD the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction during the times of the Cold War. Its pretty sickening..

Just finished "The Stranger", by Camus. A wonderful testament to the vitality of the atheist and the existentialist. His speech to the Chaplain at the end is brilliant.

Finished Midnight's Children. It was hella long but I feel like it could have been even longer, like three books or something. A lot went on in it.

Gonna read Snow Falling on Cedars now.

Reading atheism into that isn't a stretch but I feel like it is definitely unnecessary.

I don't think it's unnecessary at all. It seems to me more like Camus went deliberately out of his way to include atheism into the ending. The book ends with his speech to the Chaplain, where he essentially justifies a godless existence in existential terms.

Finished A Storm of Swords. Oh man that got pretty brutal. Now waiting for A Feast For Crows to Arrive, which I can promptly finish and join the queue with everyone else.

Currently reading: The Spiders Of Allah by James Hider, and Alistair Cook's America.

What I don't understand is why, after reading it, you would want to be like that...

Gonna read World Without End by Ken Follett. Sequel (sorta) to The Pillars of the Earth!

Like what, like the protagonist? I don't. I just found Camus expressed his somewhat heroic interpretation of atheism in a very nice manner.

re-reading What is to be Done? by Lenin; some things Rio said in the politics thread a while back gave me a lot to think about, and I've been combing through my old Lenins to see if he's got a point.

It seems a lot more condescending than it did before, so far.