Sunday, November 11, 2007

some deeply-valued empathy for religious minds



I wouldn't say I have a religious mind—a spiritual mind, yes—but I am committed to appreciating, as best I can, religious perspectives in contemporary political life (as time allows; it's not a high priority), especially relative to Habermas' interest.

Today, I defended Habermas' openness to religious voices in "the public sphere" against a misreading of his intent in the current issue of Philosophy & Social Criticism, beginning with somewhat expressive reaction to the abstract of the essay before writing today in light of a careful reading of the article.

I’ll eventually transpose those two discussions into a single posting here (or perhaps a Webpage).

Friday, November 2, 2007

some writing on the wall about a holy grail



Oil and coal—hydrocarbon fuel—is waste of the Earth, which of course takes millions of years to accumulate, and it's not in the human interest to learn to fabricate it, due to greenhouse effects. Yet, we have learned to fabricate nuclear energy, but its waste is not practically disposable, unless we abandon a hundred-mile radius around nuclear waste dumps for about 25,000 years, as we've not yet discovered the holy grail of energy: hydrogen-fusion-produced energy that breeder reactors would generate. But that will happen this century (cost-effectiveness of hydrogen-fuel cells is already within sight); so, a dwindling politics of oil will leave the Arab region to whatever alternative resourcefulness that it has been able to develop in the meantime.