Republicans were so egocentric when they congratulated themselves for beating the Communists in Afghanistan that they never really took any serious interest in exactly WHY socialism failed in Afghanistan.

If you just dismiss socialism as something that can't succeed, then you're going to miss all of the valuable lessons that its particular mechanism of failure in Afghanistan could have taught us about what was going to happen with our brilliant idea for forcing democracy on Iraq.

"The Tragedy of Afghanistan" by Raja Anwar is quite an illuminating read.

Rape and domestic violence -- how often do we find alcohol at the scene?

This drug has to be more than a footnote in feminism.

It's not just religion. I think it's a universal human instinct to believe that the world will be better if we can just shut certain people up or keep certain points of view from being expressed. Almost everyone has their own version of this.

By the way, tribalism and Islam are not identical. It's really frustrating to see otherwise intelligent atheists repeatedly conflate the two just to make their own arguments against religion sound more convincing.

Some people only know how to succeed in a tribal economic system, and the tribal economic system in the Muslim world is very patriarchal. Women play a crucial role in this system and any change in the role of women is going to feel like a threat to the whole system.

I wonder -- does the tribal way of life have a future in the future? Can this way of life accomodate greater women's rights or do women's rights really mean the end of this ancient economic system?

People should be glad that at least Salon covers the gay marriage issue. Be grateful for that. They don't cover the issue I care about, not even when Congress votes on it.

But whatever. It seems like the Bill of Rights doesn't matter much any more. Equal protection under the law? No, we don't believe in that idea at all.

It's perfectly fine in this country to give alcohol addicts more rights than any other addicts, and to give heterosexual couples more rights than any other couples.

It's like Animal Farm -- some pigs are just more equal than other pigs.

And the heterosexual pigs who drink alcohol are the most equal pigs of all.

This article will definitely change the way things are done in my house.

Today, Edis calls himself an "Enlightenment rationalist." "I am a bit of a physics chauvinist," he writes in his book. "I think that according to the best of our current knowledge, our world is an entirely natural, physical place that does not depend on any supernatural powers."

Sometimes humans behave in a way that can only be described adequately through use of the fantastic.

In his book on string theory, Brian Green wrote that the universe finally makes sense now that we have a mathematical theory that encompasses gravity and particle theory.

But while he wrote that, ethnic cleansing was taking place in former Yugolavia. Rape camps and all that.

It seems strange to claim that the world makes sense when such terrible things happen in it.

I think this is why even educated people can resort to the supernatural -- because there's nothing in science that can adequately express or explain the grotesque, terrifying ugliness of which human beings are capable.

Enlightenment rationalism doesn't come close. There's no screaming or crying allowed in science.

On the other hand, in the modern world, science and prosperity go together. The Muslim world is going to stay poor if they don't start teaching their kids real science.

Look at Europe during the period of rapid scientific advancement -- that all happened in between and during repeated cycles of war over religion and national identity.

War and scientific development went hand in hand in Europe. Newtonian mechanics found its most popular application in the proper computation of artillery trajectories -- something you still have to do in freshman pohysics homework today. And Napoleon founded the Ecole Normal. He supported scientists and engineers because he wanted their help conquering the world for France.

The Space Race was really a part of the Cold War. Think of how many American kids were brought into science for that reason.

And let's not even talk about particle physicists who just happen to mention the national security implications of their work on their DOE applications.

People were really afraid that the end of the Cold War would be bad for American science.

Right now, after 911, it's hard to think of Islam as a religion of peace, but have they really fought as many major wars as Europeans and Americans have fought in the last 500 years?

I think that's part of answer here. People keep wanting to add it all up to religion, but there are a lot of forces at work.

Maybe science supplanted religion in the West because science is way more useful for winning wars, and the West has seen one hell of a lot of wars in the last 500 years.