An author of a thread on Benatar at http://forums.philosophyforums.com was fretting that the thread had run out of steam. A kindly person mentioned this web site and noted, by way of encouragement I guess, that "A Challenge to Meat Eaters" was on it's 2000+ post and was still going strong. I followed the link and thought I'd join. I've contributed about 8000+ posts PhilosophyForums, so far. They operate an excellent site, too.

I've lived in Minnesota for all but two of the last 67 years. I am not now, nor have I ever been a "philosopher". My internal operating system (over which I do not have control) is theist, but I have pretty much abandoned theist notions. I am not, on the other hand, an enthusiastic atheist. Many an atheist has exceeded many a theist in achieving remarkable levels of annoyingness. Neither am I a vegan (It's very good ecology -- you should eat that way!) nor a libertarian. I am more of a socialist along the lines of Daniel Deleon or Eugene Debs. I am not waiting for the revolution. I've always been gay. As of this past week, Minnesota became the 12th state in the US to make marriage between same sex partners legal. I've had several good and long relationships that were strong without marriage, and the last would still be there had not death done us part after 30 years.

I am retired from the tar sands of social service / non-profit work. There were some great jobs that lasted a few years each.
Some of the jobs were death on the installment plan, and the rest were just a drag. I'm really happy for that stage of life being over.

I like film, most kinds of music between the 9th century and the present (with two or three exceptions), I read as widely as I can manage, trying to fill in the large gaps from my undergraduate years. I've done well in some areas (social and biological sciences) but I still have a lot of back filling to do in my major field, English Literature. I used to bicycle a lot (I could do a 100 mile ride), I swam, I jogged, I did all sorts of things and, DAMN, never enjoyed the buffed results I was longing for. Tragic, just tragic. I was in pretty good shape though, for quite a long time. Now I am fat and lazy.

I am inexplicably upbeat and happy. This is a change from 30, 20, or even 10 years ago. I have become an unwilling optimist. Even so, when it comes to global warming, I think we are just totally screwed. For instance:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/busin ... .html?_r=0
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/ ... e-picture/

Fáilte

Welcome, numbers.

Great intro! Welcome, 3571113!

Welcome aboard

Catchy name BTW.

LucidFlight wrote:Great intro! Welcome, 3571113!

Yes it was.

I like this bit

My internal operating system (over which I do not have control) is theist, but I have pretty much abandoned theist notions.

Very honest.

Welcome

Hi

I like your intro too

At first I was suspicious of your username, thinking you might be a sock or something. I mean what genuine new member just types random numbers as a username?

Then I realised they weren't random. Caught me slippin'.

Welcome.

Hi there 357 : I am surreptitious 57 so we have least one thing in common

Welcome to our corner of the web thing net dot whatever ha ha ha

But joking aside hope you enyoy it here : Most of us do

And congratulations to Minnesota on the vote

A prime example of an original username.

Welcome!

Bob Dylan is from Minnesota. Anything else I should know?

Hi Michael, and welcome.

Welcome!

Nicko wrote:At first I was suspicious of your username, thinking you might be a sock or something. I mean what genuine new member just types random numbers as a username?

Then I realised they weren't random. Caught me slippin'.

Welcome.

Aren't they?

Scarlett wrote:

Nicko wrote:At first I was suspicious of your username, thinking you might be a sock or something. I mean what genuine new member just types random numbers as a username?

Then I realised they weren't random. Caught me slippin'.

Welcome.

Aren't they?

no they are the first 5 odd prime numbers 3,5,7,11,13

Welcome, Michael.

scott1328 wrote:

Scarlett wrote:

Nicko wrote:At first I was suspicious of your username, thinking you might be a sock or something. I mean what genuine new member just types random numbers as a username?

Then I realised they weren't random. Caught me slippin'.

Welcome.

Aren't they?

no they are the first 5 odd prime numbers 3,5,7,11,13

Oh yea! Course!



I'll google it.

Evolving wrote:A prime example of an original username.

Thank you, I was being dense.

To be fair, they could be the first five odd primes not counting 1 or they could be any of a 'number' of other things, including a random collection of numbers that happens to be…

And this might be a decent spot by way of welcome to drop this lovely, if not quite accurate, video in:[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0tLbl5LrJ8[/youtube]

Onyx8 wrote:To be fair, they could be the first five odd primes not counting 1

1 is not a prime.