Paulo Seabra

On first glance this is a pretty dumb argument. It went something along the lines of – atheists aren't really convinced God doesn't exist, they just convinced themselves of it so that they can wallow in sin... It sounds strange and doesn't make much sense for a couple of reasons, the first of which is that it attempts to psychoanalyze a stereotypical view of the atheist mindset instead of addressing the actual atheist arguments. Don't get me wrong though, psychology still plays an important part in the discussion, at least to me, and I've mentioned my thoughts about it very often, but it's still incorrect to use some armchair psychology as a way to minimize or avoid the actual arguments. And even if the psychological profile happens to be correct, it doesn't then follow that the philosophical arguments are incorrect. It could well be that the notion of God makes no sense and that religion is entirely man-made, even if in the atheist's mind there happens ...

One of the first articles I wrote for this blog was a list of ten common, or not so common, atheist arguments that I used to defend during my militant atheist phase but that, in recent times I've come to sort of abandon. At first I thought the title I chose for the article was a bit weird, but now I think it's actually quite apt. That's because, while I now see some arguments as uncharitable at best and dumb at worst, most of them are arguments I can't wholly refute but also can't quite use in a discussion anymore. I've come to realize they're full of holes, they don't often tell the whole story, and quite a few of them seem to have an underlying psychological component that atheists elect to ignore when marching under the banner of logic and skepticism. And I say that because I look back on my reasoning from those days and I find in my past self those exact same idiosyncrasies. Now, having said that, do I remain an atheist? I do, just not a militant at...

There's a person I've known for a long time. I won't say who because it don't matter. And recently I've met another person who is the exact replica of that person I know – they have the same sense of humor, they tell the same kinds of jokes in the very same inflection, they even have the same voice, they have the same sense of dress style, they have the same love for food, which they keep banging on about, particularly through the same tendency to control the conversation with detailed recipes nobody will ever remember, they have the same slightly pretentious love for travel, they have the same taste for vain platitudes about how traveling is an art form, they even have the same face, hell, they even have the same allergies and the same excuses about the alarm clock... And then it hit me – how can it be that I just so happened to meet two extremely similar people who have no clue about the existence of one another? It doesn't add up... I'm not a very social ...

Attributing quotes to artists is a risky business. Even as I began to write this article I was immediately confused by my research and became very unsure of what Lucas actually said. It appears he was actually quoting someone else before him, which made me realize a lot of artists agree with what I'm about to say – George Lucas in cinema, Oscar Wilde in writing, and Pablo Picasso in painting. However, and regardless of the confusing quote game, I had Lucas on my mind for a little while now, and that is because he is famously known for going back to Star Wars and reediting it with new technology. Some changes, in all fields of art, can be minor and tame, such as merely improving upon the special effects, enhancing the picture quality, or, in the case of writing, correcting a few slips of the pen. But then again, some changes can be big enough to make us rethink the whole thing. Indeed, a quick search for additions and changes in Star Wars reveals a list far bigger than what I firs...

Wow, where to even begin with this one?... I was just watching some random clips of Beetlejuice when I happened to stumble upon this legendary day of old. What first got my attention was Shirley Phelps' demonic grin on the thumbnail picture there, a grin I had definitely seen before, but then I noticed Megan Phelps, now Phelps-Roper, making a distinct gesture of teenage embarrassment, and her sister Grace beside her with a look of strange distrust. What I'm trying to say here is that even the thumbnail of the video is a work of art... So I clicked on it, I skipped ahead to watch a random bit and I immediately knew I had to watch the whole thing from beginning to end. And since I first saw it, which was a few days ago now, I've been rewatching it nonstop, both in full or in random bits. So yeah, it's been a fun, and very controversial, couple of days. In case you haven't seen it or know nothing about it, it's a sort of parody of Hollywood Squares, a gameshow w...

Call me crazy but at least for my money it is. I understand most people prefer GTA V for obvious reasons, being the most recent one and therefore the most advanced of all, and beside it they often place San Andreas, which is quite often hailed as the GOAT by most fans. But at least for me, GTA V is kinda tainted by strange memories, and SA, though it gave me my share of fun, never quite did it for me. Maybe it has the most content, the bigger map, it has way more missions and has much more variety within them, and so on, maybe it even has the most complex story and characters, but for some reason, it just don't do it for me. And having said all that, as the title of this article implies, I find Liberty City Stories to be the true Rockstar ace. Now it could be that, as with most games and so on, nostalgia is playing a factor here, I won't deny that possibility. I still remember getting LCS sometime in september 2006, just at the end of summer, and then playing it all throu...