At its best, the Western style of parenting aims to help children live authentically, that is, to take on the responsibility to decide for themselves what to do and how to live.

Teaching children how to live capably and independently in the world, anyway. I'm not sure what authenticity has to do with it.

How do you live "inauthentically"- isn't the fact that it is life make it authentic? I am more used to art/theatre described as inauthentic, which makes more sense to me.

How do you live "inauthentically"- isn't the fact that it is life make it authentic?

I surround myself with cardboard cutouts of my robot army and of the groveling masses. My house is actually pretty small, but I've built a gigantic paper-mache volcano completely around it so I can pretend it's a secret lair.

In contrast, what is authentic is what is our own—what we have that we have made our own. My understanding and discourse is more authentic the more it comes out of my own experience, thought and judgments. My life is more authentic the less it is dominated by “the everyone” and the more it is governed by my own understanding, concerns, desires, tastes, goals, etc. One of the clearest articulations of this idea of authenticity comes in Leo Tolstoy’s novella, The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy tells the life of a man who becomes successful and respectable by ignoring his own moral intuitions and living according to the bourgeois values of “the everyone”:.

Tolstoy doesn’t tell us what exactly Ivan Ilyich did; he doesn’t denounce this or that immoral act. The point is that Ivan let his own sense of good and bad be overruled by the dictates of common opinion. The tragedy of his life is not that he failed to achieve something, but that the ideals he did succeed in reaching were not truly his own. The novella has often been read as a condemnation of the bourgeois ethos whose highest values are success and respectability. It has also been read as an indictment of conformism. While both these readings are plausible, at the deepest level the novel is about inauthenticity. What is wrong with Ivan Ilyich’s life is not just that it was guided by a narrow and superficial set of values, but that Ivan simply accepted those values without questioning them.

Actually, Gud's one person I think could do that ....

My life is more authentic the less it is dominated by “the everyone” and the more it is governed by my own understanding, concerns, desires, tastes, goals, etc.

As a person who generally likes things that are popular, I hate that shit so much. I authentically like popular arts!

People say stuff like that to us a lot, "ooh, you're so authentic!" But I think what they mean is, "ooh, you have no tact!"

I just met my boss's boss. His first comment was "I've heard your name so much, I feel like I've already met you". He said it with a smile, so I'm taking that as a good thing. Still...eeeep.

So, this poster of logical fallacies is handy: [link]

This is big news on several fronts, not the least of which being the fact that this venture stands to reinvigorate the world's passion for space exploration

WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO FOR YOU PEOPLE? SEND ROBOTS TO MARS?

PS: The new rover will land August 5th. Pass it on. Also, our open house is June 9 and 10 and you are all invited.

Yikes!

Brazil actor playing Judas dies from accidental hanging

A Brazilian actor has died after accidentally hanging himself while playing Judas in an Easter Passion play.

Tiago Klimeck, 27, was enacting the suicide of Judas during the performance on Good Friday in the city of Itarare.

The actor was hanging for four minutes before fellow performers realised something was wrong.

Klimeck was taken to hospital suffering from cerebral hypoxia but died on Sunday.

The Passion play was being performed in Itarare, 345km (214 miles) west of Sao Paulo.

Klimeck was re-enacting the scene in which Judas commits suicide in repentance for his betrayal of Jesus Christ.

Police are investigating the apparatus that was meant to support Klimeck. It appears the knot may have been wrongly tied.