Hi Charlie :)

How are you? How long has your site been going?

Hope you have a good time with Booktalk.

Brad

Hi Katie :) How are you?

Good to see more Australians on Booktalk, even if they are on the other side of the country. I'm somewhat of a sporadic poster and stick more to nonfiction, but you never know...

Hope you enjoy Booktalk, it's a great site.

Brad

The key sentence in the first chapter for me is on page 36 of the hardcover edition (look up Panzee in the index if your copy doesn't match): "... caretakers generally have a higher opinion of apes' mental abilities than the philosophers and psychologists who write on the topic, few of whom hav...

Austria: Activists ask European human rights court to declare chimpanzee a 'person' The Associated Press Published: May 21, 2008 VIENNA, Austria: Matthew Hiasl Pan isn't even a human, but that hasn't stopped his supporters from taking his case to Europe's top human rights court. Austrian animal righ...

I'd be happy to call or email Dawkins for a response. Let's get further into this discussion period and see if we're understanding Frans de Waal. It could be our misunderstanding. Okay, since I gave my copy of the book to my grandfather I'm working off Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolve...

I'd be happy to discuss Walden, but as it happens I've been doing a lot of reading about anarchism and the justification of authority so DissidentHeart's suggestion would suit me just fine too.

I thought I should re-introduce myself! Apologies for the absence. I got accepted into a postgrad psychology course and the semester started and I got caught up in the work and it all happened very quickly! It's study week this week, so I can breathe a little bit and thought I'd check out what's goi...

You're right Saffron. de Waal is very critical of what he calls "veneer theory" - the idea that we are really nasty to the core and this nastiness is covered by a thin veneer of altruism. This seems very popular in evolutionary circles, and I agree it's wrong. I think we have the capacity ...

I've read it before, and a few other things by de Waal. Thoroughly enjoyed it and I'll read it again for the discussion. A word of warning though: I suffered some side effects from the book. I viewed everyone I came into contact with as a clothed chimpanzee for months afterwards, and interpreted the...

Well, I have to admit that Das Kapital has again defeated me. One look at the daunting 900+ pages (and that's just volume 1!) was enough to scare me away. I think if somebody dropped all three volumes in a hardcover edition it would truly be a book that shook the world! I've sought out David McLella...