In a surprisingly vociferous statement Pennsylvania Judge John Jones ruled against teaching intelligent design in public classrooms. What's unfortunate about this victory is that Judge Jones passed his decision on the case without considering that the United States Government has no business interfering at all in either education or research, in favour or against.
The purpose of our government is not to tell us what is and is not science. Such a policy is horribly dangerous to our liberty because the government holds the ultimate legal authority to use force. To make the philosophical issue here very concrete; a person who has the legal right to hold a gun to your head should not also have the legal right to tell you what is/is not proper to believe/learn/research. Consider the ramifications when such an action on the part of government officials is tolerated.
Articles/Resources:
Judge Rules Against Pa. Biology Curriculum (Excite News) Update [2.10.2006]: Link Defunct
Judge Rejects Teaching Intelligent Design (New York Times)
Kitzmiller, et. al. v. Dover Area School District, et. al. (Filed by Judge Jones on 12/20/05)
Last Wednesday the Senate called a group of representative executives of the oil industry to a meeting in Washington D.C. in which they were asked to justify the fact that they had made very large profits.
Even though it's been in the news a lot, I thought I'd just repeat that for the benefit of those of you who already heard about this but thought you had accidentally fallen into a Twilight Zone special in which Stalin and the pope team up to take over the world. Consider this a public service announcement; I assure you that you are still living in what is left of America, and this did actually happen.
In an interview on MSNBC Senator Ken Salazar (D-CO) accused oil executives of having "the highest profits that we've seen in history for the oil companies", contriving to make that a derogatory remark by also calling the profits "inexplicable". Scarborough echoed this sentiment by also labeling the oil prices, and subsequent profits, as inexplicable. (In related news Salazar and Scarborough are currently winning the People's Republic of America Award for invoking the vague concept of 'The People' the most times in an interview. See if you can find a more atrocious example and you'll win the vague concept of 'A Prize'!).
This opinion on the cause of profits is in line with the recent bustle about imposing a windfall profit tax on the oil companies. A windfall profit is money which one wasn't expecting, with the connotation that it was due to luck, eg. inheritance. A windfall tax is one-time direct tax on unexpectedly large profits. You see, if the profit is unexpected, inexplicable, then it isn't wrong to steal it because the oil companies didn't earn it to begin with. *wink, wink*
I haven't been able to find a reporter, a political commentator, or even an oil executive who will say it. So, I'll say it; these companies are selling a product. That means that they expend effort and/or capital to create a value and then trade it. This particular value that they create is at an extremely high demand. That is how they justify their profit, because there are a lot of people who are willing to pay what they charge for oil. And the reason they are morally entitled to all the profits is because they get the crude oil (by buying or collecting it), they refine it into gasoline, They do research in how to make it better, and they ship it to easily accessible stations for purchase. If you think I sound like the little red hen, then fantastic! That hen had a fucking point.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I am seriously defending it, I would have thought that were obvious.
I'm confused as to why you think that when one person pays another for a product and/or service there is some sort of theft going on. Where is this theivery of which you speak? Actually, it's because they pay that makes it right, otherwise it would be theft. I don't think you understand what stealing entails, you should look it up in a dictionary.
If there were no good reason that gas should cost as much as it does then I wouldn't be able to tell you one. So be amazed at my fantastic feats! Gas costs as much as it does because when the oil companies ask that much for it, lots of people willingly pay them. Congratualtions on your eloquently placed buzz-word, by the way, invoking the name of the "inner-city" makes you intelligent and knowledgable in politics and economy!
You say that controls should be put in place, that a line should be drawn. Putting aside the obvious inethical act of doing so, who would you say should do it; who is "we"? You? Some non-existent entity you've labeled the 'Consumer' or the 'People'? Or should the government handle such forced controls?
I know $300 billion; America is so awesome! ^_^
China's calling you, you should go. You may be happier there.
- emphaticdrivel said...
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steal (verb): To seize, win, or gain by trickery, skill, or daring.
Exactly.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I'm not sure how to respond to that. You seem to think you've made a point; yet all you have is an incorrect definition with no source listed and a one word defense of your argument. Please refrain from such sloppy communication or stop posting on my blog.
Simply taking or gaining something does no constitute theft, one may 'earn', or 'buy' or 'get' or 'create', etc. all without stealing. The defining trait of theft is that of taking without the right to do so.
To anyone who happens to wander by; I highly recommend Terry Pratchett and most especially his novel Going Postal.
"Ordinary
men had dreamed it up and put it together, [...] across the frozen
spines of mountains. They'd cursed and, worse, used logarithms. They'd
waded through rivers and dabbled in trigonometry. They hadn't dreamed,
in the way people usually use the word, but they'd imagined a different
world, and bent metal around it. And out of all that sweat and swearing
and mathematics had come this ... thing, dropping words across the
world as softly as starlight." ~Terry Pratchett
I underestimated my classes this semester, and overestimated my willingness to do homework; so I ended up dropping out of my Calculus class which left me with only 11 credit hours. In order to keep my financial aid I need to maintain a least 12 hours; enter the 1 credit hour GS 175: Information Strategies.
While going over the syllabus my professor states that she wants to make this "more than just a one credit course". This is code for: I'm going to assign a lot more busy work than is necessary. Sharkey says that we are going to spend the entire course preparing for the final project, which is to create a 7-minute movie documentary about a chosen topic. What does making movie documentaries have to do with proper methods of gathering information? I don't know, she didn't care to explain.
Then came a miracle, the class was too large and had to be split; half the students (including myself) were assigned to a new professor. I have been to the edge of hell and returned to find a promised land!
My new professor, Alexius, says: "this is a one-credit course, let's treat it as such". What she is lecturing over, what we're working on, is actually about information strategies. It is even threatening to be useful! I just finished giving a presentation with my group on using Academic Search Elite, which is a article database hosted by Purdue University. I told the class about how you can use difference specifications to limit or expand your search results and Alexius added informative commentary on Boolean qualifiers; it was enlightening! While another group was presenting information on library catalogues they weren't sure what the Library of Congress is. Working in a library, I was able to explain what it is and how it's different that Dewey Decimal; and the other students were genuinely interested in knowing! It's like I've stumbled into this tiny little world inside the university and it's ... education!
We spent the rest of the period discussing what types of research would be personally useful to us; next week Alexius will assign a specific topic to each us of us based upon what will help us learn what we want to know. She then announced that it would only be necessary to meet once a week to do the work she's planned.
I'm floored. It's like I'm actually being educated, and I don't have to bend over backwards and take it up the ass to do so! It's sad that such a competent professor is so surprising.
A few people have told me that before, but now I get it.
My physics textbook says, "If our model is a good approximation to the real world, our prediction will be a good approximation to what will actually happen."
This is a false assumption because though your model fits the data you've collected, you have no reason to think that it actually does so, in that way. It's like assuming that your outcome could only possibly be caused by one thing, then your model must be that cause. Even if the data continues to seemingly corroborate your model, all you've proved is that the model hasn't changed, not that your model is the correct one. Your model could very well be Ptolemaic.
It's like you're given a set of data points, and instead of looking for the function of those data points, you connect them in what seems the most obvious pattern to you. Then you extrapolate that pattern without regard for the cause of your data points. And if ever your model should fail to predict the data points, then you simply alter the model to now fit both patterns, rather than looking for the cause of the difference. Replace the term 'you' with 'theoretical physicist' and you get the mess of quantum mechanics today.
A mathematical model may certainly be internally valid, in a deductive sense, and indeed may accurately reflect the data. But where does this model come from; how does it fit the data; why did you pick it as opposed to any other model that also fits the data? It is these relationships between the cause of an event and the event that needs to be identified, and then from there you can make a simplified model.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Agmini said...
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RYC: Hunchback is good, even though it's so different from the book. You're right, Disney occasionally throws some wonderfully powerful lyrics in there...You know the reprise in Beauty in the Beast that always gets me? The last part of the reprise of "Gaston": "No one plots like Gaston, takes cheap shots like Gaston, plans to persecute harmless crackpots like Gaston..." That's just one of the cleverest bits of lyric I have ever seen. Where else do you get to say "persecute harmless crackpots"? There are some lovely tongue-twisters like that in Frollo's songs in Hunchback, too.
- Agmini said...
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Oh...do you think Disney makes Monomyths? I do. At least a couple. Or even if they're not monomyths, the thing that makes them good (well...most of them anyway...the sequels are all mostly pretty terrible...) is item 10 on Kirby's list, Identification. I had actually decided on a couple that I thought were monomyths but I'm too tired to remember them right now, so I guess I'll get back to you on that...
So, now comes the hard part.
First, let me restate (in order to make very clear) that every individual thing has many characteristics. The task of identifying a differentiae consists of identifying the causal (defining) characteristic (or combination of characteristics, as the case may be), i.e. that (those) which make the individual a part of this concept and not that.
The class and the professor named a few characteristics which seem to follow poetry; emotion, structure (form), metaphors or any image (a metaphor being an image which means something other than it's literal definition), to name a few. While considering which one defines poetry I asked myself: which one is in all poetry, which one can poetry not do without. Of course, I came to the conclusion of emotion. But later it occurred to me that all art is created from emotion. It must be, because an emotion is experienced in response to a value and art is idealized values. So an artist would have an emotional response to his art because it is his values which are being idealized. So, not emotion, that is already implicit in that poetry is an art.
The professor gave some examples of experimental forms of 'poetry' in class which were confusing in that they had some of the characteristics of poetry, yet still did not seem like poetry. The first was a paragraph of prose that was very beautiful, elaborate, and eloquent in it's use of metaphor. The second, a sentence vividly describing an image. While they were emotional and descriptive, they were not poetry in a strict sense, though unnervingly alike to poetry. They were examples of art with characteristics of poetry, undefining characteristics. An example of an undefining characteristic is a human hand. Humans generally have two hands; hands (with 8 fingers and 2 opposable thumbs) are considered to be human. But losing a hand or not being born with any does not preclude one from being human. Conversely, by randomly attaching a human hand to a dog a la Frankenstein or through genetic modification does not create a human, only a weird dog. Similarly, poetry has characteristics which, though common, are not causal in defining poetry. Such things that have some of the undefining characteristics of poetry are called poetic. The examples of experimental 'poetry' were poetic, but not actually poetry in nature. The one thing that neither contained was a structure of poetry, they were both written in the form of prose rather than poetry.
The definition of poetry is art with a repetitive structure. A repeating structure is the one thing poetry can claim that no other language art can. Not, I should point out, simply repetition; anything redundant can accomplish that. No, poetry must be repetitious in it's form, in how it is produced rather than the content that is produced.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Agmini said...
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From CLCS 330 on Thursday:
Enemies of the ancient book (on papyrus):
time, fire, water, weather, vermin
Repository libraries: Alexandria (later), Pergamum, at temples, Bodleian (modern)
What is literacy (the bar could be set anywhere, really) vs functional literacy (enough to get through a normal day)
[This is probably the most important stuff, or at least the stuff he's most likely to quiz us on.]
Ancient VERSE: Semiotically MARKED language
--meter
--diction [special vocabulary, sometimes archaic]
--[sometimes] music [e.g. epos; tragic songs; melos] and dance
KV: Semiotics: the study of semiosis, Semiosis: the phenomenon and function of signs and signifying (or "signs at work") C.S.Peirce: "A sign is something that stands for something else to someone in some respect or capacity."
RR
W.V. Harris, Ancient Literacy
Thomas Gray, 'elegy in a County Churchyard' (modern "elegy")
[Though I guess this could be quizzed also...I don't know...]
Genres of VERSE:
the choral lyric:
Stanzaic form--the 'stanza' or strophe
--can be MONOSTROPHIC or TRIADIC [i.e. strophe, antistrophe, epode]
--RESPONSION for TRIADS--same scan for each type (all strophes have same scan, etc.)
Roman elegists: Catullus, Ovid...
Elegy: [written in COUPLETS--i.e. 'elegiac couplets'] not same as modern definition of elegy
--used for political verse, amatory verse, didactic verse, sometimes for ribald
--for the 'normal' scan of the 1st and 2nd lines of the couplet, you'll have to look at the notes...
iambos: [especially used for erotic/ribald verse, lampooning others]fd
- Amanda Carlson said...
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Thank you, Lisa!
I'll copy it down with my notes from Tuesday, then read through it all.
See you tomarrow.
- Agmini said...
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Hey, sorry I didn't make it to the meeting tonight. This is the entry that my Disney survey is in, if you want to take it.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ladyisla/20401.html
- Amanda Carlson said...
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Thanks, I'll check out your journal tonight when I'm working at the library.
Don't worry about the meeting. Nick was taking a test so Coire did the presentation/moderated discussion. He's a philosophy major, he has a tendancy to unintentionally go over people's heads. And it didn't help that the topic, ethics, is quite large.
- John Stark said...
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Jason Rheines had a good course on Poetry this summer. The Ayn Rand Bookstore just put it up for sale: http://www.aynrandbookstore2.com/store/prodinfo.asp?number=MR01M
I found it very informative, especially his definition of poetry and his thoughts on simile and metaphor.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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That sounds wonderful; thank you, John! I wanted to reason it out myself first. But I'm not entirely satisfied with my final definition, and I'd like to know wht the professional philosophers think. Though, for $70, it'll have to wait.
I began with calling poetry an art, in that poetry is an idealized creation of man. The definition of art is: a selective recreation of reality. A recreation of reality because art is not reality itself, yet reality is it's only subject. Selective because the artist does not portray reality exactly, he chooses which aspects to portray depending upon his values and idealizes those values. Please, don't ask me to define value, I thought about it and I can't do that yet. I have a working definition which I use to judge a value, for now, but I don't understand it well enough to defend the definition. Art is judged good to the extent of the artist's ability to idealize the value(s), and it is appreciated by an individual to the extent that that individual agrees with the value(s).
Then it occurred to me that I can narrow the genus further, poetry is expressed only in one particular medium. You can't paint or sculpt a poem: if you tried, what you'd end up with is a painting or a sculpture based upon a poem, but not a poem itself. At first I wanted to call this medium 'literature', and it's definition was: language arts. In other words, art which is expressed in language (written or oral). But after consulting a great friend, I think this is the wrong concept for this definition. Literature can include history/science/technical textbooks which aren't art, though it's written. But, whatever the label, the definition is correct; so poetry is a language art.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- Agmini said...
-
Hey, Amanda. This is Lisa (from class). I'd really love to discuss some of this stuff with you sometime outside of class. It appears we have some other common interests (some movies and stuff you have listed). Would you be interested in getting together to talk about stuff sometime?
- Agmini said...
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Oh, I have an account here but I don't use it much. You can email me, or go to my "blog" at LiveJournal, under the same name (ladyisla). I'm not going to post my AIM or anything else here, but if you want it, I can give it to you in class or something.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I'd love to! Do you have time after class on Tuesday? We could go to the Starbuck's in the Union, I'm addicted to good coffee and good conversation. Or we could hang out at one of the malls if it's a nice day.
See you in class. ^_^
- Agmini said...
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I have a 2-hour lab at 3:30 on Tuesday, so I don't think I could make it then. Today (Monday) I am free between 11:30 and 2:30, and from 3:30 until about 7. Could you make it anytime around there? I'm not sure what my Wednesday will look like yet.
- Amanda Carlson said...
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I have free time from 11:30-3:30. It's pretty late right now, so I don't know if you'll read this in time. But I will have lunch at noon tomarrow downstairs in the Union between Pappy's and the Grant Street entrance.
- Agmini said...
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I will see you there!
I am taking a class in Greek Literature this semester and we had a very interesting discussion in class recently about poetry. We were asked to define it. The professor wanted us to talk about it, and then think about it over the next fifty-years or so. But ... Lets do this now.
So, what is a definition, what are we being asked to do with poetry? A definition is simply identification, it means stating explicitly that this is this as opposed to that. So in defining something we first need to narrow down what we're talking about, and then we need to state how it is different than everything else. That is why I think Aristotle is correct in saying that a definition is both a genus and a differentiae. For example, when you ask 'what is man, how do you define it?' you first narrow down what you're talking about from everything that exists to a specific category of things that exist of which man is a part (similar/related to, but not wholly compromising). This is the genus, and in this case the genus is 'animal'. Man is an animal, but not the animal. I don't see why you couldn't use a more or less specific genus, why this is the certain level of genus that one must use, but it would take a more thorough study of concepts than is necessary now to answer that.
Anyway, now the important part is stating what it is that makes this animal, man, different than any other animal. This is called the differentiae, and I think it is the most important, most difficult part of a definition because you must identify the causal trait, or as I call it 'defining characteristic', that makes it this and not that. For every individual object there are many numerous ways to describe it, characteristics, but it is the job of the definer to identify which one causes it to be a part of this concept and not another. For the concept 'man' the defining characteristic is reason, ergo --> man is the reasoning animal, it is an animal which reasons as opposed to any other animal.
So far this is my understanding of definitions and I do not think it is yet complete.
Has this ever happened to you:
You're arguing with someone who
doesn't agree with you on some aspect of reality, maybe a priest. After
you've presented your argument and are waiting for his reply, he begins
by complimenting your intelligence, then proceeds to deny what you've
just said.
This is an irritating pet peeve of mine. Beyond being baldly obsequious (ie. the person with whom you're arguing doesn't have the balls to flat-out state he thinks you're a moron), I've always found it oddly disconcerting; it stops me in my mental tracks. But it's simply a compliment, and such compliments from certain people I can take graciously. So I've been wondering what it is about this particular type of situation, this particular compliment, that bothers me.
Now to the 'ah-ha' moment...
What exactly is intelligence? Intelligence is the ability to abstract (if anyone disagrees with my definition, speak now and we'll talk about it). But anyone can abstract, it is a (if not the) defining trait of humans. What makes the difference between a petty mystic and great genius, is whether or not your abstraction corroborates reality. Take Plato for example, his theory of forms is a complex and interesting abstraction ... which has nothing to do with reality. I'd admit he's intelligent, but I still think he's a rat-bastard.
This person with whom I'm arguing obviously doesn't think my abstraction models reality (because he's disagreeing), yet he still calls me intelligent, as though it is supposed to mean something significant (ie. "I agree with your model of reality and congratulate you on abstracting it") when it so blatantly doesn't. He may as well congratulate me on not having brain damage; because, whether or not I'm correct, by Jove I have a functioning human brain. Think about that for a minute, how would you feel if something, very seriously, walked up to you and said, "Wow. You know, you really are good at not being brain damaged." What could you possibly say to such a person? "Thank you, I practice being human every day."
The other day I drove by an old ruined hunk of building beside an abandoned railroad.
It made me melancholy to see such a scene of degradation and it reminded me of the old adage that everything is impermanent. That, though man builds skyscrapers, they don't last forever, and are eventually demolished. This means that man himself is conquerable, because he dies and even his most exalted works are passing. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, right.
No.
A person who would take my sad scene as an example of the impotence of man is failing to see that the railroad and building were most likely abandoned in favor of a more efficient mode of transportation. Or the company who owned it was driven out of business by a superior competitor. Or any number of other scenarios, but in no instance is it a testament to universal failure.
Skyscraper's are torn down by men; not some un-named all-powerful malevolent force bent on the destruction of man. The reason they are torn down is to make way for bigger and/or better things. Nothing is permanent because everything is constantly being improved, and that is the defining trait of human history - progress. It is stagnation humans should fear, not change and improvement.
Comments Posted to Original Blog
- John Stark said...
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Nice post.
"Skyscraper's are torn down by men; not some un-named all-powerful malevolent force bent on the destruction of man."
I think that that is the crucial point that is evaded by those pessimists [or, often, nihilists, who are perversely pleased by the idea of universal failure].
Are you seriously defending the outrageous profits that these oil companies are making… excuse me stealing from drivers? Just because people pay it, doesn’t mean that it is right. The price of gasoline is extremely inflated and it is for the greediest reasons you can think of. There is no good reason that gas should cost 20% more in the inner city than it does in the suburbs. By taxing the profits made by oil companies, controls are put on their price gouging. Come on now, 300 billion dollars in profits? We have to draw the line somewhere.
Monday, December 12, 2005 4:50:00 AM