Frost the Snowman
January 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
– Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening – Robert Frost
A Hole Theory …
December 7, 2011 by Leave a Comment
Excerpt:
In the chapters above we presented our views in a rather informal setting, trying to show the philosophical importance and consequences of a realist attitude toward holes rather than spelling out a full-fledged theory of holes.
In this appendix we attempt to address this task more directly by summarizing some basic tenets of our account in a rather systematic – though by no means complete – fashion. For convenience, we divide the presentation into four main sections:
(1) a preliminary ontological part, which introduces the basic binary relation “is a hole in (or through)” along with some relevant facts;
(2) a mereological part, which systematizes some fundamental principles governing the interplay between the host-hole and the part-whole relations;
(3) a topological part, which summarizes some basic facts concerning surfaces and the taxonomy of holes; and
(4) a morphological part, focusing on the fact that objects with holes constitute – as we have put it – the morphological manifold of fillable things.
….
The underlying logic is deliberately left vague, as after all we think holes are utterly neutral in this respect. A preferred alternative is some sort of a free logic, where improper descriptions and other possibly empty expressions can be admitted bona fide; however, everything that follows could in principle be dealt with within the framework of a standard first-order logic, with i treated as an improper symbol. In addition, we assume familiarity with some basic principles of extensional mereology and topology.
Linkie: http://suo.ieee.org/SUO/documents/Holes.html
Aaaaaand seen! 🙂
Zenophobic Episode 285 …
October 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment
So I bought this toolbox …
But the tool to open the box is inside the box …
Webinar for consideration
September 21, 2010 by 1 Comment
In 1957, Hugh Everett III believed he had solved the infamous measurement problem in quantum mechanics by explaining probability as an illusion in an evolving, deterministic universe of universes. His “relative state” theory horrified Niels Bohr, who treated Everett’s doctoral thesis (written under the guidance of John Wheeler) with disbelief and scorn.
Everett’s theory was reborn as the “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics in the 1970s. Yet despite his idea’s growing popularity, Everett never wrote another word about quantum mechanics. Instead, he worked on military operations research, designing nuclear missile targeting software. In this lecture, investigative journalist and Everett biographer Peter Byrne traces how Everett’s theory evolved over the course of his often-troubled life.
Something Vortex
September 17, 2010 by 1 Comment
PS: Not a religion thing, just a semi noteworthy behavioral observation.
Actually, non
September 9, 2010 by 2 Comments
I was reading the following from our friends at youmightfindyourself:
People are born without language, but with a genetic makeup that allows them to acquire and express any of the languages that exist in the world. And the language they end up speaking is determined by who they’re raised by. At about the age of two their mother tongue is set, so that even though a person can learn new languages the fact is that there’s a basic hardwired one. Even with people who are multilingual, if you ask what their mother tongue is, they can tell you. And if they can’t, if they say “I speak these languages equally well,” and you ask, “When you calculate numbers in your head what language do you use?” there will be one answer.
via YMFY.
As an accidental polyglot from an early age I can confirm that the above is not actually accurate. Greek is the first language I learned, my mother tongue if you will, as I lived in Athens until the age of seven. Then learned French and Italian as a consequence of residing in those countries. I learned English last, yet by virtue of it being the latest learned and most frequently used language, it is by all accounts my primary language … that is to say, that even when I speak in other languages, my thoughts have to now be translated from English.
Should I move back to Greece, France, or Italy, it would take several months to a year to begin to think completely in those languages but it would eventually happen.
I think the above is only true if a person’s ‘diaspora’ isn’t complete … namely if they retain a cultural and linguistic tie to their country of provenance after having migrated to their current country of residence. Perfect examples of this are Chinese, Greek, and many other cultures who retain ‘ethnic’ neighborhoods in cities across the US and indeed the globe.
Nevertheless, without wishing to extrapolate theory from personal experience, I can to the limited degree that my experience can attest, confirm that the ‘mother tongue’ tie 🙂 isn’t as hard wired as one might presume.
Bunny Burgers
August 28, 2010 by Leave a Comment
This is a little known and one of the best ‘setups’ ever, demonstrating once and for all that if there were such a thing as Hell, Dante would have created a basement for marketeers.
I miss Spy.
Man Hospitalized With Unwarranted Self-Importance
August 28, 2010 by 1 Comment
In a breaking news update, a prestigious hospital that no one gives a crap about until they get severely injured and then beg to be admitted to revealed that at precisely 8:03 am this morning, it admitted a patient who was suffering from high levels of unwarranted self-importance. The patient’s name was not released, as doctors stated that having the man’s name be spoken on national television would only serve to raise his level of unwarranted self-importance even higher.
Doctors are desperately trying to relieve the man’s levels of self-importance. They say that the normal treatment, forcing the patient to write depressing poetry, isn’t working, but are confident that their next planned treatment, having an astrophysicist explain that mankind is an insignificant creature in the face of the ever-expanding universe, will be successful.
According to a hospital employee, who also came close to suffering from unwarranted self-importance following this interview, the patient had claimed that he “had put those [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] forum trolls in their place” while browsing a popular online forum and that he had “achieved a victory for all of mankind” and “should be worshiped as a hero”.
When asked of the incident, the forum’s administrator stated that the patient had “just called those trolls [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] who should [expletive deleted] their [expletive deleted][expletive deleted] mothers while also [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] raped by a cow. He didn’t really do too much except make it worse.”
WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
August 21, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken’s dominion maintained.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.
Timothy Leary: Because that’s the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of “crossing” was encoded into the objects “chicken” and “road”, and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn’t cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: ‘Cause it (censored) wanted to. That’s the (censored) reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Mr. T: If you saw me coming you’d cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately … and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
The Godfather: I didn’t want its mother to see it like that.
Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken’s wings.
Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
Othello: Jealousy.
Dr Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
Mrs Thatcher: This chicken’s not for turning.
Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One’s social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience – although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, ilth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o’er.
Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter)
Hamlet: That is not the question.
Donne: It crosseth for thee.
Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
Constable: To get a better view.
serge 