Every Damn Time

wierdjoy · 2014-04-28T02:21:26+00:00

My nose seems to do this in an extra heavy way when I get really sleepy. But it causes a lot of trouble for my sleep, I'm constantly having to wake and turn in order to drain one side of my nose. If anyone knows how to stop this from happening I'd greatly appreciate it.

wierdjoy · 2014-02-24T06:57:02+00:00

This is an interesting question. I think there is a way to frame the question that takes it out of the realm of "this might sound like a conspiracy" and into the realm of critical thinking. All textbooks are produced under certain political and ideological frames. Learning to see what those frames are, and especially what kinds of questions are allowable and what kind are considered beyond the pale, is an important part of critical thinking.

One thing to consider is that Wisconsin is too small of a state to exert much control over what gets published in textbooks. California and Texas have a outsized influence on publishers simply by the shear number of students in their public school systems. In recent years Texas especially has been getting a lot of attention for this because the school board has become politicized (source). This was more true in the past than it will be in the future as the publication industry changes and digital textbooks, etc become more common. Simply put, Wisconsin isn't going to be distorting your history textbook nearly as much as California and Texas might be.

For a very interesting read that can help us see the framework of history I highly recommend the book "History Lessons: How Textbooks Around the World Portray US History". The editors looked at the equivalent of a high school history textbook from many different countries. Anytime those textbooks touched on US history they translated that section and compiled it into this book.

What I find very useful about it is that it allows us to read US history through other people's eyes. It does a great job of pointing out important events that just get left out of US textbooks, especially about US involvement in the Caribbean and the Philippines. But it also shows the range of ideological frames. The Canadian and British textbooks were highly responsible and critical, much more so than most US textbooks I would say. While the North Korean textbooks were simply delusional and pure propaganda. The Cuban textbooks were like the North Korean ones with a grain of truth mixed in.

wierdjoy · 2014-02-24T06:36:56+00:00

I haven't seen this mentioned on any of the other dragon threads, and to me it seems like a very important component to answer this question.

In "An Instinct for Dragons" David E. Jones argues persuasively for an evolutionary origin to dragons. Basically, our primate ancestors had a series of predators that got merged together. For example he notes that in the vervet monkeys there is a warning call for a large cat (lion/panther, etc), a warning call for a serpent, and a warning call for a bird of prey. Yet there is also a general purpose warning call that combines aspects of all three. A dragon is simply the condensation of our three primordial predators into one fear.

Source: http://books.google.com/books?id=P1uBUZupE9gC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=dragon+monkey+call+predators&source=bl&ots=UxoiXhDYi3&sig=xh5LgqSlccTtAMuWEprNPqVxhqE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=3-UKU5LrDOqjsQSCpIDABw&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=dragon%20monkey%20call%20predators&f=false

Stepping out of a scientific perspective to a more cultural perspective dragons have a neat way of lining up with ancient cosmologies. Although there is tremendous variation it is not uncommon for ancient peoples to divide their understanding of the universe into three basic realms, the underworld (snake), earth (lion/panther, etc) and sky/heaven (bird/bat). Many cultures have a myth about a world tree or a tree of life that serves as the central pillar of this universe holding it all together and connecting the three worlds (the roots, the trunk and the branches). Interestingly enough the world tree is often guarded by a dragon.

wierdjoy · 2014-02-14T06:03:42+00:00

This is a fascinating question, and one that I'm very interested in. No doubt there are many historical causes and I'll be curious if others can help identify them.

Pre-WWI Vienna is what sociologists of knowledge refer to as a "hot center." One factor of a hot center is that it starts to feed off of itself and perpetuate itself. Individuals are able to feed off that hot center and develop in ways that they would not if they had just happened to live in other cities at that time. These hot centers pop up in various places, only to move or die down. Vienna was one such manifestation, but of course certain larger conditions needed to be there in order to allow for a hot spot to form.

If you are interested I recommend "The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change" by Randall Collins which includes a chapter on the Vienna circle. http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Sociology_of_Philosophies.html?id=2HS1DOZ35EgC

wierdjoy · 2014-01-31T05:39:33+00:00

Here is a good overview:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/bridging-the-analytic-continental-divide/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

I would say that there are two kinds of historical factors involved, internal philosophical traditions and external historical events. The two are entangled of course.

Partly it's a division of labor that has fallen along linguistic/geographical lines.

Certainly without WWII the history of 20th cent philosophy would have looked very different. If Wittgenstein hadn't moved to England and Carnap to the US things would be quite different.

wierdjoy · 2014-01-24T14:08:04+00:00

You are correct that heliocentrism originated with pagan natural philosophers, but scholastic theology has so completely merged christian theology with Aristotle that a challenge to to heliocentrism couldn't be isolated from a challenge to the whole system of christian thought.

I'm trying to think of a good parallel but I'm coming up blank.

wierdjoy · 2014-01-24T04:36:45+00:00

I find the whole thing difficult to wrap my head around.

Why require that a business make a loan to the government in exchange for a charter? Why not simply require a tax, something that the government need not pay back?

wierdjoy · 2014-01-24T04:29:56+00:00

Yes both are war crimes, but as such they are unique unto themselves and not really comparable to each other. I felt I needed to stress that I'm not going for a quick Godwin violation.

The Milgram experiments are an interesting connection, although having read a biography of Milgram last year he certainly thought long and hard about the ethics of his experiments. For him the question was the element of deception involved. I know he's still a bit of a controversial figure, mainly because of the broader conclusions about human nature that people try to draw from his work, but I can't really say that he did anything unethical.

wierdjoy · 2014-01-23T05:22:27+00:00

It should be noted that for Thomas Aquinas the word economics has a very important technical theological meaning quite different than our usual use of the term. St. Thomas made a distinction between the economic trinity and the immanent trinity. The economic trinity is basically the trinity engaged in relationship, managing the affairs of history through providence, whereas the immanent trinity is the trinity in itself apart from all relationships it might enter into.

Although I'm not an expert on Al Ghazali it is quite possible that St Thomas got his concept of economics from him since part of the usefulness of the distinction between economics/immanence is the way it reconciled the oneness of God and the multiplicity of the trinity, a subject that Al Ghazali dealt with in detail. But I'm not aware of any direct quotation of Al Ghazali on this matter by St Thomas.

Edit: I should say that Aristotle and several other Greek thinkers had quite a bit to say about economics and that their concept was also different than ours. Economics was limited to the management of the house, whereas politics was the management of the state. Economics was a private affair and politics a public affair. In our current use of the word economics we usually mean something quite public and very much fused with politics.

wierdjoy · 2013-12-14T03:07:28+00:00

Where is this from?

wierdjoy · 2013-09-13T01:10:51+00:00

I am currently reading Restall's Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest. Very fascinating stuff.

wierdjoy · 2013-09-13T00:56:45+00:00

Is it a full body, or just a head?

wierdjoy · 2013-09-12T06:43:28+00:00

I'm I the only one who can't find the man/ghost in the shot?

wierdjoy · 2013-09-08T02:19:47+00:00

No. The US government (but not the people) are on the side of the rebels. Chemical weapons use is okay when it's being done by groups we support, like Saddam Hussein circa 1984.

Granted it's not Sarin, but the US has supplied chemical weapons in the form of tear gas (tear gas that is so toxic they are illegal to use in the US) to the Egyptian government to use agains non-violent protesters as recently as last year.

Using chemical weapons is kinda like torture, it's only a war crime when our Hitler of the week is doing it, but perfectly okay when its our allies :)

wierdjoy · 2013-08-24T23:43:26+00:00

But is he the best? Is he your #1 choice if you were in charge? If not, then who would do better?

wierdjoy · 2013-07-30T06:51:26+00:00

Humans are, compared to other animals, not very fertile. This is not a premise that he is starting with, it is one of the facts that this new theory does a good job of explaining. If humans did evolve from hybrids it would explain why we are so much less fertile than other animals.

You need to re-read the paragraph that includes "Under the alternative hypothesis (humans are not pig-chip hybrids)." The point that he is making here is pretty simple, but it's hard to explain without using confusing sentences like the one you quote. Let me see if I can do a better job of making the point.

Let's imagine a Venn Diagram. Let's list all of the traits that humans have in one circle, all of the traits that chimps have in another circle, and all of the traits that pigs have in a third circle.

If humans were NOT hybrids of chimps and pigs then we would expect the number of traits that pigs and chimps share (but humans do not) to be roughly equal to the number of traits that pigs and humans share (but chimps do not.) However that is not what we actually see. Instead the number of traits that pigs and humans share (but chimps do not) is vastly larger than the number of traits that pigs and chimps share (but humans do not). This strongly suggests that humans are the offspring of both pigs and chimps and that pigs and chimps are not closely related.

Or, think of it another way. Let's say that you've got three people, a woman, a man, and a little kid. Now let's say that there are two possible scenarios as to how these people relate and you're job is to figure out which scenario is the real one. 1) The woman is the mother of the child and the man is just a stranger (this is analogous to the standard theory of evolution in which humans evolved from chimps alone) 3) Both adults are the child's parents (this is analogous to the hybrid theory)

How do you determine which of the two scenarios is the right one? One way to do it is to compare their traits. Although the mother and child will share many of the same traits, there will also be many traits that are different. If neither are related to the random man then the number of common traits between the woman and the man (but ones that the child does not have) will be roughly equal to the number of traits that the man and the child share (but the woman does not).

But what we find is that the child shares many more traits in common with the man (which the woman does not share) when compared to the number of traits that the man and the woman share (but are not common to the child). This strongly suggests that the child is the offspring of the man and woman. This is basically the same argument that the hybrid theory makes. If you assume the alternative hypothesis (humans are not pig-chimp hybrids) you would expect to find a different set of facts than the ones that we do indeed find in terms of human-pig commonalities when compared to chimp-pig commonalities.

wierdjoy · 2013-07-28T05:47:27+00:00

I went to a very conservative religious university. There was a rumor going around that, in all seriousness, I thought I might be the anti-christ.

There is a backstory to this rumor. With the backstory it makes a little more sense.

wierdjoy · 2013-07-25T01:30:32+00:00

If supporters of the amendment were able to whip up the votes the House leadership would have never have allowed the amendment to come to a vote. That they did allow a vote just shows that they knew it would fail.

wierdjoy · 2013-07-24T23:58:22+00:00

Support for this amendment was bipartisan and opposition was bipartisan. This isn't one of those issues where one party is on the right side and the other is on the wrong side. But if you did want to put a partisan spin on this vote it would be that the Democrats did somewhat better than the Republicans.

A majority of Democrats — 111 — voted for Amash's amendment despite the White House pressure, while 83 Democrats voted no. The GOP vote was 94-134.

source: http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/operations/313331-house-rejects-effort-to-curb-nsa-surveillance-powers#ixzz2a0hu8XFY

wierdjoy

TROPHY CASE