Clipmarks | carrerinyes's clips

Strange Things Afoot-Run For Your Life!

Tue, 13 May 2008 23:47:36 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: 3) Papers falling into the trashcan. Please refer your boss to appropriate experts in astronomy, mechanics, and theoretical physics. During this dangerous time, it is essential that all soul-deadened middle-managers understand it is simply not your fault your assignments won't stay on the desk.

4) Fat people falling off diets. Please refer to your body in that high-school bikini you can still "fit into."

5) Ice-cream falling off cones. This only happens when you are derelict in your ice-cream eating duties. Have you no shame?

6) Time falling off clocks. Despite the widespread transition to digital, this is expected to remain a significant problem in the coming months, as the minute and hour hands alike are pulled down swiftly toward the poles of 6 and 12 (6 + 6). Inconclusive data is leading some scientists to conjecture the end of the world is near, and to encourage their lab assistants to experiment further with observed phenomenon No. 1.

Katelyn Sack is The Wasteful Amer

Clip Source: www.null-hypothesis.co.uk

Strange Things Afoot

Warning! Physicists at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studiousness have discovered a sudden increase in gravity concurrent with the nearer phase of the Earth's elliptical path around our Sun. They believe this heightened gravity explains a sharply increasing incidence of the following alarming phenomena, which if observed should be reported to your local law enforcement or physics department immediately:

1) Clothes falling to the floor.

1) Clothes falling to the floor. Shoes and trousers are often the first to go, but bras may display a disturbing propensity to fall out of shirtsleeves as the Earth speeds closer and closer to the Sun.

2) Cats falling to the pavement. All household animals may seem louder during this time of peak gravity, but cats in particular will beg to be thrown promptly out the window during the heat of this rare solar event.

Rocky The Robo-Squirrel

Tue, 13 May 2008 23:38:55 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: an ornithologist with Cornell University, was able to talk to a parrot through speakers hidden in a bush. The parrot was later seen encouraging other parrots to follow a set of commandments. At Indiana University, researchers were even able to build a robot that could successfully challenge male lizards to push up contests. Can complete control of the reptile psyche be far behind?

“Whether it's a bunch of squirrels in a field or humans in a mall, there are general principles of behavior that seem to hold up across species lines,” said Greg Demas, director of Indiana University's Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior. This indicates just one eventual outcome of this line of research: creating robots that can successfully challenge humans to push up contests.

Clip Source: www.null-hypothesis.co.uk

Rocky the Robo-Squirrel

Finally, after years of painstaking research, our infiltration of the squirrel community is nearly complete. Using complex robotics, Sarah Partan and her team at Hampshire College have created a mechanical creature capable of mimicking squirrel communication and behavior. No word yet on whether or not it has located the squirrel John Conner.

The creation was dubbed “Rocky,” after the cartoon character, or the boxer who was able to single handedly topple the Soviet Empire. Rocky’s mission is to aid the team in breaking down the complex web of squirrel communication, which includes “flagging” of tails and barking. Understanding the squirrel, apparently, is the first step in defeating it.

The team’s project is similar to the efforts of a number of teams around the world working to penetrate other animal societies. Researchers in Brussels have been able to use robot cockroaches to lure real cockroaches out into the open for more efficient slaughter. And Jack Bradbury,

The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction

Tue, 13 May 2008 23:15:41 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: Synthetic statements are not necessary. Philosophers use the word contingent to describe something that is not necessary. It is not necessarily true that you are reading this webpage: you could be reading a printout, for example.

It is important to make the analytic/synthetic distinction in argument. If you try to argue that something is true you need to be clear about whether you are saying something about the empirical world, or whether you are clarifying the meanings of words. It would do you no good for example to hunt for a bachelor who was married to try and refute the statement. It would be no help to you to try and find a "good murder" to refute the statement that all murder is bad, because murder is by definition bad.

Clip Source: www.philosopher.org.uk

The analytic/synthetic distinction

Some statements we judge to be true or false in relation to facts in the world, for example that you are now in reading this book. That you are reading this book is called by philosophers a synthetic truth.

Other statements we judge to be true due to the meanings of the words involved. We can know that the sentence "All bachelors are unmarried." is true without having to do a survey of bachelors, because the sentence is true by definition. It is an analytic truth.

Synthetic truths are "truths of fact" and analytic truths are "truths of reason". We use empirical methods to verify synthetic statements and rationalist methods to verify analytic statements.

Kant was the first to use the terms Synthetic and Analytic. He pointed out that all analytic truths are necessary, that is, they could not have been otherwise. If you agree that the definition of a bachelor is an unmarried man, then it stands to reason that all bachelors are unmarried.

The Enlightenment

Tue, 13 May 2008 23:11:50 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: and dogmatism of the mediaeval and the awakening of modernity.

Medieval philosophy combined Christian beliefs with the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. In the medieval world philosophers respected their predecessors and accepted their methods. If a new discovery about nature contradicted one of Aristotle's principles, for example, it would probably have been assumed that it was the discovery that was in error.

Enlightenment thinkers were not content to accept appeals to Aristotle's authority. It could be seen that using experimental methods science was progressing and increasing our understanding of nature, which could not have been done without rejecting some of Aristotle's assumptions.

It was not only Aristotle that was being questioned, using reason and logic philosophers criticised political and religious ideas. What rational answer is there for the justification of monarchy or that you should choose one type of religion over another?

Clip Source: www.philosopher.org.uk

The Enlightenment

The characteristics of the Enlightenment are a scepticism towards the doctrines of the church, individualism, a belief in science and the experimental method, the use of reason, that education could be a catalyst of social change and the demand for political representation. Its main social and political consequence was the French revolution.

The core period of the Enlightenment was second half of the eighteenth century. The thinkers associated with the Enlightenment include d'Holbach (1723-89) and the Encyclopedists in France, David Hume (1711-76) in Scotland and Kant in Germany. To understand the Enlightenment we have to look at what preceded it.

The battle of ideas that was to culminate in the Enlightenment began in the seventeenth century. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) advocated the use of scientific method and René Descartes (1596-1650) proposed a critical rationalism. The Enlightenment can be understood as the culmination of the move away from the authority