surface tension

Today my History class took a field trip to the Museum of Tolerance. Its a museum showing kids not to be prejudiced and all that good stuff. Anyways, one exhibit is two doors next to each other. One door has a sign hanging over it saying "Those with prejudice walk through this door" The other door's sign said "Those without prejudice walk through this door". Obviously the door for people without prejudice isn't openable because as the tour guide says "Everyone has prejudice". So, I start tugging on the door and say "What the hell is wrong with this damn door, did some damn Jew make this?" and the tour guide kicked me out and I had to sit in the bus for 15 minutes (the rest of the trip). When we get back my history teacher found out what I did and had a fit and I get suspended. What a fucking way to end a week




I understand that Scissors can beat Paper, and I get how Rock can beat Scissors, but there's no fucking way Paper can beat Rock. Paper is supposed to magically wrap around Rock leaving it immobile? Why the hell can't paper do this to scissors? Screw scissors, why can't paper do this to people? Why aren't sheets of college ruled notebook paper constantly suffocating student as they attempt to take notes in class? I'll tell you why, because paper can't beat anybody, a rock would tear that shit up in 2 seconds. When I play rock/ paper/ scissors, I always choose rock. Then when somebody claims to have beaten me with their paper I can punch them in the face with my already clenched fist and say, oh shit, I'm sorry, I thought paper would protect you, you asshole.




If a lion could speak french we still wouldn't understand it, unless you knew french.

Kinryo Sake

I thought Planck would be shorter

Christoph Niemann

Ghost Ghost Rider

I wish every day was Captain Picard day

You want to talk about a new iPhone?

I'm out of here

Return to Shanghai

Our American Cousin

http://blogs.suntimes.com/shinyobjects/2009/05/5-questions-with-christian-verdun---how-did-he-create-his-lincoln-assassination-image.html

Black Mesa

Morse code

http://spectator.org/archives/2012/01/20/remembering-john-thaw-and-insp

Kelly!

Step

- You fuckin' asshole. 

- What a fuckin' dick. What the fuck did you want me to do, back down? He called me a bitch. We kept our rep, bro. 

- Fuck rep, man. I got a callback tomorrow. 

- Yeah, I gotta get up early tomorrow. What the fuck are you carrying a gun for? In case somebody steps to you, Snoop Dogg? 

- Hey, man, you're not from here. You don't know how it is. I grew up in L.A. 

- Anaheim. 

- Whatever, man. It's different out here. It's not like New York, Mikey. 

- Fuckin' A right, it's not like New York. Out here you can avoid trouble. It's not like you live in Compton, Sue, with bullets whizzing by your head. You live in a good neighborhood, man. In New York trouble finds you. 

 - People get carjacked. 

- Oh, man, who would ever carjack your fuckin' K car? He's right, Sue. You don't need to carry a gat. 

- Just 'cause I had the balls to stand up to these guys... 

- Like fuckin' House of Pain was gonna do anything?

Contra-Positive

In logic, if a statement is true, then the contra-positive is also true.

Eg “if p, then q” implies contra-positively “If not q, then not p.”

So is it really true that “If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it”? One way to test your answer is to ask whether the contra-positive is true: “If you shouldn’t have put a ring on it, then you didn’t like it.”

Of course, there are many possible meanings of “liked it,” but arguably neither the statement nor its contra-positive are true (because you might have “liked it” but learned that the other person was married). However, a majority of people would think that the inverse of the song’s claim is true: If you did not like it, then you shouldn’t have put a ring on it. And we know that the contra-positive of the statement must also have the same truth value. So we must also believe “If you should’ve put a ring on it, then you liked it.” (The inverse and converse of an original statement are contra-positives of each other!)

The power to tax

It was Joel from accounts who solved the problem of death.

“And you’re sure this will work? We don’t want auditors snooping around here asking to see the corpse.”

“Won’t happen Mr Abernathy. I ticked yes for the box marked ‘have you disposed of his/her corpse’. You’ll see it on page 3, about halfway down there. See, question 47.”

“Oh, yes, then I see. And you’re sure the department has the power to do this?”

“The section is quite clear - 155G2 dash K relies on section 7889 subsection QQ of the Act. It’s been around for a while now. Basically the section says that, on application, directives may be issued on a private ruling that treat a particular event that actually happened, as not having happened. “

“Not having happened, right”

“For tax purposes”

“Oh of course, for tax purposes. It’s just that, well, if the application goes ahead, then technically the, ah, event, shall we say, never happened, and he is still alive. Is that right? What do we do, keep his office?”

“Well I’m afraid that’s a small quirk of the law. You see, if it is decided that an event hasn’t happened, and you act as though it has happened, then the event that hasn’t happened will be taken to have happened. After all, you can’t very well have something that happened and didn’t happen at the same time can you, that would be pretty silly’

‘Very silly I agree'

'Basically just avoid anything that may invalidate the status of it not having happened. They look at that stuff you see.”

“ who looks at it?”

“The auditors of course”

“You said there were no auditors”

“No I said they wouldn’t ask about a body. But they will want to see that their ruling is being upheld. If it isn’t then, well, there could be, ah, complications”

“What complications?”

“Sanctions”

“Oh. That’s not what I want at all. So how do we uphold the ruling?”

“Well it’s not too difficult, just leave his office as it is, maybe transfer some of the extra filing cabinets in there from the room next to the photocopier. Minute him attending the odd meeting and it’s all done. Abernathy and Pendleton stays as Abernathy and Pendleton. You don’t lose your partnership rating and stay registered.”

“Well, I suppose so. Funny to think that he’s not dead.”

“For tax purposes.”

“For tax purposes. Right.”

Obey

Better Stronger

White to move and win

An interesting position that arose in my game. The white queen is under attack, but should it be defended?



a5 x b6!

then if ... BxQ, b7+ Kxb7, c8 and queen leads to mate.

One Position, Two Moves

No Hot Water

Order of Wes Anderson Movies from Best to Not Quite As Best

1. The Royal Tenenbaums
2. Moonrise Kingdom
3. Rushmore
4. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
5. Bottle Rocket
6. The Fantastic Mr Fox
7. The Darjeeling Limited

anyone lived in a pretty how town

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

 Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

 someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

 one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

e e cummings

J'Accuse...!

Teddy Roosevelt - the 'best' President

Theodore Roosevelt is still one of the most face-smashing, rough-riding, badass dudes to grace the Oval Office with his awesomeness. Here's a bulletized, easily-digestible list of all the insane shit you probably didn't know about the 26th President.

He grew up an asthmatic, in a time when asthma was a debilitating affliction. He was sickly and weak...then he grew up to become a professional boxer and all-around iron-pumping, hard-as-nails tough guy . He spoke French and German fluently, studied in Europe, wrote numerous literary works and got his degree on scholarship from Harvard University.

When he asked his girlfriend Alice Hathaway Lee to marry him, she said no. This didn't deter him and made him go out of his way to be even more kickass. The second time he asked her she agreed, because everybody knows that a badass like TR always gets the girl in the end. For their honeymoon, they went mountain climbing because they were even more Xtreme than Tony Hawk is when he's drunk at 3AM and decides he's going to try and ollie over a fifteen foot-tall statue of Jesus.

TR knew how to pose for awesome pictures:




He was the youngest person to ever become a state representative for New York when he was elected at age 23.

When his wife and mother died on the same day (Valentine's Day 1884), Teddy ditched everything and moved out West (Clint Eastwood-style) to try and kick ass like a cowboy.

While he was out West, some douchebag named Mike Finnegan and his gang stole TR's boat. Instead of crying like a girl about it, Roosevelt pursued them for two weeks through the Dakota Badlands, kicked their asses, handed them over to the authorities and got his boat back.

He returned to New York and was made commissioner of the NYPD. Instead of being a pussy and hiding in his office all day like the commish on Batman, TR went undercover as a beat cop and walked the streets of New York trying to catch policemen slacking off or taking bribes. If he busted them in the act, he fired them, punched them in the mouth and then stuffed them into a garbage can.

President McKinley made Roosevelt the Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897. When the Spanish sunk the USS Maine off the coast of Cuba while his boss was on vacation, TR sent Admiral Dewey to the Philippines to take out the Spanish Navy. Roosevelt then declared a state of War with Spain, despite the fact the he had absolutely no authority to do so. Acting on Roosevelt's orders, Dewey then sunk the entire Spanish fleet at Manila in about four hours.

Immediately after issuing the declaration of War and giving the Spanish Armada a one-way all-expenses-paid trip to the bottom of the fucking ocean, Roosevelt resigned his post as Assistant Secretary and formed his own volunteer cavalry regiment called the "Rough Riders". He took anybody who wanted to join, regardless of race or creed, and headed out to Cuba to whomp asses. At the Battle of San Juan Hill, the decisive battle that sealed the American victory in Cuba, Roosevelt won the Congressional Medal of Honor for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity" and was promoted to Colonel.




When he returned as a war hero, Roosevelt decided to run for Governor of New York. Since the New Yorkers knew that TR was going to clean out all the corruption in town, George Steinbrenner and Brian Cashman decided to instead nominate him as a candidate for Vice President, a post where he presumably wouldn't have any power to do anything. The McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won, and McKinley was assassinated almost immediately. TR became President on 9/14/1901.

Out on a hunting trip in 1901, while Vice President of the United States, Roosevelt killed a cougar. But not in a generic, "normal" way of killing a mountain lion. No, Teddy made sure to kill the cougar by killing it with only a knife. Suck on that Cheney!

As President, Roosevelt settled strikes, broke up powerful trusts, built the Panama Canal, desegregated Japanese schoolchildren in California, fought to preserve the independence of South American countries from Europe and worked to conserve the American outdoors by commissioning numerous state parks. He also invited Booker T. Washington to chill at the White House, marking the first time a black man had ever eaten dinner as an official guest at the White House.

TR won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the end to the Russo-Japanese War. How many people in history can claim that they won both the Nobel Peace Prize for making peaceful and harmonious shit happen as well as the Congressional Medal of Honor for kicking asses and possibly even taking names?

Just to prove how awesome he was TR built a huge fleet of white battleships and sailed it around the world, making sure to stop at the ports of any nation that thought it could possibly kick the US's ass just to prove to them that they couldn't.

He was also the first President to:

- ride in an airplane

- own an automobile

- dive in a submarine

- have a telephone in his home

- ride in an automobile

- travel outside the U.S. while in office

- receive the first electoral vote cast by a woman delegate (Helen B. Scott in 1912)

- advocate a Jewish homeland in Palestine (1917)

- advocate the establishment of a League of Nations (1915)

- host the Olympics (St. Louis, Missouri, 1904)
While campaigning in 1912, Roosevelt stopped in Milwaukee to spread his word. Getting ready to give a speech, a man named John Schrank approached Teddy and shot him in the chest. He was quickly apprehended. But what's a flesh wound to Theodore Roosevelt? Minutes later, T.R. went on stage, announced he had been shot, and GAVE THE SPEECH, which was 3,800+ words. After the speech was finished he went to hospital to have the bullet removed.

TR went on an African Safari in 1909 and put an expedition together to explore the Amazon in 1913. While in the Amazon rain forest he battled disease, heat and hostile tribesmen before discovering a new river, the Rio Teodoro, and returning home in 1914.

After his death, a notable politician remarked, "Death had to take him sleeping, for if Roosevelt had been awake there would have been a fight".

Basically, TR was awesome. He succeeded at everything he attempted, could fight and ride with the best of them, and was essentially one of (if not the) most badass political figures in American history. If you're interested in learning more about the magical time when American Presidents were American Badasses, this page has a great biography of Roosevelt.

Anselm of Canterbury - the ontological argument

Let's work through the argument as Anselm presents it.

Anselm writes:

... we believe that thou art a being than which nothing greater can be conceived.

This is Anselm's definition. We might paraphrase it as follows:

By "God" we mean an absolutely unsurpassable being, a being that cannot conceivably be improved upon.

As we've stressed, you do not need to agree that this is what the word "God" ordinarily means. Treat it as a stipulation. Clearly, if Anselm can establish the existence of a being of this sort, his conclusion would be of immense philosophical and theological significance.

Or is there no such nature, since the Fool has said in his heart, there is no God?

This puts the question: Is there in fact a being with the properties our definition assigns to God?

But, at any rate, this very fool, when he hears of this being of which I speak - a being than which nothing greater can be conceived - understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his understanding; although he does not understand it to exist.

This begins and ends straightforwardly. The fool understands the definition of God but denies that God exists. The first hint of strangeness comes in what seems to be a parenthetical remark: "what he understands is in his understanding". Anselm apparently proposes to treat the understanding or the mind as if it were a place, and to speak of things existing "in the understanding". Anselm's assumption here is that if I understand claims about God, then we may say that God exists in my understanding or in my mind.

For it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, another to understand that the object exists. For when a painter first conceives of what he will afterwards perform, he has it in his understanding be he does not yet understand it to be, because he has not yet performed it. But after he has made the painting, he both has it in his understanding and he understands that it exists, because he has made it.

Anselm here explains a distinction. It is one thing for an object to exist in my understanding, and another for me to understand it to exist. This is a familiar distinction, even if the terms are not familiar. Ghosts, trolls, flying saucers and the like are all things I can think about. We might say that I have ideas of these things; Anselm says that they exist in the understanding. Anselm's point is that in general there is a difference between saying that something exists in my understanding and saying that I understand (or believe) it to exist. Trolls exist in my understanding; but I do not understand them to exist.

Hence even the fool is convinced that something exists in the understanding, at least, than which nothing greater can be conceived. For when he hears of this, he understands it. And whatever is understood, exists in the understanding.

Here Anselm applies the distinction he has just drawn to the case of God. The fool understands claims about God. So God - a being than which none greater can be conceived - exists in his understanding. Anselm means this to be an entirely uncontroversial claim.

And assuredly, that than which nothing greater can be conceived cannot exist in the understanding alone: then it can be conceived to exist in reality, which is greater.

Therefore, if that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in the understanding alone, the very being than which nothing greater can be conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible.

This is the heart of the argument. The trick is to show that God cannot possibly exist in the understanding alone. Anselm begins by contrastingexisting in the understanding with existing in reality. This by itself is not problematic. Trolls exist in the understanding alone; Bill Clinton exists both in the understanding and in reality; and no doubt there are things that exist in reality that do not yet exist in the understanding because no human being has ever managed to frame a thought about them. The picture seems to be as follows:


In the area marked A we have things that exist in the understanding alone; in the area marked B we have things that exist both in the understanding and in reality; and in the area marked C we have things that exist in reality but not in the understanding. (For obvious reasons, we cannot give any concrete examples of the last category.)

At this stage the fool has conceded that God exists in the understanding: so God belongs either in A or in B. Anselm now argues that God cannot exist in the understanding alone. The argument seems to proceed as follows.

(1) Suppose (with the fool) that God exists in the understanding alone.

(2) Given our definition, this means that a being than which none greater can be conceived exists in the understanding alone.

(3) But this being can be conceived to exist in reality. That is, we can conceive of a circumstance in which theism is true, even if we do not believe that it actually obtains.

(4) But it is greater for a thing to exist in reality than for it to exist in the understanding alone.

(5) Hence we seem forced to conclude that a being than which none greater can be conceived can be conceived to be greater than it is.

(6) But that is absurd.

(7) So (1) must be false. God must exist in reality as well as in the understanding.

This reading of the argument is amply confirmed by the final paragraph:

Therefore, if that than which nothing greater can be conceived exists in the understanding alone, the very being than which nothing greater can be conceived is one than which a greater can be conceived. But obviously this is impossible. Hence there is no doubt that there exists a being than which nothing greater can be conceived, and it exists both in the understanding and in reality. 

A Reconstruction of the Argument

This is a useful first pass at the argument. Now let's go over it and try to isolate its most fundamental assumptions. (I'll highlight the premises of the reconstructed argument in red.) Remember the argument's dialectical context. The aim is to refute the fool - or less tendentiously, the rational atheist. So what we want to know about these premises is whether the fool should accept them. There is first the definition:

(a) By "God" we mean "a being than which no greater being can be conceived"

Then there are some assumptions about the Fool's understanding.

(b) We understand what it means to speak of a being than which no greater can be conceived. We understand what these words mean.

(c) We can conceive of such a being's existing in reality.

Anselm now assumes a principle that he clearly regards as trivial.

(d) If we understand what it means to speak of X, then X exists in the understanding.

From (a),(b) and (d) we may now infer:
(e) God exists in the understanding.

(Note: this is not a premise. It is an intermediate conclusion supported by a quick argument from premises we have already accepted.)

Anselm now employs a form of reasoning called reductio ad absurdum. This is a very useful technique. In a proof of this sort, we begin by assuming the opposite of what we want to prove. Then we derive a contradiction or an absurdity from this supposition. And from this we conclude that our original assumption was false. The general form of such an argument is as follows:

Suppose P

From P it follows that Q

But Q is absurd (self-contradictory).

Therefore P is false.

For Anselm the target of his reduction is the proposition that God exists in the understanding alone. So let us suppose that this is the case:

(f) Suppose that God exists in the understanding but not in reality.

From (f) and (c) we may now infer

(g) God in fact exists in the understanding alone, but he may be conceived to exist in reality as well as in the understanding.

At this point Anselm wields what is perhaps his most controversial premise. It is hard to know exactly how to formulate it. But something like the following seems to be what Anselm has in mind.

(h) If something exists in the understanding alone, but can be conceived to exist in reality, then that thing can be conceived to be greater than it actually is.

The idea seems to be: if we compare two things that are alike in all respects except that one exists in the understanding alone and the other exists in reality, then the one that exists in reality is clearly greater, better, more perfect. We will have to discuss the cogency of this assumption in class. But suppose for now that it is granted. We may then argue as follows. From (g) and (h) it follows that

(I) God can be conceived to be greater than it actually is.

But this is absurd. For given our definition (a), this just means that

(j) A being that cannot be conceived to be greater than it is can be conceived to be greater than it is.

From which it follows that our supposition (f) is false. We may therefore conclude

(k) God exists in reality.

Now you should ask: Is this a valid argument as it stands? Are the assumptions plausible? Would the fool be willing to grant them? Would you be willing to grant them? If you think that the argument is not a good one, you are under an obligation to say where it goes wrong. It might go wrong in several places. See how many "mistakes" you can find.