Philosophy or Science, What's the Difference?

Huh, how to sum up this debate? Biden should drop out, and Trump should jump out, a window.

June 27, 2024

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Zuzu asked me a pretty good question today. She asked whether I would rather know science or philosophy. I asked her what the difference was, and told her that I had a philosophy of science class in college. She said that science is what we can know for sure, and philosophy is about interesting questions that maybe don't have answers. It's good she's starting kindergarten in the fall, because maybe the teachers will want to learn something from her.

June 27, 2021

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The Onion, June 27, 2013- Eminem Terrified As Daughter Begins Dating Man Raised On His Music

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The Dalai Lama says that people often ask for him to bless them. He tells them that they can only bless themselves, and they can do that by helping others.

June 27, 2020

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Huh... we are a part of the cosmos that has become self-aware if itself. I wasn't aware of that.

"We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring." -Carl Sagan

June 27, 2020

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I need to look myself over a little better before I leave the house... just found myself out in public wearing a shark t-shirt and shark socks. If I have only one clothing rule, it's that I can't wear anything that I would make fun of somebody else for wearing. I guess that's the golden rule of fashion.

June 27, 2020

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Chris Hayes:

We are in the midst of one of the worst governing failures in American history. When all is said and done, it may end up being the worst since the Civil War. There is no country on earth, this far into the pandemic, that has bungled it this badly. And we need leadership, and a leader, to get us out of this. But we do not have that.

We have Donald Trump.

And from the very first day, this has been a terrible presidency. From the first moment, from the first speech. It has been terrible. From his lawlessness, to his incompetence, what he has done to immigrants and immigrant children. What happened during Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which was a canary in a coal mine.

Or putting his personal interests ahead of the country, which is what he was impeached for. The constant attacks on the rule of law. The disgusting, despicable bigotry....and on and on and on.

But we have reached a new depth as coronavirus cases race back up and he ignored warnings from his public health experts. That resulted in tens of thousands of preventable deaths. And we are looking at tens of thousands of more. Right now we are seeing our chance as Americans to get back to some semblance of normalcy, the way other countries have, with work and school and even sports, we are seeing it slip away because of Donald Trump.

We are seeing it because of the incompetance of a man who took a huge inheretence and squandered it on stupid, glitzy investments and bankrupted his companies six times because he was not up to the task.

If this presidency had creditors, the viruses resurgence this week would have been a default. Only it is not his creditors who are suffering, it is us. It is the people who could have survived this virus. It is friends. It is loved ones. In nursing homes. And the people on the front lines. And the ones working in meatpacking plants. And the ones serving time in prison. It is everyone who has lost a job and every small business that has shut down.

Things are falling apart because of him.

And Republicans know it.

But all they do is complain about his tone or they send some passive-aggressive tweets while professing their loyalty.

The problem is not his tone. There is not going to be some course correction. Donald Trump does not learn. He is not going to get good at this. He is not going to change. He has failed, definitively. And it is an urgent matter of public health, of public safety at this moment, for the President, Donald Trump, to resign.

June 27, 2020

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George Carlin:

I don't understand why prostitution is illegal. Selling is legal. Fucking is legal. Why isn't selling fucking legal? Why should it be illegal to sell something that's perfectly legal to give away? I can't follow the logic on that one at all! Of all the things you can do, giving someone an orgasm is hardly the worst thing in the world. In the army, they give you a medal for spraying napalm on people. In civilian life, you go to jail for giving someone an orgasm.

Postscript: When I found this quote they replaced "prostitution" with "[sex work]." Haha, Carlin would fucking hate that!

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Senator Bennett is perhaps the worst presidential candidate in history, but he'd be a fine ventriloquist's dummy if there's some way to run for that instead.

June 27, 2019

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Further reflection on the democratic debate from last night... every one of them would lose to Trump. He's a garbage human but perhaps the greatest-ever enemy-vilifier. I think that might be what this country wants. Either way it goes, we get what we deserve.

June 27, 2019

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Every once in a while Gretel does this cute thing where she grabs my finger and leads me somewhere for me to help her with something. In the grocery store tonight she grabbed my finger, and pulled it close to her, and bit the living hell out of it. People in the aisles next to me must have wondered why a grown man was screaming.

June 27, 2015

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Time and time again equal rights are fought for, and fought for, and fought for, and then they become accepted, and a generation passes, and all the old arguments against them are forgotten, and nobody can imagine why people were fussing against equality to begin with, and they wonder if their ancestors were for or against those equal rights. I'm sure all the voting women know what I'm talking about.

June 27, 2015

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Voltaire- “Those who can make you believe absurdity can make you commit atrocity.”

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I have no idea how anyone found this out, but it's completely true. You don't even necessarily need to have a red light. Apparently, the brain is addicted to sensation. So when all sensation is blocked out, the brain creates its own!

IFL Science- "If you tape two halves of a ping pong ball to your eyes, and stare at a red light while listening to the radio tuned to static, you will have complex and vivid hallucinations."

A few more tricks to play on your own brain here: http://bit.ly/1agKeaH

June 27, 2013

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The founder of the Mormons, Joseph Smith, was killed by a mob at the Carthage, Illinois jail on this day in 1844. Sure, he was full of shit, but I don't think he need to be killed.

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American football player and wrestler, Dick the Bruiser, was born on this day in 1929. Sounds like a guy to watch out for! 

From Wikipedia:

On November 19, 1957, Dick the Bruiser and Dr. Jerry Graham engaged in a tag team match at Madison Square Garden in New York City before a crowd reported as 12,987 fans. Their opponents were Antonino Rocca and Édouard Carpentier. After the match ended, fighting among the wrestlers continued, and a large number of fans joined in, leading to a riot. Two policemen were injured, two fans were arrested and over 60 policemen had difficulty dispersing the angry crowd. The floor of the arena was littered with hundreds of broken chairs. As a result, Dick the Bruiser was banned for life by the New York State Athletic Commission.

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Polish director, Krzysztof Kieślowski, was born on this day in 1941.

"Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it.

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American director, J. J. Abrams, was born on this day in 1966.

"Every story has at least a little truth in it. Every story comes from somewhere."

His Star Wars Episode 7, came exactly from Episode 4, plot point by plot point. I've come to realize that movie is just a ridiculous piece of crap.

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English philosopher, A. J. Ayer, left us on this day in 1989.

"I do not believe in God. It seems to me that theists of all kinds have very largely failed to make their concept of a deity intelligible; and to the extent that they have made it intelligible, they have given us no reason to think that anything answers to it."

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Corey Allen left us on this day in 2010. He played Buzz In Rebel Without a Cause. He thought he had the most important line in the film. After James Dean's Jim Stark asked him why they have to do the chickie run, Buzz said, "Well you gotta do something." I love that.

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On this day in 1898, the first solo circumnavigation of the globe was completed by Joshua Slocum from Briar Island, Nova Scotia.

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Other notable birthdays- Emma Goldman (1869), Helen Keller (1880), Ross Perot (1930), Tobey Maguire (1975)

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgxX8Dw5-nQ&sns=fb

I think I laughed out loud for over half of this.

*Actually laughed out loud.

June 27, 2016

Postscript- BROKEN LINK! Damn, what the hell was it???

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Hey, I thought the world was supposed to STOP laughing at us! This is probably just due to the entire world's fake media. It's funny when this is presented as a problem with the American media.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/poll-shows-us-tumbling-in-worlds-regard-under-trump

June 27, 2017

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The Hill, June 27, 2017- Time asks Trump Organization to remove fake cover from golf clubs

Perhaps the definition of "fake news."

June 27, 2017

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Nothing to see here folks... the Trump campaign and Russia, fake news.

Except that the campaign chair was a foreign agent working on behalf of the Russians. But Trump couldn't have known that, could have he? It's not like he complimented Putin or anything, or had his surrogates meet with and talk with the Russians about dropping sanctions, or anything like that. That would be crazy!

http://hill.cm/amGy6E2

June 27, 2017, 9:00 PM

Postscript- from the article:

"Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on Tuesday formally acknowledged his lobbying work for Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin Party of Regions, retroactively registering with the Justice Department as a foreign agent."

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This guy is something!

Pete Buttigieg- “For a party that associates itself with Christianity to say that ... God would smile on the division of families at the hands of federal agents, that God would condone putting children in cages, has lost all claim to ever use religious language again.”

June 27, 2019

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Oh boy, a must-watch for Terence Malick fans.

"For Malick all places are temporal. They are governed not only by the changes of nature, but also by our ever-changing engagement with them. They are worlds of meaning that might be held open for a time, but they can and certainly will all away eventually."

https://filmschoolrejects.com/terrence-malick-philosophy/

June 27, 2020

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One thing that I see so many people miss- wearing masks for risk reduction vs absolute prevention. So many don't understand that concept. From the article:

“The concept is risk reduction rather than absolute prevention,” said Chin-Hong. “You don’t throw up your hands if you think a mask is not 100 percent effective. That’s silly. Nobody’s taking a cholesterol medicine because they’re going to prevent a heart attack 100 percent of the time, but you’re reducing your risk substantially.”

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/06/417906/still-confused-about-masks-heres-science-behind-how-face-masks-prevent

June 27, 2020

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From Esquire: This Baffling Visualization Shows How Much Money Jeff Bezos Really Has

It's hard to scroll through this comparison and not come to the conclusion that a wealth tax would be a good idea. I'm talking about a tax on those who could never possibly feel it. Let them be rich, but while people suffer to support basic societal functions and still keep their head above water, maybe the super-rich shouldn't be literally unimaginably rich.

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a32332217/jeff-bezos-net-worth-wealth-visualization

June 27, 2020

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Trump, post Tulsa rally.

Finding the comedy in tragedy.

https://youtu.be/bPZYdf0teuE

June 27, 2020

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This is just genius. How many true originals are out there? He became an event donor by hiring security... security which prevented event planners from taking him off stage or cutting the sound once they figured out what was going on.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/sacha-baron-cohen-pulls-epic-prank-on-right-wing-militia-event-in-olympia-washington

June 28, 2020

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Barr: “My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time. If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”

And it was!

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/06/william-barrs-trump-administration-attorney-general/619298/

June 27, 2021

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Last sentence from Werner Herzog's Conquest of the Useless:

"I looked around, and there was the jungle, manifesting the same seething hatred, wrathful and steaming, while the river flowed by in majestic indifference and scornful condescension, ignoring everything: the plight of man, the burden of dreams, and the torments of time."

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The Ultimate Warrior- I NEED NOT THE NORMALS TO PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I FIND MOST COMFORTING: THE CHARGE OF PAIN! AND THE SMELL OF COMBAT!

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Stanley Kubrick actor, Joe Turkel died today. He was in the Killing, Paths of Glory, and was most famous for playing Lloyd the Bartender in The Shining. 

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Abortion Debate:

Sharon posted at Jack Nicholson quote: 

"I’m very contra my constituency in terms of abortion because I’m positively against it. I don’t have the right to any other view. My only emotion is gratitude, literally, for my life." -Jack Nicholson

I couldn't help myself 

Ben- Hey Sharon, been a while. Any idea if he believes that conceptions from rape and incest are gifts from god?

Sharon- No but I doubt if he looks at the circumstances in which a child is conceived. Obviously his circumstances were not the best but he's very grateful for being given the gift of life. It doesn't matter how a child is conceived. They are still a human being and deserve the right to life. Don't you see how if that right is denied, all other rights have no meaning? If you know someone that is pregnant from being raped or incest and doesn't want their baby, please let me know. I'll take it and I know another 100 people who would do the same.

Ben- Would you agree that conceptions from rape and incest are gifts from God?

Sharon- Yes. Often God turns bad circumstances into good. I've seen it over and over. Regardless, abortions because of rape and incest are less than 1% of those being done. It's a straw man's argument and furthermore, the majority of Americans don't want it. Finally someone listened!

Ben- That's not a straw man. I've made no argument. I'm testing the extreme limits of your belief. Let's say hypothetically... a 12 year-old girl is raped by her father, ultrasounds show there's a 0% chance that the baby will live beyond a day, and the life of the mother is in significant danger if she attempts to deliver the baby. Is your position still that this was God's intent, and that she should have the baby anyway?

Amy- Make your argument. What are your beliefs? Mine are Pro-Life. From conception (regardless of the conditions) to natural death.

Ben- I'm not here to debate you. I've had a lot of spirited debates with Sharon in the past and was curious what she thought.

Sharon- How about I test the extremes of your beliefs? Let's say you have a 4 year old child who is diagnosed with a terminal illness and the doctor says there is zero percent chance he'll see his 5th birthday. What would you do, take a sledge hammer to his head?? I mean why go to the expense of treating him and feeding him and all that misery of uncertainty, just kill him now and be done with it. Also doctors don't know everything. You should spend some time reading about this woman instead of trolling the internet. Saint Gianna Beretta Molla

She was told by her doctor that she would die if she continued her pregnancy. She chose to give her baby life and they both lived. See that is the advantage people of faith have over those who don't have faith. We know God is in control and whatever happens to us there has been someone who went through it before us and lived a courageous life and overcame adversity. They did that by NOT putting themselves first.

Ben- I've had genuinely good discussions with you, and I've sometimes thought a little bit differently afterward. I'm not sure why you would consider this trolling, I'm genuinely trying to seek the truth. Of course I wouldn't kill my kid in your example, but it's a terrible analogy. I'm not sure why somebody who claims to be pro-life would ignore the risk of death of the mother. So to turn it into a proper analogy, if I was pregnant with a 99% chance to die if I gave birth, and I was set to deliver a child that had a next zero percent chance to live, I would have to make the hard decision. In that case I'd be more pro-life than you and your friends... less loss of life could be expected to result from my decision. Would you care to go back to my prior example and answer yes or no? 

For what it's worth, before a fetus has brain waves or can feel pain, I consider them as equally non-existent as all of the children who have never been conceived. I don't think you could give a rational answer as to why I'm wrong, I think your answer would lie strictly on religious dogma, but I don't know what I don't know.

Sharon- My analogy is terrible only if you don't recognize the child as a child. It doesn't matter to me how far along a woman is, it's a life and deserves protection. Brain activity starts during the 4th week of gestation so almost all babies that are aborted have brainwaves and do feel pain. But what I am tired of is pro aborts always bring up these drastic situations that would apply to abortions almost NEVER. Having an abortion to save the life of the mother will still be legal and has always been legal, way before Roe V Wade. I had an aunt who was offered an abortion in the early 50's. The doctors told her, her baby had a small chance of living and zero chance of being normal. She chose to have her baby and the doctors were wrong. So many doctors quit doing abortions after using 3D ultra sound. Much harder to kill something that is obvious alive and looks just like a baby. No pro-lifer is going to stand in the way of a mother having an abortion to save her life, they would just not to it themselves. We could still virtually end abortion by only doing those where saving the life of the mother is involved.

Ben- Thanks for the dialogue. For clarity, I thought it was a bad analogy because the mother's life is not a consideration for the 5-year-old. That's the critical difference. I still can't wrap my mind around the belief that a fetus with a 1% chance of survival would be worth a 99% chance of the mother dying. I know it's extreme example, and I'm not trying to make it seem like the norm, but someone with an absolutist view believes it's a good bet, while it clearly can be expected to lead to more death. Absolutist views can lead to absurdities like this. 

Do I understand you correctly, that you believe that people who are pro-life should not stand in the way, literally, or through the law, of a mother who's life is legitimately in danger, deciding for an abortion? I do genuinely enjoy trying to understand your perspective.

Sharon- Not only shouldn't, they wouldn't. If you'll notice all the trigger laws that have gone into place since Roe V Wade was overturned includes exceptions for the life of the mother. Most include exceptions for rape and incest as well. it's a non issue so you can't relax about it. Thanks for trying to understand my perspective. That is much appreciated!

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Huh... I don't think I know a more harder core anti-abortion person than Sharon, and she would not support a law outlawing an abortion for someone whose life's at risk. I guess that means she's pro-choice for that woman. Right? Should I just leave it go or should I press on? I think I'll just save that recumbentibus for next time.

June 26 and 27, 2022

BTW, my goal in any debate is to truthfully reframe my opponent's position in a way that makes them look absolutely ridiculous for believing it.

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Recumbentibus- a knockout punch, either verbal or physical.

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James Crumley- “Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.”

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Arthur Schopenhauer- “We give up three-quarters of ourselves to resemble others. A man can only be himself when he is alone. And if he doesn't like solitude it means that he doesn't love freedom. Because he is only when he is alone that he is truly free."

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Ibn Sina- "Is it the fault of wine if a fool drinks it and goes stumbling into darkness?"

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From If, by Rudyard Kipling:

"If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster, 

     And treat those two impostors just the same"

Those words are inscribed on the wall as the finalists go out to face each other in a Wimbledon final.

The poem ends:

"Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!"

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46473/if---

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Rodney Dangerfield responded to a heckler, "You better save your breath. You'll need it later when you blow up your inflatable date."

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Albert Einstein- "You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat."

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Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary- "Inhumanity, n. One of the signal and characteristic qualities of humanity."

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Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1992- "The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible."

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Jung- "Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you."

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Ricky Gervais- "Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid.”