Oi! Moron!s
Published Thursday, June 15, 2006 by Packrat.
Don't forget that homework is due in to Mr Tan this week. (All those in my class) Hand in and remind RenZheng!
Kumar, you still owe me your perception essay. Send soft copy.
Send all mails and corresponding homework to daniel_tan@acjc.edu.sg
25% of your CA depends on this. Muahahahaha.
Kumar, you still owe me your perception essay. Send soft copy.
Send all mails and corresponding homework to daniel_tan@acjc.edu.sg
25% of your CA depends on this. Muahahahaha.
The moon doesn't exist!!!
Published Sunday, June 11, 2006 by charmaine.
truly dead philosophers, hmm?
http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm which is 'proof' that the moon doesn't exist, in 12 steps. It's a satire of the holocaust revisionists (i.e. people who believe that the holocaust DID NOT occur, you can read more about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial ) This is all very entertaining stuff mhmm.
And, a truly fallacious argument:
Dear Mad Revisionist,
I can prove the moon exists and that the moon landing in 1969 happened too. My existence is proof! I'll prove it too, but first, you must know that I hold a BA in Mathematics and I work with computers everyday, even do some programing, much like your bad self. Therefore you must recognize me as a scientist--no less than your peer. So you may take everything I say as fact. OK now to the proof:
I was abandoned on the moon by my parents shortly after birth. They were aliens who didn't like my human-like features and were shamed by their alien friends into flying to the moon to abandon me. The astronauts were subsequently sent to the moon to fetch me. I can prove that I was born on the moon, because my earth-birth certificate states I was born in 1969(I can send or fax a copy if need be), same year as the moon landing. Coincidence? I think not. And, I can prove that I am on earth now, because I have a hotmail account. So that proves that the astronauts succeded in fetching me, and without a moon there for the astronauts fetch me from, how could they fetch me from the moon? Therefore there must be a moon. QED
You may contact me later for details on where to send the check.
PS can I have an additional $100,000 for proving the lunar landing also? I'm trying to by a house fer cryin' out loud, I don't want a shack by the river, it smells bad down there.
http://www.revisionism.nl/Moon/The-Mad-Revisionist.htm which is 'proof' that the moon doesn't exist, in 12 steps. It's a satire of the holocaust revisionists (i.e. people who believe that the holocaust DID NOT occur, you can read more about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_denial ) This is all very entertaining stuff mhmm.
And, a truly fallacious argument:
Dear Mad Revisionist,
I can prove the moon exists and that the moon landing in 1969 happened too. My existence is proof! I'll prove it too, but first, you must know that I hold a BA in Mathematics and I work with computers everyday, even do some programing, much like your bad self. Therefore you must recognize me as a scientist--no less than your peer. So you may take everything I say as fact. OK now to the proof:
I was abandoned on the moon by my parents shortly after birth. They were aliens who didn't like my human-like features and were shamed by their alien friends into flying to the moon to abandon me. The astronauts were subsequently sent to the moon to fetch me. I can prove that I was born on the moon, because my earth-birth certificate states I was born in 1969(I can send or fax a copy if need be), same year as the moon landing. Coincidence? I think not. And, I can prove that I am on earth now, because I have a hotmail account. So that proves that the astronauts succeded in fetching me, and without a moon there for the astronauts fetch me from, how could they fetch me from the moon? Therefore there must be a moon. QED
You may contact me later for details on where to send the check.
PS can I have an additional $100,000 for proving the lunar landing also? I'm trying to by a house fer cryin' out loud, I don't want a shack by the river, it smells bad down there.
plato! don't we just love him
Published Saturday, May 20, 2006 by charmaine.
(sorry the font's so teeny but this article is worth straining your eyes for!)
Martha NussbaumPlato's Republic: The Good Society and the Deformation of Desire.
"The ideas of Plato’s Republic are still with us, posing disturbing questions about democratic freedom.
In Singapore in 1990 Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew defends the achievements of his illiberal regime. Moralistic controls on public and private behavior, eugenic policies to promote high birth rates in the allegedly most productive and intelligent classes, public provision of a highly controlled and stratified type of education: All this has raised Singapore to thirty-fifth position in the current United Nations Development Index, just ahead of Portugal. Lee Kuan Yew holds that there is an "essential conflict" between political liberties and human well-being. Political institutions must take responsibility for ordering and constraining choice, and this requires us not to care a great deal about liberty. This view is receiving increasing attention in international human rights debates, where one increasingly hears the claim that rights are an insular modern Western phenomenon and that values of moral order should take precedence in thinking about the future. Unlike some other comparable Third World leaders, Lee does not call himself a Platonist, since he is eager to stress the Eastern origins of his views; nonetheless, in substance his program is remarkably close to that of Plato’s Republic. The Singapore success story has produced what economist Amartya Sen has called "a deep agnosticism about the urgency of political freedoms" in the international community."
[...]
"PLATO’S Republic, written between 380 and 370 b. c., is the first great work of political philosophy in the Western philosophical tradition. It is great in large part because it is not just a work of political philosophy, but at the same time a profound analysis of the human being and human desire. It is also, and centrally, a deadly assault on democracy. It denounces free speech, majoritarian choice, the free choice of marital partners, freedom of literary and political expression, and more or less every other freedom that modern democracies hold dear. Plato grew up in the Athenian democracy of the fifth century b. c., the democracy that proudly boasted that its customs were an education to all the world, that it alone allowed each person to live in accordance with his own choices and thoughts, that it alone produced a type of virtue that was not mindless obedience to custom but the flowering of a person’s inner faculties of love and reflection. Plato tells us that these boasts are hollow: Democratic choice breeds license and corruption in the soul. Its emphasis on love and free reflection robs individuals of the opportunity for the deepest types of self-development and self-expression, and robs politics of its stable adherence to virtue. Social norms must be shaped by true wisdom, not by majority vote.
Because Plato’s hatred of democracy is so evident, the reputation of the Republic in democratic societies has fluctuated wildly. In the early decades of the twentieth century, in both England and America, the Republic was treated with veneration, like a kind of secular Bible. Because veneration took precedence over analysis, interpreters tended to gloss over, or to read merely metaphorically, any aspect of the political design of the work that seemed objectionable to liberal democrats. In the aftermath of World War II, however, it proved impossible for Plato’s readers to ignore what he was actually proposing. A distinguished philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, produced a blistering indictment of Plato and of the whitewashing of Plato that had been typical of the academy. Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies treats Plato as one of history’s three great enemies of democratic freedoms of inquiry and debate (the other two being Hegel and Marx). Popper demonstrated vividly, often simply by quoting uncomfortable passages from the text, the extent of Plato’s kinship with twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. His conclusion was that Plato should be simply dismissed, as a fear-ridden spiteful intellectual unable to stand living in the open realm of Athenian democratic debate. He saw nothing deep in Plato’s arguments; dwelling on their repellent conclusions, he neglected to trace the path by which the arguments moved the reader from commonly accepted premises to those conclusions.
As a result, Popper’s work is commonly itself dismissed by philosophers today, and we are largely back, if not to veneration, at least to a tendency to deny that the work is really making serious political proposals. Once again the political passages are being treated metaphorically, as mere devices through which Plato is making statements about psychology and ethics.
But Popper is correct. Plato does make serious political proposals. They were understood as such by his contemporaries, and attacked as such by his greatest pupil, Aristotle. They drew from real-life political debates in Sparta, Crete, and Athens, and they influenced the development of real regimes. Plato himself went to Sicily to attempt to implement them, and failed only because the party that supported his reforms lost out in a bitter political struggle. Plato’s proposals constitute a living and deadly assault on democracy; it is correct to take that assault at its face value. Plato does say that democracy rots the soul, and he does defend the totalitarian rule of an elite, who will impose their ideas and values through a system of total social control that begins with rules for breastfeeding and goes on to suffuse every aspect of every citizen’s life.
So Popper is right: Plato is our enemy, and Plato is to be feared. But Popper draws the wrong conclusion from these observations. It is mistaken to suppose that Plato can and should be dismissed because we do not like—indeed, in some ways detest—what he has to say to us. It is mistaken to suppose that we should just stop reading Plato, as if that would keep us clear of the threat he represents. Plato’s political proposals are not simply a manifesto; they are the conclusions of arguments, arguments that begin from a profound diagnosis of human nature and human deficiency. If we find his diagnosis compelling, as I believe we should, we are under heavy pressure to show to ourselves and to others why the repellent conclusions should not be drawn. That is why Plato has been over the centuries the best friend democracy could have had: for he challenges it to know, and to justify, itself. As my present-day examples suggest, I believe that Plato’s arguments pose a challenge to democratic ideals and institutions that is with us today everywhere we turn. Because of the depth with which Plato connects institutional design to analysis of the soul and its desires, he poses the strongest challenge to democratic freedom that any philosopher ever has. He forces the defender of democracy to grapple with issues many defenders would prefer to avoid. If the end result of that confrontation is not to be the Singapore of Lee Kuan Yew, it will have to be because we have thought more deeply about democracy and desire than we have thought before. And on some crucial questions about moral education and the shaping of desire, I believe it will turn out that Plato was at least partially correct, in the contours if not in the content of his proposals. Some desires, deformed by anger and fear and group hatred, are so pernicious to society that we should discriminate against them in at least some ways in the formation of law and public policy."
(Martha Nussbaum. Plato's Republic: The Good Society and the Deformation of Desire. Washington, DC, USA: Library of Congress, 1998. pp.9-13)
Martha NussbaumPlato's Republic: The Good Society and the Deformation of Desire.
"The ideas of Plato’s Republic are still with us, posing disturbing questions about democratic freedom.
In Singapore in 1990 Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew defends the achievements of his illiberal regime. Moralistic controls on public and private behavior, eugenic policies to promote high birth rates in the allegedly most productive and intelligent classes, public provision of a highly controlled and stratified type of education: All this has raised Singapore to thirty-fifth position in the current United Nations Development Index, just ahead of Portugal. Lee Kuan Yew holds that there is an "essential conflict" between political liberties and human well-being. Political institutions must take responsibility for ordering and constraining choice, and this requires us not to care a great deal about liberty. This view is receiving increasing attention in international human rights debates, where one increasingly hears the claim that rights are an insular modern Western phenomenon and that values of moral order should take precedence in thinking about the future. Unlike some other comparable Third World leaders, Lee does not call himself a Platonist, since he is eager to stress the Eastern origins of his views; nonetheless, in substance his program is remarkably close to that of Plato’s Republic. The Singapore success story has produced what economist Amartya Sen has called "a deep agnosticism about the urgency of political freedoms" in the international community."
[...]
"PLATO’S Republic, written between 380 and 370 b. c., is the first great work of political philosophy in the Western philosophical tradition. It is great in large part because it is not just a work of political philosophy, but at the same time a profound analysis of the human being and human desire. It is also, and centrally, a deadly assault on democracy. It denounces free speech, majoritarian choice, the free choice of marital partners, freedom of literary and political expression, and more or less every other freedom that modern democracies hold dear. Plato grew up in the Athenian democracy of the fifth century b. c., the democracy that proudly boasted that its customs were an education to all the world, that it alone allowed each person to live in accordance with his own choices and thoughts, that it alone produced a type of virtue that was not mindless obedience to custom but the flowering of a person’s inner faculties of love and reflection. Plato tells us that these boasts are hollow: Democratic choice breeds license and corruption in the soul. Its emphasis on love and free reflection robs individuals of the opportunity for the deepest types of self-development and self-expression, and robs politics of its stable adherence to virtue. Social norms must be shaped by true wisdom, not by majority vote.
Because Plato’s hatred of democracy is so evident, the reputation of the Republic in democratic societies has fluctuated wildly. In the early decades of the twentieth century, in both England and America, the Republic was treated with veneration, like a kind of secular Bible. Because veneration took precedence over analysis, interpreters tended to gloss over, or to read merely metaphorically, any aspect of the political design of the work that seemed objectionable to liberal democrats. In the aftermath of World War II, however, it proved impossible for Plato’s readers to ignore what he was actually proposing. A distinguished philosopher of science, Sir Karl Popper, produced a blistering indictment of Plato and of the whitewashing of Plato that had been typical of the academy. Popper’s Open Society and Its Enemies treats Plato as one of history’s three great enemies of democratic freedoms of inquiry and debate (the other two being Hegel and Marx). Popper demonstrated vividly, often simply by quoting uncomfortable passages from the text, the extent of Plato’s kinship with twentieth-century totalitarian regimes. His conclusion was that Plato should be simply dismissed, as a fear-ridden spiteful intellectual unable to stand living in the open realm of Athenian democratic debate. He saw nothing deep in Plato’s arguments; dwelling on their repellent conclusions, he neglected to trace the path by which the arguments moved the reader from commonly accepted premises to those conclusions.
As a result, Popper’s work is commonly itself dismissed by philosophers today, and we are largely back, if not to veneration, at least to a tendency to deny that the work is really making serious political proposals. Once again the political passages are being treated metaphorically, as mere devices through which Plato is making statements about psychology and ethics.
But Popper is correct. Plato does make serious political proposals. They were understood as such by his contemporaries, and attacked as such by his greatest pupil, Aristotle. They drew from real-life political debates in Sparta, Crete, and Athens, and they influenced the development of real regimes. Plato himself went to Sicily to attempt to implement them, and failed only because the party that supported his reforms lost out in a bitter political struggle. Plato’s proposals constitute a living and deadly assault on democracy; it is correct to take that assault at its face value. Plato does say that democracy rots the soul, and he does defend the totalitarian rule of an elite, who will impose their ideas and values through a system of total social control that begins with rules for breastfeeding and goes on to suffuse every aspect of every citizen’s life.
So Popper is right: Plato is our enemy, and Plato is to be feared. But Popper draws the wrong conclusion from these observations. It is mistaken to suppose that Plato can and should be dismissed because we do not like—indeed, in some ways detest—what he has to say to us. It is mistaken to suppose that we should just stop reading Plato, as if that would keep us clear of the threat he represents. Plato’s political proposals are not simply a manifesto; they are the conclusions of arguments, arguments that begin from a profound diagnosis of human nature and human deficiency. If we find his diagnosis compelling, as I believe we should, we are under heavy pressure to show to ourselves and to others why the repellent conclusions should not be drawn. That is why Plato has been over the centuries the best friend democracy could have had: for he challenges it to know, and to justify, itself. As my present-day examples suggest, I believe that Plato’s arguments pose a challenge to democratic ideals and institutions that is with us today everywhere we turn. Because of the depth with which Plato connects institutional design to analysis of the soul and its desires, he poses the strongest challenge to democratic freedom that any philosopher ever has. He forces the defender of democracy to grapple with issues many defenders would prefer to avoid. If the end result of that confrontation is not to be the Singapore of Lee Kuan Yew, it will have to be because we have thought more deeply about democracy and desire than we have thought before. And on some crucial questions about moral education and the shaping of desire, I believe it will turn out that Plato was at least partially correct, in the contours if not in the content of his proposals. Some desires, deformed by anger and fear and group hatred, are so pernicious to society that we should discriminate against them in at least some ways in the formation of law and public policy."
(Martha Nussbaum. Plato's Republic: The Good Society and the Deformation of Desire. Washington, DC, USA: Library of Congress, 1998. pp.9-13)
This is just funny.
Published Wednesday, May 17, 2006 by Packrat.
May 15, 2006
Durex 'sex ring' advertisements in 7-Eleven stores could infect young minds. Remove them
Durex 'sex ring' advertisements in 7-Eleven stores could infect young minds. Remove them
I was at the 7-Eleven store at Ginza Plaza when I noticed a poster on the sale of a 'vibrating sex ring' by Durex.
The poster was placed prominently on the store front and the product advertised was on offer. Despite the fine print stating that it was for sale only to those above 18 years, it depicted the sex toy as a wedding ring. It desecrates the sanctity of marriage with such an association.
Such morally questionable products should not be advertised so prominently in a family store.
I would like the management of Durex and 7-Eleven to explain the rationale for placing such advertisements in the stores as they could infect the minds of young students.
Does the relevant government department vet such advertisments? Are there no laws to govern the display and promotion of such products?
Despite the propagation of objectionable materials on the internet, the authorities and civil society should take steps as far as possible to stop such advertisements from polluting our young minds.
Lucas Ho Wei-Jie
Commentez s'il vous plait to Monsieur Ho.
raison d’être
Published Thursday, May 11, 2006 by Packrat.
We are here because we seek to know.
No higher purpose but this. No better idea than this. And no better calling than this.
To know.
Also, to talk about all things related to all the stuff that we study...be it ideas, books or the pack of Doritos lying in the corner.
Meanwhile, sit back, relax and let the dialectic begin.
No higher purpose but this. No better idea than this. And no better calling than this.
To know.
Also, to talk about all things related to all the stuff that we study...be it ideas, books or the pack of Doritos lying in the corner.
Meanwhile, sit back, relax and let the dialectic begin.
About Us
- We're Discourse Whores