Results for 2006-02
Í morgunblaðinu í dag var frétt um norska rannsókn á tengslum milli reykinga og þunglyndis. Rannsóknin hafði athugað rúmlega tvö þúsund manna úrtak af þunglyndissjúklingum og komist að því að hlutfall reykingamanna meðal þunglyndra var talsvert hærri heldur en meðal venjulegra manna í Noregi. Af þessu drógu þeir þá ályktun að reykingar geti ýtt undir þunglyndi.
Eins og ég vona að lesendur mínir geri sér grein fyrir, þá er þetta algjörlega óásættanleg niðurstaða út frá gögnunum. Það gæti verið að sambandið milli þunglyndis og reykinga sé "acausal", þ.e.a.s. bæði þættirnir séu orsakaðir af þriðja þættinum, og ekkert orsakasamband sé þar á milli. T.a.m. er auðvelt að ímynda sér að tóbaksreykingar séu algengari hjá þeim sem neyta mikilla fíkniefna, sökum félagslegra þátta -- en fíkniefnaneysla getur síðan í mörgum tilfellum leitt til þunglyndis. Þarna er ekkert orsakasamband milli reykinganna og þunglyndisins, heldur einungis fylgni.
Ég er með smá skilaboð til þessara norsku "fræðimanna". Repeat after me:
Fylgni er EKKI það sama og orsakasamband
Fylgni er EKKI það sama og orsakasamband
Fylgni er EKKI það sama og orsakasamband
Svona, nú ætti ykkur að líða betur.
(Gunni)
Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office
I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.
I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.
from Companion Volume 4, Part 1 of the official biography, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, by Martin Gilbert (London: Heinemann, 1976)
(Sveinbjörn)
The following submitted letter was printed in The Times (London). Saturday, May 9, 1992
Sir,
The University of Cambridge is to ballot on May 16 on whether M. Jacques Derrida should be allowed to go forward to receive an honorary degree. As philosophers and others who have taken a scholarly and professional interest in M. Derrida's remarkable career over the years, we believe the following might throw some needed light on the public debate that has arisen over this issue.
M. Derrida describes himself as a philosopher, and his writings do indeed bear some of the marks of writings in that discipline. Their influence, however, has been to a striking degree almost entirely in fields outside philosophy -- in departments of film studies, for example, or of French and English literature.
In the eyes of philosophers, and certainly among those working in leading departments of philosophy throughout the world, M. Derrida's work does not meet accepted standards of clarity and rigour.
We submit that, if the works of a physicist (say) were similarly taken to be of merit primarily by those working in other disciplines, this would in itself be sufficient grounds for casting doubt upon the idea that the physicist in question was a suitable candidate for an honorary degree.
M. Derrida's career had its roots in the heady days of the 1960s and his writings continue to reveal their origins in that period. Many of them seem to consist in no small part of elaborate jokes and the puns "logical phallusies" and the like, and M. Derrida seems to us to have come close to making a career out of what we regard as translating into the academic sphere tricks and gimmicks similar to those of the Dadaists or of the concrete poets.
Certainly he has shown considerable originality in this respect. But again, we submit, such originality does not lend credence to the idea that he is a suitable candidate for an honorary degree.
Many French philosophers see in M. Derrida only cause for silent embarrassment, his antics having contributed significantly to the widespread impression that contemporary French philosophy is little more than an object of ridicule.
M. Derrida's voluminous writings in our view stretch the normal forms of academic scholarship beyond recognition. Above all -- as every reader can very easily establish for himself (and for this purpose any page will do) -- his works employ a written style that defies comprehension.
Many have been willing to give M. Derrida the benefit of the doubt, insisting that language of such depth and difficulty of interpretation must hide deep and subtle thoughts indeed.
When the effort is made to penetrate it, however, it becomes clear, to us at least, that, where coherent assertions are being made at all, these are either false or trivial.
Academic status based on what seems to us to be little more than semi-intelligible attacks upon the values of reason, truth, and scholarship is not, we submit, sufficient grounds for the awarding of an honorary degree in a distinguished university.
Yours sincerely,
Barry SmithHans Albert (University of Mannheim),
David Armstrong (Sydney),
Ruth Barcan Marcus (Yale),
Keith Campbell (Sydney),
Richard Glauser (Neuchâtel),
Rudolf Haller (Graz),
Massimo Mugnai (Florence),
Kevin Mulligan (Geneva),
Lorenzo Peña (Madrid),
Willard van Orman Quine (Harvard),
Wolfgang Röd (Innsbruck),
Karl Schuhmann (Utrecht),
Daniel Schulthess (Neuchâtel),
Peter Simons (Salzburg),
René Thom (Burs-sur-Yvette),
Dallas Willard (Los Angeles),
Jan Wolenski (Cracow)
Sveinbjörn Þórðarson
(Sveinbjörn)
Those of you using Mac OS X may be familiar with XFactor, an excellent Peer-2-Peer file sharing program which connects to the FastTrack, OpenFT, Gnutella and Ares P2P networks. Unfortunately, the author of XFactor has released a shitty new version which only connects to the Gnutella network, severely limiting the usefulness of the program. I am thus making the old version available for download here.
However, the Xfactor program will refuse to launch and report that it is expired and direct you to the useless new version. I found a workaround to the problem. Using LittleSnitch to trace the network packets, I discovered that Xfactor calls home from the computer it's running from -- the trick, therefore, must be to block this connection. To continue using the old Xfactor, do the following:
1. Open Terminal.app within the Utilities folder
2. Type the following:
sudo pico /etc/hosts
When prompted for your password, type it in and press Enter.
3. You should now see the contents of the hosts file.
Add the following line:
127.0.0.1 xfactor.cc
4. Press Ctrl-X and then 'y', and then Enter. You're done.
After this little modification, the old Xfactor will continue to run without trouble.
Ég var að uppgötva frábært drykkjulag fyrir heimspekinga -- þetta er að sjálfsögðu verk Monty Python: The Philosopher's Drinking Song:
Immanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out consume
Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.
There's nothing Nietzsche couldn't teach ya
'bout the raisin' of the wrist.
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.
John Stuart Mill, of his own free will,
after half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away,
'alf a crate of whiskey every day!
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle,
and Hobbes was fond of his Dram.
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
"I drink, therefore I am."
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed;
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed.
-- Monty Python
Kominn heim í siðmenninguna...
Myndir: NUCOG ráðstefna á Akureyri Feb 2006Hérna sit ég við drykkju í hinni miklu menningarborg Norðursins, ásamt góðum mönnum...
(Dagur)
Jæja, góðir hálsar. Ég er núna staddur á Akureyri, höfuðborg Norðursins og kapítal íslenskrar siðmenningar. Á laugardaginn síðasta fór ég á eitt svakalegasta suddafyllirí í langan tíma ásamt erlendu nemunum hérna. Fyrir rest lenti ég í ryskingum við einhvern inbred rasista-hillbilly heimamann, sem öskraði á mig "Ertu EKKI ÍSLENDINGUR??? VILTU LÁTA ÞETTA ARABA-PAKK RÍÐA ÞÉR Í RASSGATIÐ???!!!". Ég sagði honum að hann gæti tekið sitt rasistahatur og troðið því upp í rassgatið á sér. Slapp vel frá þessu, er bara eilítið marinn á brjóstkassanum. Vinir gaursins skárust í leikinn og drógu hann upp í bifreið. Siðmenning Norðursins: gotta love it...
(Sveinbjörn)
(Sveinbjörn)
Jæja, hafið þið lausn við þessu?
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Incompatible Food Triad
The Incompatible Food Triad is a puzzle that allegedly originated with the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars, and has been spread by some of his former colleagues and students. To date no solution has been forthcoming.
The problem is this: Find three foods, such that any two of them go together, but all three do not.
We understand "go together" in any reasonable sense of the expression, as it is ordinarily applied to foods.
One way of seeing the problem is this: given three foods that don't go together, it's usually because two of them don't go together. For example, Richard Feynman's famous example of accidentally requesting milk and lemon in his tea is not a solution: (1) Milk, tea, and lemon do not go together. (2)(a) Tea and lemon do go together, (b) Tea and Milk do go together, but (c) Milk and lemon do not go together. For the solution to work milk and lemon would have to go together as well. Most attempted solutions tend to overlook one of the three pairs.
The problem can also be formulated thus: Find a counter example to either of the following alleged theorems (where R(x,y,...) means "x, y, ... all go together") :
(1) Given any three foods A, B, and C, if [R(A,B), R(A,C) and R(B,C)] then R(A,B,C)
(2) Given any three foods A, B, and C, if ~R(A,B,C) then [~R(A,B) or ~R(A,C) or ~R(B,C)].
(Dagur)