This guy is so dead.
I’d give the guy in this video a couple months, maybe, before he’s murdered by someone like Islamic Rage Boy. Yes indeed, the world is on runaway train to doom. Oh well, might as well move to the dining car, open a bottle of Bollie and have a few laughs.
The Origin of the World
A double feature today. Two versions of the nature of the universe, and how everything works. Lucretius’ “On the Nature of the Universe” was written around 50-100BC by a Roman Epicurean. Lucretius was an atomist, which means that he believed that all matter was composed of a bunch of unseen atoms that, while they have different natures, combine to form all that we see. This is in contrast to the 4 element proponents like Plato and most everyone until, probably Niels Bohr.
In reading this book I was struck be two things. One, how close to our way of thinking this guy was able to come using only reason, as he had no technological apparatus to confirm his speculations. Two, how our own version of the universe is probably just as wrong as his even though we consider it to be mostly right.
The Timaeus is a Platonic dialog which concerns itself with the creation of the universe and how things work in a physical sense. In some ways its very similar to the Lucretius book, in that it purports to explain how the senses work, why the planets move, etc. The most interesting bit, to me, was where he described how people ,because of our construction, strive after perfection. Which is kind of interesting because, everyone seems to do just that, even if we have a warped sense of what perfection is, we still strive for it. Also interesting was his attribution of the function of the liver, specifically that it was what allows us to receive divine inspiration, or oracular visions. I guess this shows the importance of divination to the ancient Greeks, if such a large organ is dedicated to this purpose.
Also of interest is the Atlantis story. It starts off with a story of how Solon traveled to Egypt and meets the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh tells him “You Athenians have no no memory, you live in the present.”, and then goes on to tell him of a previous generation of Athenians and how they fought the Atlantians. He attributes their collective amnesia to periodic destruction of their city by natural disaster and their lack of literacy, up until the present.
Einstein and Marilyn
I feel compelled to write an entry about Einstein because I have this groovy image of him. From what I understand he was a smart cookie. That whole energy mass equivalence thing. The gravitation theory. I know just enough about all this to say that it hurts my head to think about it. That is to say, nothing.
I really respect his hair style though. In the 50’s it was quite daring, sartorially speaking. Also his not wearing a hat in the rain to protect the hat, speaks of a certain post depression era frugality. His use of paychecks as bookmarks shows a Socratic disdain for the pursuit of money.
The FBI created a huge file on Einstein, you can view it at http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/einstein.htm. The first one starts with a letter from “The Woman Patriot Corporation” which morphed out of an ANTI-suffragette woman’s group. Yes, that’s right, conservative women who thought that woman should NOT have the vote. I imagine they’re contemporaries vote Republican these days and drone on about gay marriage and other issues that most people could care less about.
Its stuff like these FBI files that makes me think that I am living in a Kafka novel. The comments by the people employed by the FBI make me despair at the possibility of such dim bulbs ever solving an actual crime. “The Ambassador has the honor to report a rumor circulating among Jewish circles in Moscow regarding an alleged invitation from Professor Kanitsa to Professor Einstein to immigrate to the Soviet Union and Professor Einstein’s reply which, however, was said to have been addressed to Stalin.” Yawn, and its marked “CONFIDENTIAL”. You don’t want rumors from the Jewish community in Moscow getting out I guess. Letter’s trying to keep him out of the USA, letters trying to stop him from leaving, make up your minds people.
Actually these files are quite interesting. Check out the long list of famous people that the FBI has spent millions investigating. The stuff on Marilyn Monroe is hilarious, they basically had people reading that era’s version of People Magazine and looking for articles about Monroe, which they summarize and stamp CONFIDENTIAL. Do you think its the information that wanted to keep a secret, or the fact that they were paying people read “Confidential” magazine all day?
Who’s a Failure?
This is too funny…
Click on this link:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=who+is+a+failure
I assume google will eventually “fix” this so here’s what I see:
And, by way of a bonus, check this out:
http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=serial%20killer&l1=
Marius the Epicurian
The introduction to this book states that it is the best novel ever written in the English language. With an endorsement like that I had to buy it. It was written in Victorian times and so the language is quite complex. Initially I thought that it would be unreadable for me, but with some persistence I found it quite eloquent. Some bits I had to read several times but in the end they all paid off.
According to other net sources, Pater was promulgating his asceticism and “cult of beauty” which influenced the Aesthetic movement and people such as Oscar Wilde. I guess I can see this, he wouldn’t be writing about Epicurians if he wasn’t interested in beauty and satisfaction of the senses. But he was hardly the originator of either asceticism or a love of beauty. The term “cult” is probably pejorative, unless they were actually donning cloaks, secret rituals and mixing up cool-aid.
The book pulls together philosophical and religious thought from the ancient Greeks to Victorian England, contrasting the early Cyrenaics and Cynics with the Epicurians and Stoics of the Roman era and with modern sentiments and Christianity. He shows how the Stoics and Epicurians take different paths and end up meeting with the ideal of Temperance. Stoicism and Epicurianism are contrasted in a practical sense by the description of a day at the “games”, i.e. gladiatorial, where the events are described in all of their gore and the effects they cause on Marius and Aurelius, who represent the two philosophies.
I guess the book is kind of a comparison of religion from the early worship of natural forces, to the Philosophical schools of ancient Greece and the later semi-dogmatic schools of Roman times and then to Christianity. The author seems to knock one down after the other by showing where they fall short. I found the section where Marius finds Christianity to be reminiscent of a kid at his first rock concert. Also the attempt to show the failure of Socrates, which humorously takes the form of a Socratic dialog, is interesting only as humor. How can one use logic and reason to prove that logic and reason are useless as tools to find truth?
Anyway, if anyone wants my copy, let me know. Its quite beautifully written, a pain to get through though and I’d be bragging to say I understood half of it.