Short Takes
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
January 17, 2012 | 8:54 pmSays psychologist David Lewkowicz of Florida Atlantic University, who led [a] study published yesterday…
’The baby in order to imitate you has to figure out how to shape their lips to make that particular sound they’re hearing,’’
Can you “figure out” why this is utter nonsense? I should as obvious as monkey see, monkey do. With this sort of thing passing for science, we are surely doomed.
- The Mark of Cain
November 9, 2011 | 3:13 amWatching Herman Cain duel with his female accusers is like watching the Jerry Springer Show. Not a pretty picture. If you partake, be sure an wash you hands afterwards.
- The Truth About Sovereign Debt
November 1, 2011 | 4:01 pmDuring the housing bubble people bet on rising home prices by taking out loans on to-good-to-be true terms and investment banking made bets on the rising home prices by lending on to-good-be-true terms. Everyone drank the Kool Aid. Prices went down. Having made bad bets, home owners should default on their loans and bankers should take their losses. This is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
The nations that joined the EU placed bets on rising economic prosperity that would come from joining the EU and adopting the Euro and borrowing from the EU banks on to-good-to-be-true terms. The EU investment bankers made speculative bets on EU member nations by lending them billions on to-good-to-be-true terms. The borrower economies went down not up. Everyone drank the Kool Aid and having made bad bets the borrowers should default on their loans and the bankers should take their losses. This too, is the simple-minded logic of every-man-for-himself market economics.
So how do the bankers hold the world hostage to their bad bets? They claim they are too big to fail. In other words, the only game they know is heads they win, tails we lose.
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Archive for Short Takes »
- Lip Reading Babies: Utter nonsense!
Category Archives: Theory of Knowledge
Data-ISM by David Brooks
David Brooks is one of the most frustrating columnists I now and then read. He takes what is often a brilliant insight, launches a train of thought and then he’s off to the Milky Way.
In his NYT column today, “The … Continue reading
The Island Way
I learned about the “island way” in Bequia, one of the islands making up the Grenadines group in the Caribbean. I’d sailed into Admiralty Bay to drop off a couple of pick-up crew intent on taking the ferry over to St. … Continue reading
Causes of Freewill
In the article “Scientific evidence that you don’t have freewill,” Sam Harris denies that we have freewill, saying:
“Recognizing that my conscious mind is always downstream from the underlying causes of my thought, intentions and actions, does not change the fact … Continue reading
The Mind of Guns
“The gunman [a man and a gun] in the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting forced his way into an elementary school in Connecticut, where he shot 26 people, 20 of them children…”
Guns have a mind, a mind to kill–it’s as simple … Continue reading
Brain Porn
Alva Noe, philosopher, author and NPR blogger, has a fine post on the long overdue backlash against purveyors of brain porn who claim to be able to use neural imaging technologies to peek under our psychic dresses and see the … Continue reading
Science v. Magic
I did not know that at the root of the word SCIENCE was the idea of taking the world apart. I also had not realized that at the root of the word SYSTEM was the idea of putting the world … Continue reading
Mind and Desire
Human consciousness is a process — the process of acting to obliterate desire. It is the endless cycle of our warring on want, the negation of which is un-conceivable.
Intentionality is not a condition of life. We humans alone are bedeviled … Continue reading
How many ways can you spell “fire”?
Brian Stauffer writes for the Washington Post,
“…The much-misconstrued statement of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes that free speech does not give you the right to shout fire in a crowded theater is now being used to curtail speech that might provoke … Continue reading
Deadbeat Lions and the Myth of Efficiency
Let’s wander the intellectual landscape of efficiency, value-added and waste.
We should be careful when we attribute the character of human enterprising to organisms that do not evince our ambitious habits. Still, we can learn.
Lions laze away most of their days. … Continue reading
We Are Certifiably Insane
In today’s NYT:
KABUL, Afghanistan — After months of military leaders’ attempts to tamp down worries over the killings of American and NATO troops by the Afghan forces serving beside them, Gen. John R. Allen, the top commander in Afghanistan, called … Continue reading
Testing — Testing — Testing
We are a testing society. We use tests in schools and in the workplace and as a means to self-improvement. We like the scientific certainty that tests imply. In a funny way it’s comforting to “scientifically” know that we or … Continue reading
Socially Responsible Business?
Social responsibility is a catchall phrase for doing right things — doing things that make for a better world. In her essay in the NYT Economix section this weekend, “The Profits of Virtue” Nancy Folbre, an economics professor at the University … Continue reading
Skip watching commercials on TV — Go to jail!
In his NYT essay “When Stealing Isn’t Stealing“, Stuart P. Green, a professor at Rutgers Law School, discusses the use of property laws to persecute prosecute people who “steal” movies and music and the websites operators who enable these downloading thieves.
“THE … Continue reading
Knowing Everything There Is To Know
According to a NYT Sunday Review piece, “Just the Facts. Yes, All of Them“, Gilad Elbaz wants…
“…to identify every fact in the world, and to hold them all in a company he calls Factual.”
He also wants to get rich and … Continue reading
The Medium is NOT the Message
Marshall McLuhan famously asserted that “the medium is the message”. His idea is one that is very much in play today as the “new media” have immersively engulfed the whole of the human enterprise. So is the digital revolution actually causing us … Continue reading →