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POPSEffing the Ineffable <<<Aquinas obeyed the injunction of Wittgenstein, whose Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus concludes with the proposition: “that whereof we cannot speak we must consign to silence.”,,,,,, But a question troubles me as I am sure it troubles you. What do our moments of revelation have to do with the ultimate questions? When science comes to a halt, at those principles and conditions from which explanation begins, does the view from that window supply what science lacks? Do our moments of revelation point to the cause of the world? When I don’t think about it, the answer seems clear. Yes, there is more to the world than the system of causes, for the world has a meaning and that meaning is revealed. But no, there is no path, not even this one, to the cause of the world: for that whereof we cannot speak, we must consign to silence — as Aquinas did.>>> (from article)
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POPSThe Happiness Myth Interesting article and coming from Adam Phillips one of his easier pieces to digest. Hard to clip so worth a few minutes to read it in full.
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POPSAnother Naughty Bottom A complement to fernandoar's clip on eroticism and pornography. Have a look at the full article. It will make you blush and giggle - or stand upright (in severe moral rectitude I mean).
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POPSChilean Government Advise "Faith" to feed Redundant Miners But Undersecretary of Social Security Augusto Iglesias says it is not the government's place to pick up that bill. "In the end, it's a private company which ran the San Jose mine, so we can't expect the government to pick up the tab," he says. So what is he going to do, I ask him. "Have faith," he says, "just like the 33 had when they were underground."
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POPSChess Art Lots more at site, plus poems, photographs and all things chessy :)
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POPSCheap Anger? Are anger and indignation increasingly common among a 'thin-skinned populace'?
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POPSSmall Agreement On Global Warming "This overwhelming consensus among climate experts is confirmed by an independent study that surveys all climate scientists who have publicly signed declarations supporting or rejecting the consensus. They find between 97% to 98% of climate experts support the consensus (Anderegg 2010). Moreover, they examine the number of publications by each scientist as a measure of expertise in climate science. They find the average number of publications by unconvinced scientists (eg - skeptics) is around half the number by scientists convinced by the evidence. Not only is there a vast difference in the number of convinced versus unconvinced scientists, there is also a considerable gap in expertise between the two groups" These figures show a very strong lack of agreement between the three percent and the rest.
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POPSIntroduction to Calculus: free online book I see crowds of People, walking around in a Ring. (T.S. Eliot Wasteland) A current under sea Picked his bones in Whisper. As he rose and fell He passed the stages of his age and youth Entering the whirlpool. (Wasteland ) In all simplicity the Sine function is the complex mathematical function to describe circles. From the lines from T.S Eliot's Wasteland and from your own experience circles represent a never ending, repetitive cycle. Motion along a circle passes through the same point infinite times. It is this complex nature of the circle, that causes its study to be so intense and intricate.
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POPSLoneliness Alert This is well worth a read. It's short and not 'academic', raises some interesting points but is difficult to do justice to in a clip
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POPSWorkers across Europe Protest The European Trade Union Confederation (Etuc) said the protesters were marching to voice their anger over budget-slashing plans and cuts which "could lead Europe into a recession". The union warns that the financial crisis - which it describes as the worst in Europe since the 1930s - has already made 23 million people across the EU jobless. It fears that the austerity measures being implemented by various EU governments could "result in even more unemployment".
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POPS"Let There Be No God" and There was Light! <<<In fact, it is Cambridge's greatest contributors to 20th-century philosophy—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) and his most trenchant disciple, the Cambridge-trained physicist and philosopher of science Stephen Toulmin (1922-2009)—who inoculated us against the naïve view that science shows God does not exist and is irrelevant to cosmology. Before one gets edgy over Hawking's latest ex cathedra squawk, then, consider a thumbnail version of what Wittgenstein and Toulmin taught us about religion, science, and cosmology. Their message to Hawking? Scientists eager to delete God exceed their job description.>>> (from article)>>> Excellent short piece offering elementary conceptual clarification for recent media-hyped nonsense.
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