Idle ramblings of an intermittently philosophical nature... Apologies to Martin Gardner, whose The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener is one of the best books you've (probably) never read.
An Idle Thought...
What a misfortune, and injustice, for the University of Tennessee College of Law that [Glenn "InstaPundit"] Reynolds should now be their best-known faculty member.
--Brian Leiter, Professor of Law and Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin
About Me (the condensed version)
A member of the tail end of the boomers; a middle aged recovering lawyer turned professional computer geek.
Native of St. Louis, Missouri, transplanted to Memphis, Tennessee. Avid reader, amateur philosopher, St. Louis Cardinals fan,
one of the last Renaissance men.
Blogger supplied Atom feed (in fairness, I should warn that this breaks non-Atom compatible aggregators, and frankly doesn't work
all that well in the one Atom compatible aggregator I have; don't ask me why):
The South Africans have some integrity, at least: Microsoft ad banned in South Africa for being false and misleading (in it, MS claimed that their software is so secure that it'll make hackers an extinct species; this link also has a small picture of the banned ad).
Why the Dogs of Cyberwar stay leashed... Mark Rasch's analysis... And here I would have thought it was because, assertions by Chicken Little to the contrary, that there really aren't any good methods of cyberattack, and that the problems you can cause that way aren't sufficiently deadly to take cyberwar seriously.
And Microsoft thinks they innovate.... Sun has just introduced the newest licensing innovation: Write Your Own License.... Check out the details in The Register, but make sure you follow their link to see the license in action....
Some War Commentary: Notice how Dumbya took the sympathy of the entire world on September 11, 2001, and then managed to squander it in less than two years? And what we're doing in the Gulf continues to squander what little moral capital we have...
I'm just going to say it and get it out of my system: "liberation"? Bullshit! It's an aggressive war, pure and simple, and by the Nuremberg precedents Dumbya, Cheney and the rest of the puppetmeisters should be condemned to death for what they've done. I don't approve of capital punishment, but in Bush's case I'd be glad to make an exception; considering his record in Texas that Bush should be executed would be a wonderfully delicious irony.
And the numbers keep rising.... I keep looking at the "scoreboard" at the bottom of the page. The numbers have gone up quite a bit over the weekend.
Meantime, on the skeptics-l list we're being kept updated on the number of "friendly-fire" casualties that the US has inflicted on its allies. Right now, on a basis of numbers of corpses (as well as on another, more fundamental level) one has to conclude that the US is proving itself much more of a threat to its allies than Iraq ever was...
And now, for something completely different: On the GODEXIST list (the charter is philosophical discussion of arguments for the existence of God; email me for subscription details if this sounds like something you'd be interested in) we've had a few recent digressions into theology. Found this in Walter Kaufmann's The Faith of a Heretic, and I think it bears some consideration when theology starts creeping into areas it really doesn't belong, like philosophy or religion:
...the assumption that theology closely resembles philosophy, or that liberal education can be revitalized by bringing theologians into a great university, is based on inusfficient reflection on the nature of theology and its methods.
It was unfortunate that Paul referred to the Torah, the Five Books of Moses, as "the Law," seeing how much there is in those five books that is not "law"; and it is doubly unfortunate that so many readers of the New Testament have come to think of Judaism as the religion of "the Law." For the same reason it is misleading that occasionally a rabbi as called "a lawyer" in the Gospels. In the context of our present discussion, however, this last misnomer points to an important insight. The rabbis and St. Thomas [Aquinas, of whom Kaufmann had much to say in the chapter from which this excerpt is taken--LRC], Bultmann and Father Walsh, and legions of other theologians are really closer to lawyers than they are to either philosophers or scientists.
Indeed, they resemble lawyers in two ways. In the first place, they accept books and traditions as data that it is not up to them to criticize. They can only hope to make the best of these books and traditions by selecting the most propitious passages and precedents; and where the law seems to them harsh, inhuman, or dated, all they can do is have recourse to exegesis.
Secondly, many theologians accept the morality that in many countries governs the conduct of the counsel for the defense. Ingenuity and skillful appeals to the emotions are considered perfectly legitimate; so are attempts to ignore all inconvenient evidence, as long as one can get away with it, and the refusal to engage in inquiries that are at all likely to discredit the predetermined conclusion: that the client is innocent. If all else fails, one tries to saddle one's opponent with the burden of disproof; and as a last resort one is content with a reasonable doubt that after all the doctrines that one has defended might be true. [emphasis in original--LRC]
(From: Walter Kaufmann, _The Faith of a Heretic_, Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday Anchor, 1961, at p. 112)
And the scoreboard is working. Got the "Iraq Body Count" graphic working at the very bottom of this page (figure that after this entry scrolls off into oblivion then fewer of the very few visitors to this humble site will see it, which will reduce the amount of nasty email I get). So far, the score hasn't changed with the latest rouind of bombing...
Well, the war appears to be on, now... Though from all accounts it's hardly an all out attack. (That being the case, the amount of hot air being spewed forth from CNN is incredible; I hate to think of what's going to happen when the real shooting starts. I've decided, however, to keep score here, hence the addition (shortly) of the "Iraq Body Count" to this humble page, just as soon as I can get the damned thing working.... And I think that's the only thing I'm going to watch about the damn war. It's a mistake, we're wrong to do it, but of course all the fools are going to follow our Fool-in-Chief, George Dumbya Bush, where angels fear to tread.
I thought this was illegal.... Sign on a Captain D's on the way home from class tonight:
Special: 24 ish Jumbo Shrimp
Isn't that against the law? Anyone remember the old Coke bottles? The ones that said "Contents: Approximately 6 fl. oz."? When you're selling something, you have to be a bit more precise in your measurements than that.....
George W. Queeg Excellent column by Paul Krugman in the NYT today. I like the simile, given that The Caine Mutiny is one of my favorite novels/movies...
News in brief: From The Onion Bush Orders Iraq To Disarm Before Start Of War WASHINGTON, DC--Maintaining his hardline stance against Saddam Hussein, President Bush ordered Iraq to fully dismantle its military before the U.S. begins its invasion next week. "U.S. intelligence confirms that, even as we speak, Saddam is preparing tanks and guns and other weapons of deadly force for use in our upcoming war against him," Bush said Sunday during his weekly radio address. "This madman has every intention of firing back at our troops when we attack his country." Bush warned the Iraqi dictator to "lay down [his] weapons and enter battle unarmed, or suffer the consequences."
The scary thing is that Dumbya really seems to think it's going to be that easy...
Not much going on to interest a body in this neck of the woods.... Some brief scrawlings before I go back to the salt mines:
This day in history dept.: Today is both the anniversary of the first publication of Shelley's Frankensteinand Antonin Scalia's birthday. I simply refuse to believe that is a coincidence.
Robin Williams, on the Tonya Harding-Paula Jones boxing match: It's not the end of civilization, but you can see it from there.
Monsieur Williams again, on Dumbya: Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, some get it as a graduation gift.
The "Maybe there is a God" dept.: Nigerian 419 Scammers Scam U.S. Con Man [As Jon Waltz said in our first Civil Procedure class of freshman year of law school: "Criminals are stupid; that's why they get caught."]
Oops.... It seems that the Business Software Alliance has 'bots crawling around looking for FTP sites offering pirate software for download. Apparently the 'bot's finding a piece of copyrighted software available for download causes a trigger to fire which results in a nastygram being sent to the offending FTP site's admin. Imagine their embarassment (How I love to!) when their 'bot triggered a nastygram to the University of Muenster for offering downloads of OpenOffice (which is a free, open-source alternative to Microsoft Office).
What indeed? I recently saw a television commercial featuring a bunch of guys swilling cheap beer and intoning, It doesn't get any better than this. What does this tell us about the nature of existence? --Dr. Science's Gold Star Question for today
I get so lost in Roger Ebert's movie reviews.... that I forget that the Sun-Times lets him do general and political commentary too. Today someone on the SKEPTIC list forwarded one of Roger's better commentaries:
By the way, the "enemy" mentioned in the headline isn't the enemy of public prayer (the Dreaded Secular Humanist Conspiracy), but rather Our Current World Enemy: the Dreaded Islamic Fundamentalist Movement. Just so you don't get the wrong idea about who Roger is criticizing. But what are you doing here? Go read the damn essay; it's worth every second....
Finally returned to the world of the living.... This weekend I get laid low with what seemed like the mother of all gastrointestinal nastiness; spent several days in bed sick as a dog, and it'll be interesting to see how well I do on the math exam tonght having had as little chance to study as I've had. Anyway, my The Onion: Dispatches from the Tenth Circle calendar had gone untouched since Friday, so flip to today's page, and read the headline:
With all the organic matter hitting the rotary oscillator in the middle east, wouldn't that just be loverly? I'd pay good money to see Robertson's, Falwell's and Graham's (pere et fils) eyes bugging out of their sockets at that news....
