Processing 1.0 (BETA) is a. errr....
Processing is a programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an open-source alternative to commercial software tools in the same domain.Yeah.
It looks purty, too.
That's right, I said エルエル: Animal アーカイブ
Konichi-wa, bitches!
(warning: cute animal pictures surrounded by an asian language that I think is Japanese)
From: Jesus Was No GOP Lobbyist
One parable Jesus taught was this one, from Matthew: "What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' And he answered, 'I will not,' but afterward he changed his mind and went. And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, 'I go, sir,' but did not go." Jesus' disciples all strenuously raised their hands. They knew the answer! The first son was the most virtuous!Best smackdown ever. I'm going to start using that one.Whereupon Jesus (whose sense of humor is underrated) replied: "Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you."
Apparently Ron Howard has a brother, who has a Show which is apparently filmed in the backyard of a trailer home.
The show is disturbing and fascinating: using the device of the low budget production it strips the variety/talk show to it's skeleton. The host with out canned laughter and sweeping cameras is reduced to a strange character who is desperately looking for a connection with their guests who are randomly selected entertainers looking to promote a project.
My favorite moment during episode 1, is when Henry Winkler is paid $15 and a turkey for his appearance on the show.
"It's all in ones," he says, laughing.
Foucault for Classical Liberals. Jason Kuznicki picks up on the similarity between Foucault and Thrasymachus that I noticed.
Not sure I totally agree with his assessments of Foucault, but good counter perspective.
Æ - Plato, Justice, and the Beautiful Soul
The reason for this universal pattern in the laws and customs that govern human societies is not simply human greed. To speak of greed is to suggest that a different, non-selfish kind of human behaviour is both possible and, in some way, superior. Neither of these alternatives, however, is the case. Humans behave the way they do because of the desires that they have, and there is no non-arbitrary way of deciding whose desires should be satisfied and whose not. Stated differently, there are no independently existing standards of right and wrong conduct; we make these standards, which means that, in practice, the rules of correct human conduct prevalent at any particular time and place will be the ones that serve the interests of the politically powerful. People who censure other people’s behaviour as being greedy are in fact merely trying to re-arrange things more to their own advantage. There is no higher standpoint from which to judge the actions of others. Morality is simply war conducted by other means.Christopher Byrne is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Co-ordinator of the Classical Studies Programme at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. His research interests include ancient Greek views of nature, in particular, Aristotle's natural science, and ancient Greek moral theories. Two recent publications are "Matter and Aristotle's Material Cause," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31 (2001), 85-111, and "Aristotle on Physical Necessity and the Limits of Teleological Explanation," Apeiron 35 (2002), 19-46.If I were to ask you who holds the above views about justice and morality, you might be tempted to name several contemporary figures, perhaps a modern de-constructionist such as Michel Foucault, or some of the many contemporary followers of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In fact, the above views are all put forward by one of Socrates’ interlocutors in Plato’s Republic, a man by the name of Thrasymachus. [1] Thrasymachus’ account of morality and justice is a somewhat extreme version of moral subjectivism. Moral subjectivism argues that human actions are not moral because of any intrinsic properties that belong to them, independent of us. Rather, human actions are moral because they elicit a certain response in us, typically because they please us or are useful to us in some way or other, and, as a consequence, we consider them to be morally good. This position is sometimes also called moral relativism inasmuch as moral judgments are thought to be grounded in individual preferences that are peculiar to one person or a particular group of persons, and do not hold universally.
I mention Thrasymachus’ moral subjectivism because it is important to realize that the views on the nature of human morality and justice set out by Socrates in the Republic are presented by him in full awareness of the alternative account of morality and justice stated above. In other words, Socrates’ account of morality and justice is not a naïve one, presented by someone who is unaware that another, much less flattering account of human behaviour is possible. On the contrary, in Thrasymachus, Socrates faces an opponent who believes he has dispensed with all religious and conventional obfuscation, and has instead reason and scientific observation on his side. The same can be said for Socrates’ defence in the Symposium of the view that the objects of our experience are beautiful only to the extent that they possess certain intrinsic, observer-independent properties. Socrates defends this claim explicitly against what might be called aesthetic subjectivism, namely the view that beauty is not an intrinsic feature of certain objects of our experience, but that we consider something to be beautiful only insofar as it pleases us. The first part of my paper considers the arguments given by Socrates in Plato’s Republic for what one might call moral objectivism. The second part of my paper attempts to show how very similar arguments are used by Socrates in the Symposium to argue for what one might call aesthetic objectivism. In the third part, I consider briefly some objections to the above views and how Socrates might respond to them.
One thing that is refreshing about Foucault’s political follies, however, is that they tend to make otherwise outlandish figures appear comparatively tame. In a debate that aired on Dutch television in the early Seventies, for example, the famous American radical and linguist Noam Chomsky appears as a voice of sanity and moderation in comparison to Foucault. As Mr. Miller reports it, while Chomsky insisted “we must act as sensitive and responsible human beings,” Foucault replied that such ideas as responsibility, sensitivity, justice, and law were merely “tokens of ideology” that completely lacked legitimacy. “The proletariat doesn’t wage war against the ruling class because it considers such a war to be just,” he argued. “The proletariat makes war with the ruling class because … it wants to take power.” Of course, this has been the standard sophistical line since Socrates encountered Thrasymachus, but these days one rarely hears it so bluntly articulated. Nor were such performances rare. In another debate, Foucault championed the September Massacres of 1792, in which over a thousand people suspected of harboring royalist sympathies were ruthlessly butchered, as a sterling example of “popular justice” at work. As Mr. Miller puts it, Foucault believed that justice would be best served “by throwing open every prison and shutting down every court.”
From the increasingly-entertaining New Criterion
Such attitudes predate post-modernism and Foucault's dissection of claims to truth and right as closet exercises of power. [1] Plato's character ‘Thrasymachus' claims all regimes exercise power in their own interest. [2] All are like shepherds who fatten sheep for the table, a graphic expression of amoral equivalence.Amoral equivalence is, of course, contested. Some radical feminists argue that, since Foucault's (or Thrasymachus') analysis renders all exercises of power equivalent, actions by men against women get removed from moral evaluation.
This misgiving underlines the scope of amoral equivalence. If power in the political arena is essentially amoral, then other areas involving power are apparently also amoral. As well as male violence against women, two obvious areas of concern arise for Christians, that of the church and the family. Is a pastor who ‘leads strongly' really different from one who bullies a congregation? Should we distinguish between parental authority and parental authoritarianism?
Naturally, Christians recognise some degree of equivalence: all have sinned (Romans 3:23 ) and our exercises of power are alike imperfect actions by sinful people. Yet we do not normally regard all imperfect actions by sinful people as completely equivalent. The father who tries to love rather than exasperate his children, for all his imperfection, does not seem comparable with the father who finds a certain piquancy in his children's exasperation. If they really were amorally equivalent, injunctions about using authority after the Fall seem pointless.
Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator = the classic
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Ulysses, Ulysses - Soaring through all the galaxies. In search of Earth, flying in to the night. Ulysses, Ulysses - Fighting evil and tyranny, with all his power, and with all of his might. Ulysses - no-one else can do the things you do. Ulysses - like a bolt of thunder from the blue. Ulysses - always fighting all the evil forces bringing peace and justice to all.Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho! Thundercats are on the move, Thundercats are loose. Feel the magic, hear the roar, Thundercats are loose. Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thundercats!
Hong Kong Phooey, number one super guy. Hong Kong Phooey, quicker than the human eye. He's got style, a groovy style, and a car that just won't stop. When the going gets tough, he's really rough, with a Hong Kong Phooey chop (Hi-Ya!). Hong Kong Phooey, number one super guy. Hong Kong Phooey, quicker than the human eye. Hong Kong Phooey, he's fan-riffic!
The Greek Machine courtesy of Duck Island = sort of something for everyone, with classic latin, hillbilly, marketing, the matrix, metropolitan, pseudo-german and techno babble available.
hillbilly: Tonic range over last cain't knickers over, throwed. Had wash, cabin fried grandma is me, jug fire squalor overalls pot polecat. Stew fell, whoopin' fell sam-hell shootin'. Fer hootin' over havin' everlastin' range commencin' moonshine neighbor's cousin them yer, co-op trailer, clan. Pasture, him inbred, snakeoil me, polecat sheep uncle rockinchair, firewood put. Crop landlord cipherin' feud em jig.matrix: Ivirq10 ADODB xref, else-if HS700 10111 IVirq10. Start(0x000242) 56789:CDEFG !(AB(X)), THX1138 ADODB 56789:CDEFG. Ivirq10 %00!/# /00# @#0XX01 1001001 ADSP-219x KERNAL aR.$ length[X]-ipSwitch.
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pseudo-german: Heinee yodel mitten poken wearin keepin die achtung, rubberneckin spritz buerger haben der. Undervear hans thinken haus strudel meister sparkin hans weiner corkin strudel. Blimp blitz dummkopf, das stoppern sightseerin nicht. Hinder das der sparkin poopsie sparkin makin, ich kaputt auf dorkin.
via Boing Boing
"Taking Liberty" by William A. Galston
George W. Bush's second inaugural address, with its sweeping rhetoric about the spread of freedom abroad and at home, sparked strong but varied reactions. Most of the president's conservative supporters ranked it with the greatest inaugural speeches, such as John F. Kennedy's 1961 call to bear any burden and pay any price in the service of human freedom and Lincoln's sermonic 1865 meditation on the inscrutable justice of God's judgment on those who deny freedom to others. The president's liberal critics were less laudatory, agreeing instead with former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan's surprising judgment that the speech fell “somewhere between dreamy and disturbing.” Whether the speech was a display of visionary statesmanship, or an exercise in hubristic overreach, is something only history can determine. But it is not too early to say that the speech was both a wakeup call to liberals—from whose vocabulary the evocative term “freedom” has been mostly absent in recent years—and a guide to the deep flaws in the modern conservative understanding of freedom.
I wrote this as a response to Transparency or a 'Selig Strategy'? by KC Johnson:
As a former undergrad and current employee and graduate student of supposedly "very liberal" schools, I've found that many of the faculty that are employed are in the center or to the right of center, as many are also to the right of center.I'm curious to see if the editors greenlight the comment.And of course, there's a small minority of professors on the far left. And far right.
In general, I have fund that actual "punishment " of students (bad grades, public humiliation) is relatively rare. Additionally, I've found it is very easy for the average student to blame their poor academic performance on an external factor.
Furthermore, extremist-activist students (of all shades, both looney left and wing-nut right) tend to push classroom discussions so far out of the realm of reasonable that they are often asked to be quiet by professors who just want to keep the discussion on topic.
To wit: in class, a student does not have freedom of speech. All students speak at the pleasure of the professor and should be silent when asked.
Of course, there are some disciplines that do seem to get a bit more radical than others such as women's studies or the business school (you think it's hard being a conservative in a women's studies class? Try taking a class in any business school and espousing some socialist views... you'll see some academic repression then =)
To stop this from rambling too much, and to summarize: Universities have multiple avenues for students to pursue academic justice if it has occurred already, There is no need for a Students Bill of Rights that will second guess faculty, as students feel plenty free to do that already, believe me.
With most faculty that I've met--if a student actually does the reading/assignments and is able to participate intelligently in class, the professor will be so delighted that someone actually cares about the material that I doubt the student would be punished for having views contrary to the teacher's.