Time Travel, Prenatal Ethics and other Miscellania

Random thoughts, mostly things I have posted online elsewhere:

Wow, this is simply HORRIBLE journalism. There are so many things wrong with this article - it's simply sensationalism. A text from hundreds of years after Jesus' death, written in the area from which we get all Gnostic writings which mixed up Jesus and Christianity with the mystery religions, has Jesus mention a "wife", a fact that even the person working on the text admits has nothing to do with whether Jesus was ever married, and what does the journalist say? "A small fragment of faded papyrus contains a suggestion that Jesus may have been married...The discovery, if it is validated, could have major implications for the Christian faith. The belief that Jesus was not married is one reason priests in the Catholic Church must remain celibate and are not allowed to marry. It could also have implications for women's roles in the church, as it would mean Jesus had a female disciple." Ugh. Then the journalist proceeds to undermine everything they just said. Way to go.

The real title of this article should be "I Like Incoherent, Logically Inconsistent Stories because I cannot Understand the Concept of Time Travel", but I think that would've been too long. It's because of writers like this that we have all the incoherent time travel stories that we do (and which I therefore despise, though I tend to give Doctor Who and Back to the Future a pass since criticizing them for lack of logic is like criticizing the Hitchhiker's Guide for letting Arthur turn into an infinite number of penguins). Seriously, this is horrible. Not all of the 4 options are even KINDS of time travel at all, nor even necessarily incompatible options. Number 3 is simply incoherent, 4 isn't really time travel but universe-hopping. Number 2, which is how non-contradictory time travel would work, has nothing to do with predestination, pre-ordination of events, or lack of any agency.

(1) New-born infants have a right to live;
(2) If there is no relevant intrinsic difference between the members of two sets, then the members of one set will have the same rights as the other;
(3) There is no relevant intrinsic difference between new-born infants and late-term, un-born fetuses;
(4) Therefore, late-term, un-born fetuses have a right to live.
This is a deductively valid argument, which means the only way to avoid the conclusion would be to reject at least one of the premises 1-3. But 2 seems to be a basic principle about rights and 3 is a scientific fact. 1 is therefore the most vulnerable, but few, I think, would be able to stomach the idea that infants have no right to live - to accept that would be pretty implausible. Since 1-3 are fairly certain and the argument is valid, then, we have to accept 4 as well.

Obama seems to deny 4, though, which makes me wonder which of 1-3 he would reject. But I'm sure he hasn't really thought about it (remember the "above my paygrade" remark?). This is just one of the reasons why I cannot understand people's enthusiasm for Obama (his unprecedented rolling back of various freedoms including religion and conscience are some of the other reasons). I understand people really liking some things about him or liking him more than Romney or liking him in general, but the unqualified enthusiasm some people have I cannot relate to. (Almost no one has any kind of enthusiasm for Romney (I certainly don't), so that's not an issue on his side!)

Since I did a potshot at Obama, here's one aimed at Romney: I think the rich should be taxed a lot more than the poor sheerly as a matter of fairness. Suppose we tax everyone 10% - then the person making 20,000 a year will be forced to pay 2000 - a chunk of their income they would be much better off holding onto. For them, missing that money is going to make a noticeable difference in their life. But suppose then we have someone making 100 million - 10 million is just a drop in the bucket and won't affect the quality of their lives in any noticeable way. Money has a diminishing marginal value as income goes up - 10% for a rich person, say, is an entirely different beast from 10% for a poor person. Suppose we actually scaled taxes according to the actual value money has for the individuals concerned (our tax brackets go some way towards this), then the rich person would be paying a much higher percentage of their income then the poor person and the two would be equally affected (or not affected) by the tax. And that's not even taking into account arguments you might make concerning the increased debt the rich have towards society for creating the possibility and infrastructure for such wealth in the first place. Those are just my own opinions, though.

 I don't always agree with him or think he's always fair to conservatives, but Jon Stewart is reliably hilarious. Apropos the above on taxation, this is pretty entertaining (be sure to click to watch on part two too).


I don't agree with all of this, but some interesting thoughts from a Christian philosopher on reforming higher education.

Hate religion, love Jesus?

The REAL Solution to Global Warming

As I think this graph shows us, the solution is clear...

In the Meantime...

Busy working on a biographic presentation on Elizabeth Anscombe for FBC. Here's a funny political comic I found to tide you over until my next blog:

Chavez Finally Goes Too Far!!!

According to recent news, Venezuela's radical socialist president, Hugo Chavez, has announced a series of value-based reforms in order to get his country in line with his own tastes. He's done a lot of bad or crazy stuff in the past, but this time he's truly sunk to a new low and shown himself for the true dictator and ultimate evil curmudgeon that he is. CNN reports that "The president has a long list of ... recommendations: Don't douse foods with too much hot sauce, exercise regularly, eat low-cholesterol foods, respect speed limits."

Don't douse foods with too much hot sauce!?! Who does he think he is!?! What an outrage! As if there was really such a thing as too much in the first place! It is time, O Venezuelans to rally against this infernal, cruel and petty dictator, this enemy of hot sauce! Foreign lovers of hot sauce, unite in solidarity with our oppressed Venezuelan brethren!

Some Teacher's Proverbs: Thoughts Thought While Grading a Bunch of Papers

Never underestimate your students' ability to misunderstand, misinterpret and confuse.

If you want some awful papers, ask your students to write about the nature of morality.

If you want some awful, confused papers, ask your students to write about God or religion.

If you want some awful, confused, torture-to-read papers, ask your students to write about the nature of morality and God or religion.

Peeps Alive!

Check out the peeps, yo!

The True Nature of Internet Discussions and Debates

It's funny yet both sad and true:

It's all about...

stupid people saying stupid things
really loudly so that
other stupid people
will think that the things the smart people say
are really stupid.

Yo-Mama Jokes for Philosophers

From NC/DC :

Yo Mama is a Philosopher!

Here are some philosophical Yo mama jokes...
-Yo mama is so fat, she is the truth-maker for 'your mama is fat'
-Yo mama is so dumb, she thinks the trancendental deduction is a tax break for club kids
-Yo mama is so fat, when she introspects her mental states she finds food
-Yo mama is so dumb, she thinks lost rigidity can be fixed with viagra
-Yo mama is so fat, her formal cause is the Fat
-Yo mama is so dumb, she thinks undetached rabit parts are what she uses to make rabbit stew
-Yo mama is so fat that when she sits around the house, she sits AROUND the house in every possible world
-Yo mama is so dumb, she thinks 'the T-schema' refers to the Boston Tea Party
-Yo mama is so fat that she accelerates at more than 9.8 m/s/s and so if yo mama and a bowling ball were both dropped from the Empire State building at the same time she would hit the ground first
-If you understand any of these jokes, then P(Ex) (Philosopher(x) & x=you (yes, you)); i.e. you might be a philosopher

Added at Brain Hammer :

Yo mama’s so dumb she tries to shave her legs with Occam’s razor.
You mam’s so fat the back of her slacks looks like two of Buridan’s asses.

"Blog": Genealogy of a Word

blog - What are the origins of this word? What does it mean? The obvious answer, of course, is that a blog is really quite like a log, the only difference being that a blog is a log with a 'b'. This is to be differentiated from a hive-carrying log which may contain MANY bees. So unless you empty your honey bear into a blog, the only thing sweet you'll find in one will be some nice crunchy termites or perhaps a bit of maple syrup (of course, you'll have to open the bottle to get the syrup out). The word 'blog' of course comes from the Anglo-Saxon word 'Kerblog' which is in turn derived from the Old German 'Kerbloggen' which is in turn, as everyone knows, derived from the Indo-European 'blech'. Since the Romans were the first ones to use the word, it is not very important to see how or why they pronounced it the way they did or where they got it from. Many philologists speculate that the Romans were attempting to describe the sound that a 'b' infested log makes when it hits the ground. Other philologists say the first philologists are idiots and that everyone knows that logs make the sound 'kerPLOP' NOT 'kerBLOG' when they hit the ground. In response, many theorists have proposed that in Roman society, such logs did not in fact make a 'kerplop' sound as they do nowadays but that in fact, since Roman physics were perhaps different, it made a 'kerblog' sound instead. Many experiments with togas, vomiting during meals, and woship of pagan gods have been attempted in an effort to recreate the correct setting in laboratory situations in order to simulate the Roman context. Unfortunately, all such experiments have failed to yield any 'kerblog' sounds. As research volunteer Jamey Bob Lee Thornhill says, 'It durn done went 'kerplop'. I didn' hear no 'kerblog', no siree nohow.' This merely reinforced critics of the theory in their denunciations of such theorists as complete idiots, to which some researchers have replied that it is not THEY who are idiots, but the Romans who were idiots (THEY were the ones who thought that logs went 'kerblog', after all). As noted German scientist Adolf Heinrich Von Schwartzenntumelhofferheim III has so eloquently put it, 'The Romans are old and old things and old people aren't cool. They're stupid. We are obviously much superior to those people from other races, er...I mean, times.' As reasonable as such a position is, the origins of the word 'blog' still remain a subject for debate. As for those detractors of this entry who will insist on carrying on the fabricated story that 'blog' is simply short for 'web log', I point out to them the incontrovertible evidence to the contrary that I have tried many times to insert a log into the web, but unfortunately the severed pieces of tree body only succeeded in breaking the screen of my monitor. Clearly, logs can be in your computer monitor, but certainly not in the web!