Zwischenzug
Apparently it's raining a lot here.
I didn't notice. But I did spend some time watching the rain fall. It feels very soothing, somehow.
But they do have rotten drainage and water pooling everywhere. A colleague told me his roof is leaking -- he's on the second of three floors. I think this is how Torontonians feel when they come to Vancouver and it snows and the city shuts down.
While we're here, a few more gargoyles, which give the relative worth of various specimens of the animal kingdom. These are the last two from the local gymnasium.
Ape with a book
Scholar with a book
posted by BKF @ 5:15 PM
5 Comments:
So, based on the gargolye count, apes and scholars are equivalent?
Along with the monkey and a camera there are some interesting mixes of subject matter. Curious as to who thinks these things up!
I think that ape is a actually a throwback scholar :).
You're probably finding the rain soothing as it reminds you of home. It has been raining here for a few days as well. Rollarblading is remarkable difficult to get out and do when the rain won't let up long enough for the road to dry out. *sigh*
When I was at mom's a few weeks ago I borrowed a book from Bruce titled "Introduction to Time", which I found to be a very easy to read and interesting discussion on the topic of time and relativity. Having found a series that was my level, I proceeded to the bookstore to pick up "Introduction to Nietzche" and found some fun quotes to fit my current mood:
"Never accept human reasoning at fce value, for it seeks to mask what it fears to confront".
That was the only one I wrote down, as I was having a small internal struggle on the subject of emotion vs reasoning, but I found it a quite enjoyable read. Made me think of you and your bookshelf :).
For the record that should read...
"Never accept human reasoning at face value, for it seeks to mask what it fears to confront."
Phew -- I thought the scholar was a throw-forward ape; but you've dissuaded me.
CNN seems to have a curious thing for Princeton (although I note that apparently someone died in the flood and it wasn't really localised so that makes it national news?). Today had a kind of silly headline about a student club (?!) that I guess makes a certain brand of social conservative happy but has no interest except maybe that it happens in prestigious New England school? When Condoleeza Rice came to gave a talk it got big coverage, too, which I thought was maybe not odd if the talk was unusually provactive (I assume she gives lots of speeches).
"Never accept..." -- not sure of the source but sounds like an early aphorism. The exploration of tension between (to speak more generally) philosophy and psychology is characteristic of much of Nietzsche's ouevre. He asks (somewhat rhetorically, somewhat not) why we prefer truth/certainty/knowledge to untruth/uncertainty/ignorance, etc., this 'prejudice' to that. His answer is manifold (and fills up a couple of books) but one part is to distinguish between 'certainty' (epistemological phenomenon) and 'feeling of certainty' (psychological phenomenon) -- the former not being necessary (but easy to mistake) for the latter, which can also arise for example if the conclusion avoids some badness (e.g. terrifying thing) which we wanted to avoid. By the same token it can arise in embracing some goodness we were already prejudiced toward (an element of the critique of any number of schools of moral philosophy). (The connection to the question of prejudices is that one can wonder if maybe there is actually no or only a relatively weak epistemological preference, subservient to a psychological one.)
On "emotion v. reason," perhaps not quite what you meant, but anyway I like this passage from Zarathustra: "What the mob once learned to believe without reasons -- who could overthrow that with reasons? And in the marketplace one convinces with gestures. But reasons make the mob mistrustful. And if truth was victorious for once, then ask yourself with good mistrust: 'What strong error fought for it?'"
I myself read Nietzsche (not exclusively, of course) when I find myself in a certain mood, because I find it very uplifting.
By the way, to avoid leaving you suspended, the tournament in Argentina finished on Friday. After starting 6.5/7 in the first half Topalov drew all his games to end on +6, a point and a half ahead of Anand and Svidler on +3 (Anand second on tiebreak) and three ahead of Morozevich, clear fourth with an even score.
Now begins the inevitable speculation, what next? We are told newly-crowned champion Topalov is interested from the "creative" point of view (as opposed to "sporting") in matches against Kramnik or Kasparov (the latter having retired earlier this year, if you missed that, in favour of Russian politics after getting yanked around for a couple years while trying to get another title match, and the former apparently still insisting that he's the One True World Chess Champion). There was a brief, rather improbable rumour that Fischer (also self-proclaimed OTWCC, not that anyone listens to him -- all this falderal in case you were wondering why in my first report I put 'world championship' in quotation marks) was interested in a shuffle-chess match. Heaven help us but I think Topalov's men have sense enough to leave that alone.
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