Why did the chicken cross the road?

11:06 Jan 21^st, 2012 | 31,763 notes

• Plato: For the greater good.
• Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
• Machiavelli: So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.
• Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
• Jacques Derrida: Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned, because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
• Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
• Timothy Leary: Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.
• Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
• Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
• Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
• B.F. Skinner: Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to be of its own free will.
• Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
• Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
• Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
• Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
• Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
• Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
• Salvador Dali: The Fish.
• Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
• Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
• Epicurus: For fun.
• Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
• Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
• Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
• Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
• David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
• Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.
• Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
• Ronald Reagan: I forget.
• John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
• The Sphinx: You tell me.
• Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
• Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
• Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
• Molly Yard: It was a hen!
• Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
• Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
• Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
• The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.
• Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.
• Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
• Othello: Jealousy.
• Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
• Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.
• Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
• Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
• Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
• Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
• Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.
• Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
• Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
• Hamlet: That is not the question.
• Donne: It crosseth for thee.
• Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
• Constable: To get a better view.
• Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.
• Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.
• Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.
• Hussie: He didn't, he died four pages after being introduced.

1:07 Jan 18^th, 2012 | 307 notes

historiful:

Starting at 12:00AM PDT on January 18, 2012, Historiful (and Questionable Advice) will not be posting any new material for twenty-four hours in protest of SOPA and PIPA. To learn more about SOPA and/or PIPA, click here. To sign the petition against both bills, click here. 

I’m from the UK so I don’t think I can petition against this (I’ll give it a go anyway), but any Americans who can sign any petitions to keep information on the internet free better do otherwise you’ll be making this sprightly, cockney geezer very, very sad.

NOPA TO SOPA… and PIPA!

EDIT!

I just looked and found a couple of petitions that non US citizens can sign if they are that way inclined. They are…

Sopastrike, which I think is just a generic one and Condemn Sopa and Pipa which is for UK residents only. Condemn urges the UK government to publicly condemn the proposed plans… All the good it will do but I suppose every little helps. 

(via questionableadvice)

#sopa #pipa #condemn #stopsopa #stopsopauk

8:41 Jan 16^th, 2012 | 1,023 notes

cwnl:

Where Do Dreams Come From?

Until recent years, the study of dreams has mostly been in the dark. With many of the data being inconclusive as it is such an illusive function of the brain to grasp.

But new studies from unexpected places could shed some light on where our dreams are formed, which would in turn explain for such extraordinary visuals when in the act of dreaming.

As some of my old time followers may already be aware of, I have a deep obsession with dreams. So I went and did some personal researching to find out or get some clues on the leading theories of where our dreams may be forged. The following are two separate excerpts one from a Journal of Neurology and another from a Scientific American article on The Science Behind Dreaming:

Abstract:

The term Charcot–Wilbrand syndrome (CWS) denotes dream loss following focal brain damage. We report the first case of CWS, in whom neuropsychological functions, extension of the underlying lesion, and sleep architecture changes were assessed.

A 73-year-old woman reported a total dream loss after acute, bilateral occipital artery infarction (including the right inferior lingual gyrus), which lasted for over 3 months. In the absence of sleep–wake complaints and (other) neuropsychological deficits, polysomnography (sleep study) demonstrated an essentially normal sleep architecture with preservation of REM sleep. Dreaming was denied also after repeated awakenings from REM sleep.

This observation suggests that CWS (1) can represent a distinct and isolated neuropsychological manifestation of deep occipital lobe damage, and (2) may occur in the absence of detectable REM sleep abnormalities. Ann Neurol 2004

In other words:

A very rare clinical condition known as “Charcot-Wilbrand Syndrome” has been known to cause (among other neurological symptoms) loss of the ability to dream. However, it was not until a few years ago that a patient reported to have lost her ability to dream while having virtually no other permanent neurological symptoms.

The patient suffered a lesion in a part of the brain known as the right inferior lingual gyrus (located in the visual cortex). Thus, we know that dreams are generated in, or transmitted through this particular area of the brain, which is associated with visual processing, emotion and visual memories.

Journal ref: Total dream loss: A distinct neuropsychological dysfunction after bilateral PCA stroke

I also am fascinated with dreams, what causes them and what (if any) function do they perform? I vaguely remember reading a New Scientist article about dreaming awhile back, someone thought or suggested that dreaming is the brains way of performing a disk clean up or something like that. Or was it a byproduct of your brain sorting out your memories during REM sleep… Damn I can’t remember, I’ll try and find the article. 

(Source: ikenbot, via contemplatingmadness)

UU what mate?

6:47 Jan 15^th, 2012 | 16 notes

Y’know in my Religiousness post I said I approved of the Universal Unitarians, well I revoke my approval. Only because I found one on twitter and he was rude to me. I’m not a big twitter user but it’s good for finding interesting things to read.

Anyway I find UUHULK right, but on his ‘about me’ bio bit he says “I smash puny humanists”. Now I thought UU was supposed to be modern and liberal and all that so I ask him why he wants to smash humanists and that it doesn’t sound very universal unitariany and that maybe he was going to the wrong church.

He responds saying I was picking on him and that his family had been going to church for 300 years and that he was fed up with people being afraid of Jesus and that he wasn’t afraid.

I responded by saying I wasn’t picking on him and that I’d obviously gotten the UU wrong, then I asked him why he thought I was afraid and so far he hasn’t responded. 

I did sound a bit provokey in that first message to be fair, but come on! He said he wants to smash humanists! 

Hmmm yeah, I’ll probably apologise and try to engage him in a more civil debate, I really wanted to learn about the UU but as I said, I’ve been put off.

#UU #uu church #humanism #humanist #twitter

Shut Up Brain! part 2

2:32 Jan 15^th, 2012 | 7 notes

Wow, now I have three followers, super cool. If I keep this up I’ll soon have an astronomically large number of followers… like 10 or something. 

Returning to the brain whilst keeping religion in mind, this post will mostly focus on what my girlfriend told me about Descartes. She wrote an essay about him once, so naturally when she read this blog she shouted at me for not involving her more. So there we are, she also got stupidly drunk the other night and fell over the pavement like a complete numpty. There all mentioned, lets move on. 

Descartes basically figured that he had to be able to understand stuff because god (the big man) made a whole world he could understand and plonked him on it.

This was a rationalist view (apparently), Descartes considered that the only way to accumulate knowledge was through rationalist reasoning. That all knowledge was in your brian already because god put it there and we could access it by thinking. Like a priori statements, I’ll make up an example… Err… All wood is hard, therefore I cannot bounce on wood. Oh fuck off.

This rationalism malarky isn’t wildly accepted today (although rationalist method is apparently making a “comeback” and it is still useful for… err, other stuff) and instead philosophers and many psychologists consider empiricism as a more feasible and reliable method of eating knowledge.

In actual fact empiricism is pretty much THE way people acquire knowledge, it formed the foundations of the current scientific method. Empiricism was a British movement spearheaded by John Locke (not the character from Lost) which challenged rationalism by pointing out that we can learn from our experiences.

However Locke also agreed with Descartes regarding dualism, y’know that thing where the mind and material world are separate entities, or something.

Another empiricist who was around at the time called George Berkeley didn’t believe in the duelist theory because he didn’t believe in the material world at all. He thought that the mind’s perception of the material world was all that existed. Meaning if I left a room and it was empty, that room would cease to exist. Weird right? But are we sure that doesn’t happen? Hmmm yup, I’m sure.

Others agree that things actually exist; and these days it’s all about the material and analysing the whats and hmmms using our senses and sense enhancing machinery. Although my girlfriend has just pointed out that introspective contemplating is coming back again in the form of cognitive psychology. So there you go, something else I need to read. 

I’m just glad we’ve moved on from the “We already know everything because god shoved it in our heads already!” days.

Oh wait, people still believe that bull crap don’t they? This is why I don’t want churches or christian charities running schools, filling kids’ heads with creationist nonsense.

This is where my humanist side gets all heckled and confrontationy.

Humanist Hulk Smash!

#humanism #psychology #philosophy #Decartes #Religion #John Locke #George Berkeley #brain

My Religiousness… or lack there of.

12:52 Jan 7^th, 2012 | 12 notes

I have a follower! Who’d have thought a thing possible. This event has prompted me to write my next post today instead of tomorrow (I’ve been putting it off until tomorrow for a few yesterdays now). So without further delay I dedicate this load of old ramblings to lostinthought92, hope you enjoy it.

I hate labeling, pigeonholing or tagging myself when it comes to my current system of belief. Atheist? Agnostic? Humanist? Fuck off and leave me alone. Actually don’t, come back and take your seat. I apologise for I do see the logic in labelling things, it helps us better understand the thing we’ve labeled, it assists our analysis of it by making it more consumable and discussable during say… a debate or critique.

However, I consider my belief system as something that is constantly in flux, when I was younger I believed in god, as a teenager I became a sort of agnostic and when I went to university I pretty much considered myself a full blown atheist. So the idea that I have to continuously change my belief tag as I pass through life becomes pretty tiresome. Today I still find the subject of belief fascinating and read all kinds of books, articles and exerts that alter or reinforce whatever the hell I currently and personally believe. 

Its true that I have been drawn to humanism recently, at first I was (sort of) calling myself a secular humanist and almost went in line with the idea that “If everyone was a humanist then the world would be a marvellous utopia!” I quickly came to see, with help from some excellent debates between myself and my sister, that that would not be a utopia at all. I have not abandoned the way of the humanist all together though, because it has a set of decent principles that I do agree with and I have a deep admiration and hope for our species. 

What I’m not sure about is the way some humanists and humanist organisations try to dictate to others how they should live their lives. I know this initially sounds crazy since this is essentially what religion is all about but that just proves to me more that true humanism should go out of its way to leave people to do what they want, as long as it doesn’t implicate a large part of society that is.

Now I have read the humanist manifesto and yes it makes all kinds of sense but the sad fact is there are no absolute truths for everyone, one mans prison is another mans wendy house, one woman’s tyrant is another’s beloved husband. It’s difficult to talk about liberating the oppressed from the dogma and creed of religion when some of the oppressed are actively trying to stop you by any means necessary. People are just different and thank goodness for that otherwise we’d have all killed ourselves by now due to high boredom levels.

With everything said there isn’t anything in the humanist manifesto that directly prohibits people from pursuing whatever faith they might enjoy and I have read somewhere that humanists (well, some at least) don’t want to live in an “atheist state”. Yet I still can’t shake the feeling that the humanist movement carries an overtly negative attitude to people of faith, yeah sure some of them can be hostile and ignorant as fuck but that’s their problem, they can’t change peoples beliefs anymore than we can change theirs. 

I’ll end my thoughts, first I’ll promise to return to the subject of religion and actually include some philosophy into the mix and try to leave out as much of my personal opinions as possible. Second I’ll briefly mention the Universal Unitarians (UU) if I am able. 

I’ve literally only heard of UU’s today and it’s been interesting reading. I don’t think I’ll be joining their congregation anytime soon as it all seems a bit too “christian” still for my liking. However, this church doesn’t have a creed, and it encourages rational thought and discussion. Anyone is allowed to join and you’re free to pursue your spiritual pursuits any way you see fit. Even atheists and humanists are welcomed to join and contribute to the church, science and debate seem to be embraced by the church too. It’s just a very modern, progressive religion with out the bullshit dogma, but retains the good qualities religion has to offer, a sense of community and a place to learn about morality.

I’ll look into UU in more detail but from what I’ve read so far I approve, it bares a resemblance to humanism but seems more chilled out. Still not sure it’s for me, I just like the sound of humanist better I guess, either that or I can’t be bothered to change my belief badge again.

#religion #atheist #agnostic #humanist #philosophy

Religious Ragings: Parallel Universes

12:51 Jan 7^th, 2012 | 11 notes

reasons-greetings:

tara-nova:

religiousragings:

onielar asked you:

Oh, okay I thought so! but we are talking about the same kind of dimensions right? (not like 3D or 4D) like another type of living I guess, I can’t really put into words, my mind is going to far out haha I am always thinking…

Ah, now this is the kind of thing I like being in on. I’m not a theoretical physicist, but it’s a topic that intrigues me greatly, and I hope to be one in fact some day! 

Two books that I think are well worth anyone’s time, so long as they are interested in this topic, are Brian Greene’s Hidden Reality and The Fabric of the Cosmos. I am absolutely obsessed with these books. The Hidden Reality in fact specializes in this parallel universe topic, and Greene himself is a leading physicist and is easy to read and understand. :)

My favourite band of all time are the Eels, did you know that Mr E’s (from the Eels) dad is the guy who pretty much came up with the theory of parallel universes?

You did?

Damn, that’s pretty much all I know about parallel universes. I also appear to be having difficulty spelling the word parallel despite the fact it’s spelt for me in the title of this post. Thank goodness for spell check.  

Travel Time

11:26 Dec 30^th, 2011 | 10 notes

Is time travel possible? If so, what the hell kind of consequences does it pose? I’m about to endeavour upon a new writing project with a friend. A time travel story with a twist, but apart from having to learn all the sciency stuff I think it also wise to brain strut through the philosophical aspects of it as well.

What are the philosophical aspects of time travel? Well paradoxes mostly, if you try and think of a good time travel story then you’ll probably think of one with a big juicy paradox in it. Take the Terminator for example… if they didn’t send the thing back to kill the girl then the guy wouldn’t have come back to have the sex and; ok ok we all know the plot of The Terminator fuck off.

It’s cause and effect at the end of the day, and finding a loop hole in the laws that govern our universe that will allow us to bosh it all up. 

What philosophers do I guess is help physicists understand whether it’s possible to time travel by merely thinking it all over a lot.

The most famous thought about a paradox is the grandfather paradox. I’m sure you’ve heard of this right? If I went back in time to kill my granddad as a young man and succeeded then my parents wouldn’t have had the sex and… basically it’s The Terminator.

One theory that could allow time travel to occur without paradoxes is the theory of compossibility. If I really wanted to kill my granddad as a young man (which I don’t, I love my granddad he’s delightful) and I built a time machine and had a gun and everything and aimed it at him and pulled the trigger… the gun would probably jam. Or a bird would fly past and catch the bullet or I’d have a brain aneurism and drop dead just as I were to do the deed. This is because the universe wouldn’t allow it, because it is not compossible for my granddad to be killed in his teens while he still exists in 2012 as an old man.

At the end of the day though, scientists just don’t know a lot about time and how it’s even related to existence. Once again, queue the philosophers, who’ve thought up three primary answers to this metaphysical mystery. Now I will attempt to understand it and explain it as quickly as I can using as few words as possible. 

1. Presentism.

This method of thought denies the possibility of time travel because only the present, the now, exists. The past is gone but remembered and the future will exist, only just not yet. Like that famous saying from Heraclitus which I’ve just read goes, “You can not step into the same river twice; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you”.

2. Eternalism.

Eternalists believe that time is a fourth dimension and that it exists all at once all over the place, yet we can only view it a certain way. For example, despite being extinct Dinosaurs still exist, they’re just not in our space time region at the moment. And lets hope things stay that way. Same goes for any new monster creature that might be alive in the future but hasn’t been born yet, they exist too.  

3. Possibilism.

Almost the same as the eternalism, in that the past and the present are “fixed” but the future is an open book. To be more specific an object has many different possible “worldlines” (makes me think the Earth has wrinkles) but only one will become actual for said object. 

Possibilism makes a case for the ability to change our fates with use of time travel but again throws up problems with causality and personal identity. 

Personally, I love the whole multiple parallel dimension angle, and will definitely have a bit of that when writing my screenplay. My idea is something along the lines of a time traveler who is unsure whether his actions will negate all current existence or create an alternate reality.

Lets say I traveled forwards in time right, I looked around and thought “wow, the futures pretty cool”. If I then traveled back, would I be effectively erasing the entire outcome of events that led to that point? Perhaps my presence created a temporary space time region and when I go back, the region will disappear, taking with it the lives of everyone on the planet, nay, the entire universe? Or would the region still exist but in an alternative space time region?

I’m going to ask a science person about this and see what they say.

laters…

#timetravel #philosophy #scifi #science?

Shut up Brain!

12:50 Dec 29^th, 2011 | 22 notes

#philosophy #brain #dualism #Descartes #satire

tumblrbot asked:

WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?

Err… Greece! The Birth place of philosophy of course. Is Greece the birth place of philosophy? I think it is.

Anyway, I just remembered I already went to Cypress a few years ago on a package holiday which is pretty much the same as Greece so I’ll go to Tokyo instead.

#philosophy #Greece #tumblrbot

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