Wednesday, April 16, 2008

There is no hump day in a 4 day week.

In honor of it NOT being Hump Day (which is what Wednesday regularly is in a 5-day week), here are some things that make today great:

01. Tillykke Med Fødselsdagen, Dronning Margrete II! The Queen Of The Kingdom of Denmark is turning 68 today. In Denmark there are a LOT of traditions surrounding birthdays. First of all, you're supposed to get woken up super early in the morning by your friends and family members who arrive singing and tooting horns. I bet neighbors love that. Second, you're supposed to fly the rectangular Danish flag, instead of the long, skinny vimpel that is usually used from day-to-day. Third, on the Queen's birthday, she always comes out on her balcony at Amalienborg Palace at noon to wave hello to her loyal kingdom and all it's constituents. After the changing of the royal guard, everyone sings the traditional royal birthday song "Margrete, Margrete, kom nu frem, ellers gå vi aldrig hjem!" (Margrete, Margrete, come on out, or we will never go home!) Denmark is a strange place, but it's kinda of cool that we have a queen. I'm planning on taking an early lunch at work today to go see her come out. :)

02. Robert Stadler's Question Mark Light Installation in a Parisian Church. I think it's so cool that this exhibition was allowed in a church. Perhaps we are making religious progress...

03. Oh no wait. On the other hand, America still doesn't even try to separate church and state. What First Amendment? Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave.

04. xkcd on techno. I chuckled.

05. Inconsistent Thoughts on Epistemic Disagreement: "To roughly summarize, epistemic disagreement arises when epistemic peers arrive at divergent conclusions. Epistemic peers are folks who are relevantly similar with respect to intelligence, their ability to reason, and who have access to relevantly similar evidence concerning some particular issue X." Mmm, okay, well some people are more full of shit than I am, it seems. Check out the article. If the first word that pops into your head is "evidence," you can join my Concluding the Obvious Club. We meet at the bar.

I mean, obviously theoretical physics does not equal the entirety of the quantifiable field of science. Not even close. So equating philosophy with the study of theoretical physics and trying to essentially equate that with all of science seems dumb. I draw your attention to the statement "science obviously undergoes revolutionary periods where disagreement is more widespread than convergence. Perhaps that is the phase in which theoretical physics currently finds itself." You can't equate this with philosophy simply because philosophy seems to ALWAYS be in such a revolutionary "period." (a period being, by definition, having a beginning and and end). Since when has philosophy not been in a period of disagreement?? Most of philosophy is merely speculation and hemming and hawing until science makes progress and debates move outside of the contemplative realm of philosophy and into the testable and measureable realm of science! Also, "Second, maybe philosophical truths are just really hard to understand." Um, thank you captain obvious? Or maybe there aren't any 'philosophical truths,' because by the time they become truths, they are scientific.

Have a Great Wednesday!

1 comment:

Libby said...

Danes are so cute. Tak for dronning-besøg :)