Intellect
I once read that translating a passage into a foreign language can be an excellent test of how well you understand that passage. Something tells me that the following (from the Macedonian Press Agency) made no sense in the original Greek, either: Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis in statements he made
Intellect
Our favored [psychological] defenses become habitual mental manuevers. What has worked well in key moments, keeping anxiety under control with rewarding results, is likely to be tried again. Epstein, the novelist, found as a child that isolation fended off the sorrow of his father's death; that same cutting
Intellect
Paraphrased from "Logic and Conversation", an article by H. P. Grice: 1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). 2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required -- do not add any potentially distracting extraneous information. 3.
Intellect
…inspired by reading and participating in blog and Usenet arguments over the years. Let's stipulate that there is a Subject A, and that to fully understand that subject, one needs to know 1000 things. If Person X knows 100 of these things, then he understands enough to discuss
Intellect
I retain vivid memories of the astonishment and disbelief expressed by the architecture students to whom I taught urban land economics many years ago when I pointed to medieval cities as marvelously patterned systems that had mostly just "grown" in response to myriads of individual human decisions. To
Intellect
From an interview with baseball statistics guru Bill James: [Question: ] I have to ask you this. On an internet baseball fan site, I recently saw you quoted to the effect that veteran leadership had enabled the Red Sox to come back from down 0-3 in the ALCS. But, in that
Intellect
If there are any fans of cryptography out there, here's a little fun for you: 2662 5076 3265 6648 3858 1602 1838 3842 6644 3856 4516 3844 6655 3885 4021 4360 3243 3642 6645 4804 1602 5607 I don't expect this cipher to provide any unusual
Intellect
The examples given are ill-chosen, but the basic point is sound: If not for Christian fundamentalists, after all, we probably wouldn't have punk rock. Or rap, Goth fashion, skateboarding and lots of recent art. Strong art comes from cultural ferment, from the clash of ideas, not from homogeneity.
Intellect
Today is the 100th anniversary of Ayn Rand's birth. Cathy Young at Reason Online notes a weakness of her philosophy that always stood out for me: In its pure form, Rand’s philosophy would work very well indeed if human beings were never helpless and dependent through no
Intellect
From a professor I know: This morning I gave a guest lecture about modeling. My slide about the modeling process starts with an amorphous cloud labeled "Reality". Naturally some wise-acre asked "What is reality?". I told him it's that which doesn't change
Intellect
Art is a mirror not because it is the same as the object, but because it is different. A mirror selects as much as art selects; it gives the light of flames, but not their heat; the colour of flowers, but not their fragrance; the faces of women, but not
Intellect
I own and respect several of the books on this list, but…"moan with intellectual pleasure"? Talk about a cheap date…