so, I was fatefully watching tv the other day, when the football game ended and all of the sudden a show popped on that both presented thought provoking questions but also displayed a paradym shift. The subjuct of this was laughter.
Now the paradym shift that they briefly mentioned was that laughter used to be interpreted as evilness, so laughing was rarly heard. People laughing was not displayed in portraits painting all through this time. I did not catch the time period but the Mona Lisa was one of the solemn picture that was used as evidence of this, as they flashed through them. I found this rather interesting.
The pondering question was that there was this couple who lived a very sad life, and did not laugh (apparently, i don't understand how this was possible) yet they had a baby and around two months old, this baby started to laugh. The question for him was where did this baby learn to laugh. There was studies done on babies blind, deaf, and with lack of proper sensation and all the babies started to laugh at around the same age as the babies who lived with out these conditions. So the questioned remains, is laughter just instictual and as we grow older some people decide to stop doing it? Should we allow stress or pressure distract us from doing something inate from birth?
I just found it interesting.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
random thoughts on technology
So ONE of the problems with me is that I have a short term memory and I tend to forget much of what we talked about in class by the time I get onto blog. So i like to take random quotes and expad upon them, so this is exacly what I am going to do for this blog.
"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quailty of life, please press three." Alice Khan
I came across this poem while researching a debate topic about generally modified foods. Having not done extensive research on this topic before, I had never thought about the veiwpoint of GMO's that they reduce the amount of our experience of the world, as through technology we are manipulating our plants to become negligent to the natural factors of the world. Technology with therefore the manipulation of the world so we do not have to experience it. Now is this actually a bad thing? I don't really have that answer. It depends on the extent to which technology takes us. With the example of the GMO's, think of the advantages we give the farmers. They would be able to have a crop they could readily rely on and a steady income regardless of how much rain fell and when. There would be less fluctuation within the markets of these raw materials and would create a more stable ecomony. Therefore, by us not experiencing the world, technology makes the world easier. ie. here i sit, with my laptop to relay my thoughts to you, my cell phone to coordinate my acitivities, or ask what is due at school tommorrow, access to the internet and millions of webpages full of information. Therefore I believe that whether this manipulation is true or not, technology is going to be devolopped and be usedin our world and soon we will be the generation looking back at when we were in school and we only had two high speed computers, three flat screened tv's and cell phones that only texted and connected to the internet.
"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quailty of life, please press three." Alice Khan
I came across this poem while researching a debate topic about generally modified foods. Having not done extensive research on this topic before, I had never thought about the veiwpoint of GMO's that they reduce the amount of our experience of the world, as through technology we are manipulating our plants to become negligent to the natural factors of the world. Technology with therefore the manipulation of the world so we do not have to experience it. Now is this actually a bad thing? I don't really have that answer. It depends on the extent to which technology takes us. With the example of the GMO's, think of the advantages we give the farmers. They would be able to have a crop they could readily rely on and a steady income regardless of how much rain fell and when. There would be less fluctuation within the markets of these raw materials and would create a more stable ecomony. Therefore, by us not experiencing the world, technology makes the world easier. ie. here i sit, with my laptop to relay my thoughts to you, my cell phone to coordinate my acitivities, or ask what is due at school tommorrow, access to the internet and millions of webpages full of information. Therefore I believe that whether this manipulation is true or not, technology is going to be devolopped and be usedin our world and soon we will be the generation looking back at when we were in school and we only had two high speed computers, three flat screened tv's and cell phones that only texted and connected to the internet.
Friday, November 27, 2009
I think I should be getting better therefore I am getting better
I enjoyed very much the video we saw on Monday about logical fallacies. The movie touched on the effect of placebo trials, yet I researched a little more on placebo pills and their effectiveness and I found a couple interesting facts. (These facts are all from medical literature)
“In the 1950’s angina pectoris, recurrent pain in the chest and left arm due to decreased blood flow to the heart, was commonly treated with surgery. Rather than doing the customary surgery, which involved tying off the mammary artery, some resourceful doctors cut patients open and then simply sewed them back up again. The patients who received a sham surgery reported as much relief as the patients who had the full surgery.”
“In a recent study of a new kind of chemotherapy, 30 percent of the individuals in the control group, the group given placebos, lost their hair.”
These are only a few of the examples of the effectiveness my placebo trials. I wonder greatly at how our body could be so greatly effected by our mental component. So is it then that pain is just a figment of our imagination? Or from the latter example, was the hair going to fall out anyway? We know that they chances of this is next to none, so why did the human body act like this. We can justly say that the pain would not have left of the hair would not have fell out if the people involved in this did not decide it was supposed to happen. This directly contradicts the cause and effect theory of the world, for there is not cause for the relieved pain or the hair falling out. So we are left with this question: Can our mind be more powerful than the normal course of the world, that it can defy it?
“In the 1950’s angina pectoris, recurrent pain in the chest and left arm due to decreased blood flow to the heart, was commonly treated with surgery. Rather than doing the customary surgery, which involved tying off the mammary artery, some resourceful doctors cut patients open and then simply sewed them back up again. The patients who received a sham surgery reported as much relief as the patients who had the full surgery.”
“In a recent study of a new kind of chemotherapy, 30 percent of the individuals in the control group, the group given placebos, lost their hair.”
These are only a few of the examples of the effectiveness my placebo trials. I wonder greatly at how our body could be so greatly effected by our mental component. So is it then that pain is just a figment of our imagination? Or from the latter example, was the hair going to fall out anyway? We know that they chances of this is next to none, so why did the human body act like this. We can justly say that the pain would not have left of the hair would not have fell out if the people involved in this did not decide it was supposed to happen. This directly contradicts the cause and effect theory of the world, for there is not cause for the relieved pain or the hair falling out. So we are left with this question: Can our mind be more powerful than the normal course of the world, that it can defy it?
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
my thoughts on Sophie's World
I was reading the amazing book of Sophie’s World and I was rather intrigued by a point made. It was one of the philosopher’s many example
“A Russian astronauts and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian but the astronaut was not. The astronaut said, “I’ve been out in space many times but I’ve never seen God or angels.” And the brain surgeon said, “And I’ve operated on many clever brains but I’ve never seen a single thought.”
I think this is a perfect example of how something can exist without the proof of your eyes. This is the total basis of faith, and knowing something even when you do not see it. Sometimes you can know something without having what most people call ’reason’ to do so. Scepticism is the basis for this. Yet, I believe that sceptics are missing many points of knowledge because just as the example shows the phrase “seeing is believing” is not always the decider.
“A Russian astronauts and a Russian brain surgeon were once discussing religion. The brain surgeon was a Christian but the astronaut was not. The astronaut said, “I’ve been out in space many times but I’ve never seen God or angels.” And the brain surgeon said, “And I’ve operated on many clever brains but I’ve never seen a single thought.”
I think this is a perfect example of how something can exist without the proof of your eyes. This is the total basis of faith, and knowing something even when you do not see it. Sometimes you can know something without having what most people call ’reason’ to do so. Scepticism is the basis for this. Yet, I believe that sceptics are missing many points of knowledge because just as the example shows the phrase “seeing is believing” is not always the decider.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Take One
*Language: communication by voice in the distinctive human manner, using arbitrary, auditory symbols in conventional with conventional meanings (according to the American college dictionary).
*Communication: the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs (also according to the American college dictionary).
With this definition, I think I will go against popular belief and say that body gestures and such are not language but rather just in a different category of communication. Because doesn’t a language have to have two components based on this definition: a way to convey it to another individual by way of person, and by symbols. I am not saying that gestures are not used for communicating but believe in a more restricted meaning on language then what is given in the class, where the word communication would include other such forms.
(Yupp, that is about as profound as I get)
*Communication: the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs (also according to the American college dictionary).
With this definition, I think I will go against popular belief and say that body gestures and such are not language but rather just in a different category of communication. Because doesn’t a language have to have two components based on this definition: a way to convey it to another individual by way of person, and by symbols. I am not saying that gestures are not used for communicating but believe in a more restricted meaning on language then what is given in the class, where the word communication would include other such forms.
(Yupp, that is about as profound as I get)
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