punk

Below is an excerpt of Beowulf. You will notice no specific rhyme scheme or meter, although there is a tendency to use alliteration, rhyme and such of words in proximity to each other for effect. All those structures are largely a stylistic constraint chosen by the author but not essential to poetry per se. However, poetry should remain near to music. A poem should be intended to be read aloud and have structures and cadences conducive to such a reading. I find that much free verse doesn't do well being read aloud, and seems to be intended to be read silently. In that sense it is really just very oddly written prose. Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. Oft Scyld Scefing sceaþena þreatum, 5 monegum mægþum, meodosetla ofteah, egsode eorlas. Syððan ærest wearð feasceaft funden, he þæs frofre gebad, weox under wolcnum, weorðmyndum þah, oðþæt him æghwylc þara ymbsittendra 10 ofer hronrade hyran scolde, gomban gyldan. þæt wæs god cyning! Ðæm eafera wæs æfter cenned, geong in geardum, þone god sende folce to frofre; fyrenðearfe ongeat 15 þe hie ær drugon aldorlease lange hwile. Him þæs liffrea, wuldres wealdend, woroldare forgeaf; Beowulf wæs breme (blæd wide sprang), Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in.

This is precisely what people mean when they say you do not have a sense of humor. Humor is the ability to make fun of something one has respect for. Generally jokes that are meant to insult something one loaths are not funny. As an example... Lawyers know all the best lawyer jokes because they have a respect for the law and the profession of being a lawyer. No one does such a good job making fun of Judaism as the genuinely devout Jew. The type of humor you are advocating is analogous to the racist making jokes about people of other ethnicities. It isn't terribly funny. Lighten up.

The fact of 2 is that you have to design and build the experimental apparatus. So yes a good experimentalist must be an engineer of sorts. A good experimentalist also has to develop a very deep and intuitive understanding of the apparatus well beyond the specific physical value that the apparatus is measuring.

As for eyeball jewelry... I imagine the legislature contains a large number of parents with images in their heads' of their children showing up with eyeball jewelry one day.

"Worst" according to critical observation of the world around him and its consequences in that world. Nietzsche didn't want there to be any "Nietzscheans" in the world. He didn't want any followers. He says so explicitly in "Also Sprach Zarathustra". So, he spends most of his time critiquing the existing order. He feels that when you understand the critique fully, then you will be free from that order and able to act independently. He didn't want people to go from being enslaved to one order to being enslaved by some system he created for them. The clearest statement he makes about this is: "I've found my way, now you find yours." Or maybe clearer: "Become what you are." This train of thought existed all through the middle period. By the late period he seemed to think more needed to be said about what the new set of values should be, hence the project of "Umwertung aller Werte". Unfortunately his breakdown prevented him from going into details. I think in the late period Nietzsche realized just how misunderstood he was going to be, and that most people were going to take his philosophy as a jumping off point into some sort of extreme immoralism of the sort Nationial Socialism was. Nietzsche is often perhaps nearer a poet than a philosopher in the conventional Western sense. He expects the reader to bring something of themself to the project. He would be disgusted at the idea of someone taking their entire way of thought as on a platter from someone else.

The key phrase in Nietzsche is "Revaluation of all Values" (Umwertung aller Werte). This was to be the title of the book he was writing when he had his breakdown (He only finished the first of four parts "Der Antichrist", usually translated as "The Antichrist" though "The Antichristian" is arguably better). Nietzsche felt that existing moralities (which are all he uses the word "morality" to refer to) were failures that were really an expression of WTP in its worst sense. Through an examination of existing values he hoped to show how and why they were wrong valuations, and there was an entirely different valuation of things to be realized. The "morality" of the Overman is then the morality constructed from this new valuation of things. Nietzsche never talks about this explicitly, but the new values were to be the values of the Overman. Nietzsche's great fear is a world with no values, that is to say nihilism. He sees the existing European moral order as leading inevitably to nihilism (or rather that it is already fundamentally nihilistic and no one but him has realized this). The staving off of nihilism (that is to save values and morals) is what the messianic Overman represents to him.

There is such a thing as double majoring. Philosophy is great if you are interested. Its best to combine it with something a bit more practically useful though.

In many ways (and with some reservations) one can profitably treat many aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy as a kind of secularized (Lutheran) Christianity. In this way of looking at it WTP can be productively replaced with the (more Christian) expression "Original Sin". The Overman (which in Nietzsche is normally singular) is clearly some sort of Messianic figure who will help free people from "Original Sin". Despite all the nonsense built up around him, Nietzsche is really something of a Victorian-era prude, who is concerned that morality in European society is simply a facade. His goal is to save morality against increasing decadence (which he identified with precursors of what was to become National Socialism in Germany). In this vein the Overman is really the first genuinely moral person. On the other hand, he is a materialist who sees WTP is a fundamental biological impulse, so it cannot be simply washed away as "Original Sin" can be in the Christian view. As a result WTP becomes a more complicated thing than Sin. He has to take the view (put in Christian terms) that sin itself must also be saved.

I'd only continue for a career in physics if one of the following holds for you: 1. You love mathematics, and find it enjoyable to keep learning more difficult mathematics. 2. You love tinkering with things, putting together mechanical contraptions If 1 then you can be a theorist. The fact is to be a theorist you will end up having to learn mathematics that bears little resemblance to what you are studying as an undergraduate. Think about it this way, the mathematics you do as an undergrad (advanced calculus, differential equations, linear algebra), and how different it is from what you did in high school (algebra, trig, maybe simple calculus). By grad school you'd go through math that is to the undergrad math as that is to high school math, and then you'd have to go another step farther. If 2 then you can be an experimentalist. You wont need math so much, but you'd need to be able to construct experimental apparatus by hand and get it to work. A good experimentalist has a lab that looks like an extremely messy garage and is tweeking his apparatus by hand continually. If neither, then go on to something else.

I'd say we have more to learn from the intellectual/artistic output of cultures than the history of the cultures themselves. Studying history just helps understand that output more fully. You'll learn more reading Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, etc. then studying Greek history, but knowing Greek history might improve your appreciation of these works.

You can do anything you imagine and still be a conformist. It depends on your thinking when you do it. It's like that line in the Simpsons when Bart gets an earring and Lisa says "How rebellious in a conformist sort of way". There are conformists who rebel from ever status quo aspect of society. There are individualists who live the most status quo lifestyle imaginable. The real issue is doing what you want for your own reasons. If you are choosing to do things with consideration for what other people think (whether they approve or disapprove is irrelevant), then you are probably a conformist. If you are doing what you want and aren't concerned with the approval or disapproval of others, then you are probably an individualist.

Nietzsche's Will to Power (WTP from now on) is not intended as part of a philosophical statement of how one ought to live, but rather as an observation of how people live in fact. WTP is really a modification of Schopenhauer's "Will to Life" (WTL). The WTL would probably be expressed these days as "survival instinct". That is it is the very deep animalian impulse to live simply for the sake of living further. Nietzsche felt this didn't really account for things well enough and modified it to WTP, that is that creatures didn't merely act to live, but would also strive to subject other things simply for the sake of subjecting other things. So the WTP goes beyond WTL in saying living things act not only to continue living but also to control the world around them as much as they are able *even if it doesn't really promote mere survival*. The herdmen (basically everyone but the overmen) live their WTP in the most brutish and direct way. The overmen redirect the WTP and live it in a more refined way. Nietzsche's philosophy is largely about this redirection. Nietzsche intended WTP as a scientic theory of psychology, and it should be taken in the way one would take Freud's theory of the id, ego, superego, or whatever psychological theory you will. You are free to disagree with it as you would Freud but it should be grounds of empirical evidence.

Relative body counts don't necessarily indicate who is winning the war. In Vietnam US casualties (KIA) are on the order of 50,000. Estimates for NVA/VC casualties (KIA) are on the order of 1,000,000. And, the US lost in Vietnam. However US casualties are going to be a measure of US public support for the war in Iraq.

Actually most of the native groups in the Eastern United States were farmers. They had areas of land that they cultivated, and established towns. At one point in time the Cherokee had established towns with a newspaper in their own language and property. The US expelled them to the West. In the colonial period Indian groups established 5 to 6 (depending on the time) basic political units in the area of the continental US between the Appalachian mountains and the Mississippi river. What exactly did the Mexican government do to the Texans? What rights did it violate? The Mexican government at the time was very weak, and it is doubtful they could do very much that distance from the center of power. They only began to intervene when it became clear Texas was a break-away province. My understanding is the anglos wanted their own government, and then the US annexed Texas to have a monopoly on cotton (which at the time was the foremost commodity in the global economy). We seem to agree that the Spanish-American War was bad, so no comments there. There was no bait and switch. The point was that every side in every war claims they are acting defensively. It is such a consistent thing that no one should bother to listen to any government's claim as to why they are involved in the war. Governments lie. The German government lied in WWII. The Israeli government is lying now. It is interesting how conservatives distrust governments and government power, until it comes to blowing people up, when they suddenly think government can do no wrong.

Because the Christian Right owns the Republican Party.

I noticed you didn't list anything resembling a fact to counter what I said, just some useless rhetoric. The Native Americans just gave their land and lives to the whites for the betterment of humanity? Mexico had some sort of need to start a war with America? I suppose you'd say America was defending Texas. Let's see a bunch of anglos settle in Mexican territory and declare independence? I suppose if Mexicans in the southwest US became a majority and declared independence you'd support them? Spain, a rump empire (holding only Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico) with an obsolete fleet just decided to attack a nation with a state of the art military? I do know something about Nazi propaganda, and they did justify the holocaust as a "defensive" measure. The fact of the matter is that every aggressor in history has said their actions were "defensive". When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, it was for "defensive" reasons. Hell, Alexander the Great probably claimed his conquest of Persia was purely defensive.

Does it say whether Rand actually *read* him?

Indeed just like in the 19th century America was "defending" itself from the American Indians, and in the 1840's America was "defending" itself from Mexico, and in 1898 America was "defending" itself from Spain. Israel is "defending" itself from the Palestinians, in the same way that in the 1940's Germany was "defending" itself from the Jews, Gypsies, etc.

Classical physics in only "wrong" with respect to Quantum Mechanics, in the same way that Newtonian gravity is "wrong" with respect General Relativity. The older theory is derivable in appropriate limits in the newer theory. The classical physical quantities are perfectly describable as (statistical) means of quantum physical quantities, and satisfy the expected laws. Classical physics is the low energy/large scale limit of Quantum Mechanics. That is to say as long as we are dealing with processes of low enough energy, and only make measurements to sufficiently large (but still very small from the human's perspective) granularity (both of which can be quantified in term of Planck's constant), classical physics is just fine.

I forgot this part in my above post, but it is different enough from what was addressed there.... Wittgenstein comes nearest to Rand in his general belief that questions of logic, philosophy, truth, etc. are of a fundamentally ethical nature. That is to say that the individual should pursue truth (i.e. true beliefs about the world, and acting according to these true beliefs) as a moral imperative, and that evading the truth is fundamentally immoral.

Wittgenstein's outlook is easily summarized: 1. No question worth asking can be dealt with using philosophical analysis 2. Questions that can be dealt with philosophically are purely technical in nature That is, in his view, philosophy can never give satisfactory answers to questions of ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, theology, etc. The point of all of Wittgenstein's linguistic analysis, is to lay out in the clearest possible way how language works, and what language is capable of so that it will be obvious to all that no sort of philosophical analysis can ever rigorously resolve meaningful questions. This is not to say these things cannot be spoken about. He would say that anything you can say about important things will come from people working from artistic inspiration (such as poets). But this is inspiration, not the result of rigorous analysis and proof. The way he analyzed language changed from is early, middle, and late periods, but the overall program remained as above.

Forget Sanskrit, and go back to Vedic. Sanskrit lost the subjunctive, but Vedic still had it.

Actually it isn't as absurd as all that. The calculus as formulated by Newton and Leibniz made use of the idea of an infinitesimal, so for A = 0.99999... 1 - A = d where d is an infinitesimal and d does not equal zero. Modern analysis following Weierstrass eliminates any appeals to infinitesimals. Its all in how you formulate your system.

Consider three sequences: A is 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, 0.9999, etc. B is 1.1, 1.01, 1.001, etc. C is 0.9, 1.1, 0.99, 1.01, 0.999, 1.001, etc. We define limA, limB, limC to be the limits of the sequences. If limA differs from 1 then so does limB (and that limA does not equal limB). If this is true then you have to say that limC is undefined since it consists of two infinite subsequences converging to two different values. If however you say that limC = 1, then you have to say any infinite subsequence of C is 1 and, in particular, that limA = limB = 1 Do you really want to go so far as to say limC is undefined?

Latin is easy. The whole language is pretty regular in construction. Real men study Greek where it is almost true that there is no such thing as a "regular" verb.