Philosophy in High School

There's an interesting and provocative piece from the Boston Review, entitled Citizen Philosophers, Teaching Justice in Brazil, by Carlos Fraenkel. The article begins with a discussion with Almira Ribeiro, who teaches philosophy "in a high school in Itapuã, a beautiful, poor, violent neighborhood on the periphery of Salvador, capital of the state of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast. She is the most philosophically passionate person I’ve ever met," writes Fraenkel.


In 2008 a law was passed making the study of philosophy mandatory. As a result, about 9 million students take philosophy for 3 hours a week. The students learn something about engagement. 


“There are also other ways of political participation,” Ribeiro tells her students. She gives them the town hall’s phone number for complaints about infrastructure and asks them to find something in their street they want repaired. When one student calls, nothing happens. But when fifteen call, the city reacts. “You see that pothole?” she asks me. “It’s been closed. And that street lantern? It’s been fixed. Thanks to our philosophy class. . . . Politicians can’t afford disgruntled citizens who will vote them out of office.” 


You can read the whole piece at http://www.bostonreview.net/BR37.1/carlos_fraenkel_brazil_teaching_philosophy.php.

I definitely agree with the requirement to learn philosophy as a mandatory course in public schools. As it happened for me, I was somewhat ahead of the curve, but only because it wasn't taught, and so I had to seek it out and read. I began with Will and Ariel Durant's "The Story of Philosophy" when I was about 12. I was captivated by Diogenes, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato and later, by Hume, and much later, by Russell and Whitehead, and then Einstein and Heisenberg and Dyson. Whitehead had maybe the biggest impact upon me; "Process and Reality" most of all, but "Science and the Modern World" was pretty good, too.

I also took a couple of course in "Religious Studies" and learned a smattering about Buddhism, Shinto, Zoroastrianism. the I Ching and various other ancient beliefs and books. Lately I have been reading about Sikhism, and even visiting the local temple occasionally, not as a believer but as a disinterested investigator  Consequently, if I have any argument against this piece, it's the EuroCentrism.

Philosophy neither begins nor ends with the Western (nee Greek) tradition. Not to say that this is a dead-end. Truly exciting things are happening in the philosophy of science, cosmology, astrophysics and a few other sub-disciplines.

All that said, this remains a provocative piece.

Arthur

Homo mendax

Across the dining room table, seven-year-old Fiona has spread out a half-dozen dolls with whom she's acting out a long, elaborate story. Occasionally, others at the table are called upon to witness a fact, but really our presence is incidental--the story carries on whether we're at the table or not.

Aristotle and the scholastic philosophers called man the rational animal, homo rationale. John Stuart Mill spoke of homo economicus. Others called us homo reciprocans, reciprocal man.

Well, those are stories, too. How about man the storyteller? What would that Latin name be?

Homo mendax.

It makes politicians look a little less deviant?

Today I get this email from Nancy Pelosi ...

Dear Peter,

We’re close -- in fact, we’re less than $4,000 short of a record-breaking January.

Can we count on your support to help put us over the top? Contribute $3 before tonight’s midnight FEC deadline and we'll triple-match your gift >>

With your help we can put an end to the Republicans’ unrelenting war on women, seniors and the middle class.

Let’s prove we have what it takes.

http://dccc.org/Stand-with-Obama

If Obama and the Democrats would prosecute the Wall Street criminals who caused the "Lesser Depression", enact an adequate economic stimulus stimulus to recover from it, and get rid of the corruption under which most congressional decisions are bought and paid for, I would.




"Yes we can", said Obama.


No they didn't.

I didn't either.

Retro Programming Skills

Recently I have received several emails from headhunters with whom I have done business previously, and the nature of said emails nature provokes me to write about this. In recent days I have received the following:

1. Six-month contract for PowerBuilder expert. I don't think I qualify as an expert, but I've spent some serious time wrestling this pig to the ground, and I hate this language.
2. Three-month contract for Access 2003, for the government of Ontario. Who remembers Access 2003? It was so buggy that MS released Access XP a year later, and everyone I know immediately moved to it. Apparently the government of Ontario did not; call it Software Gravity or something; why any organization would prefer to stick to a version known to be riddled with bugs rather than migrate is beyond me. This is not to be interpreted as suggesting an eager adoption of any technology not suffixed by "SP1" or better.
3. Contract for a Clipper developer (6 months anticipated duration, perhaps longer, depending on performance). Ok, I wrote a couple of books about Clipper programming and created a company to sell a few libraries for Clipper programmers, and yes, we sold enough copies to pay the rent and the hydro and the employees, for a few years basking in the sun. But we under-anticipated the adoption of Windows, and missed the boat on transition to this new world, and although we never had to declare bankruptcy, we were forced to close the doors. Although I think that I can claim serious expertise in the world of Clipper programming, I do NOT want to return to the world of DOS, except in a VM and only then for reasons of nostalgia.
4. An offer for a contract specifying a minimum of 4 years' experience in VS C# 2010. Basic arithmetic would deem this requirement impossible, but to mention that is to invite immediate discard into the pile of Rejections.

All this is pretty much OK with me. Most of you may not recognize the name "Jack Layton", a Canadian politician who passed mid-last-year. He was Leader of the Opposition, having won a landslide in Quebec (thanks to his bilingualism and much to the shock of the Parti Quebecois, but that's another story).

Back when Jack and his soon-to-become wife Olivia Chow were City Councillors in Toronto, and the leading software at the time was DOS on IBM-PCs or clones, I wrote the campaign-management software for Jack and OC (that became her nickname). The software was not especially complex; just a couple of dozen tables and a lot of time-sensitive reports. But it did the trick, and in some small way helped Jack and OC hold their positions. I did all that work gratis (free), and took pride in helping, in my small way, the advance of two people who I felt would enhance the political landscape in Canada. I am proud to have made this small contribution to the advance of the NDP agenda within Toronto, and Ontario, and Canada.

The saddest part about this story is that less than a year after Jack's triumph (and the NDP's triumph), Jack passed away from cancer. This might rank as the saddest event in the history of Canadian national politics. Jack redefined the political landscape in Canada, and sadly didn't live long enough to enjoy the fruits of his triumph. This fills me with profound sadness. We go back to the days when he and Olivia were City Counsellors in Toronto. I have known them both since then, even before they were married, and when a departed friend called Dan Heap was still part of the equation.

I began with Jack in the days of DOS. I fondly recall a day in his office. I was the DBA guy and was allowed entry to his office. His DOS computer was passworded. It took me all of three minutes to get past that, and to update his campaign software. When later that day, he arrived at his office and found me working on his updates, he asked, "How did you get in?" And I replied, "Who do you want to keep out? Your average user, or me? Two different levels of protection are required."

This was decades ago, and penetration was easier back then. It remains easy, given certain knowledge, but back then all it took was a reboot from a floppy; now it is (slightly more, but not much) more complicated. Unless you're seriously into computing and programming and security, I venture that I can get in within an hour -- not that I have that intention, but it's not very complicated to penetrate almost every allegedly secure site. Rocket science is not required, in many cases I have investigated.

Most people use immediately-remembered identities such as birthyear, birthmonth+day, surname spelled backwards, nickname of first-born-daughter + initial of one's surname. All such passwords are easily grabbed, knowing even a trite of data about the target. Hence, you are a target. I confess that my own account (too easily deduced) has been compromised, and that's when I learned my lesson; and my lesson is this. Make sure that:

1. Your password consists of at least 10 characters.
2, Your password  includes at least a few Capitals, Lower Case letters, and Special Case characters.
3. In case you forget it, that you can deduce it from a Hint or two (for example, My Youngest Sibling; what is not declared is that this name should be entered backwards, right to left, and prepended and suffixed by some special characters. The point is, that if you forget what the password is, you can deduce it from a relatively simple set of rules, known only to you.

A.

On Dwarf-Tossing

A strip club in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, has recently introduced dwarf-tossing in its list of events, the main other one being T,&A, and occasionally P. This raises several ethical points of view:

1. This is an abomination, an insult to dwarfs and midgets and other short people of various ethnicities.
2. This is a legitimate job, and given the context of a strip club, perhaps more honourable than the main event. As I heard an Aussie interviewed by CBC Radio say, "I am a professional projectile."
3. Said dwarfs typically wear protective padding, almost but not quite guaranteeing their lack of harm.

For more information on the subject, see http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Windsor+dwarf+toss+sends+flying/6068322/story.html. But a Google on "dwarf tossing" will deliver numerous other citations.

Where do you stand on this pressing issue? Inquiring minds want to know! 

Arthur

Austerity schmausterity

In response to the economic crisis of 2008, Europe's policy makers decreed that taxpayers must bail out the banks that caused the economic crisis, and at the same time see their social safety nets severely cut by "austerity" programs. Europeans were told there was no alternative. Spending cuts would make markets more "confident", thus offsetting the effects of the spending cuts.

Some economists including Paul Krugman and Brad Delong said there's no such thing as a "confidence fairy", but austerity was music to new British PM David Cameron's ears--a banker-friendly rationale for punishing the poor and further enriching the wealthy with the proceeds. US Republicans and the European Central Bank took up the same tune.

What's happened has confirmed the Krugman view. Austerity is driving the UK and Greece deeper into their economic holes. Bailing out bankers while punishing the voters paying for the bailout doesn't grow prosperity and hasn't restored market confidence. The people of Spain and Italy and Ireland are victims too as their governments reduce themselves to the status of third-world countries having to borrow in someone else’s currency. Austerity has failed everywhere it's been tried.

And there's a demonstration of what works better. Iceland was deeper in economic poop than anybody, but it let the banks go bust, told international banks to get stuffed, and expanded its social safety net. What's the result? Iceland's social safety net is mostly intact, and its economy is recovering.

Even if Angela Merkel, the ECB, David Cameron and the US Republicans once actually believed in the confidence fairy, the results are in, and they can't believe in it now without slipping into delusion.

What's driving austerity then? One thing is continuing belief by the rich that the poor deserve their lot. How convenient it is that such policies make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

Austerity is what we get when rightwing ideologues hijack a crisis in the service of their political agendas.

As Good as It Gets

My list of great movies is not complete without a mention of this one. Winner of two Academy Awards (Jack Nicholson for Best Actor and Helen Hunt for Best Actress, it should have won at least four more: Greg Kinnear for Best Supporting Actor, Shirley Knight as Helen's mom, and Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks for Best Screenplay. It was nominated for these and others (Best Picture, Best Editing, Best Score) but somehow didn't win those.

I've seen this movie at least a dozen times; I have memorized almost the entire script. Typically, a comedy doesn't stand up to that many viewings without inducing boredom. But As Good as It Gets is more than just a hilarious comedy. Its characters are so well drawn they become part of your life. Some of the lines of dialog are simply priceless. Jack as Melvin Udall gets most of them, but Helen and Greg and Shirley get some memorable lines too.

It's impossible to recommend this movie too highly. If you haven't seen it, run to the nearest DVD outlet (assuming there still is one in your neighbourhood) and rent or buy it at once.