[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
look, i really try to be nice sometimes. but first i get called out on this site for being too academic and not understanding that i can’t apply reason to arguments about every-day topics (i guess there’s some “every-day” reasoning i don’t know about). now i get told that i don’t even know about academic things? i don’t know about one of my own fields of concentration? please. [/quote]
Welcome to T-Nation.
[quote]lixy wrote:
The day when you’ll manage to get a hetero’s penis to engorge at the sight of a guy’s butthole is when you can draw your conclusion.[/quote]
That doesn’t even make the slightest sense.
Right.
The smell regions of FEMALE homos and MALE heteros have no difference, and the same goes for MALE homos and FEMALE heteros.
Gay men and straight women are physiologically attracted to male pheromones.
Gay women and straight men are physiologically attracted to female pheromones.
All the people in the study had no idea what they were smelling.
What more do you want?
And what the hell does “[getting] a hetero’s penis to engorge at the sight of a guy’s butthole” have to do with it!?
ElbowStrike
Fear of gay people is pretty fucking gay.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Fear of gay people is pretty fucking gay.[/quote]
I do not know about gay, but definitely effeminate.
Meaning, they probably do not crave the cock, but most definitely behave like little girls.
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
nephorm wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
while the book is clearly written, plato is not clear on his stance about homosexuality.
Read the Phaedrus. Love between an older man and a young man is clearly privileged, in the sense that it provides the greatest possibility for mutual discovery of truth.
But that possibility is sustained by erotic tension and yearning; satisfaction of the bodily urge dissipates its power.
To the Greeks, the heavens were unchanging. To emulate perfection would be the ideal (such as in the Republic). Homosexuality was considered the highest form of love because it produced no change (offspring). They may also have thought that (in their way) to be the ideal man was to be asexual — if you’ve attained perfection, no need of an extensive gene pool, to deal with the chaotic changes that happen to humanity. “We’re perfect!! No need to change things!”
Its similar to cloning today: if the world wasn’t chaotic, we could simply clone the best people for dealing with an unchanging world. Nature keeps sex around to have the widest variety of genes around (chaos theory).
it must be nice to roll the entire corpus of greek philosophy and science all into one and get to pick and choice which pieces you want to collect together. [/quote]
Only Platonits and neo-Platonists…Aristotle was cool.
[quote]Petedacook wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
look, i really try to be nice sometimes. but first i get called out on this site for being too academic and not understanding that i can’t apply reason to arguments about every-day topics (i guess there’s some “every-day” reasoning i don’t know about). now i get told that i don’t even know about academic things? i don’t know about one of my own fields of concentration? please.
Welcome to T-Nation. [/quote]
Yup. It takes about 6 weeks to pick up the theme here. Kind of like Rush Limbaugh…ya gotta listen for 6 weeks, according to him, before you have your "Rush’ moment — “But of course…Rush is right!!!”
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
katzenjammer wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
Western society took after during the renaissance, a time when the Church lost MASSIVE amounts of it’s influence and power. When the Church was big man on (European) Campus, we had the dark ages.
The reasons behind the “Fall” of Rome are many and varied - but it was not “caused” by the rise of the Church. During the so-called “Dark Ages,” it was the Church that kept civilization & learning alive.
the fall of western Rome was pretty simply–they ran out of money. after ~500 ad, the eastern empire still flourished for another 1000 years, because it still had money.
LMAO! Too bad Gibbon wasted all that time writing his 3,000 page masterpiece; Historians are still arguing over this. They should have asked you! It’s “simple” - tey just ran outta cash!
rolls eyes well, that is what happened. obviously i’ve made it overly simple.
its almost like i tried to tell you that a “real number” was any number that could be expressed as the ratio of two integers. clearly in one sense what i’ve told you is true. in a technical sense though, i’m dead wrong.
but i suppose you’d also argue that the eastern empire continuing on had nothing to do with its wealth.
also, if by church, you mean mosque, sure. most of the classical civilization and learning was totally lost to the Latin west in between the fall of the western Roman empire and the beginning of the renaissance. it was the Muslims who gathered the writings of the conquered lands (Greece, India, Egypt, etc…), translated it all into Aribic, and continued the ancient classical traditions until the Latin west drug itself out of the dark ages and started to reacquire the classic writings from the Muslims (which were now new, and improved)
sure, you had scientists and philosophers still in the west during this time, but they didn’t have access to most of the classic writings. they surely didn’t “keep civilization and learning alive”. The place were that was going on was called Baghdad–which was the center of intellectualism for almost a 1000 years.
i suppose this is another good case to put into the next addition of “lies my teacher told me”.
Actually, it’s the other way around - you’ve just re-hashed the same old narrative about the Dark Ages & the Church that you were fed in school. If it works for you, and you like the PC sound of it, by all means keep repeating it…
-katz
actually, i know this because i’ve seen a myriad of copies of the primary Arabic sources, and am in a department with the people who are actively involved in the study of ancient philosophy and science who use those primary Arabic sources.
have you ever tried to research the development and history of logic or metaphysics? the major players after the stoics and before the renaissance all have names that start with “ibn”. also, if you want to do ancient philosophy, you learn greek. if you want to do medieval, you learn Arabic. Avicenna or Farabi ring a bell? how about Ghazali, or Rushd, or Razi, Miskawayh, or Khaldun?
its just a fact that Aristotle’s works were literally lost to the latin west for almost a 1000 years, and the only work of Plato the latin west had until the renaissance was the timaeus.
also, are you going to try and tell me that algebra does not come from “al-jabr”? you ever try to do algebra with roman numerals? how about basic multiplication and division? good luck buddy.
how about the house of wisdom in Baghdad, this is a fib too?
look, i really try to be nice sometimes. but first i get called out on this site for being too academic and not understanding that i can’t apply reason to arguments about every-day topics (i guess there’s some “every-day” reasoning i don’t know about). now i get told that i don’t even know about academic things? i don’t know about one of my own fields of concentration? please. [/quote]
My Good Man, I didn’t mean to offend you. To play Jefe to your Guapo: El Guapo - Three Amigos - YouTube
Yes, I know the story you tell very well indeed.
What always impresses me about it is how comprehensive it sounds: that as Rome fell to barbarian invasions (how’s that for un-nuanced!) the Great & Evil Church (historical bogeyman) oppressed everyone in Western Europe, prevented scientific inquiry, spread and encouraged superstition, while monks jerked off in an all-too respectful silence, nuns were bricked up alive howling like cats in heat, and a corrupt clergy were engaged in non-stop orgies (actually, that part sounds pretty cool, no?) Because of this abhorrent institution, we thus call the early years after the fall of Rome, the Dark Ages, a loaded term if there ever was one.
Meanwhile, a peaceful and advanced Islamic world was diligently pouring over its Aristotle - which, as you put it, was “lost” to the West for 1,000 years.
And, it was the “rediscovery” of Aristotle here in the West that ushered in the Renaissance.
A lovely story. The only problem is, it’s quite wrong in some places - and, worse still, woefully and entirely incomplete from start to finish in a way that, via an insidious subtext, casts a pall on both the west & the church.
I don’t have time right this minute to provide an alternative narrative - I have to get back to work. But I’ll do so shortly. In the meantime, you might ask yourself whether Aristotle = the entire corpus of learning of humankind, and whether “Civilization” is truly untenable - even un-thinkabe - without his manuscripts.
Looking forward to this discussion. Perhaps we ought to start another thread? Glad to hear of your “concentration.” I am planning on pursuing a degree in Classics within the year. Hope all is well. Cheers, ~katz
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
you ever try to do algebra with roman numerals?
[/quote]
To be fair, algebra with numbers isn’t terribly interesting. For algebra to have any validity it must work with any numbering system.
When I was a kid I used to wait for the day I’d be smart enough to do “Chinese Algebra”.
[quote]orion wrote:
[…]
Meaning, they probably do not crave the cock, but most definitely behave like little girls.
[/quote]
I disagree. We’re talking about guys who believe you can make someone gay through showing him (or forcing him to see) too much Will & Grace.
Perhaps someone’s sexuality is not that rock hard? Perhaps it’s just to painful to fight the temptation over and over?
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
you ever try to do algebra with roman numerals?
To be fair, algebra with numbers isn’t terribly interesting. For algebra to have any validity it must work with any numbering system.
When I was a kid I used to wait for the day I’d be smart enough to do “Chinese Algebra”.[/quote]
Is that more like Chinese Checkers or Russian Roulette?
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
you ever try to do algebra with roman numerals?
To be fair, algebra with numbers isn’t terribly interesting. For algebra to have any validity it must work with any numbering system.
When I was a kid I used to wait for the day I’d be smart enough to do “Chinese Algebra”.[/quote]
point taken, only meant that to do algebra, it really helps to have a system of numbers conducive to multiplication and division algorithms.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
you ever try to do algebra with roman numerals?
To be fair, algebra with numbers isn’t terribly interesting. For algebra to have any validity it must work with any numbering system.
When I was a kid I used to wait for the day I’d be smart enough to do “Chinese Algebra”.
Is that more like Chinese Checkers or Russian Roulette?[/quote]
Say what you will about the Arabs. If it weren’t for their numerals we’d be doing math with fucking Chinese characters or Roman numerals, which is somewhat akin to sex between porcupines or fiddler crabs: not impossible, but rather complicated and probably not much fun.
[quote]katzenjammer wrote:
A lovely story. The only problem is, it’s quite wrong in some places - and, worse still, woefully and entirely incomplete from start to finish in a way that, via an insidious subtext, casts a pall on both the west & the church.
I don’t have time right this minute to provide an alternative narrative - I have to get back to work. But I’ll do so shortly. In the meantime, you might ask yourself whether Aristotle = the entire corpus of learning of humankind, and whether “Civilization” is truly untenable - even un-thinkabe - without his manuscripts.
Looking forward to this discussion. Perhaps we ought to start another thread? Glad to hear of your “concentration.” I am planning on pursuing a degree in Classics within the year. Hope all is well. Cheers, ~katz
[/quote]
sorry if i came off harshly. i responded that way though because your claim you must admit needs to be substantiated by providing a better, alternative narrative, as you mention.
also, as you know, its hard to tell when someone’s short and smart reply is made out of stupidity, or out of frustration.
no, Aristotle is not the WHOLE of ancient learning, but one must admit he is close. If Aristotle did not invent the subject himself, he generally is the ancient authority on at least summing up the ancient positions on the subject. The Aristotelian corpus represents a huge chunk of classical scholarship–either as original work or as an encyclopedia. While significant progress in the middle ages obviously would not have REQUIRED his work, one must admit that even the idea of it is hard to imagine.
Also, i realize part of this issue is a historical problem. That is, just because the scholars of today only focus on a select batch of works doesn’t mean that at the past time those works were the key players. it is often the case that the ancient and medieval work we study today was not the major work for the time. It is also true that relatively speaking, current scholars do not study much of the ancient writings. All this i grant as fact, though i can defend some of these practices.
i could go on, but, i look forward to your reply.
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
point taken, only meant that to do algebra, it really helps to have a system of numbers conducive to multiplication and division algorithms. [/quote]
This is completely off topic and I am not sure how true it is but I heard that the reason the Chinese always kicked-ass in mathematics was because of their knowledge of abacus counting…?
Because of the way they learn algorithms it makes them more efficient at complex computations. This knowledge is supposedly a dieing art.
The Organon was available in the West, and a considerable amount of Plato was also available. Learning and study continued in the West, to be sure, but the free flow of ancient manuscripts that were lost contributed greatly to the subsequent boom in Western knowledge and intellectual growth.
Also, it is only fair to note that authors like Al-farabi had to write in such a way that they would not offend the dominant religious authorities at the time. The Muslim world did not consist of liberal regimes.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
The Organon was available in the West, and a considerable amount of Plato was also available. Learning and study continued in the West, to be sure, but the free flow of ancient manuscripts that were lost contributed greatly to the subsequent boom in Western knowledge and intellectual growth.
Also, it is only fair to note that authors like Al-farabi had to write in such a way that they would not offend the dominant religious authorities at the time. The Muslim world did not consist of liberal regimes.[/quote]
sometimes, in some places. Avicenna just strait up says religion is stupid.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
stokedporcupine wrote:
point taken, only meant that to do algebra, it really helps to have a system of numbers conducive to multiplication and division algorithms.
This is completely off topic and I am not sure how true it is but I heard that the reason the Chinese always kicked-ass in mathematics was because of their knowledge of abacus counting…?
Because of the way they learn algorithms it makes them more efficient at complex computations. This knowledge is supposedly a dieing art.[/quote]
two points about the Chinese being good at math that most people don’t consider
first, the Chinese, like the germans, have a system based on performance. In other words, if you don’t perform, your out. Also, most of the Chinese exchange students that get sent here are the “best of the best”, its not like in America where almost anyone can participate in organized exchange programs. So, one contributing factor to the apparently “high” percentage of Chinese who are very good at math has more to do with selective processes then innate ability. ie, china isn’t land of the free and home of equal opportunity. not all of their students are as “special” as ours are. (ok, i’m done being cute, lol)
next, about the abacus, i know nothing. but what you say sounds more like the Chinese get more practice at mechanically computing arithmetic answers then your average American student (who goes for the calculator to solve 7x3). If you forced the average American student to practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division algorithms twice a much as they do now, then the average American’s mathematical ability would improve drastically.
there are different ways to count and to conceptualize number systems, some of which are better then others for different purposes. ah, but this is a whole different topic.
i’m just always skeptical of this “Chinese good at math” thing. it always sounds to me like these people just practice more on average then your average American, who doesn’t realize that before one can “conceptually grasp” numbers, they need to actually memorize some multiplication tables.
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
i’m just always skeptical of this “Chinese good at math” thing. it always sounds to me like these people just practice more on average then your average American, who doesn’t realize that before one can “conceptually grasp” numbers, they need to actually memorize some multiplication tables. [/quote]
Agreed, I only have a few data points to go on and as you say the Chinese that come here (and Stay) are the best of the best. It’s amazing to watch some of these students compute using merely an imagined abacus.
For the record it is more than just the Chinese that are “good at math”. I have witnessed it with Indians and east Africans as well.
Isn’t Sally Kern’s son gay? That is just too ironic. If there’s is any truth at all to the nuture aspect of homosexuality all [and SHE must surely believe there is], there must be a boatload of guilt going on there. That’s really all this is about with her. Kind of like these homosexual evangelicals who hire male prostitutes and then vehemently preach against homosexuality to ‘cleanse themselves’. And then claim they are ‘cured.’ It’s pretty laughable.
[quote]stokedporcupine wrote:
two points about the Chinese being good at math that most people don’t consider
first, the Chinese, like the germans, have a system based on performance. In other words, if you don’t perform, your out. Also, most of the Chinese exchange students that get sent here are the “best of the best”, its not like in America where almost anyone can participate in organized exchange programs. So, one contributing factor to the apparently “high” percentage of Chinese who are very good at math has more to do with selective processes then innate ability. ie, china isn’t land of the free and home of equal opportunity. not all of their students are as “special” as ours are. (ok, i’m done being cute, lol)
next, about the abacus, i know nothing. but what you say sounds more like the Chinese get more practice at mechanically computing arithmetic answers then your average American student (who goes for the calculator to solve 7x3). If you forced the average American student to practice their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division algorithms twice a much as they do now, then the average American’s mathematical ability would improve drastically.
there are different ways to count and to conceptualize number systems, some of which are better then others for different purposes. ah, but this is a whole different topic.
i’m just always skeptical of this “Chinese good at math” thing. it always sounds to me like these people just practice more on average then your average American, who doesn’t realize that before one can “conceptually grasp” numbers, they need to actually memorize some multiplication tables. [/quote]
After teaching math for 28 years, I would like to add that Asians are better at mathematical COMPUTATION but less so at creative mathematics. Great mimicry, poor creativity.
Part of this is cultural — to be innovative was often a threat to subsistence cultures. That new crop technique might create a bountiful harvest, or it might kill everything and you’d starve…better to stick with the tried and true.
China will eventually rule the world, btw. When you have 1.3 billion people, you produce more engineers, scientists, businessmen, and so forth. That’s okay…the Chi-Comms are pricks, let them have the thankless task of policing the globe.