I heard you like spaceships

Here is a nice article detailing the history of naval ship classifications and how that has been used and might be used when referring to naval spaceships.

Those kids need to know what she's into

At least they wrapped up the story in one episode...

Descarte to Kant overview by John G. Messerly

In almost thirty years of college teaching, I wrote many things for my students, most of which are long since lost. I have been perusing the surviving material and have found some that might be of interest. Here is one such piece. (This particular file originally came with this disclaimer: “This overview was written hastily this morning without consulting the book. If any of it conflicts with the book’s explanation, favor that explanation.”) I still issue the disclaimer.

Descartes wants to know what’s true. He begins by doubting everything and argues that knowledge derives from the certainty of the existence of one’s own consciousness and the innate ideas it holds. Primary among these innate ideas are mathematical ideas and the idea of a God. Upon this foundation he claims all knowledge is built.

Locke argues that innate ideas are just another name for one’s pet ideas. Instead, he argues, knowledge is based on sense data. Locke realizes that we only know things as we experience them, we don’t know the essence of the substances that make up the world. Retreating from the skepticism this implies, he accepts the common sense view that our perceptions correspond to external substances in the world.

Berkeley realizes that we can have perceptions without there being an external world at all. He believes that things exist only to the extent they are perceived, and thus non-perceived things don’t exist. All reality may be in the mind! Recognizing the implications of this radical philosophy, Berkeley claims that his God is constantly perceiving the world and thus the world is real after all.

Hume follows this thinking to its logical conclusion. We have perceptions, but their source is unknown. That source could be a god or gods, other powerful beings, substances, the imagination, etc. He also applies this skepticism about the existence of the external world to science, morality and religion. Scientific knowledge is not absolute because there are problems with the idea of cause and effect as well as with inductive reasoning. Still, Hume believes that mathematics and the natural sciences are sources of knowledge.

Hume’s attack on religion is one of the most famous in the history of philosophy, and he ranks with Feuerbach, Marx, Neitzsche, and Russell as one of religion’ great critics. His article against the possibility of miracles is the most celebrated piece on that subject ever written. He argues that miracle stories are almost certainly myths.

For example, take the case of virgin births or resurrection from the dead. Such stories are found in many religions and throughout pagan mythology. But Hume asks whether it is more likely that such things actually happened, or that these are myths, stories, lies, deceptions, etc. Hume argues that its always more likely that reporters of miracles are deceiving you or were themselves deceived, than that the supposed miracle actually happened. Lying and being lied to are common, rising from the dead not so much.

Hume’s philosophy also set the stage for the coming of the man considered the greatest of modern philosophers, a man who said that Hume had “awakened him from his dogmatic slumber,” a man who wants to respond to Hume’s skepticism and show that mathematics, science, ethics, and the Christian religion are all true and compatible. His name was Kant.

Immanuel Kant was one of the first philosophers who was a professor. He was a pious Lutheran, and a solitary man who never married. He was the author of some of the most esoteric works in philosophy, and he devoted nearly every waking hour of his life to philosophy. Troubled by Hume’s skepticism, Kant looked again at both rationalists like Descartes and empiricists like Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. Kant believed that the problem with rationalism is that it ultimately established great systems of logical relationships ungrounded in observations. The problem with empiricism was that it lead to the conclusion that all certain knowledge is confined to the senses.

Kant thought that if we accept the scientific worldview, then belief in free will, soul, God, and immortality were impossible. Thus Kant’s project was to reconcile rationalism and empiricism, while at the same time showing that God, free will, knowledge, and ethics are possible. (In some ways all of philosophy since Descartes has attempted to show how the scientific worldview can be reconciled with traditional notions of free will, meaning, God, and morality.)

Kant’s Epistemology – Kant argues that rationalism is partly correct—the mind starts with certain innate structures. These structures impose themselves on the perceptions that come to the mind. In other words, the mind structures impressions, and thus knowledge results from the interaction of mind and the external world. (Kant describes many of these mental structures, which he calls categories of the understanding and forms of sensibility. These forms and categories—like cause and effect, time, and space—shape what the senses receive, thus making some sense of perceptions.) Thus both the mind and sense data matter in establishing truth, as the success of the scientific method shows.

Kant’s Copernican revolution placed the mind, rather than the external world, at the center of knowledge. What we can know depends upon the validity of what’s known by the structures of the mind. But is metaphysical knowledge justified? Can we know about the ultimate nature of things, things beyond our experience? Can we know if God, the immortal soul or free will exists?

What he realizes is that all we can know are phenomena, that is experience or sense data mediated by the mind. Since all our minds are structured similarly, we all generally have the same basic sense experiences. But we cannot know “things-in-themselves,” that is, things as they actually are. Thus there is a gap between human reality—things as known to the mind—and pure reality—things as they really are. We can know things as they appear, but we can’t know things as they really are.

To bridge this gap Kant proposes regulative ideas—self, cosmos, and God—which serve to make sense of our experiences. We must presuppose a self that experiences, a cosmos to be experienced, and a cause of the cosmos which is God. Kant grants that we can’t know if any of these things exist, but he thinks it is a practical necessity to act as if they do. We cannot have experiences without there being a knower, a known, and God. Since we do have experiences, Kant concludes that these regulative ideas probably correspond to real existing things.

Summary – Descartes was responding to the faith of the Middle Ages. His skepticism led eventually to the full-blown skepticism of Hume. Kant tried to reconcile Cartesian rationalism and Humean empiricism. He tried to reconcile science with religion, reason with ethics, and more. Whether he was successful is another question.

WH40K 90's ACTION!!!!!!!

NO EMBEDDING ALLOWED BY THE EMPEROR!!!!!!!

Happy Holidays

Meat, CURED BY ME!

I have always been under an impression that making a decent cured meat at home without having underground cellars or owning some kind of special equipment was impossible. Therefore, every time we visit Italy for vacation, we buy some (as much as the air luggage could care) pieces of cured meat and “prolong the taste of the vacation” for a few weeks at home. And then begins the long waiting period – until the next vacation. When I found this idea in a culinary magazine, I simply had to try it to see the results for myself. To make a long story short – the result is amazing. My guests couldn’t believe that this was home-made and not bought at some deli. And the fun part – the toughest thing here is to find enough space in the refrigerator…. So, anybody up for some cured meat? :-)

Ingredients:

1 kg meat (*)
40 gr. sea salt
30 gr. sugar
4 gr. ground coffee
10 gr. black pepper, coarsely ground
10 gr. ground juniper berries (**)
5-6 bay leaves

* It is recommended to use a long piece of topside beef

** In one case, I didn’t have either juniper or ground coffee at home (and it was weekend, so going to buy these was somewhat complicated), so I just used a spoonful of coriander seeds and a pepper mixture (English Pepper, White, Black and Green Peppers) instead. These are, by no means, equivalent, but the result turned out to be great as well – the cured meat ended up being more spicy.

Preparation:

1. Mix all the spices with salt and sugar, and then cover the meat with the mixture from all sides

2. Place the meat in some kind of a narrow “form” (not leaving any space on the sides), for example an English-cake baking form

3. Wrap the form with the meat using a kitchen nylon wrap, put some sort of a narrow plate on top of it, to cover the upper surface of the wrapped meat and put some weight on top (some cans with preserved food, for example). Leave this “construction” in the refridgerator for 7-8 days. Every two days turn the meat upside-down and drain all the liquids from the form.

This is how it looked in my case after two days:

During these 8 days, the meat could loose between 10% and 30% of its weight. In my case, I’ve started with 1451 grams and ended up with 1293 grams. After the week, remove the meat from the form and dry it with paper towels. At this stage, you could also remove the spices from the exterior of the meat, as they’ve already served their main function. Leaving them can appeal visually and also add some extra spicy taste when eating. In my case I decided to leave them.

At this stage, if you have a huge refrigerator or a cellar with the right conditions, you are supposed to hang the meat on a rope. If all you have is a normal refrigerator (like me), then use the idea illustrated above (put the meat on some sort of a grill, on top of a deep plate or baking form, to allow air access to the surface. Leave the meat this way in the refrigerator (for drying and curing). Turn the meat over every couple of days and continue the process for 1 to 3 weeks. The above photo shows the way it looks after 1.5 weeks. After the whole process, the weight was 998 grams, so the eventual weight loss was 32%.

In the end of the process, keep the meat wrapped in a baking paper in a refrigerator. The meat should not be kept longer than a month.