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Tuesday, September 09, 2003 |
Socrates' Three Filters
My old pal Bob has been studying philosophy, and forwards this story. A fascinating parable:
In ancient
Greece
(469 - 399 BC), Socrates was well known for his
wisdom. One day the great philosopher came upon an
acquaintance who
said excitedly, "Socrates, do you
know what I just heard about one of
your
students?"
"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before telling me
anything I'd like
You to pass a little test. It's
called the Triple Filter Test."
"Triple filter?"
"That's
right," Socrates continued "Before you talk to me about my
student, it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter
what you're
going to say..
The first
filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you
are about to tell me is true?"
"No," the man said,
"actually I just heard about it and ..."
"All right," said Socrates.
"So you don't really know if it's true or
not. Now
let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what
you are about to tell me about my student something
good?"
"No, on the contrary ..."
"So," Socrates continued,
"you want to tell me something bad about him,
but
you're not certain it's true. You may still pass the test though,
because there's one filter left: the filter of Usefulness. Is
what you
want to tell me about my student going to
be useful to me?"
"No, not
really."
"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell
me is neither true
nor good nor even useful, why
tell it to me at all?"
This is why Socrates was a great philosopher
and held in such high
esteem.
It also
explains why he never found out that Plato was banging his wife.
9:22:39 PM Permalink
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The New Yorker
I don't often buy The New Yorker, there's just too much in there to
read. But something caught my eye about the September 15 issue, and I
picked it up today and just finished reading nearly everything in it.
It's a jem. First is a story by Victor Erofeyev about mat
Russian obscenity, and the unusual place it holds in society. Totally
repressed, it's like an underground vernacular that absolutely cannot
be used in society. Mat is
focused on sexual matters, and there are few scatalogical cursewords in
the language (move subtitles use Damn or something like it where we
use "shit"). "Gogol , for instance, was obliged to omit the
disdainful exclamantion "Nozdrya!" -- literally, "Nostril!" -- from his novel "Dead Souls" because of its distant echo of the word pizda [cunt]."
Dan Baum writes a piece on Jake Leg, a medical catastrophe which is
expressed in blues lyrics, such as Jake Walk Blues by the Allen
Brothers, from 1931: "I can't eat, I can't talk, drinking mean Jake,
Lord, I can't walk." I haven't read all this piece yet.
The centerpiece is Peter Boyer's long discussion of Mel Gibson's The
Crucifixion, the movie without a distributor. Accused of everything
from anti-semitism to Catholic fundamentalism, the movie sounds really
fascinating. It's a rather bizarre portrait (to this apostate Catholic)
of Gibson, too.
Louis Menand, who I know of, but don't remember reading before, writes
a nice essay about "The Manchurian Candidate," the book more than the
movie. I have to read more Menand (and, I guess, The New Yorker); the
writing is great, and he brings lots of fun research to the story. I
was a minor fan of Richard Condon, who wrote the book, when I was in
high school. Speaking of Condon's prose, Menand writes, "some people
like their bananas ripe to the point of blackness," which is how I like
my bananas from time to time, if not all the time. Lots of nice turns
of phrase in the piece.
Finally, there are reviews of the new Paul Krugman book, a play about
Dalton Trumbo, "Lost in Translation," and "Dirty Prettty Things." I
have both those movies in my list of movies to see, and the reviews are
intriguing. Tomorrow on BART, finish off the Jake Leg piece, and skim
the one on Daniel Libeskind building at Ground Zero...
9:17:21 PM Permalink
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Comical Rummi and WSJ
The Wall Street Journal's online editorial page is rather hysterical today. First they cite a poll showng that over 60% of American's think Saddam was behind 9/11 as proof, somehow, that he was. They also say that further proof is that he was bragging about it on the first anniversary (not thinking that perhaps he was trying to take credit for something after the fact). It's really a very funny piece all the way through, I don't think intentionally.
But it does provide one piece of intentional humor, a link to this headlne: US, EU Butt Heads On Airline Info, wondering what Beavis things of things.
3:02:19 PM Permalink
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Larry McCaffery's "20th C. Greatest Hits"
Larry McCaffery's "20th C. Greatest Hits"
Larry McCaffery's
Pedantry alert: Here's an interesting list of the 100 "greatest hits" of 20th Century English Fiction. Fun reading; it's very nice to see a list like this populated with great science fiction works, Dashiell Hammet and the like. But reading the list is seriously marred by dopey errors in the titles of books. I like the way they title Joyce's last work "Finnegans' Wake." Apparently whoever wrote this text knew there was something you were supposed to remember about the apostrophe in that title, but coudn't remember exactly what it was. (For the record, there is no apostrophe; it should read "Finnegans Wake.") Also, the title of Flann O'Brien's masterpiece is "At Swim-Two-Birds," the hyphens matter; Swim-Two-Birds is a place.
9:03:49 AM Permalink
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Gold Finger?. “Remove the PCI slot panel cover(nomatter it with screw or not,if with screw please keep the screw if not with screw please check the system parts box and find out the screw), and plug the QX-1004 on PCI slot with right position,please check the QX-1004 PCI bus (gold finger) is all plug into the PCI slot, put the screw to fix the card on the case.”
Speaking of clear, concise instructional text... I stumbled acros the "Worst Documentation of 2003 Awards" -- an annual look at horrendous writing hosted by Technical Standards, Inc. Funny, funny stuff. [Jeffrey Veen]
I actually have one of these products!
8:49:29 AM Permalink
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© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
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