sudo life

This story gets under my nerves.  A professor asked his students to write an essay critical of U.S. VP Candidate Sarah Palin.  The article doesn’t provide any details of the assignment directly, but off the top of my head, I can’t think of any reason why such an assignment would be wrong, especially at the college level.

This isn’t about your views.  This isn’t about whether you like or dislike Sarah Palin.  Reading the sentence on it’s own merits, it doesn’t even necessarily mean finding flaws in Ms. Palin:

criticize
1. To find fault with: criticized the decision as unrealistic.
2. To judge the merits and faults of; analyze and evaluate.

I would like to draw your attention to the second definition, as it is the one most commonly used in higher education.

But let us suppose that this wasn’t the case.  The assignment really was to write an essay that found fault with Sarah Palin.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with that either.  One thing any well balanced should be able to do is formulate an argument whether they agree with it or not.  It is a necessary part of being able to understand anything.

Where is the problem?

It drives me batty that anyone attending an institute of higher education would not recognize this.  It drives me batty that the press are even paying attention to this.  Isn’t the skill this lesson is aimed towards a fundamental part of being a journalist?

I’m planning on voting for Barack Obama this fall.  Here are a few faults he has:

• His recent FISA vote was so wrong, that to completely explain why would not be appropriate for this blog post.
• He appears to think it’s wrong to criticize other people’s religion.
• A few of his commercials have not been completely honest in their criticisms of his opponent.

Those are three things right off the top of my head.  If I sat down to think about it more, I’m sure I could come up with several more.

I fear the real issue here is avoidance of being self-critical.  If you agree with Sarah Palin, criticism of her is criticism of you.  We can’t have that in the classroom, obviously.

Dammit, grow some courage, people.

“We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers. -Carl Sagan”

Philosophy critical thinking, education, Philosophy

After the events of last night, I am sorry to inform everyone that the world did in fact end, and what we are currently experiencing is merely a figment of my massive imagination.

You read that correctly.  Every thought, every sensation, everything that exists is now just the rapid firing of the nuerons and synapses in my brain during the last few nanoseconds before it completely disintegrates.

Considering this possibility as fact is known to lead to madness unless you hit upon the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.”  Although, when you think about it, even your brains are a figment of my imagination, so while it might be a comforting thought to you, it doesn’t change reality…

Enjoy your existence!

Note:  If you start seeing an abnormally high number of references to the following things, have no worries, as this is just part of the normal functioning of my brain:

• Pickles
• Onomatopoeia
• An increased density of truly stupid puns.

Philosophy funny, Philosophy, physics

Recently, there have been a plethora comments coming from people who should know better concerning terms like ‘hacker,’ or more appropriately ‘hacking.’  I would link to some of the examples, but they have been removed. It is ironic that many of these comments came from atheists who should be sympathetic to being labeled as something that has different meanings depending on if it’s self-labeled or applied by someone else.  Atheists realize they are only ‘non-theists’ while many theists have the tendency to view atheists as something much more horrible, and very far from reality.

When the lay person uses the word ‘hacker’ or any of it’s forms, they are usually refering to some sort of illegal, or at the very least, annoying activity.  Things like breaking into someone’s computer, launching ddos attacks, stealing identities, and the like.  This is not how the term was originally meant to be used.  The proper word to describe these activities is ‘cracking.’  A person who cracks into computer systems is a cracker, not a hacker.

So what is a hacker? Here are a few definitions from the Jargon file:

1. A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary. RFC1392, the Internet Users’ Glossary, usefully amplifies this as: A person who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a system, computers and computer networks in particular.
2. A person who is good at programming quickly.
3. An expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be an astronomy hacker, for example.
4. One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to view these as good things – as things to strive towards.

It is a big problem that the words can have such varying meanings.  Even though I know the difference, I’ve been known to use them inappropriately when talking to people who don’t know the difference and don’t want to know the difference.  It’s very frustrating when these people are atheists people who should know better.  I don’t know how to solve this problem, but I’m open to ideas.  I like the label of hacker, though I don’t think it can really apply to me.  I’m simply not good enough.  Never-the-less, I do hope that this post has raised some consciousness about the issues involved here.

Philosophy Atheism, pedantry, Programming, technology