*Transcendental *Logic

If you’re interested in Freedom of Speech issues at all, DON’T miss Neil Gaiman’s post  on the topic.  He does the flat-out best plain-language explanation ever of why defending freedom of speech means defending ALL speech, even speech we find actively icky.

I was complaining the other day about Twilight (as I often do), for being hideously written and revoltingly anti-feminist, and someone asked me, didn’t I wish that crap like that would be taken off the shelves? 

And I said NO, I do NOT; rather I wish that people had better taste and didn’t encourage such shitty writing and horrendously stupid depictions of women by buying it — and that the best way to get them to stop buying it was not to pull it off the shelves, but rather to be just as loud and speechy as I can about how badly it sucks.  My heated soliloquies to the tune of “Good lord this Twilight crap is pure rubbish” have actually convinced a few people, you know, and those people will not only not buy Twilight; they’ll think a little more about the next art they do buy and whether it’s crappy and/or anti-woman, based on what they now believe because of what I told them about Twlight.  If Twlight didn’t exist or wasn’t being sold, that could not have happened.  So hell no, I don’t want to get rid of it.  I want it to live forever in infamy as an example of what unbelievably sucky writing looks like!

In other words, the answer to bad speech is MORE GOOD SPEECH.  This has been proven time and time again, as Maestro Gaiman does such a wonderful job of elucidating.  If you hate something, some art or communication that someone else has produced, SPEAK THE HELL UP about it — but don’t make the mistake of trying to get rid of it, or before you know it, someone will be getting rid of something you like.

Free Speech is one of the best things about America that actually stuck around and worked, and the more we defend it, the better we look to everyone and the closer the world comes to true democracy.

That’s right, I said it — If you want to spread democracy, defend the right of speech that you hate to exist.  (Then produce twice as much speech about why it sucks.  ;)

Ahem.

(Image of the evil ScanTron courtesy of some forum and Google Search.  ;)

So, the GRE sucked, pretty much exactly as I’d expected….I hate tests.  For any information or theory or skill that I’m supposed to have learned, I will do half as well on a multiple-choice test about it than I will on an oral exam, and 1/4 as well as I’d do writing a paper on it.  I was nearly despairing Saturday though; after two solid weeks of studying for the math part I still ended up flat-out guessing on most of the questions…I’m not terrible at things like algebra, but not great + horrible with tests = massive fail, for the most part.   And of course my verbal score was good, but only high-end average, because, well, it’s a $@!ing test.  My math score was inexplicably not a total fail, not what I’d hoped for but still…the experience of doing all that studying and then not even knowing how to begin answering most of the questions really had me in the dumps.  Every once in a while I try really hard to make up for the crappy math education I had in high school, and my natural non-affinity for raw symbol-manipulation, and it’s really, really depressing when all that effort basically does nothing.  I’m not a believer in the dismal dogma that says that some people just can’t learn some things…but some days it really does feel like math, algebra especially, is just hopeless for me.

Of course, I did well on the essays — one 45 min. argumentative, one 30 min. analytic, and I know I knocked them both out of the water.  I think I could argue pretty well that the ability to organize one’s thoughts and write them coherently is at least as important to graduate work than the memorization of rote facts and the ability to give the answer expected of you**, but guess how much those essays, which comprised almost half the test in terms of time, count for on your score?

Yup, NOTHING.  Not at all.  They’re graded later and the information is considered "supplemental" to your "actual" score.  Which really makes me wonder why the philosophy – you know, almost 100% writing-oriented — graduate program even requires the dumb test?  Meh.  Probably they’re just expected to.  Dammit though, their "expectation" cost me over a hundred bucks and ruined a Saturday!

Anyway, I didn’t do so badly that it hurts my chances to get in, probably, so I’m going to just try to forget about it, be grateful that I don’t have to study any more math (well, except for what I was studying so I could better understand that awesome MIT physics course I found), and move on to worrying about all the other stuff I have to prepare for grad school in, you know, about a month.

**This is the crux of why I don’t do well on tests, in case you were wondering.  Most tests, especially multiple-choice-oriented ones, are much more about your ability to pick the answer most people would pick, not your ability to distinguish a "right" from a "wrong" answer.  I just can’t turn off the parts of my brain that, ironically, make me good at philosophy; and those parts can often find justification for most or all of the answers offered…often the specific thing they’re looking for depends on context which is assumed but not given, or on other assumptions I either don’t make or don’t want to count on since they’re not explicitly given.  So out of A, B, C, & D, both you and I may know the relevant fact that points to D as the answer, but while you may just pick D, I’m going to struggle over the possible situations in which C and B could both be true, or the sense in which A is more correct if you’re referring to a certain macro- or microcosm of the problem….and often the answer I end up deciding is "best" is not at all the one I was "supposed" to pick.  

P.S. - I’m also tagging this post "security theatre" because, even though I didn’t describe it much (for all I know the contract I signed says that if I talk about it I’ll be hunted down and decapitated), there was truly ridiculous security/theatre at the GRE place.  I ended up smuggling my lucky rock in in my sock, because lucky rocks might help you cheat you know; but with a semi-competent fake I.D. it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  *sigh*

As in, Stephen Fry is THE ISH, as the paragraph below irrefutably demonstrates:

But above all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet. Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava. Words are your birthright. Unlike music, painting, dance and raffia work, you don’t have to be taught any part of language or buy any equipment to use it, all the power of it was in you from the moment the head of daddy’s little wiggler fused with the wall of mummy’s little bubble. So if you’ve got it, use it. Don’t be afraid of it, don’t believe it belongs to anyone else, don’t let anyone bully you into believing that there are rules and secrets of grammar and verbal deployment that you are not privy to. Don’t be humiliated by dinosaurs into thinking yourself inferior because you can’t spell broccoli or moccasins. Just let the words fly from your lips and your pen. Give them rhythm and depth and height and silliness. Give them filth and form and noble stupidity. Words are free and all words, light and frothy, firm and sculpted as they may be, bear the history of their passage from lip to lip over thousands of years. How they feel to us now tells us whole stories of our ancestors.

Witness, my friends!   And get more here.

Language wizards:  Firmly among the categories of people that I seriously might have sex with no matter what they look like.  ;)

The Ish is also a rare example of words that Google just gets totally wrong.  For instance, this top image-search result for The Ish is totally, totally not.  Rather, it appears to be what a picture that won the caption contest for "Matthew Good in Jonestown" might look like…

You know, sometimes you just need something nice to do.  Not even earth-shattering or world-shaking, just…nice.

In case you’re in the market for just such a thing, I present the donations page for my good friend Psuke, who needs to raise a measly $200 in order to attend a NaNoWriMo shindig next month — and besides supporting my friend’s writing (which trust me, you want to do), you’ll also be giving to a good cause, as the money from the donations goes to Letters and Light.

Please, if you’ve got a spare buck or ten or whatever, consider hopping over here and giving it for this.  I’ll even sweeten the deal — if you don’t have one already, and you donate $10 or more, I’ll send you a free .pdf copy of the Ubersleep book.  Just send me a screenshot or confirmation email or whatever to prove that you donated.

Thanks, Internet!  You and me, we’re tight, we are.  ;)

So, perusing the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as I’m wont to, I come across this entry: 

Dialetheism

Now, you can quickly see from it what a dialethia is — in fact, if you like etymology and Greek, you can even tell without the article; di-alethia means two-way truth.  It’s essentially a sentence (logical sentence, specifically) that is true, and the negative of which is also true.

But I read all this, and understood it, and even got a ways further, before realizing that I was not reading an article on a theism which is both true, and the negative of which is true.  Somehow my brain got stuck on this idea even long after I read and processed the definition of “dialethia”, as if “dialetheism” must be the religious version of it.

Of course, now I’m in love with that idea, and totally depressed that I can’t name it dialetheism, that word already being taken and all.

Should I fold and just call it Dial-a-theism?

;)