"Pre-Galilean" Foolishness
I am currently reading The Master and His Emissary , which appears to be an excellent book. ("Appears" because I don't know the neuroscience literature well enough to say for sure, yet.) But then on page 186 I find: "Asking cognition, however, to give a perspective on the relationship between cognition and affect is like asking astronomer in the pre-Galilean geocentric world, whether, in his opinion, the sun moves round the earth of the earth around the sun. To ask a question alone would be enough to label one as mad." OK, this is garbage. First of all, it should be pre-Copernican, not pre-Galilean. But much worse is that people have seriously been considering heliocentrism for many centuries before Copernicus. Aristarchus had proposed a heliocentric model in the 4th-century BC. It had generally been considered wrong, but not "mad." (And wrong for scientific reasons: Why, for instance, did we not observe stellar parallax?) And when Copernicus propose...
Aren't we supposed to reduce reuse recycle?
ReplyDeleteAnd man I don't mind saving the planet, but not if it means more materials flowing to China! Isn't it enough that they still our manufacturing jobs?!
oops, should have been "...that they steal our..."
ReplyDelete"Still" works in that context: a bit poetic, perhaps, but still...
ReplyDeleteWe used to have "recycle bins" in my old community in Connecticut. I'd put the bin out streetside of my semi-rural on Thursday night, and awaken on Friday about 4:00 by a loud muffler and bottles clanking, damn poachers! My sleep was an expense I would not bear. I started bringing my recyclables to the dump after a few months. I believe I was sending them to the "waste to energy" pile, instead of re-use. Oh well. I'm happy that I have no state mandated waste programs where I live today. I enjoy the looks on visitors' faces when I tell them to just throw the bottles in the trash can... "we don't give a shit down here," I tell them.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about carbon emissions and global warming, but I do know that there's a lot of vacant land out there available for land-fill. We ain't running out of space, don't let them shit you.
Someone doing this at 4 am should be ticketed for disturbing the peace, but not "trash theft."
ReplyDeleteWoody -
ReplyDeleteDoes this unwillingness to bear mean that you have ceased sleeping? (Those better qualified than I to evaluate your posts can probably answer this without your input.)
Perhaps my English, is... inelegant ( a nod to the Simpsons?) "My sleep" was intended to mean a period of time that is generally used for sleeping. Back in those days I used to set my alarm clock for 4:45, which was early enough to commute "comfortably" to Manhattan. I you woke me up at 4:00, you effectively stole 45 minutes of my sleep. Give me, say, $150 each event, and we're even.
ReplyDelete