Michael Flynn's Blog, page 30

I just couldn't resist

The Argument from Chance

On the Maximal Smelliness

Fourth Way Corrigan The well-known science popularizer, Richard Dawkins, once rebutted Aquinas' Fourth Way in an article in the Times (UK).  He first paraphrased Aquinas' argument thusly:

We notice that things in the world differ. There are degrees of, say, goodness or perfection. But we judge these degrees only by comparison with a maximum. Humans can be both good and bad, so the maximum goodness cannot rest in us. Therefore there must be some other maximum to set the standard for perfection, and we call that maximum God.

and then he comments

That's an argument? You might as well say, people vary in smelliness but we can make the comparison only by reference to a perfect maximum of conceivable smelliness. Therefore there must exist a pre-eminently peerless stinker, and we call him God. Or substitute any dimension of comparison you like and derive an equivalently fatuous conclusion.

whereupon Western philosophy crumbles.  What a knockdown!  Astonishingly, no one in history, not even Voltaire, ever noticed this before.  Instead, they sought to rebut at least one of the premises (usually the minor premise).  

Now the Fourth was never TOF's favorite argument, it being rather subtle, and TOF cannot say he follows it.  But let us see what can be made of it. 
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Back Autopatting

The Wonderful World of StatisticsThis is a table apparently making the rounds that is supposed to demonstrate that people who voted for Obama are smarter, not stupider than people who voted for Romney.
h/t Yard Sale of the MindThere is something endearingly sad in the spectacle of people convinced of their own moral and intellectual superiority making such elementary errors of statistical inference. 
The Problem of MetrologyRead more »

Thanksgiving Day

A Gathering of Flynns

The Latest in Daring Intellectuals

On the Bravery of the Late Modern Intellectual Post-modern equivalent of
shocking one's parentsThe self-described ex-Catholic Irish poet, Colm Tóibín, has written a novella in the familiar manner of a memoir within the novella, although apparently making the daring choice of not using the present tense.  This is said to be a "deft strategic move."  The literati are awash in awe at his daring, edgy, unsentimental choices, since there is in their view no more swampy mire than sentiment.  In a world in which we are enjoined to "question everything" except the unexamined assumptions of the literati, this is said to be a paragon of its kind.

An admiring review in the New York Times notes that "none of the negatives that have made Christianity a byword for tyranny, cruelty and licensed hatred have attached to [Mary]."  More of a byword than communism?  That bywords are no more reliable than anyother slogan or "meme" seems not to occur to the reviewer.  She writes that "In my youth, stores sold items called 'Mary-like gowns,' which meant you could go to your senior prom looking as undesirable as possible in the name of the Virgin."  She regards this as a negative.  Apparently, the objective is to go to your senior prom looking as desirable as possible in the name of horny boys.  To be a sex object, as it were.  Here comes Honey Boo-boo. 
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On Adams World

Adam, the Littlest Grandchild, he of the invisible friend who died and became a zombie, is now in second grade.  Tonight he informed TOF that the Milky Way galaxy was going to collide with Andromeda.  When will this happen? asked TOF.  

In one-point-six billion years, he said.  Not point-five, mind you.  

The stars will not hit each other, he assured me.  But gravity will be messed up.  He performed a dance showing the upmixing of gravity, accompanied with sound effects.  Gravity, it seems, will go here and there and there.  Earth may wind up in a different solar system.  

I suppose that if he is thinking 1.6 billion years ahead it explains why he forgets what he is supposed to do tomorrow.  

+ + +

I have learned that Jupiter is a monster planet that can swallow the earth.  It's a killer planet.  It has a hot moon called Io and a cold moon; and a storm that never stops.    This kid is a fountainhead of knowledge.

We're All Gonna Die!

For Peat's Sake A number of years ago...  In fact, a great number of years ago...  I participated in the writing of a fun novel titled Fallen Angels.  The 'guffin of the book was that all the greenhouse gasses had been cleaned out of the atmosphere, shutting down global warming and thus triggering an ice age.  Nyuck, nyuck.

Now this is a common enough literary trope -- reversal of expectations -- but the matter was already becoming politicized and so reaction to the book was largely political, even though a closer inspection of the premise reveals that it accepts the fact that carbon dioxide does tend to warm the earth.  It simply supposes that Other Stuff is going on at the same time; viz., another ice age is starting and global warming is staving it off.  Remember, this was just at the tail end of the Global Cooling hoo-hah, a phase of history now falling into George Orwell's "memory hole."

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On the Razor's Edge

New book cover received.  Copyedited ms on its way Flynnward.  Be afraid.  Be very afraid. 

Phlinn's Philcon Schedule

http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2012/11/phlinns-philcon-schedule.html

Long Island Express

Hurricane WarningSome perspectives.  Part of the purpose of this 11 minute film is to hype the deeds of the WPA, and we note the recurrence of stock phrases such as "shoulder to shoulder" that were popular in the 1930s.  But the fascinating thing is how little they had to work with back then.  Also, the good ol' 1930s Newsreel Voice. 

The 1938 hurricane was dubbed "The Long Island Express."  (Our modern naming conventions were not then in use.)  It flooded Manhattan all the way up to Canal Street.

Continued Here