Aristotle Responds on Catachresis

[9thdoctor]

Well, Speusippus was a nephew of Plato, so maybe that's a reference to nepotism, meaning people getting promoted because or closeness or relationships or loyalty.

Yeah, but who is she referring to? The other references have a one to one relationship to people or books related to the McCaskey imbroglio. Maybe she means "magazine founders and PhD's with podcasts", I suppose that works.

[Selene]

> now who the heck is Pseusippos? [ND]

Well, Speusippus was a nephew of Plato, so maybe that's a reference to nepotism, meaning people getting promoted because or closeness or relationships or loyalty. And he -was- a philosopher. And Pseu suggests psuedo...(Maybe I've been doing too much Spurious Sipping of wine, though.)

I guess we'll have to wait for the authorized tell-all biography of Daunce to find out.

Phil:

Nepotism is fine...as long as you keep it in the family.

Adam

[caroljane]

> now who the heck is Pseusippos? [ND]

Well, Speusippus was a nephew of Plato, so maybe that's a reference to nepotism, meaning people getting promoted because or closeness or relationships or loyalty. And he -was- a philosopher. And Pseu suggests psuedo...(Maybe I've been doing too much Spurious Sipping of wine, though.)

I guess we'll have to wait for the authorized tell-all biography of Daunce to find out.

Phil:

Nepotism is fine...as long as you keep it in the family.

Adam

Don't drag Neoptolomos into this, I'm confused enough already and I'm the one who started this thread. Brain hurts....owww.

[caroljane]

Pippi mentioned my "stuffy tearoom" yesterday, but I guess she has edited it out, as I don 't see it now.

I'd just like to point out that my tearoom is Rennie Mackintosh and quite airy. WSS, Mad Rab and the gang often hold CLC meetings there, where the discourse is often truly incomprehensible, especially considering Rab's Dundonian accent and speech impediment.

[caroljane]

Ninth,

Your cast of characters sounds right - I didn't really chart out the roles, I just sort of channelled Peikoff and let my mind garble (I know, I know, no big stretch). Maybe Pseusippos is Kelley and the Acad is TAS? I don't think I have enough Greeks to go around though, I guess Socrates might have to be Isabel P. Aristotle.

Edited February 6, 2011 by daunce lynam

[pippi]

ok Daunce-truce?

I will allow you to retreat.

Carol:

Now that was quite uncool.

Adam

Yes it was and I am not surprised.

[pippi]

Pippi mentioned my "stuffy tearoom" yesterday, but I guess she has edited it out, as I don 't see it now.

It is still there Sherlock.

[PDS]

I don't take this website as recreational-I guess that is the main difference between us.

Thanks for the sincere reply

You're welcome. (I don't do emoticons)

DL: I respect you for that. ;) ;)

[caroljane]

I don't take this website as recreational-I guess that is the main difference between us.

Thanks for the sincere reply

You're welcome. (I don't do emoticons)

DL: I respect you for that. ;) ;)

Thank you Sir, the Neighbours need to be periodically reminded of my Respectability!

[caroljane]

Philip Coates - you said,

("Of course it could simply be that Canadians are better educated than we Yanks?")

That's a really good question, which of course can only be answered by hard data. I suppose there are comparison studies out there based on SAT scores, general knowledge level of age groups and so on. But of course I suffer from confirmation bias on this one.

I grew up a five-minute walk from the US, half my relatives and early boyfriends etc were American (the American girls were tough and we were afraid of them. Well, I was anyway)

I remember once when we Canadian girls were all about 15, over at one of the American boys's house playing Jeopardy, the board game (Art Fleming was the TV host! Good Gord I am old!!)Cdn Girls v.US boys. We wiped the floor with them, even on the American geography and history questions, even though their entire curriculum seemed to consist of that. The brainiest boy said frankly that he had known us all for a while but had no idea we were so smart.

We weren't! We learned that stuff at school.

Another thing I noticed was the difference in the small-town bookstores. Our history section had a lot of English history, natch, some Canadian, some American, a little European and so on. The history section in the American bookstore started in America in 1776 and proceeded to --America in WWII.

A sad note is that three of the boys at that game went to Vietnam a few years later, and one did not come back.

Edited February 6, 2011 by daunce lynam

[Mike11]

Daunce, I find your first post dated (significantly) but funny.

Bravo.

[caroljane]

Daunce, I find your first post dated (significantly) but funny.

Bravo.

Thanks Joel! I value your chuckles.

I figure if the Pythons could have Philosophy Football in the 1970's, I could take another swipe at Temper Tempest in a Teapot in 2011.

Edited February 6, 2011 by daunce lynam

[Philip Coates]

Subject: America in the Toilet

Daunce,

I first noticed the gap in education levels at a summer Objectivist conference populated by about 280 Americans and fewer than 20 Canadians. It was amazing how much brighter, quicker, more knowledgeable the Canucks were generally.

But it's not just Canada's schools compared to those of the U.S. U.S. public school education (and its related serious culture) is pretty much worse than that of -everybody-. Except impoverished or third world toilets where there is not enough money to educate at all.

Another indication of this, again just within the Oist community, is the fact that the top-level thinkers and writers and philosophers in the movement were educated overseas

1. Nathaniel Branden, Barbara Branden [you can see the difference in education in how clearly and effectively she posts on OL compared to the average and how well she writes more generally], Leonard Peikoff --- Canada.

2. More recently at ARI, Yaron Brook (Israel) and Onkar Ghate (India).

The only real exception among probably the Oist top six or seven really "good minds"(prime movers or major philosophical thinkers) who went to school in the U.S. is: David Kelley.

3. Oh yes, I forgot, wasn't there some woman novelist and philosopher whose name escapes me who went to school in Russia?

Could she be considered an important thinker of some sort???

Edited February 6, 2011 by Philip Coates

[caroljane]

More on schooldays--

But what is the difference Phil? Is it money? In the one empirical experience I had, I'm sure it wasn't. Here were 2 identical small towns with near-identical economies. I'm sure our school didn't have much budget. Our textbooks were so old that in the 1960's we were learning geography where Manchuria was Manchukuo; we couldn't study postwar history because our texts ended smack dab at 1931, so we found out about the Holocaust from hearsay and what our teachers outlined parenthetically. That was a serious gap, but we were expected to fill it ourselves from "Current events" and prepare for university with supplementary reading. The focus was on the core subjects, English, Math, Science.

Assuming the situation was the same on the other side of the border then, is it just that your system has radically deteriorated in the last 40 years, or ours has improved?

[Mike11]

Wait a decade. Our textbooks these days are more about pictures and format than substance.

[william.scherk]

But it's not just Canada's schools compared to those of the U.S. U.S. public school education (and its related serious culture) is pretty much worse than that of -everybody-. Except impoverished or third world toilets where there is not enough money to educate at all.

An interesting pictorial of world rankings on Math, Science and Reading, from OECD countries, featured in the Guardian.

[caroljane]

Wait a decade. Our textbooks these days are more about pictures and format than substance.

"Every man has somewhere in the back of his head the wreck of a thing he calls his education."

Too bad Ayn Rand didn't read Leacock. He could be right up there with Spillane on the A-list.

Edited February 7, 2011 by daunce lynam

[pippi]

Wait a decade. Our textbooks these days are more about pictures and format than substance.

"Every man has somewhere in the back of his head the wreck of a thing he calls his education."

Too bad Ayn Rand didn't read Leacock. He could be right up there with Spillane on the A-list.

I think Rand would hate you-why do you want to post here? Your posts are tearoom pseudo intellectual fodder-I am sure there are forums that would be more responsive-google virtual smug cyber coffee hauses?

I dont get some of you

I am on min wage and get 40% or more taken out of my pay-dunce et al cannot understand-the puffy privileged are too complacent to even move, slothlike. I will continue to work but I hate the fact I subsidize the likes of the pretentious gits that post here

Where is your pride?

[caroljane]

Wait a decade. Our textbooks these days are more about pictures and format than substance.

"Every man has somewhere in the back of his head the wreck of a thing he calls his education."

Too bad Ayn Rand didn't read Leacock. He could be right up there with Spillane on the A-list.

I think Rand would hate you-why do you want to post here? Your posts are tearoom pseudo intellectual fodder-I am sure there are forums that would be more responsive-google virtual smug cyber coffee hauses?

I dont get some of you

I am on min wage and get 40% or more taken out of my pay-dunce et al cannot understand-the puffy privileged are too complacent to even move, slothlike. I will continue to work but I hate the fact I subsidize the likes of the pretentious gits that post here

Where is your pride?

So it's you who's subsidizing Joel now? Will he never run out of women to charm out of their money? Sure, he has good literary taste, but he's bad news, don't give him another cent!

[pippi]

Edited mean spirited post. No need for it.

Edited February 7, 2011 by pippi

[Mike11]

Don't worry too much Pippi. None of your wages get garnished on account of me, Daunce or WSS.

[pippi]

Don't worry too much Pippi. None of your wages get garnished on account of me, Daunce or WSS.

I am not so sure of that.

[Mike11]

You're American. I'm Canadian.

Where is the ambiguity?

[Philip Coates]

Subject: American Education

> is it just that your system has radically deteriorated in the last 40 years, or ours has improved?

Daunce, it's the former. Half a century ago American education was admired worldwide. Now it's a joke.

> But what is the difference Phil? Is it money?

No. America spends more on its schools than almost any other country.

> [two sides of the Canadian border} 2 identical small towns with near-identical economies...we couldn't study postwar history because our texts ended smack dab at 1931, so we found out about the Holocaust from hearsay and what our teachers outlined parenthetically. That was a serious gap, but we were expected to fill it ourselves from "Current events" and prepare for university with supplementary reading.

The difference is that it seems you Canadians were expected to know history. And even to be responsible to learn extra on your own. In the U.S., mothers have bumper stickers on their cars saying each and every one of them is the parent of a "Terrific Kid" and you can graduate thinking that Abraham Lincoln was a Spanish ballerina.

[side note for Pippi, Adam, Rich, and Brant: He wasn't.]

> The focus was on the core subjects, English, Math, Science.

In the U.S., there is little accountability for not knowing what's important about History, English, Math, or Science - the four indispensable core subjects - or for being able to think clearly and write concisely about them.

Several of the states where the Puritans developed the educational system centuries ago (New England) or where they slowly migrated to (the Northern tier and Upper Midwest)have managed to retain 'standards' and 'rigor', but the Deep South states and California in particular are basically graduating legions of morons.

Edited February 7, 2011 by Philip Coates

[caroljane]

Phil, I laughed out loud at Honest Abe in a tutu complete with top hat.

It's interesting that the greatest American thinkers, the philosophers of the Revolution such as Jefferson, were all educated in the classical (English) tradition of the time. 100 years later, so were the Fathers of Confederation. Such a difference geography makes.