Project Work is, by it's nature, an infinitely intellectually stimulating subject that truly succeeds in tingling the cognitive palate. Peppered with components that stand as true paragons of academic excellence, such as the Preliminary Idea (What is preliminary to an idea? No idea), where we spin truly innovative proposals for projects that will probably never see the light of day, the Group Project Proposal (Fundamentally more of the same,but this time we do it as a group! Positively scintillating!), the Evaluation of Materials (We take random articles and essentially beat the crap out of it in an academically rigorous fashion, before deciding to use it for research anyway, proceeding under the assumption that we may lack time for deep research in order to score well for a H1 subject), the Written Report (We write some crap, plagiarize more crap, and wax lyrical about some grand cause or the other, then expound on in detail some hotshot activity which will probably remain indefinitely in the works), and last but not least, the oral presentation (preen and posture before a group of people, speaking passionately about aforementioned grand cause and statiscally probably unrealized grand grand project). Sounds exciting, doesn't it? Are you stoked? I am.
What is the ultimate aim of such a subject, besides its intellectual depth, or lack thereof? Indoctrinate the timeless values of academic research in us? I think 99% of the student population was already indoctrinated with such values ages ago. It's fairly simple. Type random topic into Google, click on relevant (or perhaps even not-so-relevant) website that contains content that coheres the most with whatever you aim to accomplish, copy, paste, and modify the language to avoid the plagiarism hammer. Oh, and perhaps you should spruce up that font and organization a little. Et voila, research al dente!
Perhaps it is to teach us the value of teamwork? That sounds deep and meaningful. Of course, Hitler was also deep and meaningful when he spoke at length on the need to maintain the purity of the human gene pool through perfectly justifiable methods (justification varies from person to person, I might add, for gassing people is delightful to one man as it is horrific to another). In any case, I would think that a significant proportion of us students would also have grasped the rudiments of team work by now. It's sort of an instinct that's cultivated over time, you know, like looking at each other blankly while trying to build a sandcastle when you were a kid before realizing that you could build it even higher if one got on top of the other. Then we have the formative years, in which most of us learnt the true value of teamwork as we perused each other's homework for inspiration, to put it nicely. So, it seems that teamwork needn't to be foisted on us through a subject which wouldn't teach us much about the value of such things, scratch that, anything, anyway.
Or maybe Project Work finds it's forte in aiding us in cultivating our oratical skills! How about that? The oral presentation component will make us all more eloquent and confident speakers! I'm just guessing here, but maybe those who are oratorically challenged would have just a tiny problem with getting their hiney up in front of a panel of people whose aim is to tear your project apart, and crap rainbows out of their posterior, or in this context, mouth. They would then be deeply encouraged by the abyssmal grade that might follow their less than successful attempt at emulating politcal propagandists (Speaking passionately about things we never ever plan on doing), and become highly motivated to continue on the path to oratorical success. Or they might just take a trip up to the third floor of one of the school buildings to enjoy the breeze and most unfortunately tip over the edge, which might or might not have nothing to do with aforementioned abyssmal grade.
So what exactly does Project Work teach us, in its capacity as a world-changing, paradigm-warping H1 subject? Maybe it does help us hone our research reflexes. Why, I've learnt a lot of things over the past couple of months. For one, did you know that those ruthless Americans actually torture inmates at Guantanamo Bay with twenty-four straight hours of the Barney the Dinosaur theme song? Shock and horror, gas me instead, please! Anything to halt the agony! Unfortunately that titillating nugget of information is not entirely related to the project at hand. But hey, did you know that Sesame Street was attacked for insinuating homoerotic tension brewing between Elmo and some other random furry puppet whose name escapes me at the moment?
Fascinating, isn't it?
Digressing now, I would like to marvel at the sheer volume of concerts/performances for the various performing arts CCAs that are inundating the calendar. One could kill oneself trying to attend them all. Sometimes one might have to split onself up just to attend two different performances. I mean that literally, because someone scheduled Dance Night and an ELDDFS Play on the same two days, at the same time, a true masterpiece of effective timetabling. Unfortunately it seems like ELDDFS had to bear the brunt of that gaffe, having to practically throw tickets at random passer-bys in order to get to half-capacity while people are actually tripping over others as they are packed in like sardines at the Dance Night. This of course leads to the age-old philosophical question: Which came first, Dance Night or How The Other Half Loves?
But sometimes you get a pleasant surprise from attending these performances. You are coerced to, I mean, politely requested to turn up at something like the String Ensemble concert and realize that your dear KI Class Rep is in String. Too bad she disappeared before I could give her a flower. I had actually neglected to purchase said flower, but hey, what's a small matter like existence between two KI students, right?
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Monday, April 28, 2008
Musings about Monopolies (1)
Economics really galvanizes the soul. Common sense such as "OMG I REALLY WANT THIS HAWT TOP BUT OTHER PPLZ WANT THIS HOT TOP AS WELL SO PRICE SO HIGH NOW" can be expressed succinctly in statements like- Demand increases, leading to shortage, putting an upward pressure on price, price increases, new equilibrium price reached. How positively academically rigorous. In the Demand curve, we see that DD shifts to the right, thus we have DD1, intersecting SS at a new position, and thus the initial price Pe now becomes Pe1, and Qe becomes Qe1... ... In other words, we take crap that most people, even idiots and nay infants can come to reason out through reflection following empirical observation and make it sound smart. And then we articulate it really well. In real life this supposedly earns you bucketloads of money. In JC it means you just might pass your Block Test.
Our lecture group has plodded over to the topic on Monopoly, following other Oscar hits such as Cost Theory, Size of Firms, Introduction to Market Structures, and Perfect Competition. Sounds positively mind-bending, doesn't it? I'm sure it does. There are tons of curves to draw, not THOSE kinds of curves to those not in the right frame of mind, but THOSE kinds of curves. See, there are two main kinds of curves that might interest a guy. One is situated on the lower torso portion of the female anatomy, and is a sight that many sexually overcharged young men devoid of any kind of contact with the opposite gender may take a gander at on any friendly porn, I mean, artistic site on the net. The other is something far more interesting. Curves such as the Average Cost Curve, Marginal Cost Curve, Long Run Average Cost Curve, and so on and so on, are guaranteed to provide hours of delight for idealistic young JC student. Who can resist painstakingly etching out curved lines all over a bit of foolscap, with the resulting product looking like a child's doodle? (Explains gaffes like the subprime crisis if Economists use these curves to make real impactful decisions, like lowering mortgage rates!) Then we can draw dotted lines all over intersections of the other squiggly lines and assign random alphabets or combinations of alphabets, shade some crap, and label them with random names such as Profit or Deadweight Loss! Whoopee! I wonder if Hwa Chong would consider offering H2 Prata Making as an Arts Subject? They could pair it with the Ice-Cream Prata and Thosai H3 Module that's making waves in Sunshine Institute.
But back to Monopoly. What is a Monopoly? The board game? That is pretty fun. Fun Economics, an oxymoron, or a logical contradiction. But seriously, we're having a blast taking over people's imaginary properties in tutorials. Great way to prep yourself for real life. However, everyone's favorite dictionary site, MW, defines a monopoly as:
Main Entry: mo·nop·o·ly
Pronunciation: \mə-ˈnä-p(ə-)lē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural mo·nop·o·lies
Etymology: Latin monopolium, from Greek monopōlion, from mon- + pōlein to sell
Date: 1534
1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2 : exclusive possession or control
3 : a commodity controlled by one party
4 : one that has a monopoly
Huh. Better than the board game?
Anyway, to better put the term into perspective, let us examine an actual case study in some random school compound somewhere in Singapore.
A canteen stall that goes by the name of Laugh Me Me (or some approximation of that) has been charging perfectly reasonable prices for their product, which we shall term as economic (economic as in cheap) rice, despite the fact that they are the sole suppliers of a... not-so-unique product (but they can produce high legal barriers to entry!). Well... sole as in the sole supplier for 800+m, since one can always sojourn to the canteen of some other nearby compound for a cheaper and more efficient product, but we proceed under the assumption that we all lack boundless amounts of time to frolick out in the wastes.
So let's see... a typical plate of four dishes will cost the customer $2.50-$3, with a savory three piecess of meat, four strands of vegetables, and an egg (but lots of rice!). Perfectly reasonable, considering they operate a monopoly, meaning that they can jack up prices all they want and the consumers can't do crud, because they love their seemingly cheap yet expensive rice with random dishes. If it was me, I would probably have set the price for four dishes at a minimum of $6, but these people clearly lack economic sense. I don't understand all the grousing spewing forth from other venerable consumers. So what if another establishment over at yonder is 33% cheaper and provides 42.1111% more quantity, and arguably quality? Remember that we do not all possess boundless amounts of time to prance along the walkways to yonder compound, unlike some elite and clearly more intellectual giants who might find themselves with time to avail on Wednesdays. So we can all just plod along and meekly fork out our hard-earned, or our parents' hard-earned moolah for our food, ok? That or someone should pen a diatribe full of vitriol and laden with suitably impressive adjectives in favor of imposing a PRICE CEILING (YOU CAN ONLY SELL AT THIS HIGHEST PRICE, HAHAHA) and dash it off to the authorities who might be suitably impressed. Otherwise just keep to the status quo, and let the intellectual giants wander off to far-away lands in search of better tidings.
Yeah, so anyway, example of a monopoly. I really prefer the board game.
Our lecture group has plodded over to the topic on Monopoly, following other Oscar hits such as Cost Theory, Size of Firms, Introduction to Market Structures, and Perfect Competition. Sounds positively mind-bending, doesn't it? I'm sure it does. There are tons of curves to draw, not THOSE kinds of curves to those not in the right frame of mind, but THOSE kinds of curves. See, there are two main kinds of curves that might interest a guy. One is situated on the lower torso portion of the female anatomy, and is a sight that many sexually overcharged young men devoid of any kind of contact with the opposite gender may take a gander at on any friendly porn, I mean, artistic site on the net. The other is something far more interesting. Curves such as the Average Cost Curve, Marginal Cost Curve, Long Run Average Cost Curve, and so on and so on, are guaranteed to provide hours of delight for idealistic young JC student. Who can resist painstakingly etching out curved lines all over a bit of foolscap, with the resulting product looking like a child's doodle? (Explains gaffes like the subprime crisis if Economists use these curves to make real impactful decisions, like lowering mortgage rates!) Then we can draw dotted lines all over intersections of the other squiggly lines and assign random alphabets or combinations of alphabets, shade some crap, and label them with random names such as Profit or Deadweight Loss! Whoopee! I wonder if Hwa Chong would consider offering H2 Prata Making as an Arts Subject? They could pair it with the Ice-Cream Prata and Thosai H3 Module that's making waves in Sunshine Institute.
But back to Monopoly. What is a Monopoly? The board game? That is pretty fun. Fun Economics, an oxymoron, or a logical contradiction. But seriously, we're having a blast taking over people's imaginary properties in tutorials. Great way to prep yourself for real life. However, everyone's favorite dictionary site, MW, defines a monopoly as:
Main Entry: mo·nop·o·ly
Pronunciation: \mə-ˈnä-p(ə-)lē\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural mo·nop·o·lies
Etymology: Latin monopolium, from Greek monopōlion, from mon- + pōlein to sell
Date: 1534
1 : exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2 : exclusive possession or control
3 : a commodity controlled by one party
4 : one that has a monopoly
Huh. Better than the board game?
Anyway, to better put the term into perspective, let us examine an actual case study in some random school compound somewhere in Singapore.
A canteen stall that goes by the name of Laugh Me Me (or some approximation of that) has been charging perfectly reasonable prices for their product, which we shall term as economic (economic as in cheap) rice, despite the fact that they are the sole suppliers of a... not-so-unique product (but they can produce high legal barriers to entry!). Well... sole as in the sole supplier for 800+m, since one can always sojourn to the canteen of some other nearby compound for a cheaper and more efficient product, but we proceed under the assumption that we all lack boundless amounts of time to frolick out in the wastes.
So let's see... a typical plate of four dishes will cost the customer $2.50-$3, with a savory three piecess of meat, four strands of vegetables, and an egg (but lots of rice!). Perfectly reasonable, considering they operate a monopoly, meaning that they can jack up prices all they want and the consumers can't do crud, because they love their seemingly cheap yet expensive rice with random dishes. If it was me, I would probably have set the price for four dishes at a minimum of $6, but these people clearly lack economic sense. I don't understand all the grousing spewing forth from other venerable consumers. So what if another establishment over at yonder is 33% cheaper and provides 42.1111% more quantity, and arguably quality? Remember that we do not all possess boundless amounts of time to prance along the walkways to yonder compound, unlike some elite and clearly more intellectual giants who might find themselves with time to avail on Wednesdays. So we can all just plod along and meekly fork out our hard-earned, or our parents' hard-earned moolah for our food, ok? That or someone should pen a diatribe full of vitriol and laden with suitably impressive adjectives in favor of imposing a PRICE CEILING (YOU CAN ONLY SELL AT THIS HIGHEST PRICE, HAHAHA) and dash it off to the authorities who might be suitably impressed. Otherwise just keep to the status quo, and let the intellectual giants wander off to far-away lands in search of better tidings.
Yeah, so anyway, example of a monopoly. I really prefer the board game.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Stomping on STOMPers
Ah, STOMP, the Straits Times Interactive Online Portal. A wonderful innovation that has propeled mundane citizens like you and me to the pinnacle of stardom, giving us a creative outlet with which to vent our compulsive photo-taking disorders. It has bred a whole new generation of citizen journalists hell-bent on bringing run-of-the-mill stories into the limelight, resulting in a vibrant cornucopia of new stories that will surely saturate the mind with their wonders.
Take this scintillating little nugget I came across a few weeks back as the benchmark:
STOMPer *** was awed by the sight of the rainbow over ***** Interchange and told STOMP that this is the first time he has seen one with his own eyes.
The 19-year-old student was waiting for a friend there, when he saw the rainbow.
“This is such a rare sight! The rainbow is so breathtaking,” he said.
The sight must have evoked many an epiphany in the mind of our budding photojournalist. Many an abstract epiphany, considering that the photo provided didn't even show a rainbow. Hmm. SPH must have a limitless budget considering the kind of bandwidth it allots to entries like these. How about dipping into that budget to offset the increase in newspaper prices?
Such salient articles are all too commonly littered about the site. If memory serves, there was one debating the merits of allowing trucks to drive on expressways... along with an attached photo of a truck innocently cruising along an expressway. There must be some new technology I'm currently unaware of that allows heavy vehicles to mysteriously teleport, else they would never get anywhere if someone in power somewhere shares similar sentiments and somehow manages to ban such vehicles from traversing expressways.
And then we have a whole gamut of tirades against public affection. Such entries usually describe some event in which said aspiring photojournalist observed some couple or the other indulging in acts of affection, which subsequently served to provoke psychological trauma of some sort. Perhaps our aspiring photojournalist forgot that he or she has eyelids and may utilize them to obscure their field of vision? Or perhaps such sights are so abhorrent that they do not need to be seen to be harmful? So abhorrent that they cause our aspiring photojournalist to freeze on the spot and whip out some sort of camera device to further burn such sights into his/her mind, and the minds of everyone else who might lay eyes on the following offending photo? I wonder.
These millions of entries lambasting public affection might actually be better served without accompanying imagery, which may be evocative of Freudian reaction-formation/repression defense mechanisms in which the photo-taker attempts to deny his/her own hidden desires and inferiority complexes stemming from the fact that he/she cannot have as meaningful a relationship. That actually sounded academic.
Or perhaps all this belies an underlying Stalinist revival blossoming in the hearts of young, aspiring photojournalists. Down with affection! Down with any sort of emotion! Down I say! Let us all be perfectly civil and robotic! Doublegoodspeak and all that jazz, you know. Orwell would be proud. Sounds like a movement I can get behind.
So, anyway, the underlying premise behind STOMP seems to be sound, even benign. Unfortunately the execution seems a little lacking. More stringent criteria in weeding out the chaff might be appropriate. It would also save bandwidth. Subsidies for our fishing newspaper price hikes, please!
And that's all for today. I have a feeling some disgruntled STOMPer might snap a picture of this and upload it on everyone's favorite interactive online portal in an attempt to rouse mob fury against the heretic. Repress free speech! Hail Stalin!
Take this scintillating little nugget I came across a few weeks back as the benchmark:
STOMPer *** was awed by the sight of the rainbow over ***** Interchange and told STOMP that this is the first time he has seen one with his own eyes.
The 19-year-old student was waiting for a friend there, when he saw the rainbow.
“This is such a rare sight! The rainbow is so breathtaking,” he said.
The sight must have evoked many an epiphany in the mind of our budding photojournalist. Many an abstract epiphany, considering that the photo provided didn't even show a rainbow. Hmm. SPH must have a limitless budget considering the kind of bandwidth it allots to entries like these. How about dipping into that budget to offset the increase in newspaper prices?
Such salient articles are all too commonly littered about the site. If memory serves, there was one debating the merits of allowing trucks to drive on expressways... along with an attached photo of a truck innocently cruising along an expressway. There must be some new technology I'm currently unaware of that allows heavy vehicles to mysteriously teleport, else they would never get anywhere if someone in power somewhere shares similar sentiments and somehow manages to ban such vehicles from traversing expressways.
And then we have a whole gamut of tirades against public affection. Such entries usually describe some event in which said aspiring photojournalist observed some couple or the other indulging in acts of affection, which subsequently served to provoke psychological trauma of some sort. Perhaps our aspiring photojournalist forgot that he or she has eyelids and may utilize them to obscure their field of vision? Or perhaps such sights are so abhorrent that they do not need to be seen to be harmful? So abhorrent that they cause our aspiring photojournalist to freeze on the spot and whip out some sort of camera device to further burn such sights into his/her mind, and the minds of everyone else who might lay eyes on the following offending photo? I wonder.
These millions of entries lambasting public affection might actually be better served without accompanying imagery, which may be evocative of Freudian reaction-formation/repression defense mechanisms in which the photo-taker attempts to deny his/her own hidden desires and inferiority complexes stemming from the fact that he/she cannot have as meaningful a relationship. That actually sounded academic.
Or perhaps all this belies an underlying Stalinist revival blossoming in the hearts of young, aspiring photojournalists. Down with affection! Down with any sort of emotion! Down I say! Let us all be perfectly civil and robotic! Doublegoodspeak and all that jazz, you know. Orwell would be proud. Sounds like a movement I can get behind.
So, anyway, the underlying premise behind STOMP seems to be sound, even benign. Unfortunately the execution seems a little lacking. More stringent criteria in weeding out the chaff might be appropriate. It would also save bandwidth. Subsidies for our fishing newspaper price hikes, please!
And that's all for today. I have a feeling some disgruntled STOMPer might snap a picture of this and upload it on everyone's favorite interactive online portal in an attempt to rouse mob fury against the heretic. Repress free speech! Hail Stalin!
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Ramblings about KI and Assorted Crap
It's been over a year since I last posted on a blog. Fond memories caress me now, memories of decidedly politcally incorrect ranting, humor generally incomprehensible to approximately 99.938726471899% of the population, threats of lawsuits and nighttime visits by vigilantes... yep, those were the days.
A year changes a lot, doesn't it? My boundless sarcasm has been tempered by a more mature sensitivity, the cruder humor that my class and I used to possess has been gradually ground down to sophisticated wisecracks, and the virtue of brutal honesty that was present in all of us has been eradicated now that we are in a school where there is actually an opposite gender present to offend. So this blog will instead be a collection of my calm, peaceful philosophical musings on the going ons of life and the bigger picture.
Yeah, and I just got full marks on my Math Class Test.
WHO the FISH am I KIDDING? Some things never change.
Today Aasaw will muse about aspects of philosophy. Sounds positively scintillating, doesn't it? Of course it is.
I've been doing a little subject called KI in Jc thus far. It has affected me in many profound ways. Some of them are actually positive. But anyway, it's an interesting subject, but there are many common misconceptions about it. Let us now list some of these misconceptions and attempt to evalutate them.
1) All students in KI are wonderfully proficient in English
This is of course absolutely true. We are linguistically superior. This of course means that half of what we speak will seem like contrived gibberish that will at best earn kindly looks and offers of professional help, at worst a knuckle sandwich followed by a trip to the hospital where the physically incapacitated student would be listed as 'John Doe' in the dossier because no one would care enough to pay. We would of course also lose all hope of becoming fully functioning, er, any sort of functioning member of society. Sad.
On a more serious note, this is quite a serious misconception. We do not all PWNZORZ at English. As one of my fellow students, known only as my Yu pian mi fen pal, so succinctly states, 'Oh my god, my English sucks lah! Why do they think we are good?' We would not neccesarily get fantastic marks for GP. Another fellow student, known only as SR!!!!!!!!! says, 'Before I joined KI, I GOT 29 ON MY GPPPPPPP ESSAY! Now I might get 27! RUIZEE!!!'
Yep, yep. And my most unshakable counterargument is the fact that I take the subject. Damn.
2) All we talk about is nonsensical Philosophy
Here's a definition of Philosophy from a most prestigious online website, Mirriam-Webster:
Main Entry:
phi·los·o·phy
Pronunciation:
\fə-ˈlä-s(ə-)fē\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural phi·los·o·phies
Etymology:
Middle English philosophie, from Anglo-French, from Latin philosophia, from Greek, from philosophos philosopher
Date:
14th century
1 a (1): all learning exclusive of technical precepts and practical arts (2): the sciences and liberal arts exclusive of medicine, law, and theology (3): the 4-year college course of a major seminary b (1)archaic c: a discipline comprising as its core logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology2 a: pursuit of wisdom b: a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means c: an analysis of the grounds of and concepts expressing fundamental beliefs3 a: a system of concepts b: a theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought4 a: the most basic beliefs, concepts, and attitudes of an individual or group b: calmness of temper and judgment befitting a...
Since I have no idea what the hell that means, I'm just going to showcase a typical conversation between two KI students to show you how normal we are. Let's call one R and the other one T. Note that the two letters give no clue whatsoever about the real identities of those mentioned, so any resemblance to living characters are purely coincidental.
R: So how exactly do you know that a table is a table is a table is a table?
T: Because it has four legs and I put stuff on it? Yeaaaahhhh!
R: Then if I take this chair here and put some crap on it, like your old GP essay, then does this make it a table? Also, some tables have less than four legs, then what?
T: Hmm. Well, look at this here. This is a table because we define it so by virtue of the fact that we generally put stuff on it.
R: But if I sit on it, does it make it a chair?
T: Well, but you don't always sit on it, do you?
R: I think it's just a matter of definition. Argumentum ad defidendum, don't you think?
T: YEAHHHH. Brings to mind the black swan problem, where scientists once defined a swan not only by it's physical characteristics, but color as well! All swans used to be white, so when a black 'swan' came along, they didn't know how to classify it!
R: Anikwan masi jin li hai!
T: Oh my! Epiphany! Cogito Ergo TABLESUS!
R: How Cherniss.
T: I think it's more IMMANUEL!
R: You faggot piece of crap, how can you think it's Immanuel? It's damn Cherniss la!
T: Are you retarded? IMMANUEL FOR THE WIN! SYNTHETIC A POSTERIORI
And so on. As you can see, a perfectly comprehensible conversation spoken in plain English. No philosophy or jargon at all. No sir. Who says all we crap about is philosophy?
3) Admission Tests and Actual Tests are EXTREMELY difficult
Quite an assumption. Look at the one of the questions for one of the selection tests:
a) Are all history books biased? Substantiate.
And an excerpt of an answer:
Of course history books are biased. Biased biased biased. What a wonderful word. Why are they biased? They are written by people. People are biased. Biased biased biased. Let's look at an example. Japanese history textbooks. What the HELL is up with them? Japan wanted to save Asia? Clearly wrong, but what do I know? All knowledge is relativistic. Um, yeah. Also, Mao rocks. If Mao had managed to spread Communism through Asia, our history books would sing praises of the savior of humankind. Right? Right. So history books are biased. End of story.
Hmm.
Also, our recent class test at B201, the next class that came in after that might have taken a gander at our amazingly simple questions, and laughed at our simplistic simplicity:
KI Class Test
Start Time: 10.04 am
End Time: 11.04 am
Do all the questions.
a) Metaphysics was superior to metachemistry in being the catalyst for philosophical breakthroughs in the 20th century. Discuss. Also state the relevance of the Gettier Problem to the issue and substantiate. (8)
b) Hume's Fork and Hume's Spoon are direct contradictions of the primary ideals of metabiology. Discuss. (8)
c) Critically summarize and evaluate Harold Cherniss's "The Philosophical Economy of Ideas". (14)
Easy peasy.
Yep, the three main misconceptions about KI, all summarily disproven. And that's all for today.
A year changes a lot, doesn't it? My boundless sarcasm has been tempered by a more mature sensitivity, the cruder humor that my class and I used to possess has been gradually ground down to sophisticated wisecracks, and the virtue of brutal honesty that was present in all of us has been eradicated now that we are in a school where there is actually an opposite gender present to offend. So this blog will instead be a collection of my calm, peaceful philosophical musings on the going ons of life and the bigger picture.
Yeah, and I just got full marks on my Math Class Test.
WHO the FISH am I KIDDING? Some things never change.
Today Aasaw will muse about aspects of philosophy. Sounds positively scintillating, doesn't it? Of course it is.
I've been doing a little subject called KI in Jc thus far. It has affected me in many profound ways. Some of them are actually positive. But anyway, it's an interesting subject, but there are many common misconceptions about it. Let us now list some of these misconceptions and attempt to evalutate them.
1) All students in KI are wonderfully proficient in English
This is of course absolutely true. We are linguistically superior. This of course means that half of what we speak will seem like contrived gibberish that will at best earn kindly looks and offers of professional help, at worst a knuckle sandwich followed by a trip to the hospital where the physically incapacitated student would be listed as 'John Doe' in the dossier because no one would care enough to pay. We would of course also lose all hope of becoming fully functioning, er, any sort of functioning member of society. Sad.
On a more serious note, this is quite a serious misconception. We do not all PWNZORZ at English. As one of my fellow students, known only as my Yu pian mi fen pal, so succinctly states, 'Oh my god, my English sucks lah! Why do they think we are good?' We would not neccesarily get fantastic marks for GP. Another fellow student, known only as SR!!!!!!!!! says, 'Before I joined KI, I GOT 29 ON MY GPPPPPPP ESSAY! Now I might get 27! RUIZEE!!!'
Yep, yep. And my most unshakable counterargument is the fact that I take the subject. Damn.
2) All we talk about is nonsensical Philosophy
Here's a definition of Philosophy from a most prestigious online website, Mirriam-Webster:
Main Entry:
phi·los·o·phy
Pronunciation:
\fə-ˈlä-s(ə-)fē\
Function:
noun
Inflected Form(s):
plural phi·los·o·phies
Etymology:
Middle English philosophie, from Anglo-French, from Latin philosophia, from Greek, from philosophos philosopher
Date:
14th century
1 a (1): all learning exclusive of technical precepts and practical arts (2): the sciences and liberal arts exclusive of medicine, law, and theology (3): the 4-year college course of a major seminary b (1)archaic c: a discipline comprising as its core logic, aesthetics, ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology2 a: pursuit of wisdom b: a search for a general understanding of values and reality by chiefly speculative rather than observational means c: an analysis of the grounds of and concepts expressing fundamental beliefs3 a: a system of concepts b: a theory underlying or regarding a sphere of activity or thought
Since I have no idea what the hell that means, I'm just going to showcase a typical conversation between two KI students to show you how normal we are. Let's call one R and the other one T. Note that the two letters give no clue whatsoever about the real identities of those mentioned, so any resemblance to living characters are purely coincidental.
R: So how exactly do you know that a table is a table is a table is a table?
T: Because it has four legs and I put stuff on it? Yeaaaahhhh!
R: Then if I take this chair here and put some crap on it, like your old GP essay, then does this make it a table? Also, some tables have less than four legs, then what?
T: Hmm. Well, look at this here. This is a table because we define it so by virtue of the fact that we generally put stuff on it.
R: But if I sit on it, does it make it a chair?
T: Well, but you don't always sit on it, do you?
R: I think it's just a matter of definition. Argumentum ad defidendum, don't you think?
T: YEAHHHH. Brings to mind the black swan problem, where scientists once defined a swan not only by it's physical characteristics, but color as well! All swans used to be white, so when a black 'swan' came along, they didn't know how to classify it!
R: Anikwan masi jin li hai!
T: Oh my! Epiphany! Cogito Ergo TABLESUS!
R: How Cherniss.
T: I think it's more IMMANUEL!
R: You faggot piece of crap, how can you think it's Immanuel? It's damn Cherniss la!
T: Are you retarded? IMMANUEL FOR THE WIN! SYNTHETIC A POSTERIORI
And so on. As you can see, a perfectly comprehensible conversation spoken in plain English. No philosophy or jargon at all. No sir. Who says all we crap about is philosophy?
3) Admission Tests and Actual Tests are EXTREMELY difficult
Quite an assumption. Look at the one of the questions for one of the selection tests:
a) Are all history books biased? Substantiate.
And an excerpt of an answer:
Of course history books are biased. Biased biased biased. What a wonderful word. Why are they biased? They are written by people. People are biased. Biased biased biased. Let's look at an example. Japanese history textbooks. What the HELL is up with them? Japan wanted to save Asia? Clearly wrong, but what do I know? All knowledge is relativistic. Um, yeah. Also, Mao rocks. If Mao had managed to spread Communism through Asia, our history books would sing praises of the savior of humankind. Right? Right. So history books are biased. End of story.
Hmm.
Also, our recent class test at B201, the next class that came in after that might have taken a gander at our amazingly simple questions, and laughed at our simplistic simplicity:
KI Class Test
Start Time: 10.04 am
End Time: 11.04 am
Do all the questions.
a) Metaphysics was superior to metachemistry in being the catalyst for philosophical breakthroughs in the 20th century. Discuss. Also state the relevance of the Gettier Problem to the issue and substantiate. (8)
b) Hume's Fork and Hume's Spoon are direct contradictions of the primary ideals of metabiology. Discuss. (8)
c) Critically summarize and evaluate Harold Cherniss's "The Philosophical Economy of Ideas". (14)
Easy peasy.
Yep, the three main misconceptions about KI, all summarily disproven. And that's all for today.
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