Lost and Hume

Lost was fantastic! I am always amazed by the depth of the show. The episode last night centered around the character of Desmond Hume, who not so coincidentally shares the last name of David Hume, an 18th century Scottish naturalist philosopher. Hume the philosopher is probably best known for posing the problem of induction. Induction is a process of reasoning by which we predict future expectations based on past experiences, (i.e. the sun will rise in the east tomorrow). The problem lies in the fact that the only way we can justify such reasoning is by basing our argument on the success of induction in the past, which is circular reasoning.

Hume the character seems to have been caught in some "time warp" and ends up with the ability to predict the future based on what he has seen in the past. A coincidence? My past experience tells me such a coincidence is not very likely, but I have no justification to say so.

Wonderful World of Technology

I had been trying to add pictures to my blog using Safari, which is my default browser. The picture would not upload. I just tried again using Mozilla, and it worked fine. I am sure there is some deep programming code reason that I did not grasp, but qui curat? It works now.

The Fighting Duck

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/michael_farber/02/05/ducks0212/index.html

My favorite quote from the article: "In our bottom six forwards, we look for the requisite level of pugnacity, truculence, belligerence, hostility and testosterone."-Brian Burke, Ducks GM in SI

Hockey's great, eh?

Top 10 reasons to study Latin

Since I am always called upon to justify my major and career to the legions of illiterate and uninformed, I wanted to start off my blogging adventures with this list:

1) Latin provides a structure for thinking that can be transferred to other disciplines;
2) Latin teaches in-depth analysis;
3) Latin allows students to understand the heritage of Western culture and society;
4) Latin improves English vocabulary;
5) Latin improves English grammar and linguistc competency;
6) Latin makes learning a third language easier;
7) Latin crosses the boundaries to teach art, philosophy, literature, and history as well as language;
8) Latin offers the challenge of a new abstract symbolic system;
9) Latin encourages higher-order thinking through comparing Roman and Greek thought to modern life (Stoicism and Epicureanism).
10) Latin is cool!!