Dear Reader,

Joe's Ideas, this blog, has been euthanised. Thank you to all two of you who have faithfully visited its bedside while it suffered quietly, too quietly, from the diseases of pretentiousness, opacity, and lack of focus. We can only hope that eventually the undiseased soul of Joe's Ideas will find a suitable vessel for its reincarnation. Its name will change, but that small, infrequently glimpsed kernel that was genuinely interesting will persist and someday reappear.

The family asks that any memorial donations be made to a charity of the donor's choosing.

Sincerely,

The Bereaved

Angel of Darkness. Glasgow, Scotland. This is in Glasgow's Necropolis. I lived a stone's throw from the graveyard for ten months and it became perhaps my favorite place in the city. Greenspace is hard to come by in Glasgow. I'll be posting some more. As always, click for a larger version of the picture.

Sinn Fein Headquarters. Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Saturday Links--March 12

The New Yorker:The Current Cinema:Beginnings-one of the best movie reviews I've read in recent memory about one of the best movies I've seen in recent memory. "Head On" is the English title of "Gegen die Wand." Anybody have any ideas why they didn't translate it literally? "Against the Wall" would seem to be a very fitting title for this movie, connoting as it does in English a situation where there is no hope of a way out, that things are going to come to a head.

Stephanie Pommez Photography-very good photography. In that way, a nice contrast with what I've been putting up.

Judging Our Ancestors: Lessons from the Criminal Law

Remembering Francis Crick-touching essay written well by Oliver Sacks in the NY Review of Books.

Ephilosopher :: Philosophy News, Research and Philosophical Discussion

Leiter Reports: John Cleese: Britain to Revoke U.S. Sovereignty

A Prescription for Senile Liberalism

Für Deutsch-Leser
NETZEITUNG PEOPLE: Camilla ist «unattraktivste Frau der Welt»

Towards an attempt to justify the title of this blog

Some thoughts on the philosophy of language.

But the idea theory of meaning has lately been defended in new form. Called the theory of prototypes, it suggests that classes are formed on the basis of ideas of a particular, ideal token. For example, the category of "birds" may have the idea of a robin as a prototype, and then the limits of the meaning of bird (for example, a penguin) are sorted out through further experience and observation of like characteristics between robins and other similar animals. This theory has been defended by contemporary cognitive scientists Eleanor Rosch and George Lakoff.

Philosophy of language - Wikipedia

This seems very plausible to me. My ideas of things are elastic, expanding and contracting, shifting into other categories through experience. It seems that the categories of intermediate breadth would be last to come. For example, the concept of mammal would require extensive experience and a certain degree of artificiality while the more specific category of bird would begin to take shape after seeing a handful of birds, as would the broader category of living things. Artificiality is the opposite of being self-evident in this usage. Perhaps the articiality is due to the number of essential characteristics in play for a classification. If something has a beak, it is very likely a bird. If something moves volitionally, it is very likely alive. The concept of mammal requires more, and less obvious, observations.

This also seems compatible with my inchoate ideas about the importance of probability in thinking and perception. Probability must be at the center of any attempt at adaptive learning and language. Probability allows for an infinity of expression within a finite vocabulary and for neologisms. If one isn’t committed to saying things like “Only moving things are alive.” are certainties, then one allows for the mutability of definitions where definitions is meant as membership of a class. Things can move in and out of classes as knowledge or observations accumulate and things acquire more specific and more subtle categorizations and cross-categorizations. An example of a cross-categorization would be mammal which categorizes across the more specific and more self-evident categories like dog, cat, etc.

P.S. Yes, it's the same George Lakoff who came up with the empty-shell ideas of Don't Think of An Elephant. As his serious work has apparently led to his very silly ideas outside academia, I will remain skeptical.

Life Underwater. Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Independence and Socialism. Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Escalator. This one was published in the UI undergrad arts review, Earthwords. You could see it on their website if only their archives weren't out of commission. Plus, I don't trust them to be true to my artistic vision in their presentation. Who would?

Saturday Links

Saturday Links: a new feature in which I will provide links to the most interesting web sites and articles that I've come across during the week. For the convenience of my fellow ALDaily readers, I've marked with *...* the articles/sites that are not linked to from that page as far as I know.

Foreign Policy

Inside the Committee that Runs the World-Foreign Policy
*The Myth of Alan Greenspan*-Foreign Policy
*Taking on Tehran*-K Pollack in Foreign Affairs
*'The Crisis':Reading the Future in Tehran*-K Pollack in NY Times
*Syria Comment*-Josh Landis, blog on Syria by a professor spending a year in Syria : there has been a lot of insight about the Syrian reaction to the Hariri assassination.
*No Beirut Spring*-spiked-online : often clear-eyed spiked goes selective, shrill, and ideological in an attempt to maintain contrarian bona fides. The selectivity and shrillness will be apparent to any reader. What I mean by ideological is that the writer indicates that current opposition in Lebanon has no right to call for Syrian pullout because those people now in the opposition at one time or another in the past had supported Syrian presence. That's just silly and seems to indicate an ideological reason for condemning pragmatism.
*The Tharwa Project*-"The Tharwa Project is an independent initiative that seeks to provide a forum for identifying the aspirations and addressing the concerns of the various ethnic and religious minorities inhabiting the Arab World." It was founded by the Syrian dissident who maintains Amarji-A Heretic's Blog. The blog is intensely personal and has lately shown the conflict between dissidence and having a family.

Philosophy

On Bullshit-Harry Frankfurt
*Dissoi Blogoi*-new Ancient Philosophy blog from a professor
*Idiocentrism*-quasi-blog by John Emerson, a disgruntled philosopher/generalist

Arts & Culture

Sign and Sight-summarizes and links to articles in the arts and culture sections of German newspapers. At the moment they have a roundup of the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, for you film buffs.
*Al Jadid Magazine*-"A Review of Record of Arab Culture and Arts"
*The Forager Blog*-infrequent, but smart posts on movies
*The Language Exchange*-"writing on history, language, and contemporary culture"
*The Italians: Three Centuries of Italian Art*-very cool site with the audio tour that a visitor to the museum would hear.

Für Deutsch-Leser

*Perlentaucher*-Bücher, Kultur, usw.
*Überraschung im Libanon*-taz
*Was ist dran am legendären Optimismus der Amerikaner?*- :-) tagesschau
*Unser Fundament bleiben die USA*-(The USA remains our foundation) Merkur

I may try to translate that last one because it's a very good article.

Special of the Day

Behind the Neue Wache. I've had this one up before, but I like it, so here it is again.

Kitchen Table Still Life

Rathaus Stralsund. (click picture for larger version) I promise there will be more than just pictures of buildings. The sky cooperated in this picture better than the last. It's learning, slowly.