Brian Lynchehaun's Journal

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

On a different note:

If you haven't seen this seatbelt ad, you should watch it. Over and over again... I know I have. ;)

Find more videos like this on AdGabber

The quality is such that it tolerates going full-screen quite well.

This blows me away. Its attention to detail, its implementation of metaphor, the subtleties... it's phenomenal.

The girl-as-angel stepping down into the shot.

The girl's eyes tightly shot as she holds her father back.

The grim determination on the wife's face.

The Moonlight Sonata-esque musical number (which is largely just single piano notes.

The use of the slow to fast moment-of-impact back to slow motif that is common in many accident commercials, but is merely used here to imply the moment of accident.

Sheer, unadulterated genius.

Whoever came up with this concept (including those who put it together) are, I suspect, under appreciated, and underpaid.

Trying a new MMO
I've been trying a new MMO recently, and I kinda like it.

Wizards101.com

It's kinda a splice between Magic: The Gathering, and an MMO. Everyone's a wizard, so if you don't like that, you're not going to like this.

If you want to give it a try, there's an invite code that gets me stuff... ;)

6449D-9LLN7-2LF4M-8L86Q

Redeem this at www.wizard101.com/friend

A Rational Basis for Belief
Given some recent nonsense on another Journal I feel it's necessary to clarify my position. Actually not just my position, but the position held by many people. While the route taken to this judgement is uniquely mine, the judgement itself (if not this exact expression of that judgement) is shared by many others the world over.

I'm going to deal with a few notions, and I'll try to be as explicit as possible. If I say that "if you believe that it's ok to sell alt-med services without some sort of concerted effort to determine if the actually work or not, then you are a moron", then I will try to define "alt-med", "alt-med services", "selling alt-med services", how "to determine if they actually work or not", and (of course) "moron".

First, I'm going to open with some generally held beliefs. I've veered away from my usual polemical style, though I have no doubt that certain people will find the below outline to be controversial nonetheless. To them I can only say: please make explicit your disagreement. If you disagree with my conclusion, then you must (as a matter of rationality) disagree with something prior in the argument. If you accept all the premises but disagree with the conclusion (and have no additional reasons to present), then your disagreement is most likely a matter of personal investment and emotion, not of rationality. It has been said to me that "I don't believe you to be capable of making a reasoned and unbiased judgement on this issue". Well now. Let's begin...

Let's start with the idea that we must respect one another's beliefs. This is part of that horrible, horrible line of nonsense that is Post-Modernism.
( Respecting Beliefs )
( Evidence )
( Knowing )
( Science )
( Knowing that something works )
( Medicine )
( Complementary Medicine/Alternative Medicine )

Clothes-shopping.
I have to study for finals. Which means I shall be ranting on here instead.

( Moron, definition of: clothing designer )

I hate Essays.
I really hate writing essays. I have one due tomorrow morning, but it's such a pain in the ass.

The main question is, basically, "what model of scientific explanation does Darwin's theory of natural selection (as Ernst Mayr describes it) operate under?".

I have to write 2000 words on the topic.

The answer to the question is

"As per page 445 of our text, it's a causal theory. Quote "... induced him [Darwin] to introduce a third causal theory". The end."

Paper written in 25 words. I now need to expand that by two orders of magnitude, as I'm pretty sure that 25 words gets me an F (and fails me the course).

Stupid essays.

Bleach (Anime)
Bleach is an Anime that focuses on death. I just watched the third Bleach movie (Fade to Black, you'll have problems understanding what's going on if you've never watched any of the series), and it raises interesting ideas:

If you know someone well, someone important in your life, they die, and you subsequently (but unrelatedly) experience amnesia such that you completely forget about their existence... Do you experience loss? Could you? Is the possibility of 'sadness' lost with the memory of that person? Have you actually lost anything? Does the memory 'loss', itself, constitute loss? Is there a difference? Is the knowledge of the loss necessary to the bodily experience (take whatever implication of that phrase that you want) of loss?

If yes to any of the above questions: what conception of the human body is necessary for those ideas to make sense? On a dualist (material world + some other non-material) conception I can see a lot of 'yes's' to the above, contingent upon other factors (where is memory stored? does the body have a memory store separate to the mind/soul/whatever? Then there's questions of retrieval and duplication)

On a purely materialist/empiricist conception, is there any justifications for 'yes's? Is all memory *only* stored in the brain? (my own view is purely materialist, and 'no' to all the above questions, and 'yes' to memory only being stored in the brain)

Interesting thoughts...

Science vs beauty
It's been often said that by understanding things, we lose the beauty. I used to believe this, a view that is born out of, I think, a *lack* of understanding.

To see rainbows and be stuck at seeing prisms, is akin to viewing a cake and only being able to think of raw eggs: objects are more than the sum of their components. Seeing only the object is as limited as seeing only the components. Appreciating how and that the components come together to form the object... that's appreciating a whole different order of beauty.

And now, for some scientists:

And if your initial reaction to that is "oh... sounds boring... I won't click it": click it. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

JET Update...
I finally got my reference back from my Prof! Yai!

Her envelope weighs significantly less than my other reference... Which means she didn't put her reference in triplicate... /sad_face

My name is misspelt on the envelope, which means it's likely misspelt in the reference letter itself. And I'm talking about Bryan, not the (presumably more difficult) surname. /very_sad_face

I hate asking people to do stuff for me, I hate owing favours (even if they don't see it that way), and I absolutely despise having to go back to someone who did me a favour and say "hey, that was super-helpful, but... you did it wrong. Could you do it again, but this time correctly please?"

I really feel that it makes me seem ungrateful. But if there's any mistakes in this, they just bounce my application. They don't ask for a correction, no, they just reject it and that's it until next year. :(

[Edit: and the prof in question appears to be coming down with something, as she had to skip out of an Ethics Bowl meeting. And she has marking to do. I hate it when I feel like I'm really imposing on someone.... :( ]

Bah
So not being 'open-minded' has bitten me in the rear again.

Had a date scheduled for tomorrow. Girl tells me she did acupuncture today. Inquired as to my opinion on acupuncture. Gave my opinion on acupuncture (ie clinical trials have shown that there is no evidence for the efficacy of acupuncture). She then inquired about my opinions on Feng Shui, Tarot, Destiny, Astrology, Karma, Reflexology and Reiki (which, for those of you who don't know, is magic healing by touch).

"nonsense" was not received well. I am not "open-minded" apparently.

Not in the sense that she meant, no, I'm *definitely* not a freaking moron who just lets any old random idea enter my brain. Evidence!

(and again, flashing back to 2005 (and 2006) makes me very sad about Brian-in-the-past, cause he uncritically accepted all that crap, and didn't make any attempt to verify the truth of them at all)

And if anyone wants to go the 'that just a Western-bias against non-analytic stuff' route: please don't. It'll make me sad, because it means you really just don't understand (and probably haven't tried to) what these things are saying about the world, and why it can be said with a high degree of certainty that they are just simply wrong.

(and I know that I've posted this before)

Descartes, 4 years later...
I was reading through some old posts, desperately avoiding writing essays when I ran across this 2005 LJ post:

This was when I first read about Descartes in Sophie's World. Right now, one of the courses that I'm doing is 17th Century Philosophy, which is (basically) all about Descartes (and other people reacting to Descartes, like Spinoza and Leibniz).

I still think that Descartes was talking crap, but in different ways about different things, and the one thing that's *not* up for arguing is the Cogito Ergo Sum.

It's not about opinion, and to some extent I'm quite embarrassed by my 2005 thinking...