Philosophy Babel Quiz

Thanks to cassielsander for introducing me to Lost in the Translation. This is a nice script that runs a text through Babelfish, translating and retranslating between English and five other languages. For example, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet" comes back as "Each one that the possible one was presented/displayed of the other name would think about the one the cake" (if this sounds like one of those examples in logic textbooks where the author tries to render a piece of complex symbolic logic into English, it's probably because the same process is involved).

So, test your philosophical knowledge! Which famous philosophers said the following?

1. The task, therefore is I
2. The ghost has one, Europe, that takes care of the ghost of Communism.
3. The liberations of the sopportato of the man, but are all the part in chains.
4. Welcomely with the Earth inculta of the truth.
5. Which we cannot speak, to the interior of us in having if within calm left that it its

A font by any other name ...

From Top 11 Signs You're a Geek:

"1. If by some happy accident you ever have children, you'll want to name them after your favourite fonts."

Actually, I kind of like this idea (certainly no more silly than Frank Zappa calling his offspring Dweezle and Moon Unit). The problem is that the nicest fonts don't always have the nicest names. For example, Arial is a pretty name but a rather ugly font, whereas I doubt if any child could cope with being called after my favourite font family, Computer Modern (which ironically doesn't look at all modern - there again, those so-called modern-looking fonts tend to hark back to the days of LED displays and magnetic character readers). Palatino would be a comprise - a fairly elegant serif font that could double as a Shakespeare character.

Plato, Aristotle and Dangerous Things: what categories reveal about the classroom

In class this week, I handled the transition from Plato to Aristotle. I hope it was interesting for the students, because it was certainly interesting for me.

First I covered the difference in text types between The Republic and The Politics (how you read an imaginary dialogue as opposed to how you read something that is supposed to be someone's lecture notes but almost certainly isn't). Then I got onto what really interests me, which is the difference between Platonic and Aristotelian categorisation. If this subject doesn't interest you, click your Back button now; otherwise ... ( Read more... )