|
|
||
 |
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
||
|
Online Newsletter |
 |
|
||
|
|
||||
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
Index for this page...
All The Following Items Were Posted On September 1, 2009 Law: The word "law" in the vocabulary of religious Jews, Christians, and Muslims means the Divinely ordained law of the Ten Commandments, and the Mosaic law enunciated in the last three books of the Pentateuch. In the first two of these religions, the Ten Commandments are laws individuals are obliged to observe and honor. But for Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, what Jesus Christ called the two precepts of charity replace the Mosaic law. The two precepts of charity are to love God with all they heart and all they soul, and thy neighbor as thyself. On these two precepts, Christ tells us, "hang the law and the prophets." For Muslims, however, the Koran is a book of laws that deal with the everyday conduct of the faithful. The law that is taught in our law schools is the human-made or positive law of the various jurisdictions, and also the underlying law of the U.S. Constitution, which all federal officeholders swear to uphold and all citizens regard as the fundamental safeguard of their natural rights. The thing that connects the Constitution of the United States to the human-made laws of the federal government and of the fifty state jurisdictions is the natural law. Religious persons believe that the natural law is instilled in our minds and hearts by God, but even atheists can appeal to the natural law as the law of reason concerning what ought and ought not to be sought and what ought and ought not to be done. It is the law of reason that proclaims our natural rights. Natural rights are the same at all times and places, but in the course of history there has been a growing recognition of such rights. Chattel slavery was always a violation of man's natural right to liberty, but this natural right was not always recognized by most countries, and it is still far from being universally observed. In the United States today there is still dispute between those who advocate a strict interpretation of the Constitution and those who think that reason can instruct us with regard to rights not mentioned in the Constitution or its Bill of Rights. The strict constitutionalists have difficulty in explaining our government's foreign policy -- one that condemns those nations in the world which do not respect the natural rights of human beings. Strict constitutionalists have difficulty also in recognizing that if chattel slavery is wrong now, it was wrong when it was incorporated into the Constitution originally, which was thus itself to that extent wrong, and made right only with the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. If I am correct in thinking that every human being has a right to a decent livelihood, then it must be inferred that the United States has not yet become a nation that secures all the natural rights of its citizens. It may not succeed in doing so until late in the next century. Source: Adler's Philosophical Dictionary: 125 Key Terms for the Philosopher's Lexicon. Have you a copy of this book in your personal library? If not, consider getting one. Read Max Weismann's review of this book by Clicking Here.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) Ancient Greek philosopher "Any attempt to recover Aristotle's physical likeness remains problematic. Eleven busts exist, but they are all replicas of earlier works, and the earliest of these was sculpted some 350 years after his death; however, it may be a copy of an original statue Alexander [the Great] set up in his teacher's honors. We know he was wealthy from an inheritance from his father and from substantial remunerations from King Philip. The biographical tradition tells us Aristotle was often the butt of satire because 'he was conspicuous by his attire, his rings, and the cut of his hair.' He apparently gave the appearance of an aristocratic gentleman, slender and with fine features. However, a hostile tradition (such a tradition exists for almost every great historical figure) described him as having small eyes and spindly legs and speaking with a lisp. ... We are on firmer ground when we seek to recover the man's character. Aristotle was, above all, a scholar. Though not a recluse, he enjoyed the scholar's quiet life and the adventures of the mind; only philosophers (that is, educated people) can fully enjoy life, he believed, and all the evidence indicates that, despite the inevitable tragedies, he enjoyed life. 'Life is by nature good,' he once wrote, 'Men cling to life even at the cost of enduring much suffering, seeming to find in life a natural sweetness.'" (Source: Volume 1 of The Wisdom Seekers: Great Philosophers of the Western World, by James L. Christian. If you want an excellent and comprehensive history of philosophy, the two volumes in this set are among the best available.)
Read about Aristotle in The Radical Academy. Also see The Philosophy of Aristotle in the Classic Philosophers section and Books by and about Aristotle in The Radical Academy Bookstore.
FOR THE RECORD Obama's Drug Czar Spouts Flat-Earth Science, by James W. Harris The Drug Czar of (former pot smoker) President Obama is sounding an awful lot like the Drug Czars of (alleged former pot smoker) George Bush and (former pot smoker) Bill Clinton. In late July, explaining why he supports continuing America's savage war on peaceful marijuana smokers, Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske made this stunning declaration: "Marijuana ... has no medicinal benefit." Oh, really? Tell that to the dozens of medical organizations that have publicly recognized marijuana's medical value, including the American College of Physicians, American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Lymphoma Foundation of America, American Academy of HIV Medicine, and many more. Angel RaichOr tell it to the untold thousands of patients -- many suffering from grave illnesses -- who, following their doctors' advice, are using marijuana for medical purposes in the 13 states that have legalized the medical use of marijuana. (Or who are doing so illegally in the 37 other states.) Or perhaps best of all, tell it to the esteemed National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine -- the "gold standard" of U.S. medical opinion, whose membership includes some of the world's leading scientific and medical minds. In a 1999 study -- commissioned by (drum roll please) the U.S. Drug Czar's office itself -- the IOM declared that marijuana had medical uses and could be safely used: "Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and all can be mitigated by marijuana." The so-idiotic-it's-hilarious movie Reefer Madness was made in 1936. Why, in 2009, are we still living in it? Source: Liberator Online James W. Harris is the editor of Liberator Online, a publication of Advocates for Self-Government. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, and he has been a Finalist for the Mencken Award, given by the Free Press Association for "Outstanding Journalism in Support of Liberty." Exposure to chronic stress causes alterations in brain anatomy that may compel rats to rely too much on routine, even when a change in circumstances calls for a change in behavior, according to a new study published [last] week in Science. ... Habit formation is believed to be a way to conserve cognitive resources and make decisions more efficiently, as habits do not require constant evaluation of potential consequences. Driving home from work, for example, quickly becomes a matter of routine, leaving your mind free to daydream without missing a turn. However, some situations require alterations to such routines... In a series of behavioral experiments, neuroscientists Rui Costa ... and colleagues determined that rats that had been stressed repeatedly and unpredictably for three weeks were more likely than unstressed animals to continue performing habitual behaviors, even when it no longer made sense to do so. Source: The Scientist Perchance to Decode a Dream's Meaning Everybody dreams. But why? And what do the dreams mean? Answering those questions has consumed the waking hours of scientists, psychologists and garden-variety dreamers. Psychologist Marcia Emery, a professor at Holos University in Springfield, Mo., helps others learn how to use their dreams to make their lives better. "Dreams offer insight to things that are going on in our daily life," she says. She calls a dream an "inner physician" because it can communicate "illuminating insights" that show you how to remove personal blocks, foretell the future and even help with health problems. Source: USA Today Unfolding the Mysteries of the Brain The surface of the brain is a complex landscape, featuring endless peaks and valleys. This intricately folded outer layer, known as the cerebral cortex, is one of the brain's most noticeable features. But it's also one of the least well understood. ... Technological and computational advances have enabled researchers to image the brain's wrinkled exterior in stunning detail, mapping the size and shape of each fold. Scientists pursuing this new discipline of "cortical cartography" expect it to yield insights into how the brain develops and what happens when things go awry. Researchers have already discovered that the cerebral cortex ... is folded abnormally in disorders ranging from autism to depression. Such insights could lead to better and earlier diagnoses and perhaps even new clues to treatment. Source: Boston Globe In On the Origins of Species, published in 1859, Charles Darwin rewrote the story of life, offering a new explanation of how nature worked. His theory of natural selection profoundly and permanently altered the way we perceive the world around us. The book's momentous impact was not restricted to the realm of science, however. Darwin's ideas resonated in the arts as well, challenging and inspiring artists like Martin Johnson Heade, Thomas Moran, Claude Monet ... and others to visualize their environment and its inhabitants in new, marvelous and sometimes fantastical ways. It's a connection not often made, but Darwin's relationship to the visual arts is the basis for a current and highly regarded exhibition at the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum in England. Source: San Diego Union-Tribune Oxford University Zoolgist Shows Crows Can Think Crows are capable of using multiple tools in complex sequences, the first time such behaviour has been observed in non-humans, scientists have found. A study at Oxford University suggests that the birds are capable of a level of logical thinking, forward planning and creativity only normally associated with people. Scientists say the work calls for a rethink on the underlying mechanisms governing animal behaviour. In the study, details of which are published in the journal PLoS One, crows were able to use tools in a precise sequence that culminated in them obtaining out-of-reach food. Crucially, they were able to complete the task without any special training. Source: Times (London) Extinction: Is It in the Genes? Sometimes it's just a case of being a member of the wrong family. Researchers analyzing evidence from 200 million years of fossil records have concluded that some lines of living organisms don't need a cataclysmic event to wipe them out. They just seem destined to go extinct. The long and varied history of life on Earth is riddled with extinctions. They can signal the end of a species, a genera, or even a whole family of creatures. Sometimes they come suddenly and massively, as in the catastrophe that befell Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago. Or they can occur, as in the present day, when single species lose their habitats and quietly fade away. Evolutionary biologists have been studying these phenomena for more than a century, but they seem to have left a third extinction scenario largely unexplored: the possibility that certain types of creatures are simply more prone to dying out, irrespective of outside causes. Source: ScienceNOW Daily News "The human brain has been terra incognita for as long as we've known it," says Olaf Sporns, a professor of neuroscience at Indiana University. In 2005, Sporns co-authored a paper attributing the large-scale shortcomings of comprehensive neuroscience research to a lack of a foundational, anatomical description of the brain: In order to properly navigate this "unknown land," he said, we must first draw a map. Sporns proposed calling this map the "connectome." As a thorough atlas of the connections in the brain, the name deliberately conjures associations with the enormously successful human genome map that had been sequenced two years prior. Now, four years after Sporns' initial paper, the National Institutes of Health Blueprint for Neuroscience Research is launching the $30 million Human Connectome Project (HCP) in hopes of creating a comprehensive map of a healthy adult brain by 2015. Source: Seed Why Humans Can't Navigate Out of a Paper Bag ... [The] feeling of getting hopelessly lost is something that most of us can relate to. In fact, along with our flair for language and our unparalleled intelligence, less-than-stellar navigational skills are among the things that can be considered uniquely human. While the vast majority of animals have no trouble finding their way around, most people, when stripped of maps or signs, are notoriously bad at it. A handful are so terrible at orienting themselves, even in places they know well, that they rarely leave the house alone. ... Until recently, little was known about how the human inner compass works. This is partly because "sense of direction" is not one neatly defined ability. Instead, it is made up of many different skills, such as awareness and memory of your surroundings, sensing your speed and direction changes over time, and tracking the location of objects and places relative to you as you move through an environment. These skills rely on many different parts of the brain, including those involved in vision, memory and imagination, which are tied together into a "cognitive map" by the hippocampus. Now researchers have begun to unravel how this system works ... Source: New Scientist Study Finds People Who Multitask Often Bad at It The people who multitask the most are the ones who are worst at it. That's the surprising conclusion of researchers at Stanford University, who found multitaskers are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking. "The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked," Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford's communications department, said in a telephone interview. The researchers studied 262 college undergraduates, dividing them into high and low multitasking groups and comparing such things as memory, ability to switch from one task to another and being able to focus on a task. Their findings are reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When it came to such essential abilities, people who did a lot of multitasking didn't score as well as others, Nass said. Source: San Diego Union-Tribune Guilt and Atonement on the Path to Adulthood ... Guilt in its many varieties--Puritan, Catholic, Jewish, etc.--has often gotten a bad rap, but psychologists keep finding evidence of its usefulness. Too little guilt clearly has a downside--most obviously in sociopaths who feel no remorse, but also in kindergartners who smack other children and snatch their toys. Children typically start to feel guilt in their second year of life, says Grazyna Kochanska, who has been tracking children's development for two decades in her laboratory at the University of Iowa. Some children's temperament makes them prone to guilt, she said, and some become more guilt-prone thanks to parents and other early influences. ... In Dr. Kochanska's latest studies, published in the August issue of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, she and colleagues found that 2-year-olds who showed more chagrin during a broken-toy experiment went on to have fewer behavioral problems over the next five years. That was true even for the ones who scored low on tests measuring their ability to focus on tasks and suppress strong desires to act impulsively. Source: New York Times The number zero as we know it arrived in the West circa 1200, most famously delivered by Italian mathematician Fibonacci (aka Leonardo of Pisa), who brought it, along with the rest of the Arabic numerals, back from his travels to north Africa. But the history of zero, both as a concept and a number, stretches far deeper into history--so deep, in fact, that its provenance is difficult to nail down. "There are at least two discoveries, or inventions, of zero," says Charles Seife, author of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Viking, 2000). "The one that we got the zero from came from the Fertile Crescent." It first came to be between 400 and 300 B.C. in Babylon, Seife says, before developing in India, wending its way through northern Africa and, in Fibonacci's hands, crossing into Europe via Italy. Initially, zero functioned as a mere placeholder--a way to tell 1 from 10 from 100, to give an example using Arabic numerals. Source: Scientific American
COUNSELING CORNER: How Fights Get Started . . . One year, a husband decided to buy his mother-in-law a cemetery plot as a Christmas gift. The next year, he didn't buy her a gift. When she asked him why, he replied, "Well, you still haven't used the gift I bought you last year!" And that's how the fight started..... A man's wife walked into the den and asked "What's on the TV?" He replied "Dust." And that's how the fight started..... A woman is standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror. She is not happy with what she sees and says to her husband, "I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment." The husband replies, "Your eyesight's damn near perfect." And that's how the fight started..... A man's wife was hinting about what she wanted for their upcoming anniversary. She said, "I want something shiny that goes from 0 to 200 in about 3 seconds." He bought her a bathroom scale. And that's how the fight started..... A man asked his wife, "Where do you want to go for our anniversary?" It warmed his heart to see her face melt in sweet appreciation. "Somewhere I haven't been in a long time!" she said. So he suggested, "How about the kitchen?" And that's when the fight started.... A man and his wife are watching "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" while they were in bed. He turned to her and asked, "Do you want to make love?" "No," she answered. He then said, "Is that your final answer?" She didn't even look at him this time, simply saying "Yes." So he said, "Then I'd like to phone a friend." And that's when the fight started.... A man tried to talk his wife into buying a case of Miller Light for $14.95. Instead, she bought a jar of cold cream for $7.95. He told her the beer would make her look better at night than the cold cream. And that's when the fight started..... A man and his wife were sitting at a table at his high school reunion, and he kept staring at a drunken lady swigging her drink as she sat alone at a nearby table. His wife asked, "Do you know her?" "Yes," he sighed, "She's my old girlfriend. I understand she took to drinking right after we split up those many years ago, and I hear she hasn't been sober since." "My God!" says his wife. "Who would think a person could go on celebrating that long?" And that's when the fight started..... Joe rear-ended a car one morning. So, there he was alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car. You know how sometimes you just get soooo stressed and little things just seem funny? Yeah, well he couldn't believe it. The other driver was a DWARF!!! He stormed over to Joe's car, looked up at him, and shouted, "I AM NOT HAPPY!!!" So, Joe looked down at him and said, "Well, then which one are you?" And that's when the fight started..... A man took his wife to a restaurant. The waiter, for some reason, took his order first. "I'll have the strip steak, medium rare, please." The waiter asked, "Aren't you worried about the mad cow?" The man replied, "'Nah, she can order for herself." And that's when the fight started......
A LITTLE OF THIS & A LITTLE OF THAT A Little Wisdom: "The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live." -- Morris Adler. A Little Advice: Don't interfere with something that ain't botherin' you none. A Little Quip: Thousands of years ago, cats were worshipped as gods. Cats have never forgotten this. A Little Proverb: Tell me and I forget. Show me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. A Little Request: DEAR IRS, Please cancel my subscription. A Little Reflection: Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its students. A Little One-Liner: He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead. A Little Admission: At the end of the money I always have some month left. A Little Observation: What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their own prejudices. A Little Warning: It is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. A Little Quote: "In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but how many can get through to you." Mortimer Adler, American philosopher. A Little Put-Down: Quote from the Boss: "I didn't say it was your fault. I said I was going to blame it on you."
|
|
|
Newsletter Front Page |
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
||
[Homepage] [Newsletter] [Search] [Support the Academy] [Link to Us] [Contact the Academy] [Citing Articles from Our Website] [Privacy Policy & Disclaimer]
Copyright 1998-99, 2000-01, 2002-03, 2004-05, 2006-07, & 2008-09 by The Radical Academy. All Rights Reserved.