Which Philosopher Do You Agree With?

Over at The Archer Pelican, Phil posted the results of a survey a few days ago that purported to display a person's affinity for the philosophies of the better known Western thinkers. I pointed Phil's post out to a few friends who had recently posted a video of a Monty Python gig about philosophers and beer (here and here). The three posts seemed to complement one another.

The result was yet another post over at Buck's place and one of those threads that surprises you with its longevity and enthusiasm.

Lest I be guilty of Buck's accusation of stirring the pot and running (though God knows I'm not above that), I am finally submitting my own results to one of the quizzes.

If you're interested, you can find the quiz above here.

I could not, however, bring myself to take the other quiz which my colleagues submitted to. That quiz opens with the following paragraph, riddled with such egregious spelling errors that I could barely proceed.

Great minds think diffrently. The history of western philosophy alone can prove this. I hope this quiz will intrest you in philosophy, possibly provoking you to read some of the philosophers in this quiz. If not, just have fun.

I hope someone can "intrest" the author of the quiz in some spell check software soon. Thinking differently is one thing; spelling differently, "diffrently" . . . well, that's another subject entirely.

Nonetheless, I did at least begin the quiz, but I couldn't get past question 7:

7. Art...
satisfies the human impulse for immitation and harmony.
unless it dipicts Truth, is harmfull and delusive.
stands on it's own as immortal and trancendent.
is the most noble goal of man.
is the idealized representation of fact.

YGTBFKM! I can demonstrate the chances that the person who put this quiz together can even define "philosophy," let alone tell you which philosopher believes what, with a snowball in one hand and a propane torch in the other (which would explain why Phil's results from that quiz were at complete odds with the other two quizzes he took). I stopped there. I would like to take the quiz, just for curiosity's sake, but I kant bring myself to do it. (And yeah, the pronunciation is wrong in that slot, but do you really think the object of the jab is likely to know?)

Peace ya'll.

Build Your Own Hell

Here's mine.

People who plan meetings during the last week of a semester
Circle I Limbo

Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

General asshats
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

The Inventor of Hand Drying Blowers
Circle IV Rolling Weights

The Inventor of Voice Recognition "Help" Lines
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

Folks who drive in the left lane (at the same speed as the person beside them in the right)
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Osama bin Laden
Circle VII Burning Sands

Qusay Hussein, Uday Hussein
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

Saddam Hussein
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

Hat tip: Laura

FAIL Blog

I think it was probably Lex's post the other day that initially sent me to the FAIL Blog, where you'll find lots of images like this one:
which, in and of itself, explains a lot.

Or this one:
which I consider the software version of the recorded message you get when you call your Internet Service Provider and hear, "For faster service, you can log on to our web site at . . . " It's all I can do not to scream into the phone, "If I could log on to your or any other web site, I wouldn't be freakin' calling!!"

At any rate, check out the FAIL blog if you need a brief pick me up. Now I just need to figure out how to submit a few photos of my own (or my daughter's in this case).

Who Said What

I had thought about titling that last post, "Hell Hath No Fury . . . " But upon looking up the quote, I learned, oddly enough, that it didn't originate where I thought. Even better, I found that a number of other "quotes" I thought I knew well, also didn't come from the sources I was accustomed to crediting for them. While I recognize that the internet overfloweth with bad information, and only at great risk should anyone consider it the last word on anything, I've found over the years that, with regard to matters other than political biographies, sites such as Wikipedia are generally fairly reliable.

I hope the same may be said of Wikiquote, from which the samples below come. With that in mind, and the caveat that I've not done the personal research to confirm the validity of even the examples I'll offer, here are some tidbits from a page dedicated to some of the most frequently misattributed and misquoted "quotes." When you have a little time to kill, you might peruse the page simply for the fun of it.

• "Just the facts, Ma'am." Never actually uttered on Dragnet.
• "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned." Not from Shakespeare.
• "Only the dead have seen the end of war." Not from Plato.

Admittedly, many of the quotes listed on the page are not misattributed, but only "misquoted," in that they are paraphrases, capturing the meaning of the original, if not the exact wording. Still, it's an interesting page on which to kill a few minutes and learn a few things.

Cayenne Pepper

I couldn't resist.

Your Score: Cayenne Pepper

You scored 75% intoxication, 75% hotness, 75% complexity, and 50% craziness!

You are Cayenne! You're known for your dry wit, saucy remarks, and ability to stimulate (take that however you want). People in hot climates like you for your ability to make them sweat, but you're also quite good for people all over the world. Just don't mention your cousin, deadly nightshade.

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Of course, I'm not sure about that whole cousin comment at the end. I could have sworn Barry was Saffron.

What spice are you?

The Survey Generation

Things survive on the internet. Nothing really ever goes away. Sometimes, it gets harder to find, but your best bet is to assume that, once there, it'll stay there. Forever.

Surveys are a good example. They can be fun. They can be revealing. They can be dangerous. They can be dangerously revealing.

Got kids? No, this is not a survey question. Well, actually, it is, but not in this instance. In this instance, it's rhetorical. In a survey, it would likely be followed by "How many?" "What are their names?" "Birthdays?" Now, next to each other those questions look pretty suspicious. But a survey will get you to drop your guard by interspersing innocuous questions like, "Do they ever eat macaroni?" "What was their last injury that required a bandaid?" "Are they walking yet?" etc.

In this instance, it's prelude to saying, Get online and watch what they're posting on their personal sites, like MySpace and FaceBook, and the like. They may not have bank accounts yet, but one day they will. And when the bank asks security questions like "What's your mother's maiden name?" "What town were you born in?" "What was your first pet's name?" "What was your first car?" "What's your favorite color?" (all of which I've seen as security questions at one time or another), do you think they'll remember that they've answered all of those questions for the world to see (or at least all of their "friends"--who for most kids, number well into the hundreds) on MySpace or FaceBook.

I took the title of this post from one of the hits I got when I typed "myspace surveys security" on Google. Ethan Kaplan, had an interesting blog post about the same tendency, but less from a security perspective than a psychological one. It's worth reading though.

Meanwhile, our children are likely to be challenged, when the time comes for them to set up security questions for online financial accounts; that is, if they're web-savvy enough to remember that the purpose of those questions is to ask them things that only they would know the answers to, and then to remember that, oh yeah, several hundred of my "friends" and by means of "extended networks" their "friends" and so on, know those answers too. Because, as I said at the beginning, nothing on the web ever dies, and just because you can't find it anymore, doesn't mean that even a poorly skilled hacker can't.

So, think twice about answering all those survey questions, or try to get your kids to, or at least try to school them in which ones are best answered, "None of your beeswax." And then, after you've schooled them, plan to remind them, and remind them, and remind them. Nothing on the web dies, but good advice has a half-life shorter than most man-made elements. Good luck.

Red Square

17.5 seconds was my best in five tries. Now I'm going to bed.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html

Hat tip: JPL