Fiction - "The South Sea Expedition - A Campaign Novelization" Chapter 1, Part 1.1

- Chapter One -

A Lock Without A Key

            It was very hard for Locke to make out clearly anything in regard to his immediate vicinity, so soon after his awakening.  He was not at all unintroduced to the phenomenon of rediscovering consciousness in such a . . . 'compromised' sensory capacity; worrying him a bit more pressingly was the fact that he could not recall when, or, on what specific occasions, he had been so introduced.  Where had he been so indisposed before, and with whom?  There had been company, hadn't there?  He had the vaguest recollections of one (or many?) enjoyable . . . evenings . . . spent in what he could still intuit was a ludic disregard of consequence, but there were no faces, no recognizable places, just vestigial sentiments evacuated of purpose or context.  Locke, that was his name . . . but what was his last name?  Did he have one?  There was no response forthcoming for these queries either.

            His cheek felt as though it were plastered to what was coming into focus as a grey rock floor with what he could only presume was his own sweat.  With an audible 'thwack', he emancipated his face from its' squalid embrace with the stone to take stock of his surroundings.

Philosophy - A Dialogue Twixt Fiction and Faction

“Do you believe in God?”

“ . . . ”

“Well, do you?”

“The frame of your question, it is . . . loaded.”

“ . . . What?”

“Have you ever said the word ‘white’, ten times fast?”

“Mm . . . no.”

“Give it a swing.”

“White-white-white-white-white-white-white-white-white-white.”

“Now, what does a cow drink?”

“Milk . . . wait, what - ”

Philosophy - Ethics - Axioms as they Pertain to Plan-Making and Value Systems

            Life is often framed in the metaphor of the long journey to a destination.  This is a useful simplification, as it allows for many further metaphorical framings.  In life, you must choose between paths when you arrive at a fork in the road, you encounter and surmount obstacles and opponents, you may have a variable pace depending upon your motivation or whether you know where you're going, and above all, you must choose a destination and judge whether the paths you have chosen shall lead you there.  The metaphor even allows for elaborations upon the content of the destination itself, be it the endless void of feeling and thought predicted by lone science, or the undying torment, elation, or continual rebirth of feeling and thought predicted by other belief systems.

            For my purposes I will tailor this metaphor thusly:  first, that in our lives we choose paths continuously rather than discreetly at given intervals as a man walking through the woods on a well-trod path might be envisioned to choose.  At each moment we may choose to sit down or stand, to be silent or to scream out some irretractable remark, and each decision, a decision that sends us down one of these continuously branching and occasionally yet only ever contingently intersecting time paths, is however imperceptibility distinct from the path beside it that may differ if only by a word left out or a glance ungiven.  

Mathematics - Advisements of the True Mathematician

#1.  A true mathematician is a pattern-seeker.  The majority of math concerns patterns in numbers, but a skilled mathematician finds himself well equipped to deal in logic and philosophy as well - because it is not numbers, intrinsically, but patterns, that concern him.  The better you are at noticing, conceptualizing, defining and explaining patterns, the better you are at mathematics.

#2.  A true mathematician relishes challenge.  Never work out on paper what you think you might be able to do in your head.  Take ten seconds to think about it.  If you aren’t sure, then check it by working it out (when you’re being graded, always work it out).   Likewise, only use the calculator to save time!  Never use it as a magic conch!  If you can’t explain to yourself or someone else how the calculator got the answer it did, you are doing divinations, not mathematics!

Philosophy - Ethics - Scientific Prescription

The very beginning of ethics must have been a prescriptive beginning for the prescriptive variety to come be known today as “normative”, a word that is used in many fields to describe the typical or expected.  There certainly could not have been meta-ethics, as that discipline requires a number of established ethical systems to compare and contrast.  And descriptive ethics seems to be a purely modern “science”, concerned with pointing out to would-be prescriptive ethicists the anthropological limits of what they are allowed to propound, denounce, prohibit, and exhort, if they wish posterity to view them with anything but flabbergasted curiosity.  Where the prescriptive ethicist is concerned with possibility, potentiality, and the experimental probing of conventional habit, the descriptive ethicist is content to observe passively and take note of what has been the case, then report back to the rest of humanity with their data, in much the same way that a physicist might matter-of-factly record the natural laws of gravity, insofar as they have observed them.  So the question that leaps to my mind is, which of the two is most truly deserving of the adjectival accolade “scientific”, which the descriptive approach has seemingly won for itself?  
Let’s investigate. 

General News - A Blog Is Born

A warmest welcome extended to thee, 

o great and gaping chamber of echoes!  

Your welcome is a silence, extended to me - 

for now a cherished sympathy.

For in not knowing whether I am to die or grow, 

not wishing any wayward hope to show,

I must suckle the myriad breast of quiet curiosity.

What greatness might herein lie?  

What failures, what foibles, what pretentious guise? 

You cannot know any more than I, 

yet I may dream

Of relevance and wit, and a will to let me scream.

Scream! Scream, scream, 

until some wandering god sees fit,

to direct an echo back to me, 

and that I may happily hear it.