yes it can lead to alot of contemplations when sit back and think about it.

The best philosophy is the one that works best for you

The Fool has always interested me. For many years I have watched numerous cartoons in various countries that so happened to always have a character as the fool that represented cowardness physically, but great wit mentally.

How it all started? The history, the beginnings of such characteristics doesn't seem to be easy to find, besides looking at jesters in medieval times.

Anyway, I am sure we all pose this characteristic occassionally.

Sorry for being off topic by the way.

Please don't shoot me down!

Perhaps a unintelligent universe doesn't know it is working logically? It is an act of luck?

Perhaps a intelligent universe is functioning illogically on purpose or without control. Does that make sense?

Not that I am a expert or anything, but I am sure there are many variations people can play around with to try to figure out what or how it all was created. To me it seems like an impossible feat.

I would rather just believe that this following created the designs of everything we now enjoy

-------------) . (-------------

Stare at it for a good moment and believe!

Will there ever be a day someone will come up with a better method to perfect it? That would be interesting to know

I really have to find a book on Zeno and see what you are exactly talking about.

When taxes get raised for corporations, corporations will find ways to get around it. They pay it but will do something to the product to make up for it. For example make the boxes smaller, less cigerattes in a pack, cheaper quality by a few milligrams, etc. etc. The consumer usually is the one who suffers in the end and what makes it worse is we allow it to happen.

Oh come on! Sky, Creative, Jeanniebean, Abra, Shoku, Redy, Billybush, Lamuerte, jrborgie!

You all are experts on this topic. I am sure you can give an logical opinion on it.

Just don't raise your eyebrows like Spock always did. That means you had to give it some thought.

It seems that the governments as of the international banks have us where they want them.

With that being said, these huge monopolies know that the majority of the people around the world cannot afford too much and set prices to encourage most of the people to come to them.

I mean the mentality for most is "if it is cheaper then I will go there" to get whatever is needed.

For example now that Christmas is coming around "Walmarkt made sure to advertise their christmas trees as the cheapest to get for most city folks. I could imagine for the country folks they just go out to their backyard and chop one down.

I too favor small businesses for they are more personal. I like the idea that a store represenative can call out your first name and offer a good quality service that guarantees you are not being ripped off at the moment as I have always experienced thus far in Miami when going to these corporational stores.

How this issue can be resolved. Perhaps it is a bit too late now, yet also perhaps the power of the corporations will also crumble one day from so much greed that it will go back to small stores again.

With a population of 6.6 billion, I feel that corporations will strive economically strong because the majority of those people are poor or below average and can only afford the prices that are offered.

Then we look at Germany. Now their motto is "quality" before "quanitity" and for some reason it works. It works so good that this small country has managed to be one of the biggest exporters in the world surpassing a couple of years as the biggest exporter, yet what I think it is, is they just concentrate on selling primarily to the rich who have the money or credit as oppossed to for example China, Indonesia, Mexico, and India who want to serve primarily the poor and middle class income.

Whatever the cause I certainly don't see any peaceful alternative in stopping monopolies in going their course, yet I would be interested to see ideas that don't start wars (if even possible) if anyone has them.

This idea first appeared early in the second half of the first millennium BC, when teachers in India, Greece, and China showed an intense interest in formulating rules for the correct use of reason. Practical issues probably underpinned these movements: for pleading in courts, arguing between embassies, persuading enemies, and extolling rulers, it was important to make arguments watertight. There was a vital by product” rules for differentiating truths from falsehoods.

The most rigorous and systematic exposition was Aristotle’s strapping common sense into intelligible rules. If we think we understand him, it is because he taught us how to think. To this day, even people who have barely heard of him use the techniques he taught, which have seeped into the way we think through the channels of tradition. He was the best ever analyst of how reason works, inasmuch as it works at all.

According to Aristotle, or to a doctrine he wrote down, all valid arguments can be broken up into more-or-less identical phases, in which a necessary conclusion can be inferred from two premises established by prior demonstration or agreement. If the premises are – in what has become the standard syllogism-“Men are Mortal” and “Socrates is a man,” it follows that Socrates is mortal.

There is a flourish of the conjurer’s wand about the method. The whole art and science of logic after Aristotle became focused on improving his rules for distinguishing valid arguments from misleading ones (like “Socrates is a mortal; Socrates is a man ‘therefore all men are mortal”). By the time his followers had finished, arguments seem unbearably cumbersome, over-analyzed into 256 distinct types.

This was a method akin to mathematics: two and two make four irrespective of whether they are two eggs and two irons, or two mice and two men. The rules of logic yield the same results, whatever the subject matter; indeed, you can suppress the subject matter altogether and replace it with algebraic-style symbols. Clearly the system was imperfect.

There have to be axioms to start from: propositions deemed to be true that cannot be tested within the system. Aristotle saw no conflict between reason and observation or experience; he thought all were means of establishing truth. His legacy, however, made it possible to take sides, and people have done so ever since – some mistrusting “science” and doubting the reliability of evidence.

A roughly the same time in India, the Nyaya school of commentators on the ancient texts demonstrated their own confidence in reason and analyzed its processes in five-stage breakdowns that resembled syllogisms. Their concept, however, was in one fundamental way different from Aristotle’s: they claimed reason was a kind of extraordinary perception, conferred by God; nor were they strictly rationalists, for they believed meaning did not arise in the mind but was conferred on the objects of thought by God, tradition, or consensus.

“Illogical Captain”

The “mechanical” application of logic – famously championed by the half-Vulcan Mr. Spock from the television series Star Trek – appears alien to some, to others a sign of distinctively human rationality.



Man versus machine – When chess master Garry Kasparow took on the IBM computer “Deep Blue” in 1986 and 1987; it seemed to be an ideal way of testing pure logic against the more creative, if erratic, powers of the human brain. Man and machine won one game each.



And as usual a quote I will leave behind:

“Contrawise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it weren’t so, it would be: but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.” – Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass (1872)

Good readings on this topic include:

I.Bochenski’s “A History of Formal Logic (1956) is an excellent introduction.

W.H.C. Guthrie’s “Aristotle (1981) describes brilliantly the author’s “encounter” with Aristotle’s thought, while J.Lukasievic’s “Aristotle’s Syllogistic (1957) is a valuable technical exposition.

C. Habsmeier’s “Science and Civilization in China (1998), R. Collin’s “ The Sociology of Philosophies” (1998), and J. Goody’s “The East in the West” (1996) help set Greek logic in its global context.

I could imagine, yet I wonder if any of these multi rich mongols ever have a guilty conscience sitting on stacks of money while a large portion of the world is eating rice and stale salty fish under a shack that has no clean appliances for basic necesseties?

I have the impression that if they don't see it then it doesn't pertain to them.

Then perhaps if you care less then you should tell your government to stop putting their affairs in everyones business. You guys have over 500 bases distributed world wide acting as if they are a world's police determining how each country should live. Countries are getting tired of it rather you want to see it or not. Perhaps ask the inhabitants about this to get a better understanding of how they feel about it.

Second the term "care less" is exactly the attitude many Americans have. It is too bad that such an attitude persists instead of trying to understand countries and respecting their wishes for their own beliefs.

Third - Your prejudice for Muslims is unwarranted. They pretty much keep their affairs in the Middle East and are not trying to be a world police. Muslims are everywhere in the world and most of them are good people that also only want to live a normal life. Such prejudice needs to stop on both sides and especially between the Christians, Muslims, and Jews, which are all of mediterrenean origin. Their hatred and prejudice needs to stop amongst each other. It is getting old for alot of people who wish only to live in peace.

The idea that money-making enterprise is virtuous- or at least compatible with virtue – seems to be unshakable in the minds of the rich, for whom it is a self-justifying doctrine, and the poor, for whom it is a focus of inspiration. It is well documented in biblical Judaism, which represented worldly success as a sign of divine favor. It is the theme of many early Buddhist stories about the sanctity and nobility of merchants; for example, Jatakas, which perhaps dates from as early as the 3rd century BC.

Yet the idea was challenged by moralists and many ancient societies evinced hostility toward capitalism by practicing state controlled trade or representing trade as “tribute.” The earliest systematic defense of a capitalist way of life was probably drawn up in the 6th century BC by Mahavira, the founding sage of Jainism. Only monastic self-abnegation, in his view, was fully meritorious, but at least he regarded wealth-creation as morally neutral, as long as the rich man relieved the needs of his neighbors and labored “that many may enjoy what he earns.”

This anticipates modern capitalist theorists’ main moral justification” the wealthy “give employment to the artisan.” Their prosperity “trickles down” to enrich the whole of society.
The doctrine has remained contentious. Hindus, for instance, often represent trade as incompatible with high caste. Confucianism regards commerce as an inferior calling. Aristocratic prejudice usually despises it. Christian tradition questions capitalists’ fitness for heaven. Poverty is regarded as a qualification for sanctity in many religious traditions.

Common experience condemns unregulated enterprise as inherently unjust on the grounds that it rewards the most competitive, the most cut-throat, and the most selfish, and misrepresents greed as good. The consequence, critics say, is a society of exploitation. Socialism proposed an alternative” commerce should become the monopoly of the state.

In practice, where this was tried, it simply transferred immorality to the public sphere on a gigantic scale, creating “state capitalism.”
Capitalism has come to mean different things to different people. Karl Marx used it as the name of a historical period - phase of society in which power is concentrated in the hands of people who dispose of movable wealth, rather than those who own land or make their living from their labor. Economists treat it as a system regulated by the “invisible hand” of market forces, rather than by the state. The essence of capitalism, however, is always privilege accorded to wealth-creation.

Today, capitalism has come to be accepted almost universally as the “least worst” basis for an economic system. However, its deficiencies – which take the form of market instability, undemocratic abuses of corporate power, gross social inequalities, and the “fat-cat” behavior of some capitalists – keep people searching for a “third way,” retaining the benefits of capitalism but controlling it excesses.



Do you favor capitalism? If you don’t what other alternative could you suggest? If you do favor capitalism explain your reasons.

And as usual I will end this with a quote:

“Capitalism wisely managed can probably be made more efficient…than any alternative system…but…is…extremely objectionable.” – John Maynard Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire(1926)


Suggested readings that I used:

K. Marx’s “Das Kapital (1867) remains the great critique of capitalism.

M. Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom” (1982) mounts an impressive defense.

A. Gidden’s “The Third Way” (1998) is the strongest – yet disturbingly vague – voice for a “third way” in economics.

M. Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” (1904) advanced the now discredited claim that capitalism is peculiarly linked with Protestantism.

Do you favor capitalism? If you don’t what other alternative could you suggest? If you do favor capitalism explain your reasons.

So as the Americans criticize their president as if he makes all the decisions when in actuality Congress makes them with a heavy influence of corporate lobbyists ask yourself if this is true or false.

Since 1945 by deed and by example the United States has overthrown 50 governments including Democracies and crushed some 30 liberation movements and bombed countless men, women, and children.

Do you believe America is a nation of "morale ideals" and that other countries should follow them?

Ask yourself with such a record do you expect other countries to simply agree with American policies and decisions immediately without first checking with their own government and its people?

If not then one has to think about what kind of leadership do you want in Congress? Who should you truly vote for to make better decisions to ensure peace not only in this country that is so divided on a great many of topics, but also for the world.

Yeah I wish! I really enjoy his movies and his philosophy.

I just used his philosophy on ying and yang when saying the glaciers are melting and at other times it isn't melting.

Yes very true. Data can be construed at times, yet it is amazing how many scientists are divided on the issue of global warming.

if that works for the individual then be my guest.

and I used less words to explain my point! Now just imagine that

Shaq will be a great to help their original center get some rest. Cavailiers might take the whole thing this year.

NJ Nets can still play good ball. Just a slow start and it is too earlier to tell.

Nuggets were really good last season and from the loss they had they are now going all force. They will make it to the playoffs also.

Lakers are the champs, but if they are going to do good with Artest on their team. He is a great player, but I would have just left the team as it was without any changes. Ariza is coming back I heard so that is good.

Atlanta was good last year. They just lost against Miami, but with a good fight! With that loss they are now dedicated to working harder.

Portland is a surprise, but they have always been solid the first round of the season all the time. Let us see if they can finish it as strong as they start it.

The Phoenix Suns is what everyone should be looking at. They are now determined to take it all. The question will their team stay healthy that long.

Thanks for the compliment. I just am expressing how I see it and have interacted with both Americans and Iranians about these issues before. There are many sides of the story that had me come to this conclusion at hand, but as you know in politics decisions change and actions go with it. I just hope there will be peace one day.