10-17-87 . . . In other news, the [Minnesota] Twins defeated the [St Louis] Cardinals, 10-1, in the first game of the 1987 World Series. It was played in the Metrodome. The crowd was boisterous, as usual, and the Twins put on a power display for the nation. Unless St Louis’s pitching improves dramatically, the Cardinals are in trouble. Minnesota can score runs in bunches.
Micah Tillman continues his fine blogging. Perhaps my Australian friend Dr John J. Ray will give him a plug.
Addendum: Stephen Parise is another philosopher who blogs. It’s gratifying to know that not all philosophers are progressives.
I have a question for my theistic readers. What would have to happen for you to abandon belief in God? If there is nothing that could happen to force such an abandonment, what does that say about your belief?
This journalist is incredulous that anyone thinks Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks of 9-11. Key paragraphs:
One of the most striking poll findings is the number of people who continue to think Saddam Hussein was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. Depending on how it is asked, more than a third of Americans say Saddam Hussein was personally involved in those attacks. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll in September, 33 percent of the respondents said Saddam Hussein was “personally” involved. In June, when Princeton Survey Research, polling for Newsweek, asked if “Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly involved in planning, financing or carrying out the terrorist attacks,” 41 percent said yes.
There was a time, though, when a majority of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. In a Times/CBS News poll in April 2003, just after the war began, 53 percent of Americans said Saddam Hussein was personally involved. That wide perception didn’t last. By September of that year, 43 percent said Saddam Hussein was involved.
Perhaps she will write a story about college professors who think George W. Bush was behind the attacks of 9-11.
1. How many of you think the 2-3-2 playoff format confers an advantage on the team that opens at home? If you do, please state the grounds of your belief. I deny that there is any such advantage. Since 1997, the team that started at home has won 15 seven-game series (that includes World Series and LCS). The team that started on the road has won 17 series (counting Cleveland as a winner over Boston in 2007).
2. At least two World Series games will be played in Denver, on 27 and 28 October. The games could easily be snowed out. Has a game ever been called on account of cold?
3. The Colorado Rockies have won 21 of their past 22 games. That’s ridiculous. In 1984, my beloved Detroit Tigers began the year 35-5. The Rockies are entering Tiger territory.
4. Can the Boston Red Sox win three straight games against the Cleveland Indians? If they do, will they have anything left for the World Series? (Please don’t remind me that the Red Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit in 2004 and then went on to sweep the St Louis Cardinals in the World Series. The question is, can lightning strike twice in four years?)
Addendum: Regarding note 1, did anyone hear of home-field advantage before Bud Selig became commissioner? I’ve been a baseball fan for 40 years, and I never heard anyone, in any context, say (or imply) that the 2-3-2 format confers an advantage on anyone. Either Bud Selig invented this as a gimmick to sell the All-Star game or tens of thousands of baseball experts missed something obvious. I’ll let you draw the conclusion.
“Of that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one should remain silent.” With these words, published in 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein concluded his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and brought Western philosophy, as it had been known, to an end. Thereafter all schools of philosophy should have become centers of silent contemplation, as in Yoga or Buddhist meditation. But, on the principle of “publish or perish,” even Wittgenstein had to keep on talking and writing, for if the philsopher [sic] remains silent we cannot tell whether he is really working or simply goofing off.
(Alan Watts, “Philosophy Beyond Words,” chap. 12 in The Owl of Minerva: Philosophers on Philosophy, ed. Charles J. Bontempo and S. Jack Odell [New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975], 191-200, at 191)
John Franco. (For an explanation of this feature, see here.)
This will infuriate progressives, who value science only when it confirms their prejudices. (Thanks to Dissecting Leftism for the link.)
To the Editor:
I found your article both reassuring and alarming. Reassuring in that military officers are at least asking what went wrong in Iraq and why. Alarming, in that they couldn’t answer the question “Should the war have been fought?”
Let’s see: the evidence for weapons of mass destruction was known to be dubious even at the time; there was no evidence at all that Iraq played any role in 9/11; there were targets of far more relevance in Afghanistan; there was no planning whatsoever for reconstruction; and finally, there was abundant historical data that military action isn’t effective against decentralized insurgencies.
How can they know all that and still answer the question by saying “I honestly don’t know how I feel about that”? What is wrong with these people?
Michael Chorost
San Francisco, Oct. 15, 2007
Note from KBJ: What’s wrong with them is that they lack the letter writer’s preternatural ability to discern simplicity in complexity. In other words, they’re not simpletons.
