Theseus is remembered in Greek mythology as the slayer of the Minotaur. For years, the Athenians had been sending sacrifices to be given to the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull beast who inhabited the labyrinth of Knossos. One year, Theseus braved the labyrinth, and killed the Minotaur.

The ship in which he returned was long preserved. As parts of the ship needed repair, it was rebuilt plank by plank. Suppose that, eventually, every plank was replaced; would it still have been the same ship?

A strong case can be made for saying that it would have been: When the first plank was replaced, the ship would still have been Theseus’ ship. When the second was replaced, the ship would still have been Theseus’ ship. Changing a single plank can never turn one ship into another. Even when every plank had been replaced, then, and no part of the original ship remained, it would still have been Theseus’ ship.

Suppose, though, that each of the planks removed from Theseus’ ship was restored, and that these planks were then recombined to once again form a ship. Would this have been Theseus’ ship? Again, a strong case can be made for saying that it would have been: this ship would have had precisely the same parts as Theseus’ ship, arranged in precisely the same way.

If this happened, then, then it would seem that Theseus had returned from Knossos in two ships. First, there would have been Theseus’ ship that has had each of its parts replaced one by one. Second, there would have been Theseus’ ship that had been dismantled, restored, and then reassembled. Each of them would have been Theseus’ ship.

Theseus, though, sailed in only one ship. Which one?

this question is essentially about the concept of object.. The paradox lies in the fact that what is a object..There two major schools of thought for that .. One that set of all constituent elements that is all components alone make a object … Other being set of elements as well as the relationship or the interaction between them …Also the fact whether object is physical or abstract in nature.. That is only elements are present and boundary between the object and the surroundings is our imagination and we assume it to be a object or object is present by itself…This in Buddhism is famously known as the emptiness .. They say that everything is empty within .. And we are the universe and universe is us … That is only one object is present that is the universe no other boundary can be there …supporting the first school ….

wiki says ….on unclycopedia

Uncyclopedia, “the content-free[2] encyclopedia that anyone can edit,”[3] is a satirical parody of Wikipedia, though Uncyclopedia claims the reverse. The site was launched in January 2005 by Jonathan Huang and an unnamed counterpart (known as ‘Stillwaters’ or ‘Euniana’), and claims to be a project of the “Uncyclomedia Foundation,”[4] a parody of the Wikimedia Foundation.
The original self-proclaimed mission of Uncyclopedia was to provide a satirical point of view (SPOV) in the wiki format. However, as the community grew, the content expanded to include many other forms of humour. There is no restriction on the kinds of humour allowed; however, all articles are held to a standard of comprehensibility and must appeal to more than just a small group of people.

uncyclopedia says on wiki….

Wikipedia (formerly crack house), “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” [1] is a satirical parody of Uncyclopedia, though Wikipedia claims the reverse (and correctly claims that Uncyclopedia claims the reverse, and so on and so 4th). Some say that it is actually a database including such things as: lists of trains, Mortal Kombat characters, one-time villains from Mario games, road intersections, boring suburban schools, garage bands, cats, dead flounders, webcomics, Bionicle characters, kittens’ headquarterwebforums, characters from English soap operas, Mortal Kombat characters that don’t exist, and a thing they call articles. Ergo: Wikipedia is a Massive Multiplayer Online Editing Game played by experts in redundancy, skepticism, pseudoscience, hyperlinking, reverting articles, demanding reliable sources, verification, identifying original research (which is often quickly denounced in the article talk pages), and initiating subtle flamewars over what is encyclopaedic. The site often exhibits the qualities of the Dada art movements, via the discussion pages attached to all articles; and it can be argued that Michel Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge is a case in point. Wikipedia is a complete waste of time ruled by Dr. Phil, live from a soundstage in Hollywood California. It is a proven scientific fact that after reading this site, Wikipedia sucks.

i will leave the judgement to u … the sute provides some satrical comedy which is content for some timepass reading….

scientist
n noun a person who is studying or has expert knowledge of one or more of the natural or physical sciences.

It was in that year that William Whewell, a Brit philosopher, geologist, and all-around bright bulb fused would describe him better, coined the word scientist. His mentor,(the word has come back in fashion in tech circles again so has guru..ah..i suppose every word has its own cycle..not depicting older meaning..but i suppose like everybody else i got to live with the change..makes me feel old beyond my years..and i rather like that) Coleridge, thought the English language woefully lacked a term for someone who studied the natural world but who did not inhabit the lofty heights of philosophy like Coleridge himself to qualify him as philosopher.

There are hundreds of “natural philosophers” who had the misfortune to be born before 1833 that most of us would call scientists-and rightfully so- Newton,Lavoisier, Halley, Linnaeus,Aristotle,Euler,Gauss the list is endless. But the word would have been meaningless to them. The closest term they might use was “natural philosopher.” Their work and ideas were deeply rooted in medieval ways of thinking about the world, still struggling with renaissance .

Science did not burst out of the blue in a sudden onslaught of modern reason crushing Old Ignorance and inertia. rise was much slower and frustratingly so. One of the most major components of science as we know it today is a method for scientist to share their observations and experiments. Today peer-reviewed journals and magazines who charge astronomical subscription fees in the name of science so that we poor students cant even think of aspiring to subscribe to them .are at the core of the scientific thinking .u get a article published in nature science or watever top journal ur standing goes up a few notches even wat u say isn’t worth a pile of dung… But until the17C, nothing like this existed. “Natural philosophers” normally were more interested in what the ancient Greeks and Romans had to say about medicine, physics, and biology, astronomy than what they might observe for themselves thus the dark ages.. one u start thinking the people before u were far better than u could ever be then civilization is in a state of actual or perceived decline. In 1665, a group of “natural philosophers” probably feeling left out in England got together and decided to publish what is arguably the first scientific journal in the western world nowadays u never noe wat the chinks have done for all i noe they mite have been the first: the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.– i hope i got that rite took some time to locate the actual name… major milestone which i dislike personally they started this unholy journal business

It’s still going strong today, putting out a lot of important papers. And for the next couple months, the Royal Society is making the entire archive–all the way back to 1665–available for free,didnt really believe the announcement ..the capitalist suckers were actually giving this for Free

bit more history..about the theme of this post fist lets introduce the little known Thomas Willis, first neurologist Willis did astonishing work, recognizing some of the fundamental features of the brain–that the flesh of the brain itself was the seat of thought, for example, rather than the spaces around it, known as ventricles. Willis published the first accurate pictures of the brain, in the first book about the brain. He argued that melancholy, epilepsy, and nightmares were all chemical disturbances in the brain. He even coined the word neurology.ofcousre ppl trashed is work..

For all that, however, Willis was still floundering in the dark. He had no clues to how the brain talked with the rest of the body. He laid out an elaborate theory about how particles (“spirits”) moved around in the brain and then traveled down the nerves. But he had no actual evidence for this idea. And he knew nothing about electricity.coz it wasn’t discovered then..

The paper recounts how Willis and his colleagues dissected a man killed by lightning. The bolt had thrown its victim, out of the boat he had been rowing. When the scholar’s body was brought back to town, Thomas Willis came to see it along with his assistant Richard Lower and the mathematician John Wallis, who later wrote

They picked up the man’s hat and put their fists through the hole the lightning had torn. His doublet had been ripped open and his buttons knocked off. Willis and his friends found spots and streaks across the torso where the skin seemed to be seared and hard, “like Leather burnt with the fire,”

Wallis later wrote to the Royal Society.

The following night Willis and company returned, along with a crowd of onlookers, to cut the man open. “The whole Body was, by night, very much swelled,” Wallis wrote. The stench that rose from the body was unbearable, but they soldiered on because such an opportunity might not come again in their lives. “There appeared no sign of contusion,” Wallis wrote, “the brain full and in good order; the nerves whole and sound, the vessels of the brain pretty full of blood.” They opened the man’s chest and found that the burns did not reach below the skin. “The Lungs and Heart appeared all well, and well-coloured without any disorder,” Wallis wrote. The heavens had struck the man dead, and yet the natural philosophers could find nothing changed inside the body.

It would take Benjzi(Franklin) and other eighteenth century scientists..oops natural philosophers to begin working electricity, and to see its role in the nervous system. But I still like to picture Willis puzzling over a cadaver, not realizing that the man had been killed by the same thing that made thought possible.

I picked this one up mainly coz I liked the others authors (geogre and susan) from the minot family ..u noe u can get ur bro or sis to edit ur book and fix things up in case things turn sour… name does have some value…

Eliza Minot’s “The Brambles,” comes seven years after her first, “The Tiny One,”… haven’t read that yet…not planning to either the reviews aren’t too good.. has performed the literary equivalent of a triple jump. If 7 years is what it takes for juvenile authors to get mature..( she was 29 then.. hardly a juvenile.. Speaking literarily of cousre.. )into the kind of adroit, top writers whose books are worth the time and money ( that’s for fools who do spend the money buying books I never do…it is either the library or the ever dependable friend if all else fails there is always the net…) publishers shouldn’t make two-book deals without persevere that writers take a sabbatical in between… (wonder if kavvya goona really rite the second book) Anyone who experienced “The Tiny One” as a sometimes exasperating exercise in sustaining the voice of an 8-year-old reacting to her mother’s sudden death …Eliza’s own mother died in a car accident ..With its different angles, well-meaning albeit befuddled characters and fearlessness in the face of its own insights into family life, this is a grown-up book about grown-up people.(the inflated ego again.. I like to think of myself as grown up )

“Brambles” is the name of the family at the center the story, though we can’t help but seeing them as if peering through a thicket of “brambles”, The adult children of a mother who died a few years earlier in a plane crash and a father with terminal cancer, Margaret, Edie and Max Bramble have come together less out of love than necessity. The bleak task of caring for their ill father, Arthur, has reduced them to overgrown versions of their old childhood roles. The weight-obsessed, romantically hapless Edie, “a woman more like a girl,” is the youngest and the family screw-up.( there always to be one ..) Max is aloof and unfathomable while Margaret, whose point of view dictate the tone the book, is a kind of martyred supermom. The demands of her three children have, as her husband puts it, “thrown her into neutral,” and when she volunteers to take her father in his last weeks, he too becomes a burden she both resents and relishes(gets a little complicated… admit… i don’t completely understand.. but then I hardly noe the world…) It’s as if only in dying can Arthur make up for the distant father he was when his children were young. Touching I suppose… but then it is not a new plot…u can hardly expect to churn up emotion in a empty well …

The marshaling of Arthur from life into death is supposed to be a group effort, but it’s Margaret, the oldest , due to her personality and her house in suburban NJ, on whom the most of the burden falls. Edie manages to go along with him on the plane from California ,but she quickly takes off for Maine to stay with old family friends. Meanwhile Max has impulsively quit his job at a film production company and spends his days wandering around Manhattan in an effort to keep his wife from discovering that he’s unemployed.(brings up memories of a old tamil film and the origin of the infamous “manar &co” ) When he shows up a day late to see his father, Margaret receives him with sufficient scorn to imply that she’s the real matriarch of the bramble family.

Though the plot rotates around the arrangements for Arthur’s arrival and the psychological fallout from his rapid decline, Eliza doesn’t so much tell a story as she shows us three portraits of people who, for reasons i found out afterwards, have ties that are more loosely knit than they ever could have thought it would be. From following Edie through bouts of self-loathing, self-destruction and ruminations about her past. to Max stumble along in a fog of confusion and denial, making occasionally hilarious efforts to cover his tracks.

Mostly, though, we are taken inside Margaret’s mind as she tosses off trenchant remarks that capture the tensions of motherhood.(I never thought there would be any tensions…well thinking back …I suppose I gave enuf trouble as a kid to fear parenthood maybe I will escape altoghter if I m lucky..)

Unlike Edie and Max, whose troubles are more evident, Margaret is drawn from the inside out — so much so, in fact, that it diverts attention from the action taking place around her. About halfway into the book, a mysterious woman with whom Margaret had a minor car accident begins harassing the brambles. It’s an incident that ultimately takes on greater significance, but Eliza can’t really gather up the narrative drive to take the reader compellingly outside Margaret’s head. The unraveling action — most of which takes place in the final chapters — seems almost cartoonish in contrast with the finely attuned inner voice of the Brambles . A plot twist that would be surprising under any circumstances comes across as downright bizarre.

If Eliza had less control over her prose, this might have been fatal. As it is, however, she delivers such consistently perceptive, even stunning sentences that it’s easy to overlook the less than solid story and just recline inside the characters’ minds and listen to them think. This novel is imperfect in a way that leaves you marveling at the many things it does right and looking forward to the author’s next move. Maybe with more experience she will get over the those hurdles…

have to right sometime on that philosophy ..but never got around to it ..should rite a reminder somewhere.. next seminars bound to prove useful… )

The newly American territory is filled with a mix of opportunistic(diplomatic way of saying greedy cutthroats!!i m sure u get it though ) people from all over the globe: French, Spanish, Native American, Creole, Canadian, African and American( the first letter capitalization on the same account ); everyone is judged by his/her and culture/color.Take any African tribe,it has a unique reputation; Ibo people are reviled for their violence; they’re known for killing their masters. And each race has subclassifications, such as the complicated labeling system that measures African blood in fractions (griffe, octaroon, quadroon, sacatra, etc).(wonder woever came with that it is a tedious way of provingur blood u can’t go around saying i am 1/10 monkey a quater chimp half giraffe a picnh of pig thrown in … really …u get the dirft ..)
Moinette, a biracial slave called a mulatresse, lives on a large sugar plantation in the bayou south of New Orleans. She is smart and lucky (or as lucky as a slave can get.. which really isnt’t much..these were the times of the free America completely oblivious to slavery talking to about human rights..then again slaves weren’t even considered human in the first place .. so perfectly understandable..often dogs where treated better than slaves.. no ill-respect to dogs of c ourse ); her “mistress,” a teenage girl profoundly bored by plantation life, teaches her to read. But though Moinette may be fortunate in some ways, she is ill-fated in others. Like many of her contemporaries, she is separated from her family when she is sold to another plantation.(brings me memories of uncle tom’s cabin.. mark twain… reading the book borrowed from a girl i was all calf eyed about…err.. never mind that now..)

Moinette is hardened by that event; she decides early on that she belongs only to herself and she will never love anyone. Consequently, her outer journey though life is unemotional and sensible. Yet her interior life is complicated and visceral, and she calculates every action and every word. She may walk along the road silently and carefully, eyes glued to the ground, but her mind is racing:(surprised a intelligent woman.. a novel idea…almost like a talking dog… no offense to woman but it almost never happens in novels actually form this era.. chauvinism? or true portrayal of the society?? probably coz the author is a woman..) “And it was clear to me, then, that every free person I met — Indian, white, African — would only sell me or use me as an animal. My skin. Hide. Pounds of money — my fat and fingers and breasts.”

Moinette is living through one of the most shameful times in American history, yet “A Million Nightingales” celebrates the dignity of life. This story could have been a sentimental bodice-ripper(crude ..but that is the truth) or a predictable historical yarn, but Straight manages to find a compelling balance that is both intelligent and heartbreaking.(it really is)
The book’s most striking aspect is how deeply the author delves into Moinette’s character( mite be helpful on sculpting my chararcters not a novel yet but working vaguely towards that...) Even in the most gut-wrenching moments, Moinette is fully present, always observing and planning. She is interested in science and uses deductive reasoning to achieve her goals. And the fact that her white mistresses are slaves to their own culture is not lost on her.(women oppression .. not just black…thats something less talked about too white women oppression..for all the bull shit about equality not a single black or woman president..)
Straight weaves the themes of freedom and ownership throughout the plot, from the obvious slave and land ownership to a more subtle idea of creating one’s own intangible freedom by thought. Though Moinette’s life is as tragic as any slave’s would be(any woman would be), she uses her limited means to find freedom for herself and others.

In many ways, Moinette is more free than the people who own her because she is able to find contentment.(another one of those philosophy wanting to explore ...) America has long been a alloy of cultures, but “A Million Nightingales” celebrates the individual’s power to create a personal freedom within the most rigid social and sexual order.

WOULD you like to hear a writer’s nightmare?
Well, then, imagine a writer of considerable reputation, who knows himself to be a Great Man. Bestow upon him a wife, a little woman who is a bit of a writer herself but, of course, nothing like her great, her magnificent husband, either in her own eyes, in the world’s eyes, or (most important of all) in his eyes.
And imagine that, as a result of some conversation, the little woman suggests she write a novel on the subject. And the Great Man, smiling benignly, says, ‘Of course, dear You go right ahead.’
And she does, and it is published, and it makes a perfectly gigantic sensation. And it follows, then, that although the Great Man is universally admitted to be Great, it is the little woman’s novel which is best known forever afterward —so well known, in fact, that the title becomes a byword in the English language.
How grisly a situation for a normally egocentric professional writer that would be.
Yet I’m not making this up. It is a true story. It happened.
The Great Man is Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the magnificent lyric poets of the English language. At the age of twenty-two, he eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin…
an event which, however romantic, was slightly irregular, as Shelley was a married man at the time.
The publicity was such that they were better off outside England, and in the summer of 1816 they stayed on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland with the equally great poet and equally notorious gentleman, George Gordon, Lord Byron.
At the time, the scientific world was in a ferment. In 1791 the Italian physicist, Luigi Galvani, had discovered that frogs’ muscles could be made to twitch if touched simultaneously by two different metals and it seemed to him that living tissue was filled with ‘animal electricity.’ This theory was disputed by another Italian physicist, Alessandro Volta, who showed that electric currents could be produced by the juxtaposition of different metals without the presence of Jiving or once-living tissue. Volta had invented the first battery and the English chemist, Humphrey Davy, went on in 1807 and 1808 to build an un-precedentedly powerful one and to carry out, with its help, all sorts of chemical reactions that had been impossible to chemists of the non-electrical age.
Electricity was therefore a word of power and, although Galvani’s ‘animal electricity’ had been quickly smashed by the researches of Volta, it remained a magic phrase among the lay public. Interest in the relationship of electricity to life was intense.
One evening a small group including Byron, Shelley, and Mary Godwin discussed the possibility of actually creating life by means of electricity, and it occurred to Mary that she might write a fantasy on the subject. Byron and Shelley approved; in fact they thought they, too, might write fantastic novels for the private amusement of the little company.
Only Mary actually carried this through. At the end of the year the first Mrs. Shelley committed suicide, so that Shelley and Mary could marry and return to England. In England, in 1817, Mary Shelley’s novel was completed and in 1818 it was published. It was about a young scientist, a student of anatomy, who assembled a being in his laboratory and succeeded in infusing it with life by way of electricity. The being (given no name) was a monstrous eight-foot creature with a horrible face that frightened all beholders into fits.
The monster can find no place in human society and, in his misery, turns upon the scientist and all those dear to him. One by one the scientist’s relatives (including his bride) are destroyed and in the end the scientist dies as well. The monster wanders off into the wilderness, presumably to die of remorse.
The novel made a huge sensation and has never stopped making a huge sensation. There is simply no question as to which Shelley made the greater mark on people generally. To the students of literature, the Shelley may be Percy Bysshe, of course, but stop people on the street and ask them if they’ve ever heard of Adonais, or Ode to the West Wind, or The Cenci. Maybe they have, but very likely they have not. Then ask them if they have ever heard of Frankenstein.

For Frankenstein was the name of Mrs. Shelley’s novel and of the young scientist who created the monster….
Curious isnt it ?

I also spend way too much time staring at objects and trying to make them burst into flame sor make them fly . I realize it’s a long shot, but how do your really know unless you try?

I grew up reading Superman and Spider-Man comics, so I take for granted that sooner or later I’ll have a freak accident that gives me a super power. It’ll hurt when it happens, for sure, but it will be worth it. I just hope it’s not some crappy super power, such as the ability to add long columns of numbers in my head, or the power to eat an unlimited amount of dosas. I want the kind where I can kill people and impress people and ultimately kill the people who refuse to be impressed. And the witnesses too, of course.

Apparently I’ll be quite busy. So if it’s not too much to ask, I’d also like a second freak accident that gives me the ability to secrete caffeine from my tonsils directly into my throat.

Hey, did you hear that?

P.S. I do not know how they generated this fascinating image, and I believe no-one else is able to generate anything similar in Photoshop. I know it has something to do with “low-pass” and “high-pass” filters, but the details??

Whoever is conscientious for this galling word processing turd of a software needs to be tied up with straight razor wire and pulled backwards through a broken glass and cow dung until he or she gets into her pea brain the physical pain their wilfully divergent conception causes. Motherfucker. And btw us I wrote this on MS Word…