01.11.2004 || 03h21

doomBook's last legs and a young Wittgenstein

Otay, so my muttfucker bitch of a computer died on me to-day. Well, as in the screen went. It's working right now *only* because I have managed to find the exact angle at which the screen will let me see something. Irritating.

Also scary, as I'd sorta decided to give myself six months to get up as close to $4000 as I can, then get a new computer. I had an idea to-night. We discovered that the machine I was is significantly cheaper at Apple's student site, so I figured I could save up, then funnel the cash to Mystie and have her buy it. Means I can't write it off at tax-time, but I figure she could, provided she gets paid for some of the writing she's doing these days.

There's no way I can do it immediately, though. So I'm off to Mac911 next week to see about getting another screen put on the doomBook-- again.

Seems that G3 iceBooks are what is reverently referred to in the industry as a 'lemon.' Seems that they have motherboard issues that knock out screens and hard drives like no to-morrow. Seems that the latest G4 ones don't have this problem. Seems that I'm not the only person pissed right now. I signed a petition, but I haven't decided whether it'd be worth my while to jump my arse onto the class-action bandwagon.

Anyway. To-day, Mystie and I were sitting in the bath and talking about philosophy. Now, I don't mean that in the pretentious, Gitanes-smoking, strong-coffee-and-a leather-raincoat, hangs-at-Cin�-Express-with-the-faux-intelligensia way. I mean, she was talking about her professors and the Jesuits who taught her back in NYC, and I was asking questions and such. At one point, I asked about whether Philosophy was, fundamentally, just asking what the hell the meaning of life is. She was telling me about how these days it's mostly about trying to talk about science without having gotten a science degree (ie: Is the expanding universe an open or closed system? Is it gonna collapse again or just keep on keeping on?), and I clicked onto what's been bugging me about philosophy.

Philosophy could only have come out of the Age of Faith, which is why so much of it has hitherto been about religious questions. Fuck, look at mediaeval philosophy and tell me I'm wrong. Look at the older names as well. SPA and the rest. It's all about faith; being a good person, ethics, politics. Nowadays it seems that philosophy is struggling to lend itself some semblance of relevance by trying to attack questions of a scientific nature, so that post-modern philosophers are dealing with a completely different (and maybe unrelated) paradigm than their predecessors. I dunno, it's kinda like her Jesuit professor who wrote a book saying how the evolutionary theory has to be completely re-thought and/or abandoned because it doesn't adequately explain blood chemistry (Addendum: My mistake. He didn't write it. He read it, then made it his personal crusade. Doesn't balance out not having a biochem degree though). I say that you can't really talk about evolution if your entire worldview pertains to a world that's only 5700 or so years old. Leave the science to those with science degrees.

But more importantly, I have a nagging suspicion that the struggle for relevance is just a death throe; that Wittgenstein was right when he claimed that there can be an end to philosophy, it's just that he couldn't see that it was already happening.

Yeah, I know: 'leave the science to the scientists and the philo stuff to the philosophers, Mr filmmaker.' Shut up already. If they can base and entire curriculum around uneducated rambling, then I should be allowed an entry or two.

Enough.

back || forth

older shite

One last little note... - 09.21.2006

de-stressing, biking and terrorism - 06.06.2006

Mildly stressed... - 05.29.2006

More crime stupidity - 05.28.2006

Scary stuff - 05.25.2006

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