- "The bacterium used, Lactobacillus fermentum, is normally considered a "friendly" bacterium, and is often found in yoghurt." #
- I worry that my increasing ability to lie convincingly and fluently will lead me into politicks. #
- Sometimes I think my supervisors are wrong but often its just because they have different intuitions. #
- DPF has started his campaign against Len Brown and, with his comments on CNZ, has revealed himself to be Stalinesque. Ah, the crazy right. #
- Why am I thinking of a breakfast I ate in Edinburgh? #
- Hmm. Writing a twenty minute lecture on a topic I'm heavily invested in is hard. Oh, for thirty more minutes… #
- I was going to attend tonight's "Media 7 " on music but I am now attending a musical performance at the Jazz School instead. #
- Just found my favourite barista is now working at Dellows on Jervois Road. The fact I have a favourite barista is so middle-class… #
- Gah. Writing lecture notes at the last minute because your Mother wants you to help her buy a house makes me cranky. #
- Good news from thesisland. The chapter piece I was sure was flawed, maybe even a load of crap, "hangs together nicely." Yay! #
- xkcd, you've done it again: http://xkcd.com/808/ #
Category: General
A Conspiracy Week of Tweets 2010-10-24
A Conspiracy Week of Tweets 2010-10-17
- My Mother just asked a very good question: "Why were there so many people stationed at Icarus Base?" #sgu #
- Someone I hadn't seen in ten years told me I hadn't changed. Told her I died in 2003 but I travelled forward from 2001 to be here today. #
- This post claims it was published six months ago. I finished writing it on Thursday: http://bit.ly/dAinTc #
- Thanks to @CherylBernstein I'm reading more about the Christchurch Earthquake. I've just learnt: "CERN attenuated with HAARP = not good" #
- I've also learnt that any local circumcised cock entails that person is a Jewish New Zealander. Conspiracy theorists do like to generalise. #
- Almost all my correspondence is now up to date. Bed. #
- Causing the Christchurch Earthquake. #notpaulhenrysfault #
- Rocking the hometown hate this morning. I'm building up to some epic race traitor-ness for this afternoon. #
- In a month's time I will have two HDs in my MacBook. Who needs optical drives in a laptop, I say. #
- Well down, Wellingtonians. You now have a slightly better mayor. Now we must all feel all the more sorry for Christchurch (again). #
- Well done, not "Well down." This rivals this morning's "ten words of less…" handout blunder in class. #
- Once again the ACT Party shows itself to the party of no principle whatsoever. #
- If I were an economist I would call my blog "Cookies and Ponzi Schemes." #
- So, Hilary Calvert attacks Shane Jones for singing into law exactly the kind of thing her party is insisting be signed into law. #hypocrites #
- Sign, not sing. Gah, this headcold is doing my spelling in. #
- Is Patton Oswalt guesting in everything now? Not that I'm complaining; he is very good. #
- Star Wars weather http://www.tomscott.com/weather/starwars/ (via @Glinner) #
- Yesterday my March deadline seemed doable. Today… Headcold says "Nah." #
- My grandparents are currently making a guest appearance in this chapter of my thesis. #
- Why do I hate MS Word? Because it crashes when I am entering comments into student essays'. That is why. Bloated piece of crap. #
- Hmm, thesis-related nightmares. #
The Logic of the Conditional Apology
Any apology in conditional form expresses a relationship of necessity and sufficiency with respect to antecedent and consequent claims. In the conditional apology the apology itself is the necessary consequent of some antecedent which suffices for an apology.
Valid forms of the Conditional Apology are:
Affirming the Antecedent
P1. If you are offended, then I am sorry.
P2. You are offended.
Therefore,
C. I am sorry.
Denying the Consequent
P1. If you are offended, then I am sorry.
P2. I am not sorry.
Therefore,
C. You are not offended.
Invalid forms of the Conditional Apology are:
Denying the Antecedent
P1. If you are offended, then I am sorry.
P2. You are not offended.
Therefore,
C. I am not sorry
Affirming the Consequent
P1. If you are offended, then I am sorry.
P2. I am sorry.
Therefore,
C. You are offended
The rarely used Biconditional Apology is also an option:
“I am sorry if and only if you are offended”
Thesis Update: The Thick of It
You know, it doesn’t seem all that long ago that I promised that this blog would be all about upcoming chapter revisions, snippets of thesis writing and, well, a diary of how I was/am getting closer and closer to completion. I suspect I only really managed to keep that up for about two weeks, then I didn’t post anything for a while, and then it was back to sporadic postings borne of a need to make it look as if the blog was being updated.
Sigh.
Still, the Christchurch Earthquake material seems to have resonated with my now tripled-in-size audience and I have plans to spend a bit of time looking in/over the local version of the Chemtrails story. I also have enough new material to eventually write another post in the earthquake series. Indeed, I’m seeing a host of potential articles on matters local post the thesis.
Ah, post the thesis. What a wonderful term, and one I am beginning to believe has a truth value of “1.” Work has slowed down slightly; I had hoped to be at the end of the drafting process and in the final revision stage by now, but the latest chapter has spawned a child.
Chapter 7 (although it could end up being chapter four or five) is my analysis of the Inference to Any Old Explanation and how I think that explains our prima facie suspicion of conspiracy theories (because conspiracy theories require an Inference to the Existence of a Conspiracy and most, but not all, Inferences to the Existence of a Conspiracy are Inferences to Any Old Explanation) and, for a time, I thought that one way to explicate the Inference to Any Old Explanation was to talk about how we can design explanatory hypotheses to get the results we want. I have been persuaded that this design hypothesis of mine, which now goes by the much more inelegant but accurate name of “Selective Evidence,” really isn’t part and parcel of my analysis of Inferences to Any Old Explanation and is a separate idea which deserves its own chapter.
Which it is getting.
So, that’s the work in progress update. I would write more but, really, I should write less here and put the effort of the next paragraph or two into the open window on screen two, the one entitled “Inference2.tex.”
Trah.
A Conspiracy Week of Tweets 2010-10-10
- Last week was long but fun. This week promises to be much more relaxed. #
- Still waiting for someone to make me a royal seal for my new role as the Debunk King. #
- New post: The Mystery of the Severed Hand: http://bit.ly/9uQAYh #
- So, Twitter Tools for WordPress is working again. Sorry for the double-posting of the blog post notification. #
- My "Media 7" peeps better beware my return; I'm expecting heavenly choirs and the like. #
- 8 Conspiracy Theories That Make the Reptilians Seem Normal http://tumblr.com/xqukqe03f #
- Finally. "Rubicon" is beginning to show what its all about. Thus far, though, it isn't a surprising reveal. #
- Norman Wisdom is dead. I wish I had something of his on DVD to watch right now. #
- So, now I want to be a superhero. http://bit.ly/aq8TT1 #
- So, Left-wing Super-Mayor, who was best-of-bad-lot. I like hyphens. #
- Writing a letter to my aunt in Weymouth, in the style of a war correspondent. No idea why. Don't think she will understand it, either. #
- Time to slap on a suit and see an atheist get married in an Anglican Church with a Freemason as the presider. #
The Mystery of the Severed Hand
Ah, the Mystery of the Severed Hand; it’s a great title for a post and if you want to know more about said hand, its severing and why it is important for the history of insurance fraud in New Zealand you should either track down a copy of Robyn Gosset’s book `New Zealand Mysteries’ (Bush Press of New Zealand, 1970, chapter 13) or look up the mysterious disappearance of Arthur Howard in 1885ACE. I’m just here to quote this from Gosset:
The case proved to be one of the most interesting heard in this country. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty in the case of the Godfreys but found Howard guilty of a charge of conspiracy.
When the judge pointed out that this was an impossible verdict as Howard could not conspire with himself, the jury retired and returned with a verdict of not guilty against Mr and Mrs Howard on the charge of attempting to defraud and not guilty against the two Godfreys.
I’m curious about the jury finding only one person guilty of being in a conspiracy. As the judge wisely counsels his jurors, this seems impossible.
Is it?