Updates to Essays

* A lot of people found the Dakota Johnson ISIS skit on SNL  almost unmouthably offensive.  It's actually pretty bland.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBZCivK5WGw

Indeed, to the extent that the sketch is deft, this relies precisely on its decision to remain low-key, about a subject inherently inflammatory, the reality being too over-the-top for satirical exaggeration.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/isils-caliphate-gender-aspect.html

[2 March 2015 -- UPDATE to the update]

It turns out that, indeed, the skit’s concetto of a father’s consenting to his daughter’s joining the Islamic State, is beggared by the indescribable reality.  From this morning’s headlines:

There are indicators that young women and children are being coerced into carrying out suicide attacks, either by their families or by Boko Haram captors. Female bombers are often escorted to the sites of their attacks by men, and in December, a 13-year-old told reporters that her father tried to force her to bomb a market in the northeastern city of Kano.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/02/teenage-girl-thought-to-be-a-suicide-bomber-is-beaten-and-burned-to-death-in-nigeria/?tid=hp_mm

* The ISIL flag functions internationally rather  like MacDonald’s Golden Arches -- an instantly recognizable visual brand.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/09/flagge-verbot.html

* [Appendix]  Weiteres zur Elefanten-Mechanik:

It is well known that slowly-moving things obey classical mechanics.

-- Robert Lindsay & Henry Margenau, Foundations of Physics (1936), p. 269

Corollary:

Elephants obey classical mechanics.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-blind-men-and-billiard-ball.html

* “The question of the objective existence of the objects of mathematics … is an exact replica of the question of the objective existence of the outer world.”-- Kurt Gödel

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-new-proof-of-existence-of-coffee-cups.html

* Another faddish forerunner of all this:

En attendant de s’attaquer à l’homme, [il] prétendait simplement réduire en “tropismes”  toute l’activité des animaux qu’il observait.

Tropismes !  Le mot nétait pas lus tôt inventé  que déjà l’on ne comprenait plus rien d’autre;  toute une catégorie de psychologues ne consentit plus qu’aux tropismes.

-- André Gide

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/04/eliminative-materialism-expanded-update.html

* Es verging dann drei Wochen, ohne dass sie zu mir im Labor käme;  ich meinte, sie hatte mich wahrscheinlich vergessen.  Sie aber vergass ich gar nicht.

Dann plötzlich, einen Sonntagmorgen sogar, da ich ganz allein im Labor mich bei meinen Versuchen beschäftigte, trat sie ein, diesmal ohne mal anzuklopfen.

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/03/from-case-files.html

*  “The units of social life are far less clearly defined than those of language … Linguists are fortunate in possessing a domain whose units are at least relatively self-defining and isolable.”

http://worldofdrjustice.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-ontology-of-linguistics.html