ashrei

Yo, who’s in the house? In the house of the Lord
Playing that harp like it was a harpsichord
King David, the warrior poet
A gangsta rapper but he probably didn’t know it
The greatest lyricist whoever lived
But before he was the king, he was a fugitive
Always on the lam, one step ahead of the law
‘Cause the king at the time was his father-in-law
When his childhood hero turned into a villain
David’s solution was to say more Tehillim
Yo happy is the nation that does it this way
Yo sometimes I feel like I got nothing to say
But ashrei

chorus:
Ashrei yoshvei vetecha
Od yehallelcha sela
God is great, just ask Christopher Hitchens
Merciful to all creatures according to our religion
Hasidim always praising You in every generation
On every YouTube channel, every radio station
The King of Kings, yo, forever and ever
Distributing health food, just like Unilever
You open your hand, satisfy our desires
Now our cup is overflowing like a bonus multiplier
Saving all the heros, destroying all the villians
You can read all about it in the pages of Tehillim
Yo happy is the nation that does it this way
Yo sometimes I feel like I got nothing to say
But ashrei

(chorus)

I like electric guitars, and electric cars and electrical engineering
But what are those irritating lyrics that I’m hearing?
I wish heavy metal would be always instrumental
But usually it’s mostly pathetic and sentimental
Music ruined video games, but rock and roll
Was ruined by the lyrics of this melody I stole
And hip hop? Well, that was ruined by Evil Jared
‘Cause all of this swearing has no redeeming social merit
He’s a guitar hero but a lyrical villian
So you keep your Bloodhound Gang and please pass me the Tehillim
Yo happy is the nation that does it this way
Yo sometimes I feel like I got nothing to say
But ashrei

(chorus)

The Enemies of Reason: A Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel: Why don’t you believe in the principle of noncontradiction?
Graham: As I explained in my blog post, the Liar Paradox proves that some things are both true and false.
Daniel: But the Liar Paradox is cyclical. Cyclical propositions are meaningless.
Graham: Actually, the proposition “all cyclical propositions are meaningless” *is* a cyclical proposition.
Daniel: Which would seem to imply that it’s meaningless.
Graham: And how can you solve a paradox with a meaningless proposition?
Daniel: Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of that. But doesn’t mainstream logic assume that ZFC solves the Liar Paradox?
Graham: ZFC is a formality. If you take it as a proposition logico philosophicus, it’s cyclical, and therefore declares itself meaningless.
Daniel: But can’t you separate the rules for constructing propositions from the system of propositions themselves?
Graham: Some people think you can. You’re welcome to try if you have the time. But you need to explain who rules the rules.
Daniel: True...I’m starting to see how the “outlawing cycles” approach may be a dead end. And your paraconsistent logic does seem like a simple solution. But maybe there’s a simpler one.
Graham: What do you have in mind?
Daniel: Maybe we should just forget about logic altogether. Who needs logic?
Graham: Whoa, Daniel. Slow down there. You’re throwing out the family with the bathwater.
Daniel: We had mathematical proofs before Frege. Have proofs really gotten better? As Logicomix points out, symbolic logic proved to be extremely useful in telling computers what to do, but is it really useful in resolving The Problems of Philosophy?
Graham: Logic can certainly help expose philosophical fallacies.
Daniel: You mean, like the ontological argument?
Graham: Touche, touche. But come on. Without logic, how can you start with premises and arrive at a conclusion? How can you make inferences?
Daniel: The same way you do anything. With intuition.
Graham: What do you mean?
Daniel: When you start with some premise and you infer a conclusion, your confidence in the conclusion is proportional to your confidence in the premise and your confidence in the inference. In other words, you’re convinced to the extent that the argument is convincing.
Graham: Sure. So logic gives you rules of inference, that you can use to infer things.
Daniel: But maybe logic is a mistake. Maybe there are no rules. Maybe each inference is its own axiom. Its own act of gnosis.
Graham: You and your gnosis again. You know, Daniel, you’re starting to creep me out. How can I even have a Platonic dialogue with you? You talk like an analytic philosopher, but deep down you’re just another mystic.
Daniel: I think Winston Churchill said it best. “He who is not an analytic philosopher at 20 has never been young; he who is not a mystic at 30 has never matured.”

If I Only had a Brain: A Platonic Dialogue by MC Complete

Daniel: What do you think about personal identity?
David: I don’t believe in it. Cogito ergo sum and all that. I believe I dealt a conclusive death blow to that idea in my book.
Daniel: But you weren’t able to refute my “apparent past” argument. (See http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/05/ideas-matter-platonic-dialogue-by-mc.html and http://mccomplete.blogspot.com/2010/04/science-does-not-make-predictions.html).
David: I don’t know if I’m really convinced by it yet, but no, I wasn’t able to refute it. It was very crafty.
Daniel: Thanks. So, for the purposes of the current discussion, would you be willing to assume that my apparent past argument is sound?
David: Only if you give it an ism.
Daniel: What ism?
David: If it’s a philosophical theory, it needs an ism. Every philosophical theory has an ism.
Daniel: Come to think of it, in my last post, I called it “truth-value realism”.
Daivd: Too long-winded. Can you come up with something more succinct?
Daniel: OK, how about “virtualism”?
David: Why “virtualism”?
Daniel: It’s the “apparent” part of the apparent past. The idea is that the world of appearances, let’s call it the virtual reality, shares a lot of information with the real world, whether or not the real world actually exists. So most of our beliefs about science, math, and common sense are well-founded if they are reinterpreted as statements about the virtual world.
David: OK, that’s fine for now, but “virtualism” sounds like it might already be taken.
Daniel: Yeah, I’ll have to check Plato when I get back to my computer.
David: So what does virtualism have to say about personal identity?
Daniel: Well, viirtual objects can be said to exist because they are generalizations over the apparent past.
David: OK.
Daniel: And people are just virtual objects, right?
David: OK.
Daniel: So I’m a virtual object too. Just like everyone else.
David: Well, “David Hume”, “Daniel Dennet”, and “Bob Stalnaker” are all virtual objects. But why is “David Hume” me, while “Daniel Dennet” and “Bob Stalnaker” are not me?
Daniel: Because I never see my face except in a mirror.
David: So that’s the definition of “me”? The person whose face I only see in a mirror?
Daniel: Kind of. I mean, there are all kinds of special things about “me”, i.e. “MC Complete”. If “MC Complete” stubs his toe, I experience pain, but if someone else stubs their toe, I don’t experience pain. The visual memory stream is kind of analogous to a video (although of course there are many differences), and the virtual camera is located more or less at the same place as “MC Complete”’s eyes.
David: Behind my eyelids, apparently, because when David Hume closes his eyes, I don’t see anything.
Daniel: Exactly.
David: Very crafty, as usual. But you’ll notice that I don’t have a brain.
Daniel: What?
David: I’ve seen my hands and my feet. I’ve even seen my face, in a mirror. But I’ve never seen my brain.
Daniel: But people have brains. There’s tons of evidence. Autopsies, dissections, x-rays, surgery...
David: Of course.
Daniel: And I am a person.
David: Of course.
Daniel: Well, therefore I have a brain, don’t I? Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal?
David: Not so fast. In Apparent Pastitstan, that inference is invalid.
Daniel: But I invented virtualism. What do you know about it that I don’t?
David: “People have brains” is a generalization over the apparent past. “David Hume has hands” is a generalization over the apparent past. But “David Hume has a brain” is not a generalization over the apparent past.
Daniel: That kind of sounds right, I guess...
David: As far as I can tell, your virtualism reverses the conventional notions of induction and deduction. Induction is inference from the specific to the general, whereas deduction is inference from the general to the specific. It’s conventionally assumed that deduction is more well-founded than induction. But virtual inductive inferences are very well-founded. They take a set of specific instances and generalize over those instances, without attempting to address anything outside those instances. And conversely, when you take a virtualistic interpretation of “the general”, inference from the general to the specific is simply invalid.
Daniel: That’s kind of cool. I’ll take credit for it.
David: Kind of solves the mind-body problem, doesn’t it?
Daniel: The mind-body problem? I just solved the problem of induction, and now I’ve solved the mind-body problem?
David: Kind of...I mean, think about it. The mind-body problem is really the mind-brain problem, right?
Daniel: Right...
David: But the mind-brain problem is only a problem if people have both minds and brains. And virtualistically speaking, the sets are disjoint. How can there be a mind-brain problem if some people have minds but not brains, i.e. myself, and some people have brains but not minds, i.e. all you zombies?

Imitation Vanilla

http://rhythmshare.com/f78ve1

I get lifted till I'm spinning like a sandstorm
'Cause imitation is flattery of the highest form
They called me Daniel eight days after I was born
By age four I was more middle class than Marshall Mathers was poor
So this is my story in all its glory
How I went from Columbus Torah all the way to the top forty
I'm not the real Slim Shady 'cause Marshall Mathers came before me
Taught me how to perform and make your fans adore me
He told me "don't do drugs because they're habit forming"
My formative years spent with my white Jewish peers
Pop music by gay men was always ringing in my ears
Like Elton, Pet Shop Boys and George Michael
And Freddie Mercury was always riding his bicycle
But what did I know? I was just a little vanilla icicle
Searching for a rebbe, a role model whose ideas I could recycle
So I took a walk down the Shvil Yisrael
Eschewing showers, collecting sea shells
Five weeks on trail we were beginning to smell
Like a country garden in the nether reaches of hell
Alter Shimon always had a rhyme to spit or a tale to tell
He memorized "the real Slim Shady" so well he had me MFROTFLOL
And little Danny Pop had never heard that stuff before
Like someone snuck into my mind and opened a trap door
Before I knew it I was Slim Shady number three hundred and four
The new unit out the drawer from the Slim Shady store
Attack of the clones like it was Star Wars
Now, would the world be worse off one Slim Shady fewer?
I'm not sure, but if you feel the way I feel I've got the cure
Imitation Vanilla, 100% pure

chorus:
I'm not Shady
I'm not the real Shady
I'm MC Complete and I'm just imitating
And while you're all debating who's the real Slim Shady
I'll be imitating all the music that you're making

Ran far away to Far Rockaway
So they keyed me up and threw the lock away
I talk a way that most folks can't understand
Like I'm a refugee from Hip-hopistan
I'm complete like a breakfast with Raisin Bran
But I'm losing my mind 'cause I can't find my master plan
I swear it was right here in my right hand
Must have been snatched by some sycophantic fan
Who wants to try to imitate the imitation man

(chorus)

So will the real Slim Shady please stand up
The Dr. Dre with the real degree stand up
All you record labels who like to compete stand up
And let's see who's got the sweetest contract

For MC Complete
Come on, you know you need it
Don't make me repeat it

Will the real Slim Shady please stand up
The Dr. Dre with the real degree stand up
The record labels who like to compete stand up
And let's see who's got the sweetest contract for MC Complete

They Come and Go

In the summer after I graduated from college, I hiked around Israel for a few weeks with my future brother-in-law, Alter Shimon Riess. We started at Kibbutz Dan in the north and hiked to Eilat in the south, more or less following the Israel National Trail. Somewhere around the middle of the country, I put my water in my backpack without screwing on the lid correctly. A few hours later, we discovered that the water had leaked out and drenched the camera (along with a few other unmemorable things).

For whatever reason, we hadn’t taken many pictures on the trip, and the ones we had taken were nothing to write home about. The only photograph that I really missed was the photograph of the wild chameleon. It had been a truly spectacular sight, and we’d gotten what had promised to be a great picture.

But in hindsight, who cares? I can search Google Images and get 20 million pictures of chameleons. I can even post one in my blog.

As Queen Maraud once said: in space, you’re weightless anyway.

The Naziest Sound Around?

I’ve been listening to some 2-Tone Ska recently. Mostly the two bands that I used to listen to in high school, “The Beat” (also known as “The English Beat” and “The British Beat” for copyright reasons) and “Madness”.

I started reading some wikipedia on Madness and ska and discovered some things that were very surprising to me. I had no idea that ska in general, and Madness in particular, is skinhead music. So then I read the wikipedia entry on skinheads. To my surprise, skinheadism originally had nothing to do with white supremacy, and was in fact originally inspired by the Jamaican “rude boy” subculture. Apparently the nazis took over skinheadistan in the 1970s, and there are still pockets of resistance. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinhead#Racism.2C_anti-racism_and_politics.

The wikipedia article on Madness in particular is very sympathetic. The basic idea is that, while many fans of Madness were nazis, the band in general tried to distance itself from skinheadism. (Note that Madness first gained success in 1979, by which time most skinheads seem to have been nazis, and see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madness_(band)#Skinhead_controversy).

Madness often opens live performances with the song “One Step Beyond”. This song was also the first track, and title track of Madness’ (very successful) first album. Here’s the lyrics:

Hey you, don't watch that
Watch this!
This is the heavy heavy monster sound
The nuttiest sound around
So if you've come in off the street
And you're beginning to feel the heat
Well listen buster
You better start to move your feet
To the rockinest, rock-steady beat
Of Madness...
One step beyond!

The song itself is an instrumental song by Prince Buster, but the lyrics are by Madness. The first two lines are a quote from another song by Prince Buster. Clearly, the term “buster” in line 7 is a reference to Prince Buster. According to Wikipedia, the members of the band idolize Prince Buster, who (according to some accounts) is the inventor of ska. Prince Buster is a black Jamaican.

The problem is that line 4 isn’t really “the nuttiest sound around”. Listen to it. It’s “the naziest sound around”. I’ve listened to the original and a performance from 1991. Is “nazi” just Cockney for “nutty”, or something? I checked three lyrics sites and they all said “nutty”. Also, Madness recorded a Spanish version; if some of my Spanish-speaking readers could listen to the Spanish version and tell me if that says something analogous to “nazi” or “nutty”, I’d very much appreciate it.

Free Egypt: A Platonic Dialog by MC Complete

Daniel: You know what really ticks me off? Dictators. I want the Egyptian people to be free. Mubarak needs to go.
Benjamin: But what if he’s replaced by somebody worse, like the Shah was replaced by Khomeni?
Daniel: That would be bad. I don’t want Mubarak to be replaced by another tyrant. I support the pro-democracy movement in Egypt. But I certainly don’t support Mubarak.
Benjamin: But don’t you think that even a democratically elected government in Egypt could be more anti-Israel than Mubarak?
Daniel: The Arab street can’t be trusted to vote the right way, so we should just stick with the dictators? I can’t accept that. Look, it’s possible that there will be a democratic government that is more anti-Israel than Mubarak. But I think that freedom in Egypt would be good for Egypt and for the Egyptian people and it would make the world a better place. We can’t let fear and small-mindedness prevent us from taking a stand for freedom.
Benjamin: But what if the current unrest is resolved in such a way that it leaves Mubarak stronger than ever? We don’t want him to be mad at Israel and the US. Other Western-leading Arab leaders are also afraid of democracy. Maybe we shouldn’t risk offending them.
Daniel: How many times have Mubarak and King Hussein complained about the occupation? They’re not exactly on the payroll of the Hasbara, if you know what I mean. Look, Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. We’re not shooting at each other. We even have diplomatic relationships. But we never promised to help prop up their oppressive, autocratic regimes. It doesn’t say “we will kiss your ass” anywhere in the peace treaties. (I think.)
Benjamin: Don’t you think you’re being a bit too idealistic?
Daniel: I am idealistic when it comes to freedom. And I’m not saying anything original or profound either.
Benjamin: I know, and your blog is usually so deep.
Daniel: I don’t even know why I’m writing this. I guess I was just feeling frustrated because of that story in Haaretz that said that the Israeli government was quietly supporting Mubarak in the diplomatic channels.
Benjamin: What makes you think that Israel has any influence in diplomatic channels?