ki-lla

Madame X by John Sargent

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:10:00 +0000

and superbananabomb shall attempt to revive this blog. even though we are thought to be killers, i think it does not mean that we are trying to kill the blog. anyway t-lympho is busy and deathnote is busy too and i am well, uh busy, so we shall not make any apologies. so yes.

Portrait of Madame X
John Singer Sargent
1884

the Madame X in question is actually Madame Gatreau, a lady with a high social standing and of considerable beauty.

when this portrait was first displayed in 1884, it immediately caused an uproar in the French society. the painting was termed as "salacious" and "scandalous" due to the sexual suggestiveness of the lady's pose. in fact, the Parisians termed it as a "monstrous painting".

however, at present, art academics comment that Portrait of Madame X is actually a spectacular painting that captures the essence of Mme Gautreau very strongly – her assertiveness, boldness of her beauty and manner, a “real woman”.

(an interesting nugget of information: the original painting actually had one of the dress straps off the shoulder! it was later adjusted after Sargent brought it back to his studio.)

---

the above point is often used to argue for the position that objective knowledge of beauty is not possible. from the example, it seems as if "beauty" is largely dependent on the culture and maturity of the society.

---

there is another distinction that supports the same point above:

- Madame X was a notorious beauty in Paris, and people travelled to attend social functions just to catch a glimpse of her.

- But when the painting was finally done, Parisians called the portrait a "monstrous painting".

beauty in real life or beauty in art? of course, one might argue that the Parisians were just commenting at the painting, and not the subject. however, one must know that Sargent was an accomplished artist who received favourable reviews by the critics for 7 years before this fateful painting.

---

another point:

is there a difference between knowing that a person is a certain way, and immortalising it in a 7-foot tall painting?

in this case, it was a poorly-hidden fact that Madame Gatreau was a "sexy" (in modern day speak) woman, and she had never received flak for acting in this way. but why, when this essence of her was immortalised in a painting, the Parisians were unable to accept the painting as it was?

sources:

http://jssgallery.org/Paintings/Madame_X.htm

\ \ / / bam.

Phillips Curve

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 07:06:00 +0000

long time without an update, i wonder what we are busy with? :) anyway it is hard to maintain this blog when we know that they are hardly any readers. so minion-readers, publicise the blog with your fellow ki-mates. spread the love man. come to think of it, it is really a vicious cycle. never mind, i shall be more proactive now.

(oh and deathnote, you totally took t-lympho's first art entry!)

this is the phillip's curve, created by A.W. Phillips during the 1960s.

what?

curve created from data gathered on the relationship between inflation and unemployment in UK between 1861 and 1967.
curve shows an INVERSE relation between inflation and unemployment, i.e. as unemployment decreases, inflation increases (higher wages for all!).

but...

governments understood the curve as there being a trade off between unemployment and inflation

so?

governments allowed inflation rates to increase, hoping that unemployment rates would then decrease.

HOWEVER!

the philips curve broke down.
1970s: many countries experienced increased inflation together with increased unemployment instead.

questions/usage

correlation =/= cause (if two variables are correlated, it does not mean that they cause each other, i.e. fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc)
in this phillips curve case, there could be 3 types of explanations for the correlation -
1. A cause B
2. B cause A
3. C cause A & B.
definitely for use in social science.

sources

wiki: phillips curve
theory of knowledge by Richard van de Lagemaat

\ \ / / bam.

Duchamp's Fountain

noreply@blogger.com (DeathNote) — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 05:44:00 +0000

One of Duchamp’s most famous and controversial pieces
It is a model urinal bought from J.L. Mott Iron works. Duchamp turned it 90 degrees from it original position such that the side which is suppose to face the wall now functions as the base. It was signed R. Mutt 1917.

Duchamp was the director of the American society of Independent artists. He sent the fountain in under a fake name and the piece got rejected by the committee

However, an anonymous author defended the fountain as an art piece in The Blind Man (An art journal published by Duchamp). He equated his “art” with artwork of both the Virgin Mary, and Buddha. The shadows cast on the urinal gave the illusion of a veil on it, much like the Virgin would wear. Also, all three images have the same general outline shape.

see http://myweb.wit.edu/sheas/EP/Work/MarcelDuchampsFountain.pdf

Controversies. (Points to think about)

Duchamp never gave an explanation for the Fountain. Some said it was just to test the impartiality of the committee. According to the rules, the piece can be exhibited.

Authorship: It was not manufactured by the artist. It was a piece of plumbing taken from a company. Can it then be considered art?

Identity and nature of art (a.k.a. What is art?): When you put the urinal in the art museum, are you transforming it into an art piece or the museum into a lavatory?

Sources:
http://arthist.binghamton.edu/duchamp/fountain.html
http://www.artscienceresearchlab.org/articles/betacourt.htm

:Noted:

Georg Cantor: The Man who went Beyond Infinity

noreply@blogger.com (DeathNote) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 03:18:00 +0000

Georg Cantor (1845-1918)

Georg Cantor is a German mathematician whose work in set theory and transfinite numbers remains as one of the most important conributions to mathmatics. His theorem implies the existence of the "infinity of infinitied".

His work was not well received initially as it was counter-intuitive and question the authority of much of modern mathematics. His history-making paper was at first denied publication and when it was finally published, reception was by no means cordial.

His ideas encountered resistance from other leading mathematicians especially Leopold Kronecker who was once his mentor.

By 1900, his work had gained some respect in the mathematical community, however, it was still not universally accepted.

Sources:
Evolution of mathematical concepts, R.L. Wilder
The Story of Mathematics, Motz & Weaver
http://dissertations.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092&context=ashonors

Point.

The traditional views of the mathematicians prevented them from acknowledging and accepting Cantor’s work. For a theorem to be considered as part of mathematical knowledge, it has to be first accepted. Is there then a social aspect in mathematics?

:Noted:

"N-ray" Phenomenon

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:34:00 +0000

i feel so uncreative about my titles -.-" but i figured it would make it easier to look for stuff here :)

N-ray Phenomenon

"discovered" by French scientist, Prosper-René Blondlot, in 1903.
subsequently found to be illusory.

what?

changes in brightness of an electric spark in a spark gap placed in X-ray beam.
Blondlot even managed to photograph the N-rays!
many scientists even claimed to be able to detect rays from most substances (including the human body!)

but...

no other researcher was able to reproduce Blondot's results.

worse still.

when another physicist secretly changed the setup (removed essential prism from apparatus), experimenters still said that they observed N-rays.

so...

N-rays was a purely subjective phenomenon
cautions against the dangers of error due to experimenter bias. (patriotism)

questions/usage

subjectivity in science
certainty & accuracy in science
is science any different from social sciences?

sources

wiki: N-rays

\ \ / / bam.

Please, Save Me from My Leg

noreply@blogger.com (T-lymphocyte) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:55:00 +0000

Applied Ethics.

Background:

Several thousand people worldwide suffer from an extremely rare psychiatric illness called body integrity identity disorder (BIID).
The afflicted have an obsessive desire to be rid of a normal healthy limb, which they view as an alien appendage.
BIID can be distressing and deadly, especially when patients decide to take matters into their own hands i.e. saw the offensive limb off, freeze it to death, or even conveniently place it in the way of an oncoming train.

Dilemma: Should surgeons grant BIID patients their wishes?

Yes

To prevent BIID patients from injuring or killing themselves.

- Medical ethicists Tim Bayne of the University of Oxford
and Neil Levy of the University of Melbourne in Australia

Amputation of healthy limbs violates the Hippocratic Oath (which instructs doctors to do no harm).
BIID patients must be protected from their own desires for amputation, which are as delusional as the desires of anorexics for weight loss.
Amputation is permanent while the desire for it may not be.
Significant costs to society could be incurred if BIID amputees claim the right to medical rehabilitation and early retirement.

- Arthur Caplan, director of the Centre for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania

Thanks to: Mueller, S. (2007). “Amputee Envy”. Scientific American Mind 18:6. New York: Scientific American.

Finding the theory in reality: What metaethical theories do the respective stands represent?

Disclaimer: The above arguments are put forth solely by the respective persons to whom these arguments are attributed. By posting the above views, T-lymphocyte is by no means endorsing or criticising either stand. Please use at your own discretion.

One night I woke and found a leg
I thought it was a corpse
But when I threw it out of bed
I landed on the floor!

Abel's Mistake

noreply@blogger.com (DeathNote) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 02:45:00 +0000

Niels Hendrik Abel (1802-1829)

1823: At the age of 21, Abel published a paper where he gave the first general solution to fifth degree algebraic equations .

(Equations of type Ax⁵ + Bx⁴ + Cx³ + Dx² + Ex + F = 0)

A year later, Abel retracted the claim in a famous paper in which he proved that the general 5th degree equation cannot be solved in terms of algebraic radicals.

Source: The Story of Mathematics, Lloyd Motz & Jefferson Hane Weaver

Point.

Even in the realm of mathematics, certainty is not guaranteed. As hard as it is to believe, mathematicians are human. Thus, it is not unreasonable to believe that years from now, some of today's mathematics will be proven wrong or invalid.

More about Abel:

http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/men/abel.html

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Abel.html

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=700029

:Noted:

Tiananmen Square Protests 1989

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:35:00 +0000

shall do a quick one before i get back to what i was doing. i.e. playing with worms.

Tiananmen Square Protests 1989
(my all-time favourite eg even though i never got the chance to use it)

better known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre
Tiananmen Square is in CHINA! (ki students like t-lympho aren't very good at geography)

what?

series of demonstrations by students, intellectuals & labour activists
they were critical of the ruling Chinese communist party
and called for a full-fledged democracy in China

consequences

there was a military crackdown on the protesters - the military was told to get rid of everyone from the square by 5 am the next morning, and "use violence if necessary".
indiscriminate firing by soldiers
students were beaten with heavy sticks

made famous

the tank man

made famous by the western media
refers to the young unarmed man standing at the centre of a street, halting the tanks' progress to the military crackdown.

* watch "The Theatre of Massacre" and be amazed.

of significance

death tollS
government - 200 to 300
new york times - 300 to 400
chinese student association - 2000 to 3000

history was deleted inside mainland china
- strong government censorship:
~ media forbidden to report anything related to the subject.
~ china gov worked with various internet search engines (google, yahoo) to censor sites
- this part of history literally disappeared from china
- in 2006, an American program showed 4 students (Peking Uni, where most of the original student activists were from) the picture of the Tank Man - and none of them could identfy what was happening.

questions/uses of example

what is history? how is history written?
objectivity in history - is it tainted by bias?
ethics of inquiry

sources

frontline - the tank man & tiananmen massacre
watch the videos here, they are really good!
wiki - tiananmen square protests 1989

arial is totally getting on my nerves. lol.

\ \ / / bam.

The Four Color Theorem

noreply@blogger.com (DeathNote) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 03:59:00 +0000

Theorem: A plane separated into regions can be colored by no more than four colors such that regions which share a common boundary do not have the same color.

Conjecture first made by Francis Guthrie

1879: Alfred Bray Kempe provided a proof for the conjecture and received great acclaim

1890: Percy John Heawood showed that Kempe's proof was wrong.

1976: Four color conjecture becomes four color theorem for a second time. Four Color theorem proven by Appel and Haken, using a computer.

Hence, the first computer assisted proof was born. The four color theorem cannot be verified by other mathematicians without the use of a computer.

Point.

Is it ok for mathematicians to put their faith in computers? Can such proofs be accepted? (By the way, Mathematicians have already accepted it.)

Small point.

Mathematicians can make mistakes. Maths can't be true all the time. (see what happened to Kempe)

Sources:
http://www.mathpages.com/home/kmath266/kmath266.htm
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/The_four_colour_theorem.html.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Four-ColorTheorem.html

:Noted:

Rock-A-Bye Baby

noreply@blogger.com (T-lymphocyte) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 08:18:00 +0000

Language as innate and universal? (Think Chomsky's Universal Grammar)

"Motherese" : baby talk i.e. the singsong way non-infants talk to infants

cross-cultural (cognitive psychologist Greg Bryant of the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered that the Shuar people of South America - non English-speaking - got the gist of what North American mothers were trying to say 75 percent of the time when the latter spoke in motherese)
across species? - resembles special vocalisations (grunts and girneys) used by rhesus monkeys around their infants (as demonstrated by University of Chicago biologists Dario Maestripieri and Jessica Whitham)

Thanks to: Leitzell, K. (2007). "Understanding Baby Talk". Scientific American Mind, 18:6. New York: Scientific American.

Bah-Baah Bah Baah Bah-Baah Baaaaah

Translation: Mary had a little lamb.

Moo.

Nazi Data Detected: ACCESS DENIED

noreply@blogger.com (T-lymphocyte) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 04:19:00 +0000

Ethics of Inquiry
aka
Should I Squash a Mouse to Find Out the Exact Sound Made By A Mouse Being Squashed

Who: Nazis and prisoners

What: Nazi experiments which contributed to the Great Cause of knowledge construction, but which regretfully (to the experimentees' regret, of course, not the experimenters') involved the sacrifice of a few guinea pigs along the way

When: 1942

Where: Dachau concentration camp

Why: To determine the most effective method of rewarming for military use

How:
1. Create conditions cold enough to decrease body temperature rapidly.
2. Rewarm when body temperature falls below X degree Celsius / Fahrenheit.
3. Observe and record which method of rewarming is the most effective.

So what?
Usage of Nazi data by Air-Sea Rescue Services of the U.S. Armed Forces --> Justified?

Thanks to: http://www1.umn.edu/ships/ethics/research.htm#Nazi

T-lymphocyte does not wear weird mushrooms.
T-lymphocyte wears cool mushrooms.

One does not have to be smart like SuperBananaBomb, Deathnote and T-lymphocyte to figure out the brilliance behind T-lymphocyte's pseudonym.

Just refer to one's biology textbook.

david's favourite - induction

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:13:00 +0000

"induction rests on the assumption that the course of nature will continue uniformly."

- David Hume, scottish philosopher.

\ \ / / bam.

nothing in mind

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:03:00 +0000

"there is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses."

- Aristotle, greek philosopher.

(i'm pretty sure no one needed that aristotle link)

\ \ / / bam.

maths in reality or reality in maths?

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 16:57:00 +0000

"mathematical reality exists on an abstract plane, and its objects are as real as those in everyday life."

- G. H. Hardy, mathematician.

\ \ / / bam.

stanford prison experiment + further...

noreply@blogger.com (superbananabomb) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 13:10:00 +0000

well. it's finally time for us to start writing on the blog. haha since it's the first contribution afterall, i guess i shall choose to start with something easy and familiar, plus something a bit further!

since deathnote wants to start with math and t-lymphocyte (please ask it to explain its nick -.-") wants to use aesthetics as a starting point, i shall begin with social science! a few points will be here and there, but i think examples are pretty flexible, so use them where you need them (:

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in the social science module in ki, one of the common topics studied is the comparison between social science and natural science. (essay questions on social science will usually ask if social science can be considered as a science!)

i think one of the points that we will first think of is experimentation! i think like i get this image that you can't actually put these little humans in a box and control their environment and their actions like the sims (i really like to kill my sims whenever i can.)

in natural sciences, scientists have to conduct tests, and have control groups. but for social sciences, social scientists run into problems...

* ethical constraints
many experiments cannot be carried out due to ethical reasons, such as when there may be negative effects on participants who take part in the study.

e.g. Stanford Prison Experiment
the stanford prison experiment was conducted in 1971 by researchers led by Philip Zimbardo, at stanford university. its purpose was to study the human responses to captivity and how captivity would affect the behaviour of both the guards and inmates in prison.

the experiment went out of control. seemingly normal undergraduates started to display genuine sadistic tendencies when they played the roles of prison guards. they humiliated the inmates in various ways (like denying trips to the washrooms and prisoners being forced to sleep naked on the floor!), and most of the inmates also seemed to internalise their roles as prisoners.

* humans change, they are not static or uniform.
in social science, it is difficult to replicate experiments - unlike in natural sciences.

e.g. BBC Prison Study (Haslam & Reicher, 2003)
a partial replication of the stanford prison experiment was done with greatly different results, the "guards" did not internalise their roles, and on day 6 (coincidences?), there was a Prison Break. after that, the "prisoners" even started to dominate the "guards"!

sources:
wiki: stanford prison experiment
official site of the stanford prison experiment
wiki: the experiment (BBC)

-----

well use your imagination to present these examples more effectively, like in short paragraphs or something. you are definitely not required to write one entire page describing the process of the stanford experiment! this example can also be used to describe the process of "scientific" experiments in social science, or how variables cannot be fully controlled etc. the sources will provide lots more information so read them!

examples are flexible!

\ \ / / bam.

t-lymphocyte wears weird mushrooms

noreply@blogger.com (ki-lla) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 05:29:00 +0000

- why are you not doing that too?
(deathnote and superbananabomb have good taste)

deathnote's woodpecker: hi.

superbananabomb: this is a ki website. i bet you knew that too! WAHAHAHA.

(deathnote: i bet they didn't know that. we are so smart!)

t-lymphocyte: dogs are furry. and so are teddybears.

superbananabomb: trust me, we're NOT a bunch of lunatics. they are pretending.

deathnote: i like spongebob.

t-lymphocyte: does your mum soak it in saltwater?

superbananabomb: woodpecker's cursor says censored.

deathnote: no

t-lymphocyte: i cannot remember.

superbananbomb: there's no undo.

PUNCHLINE TIME!

the world is going to explode.

...

well, if you didn't get any of that, that's because you're m.i.s.s.i.n.g. t.h.e. p.o.i.n.t.(s).
that's what you're here for.

ki-lla provides you with points and examples for your ki essays.
the catch is you have to find them.

we shall give you a headstart -

the above conversation is littered with counterexamples for the argument that pragmatism is not a sufficient condition for truth. (pragmatic theory of truth) i.e. there are some truths that are true even though they sound completely useless to you.

we are smart.