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2009-08-30 05:17:50   Hi, i wanted to know if you like this addition I made to the page on Aristotle. See text under the picture of Plato and Aristotle. —PerigGouanvic

2009-09-04 17:36:54   Hi - I noticed that "Users/docmartin" (the page one gets when clicking your signature) leads to an empty page. If you want to create a redirect, just paste the following on that page: #redirect Users/Martin Cohen —PerigGouanvic

2009-09-04 19:11:19   Good idea - thanks Perig! —docmartin

2010-09-17 21:07:48   I've been a bit quiet lately, and special apologies to Norman for that, but the fact is, I HAVE NOT BEEN EATING ENOUGH PUMPKIN SEEDS LATELY. —docmartin

2011-07-29 02:38:47   Hi Martin,

Pleasure to 'meet' you. Hope you don't think it was a mistake to show our teeth towards the end of the thread at THES. I had a thrilling time.

I notice the astrology here is mostly clandestine. Maybe I can help.

Interesting to see that Neptune found itself on Kepler's very ascendant years after his death. Whatever it means, it's undeniable that Neptune rules Pisces, under which Copernicus, Galileo and Einstein were born.

Similarly Uranus, harbinger of Enlightenment and revolution, discovered when Kant was 60, was precisely opposite Kant's Sun at birth. I've wondered what Kant had to say about Uranus — surely something — but I have no German.

I would try to contribute something to your astrology page, if you think it passes muster. Maybe about Feyerabend's chart — which appears in place of a bio in the first edition of AM (on the back inner flap).

Or the Libran lineage: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Dewey, Rorty, Foucault, Althusser.

Please have a look at my poor old blog to which nothing has been added in too long.
[WWW]http://astrodreamer.squarespace.com

I leave you with this:

Can anyone really explain how it is that on the basis of horoscopes such astonishing predictions can be made about human life which then prove true? Here we can be skeptical, but at the same time we all have the right to judge from our own experience.

2011-08-02 19:02:26   2011-08-02 19:00:21 67.142.161.23, this is a really great idea - yes, do start something on Feyerabend's cahrt. I somewho missed that in AM - maybe I have the wrong edition. Are you thinking of testing astrology out on famous philosophers? It might be fun, if not revealing. We will get 'data' and then draw our conclusions, as you say. Actually, I'm a bit sceptical that 'facts' can be considered somehow ;out there'... but surely, that's another page...

Philosophical Investigations has been getting too quiet these days, it really needs some new ideas and input - so just fire away.

If you want, do set up a proper account for yourself, otherwise I have to keep tracking you by your 'number'... kind of Science Fascist behaviour by me!

ps

Your site is too flashy for my old computer to even load up, so I can't comment on it. You say not many comments, unlike Stephen's blog, I noticed, maybe lots of people can't read it? —docmartin

2011-09-19 21:16:45   I fixed the text about Canguilhem on the Gemini Ramble, but screwed up you lovely formatting in the process. Sorry. Also moved the extra Gemini philosophers back to the philosophy page. How about retitling Decoding Gemini Scientists to Gemini Scientists Decoded. That way both Gemini articles are together in the alphabet listing? —Mark-Shulgasser

2011-11-08 00:02:28   Actually, I noticed no discussion ever goes on here these days.. too sad! So here's an interesting point I saw in the IHT/ New York Times (the paper edited by the CIA in New York). It seems Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are computer skeptics.

"Even Mr. Jobs, Apple’s co-founder, turned skeptical about technology’s ability to improve education. In a new biography of Mr. Jobs, the book’s author, Walter Isaacson, describes a conversation earlier this year between the ailing Mr. Jobs and Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, in which the two men “agreed that computers had, so far, made surprisingly little impact on schools — far less than on other realms of society such as media and medicine and law.”

The comments echo similar ones Mr. Jobs made in 1996, between his two stints at Apple. In an interview with Wired magazine, Mr. Jobs said that “what’s wrong with education cannot be fixed with technology,” even though he had himself “spearheaded giving away more computer equipment to schools than anybody else on the planet.” Mr. Jobs blamed teachers’ unions for the decline in education."

(Grading the Digital School: Silicon Valley Wows Educators, and Woos Them, By MATT RICHTEL, November 4, 2011 ) —docmartin

2011-11-08 16:56:47   Very surprising, these quotes,in the middle of the self-congratulating talk we're hearing today.

What surprises me a lot is the (apparent) total blackout on the very real potential of the free platform, Linux (Ubuntu in particular), to really make a change — it's not unions who block things, it's the price of Mac and M$, that schools have to pay year after year, while Ubuntu is sitting there, with a community of millions of developpers and a version update every 6 months (!), totally free, ready to be installed in 40 minutes in all the computers of the world, especially those old rundown computers in latin america, africa and the middle east who won't work with Windows because it's too heavy.

It seems that Jobs and Gates have been playing the 'Coke vs Pepsi' game all along, to make consumers believe that this was the only choice they could make. Even more unknown is the fact that most M$ Win software can be run on Linux!! —PerigGouanvic

2011-11-08 20:59:32   I like the Coke versus Pepsi comparison... But otherwise - speaking as a teacher in schools- no, I don't think the technology is either the problem - or the answer. Cost is irrelvant. I visited a lot of schools in my time as a researcher, and the creativity of children had nothing to do with the age or sophistication of the computers. Several of the more imagintive teachrs I spoke to used old computers running out of date programs because they could put their classes more 'in control' of the technology that way. The death of learnign was in the passivity - and that's what Steve Jobs' legacy to the world is going to be. —docmartin

2011-11-09 05:45:49   I think that what's important is to have a connection. In order to have it student must have computers, even old rundown computers; if schools and governments stopped to pay Gates or Jobs and just ran on a free platform, things would be much different. I have no peculiar interest for this technology other than the fact that it helps to make links between ideas and persons and destroy false problems with new information.

2011-11-09 05:49:41   But no, I don't think that it's either a good teacher who stimulates students without computers or a bad teacher who relies on high tech but only elicits passivity. —PerigGouanvic

2011-11-09 21:55:54   Er... what's the aim? If the teacher's role is to provide a stimulating environment ofr learning, ideas, personal and social development - and they can do all that with just a good line in banter (chat) that's fine by me! If they can do it with old computers runnign old software that's fine, if they can 'only' function with up-to-date stuff, and they have it, well that's fine too. Because the aims of teachers and students are met.

But what I was interested in when I looked at these sorts of issues, was how people said they had certain aims - say it is to increase 'creativity' - and then used computers in ways that reduced people to rote learners, dullards. 'Press F2 then F4 then type $24/ipso'

I often saw classes sitting obeditnetly at their new moniitors doing this sort of thing. IN a few schools, I saw children doing 'slightly' more imagintive things with LOGO - if you know that old program? The one where th child is supposed to be 'in control of the computer', rather than vice versa.

This quote of yours would worry me!

"There simply wasn't the budget to upgrade to the latest versions of the software nor to keep replacing suites of PCs on a three or four year cycle."

(Anyone else reading this, do join in!) —docmartin

2011-11-10 17:58:51   Yes, LOGO! I remember... We're sounding like living fossils, don't we? But seriously, I don't question that things have been happening just the way you say they did. They take the instrument as an end in itself, when it's obvious that, in their 'free times' both students and teachers get their mind blown regularly by something on the Web. Just reading Project Censored, Wikileaks, PI, Amnesty International, Projet Voltaire, even Mother Jones etc., and authoritative conspiracy sites (such things do exist) should educate the students and teachers of the future.

2011-11-12 01:31:27   We're LIVING FOSSILS man! That's the wonder of PI. innit... we're not just passive spectators. But creepy thing is, eg comment slots on newspaper sites. or blogs - the 'active' user is also made passive - they are reduced to posturing, their thoughts irrelvant and ignored. Personally, I think LOGO failed - it was too techy. But the idea, yes, I support that. Active learning... —docmartin

2011-11-12 19:10:02   This is kind of relevant : [WWW]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOE1HFEL8XA&feature=share —PerigGouanvic

2011-11-20 03:56:46   Your friend Larry on education, with his 6th project or so... [WWW]http://thenextweb.com/insider/2011/11/19/larry-sanger-on-co-founding-wikipedia-and-how-online-education-could-change-the-world/ He says CZ is doing okay ($), but the website says differently - —PerigGouanvic

2011-11-20 23:42:26   How is Cz doing the, Perig?

I couldn't reisist 'joining the philosophical debte' there, btw... viz:

>>

Real philosophers (not, admittedly, that there are many and certainly not in the universites these days) know that how children learn is very much a central philosophical issue... and phonics is a technological fix for a learning process that does not need it. How children learn to read is similar to how they learn to speak - and of course we don't teach babies 'bits of words' - we teach them in whole words, indeed whole sentences. I don't think the Bear is going to go anywhere... I'm afradi Larry will soon have to add it to the long list of abandoned projects!

"“It’s much harder to get traction up against so many other websites. But Reading Bear is growing, and we’re moving in the right direction.”" - I've heard that before!

Technology is changing the way children learn, of course. it is DVDs and mobile phones that are the incluences though, not educational initiatives how ever well meant.
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2011-11-23 20:55:21   He responded. —PerigGouanvic

2011-11-24 00:17:17   Yes, the young fogey seems to have enjoyed that! —90.84.144.197

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