In the olden days, did they shred documents?

The reason for my curiousity on this matter will become apparent in short order. See, while John McCain is only aware of the internet, his new running mate, Sarah Palin, apparently has a little experience as a hacker. And that experience has apparently come in handy. Her wikipedia page was altered favorably the night before it was announced that she was the Republican VP nominee. And the internet scrubbing continued from there. After all, we wouldn't want people to know that the "anti-corruption" politician was super cozy with Rep. Ted Stevens - you know, the corrupt one. Nor would we want people to know that she supported Obama's energy policy. (How does that work???)

Unfortunately for the apparently internet saavy Palin, for every forty-four year old who knows something about the internet, there is a twenty something year old who knows a hell of a lot more. You can't hide from the true techies. Hence my question. In the olden days, did they just shred documents? And if so, wouldn't politicians be better served by returning to the days when no amount of digging through caches could bring that information back and they could actually hide their dirty deeds and unfortunate statements? Too bad for Palin we're in the information age.

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More of Ben Stein's true colors

You remember Ben Stein, right? He's the nutjob who made that disgusting, piece of filth creationist propaganda film Expelled. He also claimed that science leads you to killing people. Well, he's at it again, this time claiming he "abhors racism" while basically calling Barak Obama an angry black man (video of the statement below).

Now, I'm not saying that you are automatically a racist just because you call someone an angry black man. I mean, if the shoe fits... right? Nor is there necessarily anything wrong with being an angry black man. There are, after all, some things that blacks in the US have a right to be angry about. But in this case, Stein's statement seems like blatant pandering to the racists in this country. I mean, c'mon. How is Barak Obama an angry black man? Since when did talk about hope and change make someone angry? Since when was expressing idealistic (perhaps even overly idealistic) optimism actually expressing deep seated rage? In my opinion, the problem with Obama is not that he's vitriolic, it's that he's saccharine, to the point of making this cynic a little nauseous at times. So why would Stein make such an obviously false statement? The only motive I can come up with is scaring those low information, low education voters with the specter of the one thing that terrifies an ignorant bigot more than anything else - an angry black man. I know not all Republicans will be using race to come after Obama, I just happen to think it says something significant about Stein that he's chosing to play this card.

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Flip Flop on the Bridge To Nowhere

Sarah Palin told a fib. She claims to have been opposed to the notorious "bridge to nowhere". Well, it looks like she must have been for it before she was against it, then. And the mainstream media, worthless talking heads that they are, can't seem to inform the American public about it. CBS hasn't done their homework. Nor has the Wall Street Journal. Nor has Forbes.com. Of course, what should we expect from the rest of the media when even the supposedly "liberal" New York Times is falsely putting forward the idea that Palin is some sort of centrist. Yeah. Cuz centrists oppose gay rights, deny global warming and oppose abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Please.

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Palin doesn't know what the VP does.

Sarah Palin is the republican nominee for VP, but two months ago...

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I love Dennis Kucinich

I may not always agree with him, and FSM knows I'm horrified by the whole UFO thing, but I really wish that more politicians had his passion.

This is Rep. Kucinich addressing the DNC.

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Wow...

just....wow.

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Dissertation Live Blogging: Russell on Definite Descriptions

How are we to analyze the semantics of linguistic expressions like the following?

(1) The Queen of England is old.
(2) The prime minister of England is male.
(3) The present king of France is bald.

(1), (2) and (3) contain what are called definite descriptions (because they are descriptions beginning with the definite article "the"). At first blush, it seems like we might analyze them in the same way we do names. When it comes to names like "George W. Bush" or "Samuel Clemmens" we tend to think that all there is to the meaning of a name is what it refers to. "George W. Bush" picks out Dubya, so it means Dubya. That's all there is to it. And when it comes to definite descriptions, this solution seems appealing - 'the queen of England' just means Elizabeth II.

But there is a problem with this approach, one which becomes readily apparent when we examine sentence (3). The expression 'the present king of France' has no referent. There is no king of France at the moment. But, on the approach we are taking, that would mean that the expression 'the present king of France' is meaningless, and that seems wrong.

To get around this problem, Bertrand Russell suggested that the semantics of definite descriptions are quantificational. He gave the following analysis of (3) (using E and A as the existential and universal quantifiers, respectively):

(4) Ex(Px & Bx) & Ay(Py > x=y)

In plain English, (4) reads "There exists exactly one thing that is the king of France and it is bald."

Russell's solution is pretty effective at avoiding the problem we ran into earlier. Sentence (3) is meaningful even though it lacks a referent. And because it lacks a referent, it is false.

Russell's solution is not without it's problems, however. For example, what about sentence (5)?

(5) The cat is on the mat.

We'll look at why Russell's analysis can't handle (5) next time.

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