Philosophy Wire: Track primates. Track humans.

Scientists have developed new artificial intelligence software to recognize and track the faces of individual chimpanzees in the wild. The new software will allow researchers and wildlife conservationists to significantly cut back on time and resources spent analyzing video footage, according to the new article. [1] We try to track animals in the wild. But we live in cities. What does it matter that we track them? Can the animals track us? Does it matter whether we know of something with which we will never interact with? Could we really know something with which we will never interact with? Look at the lions in the TV! So scary… Give me some popcorn…

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Say NO to Earth Hour! - Πες ΟΧΙ στην Ώρα της Γης!

[English article follows the Greek one]

28 Μαρτίου 2015 - Ώρα "ΓΗΣ". Η ευκαιρία για κάθε βλάκα να "αποδείξει" πόσο αγαπάει τη Γη αν και όλο το χρόνο χρησιμοποιεί ρεύμα για να φάει, να δει, να παίξει πίου-πίου στο κομπιούτερ, να στεγνώσει τα μαλλιά του, να έχει ζεστό νερό, να φτιάξει καφέ, να φορτίσει τα 2 κινητά του, να κάνει λίγο chat, να γράψει πόσο οικολόγος είναι στο FB βρε παιδί μου! Για αυτό αύριο ΑΝΑΨΤΕ ΟΛΑ ΤΑ ΦΩΤΑ, ψήστε παϊδάκια σε όλα τα μάτια της κουζίνας και ανάψτε και το στέρεο να παίζει δυνατά μαζί με τηλεόραση. Έτσι για το καλό. Ο,τιδήποτε πιο ειλικρινές είναι πάντα καλύτερο.

Από παλιά τα έγραφα εγώ...

~

28 March 2015 - Earth Hour. The chance for every stupid man to "prove" his love for Earth even though throughout the whole year he uses electric power to eat, to see, to play games on the computer, to dry his hair, to have hot water, to make coffee, to charge his 2 phones, to chat, to write how much ecologist he is in FB! So tommorow TURN ALL LIGHTS ON, bake burgers, open the music and the TV as well. Just... because! Anything more honest is always better.

I said it a long time ago...

Philosophy Wire: Gay actors. Playing straight people. The story of our life.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2015-02-14]: Gay actors. Playing straight people. [1] The whole world a stage. And we, the actors. But life needs wisdom to be accepted. The best are those who choose to stay "unemployed". And be just spectators...

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Philosophy Wire: Children, adults, disabled persons & a lesson…

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2015-01-17]:

Adults and children asked to mimic faces they saw on the screen.
Adults felt bad to mimic faces of disabled persons. Children did not. [1]

Being hypocritical.
This is the main problem today.
Listen to the children.
They are innocent. And ruthless.
As we all should be...

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Philosophy Wire: Death. Steaks. Hypocrisy. Fear.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-12-26]: An Idaho high school teacher under fire for killing and skinning a rabbit in front of his students to demonstrate how animals are processed for food has apologized to children disturbed by the incident, a school official said on Friday.

The part-time teacher is a farmer who raises rabbits and other livestock for food and was asked to provide a lesson on animal slaughter and processing by students in a 10th-grade biology class he taught at a high school in the Nampa School District near Boise, said district spokeswoman Allison Westfall. School administrators were not consulted about the demonstration, which happened last week but came to light in recent days after a parent called the district to complain, Westfall said. [1]

We are afraid of death.
We are afraid of our food.
We do not want to know.
We do not want to die.
We do not want to live.
Afraid little people.
Eats your steaks...

Related article: Why we need more bullfights!

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Philosophy Wire: Forgiveness. Arrogance. Humans.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-10-18]: A football player in the US hits his wife and is condemned by everybody. His wife forgives him. He is still condemned by everybody. [1] He without sin let him cast the first stone. Who are we to decide who is to be punished even though the victim has forgave him? Arrogant little people we are. Little people who want to play gods. But we have forgotten that once upon a time we actually were...

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Philosophy Wire: Violence, society, trials...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-07-29]: The digitized archives of Old Baley, the central Criminal Court of England and Whales which cover 200.000 trials and have a total length of 137 million words, are a treasure to the archaeologists and sociologists, if only they could analyze the vast volume of data. The analysis showed that until the end of 18th century, the language used in the court was unequivocally violent no matter what the nature of the crime was - for example the references to knifes and blood were equally frequent both in trials for murders as well as trials for stolen watches or handkerchiefs. The great change came at the decade of 1800, when the language of of the trials' transcripts started to discriminate more the crimes of violence. As the researchers claim in their PNAS paper, the results show a decrease in the tolerance against violence in society [1] Can we really say that we are less violent today? Or are we just more hypocrites? Is a change in language enough to cover a steadily miserable reality? From the wars of the past, to the drone kills or the famine deaths of the present. Look carefully. The truth is not into what is written. The truth is not into what is told. But in the silence... Stop talking. Stop writing. And you will see the world as it really is.

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Philosophy Wire: Genes. The perfect excuse...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-05-19]:

Genes amplify stress for kids living in harsh environments. [1]
We live in an era of cowardliness.
The worst things we do, are always a result of some inescapable physical law or physical process. Modern man has lost the most basic thing that characterizes him: free will. And not because his genes say so. Because he WANTED to.

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Philosophy Wire: Moa, Maori, harmony...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-04-25]: It seems that Maori people ate the last moan birds. [1] Many people use this as an argument against primitive people which seems that they did not live in such harmony with nature as once believed. But why is killing a species not in harmony with nature if that species was not fit for survival you fake ecologists? How perverted must one be to think that not only life but also death are part of harmony in the cosmos?

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Philosophy Wire: "Sick people", said the "healthy" people... [The problem of Evil]

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-03-30]: People killing someone just to... kill someone! [1] The problem of evil is something we often prefer to overlook or discard as something too easy to explain. "They are sick people" we say. End of story. We like researching for the cure of every other disease except the disease of "being bad". Maybe deep in our soul we feel that the lack of strong will is not really a disease... We do not believe we can control the uncontrollable. We do not believe in God anymore. We do not believe in our self. And that is why we fail. Everything is there. Waiting for you silently, in a dark room closed for years. And the only way to see them is to seek them honestly with open arms... The first step to curing others, is to cure your self. And only a handful of people have tried that up to now...

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Philosophy Wire: Tigers, plants, cameras, pseudo-ecology.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-02-02]: Documenting the lives of tigers with automated cameras in the wild. [1] Digitizing biodiversity history at the New York botanical garden. [2] But why? Why keep the memory of something dead just to pretend it is not? As Heracletus used to say, the dead must be removed from the living as fast as we can - like manure...

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Philosophy Wire: Turing, forgiveness, black, white...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-01-28]: Alan Turing, British code-breaker castrated for homosexuality, receives pardon. [1] Well, it should be the OTHER WAY around actually! We should be begging for Turing to pardon US! Damn this era of hypocrisy and arrogance! Black is painted white. White is painted black. Evil intentions masked under good words... Seek the ugly ones for honesty.

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Philosophy Wire: Live and let DIE you small hypocrite...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2014-01-18]: People in the "brainy circles" of our hypocritical society talk about diversity. But how much are differences really valued? “I wonder”, a mother of a child with Down's Syndrome writes, “whether my friends and colleagues would recognize the value of a child who was slower, less capable and more dependent”... [1] Love is hard to find. And even harder to give. Take a nap. Watch TV. Don't care about people with problems or children with genetic problems. You will not see them anyway. You will not let them be born. Being active is hard. Giving your hand is hard. Being passive is easy. Live and let DIE... Change the channel. I am bored.

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Philosophy Wire: Eugenics, evolution, "civilization"...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-11-15]:

Theory of evolution.

Then: Three eugenics conferences. [1, 2] (1912, 1921, 1932)

After that: Hitler.

Why are we so surprised? Why are we so hypocrites?

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Philosophy Wire: Ban Christmas. We are free !?

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-10-25]: A German district banned Christmas [1, 2, 3] Freedom defeated by neutrality...

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Philosophy Wire: Russian bear against pseudo-"ecology". 1-0!

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-10-16]: Russians captured a Greenpeace vessel at the Arctic sea and arrested Greenpeace members on accounts of terrorism. [1] At last someone fights against this pseudo-ecology of american organization which supposedly care about the environment but the only thing they care about is the US foregn policy. Where was Greenpeace during the US nuclear tests or during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill? Hypocrisy has its limits. Your ecology stopr where my political rights start...

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Philosophy Wire: Controlling health...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-06-28]: Electronic cigarette will be under more strict control by the British authorities. [1] Addictions are what keeps our society go on. Who said you are free to get rid of them?

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Philosophy Wire: Wild (mild) cougar...

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-06-22]: A wild cougar released to nature again. [1] It can now be "wild" as long as it does not get into our way. Because when it does we will shoot it down... In an ecologically friendly way of course...

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Philosophy Wire: Misinformation, ERT, stupidity.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-06-17]:

The Greek PM closed the national TV broadcaster.

Media in Greece talk about "thousands" who protest against this "fascist" decision.
Media abroad reproduce what media in Greece say. [1]

Stupidity and misinformation propagates. Aggressively.

A channel with 4% ratings and with almost zero productions of any logical quality (with one "Third" exception which just verifies the rule - making everyone "suddently" love classical music), a channel where all the political parties used to appoint voters, a channel where people get paid €150,000 just for doing nothing, a channel which said NOTHING about the 2,000,000 people who lost their jobs from the private sector all these years, a channel which is paid by the Greek citizens via a do-what-I-tell-you-or-else-I-will-cut-your-power tax is suddently the culmination of "objectivity", "freedom" and "democracy".

Stupidity and misinformation propagates. Aggressively.
Masses are mindless. And need to be manipulated. They deserve it.

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Philosophy Wire: Take off your shoes.

Philosophy Wire by Spiros Kakos [2013-05-16]: Three people were killed when the ceiling of a warehouse fell in at a shoe factory in Cambodia, a government minister said on Thursday. [1] Do you think you should not care? Do you think this has nothing to do with you? Think again. Look at your shoes. The king is barefooted.

 

Related article: Western civilization – The Sum of All Hypocrisy

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