RKMBs Forums .::Important::. off topic and offensive posts The Revenge of Frank Burns.

A boy is about to go on his first date, but he has no idea what to talk about. He asks his father for advice, and the pearls of wisdom in reply are, "Son, there are three subjects that always work. These are food, family, and philosophy."

The boy picks up his date and they go to a soda fountain. Ice-cream sodas in front of them, they stare at each other for several uncomfortable minutes. The boy remembers his father's words. He asks the girl: "Do you like potato pancakes?".

"No," she says, and the silence returns.

After a few more nerve-wracking minutes, the boy thinks again of his father's suggestions, and turns to the second item on the list.

"Do you have a brother?"

"No," says the girl, and, again, the silence is deafening.

In desperation the boy plays his final card. He thinks of his father's advice, and asks: "If you had a brother, would he like potato pancakes?"

Two rednecks, Bubba and Cooter, decide to go to college. Bubba goes first, and he is advised to take maths, history and logic.

-- "What's logic?" says Bubba.
-- "Well, let me give you an example," says the professor. "Do you own a tractor?"
-- "Sure do," says Bubba.
-- "Okay. Then I assume, using logic, that you have a yard."
-- "That's real good," says Bubba, in awe.
-- "Logic also tells me that since you have a yard, you also have a house. Is that right?"
-- "Gawly!” says Bubba.
-- "And since you own a house and a house is tough to take care of by yourself, the odds are that you have a wife. Right?"
-- "Betty Mae! This is incredible!"
-- "Finally, since you have a wife, logically I can assume you are heterosexual. Is that right?"
-- "You are absolutely right! Why that's the most fascinatin' thang I ever heerd of. I can't wait to take this here logic class!"

Bubba, proud of the new world opening up to him, goes back into the hallway where Cooter is waiting.
-- "So what classes are ya takin’?" says Cooter.
-- "Maths, history and logic," says Bubba.
-- "What in tarnation is logic?"
-- "Let me give you an example," says Bubba. "Do you own a tractor?"
-- "No."
-- "Then you’re gay."

Question: What do you get when you cross a postmodernist with a mafia boss? --- Answer: An offer you can't understand.

Question: How do you get a philosopher off your porch? --- Answer: Pay for the pizza.


Question: What's the difference between a philosopher and an engineer? --- Answer: About $80,000 per year.

John Heil on "Twin-Earth" in Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy:

Twin-Earth, a fictitious planet first visited by Hilary Putnam in a thought experiment designed to show, among other things, that "'meanings' just ain't in the head"... Although Twin-Earth has become a popular stopping-off place for philosophers en route to theories of meaning and mental content, others regard Twin-Earth as hopelessly remote, doubting that useful conclusions can be drawn about our Earthly circumstances from research conducted there.

How many philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?

"Hmmm... well there's an interesting question isn't it?"
"Define 'light bulb'..."
"How can you be sure it needs changing?"

Q. How many deconstructionists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
A. On the contrary, the Nile is the longest river in Africa.

Q. How many modal logicians does it take to change a light bulb?
A. In which world?

From Russell's "On Denoting":

By the law of excluded middle, either "A is B" or "A is not B" must be true. Hence either "the present King of France is bald" or "the present King of France is not bald" must be true. Yet if we enumerated the things that are bald, and then the things that are not bald, we should not find the present King of France in either list. Hegelians, who love a synthesis, will probably conclude that he wears a wig.

An engineer, an economist, a physicist, and a philosopher are hiking through the hills of Scotland. On the top of a hill they see a black sheep.

"What do you know," the engineer remarks. "The sheep in Scotland are black."

"No, no", protests the economist. "At least one of the sheep in Scotland is black."

The physicist considers this a moment. "That's not quite right. The truth is that there's at least one sheep which is black from one side."

"Well, that's not quite right either," interjects the philosopher. "There appears to be something describable as a 'sheep' that seems to be black from one side..."

Cause of death for philosophers:
Bentham: Fell off his stilts
Freud: Slipped
Goodman: Gruesome bleen inflection
Hare: Wrong prescription
Heraclitus: Fell in the same river twice
Jackson: Saw red
Kripke: Went rigid
Marx: Capital punishment
Peirce: Abducted
Plato: Caved in
Wittgenstein: Became the late Wittgenstein

No comment about Occam? -- I'm sure the list could be expanded indefinitely at any rate...

A job hunter, a philosophy major, went here, there and everywhere in his search for employment, but in vain. Having run out of options, he swallowed his pride and took up the offer of playing a bear in a costume at a zoo. He was locked up in a cage, where he was supposed to imitate various bear-like movements to entertain visitors.

To his horror, another bear appeared in the cage and started approaching him. He panicked and was on the brink of collapse when the bear said: "Don't be afraid. I'm also a philosophy major."

One day the great philosopher Socrates came upon an acquaintance who ran up to him excitedly and said, "Socrates, do you know what I just heard about one of your students?"

"Wait a moment," Socrates replied. "Before you tell me I'd like you to pass a little test. It's called the Triple Filter Test."

"Triple filter?" asked the acquaintance.

"That's right," Socrates continued. "Before you talk to me about my student let's take a moment to filter what you're going to say. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?"

"No," the man said, "actually I just heard about it."

"All right," said Socrates. "So you don't really know if it's true or not. Now let's try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my student something good?"

"No, on the contrary..."

"So," Socrates continued, "you want to tell me something bad about him, even though you're not certain it's true?"

The man shrugged, a little embarrassed. Socrates continued."You may still pass the test though, because there is a third filter -- the filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my student going to be useful to me?"

"No, not really..."

"Well," concluded Socrates, "if what you want to tell me is neither True nor Good nor even Useful, why tell it to me at all?"

The man was defeated and ashamed. This is the reason Socrates was a great philosopher and held in such high esteem.

It also explains why he never found out that Plato was shagging his wife.

This University of Otago lexicon includes such gems as:

Mackie the Knife. Fictional gangster with no respect for moral values.
"On the sidewalk, Sunday morning
Lies a moral realist oozing life
Someone's sneaking round the corner
Is the someone Mackie the knife?"

Richard at Philosophy, et cetera mentions the following:

Why did the chicken cross the road?
Epicurus: For fun.
Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference.
Zeno: To prove it could never reach the other side.

Dean, to the physics department. "Why do I always have to give you guys so much money, for laboratories and expensive equipment and stuff. Why couldn't you be like the math department - all they need is money for pencils, paper and waste-paper baskets. Or even better, like the philosophy department. All they need are pencils and paper."

The First Law of Philosophy: For every philosopher, there exists an equal and opposite philosopher.
The Second Law of Philosophy: They're both wrong.



Descartes is sitting in a bar, having a drink. The bartender asks him if he would like another. "I think not," he says and vanishes in a puff of logic.

What is Mind? No Matter.
What is Body? Never Mind.


The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe when a waitress approached him: "Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?"
Sartre replied, "Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream".
Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however, the waitress returned and said, "I'm sorry, Monsieur Sartre, we are all out of cream -- how about with no milk?"

I passed my ethics exam. Of course I've cheated.



Philosophy is a game with objectives and no rules.
Mathematics is a game with rules and no objectives.
Theology is a game whose object is to bring rules into the subjective.

A renowned philosopher was held in high regard by his driver, who listened in awe at every speech while his boss would easily answer questions about morality and ethics.

Then one day the driver approached the philosopher and asked if he was willing to switch roles for the evening's lecture. The philosopher agreed and, for a while, the driver handled himself remarkably well. When it came time for questions from the guests, a woman in the back asked, "Is the epistemological view of the universe still valid in an existentialist world?"

"That is an extremely simple question," he responded. "So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer that, which is exactly what he will do."

One more final exam:
Q: Is this a question?
A: If this is an answer!



A philosopher went into a closet for ten years to contemplate the question, What is life? When he came out, he went into the street and met an old colleague, who asked him where in heaven's name he had been all those years.
"In a closet," he repied. "I wanted to know what life really is."
"And have you found an answer?"
"Yes," he replied. "I think it can best be expressed by saying that life is like a bridge."
"That's all well and good," replied the colleage, "but can you be a little more explicit? Can you tell me how life is like a bridge?"
"Oh," replied the philosopher after some thought, "maybe you're right; perhaps life is not like a bridge."Raymod Smullyan, "5000 B.C."

Two freshman philosophy students see the following bulletin posted on the wall of their lecture hall:
Crash Course in Logical Assumptions
Saturday, September 26, 1998, All Day

Neither of them knows what it means and they are both curious. The pair decide to find the professor and ask some questions. When they locate the professor's office, the bolder of the two enter the building while the other remains outside.
Student: "Uh...Sir..What does Crash Course in Logical Assumptions mean?"
Professor: "Well, it involves taking information that you have, forming assumptions using logic, and then creating new information. Let me try to answer your question by asking you a question. Do you own a car?"
Student: "Uh...Yes, I do."

Professor: "Well, then I can now logically assume that you drive."
Student: "Yes, I drive. "

Professor: "Then I can logically assume that you drive on weekends."
Student: "Yeah, I drive on weekends, I go out on dates."

Professor: "Then I can logically assume that you have date partners."
Student: "Well, yes, I have a girlfriend."

Professor: "Then I can logically assume that you are heterosexual."
Student: "Uh...hell yes! OK, I think I understand what this course is about now. Thanks a lot for your time."

Once back outside, his friend asks him: "So, what's it all about?"
"Its about using information and stuff...Let me answer your question by asking you a question. Do you own a car?"
"No."
"Uh...Then you're homosexual, dude!"

Don't LOOK at anything in a physics lab.
Don't TASTE anything in a chemistry lab.
Don't SMELL anything in a biology lab.
Don't TOUCH anything in a medical lab.
and, most importantly,
Don't LISTEN to anything in a philosophy department.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as to seem not worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.Bertrand Russell, Science and Religion



If metaphysics is being qua being;
and if epistomology is knowing qua knowing;
then metaphilosophy must be... qua qua qua.

Graduate student lends his advisor a book on tensed logic by Arthur N. Prior. Advisor reads it, then tells his student that he dropped it off in the student's mail box. Moments later the student returns, and breathlessly exclaims: "Professor, professor. Someone's stolen my Prior."
To which the professor sagely replies: "You're lucky around this department they haven't stolen your posterior."

A philosophy professor walks in to give his class their final. Placing his chair on his desk the professor instructs the class, "Using every applicable thing you've learned in this course, prove to me that this chair DOES NOT EXIST."
So, pencils are writing and erasers are erasing, students are preparing to embark on novels proving that this chair doesn't exist, except for one student. He spends thirty seconds writing his answer, then turns his final in to the astonishment of his peers.

Time goes by, and the day comes when all the students get their final grades...and to the amazment of the class, the student who wrote for thirty seconds gets the highest grade in the class.

His answer to the question: "What chair?"

Nietzsche: GOD IS DEAD.
God: NIETZSCHE IS DEAD.
Nietzsche (in the afterlife): WELL, AT LEAST I CONTINUE TO LIVE IN THE MINDS OF EXISTENTIALISTS AND POST-MODERNISTS!
God (elsewhere): WELL, AT LEAST I CONTINUE TO EXIST IN THE MINDS OF FUNDAMENTALISTS AND RELIGIOUS FANATICS!
Nietzsche: AT LEAST, THERE IS ONE COMMON THING IN US . . . FANATICS BELIEVE US!
God: WHAT DO YOU MEAN?
Nietzsche: DON'T YOU KNOW THAT EXISTENTIALISTS AND POST-MODERNISTS HAVE ALSO GONE FANATICAL?
God: WELL, BEING OMNISCIENT, I KNOW EVERYTHING EXCEPT THOSE SAID BY POST-MODERNISTS COZ EVERY TIME I EXPRESS MY OWN UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT THEY SAY, THEY KEEP ON CHANGING WHAT THEY MEAN . . . BY THE HOUR . . . BY THE MINUTE . . .
Nietzsche: HA-HA-HA!! THEY LEARNED IT FROM ME!! AND THEY WILL SOON BE LINING UP FOR THE MENTAL ASYLUMS . . . LIKE ME.Ruel Pepa

The Hemp Plant
The hemp plant is harvested for its fibers, seed, seed meal and seed oil.
Hemp is a distinct variety of the plant species cannabis sativa L. Due to the similar leaf shape, hemp is frequently confused with marijuana. Although both plants are from the species cannabis, hemp contains virtually no THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol), the active ingredient in marijuana.
Hemp cannot be used as a drug because it produces virtually no THC
(less than 1%), where marijuana produces between 5 - 20 % THC.

Hemp Agronomic Characteristics
Hemp is a bast fiber plant similar to flax, kenaf, jute and ramie. Long slender primary fibers on the outer portion of the stalk characterize bast fiber plants. An annual plant that grows from seed, hemp can be grown on a range of soils, but tends to grow best on land that produces high yields of corn. The soil must be well drained, rich in nitrogen, and non-acidic. Hemp requires limited pesticides because is grows so quickly and attracts few pests. In northern latitudes, hemp is usually planted between early March and late May. Hemp averages between 2 - 4 meters in height in about four months of growth.
Hemp crops are harvested at different times for different hemp products.

Harvesting hemp stalks for high quality primary fiber occurs as soon as the crop is in flower.
Harvesting for seed production and stalks occurs 4 - 6 weeks after flowering, when male plants begin to shed pollen.

Primary Hemp Fiber
The valued primary fibers are contained around the hollow, woody core of the hemp stalk. These long, strong fibers that grow the length of the hemp stalk are considered bast fibers Hemp fiber possesses properties similar to other bast fibers (flax, kenaf, jute and ramie) and excels in fiber length, strength, durability, absorbency, antimildew and antimicrobial properties.

Once a hemp crop has matured and been harvested, hemp primary fibers are separated from the hemp stalk through the "retting" process. For "dew retting", the cut stalks are left in the field for several weeks to allow natural humidity and bacteria to decompose the fiber-binding pectins. Other ways to separate the fiber from the core are: water retting, warm water retting and chemical retting. When the retting process is complete, the fibers are readily separated from the core, and processed for specific products.

Hemp
Primary fibers are long-staple length fibers, averaging 8 ” (20 cm) in length. These hemp fibers can be spun and woven to a fine, crisp, linen-like fabric and used for apparel textiles, home furnishing textiles and carpeting. Antimildew and antimicrobial properties make them very suitable for sails, tarps, awnings, and floor coverings.

Primary Hemp fibers can be cut to shorter staple lengths to accommodate a variety of spinning systems. Hemp fiber blended with wool, cotton, linen or other fibers, adds strength, durability, absorbency and breathability, making hemp-blended fabrics cool and comfortable to wear and touch.

The Qualities of Primary Hemp Fiber


length average 8 ” (20 cm) in length,
4 - 6 ”, 1 - 2 ” and special lengths available upon request
luster high
strength high
elasticity low, can be treated to improve
heat conductivity high, very cool fabric to wear
absorbency high
cleanliness and washability high
reaction to bleaches will weaken, use with care
reaction to heat will scorch and burn
effect of mildew highly resistant
effect of light & outdoor exposure very resistant
reaction to alkalies not affected
reaction to acids easily affected
affinity for dyes very good

Core Fiber
Core fiber is derived from the sturdy, wood-like hollow stalk of the hemp plant. Sometimes referred to as "hurds", it is up to twice as absorbent as wood shavings, making it an excellent animal bedding and garden mulch. It can be easily blended with lime to create a strong yet lightweight concrete or plaster. Its high cellulose content means it can be applied to the manufacturing of plastics. Like primary fiber, it is biodegradable and possesses antimildew and antimicrobial properties.
U.S. Legal Definitions

Custom Regulations of the United States, Official US Custom House Guide, 1987. sec. 302.58 --CR-360. MARIJUANA STATUTORY PROVISIONS
Controlled Substances Act, Food & Drug Admin (1970)

Chapt. 22, Sec. 802-15 Definitions:
(a) MARIHUANA. The term 'marihuana' means all parts of the plant Cannabis sativa (L.), whether growing or not, the seeds thereof, the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin;

BUT SHALL NOT INCLUDE the mature stalks of such plant,. fiber provided from such stalks, oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant., any other compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of such mature stalks (except the resin extracted therefrom), fiber. oil or cake or the sterilized seed of such plant. which is incapable of germination

LEGAL FACTS

*The US Drug Enforcement Agency classifies all C. sativa varieties as "marijuana." While it is theoretically possible to get permission from the government to grow hemp, DEA would require that the field be secured by fence, razor wire, dogs, guards, and lights, making it cost-prohibitive.

Hemp

*The US State Department must certify each year that a foreign nation is cooperating in the war on drugs. The European Union subsidizes its farmers to grow industrial hemp. Those nations are not on this list, because the State Department can tell the difference between hemp and marijuana.

*Hemp was grown commercially (with increasing governmental interference) in the United States until the 1950s. It was doomed by the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which placed an extremely high tax on marijuana and made it effectively impossible to grow industrial hemp. While Congress expressly expected the continued production of industrial hemp, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics lumped industrial hemp with marijuana, as it's successor the US Drug Enforcement Administration, does to this day.