Comments for Objectively True

Comment on Is there a little paradox here? by jackson

jackson — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:54:55 +0000

Curious. For me, “Any” was the real hairy word here, because, if the statement is true, arguments from induction are unverifiable (or, if you dislike verification, let’s use a weaker term like “justifiable”). Yet this statement generalizes, having not observed the entire class of statements which are based in induction. Thus, until EVERY inductive statement can be shown to fail the test of verification, this statement has extrapolated from a potentially unfairly-generalized inductive observation. If, however, the original claim was shown to be true by examining every possible such statement, it was shown to be verifiable even when the statement was only an inductive generalization (and thus, simultaneously false)…maybe?

Comment on Installing e17 on (k)ubuntu jaunty jackalope by jackson

jackson — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:00:53 +0000

Thanks, I’ll take a look at that. I know also that edje now requires lua > 5.10, so I will have to update the post to reflect that as well.

Comment on Installing e17 on (k)ubuntu jaunty jackalope by tartan

tartan — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:34:18 +0000

at the moment two package names in repos are changed:libglib-2.0-dev is now libglib2.0-dev and libcurl3-dev is now a virtual package provided by libcurl4-openssl-dev, at least in crunchbang jaunty it is so.

Comment on On Bullshit: Studying for the GRE by Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:57:26 +0000

A few comments:

A professor of mine commented that students writing bar exam essays are better off leaving a brilliant argument off the page and instead inserting the generic model answer that looks like all the rest. His advice: “Aim for a B.” According to him, the exam graders simply wouldn’t know a brilliant answer if they saw one, and noting the deviation from the norm, would likely mark it with a lower score. Of course, unlike the GRE, bar exams are pass/fail. There is likely to be a few differences in how to prepare answers. I think, though, that his general point that test graders may not know brilliance if they saw it remains true in both circumstances.

Also, what is being asked for in the exam? Specifically, who is the audience and what do they value in an exam?

My guess is that the criteria looked at by the judges include things like organizational structure, ability to develop a position, ability to support your stated position with facts, and an ability to foresee possible counterarguments to your position and to anticipate them. If finessed properly, the ability to recognize that the prompt is, in fact, a false-dichotomy that can’t be answered in the abstract might actually be really useful. Articulating that in a manner that doesn’t seem to cut against an asserted position and isn’t too intellectually challenging for the test graders, however, could pose quite a challenge.

Finally, I recommend the book below. It’s written for law students, but I think the writing skills in it have far more applications than just law.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Maybe-Excel-School-Exams/dp/0890897603/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248897248&sr=8-1

Comment on On Bullshit: Studying for the GRE by Aiyaz

Aiyaz — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:13:35 +0000

Well said Jackson, but even with the recognition of the inane nature of the questions, more often than not such prompts are testing how well you can argue for a given side. The side matters not so much as the support that you give. Philosophically this is problematic, but for testing purposes it shows how well one can write for a given side and against another whether they do or do not believe what they are saying. I am most likely biased in my views on this due to the fact that this is largely the same exercise I had to do and now judge in High School debate.

Comment on Installing e17 on (k)ubuntu jaunty jackalope by jackson

jackson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:51:12 +0000

the package needed libfontconfig-dev, I think. I have added that to the huge dependencies list now. Thanks for the reminder about enlightenment_start

Comment on Installing e17 on (k)ubuntu jaunty jackalope by Dennis

Dennis — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:43:51 +0000

ah, here’s the error:

<<<>>>
Enlightenment found Evas can’t load the ‘Sans’ font. Check Evas has fontconfig
support and system fontconfig defines a ‘Sans’ font.

E17: Begin shutdown procedure!

Comment on Installing e17 on (k)ubuntu jaunty jackalope by Dennis

Dennis — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:42:39 +0000

ok, got it all compiled, then had two problems when trying to start.
first problem was that when I tried to log into e17 it said that I wasn’t suppose to use the enlightenment binary to start enlightenment but rather the enlightenement_start script.

i switched to that and then got the error that I was missing some configuration for the Sans font.

Comment on Installing e17 on (k)ubuntu jaunty jackalope by Dennis

Dennis — Wed, 27 May 2009 05:24:09 +0000

Ok, so I removed that and it’s proceeding again, still missing some -dev packages though, like glib-2.0-dev

Comment on Installing e17 on (k)ubuntu jaunty jackalope by jackson

jackson — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:19:21 +0000

That’s quite strange. I don’t think cvs was required for my install, at least not recently since they switched the repository to svn, but I might try do a fresh install and check if these things are required. I’m not sure if enthrall is still being developed, but I can probably find out and update that as well.