On Thu, 7 Sep 2000 17:18:02 +0100, Aldo P. Solari [APS]
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Bob et al.:
>
>It  is amazing someone could said that about philosophy ... maybe
>Dave  Barry  should  review his concept.

Aldo, you've done it again.  First you failed to see Crusty's obvious
humorous reference to dolphins.  Now you are flaming Dave Barry for:

>RF>    "PHILOSOPHY: Basically, this involves sitting in a room and
>RF>    deciding there is no such thing as reality and then going to
>RF>    lunch.  You should major in philosophy if you plan to take a
>RF>    lot of drugs."
>
>RF>    Quoted without permission, from "COLLEGE ANYONE?  A veteran's
>RF>    crash course in campus survival", by Dave Barry.

Dear Aldo, Dave Barry SPECIALIZES in writing humor, and he won a coveted
Pulitzer Prize for so doing.  With or without any acolade, Dave Barry
does not need to review his concept of philosophy to write HUMOR!


>I have *no intention* to flame  anyone  BUT there maybe a lot of
>flaming against academics in  "blue-collar"  America.

Could you elaborate and explain yourself?

>Some  people  believe phd-titles are
>bought in drug-stores or beach parties ... anyway.

Who are they?


>Your  observation  about  dolphins which are socially rejected by
>their  own  would search contact with humans is very interesting.

That's actually not MY observation, but the observation of scientists
who studied the behavior of dolphins.

>This happens among geese.
>
>What  could  we  possibly  learn  anout  it  ? That's a very good
>question. I might propose some hypothesis:
>
>(a) The socially rejected (or auto-rejected) may be colonizers;
>(b) Divers may be socially rejected (or auto-rejected);
>(c) Divers may be colonizers.

Will this be part of your Ph.D. dissertation?  Will it be in marine-
fishery biology or sociology?   Dave Barry had THIS to say about
SOCIOLOGY in the SAME article I cited:

    SOCIOLOGY:  For sheer lack of intelligibility, sociology is far
    and away the No. 1 subject.  I sat through hundreds of hours of
    sociology courses and read gobs of sociology writing, and I never
    once heard or read a coherent statement.  This is because socio-
    logists want to be considered scientists, so they spend most of
    their time translating simple, obvious observations into
    scientific-sounding code.  If you plan to major in sociology,
    you'll have to learn to do the same thing.  For example, suppose
    you observed that children cry when they fall down.  You should
    write: "Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior
    tendencies of prematurated isolates indicates that a causal
    relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrymatory,
    or 'crying' behavior forms."  If you can keep this up for 50 or
    60 pages, you will get a large government grant.

See?  Sociologists are always looking for CAUSAL relationships as
you have exhibited in your questions about dolphins.

As for

>This happens among geese.

My methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior of
geese which have large bumps on their heads is that there is a
CAUSAL relationship between the size of these "goose-bumps" and
the number of times they are clubbed on the head.   o:-)

-- Bob.