Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 13, 2009, 7:00 pm
Episode 10. Aristotle's teleological understanding of the universe made him think of social and political institutions in terms of goals and purposes. If you understand the telos of a particular i...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 11, 2009, 10:42 pm
I know the Tiger Woods story has monopolized the media, and everyone's sick of it, but it provides an opportunity for me to explain why I admire golfers as much as I do: somehow, almost magically ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 11, 2009, 10:12 am
This blasphemer dared to show some neck? I cannot be held responsible if I end up raping her... obviously, it would be her fault that I can't control my own animalistic instincts... :) Watch the ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 10, 2009, 8:43 pm
Reality sucks sometimes, especially when your world-view is based upon the incoherent, bigoted, unscientific and self-contradictory ramblings of an ancient barbaric and illiterate people with a reputa...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 10, 2009, 5:44 pm
Until this week, I have been working under the assumption that my blog readership was made up entirely of intelligent and curious people, but now that scientists have figured out Campbell's monkey...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 9, 2009, 4:38 pm
Things have not been going too well in the White House recently, what with attention-obsessed party crashers sneaking in past the secret service, health care reform being stalled by congress douchebag...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 8, 2009, 12:46 pm
I think we can probably all agree that the so-called War on Drugs has been a huge failure. Virtually all the money we've thrown at the problem has been wasted, or it's being used to house non-...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 8, 2009, 3:45 am
Magnetic fields are invisible to the naked eye, so how do we know what they would look like if they were visible? And how would we even know they exist in the first place? One of the first humans ever...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 6, 2009, 10:20 pm
Homeopathy isn't some wacky fringe belief, as many scientists and skeptics tend to think; it's a wacky popular belief :) When the early homeopaths noticed they were poisoning some of their cl...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 4, 2009, 7:20 am
Gay people want the same constitutional right to be miserable that the rest of us have. I don't quite get this preference myself (I'm skeptical of marriage in general), but the question is ult...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 3, 2009, 8:28 pm
If only religious leaders could be this honest :) The Flying Spaghetti Monster is not pleased... .
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 3, 2009, 6:11 am
I don't know whether it's just a coincidence that just as reports uncovering the institutionalized cover-up of the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests in Ireland became public, Vatica...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Dec 1, 2009, 11:28 pm
World-famous primatologist and conservationist, Dr. Jane Goodall paid a visit to Bill Moyers this weekend. In this engaging discussion, they talk about her classic work with African chimpanzees and wh...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 30, 2009, 11:14 pm
Bleeding-heart liberals and Obama-lovers... your days in power are over! We've all known that, for a good while now, there has been no true and uniting spokesperson for the Republican party. Late...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 30, 2009, 6:29 am
Crocodiles have been around virtually unchanged for a very long time, at least since the time of the dinosaurs. We mammals may think of ourselves as the present culmination of the evolutionary process...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 28, 2009, 7:14 am
Episode 9. Affirmative Action is a notoriously contentious social, ethical and political issue, so before we let our emotions get the better of our judgment, it may be worth our time to consider its r...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 26, 2009, 2:32 pm
If this doesn't make you want to study marine biology, I don't know what will :) .
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 25, 2009, 11:55 pm
I personally think that the first time you see the planets through an ordinary telescope, Saturn takes the cake as the most beautiful to watch, and it can all be explained in two words: planetary ring...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 25, 2009, 8:04 am
... a few years earlier. It's still something of a great mystery how they manage to orient themselves so effectively, but this instinct drives them so powerfully that they will undergo great ris...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 19, 2009, 10:18 pm
Humanity has been curious about the nature of the universe and our place in it for a very long time. That curiosity, as well as our large heads and the fact we are big fat copycats, might be one of th...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 19, 2009, 2:03 am
There is so much about the world we are completely unaware of simply as a function of the slow speed of our perception. If we were to release a water drop into a pool of water, for instance, it would ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 17, 2009, 11:02 pm
"All men are not created equal. It is the purpose of the Government to make them so." That is the premise of this film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's brilliant short story: Harrison Bergeron (which...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 17, 2009, 7:52 am
Many of the documentaries I post on this blog, especially those featuring animals, display incredible photography, the kind that must require weeks or even months of patience, careful planning and a t...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 16, 2009, 8:20 am
When they directed The Matrix and its sequels, the Wachowski brothers were confronted with a dilemma: their fantastic sci-fi story required visual and special effects that simply did not exist at the ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 14, 2009, 7:17 am
Episode 7. As we saw in the previous episode, the essence of Kant's categorical imperative is its absolute and universally binding force: since the moral status of our actions does not depend on c...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 12, 2009, 11:21 pm
For all the diversity of their thought and the uniqueness of their creativity, there's at least one thing all philosophers have in common: eventually they all die. It's like we're cursed! ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 12, 2009, 7:37 am
When we think about the time the Romans would unleash hungry and fierce lions on devout Christians, we tend to squirm, become morally outraged, and express our righteous indignation against the cruelt...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 10, 2009, 7:05 am
Carl Sagan would have turned 75 yesterday. I can't help but wonder what the state of the world and our general attitude toward science would be today without his courageous quest to popularize sci...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 9, 2009, 8:52 am
Born from humble beginnings rooted in deplorable poverty and a broken home, Charles Spencer Chaplin would one day rise to worldwide prominence through the artistry of his comedic genius and the newly ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 6, 2009, 1:39 pm
I don't know if you've had the patience to watch Glenn Beck make a complete ass of himself during the past year with his dramatic accusations, preposterous associations, exaggerations, inventi...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 6, 2009, 6:21 am
Nature and its laws seem to be governed by patterns which can be described mathematically, and human beings have been hard at work trying to make sense of such patterns for a very long time. In this ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 5, 2009, 5:35 pm
We're probably all guilty, English majors included, of occasionally laughing at English majors. But here is a little vindication for language enthusiasts in the form of some kick-ass alliteration ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 4, 2009, 5:08 pm
Suppose you're wandering around an art museum and you stumble upon a suicidal hottie who's read a bit too much Sartre or Camus for her own good and who's more than overwhelmed with existen...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 4, 2009, 8:32 am
Religions are wacky in all sorts of ways, but at the heart of Christianity there is a logical problem so deep, one has to wonder how on earth it's possible for people to actually believe it... and...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 3, 2009, 5:45 am
Losing a loved one in a fatal accident is obviously difficult, especially when it's your innocent and life-loving child, but The Onion reports that what really sucks, the real heart-wrenching trag...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Nov 2, 2009, 8:35 am
Episode 6. No ethics course can be complete without an exploration of one of the strangest and most important moral theories out there: Immanuel Kant's deontology (or duty-based morality). Kant ar...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 29, 2009, 7:19 pm
If your boyfriend or husband beats you, you might want to start thinking about keeping extra ice in the fridge because insurance companies are denying medical claims on the grounds that domestic abuse...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 29, 2009, 7:34 am
When the ice in the Arctic starts to melt as the sun rises in the sky, things begin to happen, life resumes its annual cycle, and David Attenborough is there to tell us all about it to the sight of so...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 27, 2009, 4:12 pm
Cornel West, one of America's most popular leading intellectuals, just paid a visit to Stephen Colbert to talk about his autobiography. The man has a lot of good ideas, a compassionate heart, envi...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 27, 2009, 3:51 pm
If you think your religion is just not homophobic or misogynistic or racist enough, you are in luck! The Catholic Church is sending out an open invitation to Christian conservatives who have a problem...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 27, 2009, 8:57 am
We philosophers tend to take the etymology of our profession rather seriously: we are sort of obsessed with the love of wisdom. And because wisdom requires knowledge, and knowledge requires truth, we ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 26, 2009, 8:00 am
Episode 5. The previous lecture opened up the question of whether state conscription violates citizens' right to life, or whether and under what conditions this practice might be legitimate. Would...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 24, 2009, 2:19 am
The following Public Service Announcement comes from the LAPD's citizen surveillance program and promotes the idea that, as responsible and caring citizens, we should report any suspicion of possi...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 23, 2009, 8:19 am
For the past three decades, historian Jared Diamond has been studying the historical reasons that might be able to explain human inequality in our own time. In the first episode of this series, Diamo...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 22, 2009, 7:18 am
This one goes out to all my... let's call them Soviet friends, to be sufficiently inclusive :) The following video depicts a touching and powerful interpretation of the invasion and occupation of...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 21, 2009, 4:35 pm
Recently, I posted a time lapse video of China's 60th anniversary celebration and lamented our own lack of discipline and coordination. It turns out the French don't want to be left behind eit...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 20, 2009, 11:04 pm
Episode 4. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson penned these immemorial words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their ...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 20, 2009, 9:06 am
I am somewhat conflicted about posting the movie below. On the one hand, since philosophy deals with ideas and abstractions not easily captured through a visual medium, it's difficult to find vide...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 19, 2009, 6:26 am
Look at the cube on the right. Is the center piece on the top side of the cube lighter or darker than the center piece on the left side of the cube? Whatever you 'think' is the right answer (a...
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Roberto R. posted an article on Berto: Philosophy Monkey - Oct 16, 2009, 5:37 pm
I refuse to believe Michael Steele is black... Only a white man can be this lame and transparent... The Daily Show With Jon StewartMon - Thurs 11p / 10cYou've Got Failwww.thedailyshow.comDaily Sh...
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