Thursday, June 3, 2010

“If you are inquisitive and have a logical mind, Philosophy is right for you” plus 3 more

“If you are inquisitive and have a logical mind, Philosophy is right for you” plus 3 more

If you are inquisitive and have a logical mind, Philosophy is right for you

Posted: 26 May 2010 11:48 AM PDT

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Philosophy, which literally means love of wisdom, is one of the oldest academic disciplines besides Mathematics. In the Indian context, it also implies a way of living life righteously.

Hence, philosophical analysis refers to intellectual and reflective method for attempting to comprehend the underlying principles and to discover normative criteria. At the same time, philosophical activity refers to rational and critical examination or a critique of the most basic elements of our everyday life situations and experiences.

Philosophy differs from other academic disciplines in mainly being normative. For example, when philosopher states that human beings are rational beings, it is not a descriptive statement of how humans behave but how they need to act. The normative function of philosophy also implies an attempt to unravel or conceptually analyse the fundamentals of underlying principles. Accordingly, it can be argued that philosophical enquiry and methodology differ sharply from natural sciences and other social sciences as well.

The BA (H) Philosophy course is being taught at 15 colleges of Delhi University and is being taught as inter-disciplinary credit course for various BA Honours courses and as Discipline course for BA Programme in most colleges.

Students pursuing the BA (H) Philosophy course in DU have to study papers such as Logic, Elements of Indian Philosophy, History of Western Philosophy and Text of Indian Philosophy and Ethics as compulsory papers and rest three are optional papers. For instance, there are options to choose from Social and Political Philosophy, Early and Later Greek Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language, Contemporary Philosophy, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Logic.

A student needs to be inquisitive, be able to have a critical insight, needs to have good command over language and be able to put things in perspective besides having a flair for logical analysis. However, any intelligent minded and a keen learner can pursue this course.

(The course profile on BSc (H) Biomedical Sciences published on Wednesday erroneously mentioned that admission to the course is through entrance examination. Admission is based on merit.)

Rekha  Navneet is an Associate Professor at Gargi College.

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Royals put hitting philosophy in place early

Posted: 02 Jun 2010 05:48 PM PDT

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By Dick Kaegel / MLB.com

06/02/10 8:30 PM ET

KANSAS CITY -- The Royals, despite a recent scoring drought, were still second among Major League clubs in batting at .278 after Tuesday's 6-3 win over the Angels.

Beyond that, manager Ned Yost likes the way the Royals are applying hitting basics throughout the organization.

"They're teaching them two-strike approach, they're teaching them situational hitting, they're teaching them how to to bunt, they're teaching them offensive fundamentals and it's the same approach at each level at each team and it has to be like that," Yost said.

"Because when they get here, you don't want to have to teach a kid a two-strike approach. I tried that in Milwaukee and it's tough to do. But these kids here have it and know it."

Yost, who formerly managed the Brewers, sees a different approach by the Royals.

"In Milwaukee, we were bombers, I mean those kids from one to eight [in the batting order] were going to the 25 homers a year but their approach didn't change from the first pitch to the last pitch," Yost said. "These guys [the Royals] take their walks, they try to get in good hitting counts, they go to all parts of the field and it's a learning process and it's easier taught young than old. They do it right here."

Yost likes what he sees from KC bullpen

KANSAS CITY -- Call Royals manager Ned Yost quite pleased with the improvement in the bullpen.

The relievers' ERA is down to 4.66 from 5.19 when he took over the club on May 14. Entering Wednesday night's game against the Angels, the bullpen's ERA in the Yost era was 3.53.

There was a picture-perfect example in Tuesday night's 6-3 Royals victory as Robinson Tejeda and Blake Wood flawlessly set up a save for closer Joakim Soria.

"I think since we got here, we implemented the new pitching program and it's starting to pay some dividends. Woody and Robby both threw on the side before the game to prepare them for the game and the results were pretty obvious when they came in," Yost said. "It's just practicing your craft before the game a little bit and it helps."

Yost and pitching coach Bob McClure have had their relievers practicing off a mound rather than throwing on flat ground as they often did previously.

"Why play catch in the outfield with another pitcher when you can get on the mound and do it in your environment, practice off the plate, focus on commanding your pitch every time," Yost said. "And sometimes it's a 15-to-20 pitch session at 75 percent but you're practicing your craft. I mean we take batting practice every day, we take ground balls every day, what are the pitchers practicing? Get them on the mound and let them practice."

That's not the only reason for the recent improvement, of course.

"I think settling into roles has helped a little bit and they all understand at what spot in the game they're going to be pitching in and those things all add up," Yost said.

One of the key moves has been using rookie Wood as the eighth-inning setup man for Soria.

"He's got a 96 mile-an-hour fastball that I describe as having teeth," Yost said. "It bores in on right-handed hitters hard, it bores away hard on left-handed hitters so it's a very difficult pitch to handle. So he's not going to need much secondary pitches as long as he can command that first one."

Tejeda's season has been a study in contrasts. With his 1 1/3 scoreless innings on Tuesday night, Tejeda had given up just one earned run in his last 18 1/3 innings. In his first 8 1/3 innings this season, he'd given up 12 earned runs.

Pitchers take their hacks for Interleague

KANSAS CITY -- It's pitchers' play time around the batting cage these days, as the Royals prepare for their first Interleague action at National League cities this month. That starts on June 11 at Cincinnati and later they'll visit Atlanta and Washington.

The American League pitchers don't get to hit often and there's a lot of frivolity as they get in their licks. Hitting coach Kevin Seitzer added some humor on Wednesday with a slow curveball that had Luke Hochevar flailing helplessly.

"I thought I'd drop an equalizer on him. When they start getting happy, I've got to go bender, up-and-in cheese," Seitzer said, laughing. "Then all of a sudden, it wasn't that pretty."

Starters Zack Greinke, Brian Bannister and Bruce Chen joined Hochevar in the cage on Wednesday. Kyle Davies was preparing to pitch against the Angels.

"Zack is unbelievable and Banny's got a real good idea of what he's doing in there, too. K.D. is swinging all right and Hoch has made vast improvements, staying in the middle of the field but I had to drop a little bender on him because all they've been hitting is fastballs all week," Seitzer said. "They've been having a good time with it. I try to throw it in their wheelhouse so they can have a little bit of fun."

Chen whistled some line drives around the field.

"He's got a short stroke and, matter of fact, last year he got a start in Pittsburgh and had a walk, a double down the left-field line and hit another ball sharply, if I remember right," Seitzer said.

The Royals don't expect too much from pitchers who normally don't hit.

"We just want them to get a bunt down and maybe put the ball in play to move a runner if need be," Seitzer said, "and whatever we get will be a plus."

Moustakas receives another honor

KANSAS CITY -- Third baseman Mike Moustakas was the Royals' Minor League Player of the Month in May and was awarded the same honor by the Texas League.

Moustakas hit .393 (35-for-89) in 25 games for Northwest Arkansas with 22 runs, seven doubles, nine homers and 32 RBIs. With 15 walks, he had an on-base percentage of .486.

He missed the last four games of the month with a bruised knee.

Worth noting

The Royals Wives Food Drive begins before Thursday afternoon's game and continues on Friday and Saturday nights. Non-perishable food items will be collected at Kauffman Stadium Gates B and D on Thursday from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. CT. ... Alex Gordon hit his ninth homer and raised his average to .376, as Triple-A Omaha won at New Orleans, 9-2. David Lough hit his fifth homer. ... Eric Hosmer's two hits in Class A Wilmington's 3-2 win at Kinston raised his average to .354.

Dick Kaegel is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

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Married Authors Explore Politics, Philosophy Behind Happiness

Posted: 02 Jun 2010 05:49 PM PDT

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JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, we end on a happy note, or at least a happiness note.

Jeffrey Brown has our conversation.

JEFFREY BROWN: They seem happy in their Cambridge, Massachusetts, apartment, Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard, and Sissela Bok, a philosopher and ethicist, married for 55 years, authors of numerous books between them, and now two more, both on the subject of happiness.

Sissela Bok's book, Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science, comes out this fall, and, as the title suggests, takes the long view.

SISSELA BOK, author, "Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science": I felt that it was so important to look at everything that's been done for millennia, really, in religion, in literature, in philosophy, and to bring that together with all the new research and what's been done, really, I guess in the last three decades in the social sciences and perhaps the last 15 years in brain research, to try to bring all those things together.

JEFFREY BROWN: Derek Bok's book, "The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being," was published this spring.

DEREK BOK, author, "The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being": I had always been interested in happiness research. I noticed the one thing that wasn't written about very much was what implication did this have for -- for public policy.

And since the -- the great champion of happiness, Jeremy Bentham, had made the point 200 years ago that happiness should be the sole objective of government, it seemed natural to take that forward and say, now that we know something about happiness, what are the results for public policy-makers?

JEFFREY BROWN: Happiness, or at least literature and research on happiness, is everywhere these days, with college courses and whole sections of your local bookstore devoted to everything from academic studies, to how-tos of personal fulfillment.

And both Boks have taken into account the contradictions of what does and doesn't make us happy: having more money, for example.

DEREK BOK: When you get more money, very quickly, you become adapted to it. And the things you have always looked forward to buying now become commonplace. And the other thing that happens is, your aspirations begin to rise, so that, if you survey the American people and you say, how much money do you need to live a really completely happy life, and then survey them 10 years later, you will find that, 10 years later, they want a lot more money than they did 10 years before.

So, I think our aspirations are always leaping out in front of reality, leaving us about as satisfied and as frustrated as we were before.

SISSELA BOK: It's true that we can get used to money and all kinds of advantages. We can adapt to that, so to speak. But it's very much -- it's very good for human beings that they don't adapt in the same way to, for instance, cherished personal relations, friendships, affection for children, affection -- feelings of beauty.

JEFFREY BROWN: Combing through the research, Derek Bok moves from personal to policy and asks whether government puts too much emphasis on economic yardsticks, at the expense of other priorities, measuring a country's well-being through the gross national product, rather than, say, a gross happiness index.

DEREK BOK: Only Bhutan recognizes gross national happiness as its major objective.

DEREK BOK: But, yes, there's a lot of dispute in the research on happiness about whether economic growth really does produce lasting happiness. There are some people who believe it does. And richer countries are uniformly happier than poorer countries.

But there's also a lot of evidence that happiness in the United States has not increased in the last 50 years, even though we're much more prosperous today than we used to be.

JEFFREY BROWN: For her part, Sissela Bok takes a different tack, looking at the very idea of happiness through time and some of the moral questions it continues to raise.

SISSELA BOK: So, for instance, even if people get happier by something -- let's say that they get happier by living in a very prejudiced society, or that they're, you know, happy about their own family, their own particular social group, so long as they can oppress the others, perhaps, or draw money from them. Is that happiness worth having? And how should we look at the moral issues that are raised?

JEFFREY BROWN: In other words, for both Boks, the study of what can make us happy can illuminate a great deal, about our values, our relationships to each other, to our jobs, money, and so on. But it can also quickly become complicated.

For Derek, for example, the question becomes what exactly government do could do differently to make us happier.

DEREK BOK: Let me give you an example from health care, for example.

If you look at the research, you find that, remarkably, a number of the unhappy things that can happen to you from a health standpoint really don't have very long-lasting effects on your happiness at all. You get over the loss of an arm quite quickly.

But there are three health conditions that produce lasting unhappiness of a very acute kind. One is clinical depression. Millions of people suffer from that. Another one is chronic pain, more millions of people. And the final -- the third one is rather unexpected, is sleep disorders.

And there are, again, millions of people who suffer from insomnia and related disorders. Now, the interesting thing from a policy point of view is that all of those three illnesses are comparatively under-resourced and underemphasized by government policy.

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean that government could step in with -- and help people with sleep disorders?

DEREK BOK: Absolutely.

JEFFREY BROWN: And you're not worried about proposing something like that at a time where there's -- you know, people are out protesting over health care, government in this, government in that?

DEREK BOK: Not particularly, because I think, in the end, the research also tells us that the thing that matters most to people is happiness.

And, so, I think a government that tries systematically to relieve what causes lasting misery and to emphasize what gives lasting happiness will eventually win the support of the -- of the people.

SISSELA BOK: It's so interesting to look at the -- at the huge controversies from the beginning of time about what happiness really means, what it comes from, what it involves.

People have always fought over that, so that there's always been disagreement about it. There still is. You can ask, for instance, a young person considering whether or not to be a suicide bomber, what will my happiness perhaps be if I do that?

That's entirely different from lots of other people's views about happiness. So, that's one thing I did want to explore.

JEFFREY BROWN: Does it require hopefulness to -- to write about happiness?

SISSELA BOK: That's an interesting questions, because it seems to me that some people who write about happiness get very hopeful and quite cheery, just as people who write about, let's say, child abuse and torture, that can be extremely depressing.

So, there, I think that they have -- everybody has to watch themselves a bit and to say, you know, how is the research influencing me, quite apart from, how might I influence the research?

JEFFREY BROWN: And what about when you're a couple both writing books on happiness?

DEREK BOK: I think that just elevates the happiness even more. I think -- I would recommend it to any couple.

DEREK BOK: Write different books, noncompetitive books about the same subject, and you have guaranteed interesting dinner table conversations for months on end.

JEFFREY BROWN: Sissela and Derek Bok, thanks for talking to us.

SISSELA BOK: Thank you so much. Thanks for having us.

DEREK BOK: Thank you. It was a pleasure to be here.

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Putting a Precocious Palate to Work

Posted: 01 Jun 2010 06:41 PM PDT

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Pascaline LePeltier, 29, has been wine director at Rouge Tomate, a restaurant with an obsession for healthful pairings of food and beverages, since June 2009. She joined its staff in 2007 as a consultant to its nutritious beverage program, a k a the liquid menu. A native of Angers, France, in the Loire Valley, she studied philosophy before switching fields and training in Paris with Potel et Chabot, a high-end caterer.

Starting early: I had my first sip of wine at a family dinner when I was 2 or 3. I don't really remember the taste. I do remember tasting Calvados at my grandparents' house in Normandy at a holiday when I was 3. I liked it so much that by the time I was 13 or 14, they were taking the Calvados away from me!

Books and bubbly: I discovered wine at the end of high school; I studied philosophy in my final year, and when I graduated with high honors, my teacher and I celebrated by drinking together a bottle of Champagne. Veuve Clicquot Rosé. Oh my God, it was great. Then for five years I went to study philosophy in Nantes and in Paris at the Sorbonne.

Sampling the restaurant life: I decided I was too young to teach philosophy at 23 years old, so I put it aside to get more in touch with hospitality and management; I had some summer jobs in restaurants and catering and liked them.

The luckiest apprentice: I went back to school again for two years and into a specific apprenticeship where you work three weeks of every month at a restaurant and spend the other week in school. I was the oldest in my class. And the luckiest. I met a chef in Brittany with a two-star Michelin rating and a wine cellar with 45,000 bottles, the best names from every appellation. This chef, Jacques Thorel, was totally crazy about old books, and he picked me to work for him in 2005 because I had studied philosophy. The restaurant was L'Auberge-Bretonne. I started taking the wine leftovers to blind-test myself. I shaped my palate with the good stuff!

Winner in wine: There was a school competition, and in 2006 I won it. Every year since 1922 there is this famous competition, Salon des Vins de Loire: you have Q.&A., you do blind tastings. After I won, I received lots of wine. I was sending my résumé around, and by chance, Rouge Tomate was looking for a person with a hybrid profile like mine.

Counting the bottles: I have two bottles at my apartment and 1,000 in my cellar back in France because I have no place to store them here. There are three to four thousand bottles at Rouge Tomate. My most expensive bottle is a 2000 La Tâche burgundy for $1,900. Least expensive: organics from Argentina and Chile for $36.

Bordeaux on the rocks: My worst wine memory is from the night in Brittany when a Russian couple came into the restaurant and ordered a Château Margaux 1959; the woman asked for ice. They finished the bottle in 15 minutes.

New York, cocktail town: I love the East Village. I live alone, so I can play my ukulele without bothering anybody! I discovered the cocktail in New York: my favorite is the Earl Grey Marteani at Pegu Club and the Jasmine at Terroir. But I'm careful about how much I drink; I want to do this job a long time. I'm taking courses to be a master sommelier.

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