> "Great Books" is mired in fairly a ridiculous fetishism of the Greek classics, the Enlightenment era, the American founding, and the Anglo view of the western world.
The webpage clearly states that the list is of foundational books of greco-roman civilization. And SJC is an american university. What do you expect?
Also, fetishism? Greek classics are the foundation of european civilization. That's like going to a christian seminary and whining about their fetishism of the bible.
> But it's a much larger problem in Mathematics where the field is essentially unrecognizable from the way it would've been taught in 1920 or whatever.
The foundation of european mathematics goes back to the ancient greeks. It's a foundational books list.
> Russell is predictably floating around (see paragraph 1) even though... well, yawn.
> Even some of the Founding Fathers appeared obese or overweight
That's a tiny privileged group of people living in an era where you flaunted your status and wealth by being chubby. You are talking about the 1% of the 1%. They are not representative of the population as a whole. The average height of an american revolutionary soldier was 5'3". A more representative sample of the population as a whole. And they certainly weren't obese. You can go to museums and see the guns they carried and the clothes (tiny) they wore.
I don't think there was an obesity issue before industrialization, especially industrial farming which led to abundance of food.
> Most physics revolutions refine rather than replace their predecessors.
No. You are describing advancement, not revolution. Physics revolutions cause paradigm shifts. The difference between relativity ( refinement ) and quantum physics ( revolution ).
> So, for instance, gr gives similar predictions to to Newtonian gravity in an appropriate limit.
GR wasn't a revolution. It was adding onto and refining newtonian physics. As in newton gave us the laws of gravity, einstein showed us what gravity is.
> It is possible that relativity will be refined by further developments (quantum gravity?)
That's impossible because relativity cannot exist in a quantum world. Relativity/newtonian physics is deterministic, quantum physics is non-deterministic. Quantum physics gives us true randonmess whereas the relativistic world cannot.
> Hoping that exotic physics will allow ftl travel is like hoping that an exotic theory of gravity
No. I'm just pointing out that it's silly and naive to assume that physics will remain stagnant forever. Forever being the key word. Especially, as I pointed out, since modern physics cannot account for 95% of matter.
2000 years ago, someone could reasonably say man would never reach space because the current understanding of physics was so lacking. Today someone could also say man would never travel between the stars. But they would be assuming that no advancements in physics and knowledge would occur.
It's like all those "russians testing our airspace" propaganda a few years back. Everybody tests everyone's airspace. It's only when the elites want it to turn it into "news" that you hear about it. Then it's all forgotten.
It's just manufactured propaganda. The good thing about this is you can see how propaganda ( aka news/media ) coordinates with the pentagon/intelligence/etc.
> Also also: are movie trailers that depict a gun being loaded with a > 30 rd magazine now banned? Or movie trailers that show any kind of modified weapon? How about video game footage?
Rules do not apply to establishment corporate entities. You can find SNL sketches that use the N word on youtube. Youtube rents videos on their platform that has racist, etc language. Late night "comedy" shows could use vulgar terms/jokes without getting demonetized, banned, etc. It's just you can't. It's about reigning in the voice of the little guys and protecting corporate interests. Remember when youtube was about giving a platform to "you" - the little guys? The funny thing is that these guys support banning tiktok and giving youtube a greater monopoly. They, of all people, should be demanding more options. Where are they going to go once rumble does the same thing. After all, rumble is controlled by the same interests that control youtube.
Aramaic wouldn't make any sense either as aramaic isn't part of european civilization. It should be latin and greek. A degree in "classics" ( the works of greco-roman civilization ) should require both latin and greek.
Heck all students in american education ( K-12 ) should be taught latin at the very least. Why we stopped...
That's assuming the current model of physics is true for all time. The current model of physics which cannot account for 95% of matter in the universe.
There was a time when the current model of physics couldn't allow for traveling to different planets.