Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers! Happy Monday to you!

Very funny — what I’m calling “corporate Cartesian philosophy,” according to Dilbert.

Enjoy!

Good morning, readers!

For a little humor mid-week, here’s a funny bit on Dilbert and the Turing Test.

Good morning, all! Happy Friday the 13th to you!

To end the week, here are some hilarious philosophy-related comics: one, two, and three.

Have a great weekend!

At left: Ambrose Bierce, c. 1866.

The photograph is part of the Ambrose Bierce Collection of the Clifton Waller Barrett Library of America.

Good morning, readers, and happy Monday to you!

Let’s start off the week with something amusing, shall we?

From Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary:

LOGIC, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding. The basic of logic is the syllogism, consisting of a major and a minor premise and a conclusion — thus:

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.

Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds; therefore –

Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a posthole in one second.

This may be called the syllogism arithmetical, in which, by combining logic and mathematics, we obtain a double certainty and are twice blessed.

PHILOSOPHY, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.

SYLLOGISM, n. A logical formula consisting of a major and a minor assumption and an inconsequent. (See LOGIC.)

Good morning, readers!  It’s Friday, and we need a little humor today.  So, here’s Mr. Bean at the library:

Enjoy!

A hat-tip to Laura Milligan and her post, 100 Awesome Youtube Vids for Librarians for this link.

Good morning, readers!

How about some humor today?

• Existentialist boardgames

• Existentialist light bulb joke

Q: How many existentialists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Two. One to change the light bulb and one to observe how the light bulb symbolizes an incandescent beacon of subjectivity in a netherworld of Cosmic Nothingness.

Enjoy!

Good morning, readers! I’m back after the long holiday break, and blogging again.

Tomorrow, I am planning a longer post on scholarly publishing and scholarly journals, but, for today, I will give you a bit of humor to start off the new year.

Enjoy!

Happy Festivus to all!

I will be away from 21 December 2008 – 4 January 2009, and won’t be posting during this time.  A happy holiday season to all, and I’ll see you when I return on 5 January 2009.

Good morning, readers!

As term draws to a close, I’m sending out a request that all books, journals, and items “borrowed” from Robbins over the course of the fall term be returned as soon as possible.  And please pass the word along. Thank you for your cooperation with this!

And now, for your viewing pleasure, a clip from Conan the Librarian*…

*from the movie, UHF.

Good morning, readers!

I think we need to have a bit of lightheartedness this Monday morning, so I’m going to include a link to Philogelos: The Laugh Addict. This is a multimedia book in which ancient jokes are given new life in the early 21st century.  It may prove that some humor and jokes are indeed older than dirt, or close to it.

I discovered this link while reading “Dead Parrot sketch ancestor found” on the BBC Web site last week.

And, yes, there has been a good deal of discussion around humor by philosophers since at least Plato, as this Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy article reveals.  It’s actually quite a fun sub-field to study, involving questions about epistemology, language, philosophy of mind, and ethics.

Enjoy!