[FRIAM] The next Heterodox University faculty member

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

Glen, 

Rest assured.  You will never be mistaken for a wing nut.  You just don't spin that easy.  Spoken as somebody who has tried to spin you many times. 

By the way, our joint exploration of the wing-nut metaphor last Friday was a wonderful example of the intentionality of metaphors. For me, a wing nut is a fastener that can be applied to a machine screw without a tool.  "Spinning off wildly"  was a feature I never really focused on, hence I never really understood the metaphor until you-guys explained it to me.  Yup!  

So, if "spinnability" is a feature of wing nuts, then "spinning off wildly" is a bug, right.  But for the purposes of the metaphor (as you use it) it is a feature.  So the feature/bug relation is another example of the extension-intension relation (aka epiphenomenality).  

Ok.  Now that I have thoroughly bent your thread, I think I will go eat breakfast. 

Snow grains, thunder in Santa Fe.  The thunder echoes in the covid-emptied streets.  Apocalyse!

Nick 

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2020 11:19 AM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] The next Heterodox University faculty member


http://www.quantumthom.com/LetterToFerrisCommunity.pdf
https://fsutorch.com/2020/11/18/science-professor-denies-science/
> The account’s other tweets in regard to COVID-19 say things such as:
> “Guess what the covid stunt has failed. You won’t get your leftist new world order.”
> “Covid19 is another jewish revolution.”
> “F— this evil wizard,” in reference to a video of Dr. Anthony Fauci. 
> “Stand up for yourselves people, and stop falling for this corona virus hoax!”
> “I’d say covid-19 is fake. An evil medical system just killed a bunch of old people.”


>From the Amazon page for his book:
"Thomas Brennan is a professor of physics at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan, where he's taught physics and astronomy since 2014. He completed his PhD thesis on the topic of sonoluminescence in 2009 at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also received a BA in Physics from the University of Chicago and an MS in Physics from UCLA. His research interests include both experimental and mathematical physics as well as astronomy."

I continue to marvel at how someone seemingly intelligent can fly off the bolt [⛧] so easily. As one who regularly expresses my opinions about non-professional things, I consistently wonder how/when it will or has already come back to bite me, not to assert that I'm seemingly intelligent or anything. It also questions the coherence of the "public intellectual", best exhibited by people like Chomsky, or Pinker, or Tyson. We need them ... but they put themselves at great risk. So thanks to all those people who manage to speak outside their competence, but do so without flying off the bolt.


[⛧] Yes, I'm aware that "wingnut" is often understood as a nut who sits on the wing of a political spectrum. But I prefer to think of it as someone who's easily "spun up", spun on, or spun off. This fits nicely with the old saying that there's a fine line between genius and crazy, it's only a difference in chirality. That batsh¡t old man who spends his lifetime in his basement working on his time machine exhibits the same dedication as the non-batsh¡t microbiologist who spends his lifetime in the cancer lab. They're both easily spun up, wingnuts on a different spectrum.

--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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