View Single Post
Old 06-29-2003, 06:21 PM   #31 (permalink)
CSflim
Sky Piercer
 
CSflim's Avatar
 
Location: Ireland
suggestion to poster I think, that it would be a good idea, to give an indication when the books you post were published. Are the reasonably modern? Or are they hundreds of years old. Just a thought.

Anyway, both of these suggestions are modern.

A film that I think would do well as "An Introduction to Philosophy" is Waking Life it is an animated movie, created using a technique known as rotoscoping, where the scenes are filmed using real actors etc, then are later fed into a computer and traced, to make an animation. It is not really a film, in the traditional sense of a story, with a start middle and an end. Instead, it is about this guy, walking around a dream world, coming across these weird and wonderful characters who impart their philosophical views to him.
Some people claim that it is a very deep and thought provoking film. It's not. It's not meant to be. This film barely scratches the surface of philosophical discourse. How could it? Instead it gives a very gentle introduction to the world of philosophy, giving a primer on some topics such as existentialism and free will.


A book that I think should be required reading for everybody is Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos. It is a very short book (little over 100 pages) about mathematical illiteracy and it's consequences. If you are one of the many people who consider maths unapproachable and boring, fear not! Not a bit of calculus or algebra in sight! He explains how the general publics mathematical illiteracy contributes to exploitation, through pseudo-science, mysticism, predictive dreams, coincidence, stock market scams, numerology and others. It is very well written, it is funny and witty. It doesn't feel as though you are reading a "maths" book at all!
If you can see the humour in a weather forecaster announcing that there is a 50% chance of rain on Saturday, a 50% chance of rain on Sunday, and therefore a 100% chance of rain over the weekend, then this book is for you!
If you don't, then this book is definitely for you!
__________________
CSflim is offline  
 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76