Jeremy Chapman : Montreal Linux Computer Consultant

Opaque with hoary frost sublime

Nought's had, all's spent,
Where our desire is got without content.

I hope

to unlock

the fearful

box of pandora

Poincaré's doctrine of geometric conventionalism presents observers of space with a difficult quandary: how to know that space is Euclidean or non-Euclidean. He begins his discussion with some definitions and clarifications. He distinguishes between two types of phenomena, external and internal.

The question of the existence of theoretical entities is the subject of W. T. Stace's article Science and the Physical World and Grover Maxwell's The Ontological Status of Theoretical Entities. Theoretical entities are things that are unobserved, either because they are sub-microscopic (electrons, neutrinos and the like), or because they simply do not exist in a traditional sense (gravity, warped space-time). We are unable to directly perceive these entities with our five senses, and therefore they would seem to consist of something other than what is tangible to our touch, taste, sight, hearing or smell. What then do these entities consist of? How can their existence be verified? What is their purpose? We shall see what both these philosophers of science think of these questions, and I will attempt to synthesize both positions into a coherent conclusion.

Walter Horatio Pater, the English essayist and critic lived from 1839 until 1894. Born in London, he was educated at the University of Oxford, where he spent most of his life. His concentration was on interpreting to his age the art and literature of the Renaissance through historical novels, stories, and, mainly, essays.

"In effect, all products and useful information resulting from the labour of university scientists is becoming private property owned by professors, funders, or the university. This fact transforms the university's role from that of ‘producing' for the general society to a function more akin to that of a leased research team."

-Janice Newson & Howard Buchbinder, University Means Business

Kurt Vonnegut was born the eleventh of November, 1922 in Indianapolis. He served in the U.S. army from 1942-1945. During this time, he was captured by the Nazis and sent to Dresden to work in a factory producing a liquid vitamin supplement for pregnant women. His imprisonment in Germany supplied Vonnegut with many insights into the German lifestyle of the time.

This essay will deal with three terms in literary criticism, and with one critic. These areas of discussion are archetypes, rhetoric, character; and the critic is Northrop Frye. The mode of presentation is this: the four topics will be discussed in relation to each other, in four sections.

For Buddy Rich

Play on

play on

with blurred vision

of fiery sticks

beating

frenzied tattoo about

stretched skins

reverb

orating to masses

History and Revisionism in Mordecai Richler’s Solomon Gursky Was Here and Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water; A Metafictional Analysis

This essay will compare the novels Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler and Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King. Both novels share a common theme, a sense of history being rewritten by authors fully aware of the existing views on their subject matter. Historiographic metafiction involves games in which narrative reality and the reader's perception of them are confused.

This essay will look at two parts of astronomical history; general relativity and the research into the phenomena of black holes. First will be a history of general relativity (GR) and a discussion of its impacts on scientific thought, then the history of black hole research and the specific interactions between GR theory and black holes.

This essay will show that non-Euclidean geometries arose as a direct consequence of a weakness in one of Euclid's own axiomatic postulates, specifically Postulate Five. Further, that should Euclid have omitted this contentious Fifth Postulate, the very possibility of non-Euclidean geometries would be challenged.