Aristotle Didn't Get Much (QED)

So I was in the loo today and suddenly I couldn't remember what got Archimedes all excited. (No! I didn't run out naked!! Ladies???! ehehheeehe. No? Ok sorry.)

I mean I knew that he got into his tub and then some water spilled over (some say splashed, in which case Archimedes was being naughty).

STOP PRESS: Did You Know - If brackets open in the middle of a sentence and close before the end of the sentence, the full stop comes after the closing bracket. Where a sentence is entirely in parenthesis, the full stop comes inside the second bracket.

And, Eureka!

Ahh I remembered; he was asked by his King to find a way to say for sure that the new royal wreath was made of solid gold.

Sometimes, I forget things.

Which brings me to Aristotle. I'm reading this (sort of) tedious book on philosophy, and it starts off with the days and lives of the great thinkers of ancient Greece.

The most fascinating thing in the book yet is Plato's disgust with democracy and his complicated solution - the formula for a Utopian world where the best and the brightest would be plucked and taken through 50 (!!!!) years of intense training before being handed over the city-state to run. Which is awesome except we'd have to wait half a century for the first batch of seasoned politicians to take charge. Also ancient Greece had a life expectancy of 13.2 years.

And if the chosen few defied logic and made it through, they were forbidden from having sex, earning money or buying property.

Clearly, Plato wasn't really into the idea of voting (or fun). He also suggested the enforcement of strict birth control to maintain resources.

Wait a minute, Plato was Chinese!

(That's it, slowtumblinglife, NO MORE TRAFFIC FROM CHINA. Also watch out for that heat ray from outer space sent to zap you!! MUHAHAHA.)

While what he says makes sense, ie, it is highly unlikely that a large bunch of people will ever choose the BEST person to lead and govern them (eg. India); it is difficult to achieve his plan in practice.

I mean you can't do away with choice totally. And in this case you'd be putting that choice in the hands of a few people actually selecting the future leaders.

The other interesting thing is how stupid these really really brilliant great philosophers were.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, Aristotle.

So Aristotle completely laid the foundation for Western thought over the next thousand years by giving Logic it's first formal treatment. He also contributed to the study of Physics, Ethics, Politics and Poetics. In fact it is said that he was the last person ever to know everything there was to know at his time.

(Btw, we have Wikipedia. In your face Aristotle!!!)

But Aristotle also made hilarious errors. Like he concluded, after much deliberation and study and with great confidence that -

1. The brain served to cool blood.
2. The sun was actually a chariot. (Okay FINE, that was us Indians!)
3. Men had eight ribs on each side.
4. Women had fewer teeth than men.

The last one really makes me laugh. I mean here you are doing seminal work on the nature of God, and you don't have the time for one lingering look into a lady's mouth?

So I guess Aristotle set the earliest trend for nerds everywhere - he wasn't getting much.

She does have a small face. So of course, fewer teeth. What GIANT BREASTS, though!! Totally explains why she is so smart.

Oh, I was also troubled by two other things in the loo today, for which I turned to the Internet later..

So a double entendre is a phrase that is used to convey two meanings, one pretty straightforward and the other usually risque and inappropriate.

Dr. Hannibal Lecter: "I'm having a dear friend for dinner." *wink wink*

AND

Vignette is pronounced vi-ni-yet.

Sometimes when I want to ask someone how to pronounce a word, and not admit it, I say, "How exactly do you pronounce this word?"

Sometimes when I forget a persons name, and I don't want to admit it, I say, "What's your full name?"