So spake Charles Barkley

From espn.com:

“I understand that’s a lot of money, but it is my money. Nobody has the right to tell me what to do with my money.”

-Charles Barkley

So Sir Charles makes a good point. I was listening to the alt.npr podcast “On Gambling” with Mike Pesca, and he played some of the audio from the interview where this came out. Hot on the tail end of the news of Daly’s “$50 million” in losses, which probably wasn’t quite that, Barkley admitted to losing around $10 million over the years. As Pesca said, that’s not much for someone with his bankroll, but still doesn’t it make you feel bad that that $10 million could have gone to charity? I say, do what you want. No pro athlete is obligated to donate money or to do anything with their money that they don’t want to. There is an element of responsibility for being in the public eye and acting as a role model, and I’m not sure of where I am in that regard. To use a distant example, if Paris Hilton whores herself out and gets caught doing drugs, that sucks because there’s some girl out there who want to be like Paris. At the same time, the majority of the population (I hope) realizes that she’s just a public spectacle and her notoriety relies on her body, her sluttiness and her arrogance. Pesca busted out the DSM-IV (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychological Association) and tried an amateur diagnosis to see if Barkley was a gambling addict. For the criteria that Pesca knew from the interview, Barkley only fit one or two, and the requirement was four or more. Still, Barkley called it “our addiction”, referring to himself and Daly. What siginificance does it have when someone who makes millions of dollars drops $100,000 in a weekend? Probably not much. Yet, if someone who was making a fraction of that and gambled off the same fraction, it could be bad. Say you made $35,000/year and you dropped $3500. That could have covered your ass in a lot of things, and if you’re supporting a family, you’ve got a major problem.

Jsut my thoughts. Now, on to that English paper…

So spake Wikipedia:

Most definitely recommended, as per my experiences: www.alessonislearned.com

Something else. Note the last line:

Solipsism (from the Latin ipse = “self” and solus = “alone”) is an extreme form of skepticism, saying that nothing exists beyond oneself and one’s immediate experiences. More generally, it is the epistemological belief that one’s self is the only thing that can be known with certainty and verified (sometimes called egoism). Solipsism is also commonly understood to encompass the metaphysical belief that only one’s self exists, and that “existence” just means being a part of one’s own mental states — all objects, people, etc, that one experiences are merely parts of one’s own mind. Solipsism is first recorded with the presocratic sophist Gorgias (c. 483-375 BC) who is quoted by Sextus Empiricus as having stated:

1. Nothing exists
2. Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it, and
3. Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can’t be communicated to others

Solipsism is generally identified with statements 2 and 3 from Gorgias.

But, in introducing methodological doubt (via Cogito ergo sum) into philosophy, Descartes created the backdrop against which modern interpretations of solipsism subsequently developed and were made to seem, if not plausible, at least irrefutable.

Solipsism is logically coherent, but not falsifiable, so it is not testable by current modes of the scientific method.