Originally Posted By: tsuwm
Originally Posted By: Jackie

Re: your opening post -- couldn't there be some instances where the second and fourth kinds are one and the same? Ex:
Q: Do you like corn?
A1: No, I hate corn.
A2: Yes, I like corn.

If that's not a good example, are there better ones?


I've been thinking about this fourth kind: affirmation and negation. I think what's meant is, e.g., concepts like hot/cold and light/dark -- cold is not hot (the absence of heat); dark is not light (the absence of light). but that seems to apply only to absolutes, and breaks down in those gray areas (see love/hate).

of course, being it's philosophy this is about, some really strange ideas were developed: everything, however small, contains portions of all opposites - snow is black (in part)*. Plato (read, Socrates) said that all things which have opposites are generated out of their opposites, and concluded that "the living spring from the dead." [see the Phaedo]

*this must explain why fresh snow gets 'dirty' so quickly.


Snow is black (in part) generally because of atmospheric pollutants.

In the very early 1960s when I was stationed at Yokota Air Base in Tokyo-ken, we had a pink snow. The volcano Asama-yama was active and its ash was pink.

On the other hand, the snow that is lying on the ground in my back yard right now is as white as is was when it fell three nights ago. Charlotte, NC had a late winter snow storm that dropped 4 to 9 inches on the area. It was preceded, however, by more than 24 hours of continuous rain which very effectively eliminated those atmospheric precipitates that might otherwise have been present. It would have been a good snow from which to make snow ice cream. And with air temperatures hovering in the 20s, it might still be.



Last edited by PastorVon; 03/04/09 05:41 PM. Reason: typos