Football and the New Reconstruction

The Super Bowl, as has been said time and time again, is more than just a game in American culture. But last week's game, the forty-fifth in NFL history, may have held more significance for the country than the usual demonstration of American capitalist competition. The mascots of the two teams, the Packers and the Steelers, were named, around the turn of century, after prevalent blue-collar industries in the cities in which they play, Green Bay and Pittsburgh, respectively. As the orgy of ads offering various services surrounding the Super Bowl indicates, the economy of the nation has undergone significant change since the inception of these football teams. While Green Bay and Pittsburgh still are leading producers in their industries in the US, manufacturing as a whole has fallen from its role as the driving force behind the American economy. You could even go as far as to say that America's transition from a manufacturing to a service based economy represents a modern-day Reconstruction. And if the recent financial downturn is any indicator, the new, like the old, Reconstruction hasn't been a complete success. Does the government have the same responsibility to integrate lower-class workers (those who traditional filled manufacturing jobs) into a more modern economy? Will the new Reconstruction be seen as a time of increasing civil rights like the last? And perhaps the most important, will we see our sports teams change with the economy, could the future hold team names like the Green Bay IT Technicans or the Pittsburgh Hedge Fund Managers? One can only wonder.

Stephen Hawking and Brick Houses

In our final exam paper a lot of people, myself included, examined the nature of truth. In my paper I argued that absolute truth (or as Doc OC branded it "big-T Truth") doesn't exist and discussed the impact that had on the motivations and interactions of humans. In agreement is Alva Noë, professor of philosophy at Cal Berkeley, and one of the authors of the blog, 13.7. In his latest post, A Little Philosophy is a Dangerous Thing, Noë criticizes Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow's conclusion that thew belief that perception of reality is subjective and unique to each individual is a, "naive view of reality". Noë makes a persuasive counter-argument, I especially like this example he gives:

I can find out whether there are brick houses on Elm Street by looking. In a different context, I can test whether my eyes are working by checking whether I see the brick houses. We don't have any grip on the idea of what we can see (or measure, or detect) apart from our prior understanding of what there is.

 But I'd like to here from the other side as well. What seems more plausible to you, Noë's assertion of subjective reality or Hawkings' and Mlodinow's that consclusion that all humans are born with "the conscious and subconscious mental models we all create in order to interpret and understand the everyday world"?