December 2003
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Publishing schedule
There will be little new between now and the week of January 5. Best wishes to all for the New Year.
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Evolution-Bashing in Minnesota…
…is discussed here. It says something about the sorry intellectual condition of the country that this nonsense occurs even in a progressive state like Minnesota.
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Personal Ads of the Philosophers: Socrates
MWM, age unknown (mature, not elderly), famously ugly but a good talker. I like questions, not answers; reason, not passion; wisdom, not wealth; Euripides, not Aristophanes. Seeks ignorant and irrational woman or handsome youth to do what is wrong. [Note: Nietzsche helped Socrates write this one.] (More Personal Ads of the Philosophers are here.)
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On the MLA
Two of my favorite academic bloggers, Chun the Unavoidable and John Holbo, are having an interesting discussion of the Modern Language Association, which is often the target of ridicule in the media. Chun is a literary theorist and scholar, Holbo a philosopher. It’s a good discussion.
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Mill on Conservatives
Thanks to Ciceronian Review for this gem: John Stuart Mill, letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington (March, 1866): “I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly…
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Two Other Left Blogs
These two a bit “off the beaten track” (which is why I thought I’d note them), both written in likably distinctive voices: Unenviable Situation and Strange Doctrines Enjoy!
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Ethical Philosophy Quiz
A couple of folks have asked why I haven’t participated in the Ethical Philosophy Quiz, which has been making the rounds of the blogosphere. Simple answer: its accounts of the views of the philosophers in question are largely incompetent, the one on Nietzsche scandalously so. (Only the one on Rand is really passable, which is…
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Law School Move
Donald Clarke (Chinese law) at the University of Washington at Seattle has accepted an offer from George Washington University Law School.
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A Blog on the Left
Max Sawicky (economist at the Economic Policy Institute in DC) is a smart left economist: see, e.g., his item on “liberal” versus “left” approaches to economic policy here. (His new blog site is here.) I’m glad to have discovered this one. The squishy, polite “liberal” blogs were getting tiresome, and the popular Atrios and CalPundit…
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Adam Morton to Alberta
Adam Morton (epistemology, philosophy of mind), who is currently a half-time Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oklahoma at Norman, has accepted a Canada Research Chair at the University of Alberta, to start next academic year.
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Blog Stats
Averaged more than 1,000 visits per weekday all last week. Considering that I have no blogroll, am not a right-wing kook, and hardly link to other bloggers, these folks must actually be coming to read. Very kind. Also surprising: some 9,000 visits to the law school ranking site last week (5,000 per week is typical)–the…
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Chomsky on Saddam’s Capture…
…is here: “Throughout history, even the harshest and most shameful measures are regularly accompanied by professions of noble intent – and rhetoric about bestowing freedom and independence. “An honest look would only generalize Thomas Jefferson’s observation on the world situation of his day: ‘We believe no more in Bonaparte’s fighting merely for the liberties of…
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America’s Class Structure
Speaking of “what is living and what is dead in Marx,” according to Business Week (summarized here), “we are becoming a society in which the poor tend to stay poor, no matter how hard they work; in which sons are much more likely to inherit the socioeconomic status of their father than they were a…
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Funny–On Academic Bad Manners
A young philosopher at a top research university writes: “The thing that always astonishes me is that they [other bloggers] put on this air of pained affront if an academic gets short with them – ‘I don’t expect this tone from an educator’ and all that jazz. Jesus, they should have been in a room…
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Our Dangerous Mass Media
Has anyone else noticed that the mainstream media–and I mean the genuinely middle-of-the-road media, not the crytpo-fascist media like Fox–is consistently reporting the recent decision in the Padilla case–and the less important 9th Circuit decision about the Guatanomo prisoners–under the rubric, “Administration Suffers Setbacks in War on Terror,” instead of under rubrics like, “Administration Suffers…
I don’t disagree with David Wallace, the things he says are to my mind obviously true. But I have a…