January 2004

• A Philosophy Draft?

  January 31, 2004

  An interesting idea from a Brown philosophy graduate student: “[W]ouldn’t we (academics) be better off if our job market and employment practices worked more like they do in baseball and football?” More here.

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• Iraqi Women Worse Off After Saddam

  January 31, 2004

  Details here and here. I know, I know, the world is black-and-white, so they couldn’t really be worse off without that monster. Or could they?

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• European Anti-Semitism

  January 31, 2004

  From Chris Bertram (Philosophy, Bristol): “[T]he view peddled by US-based commentators such as Thomas Friedman and their blogospheric echo-chamber of Europe as a seething cauldron of ancient Jew-hatred is plainly garbage.” Details here.

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• British Universities have a future…

  January 30, 2004

  [UPDATED and moved to the front: two reader comments, below.] Blair succeeded (just barely) in getting his proposal for tuition fees through parliament. Ever since Thatcher declared war on the public sector, including universities, in the 1980s, British universities have been in decline. The evidence has certainly been tangible in philosophy: there are now only…

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• Our President, the Deserter

  January 30, 2004

  The Village Voice hits the nail on the head regarding the brouhaha resulting from Michael Moore’s “the general vs. the deserter” comment about Clark debating Bush: “Fortunately for us, Michael Moore is crazy like a fox. By calling Bush a “deserter,” he got the big-time journalists—horrified David Broder, incredulous Peter Jennings, outraged Robert Novak, nonplussed…

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• And now the Georgia Taliban Strike a Blow for Ignorance

  January 30, 2004

  Story here. As the editor of Scientific American put it: “Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy.” At some point, there has to be a backlash by “people of…

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• Jack London on “The Scab”

  January 30, 2004

  As relevant now as then. From The Atlantic, 1904.

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• More John Edwards

  January 29, 2004

  I’m glad to see The Atlantic understands why John Edwards will win, and John Kerry will be a disaster. The Sophists understood this nearly 2500 years ago: rhetoric.

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• Join the MoveOn Media Corps

  January 29, 2004

  Jessica Wilson has the reasons why.

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• Kerry v. Dean

  January 29, 2004

  This perceptive piece makes some good points about John Kerry and about the coming election once the primaries are over (also check out Mr. Mahajan’s blog, which you can get to from the preceding link). For example: “There’s something I think the pundits are not paying attention to – the main election campaign will be…

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• Stanford Making Bid for Longino

  January 29, 2004

  Stanford has made a senior offer to Helen Longino (philosophy of science, feminist philosophy) at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis-St. Paul. (Note: this offer was made prior to Elliott Sober’s decision, noted earlier, to return to Wisconsin.)

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• More Discovery [sic] Institute Attacks on Science Education

  January 29, 2004

  Pharyngula has a revealing case study of how the Discovery [sic] Institute conmen are trying to destroy science education (and despite their stunning rebuke by the Texas State Board of Education several months ago, they’re still harassing textbook publishers here).

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• Yale strikes out on the trio

  January 28, 2004

  John Hawthorne (philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, Leibniz) and Ted Sider (metaphysics, philosophy of language), both at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, and Jason Stanley (philosophy of language) at Michigan, have turned down the Yale offers. Bad break for Yale. Stanley still has a Rutgers offer.

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• Talk about pernicious ordinal rankings…

  January 28, 2004

  …National Public Radio this morning reported that Wesley Clark “finished third in New Hampshire,” implying, of course, that Senator Edwards from North Carolina (who will be the nominee according to my crystal ball) suffered a severe setback. In reality, Clark got 12.4% of the vote, or 27,254, while Edwards got 12% of the vote, or…

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• Tax lawyer Mundstock Returning to Miami

  January 28, 2004

  Tax law expert George Mundstock recently moved from the University of Miami to the University of Minnesota, but now he’s heading back to Miami. No word on why. Climate shock? Perhaps. It’s a good break for Miami, which has a nationally recognized tax faculty and program.

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