December 2004
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New Blog Featuring Leading Moral and Political Philosophers
Left2Right is a new philosophy blog featuring many of the most accomplished moral and political philosophers working in the U.S. today (including Stephen Darwall, John Deigh, Gerald Dworkin, David Estlund, Jeff McMahan, Peter Railton, David Schmidtz, George Sher, and David Velleman, among others), as well as a handful of legal academics and political scientists with…
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The Social Security Crisis Hoax
Glad to see Krugman saying this in a very public forum. Of course, since what he says is rational and factual, it will have no impact on the debate. There are, after all, much more powerful considerations at work.
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Philosophy Presses: Which Ones are Responsible, Which Not?
Tad Brennan (Philosophy, Northwestern) writes: Last week’s thread on philosophy journals was right in line with themission of the PGR: making widely available to philosophers andphilosophy grad students some important facts about how theprofession works. There was some healthy venting, somenot-so-healthy (in my opinion) piling-on, and now everyone has abetter sense of which journals are…
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Stamping out the terrorist threat from Swiss Grandmas
Details here. I feel better already.
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Canada “Pacifies” Toledo…or a Golden Rule Hypothetical
If Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the "empty suit" ruled Canada: article here; an excerpt: The Canadian government, unhappy for many years with Washington’s belligerent foreign policy and fearful of its massive weapons stockpiles, decided last year to invade the U.S., seizing oil refineries and manufacturing plants, and establishing "regime change" to the delight of many of…
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Creation Museum Coming Soon
As further evidence that America is sinking in to the dark ages, reader Doug Barnes calls my attention to the fact that, in Kentucky, they are building a Creation Museum which will teach children lies and falsehoods about the origins of life. (See their FAQs page to get an idea what’s planned.) Ain’t freedom grand?
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Law Schools Whose Graduates are “Most Hired” by Major Firms
Here is The National Law Journal list of the ten schools whose graduates were hired "most" based on a survey of the 250 largest firms in the country (the ranking does not appear to be on-line, but I picked it up from this press release): 1. Harvard University 2. Georgetown University 3. Columbia University 4. …
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Posner on blogs
In introducing his blog with Gary Becker, Dick Posner writes: Blogging is a major new social, political, and economic phenomenon. It is a fresh and striking exemplification of Friedrich Hayek’s thesis that knowledge is widely distributed among people and that the challenge to society is to create mechanisms for pooling that knowledge….The internet enables the…
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New York Times Dumps on Philosophy Majors
Michael Weisberg (Philosophy, Penn) has called my attention to this recent article in The New York Times on the choice of college majors; a pertinent excerpt: In their recently published "College Majors Handbook With Real Career Paths and Payoffs" (Jist Publishing), three economists from Northeastern University in Boston try to quantify just how much students…
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“Living under Fascism”
Via Jessica Wilson, I learned of this illuminating lecture by Austin-based Universalist Minister Davidson Loehr–what a great town Austin is!–that touches on themes we have considered before (maybe Rev. Loehr is a reader?). An excerpt: You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word "fascism" in a serious discussion of where America is…
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The truth about war
This is a first-rate piece of writing by journalist Chris Hedges; it gives you a good idea why the morally depraved war-mongers, who now constitute "mainstream" opinion in the United States, love to hate him. An excerpt (from the very beginning and very end of his essay): The vanquished know war. They see through the…
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Chomsky Blog Has Come Back to Life
It’s now here.
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Philosophy Publications and Hiring Practices
The thread on the editorial practices of philosophy journals has produced voluminous and very informative comments. Jason Stanley (Philosophy, Rutgers) suggested that it might be worth calling special attention to some comments by Keith DeRose (Philosophy, Yale) that raised important issues (that we have touched on before) and also broadened the topic of discussion in…
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Revisionist History of the Holocaust from Justice Scalia
It is often said in legal circles that Justice Scalia is the "smartest" or "one of the smartest" Justices on the United States Supreme Court; this may be true, but it also may say more about the Supreme Court than about smarts. By way of possible example: Antonin Scalia…turned history on its head recently when…
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David Brooks Whitewashes Religious Fundamentalism…
…and UT law student Tyler Whitmer takes Brooks apart; an excerpt: To "evangelize" is to teach the gospel. You can do that without believing that the bible must be taken literally and without interpretation. "Fundamentalism" is strict adherence to a very particular reading of a religious text (or, I suppose if you are a fundamentalist,…
I don’t see any connection between the knowing how/that issue and LLM opacity. Can you elaborate?