December 2012
-
The “snake fight” portion of the dissertation defense
Here. (Thanks to Jeffrey Roland for the pointer.)
-
Chalmers Podcast Interview on “Constructing the World”
Here. (Thanks to Dirk Felleman for the pointer.)
-
“We are the world…
…we are the linguists."
-
Friday Poem: “Dawn Determines Us”
Dawn Determines Us Dawn determines us And nightfall And the never fickle seasons And mortality our impossible burden And hope’s illusion And each new born Who knows nothing summarizes everything Thus are we defined Willingly accepting The distractions and titillations of living As if they matter As if they make a difference As…
-
2012 Lakatos Award to Wolfgang Spohn
Wolfgang Spohn (Konstanz) is the winner of the Lakatos Award in philosophy of science for 2012 for his book The Laws of Belief: Ranking Theory and its Philosophical Implications published by Oxford University Press (2012). (Thanks to Franz Huber for the notification.)
-
Loans and the end of the world: legal issues
Reader Ben Schewel shares this handy "Default Clause" just in case (author unknown): 12.7 END OF WORLD. In the event that the world as known to mankind shall come to an end, whether through natural forces (including, without limitation, plague, drought, earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods), manmade forces (including, without limitation, nuclear or biological war, pollution…
-
Academic job market in English and foreign languages
IHE story here.
-
More cutting-edge empirical work
"Please pass the salt": Download SALT research (Thanks to Richard Stith for the pointer.)
-
More on guns, gun control, and related issues
Jeff McMahan (Rutgers) has a very good takedown of the idea that more guns is a solution. He argues for a nearly total ban on private ownership of firearms. This would require overturning the dubious interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution recently adopted by the Supreme Court. My law school colleague Geoffrey…
-
Geoffrey Stone on an unfortunate kind of American exceptionalism
Here; an excerpt: Of the 188 nations that have written constitutions, the vast majority have adopted fundamental guarantees that were first fully articulated in the US Constitution. Indeed, 97 per cent of all the world’s constitutions now protect the freedom of religion; 97 per cent protect the freedom of speech and press; 97 per cent…
-
If the great philosophers wrote on e-mail…
…we'd have more of this.
-
Why more guns can’t possibly be the answer
Philosopher Jeff McMahan (Rutgers) explains.
My former colleagues at another university in Middle East have also been moved to online teaching indefinitely, with the students…