March 2019
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The USNews.com roller coaster
Blog Emperor Caron unwisely hypes his school's favorable overall ranking in the USNews.com charade. This is unwise because it legitimates the nonsense number (i.e., the overall rank), which will likely come back to bite Pepperdine in another year (much as they got bitten rather unfairly last year). With resources, any school can move up in…
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A combined PhD program for philosophy and psychology
Is this a first? It certainly makes sense at Yale, which has philosophically-minded psychologists like Paul Bloom and psychologically-minded philosophers like Joshua Knobe and Laurie Paul.
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Harvard’s Mathias Risse interviewed…
MOVING TO FRONT FROM MARCH 9–UPDATED …at 3AM. Alas, they didn't talk about his Nietzsche work, which is also noteworthy! ASK AND YE SHALL RECEIVE: Now the interview has been expanded to include some discussion of Risse's Nietzsche work!
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Karl Marx makes it to Business Insider
Not bad, although it doesn't get the labor theory of value quite right.
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White House proposes to spend approximately nothing on early childhood education to minimize taxes for top 0.1 percent (Michael Simkovic)
NPR reports that the Trump administration has proposed a meager one-time increase in funding for childcare / early career eduction equal to approximately 0.0045 percent of GDP ($1 billion out of $22 trillion estimated 2020 GDP) or about 0.001 percent of household networth. Total federal spending would increase to $5.4 billion, or 0.0225 percent of…
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Matt Heffner for D90 Board of Education (River Forest)
He's definitely the person you want on your BOE. If you're in River Forest or vicinity, please share!
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“If trans women are women, what is a woman?”
Interesting essay from last fall by philosopher Sophie Allen (Keele) that only recently came to my attention.
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In Memoriam: Robert S. Summers (1933-2019)
Alas, there are a lot of passings of notable figures in the legal academy the last couple of days: Robert Summers, emeritus at Cornell where he spent four decades, who was well-known for his work on commercial law and legal theory, has also died. The Cornell memorial notice is here. (Thanks to Brian Bix…
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Humanities, including philosophy, in community colleges
Robert Townsend, Director of the Washington Office of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, kindly wrote to share news of a new study from the AAAS: [W]e have just released a new report on the humanities in community colleges (at http://bit.ly/HESCC2019), with a number of interesting findings about philosophy study in the sector, including:…
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In Memoriam: William C. Powers, Jr. (1946-2019)
I was shocked to learn of the passing of Bill Powers, former Dean of the Law School and President of the University of Texas at Austin, as well as a leading authority on tort law. I was fortunate to be his colleague and to serve on the faculty at Texas when he was Dean; he…
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QJE: Investments in education continue to provide economic benefits two and half centuries later (Michael Simkovic)
A recent article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (the leading journal in economics) finds evidence that early investments in education in the 1600s through mid 1700s continued to provide economic benefits in the form of persistently higher eduction levels and 10% higher wages and centuries later. The study examined the economic performance of communities…
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In defense of Harvard’s Ronald Sullivan
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–DEFINITELY WORTH READING! Sullivan is a clinical law professor at Harvard and a very accomplished criminal defense attorney, who, among his many cases, recently joined the defense team for Harvey Weinstein; he is also the faculty member in charge of one of Harvard's undergraduate dorms. Benighted Harvard students have launched a…
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In Memoriam: Stephen J. Ellmann (1951-2019)
I was very sorry to learn of the passing of Professor Ellmann, a longtime member of the New York Law School faculty, and a leader in clinical legal education and an expert on the law of human rights and South Africa in particular. There is a lovely tribute from the NYLS Dean here and an…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: The Good Rats, “Coo Coo Coo Blues,” 1978
We haven't featured this Long Island, NY band in quite some time, but here's another favorite of mine, from their fourth album:
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Would someone really buy a self-driving car that would *not* swerve to avoid hitting a human…
…while hitting a cat or dog? (Thanks to Robert McGarvey for the pointer.)
Don’t click the transcript – it’s a mis-transcription that makes Harvey sound unhinged. The bit of it that’s visible without…