May 2020
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How Vietnam avoided a COVID catastrophe
Pretty remarkable, given the size of the country and the proximity (and ties) to China. Nothing like competent political leadership during a catastrophe.
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Do legal clinics help reduce civil unrest? (Michael Simkovic)
A recent article argues that legal clinics funded in the 1960s to help the poor obtain access to legal services helped reduce civil unrest and thereby increased property values in minority communities. The article argues that the timing and location of grants to fund the establishment of these clinics was close enough to random (or…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Tear Gas, “Woman for Sale,” 1971
Scottish hard rock band, this comes from their second album:
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Can President Trump federalize the National Guard and/or send in the U.S. military to restore order?
Yes to both. The Insurrection Act was utilized during the Civil Rights era to insure state compliance with court decisions in the American South, and it was utilized again during the urban riots of 1967 and 1968 in cities like Detroit and Chicago.
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Biden’s proposal to lower Medicare eligibility to age 60
This is informative. (Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)
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Yet another charlatan in the Trump administration
But at least he thought pretending to have a PhD in philosophy was better than having a PhD in management! (Thanks to John Casey for the pointer.)
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Philosopher Kathleen Stock (Sussex) calls out some bad actors in academic philosophy
Here (and scroll down).
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Section 230 and Twitter
Section 230 of the ironically-named 1996 "Communications Decency Act" provides that: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider" (47 U.S.C. § 230). What this means is that, whereas the New York Times is liable in tort…
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More on the need for ventilation in indoor spaces–social distancing is not enough
A Dutch study, summarized here. ‘After a single cough, it takes about five minutes for the number of small droplets in the air to be halved,’ the researchers said. These tiny droplets are therefore much more dangerous when it comes to possible transmission of coronavirus. When the same experiments were repeated in a well-ventilated room,…
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Sweden has highest rate of COVID-related deaths per capita in the world…
…according to this source, although one suspects Brazil, which is close, may not be testing or keeping track as thoroughly as Sweden.
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Princeton Sociology Department will not accept PhD applicants in 2020-21
MOVING TO FRONT FROM YESTERDAY–SEE THIRD COMMENT WHICH EXPLAINS WHAT PRINCETON IS DOING Now this is a striking decision, not only because this is a top sociology PhD program, but because Princeton is far and away the richest university in the United States. Have other PhD programs in philosophy or other fields announced that they…
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In Memoriam: Ronald Giere (1938-2020)
A leading contributor to the philosophy of science, Professor Giere taught for roughly twenty years at Indiana University, Bloomington, before moving to the University of Minnesota in 1987, where he spend the remainder of his teaching career. I will add links to memorial notices as they appear.
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Texas is opening up, so the Dallas Morning News asked some experts what activities would be safe
The answer is very little that is indoors, a bit more that is outdoors.
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In Memoriam: Karen Neander (1954-2020)
MOVING TO FRONT, ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 11–UPDATED A professor of philosophy at Duke University since 2006, Professor Neander was well-known for her contributions to philosophy of mind, biology, and cognitive science. Before Duke, she taught at Johns Hopkins University and the University of California at Davis in the United States, and before that, in her…
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii