October 2020
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Another pretend ethnic minority unmasked
An historian at Furman University. I wonder how many of these cases involve attempts to take advantage of "diversity" initiatives in hiring? It certainly seems like the clearest grounds on which such fraud could lead to loss of an academic position.
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Regional patterns in polling errors in 2016, 2018
Polls underestimated Republican votes in the Midwest, Democratic votes in the Southwest. Some useful comparisons with Clinton/Trump polls in 2016 too. Bottom line is this analyst thinks Biden will win.
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Writing a “trade book” in philosophy
Philosopher Tamler Sommers (Houston) recounts his experience and offers some advice.
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How NYU recruited faculty from top law schools in the 1990s: a case study
Richard Stewart, a leading scholar of administrative and environmental law at Harvard, moved to NYU in the early 1990s. He lived in a 4,000 square foot town house in Greenwich Village, a few blocks from NYU's law school. This was rented to him by the University at an undisclosed price, but no doubt well below…
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Academic freedom does not protect your “freedom” not to do your job
It cheapens the value of academic freedom for professors to invoke it as protecting their right not to teach their classes in "solidarity" with what they deem a worthy social movement. Academic freedom does not cover failure to discharge professional duties; indeed, just the opposite. Faculty who consistently fail to carry out their professional duties–whether…
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538 says there’s now a 13% chance (up from 12%) of Trump winning the election…
…which might seem like a 13% chance of the apocalypse, so way too close for comfort. While it would obviously be very bad if Trump were genuinely re-elected–especially for what it says about the level of pathology in this country–it's worth remembering that the other elections count too. If the Democrats take the Senate and…
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Survey on “The Concept of Representation in the Mind Sciences” seeking participants
I was asked to share the following announcement, which I'm happy to do: I am Dr. Edouard Machery, Distinguished Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh (www.edouardmachery.com). I would like to you to participate in a 15-minute research study about the meaning of the notion of representation. If…
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Amerliorative analysis [sic] and Humpty Dumptying
This is amusing. ADDENDUM: And here's the 2005 paper by philosopher Nicholas Shackel (Cardiff) that introduced this terminology. (Thanks to David Zimmerman for the pointer.)
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On being a philosopher with autism
Parts of this interview are quite eye-opening; for example: [I]t’s not that uncommon for people to tune me out completely in the way that people in a public setting tune ou[t nearby conversations. The result is that people often treat as empty the space that I occupy in a social situation. For example, they make…
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Evidence-driven education policy, money, and influence (Michael Simkovic)
I recently discussed research debunking claims that law school and business school are only worthwhile for those privileged enough to gain admission to elite programs. Press coverage has been curiously oblivious to social science research using high quality data and well-established methods. Why might the press overlook high quality information sources while instead elevating the…
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Hospitals in Utah preparing to ration care…
…due to surge of COVID patients. Utah has a 7-day rolling average of about 1,400 cases per day in a population of a bit more than 3 million. By way of comparison, Illinois has a 7-day rolling overage of about 4,100 cases per day, but with a population four times the size; Illinois is, not…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Irish Coffee, “I’m Lost,” 1971
Belgian rock band, this was the concluding track on their debut album:
Georgy Maksimovich pointed me to this article in Russian: https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/05/25/antisovetskie-filosofskie-kontratseptsii