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More on the Swedish COVID disaster: the “herd immunity” that wasn’t
Here. Of course, the Swedish disaster isn't as bad as the American one, but that's not saying much!
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Blast from the past: how difficult for a North American PhD to move from a job in the developing world to a North American job
Back in 2016, and probably on the mind of some job-seekers this year as well.
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In Memoriam: William J. Wainwright (1935-2020)
Professor Wainwright, a leading contributor to philosophy of religion over the last half-century, was emeritus in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, where he spent most of his career. There is a brief memorial notice from the UWM department here, which links to an obituary.
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Speed, Glue & Shinki, “Mr. Walking Drugstore Man,” 1970
Japanese power trio led by Hendrix-inspired guitarist Shinki Chen, this is the lead number of their only album: UPDATE: On Twitter, Andrew Grossman points out to me that in fact they released a second album, in 1972: some details here.
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As expected, state Republican leaders won’t get involved with (illegal) efforts to change the slate of the electors
Political self-preservation triumphs over criminality!
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Blast from the past: remembering Annette Baier
Back in 2012.
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Did suburbanites tired of Trump put Biden over the top?
That's the hypothesis here, and it doesn't bode well for Democrats going forward; an excerpt: Biden was able to hit the numbers he needed in the crucial highly educated suburbs, but many of these traditionally Republican voters split their tickets down ballot, voting for the Republican in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Despite…
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COVID vaccine and the universities
Next fall may be normal, but masks will probably be necessary through the Spring.
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On the will to truth and the will to meaning in Nietzsche
Philosopher Ken Gemes (Birkbeck) comments.
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It’s hard to undo election results…
…but Trump is, as usual, doing a lot of damage that may come back to haunt us in the future.
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Blast from the past: Why study history of philosophy?
Back in 2011, an open letter from Robert Pasnau (Colorado), and an extensive discussion in the comments.
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The problem with polls
It's not "shy" Trump voters lying to pollsters, it's that the Trump voters aren't the kind of folks who respond to questions from pollsters (what I've been saying all along!): [I]t turns out that people who answer surveys are really weird. They’re considerably more politically engaged than normal. I put in a five-factor test [a…
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Richard Marshall interviews Steven French (Leeds)…
…at 3:16 AM. Very interesting!
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Lord Kilclooney of Northern Ireland refers to Senator and VP-Elect Kamala Harris as “the Indian”
Old habits die hard. But seriously: what happens if the Mick loses his peerage over this? Who gets it? An Indian? A Colored? A Yid?
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Gauleiter Barr continues his destruction of the Department of Justice…
…as the top prosecutor for election misconduct resigns in protest. One can only hope that Barr is treated as radioactive by the legal profession for the remainder of his life.
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The Evans-Strawson debate comes from the archives of The Open University…
…which includes similar items!
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On Trump’s appeal: from the less-to-more plausible
Here's two takes, from commentators I've never heard of, both hostile to Trump. First: That Mr. Trump has received nearly 70 million votes is a disgrace. And it says a lot about this country that too many people refuse to face. This is America. This is not an aberration. This is indeed our country and…
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And now for a different perspective
My esteemed former philosophy colleagues from Texas, Daniel Bonevac and Robert C. Koons, discuss the election here. They are a bit to my right, hence their different take (scroll into the comments). (Thanks to a mutual friend who flagged this for me.)
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Promising initial data on Pfizer vaccine for COVID
The NYT story includes the appropriate notes of caution as well. If it's 90% effective, that's phenomenal. That it has proven safe in 43,000 people is good but does not yet mean it is really safe. If it produces adverse effects in 1 out of every 100,000 people, they might not yet know, but that…
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Richard Marshall interviews Paul Woodruff (Texas)…
…at 3:16 AM. Woodruff is a gem, both as a person and a scholar. If the American Academy of Arts & Sciences weren't really a "friends of friends" academy, he would have been elected long ago.
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Hume and Trump
When Hume observed that, "It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger," he was not thinking of a Trump humiliated. Let us hope the military professionals will be alert over the next three months.
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Crispin Wright on the Evans-Strawson debate about truth
An interesting essay, a propos this. I read a lot about this in graduate school in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Wright taught at Michigan during part of that time), but coming back to it many years later some of the unargued-for assumptions do leap out at me: e.g, "it should be a priority…
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The wrong “Four Seasons”
This is too perfect a mistake by the monster-child's minions; if it weren't real, no one would find it plausible.
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Speaking of “fake news”…
…stories like this purporting to offer evidence-free explanations for Biden's victory are a staple of our media, and no one seems remotely embarrassed about running them. Why did Biden win? Here are some possible explanations: (1) hatred of Trump sent people to the polls to vote against him; they would have voted for anyone other…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Ancient Grease, “Mother Grease The Cat,” 1970
Welsh hard rock band, this comes from their one and only album:
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All politics is local
Back to Queens edition: A 74-year-old Jamaica Estates developer has less than three months left at his current address after Americans overwhelmingly voted him out of the White House, the AP projected Saturday. President Donald Trump, a Republican, lost his bid for reelection after a days-long vote count, becoming the 11th commander-in-chief to lose the…
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As of 11:40 am EST, Fox is the only major media outlet not to have declared Biden the winner
That's bad, but hopefully they will get there soon. (UPDATE [11:46 AM EST] : Fox has declared Biden the winner. Whew.) On the other hand, the Drudge Report headline is "You're fired!" with this photo:
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Both Georgia Senate contests head to a runoff
Although Republican incumbent Perdue beat Democratic challenger Ossoff by a couple of percentage points, he failed to get more than 50% of the vote, so they will meet again in a January contest. The other race everyone knew would lead to a run-off: incumbent cretinous social parasite Loeffler outperformed another Repug challenger (the two split…
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Small Boston study finds 1 in 5 grocery store workers test positive for COVID
But the vast majority were asymptomatic. Given that clerks in a grocery store will interact with several dozen people during a day, and in a closed environment, this isn't wholly surprising, but still sobering if it generalizes. All the more reason to mask up carefully when grocery shopping.
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A propos nothing…here’s the earliest known recording of Joni Mitchell…
…at age 19, singing "House of the Rising Sun." It's instantly recognizable as her! What a voice!
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Rosenberg v. Dennett on naturalism
An exchange of letters.
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A few reader comments that particularly struck me…
…all taken from yesterday's open thread. Blog traffic has been up as much as 50% over usual levels the last couple of days (e.g., 16k+ visits on Wednesday, 21k+ page views), which was gratifying. So let me share some interesting insights from blog readers (but do read the whole thread, these are just selections): Peterwoit:…
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It’s all over, except the mischief
Biden will win the electoral college: he is ahead in Pennsylvania, Georgia (wow!), and Nevada (he won Arizona, although some media outlets seem nervous about calling that for him). Pennsylvania alone gets him over 270, Nevada gets him to 270, Georgia gets him over 270. All three gets him over 300 electoral college votes, but…
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Philosophy job postings in 2020 down by roughly 50% from 2019 and 2018
Philosopher Charles Lassiter (Gonzaga) looks at the grim numbers.
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When all you have is a hammer…
…everything looks like a nail, redux. A well-known philosopher in the UK, a more serious and alert Twitter user than me, shared the following regarding what he aptly called "Kate Manne's non-falsifiable thesis" (he asked not to be credited for his find!): Re the limits of Kate Manne's one trick: "Without misogyny as a factor,…
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Gauleiter McConnell speaks, and Trump is doomed
This Gauleiter plays the long game–hence his fixation on courts–plus he hates Trump and he knows that the Biden Presidency is hobbled now that the Gauleiter retained his legislative chamber. This odd congruence of interests for a very bad man should mean the monster-child is finished for 2020 (he'll be back, of course, until his…
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Speaking of sick fascists salivating in public…
…here's Mark Levin, radio host and Trump lapdog, tweeting to his two million followers.
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All the incumbents in the House of Representatives who lost…
…were Democrats, although Democrats still control the House. Not a good sign, however.
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News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…
Everything you say is true, but what is the alternative? I don’t think people are advocating a return to in-class…
The discussion here assumes an institutional context where returning to supervised in-person assessment is at least theoretically feasible, a reasonable…
Cyber security professional here -reliably determining when a computational artifact (file, etc.) was created is *hard*. This is sorta why…
Agreed with the other commentator. It is extremely unlikely that Pangram’s success is due to its cheating by reading metadata.
I see this question as a bit naïve. There is metadata on every document created by a modern word processor…
I first met Professor Hoy when I returned to UC Santa Cruz in Fall of ’92 to finish my undergraduate…