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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Kaleidescope, “Lie to Me,” 1969
Eclectic folk and rock band from California, this is a live version of the lead number from their third and probably best album (here's the album version); I love this tune!
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Allergies, asthma, and COVID-19
A possible mechanism explaining a lower incidence of COVID-19. (Thanks to Blake Myers for the pointer.)
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America is nuts, part 732: Michigan State Capitol edition
Is there any civilized nation on the planet that would permit heavily armed morons to parade about in a state government building like this (with the result, by the way, that state legislators are wearing bullett proof vests)?
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The sexual assault allegation against Biden isn’t credible
I wouldn't even bother addressing this, except I notice so many clueless philosophers on social media seem to think it's a central issue. Thank God for lawyers with experience and sense. From the conclusion of the preceding piece: I know that “Believe Women” is the mantra of the new decade. It is a response to a century…
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Anscombe’s arguments against “unconditional surrender” in war
Philosopher John Schwenkler (Florida State) and a colleague give a sympathetic reconstruction here. I still find the argument wholly unpersuasive, but see what you think!
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University of Arizona plans to resume in-person classes this fall
Statement from the University President: "We have launched antibody testing for the county and will soon begin antibody testing 250,000 health care workers and first responders for the state of Arizona in partnership with the Governor’s Office. Next, we will test our own students, faculty and staff. We are expanding our diagnostic testing capability for…
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Wenar from King’s College, London to Stanford
The political philosopher Leif Wenar, currently at King's College, London, has accepted a senior offer from the Department of Philosophy at Stanford University, where he will start this fall. (Thanks to Bob Talisse for the pointer.)
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At least 30 million Americans out of work in the last six weeks
The last time I looked, the active labor force had about 160 million people in it–so we're approaching 20% (probably exceeded it, since unemployment claims trail job losses). If a lot of them don't get put back to work, we will have a social and political catastrophe on our hands by mid-summer.
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Typepad (the blog service provider) was down this morning…
…which is why you would have gotten an error message earlier. It seems to be fixed!
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Thoreau’s revenge on literature professors during the pandemic
This is funny; an excerpt: A few months ago, you were talking smack about my year in a cabin. Now you’re trapped in your condo in Yonkers or the backside of Amherst or wherever, and you’d trade it in a heartbeat for 150 square feet and a whole forest full of owls and frogs and…
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“Statement of Academic Solidarity”
This petition has been making the rounds, and has been signed by a number of philosophers and other scholars whom I respect (it's also been signed by some hypocrites, mindless ideologues, and clowns, but that's OK! [amusingly, Avital Ronell, Ms. Solidarity with graduate students, signed]). I encourage readers to take a look. Here's the core…
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A good milestone in New York City
1,849 new confirmed cases today, the first time there have been fewer than 2,000 new cases in NYC since March 19. (Details for NYC and Chicago here. Chicago is currently at what appears to be its peak, and the good news is hospitals are not overwhelmed, and the planned 3,000-bed field hospital at a convention…
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Distribution of jobs by area in 2019-20
Philosopher Marcus Arvan (Tampa) has again compiled the data on the job market. I'll repost just one data point, the number of tenure-track jobs, with the distribution of jobs by area of specialty (AOS): Junior-level TT jobs advertised = 224 Value Theory = 76.8 jobs (34.3%) Open: 46 jobs (20.5%) History: 27.5 jobs (12.3%) Science (including cog.…
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More hopeful vaccine news…
…from researchers at Oxford University.
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A list of college plans for the fall
Courtesy of CHE (and it includes links to the sources). (Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for the pointer.)
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Philosopher Cheryl Misak’s biography of Ramsey informatively reviewed…
…by Anthony Gottlieb at The New Yorker.
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More on blood pressure meds and COVID-19: some good news
Here; briefly: "The report from one hospital in Wuhan found that among patients with hypertension hospitalized with the COVID-19 virus, there was no difference in disease severity or death rate in patients taking ACE inhibitors or ARBs and those not taking such medications." There's further detail at the link. (Thanks to Dr. David Ozonoff for…
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Great moments in obscure rock ‘n’ roll: Captain Beyond, “Dancing Madly Backwards,” 1972
California band, made up of former members of Deep Purple and Iron Butterfly, among others, they are sometimes described as a proto-"stoner rock" band. This is from their debut album:
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A guy from Brooklyn explains to the government what needs to be done
This is how I talk, so God bless him (and fuck "the greedy cocksuckers"!): And it's getting close to class consciousness!
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Houlgate on Brandom on Hegel
I agree with Professor Houlgate's verdict (if not all his reasons for it): The result is a rich study of the issues that are of enduring interest to [Brandom] and that he takes to be at the core of Hegel's Phenomenology….[T]he book, in my view, sets out Brandom's ideas rather than Hegel's, so if readers…
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Some modest vaccine progress in China
Hopeful news, but still early days: For the first time, one of the many COVID-19 vaccines in development has protected an animal, rhesus macaques, from infection by the new coronavirus, scientists report. The vaccine, an old-fashioned formulation consisting of a chemically inactivated version of the virus, produced no obvious side effects in the monkeys, and…
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Modeling, policy, and COVID-19
Philosophers John Symons (Kansas) and Eric Winsberg (South Florida) talk with Daniel Kaufman (Missouri State).
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Six philosophers elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences
They are: Cheshire Calhoun (Arizona State), Paul Churchland (emeritus, UC San Diego), John Dupre (Exeter), Miranda Fricker (CUNY Graduate Center), Steven Nadler (Wisconsin), and Laura Ruetsche (Michigan).
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“The Liar Tweets Tonight”
This is very funny: (Thanks to Peter Carruthers for the pointer.)
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How one resort plans to reopen “safely”
This is instructive, not only for what some businesses may need to do, but what universities may also need to do. I assume they're making this public to reassure potential customers; it is quite a detailed plan, do take a look.
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A Marxist perspective on the pandemic and the “response” to it
I don't agree with all of this, but I do agree with the basic point: [T]he Times asserted that it will become necessary to accept that there is a “trade-off between saving lives and saving the economy.” While in the short term the two goals may be aligned, in “the longer run, though, it’s important…
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On the etiology of belief, and luck
Philosopher Miriam Schoenfield (Texas) comments.
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A drink for our times
(Thanks to Gregory Mayer for the pointer.)
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Richard Marshall interviews Charlie Huenemann (Utah State)…
…at 3:16 AM. (Link now fixed.)
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Threadgill’s in Austin closes
I saw the sad news from a friend on FB. Janis Joplin sang here when she was a student at UT Austin in the 1960s, but, more importantly, the place served up really good Southern cooking (chicken-fried steak anyone?), and it was inexpensive and fun. When we lived in Austin, from 1995 to 2008, we…
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The pandemic and Anglophone universities…
…with a particular focus on the impact on the UK. UPDATE: Unfortunately, this article is now behind a Financial Times paywall.
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Pulse oximeters, again
A propos an earlier post, this emergency medicine doctor recommends having one on hand for early detection of COVID-related pneumonia: We are just beginning to recognize that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call “silent hypoxia” — “silent” because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature. Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs…
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Philosopher Alexander Bird (KCL) explains epidemiological modelling…
…and other COVID-related topics. (Thanks to James Uccello for the pointer.)
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When the “war” against COVID-19 is over, I hope there will be war crimes trials to hold to account those who caused unnecessary deaths
The incompetent monster-child declared himself a "wartime President," and indeed he is. And thus when the war is over, it will be time for war crimes trials. Here is an initial useful accounting; Dr. Redfield of the CDC and Dr. Hahn of the FDA will have a lot to answer for, even if their incompetence…
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Eric Feigl-Ding is not worth following on Twitter
Early on, Eric Feigl-Ding–who turns out to have a PhD in nutrition not anything related to epidemiology–was one of the first to express proper alarm about COVID-19 and he was also a useful source of links to medical and science journals and news outlets covering the new coronavirus (useful, at least, for someone like me…
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Is immortality worth it?
Philosopher John Martin Fischer (UC Riverside) discusses.
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Who has been more incompetent in dealing with the coronavirus: Trump or Boris Johnson?
Johnson is giving the monster-child a run for the money!
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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…
There’s a simple way to test. Open a pre-2022 essay and copy-and-paste it into a new file.
To be worth using, a detector needs not only (A) not get very many false positives, but also (B) get…