Richard Wollheim has died. There’s an “obituary in the Guardian”:http://books.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,11617,1078109,00.html from Arthur Danto, and Chris Brooke has “a relevant excerpt”:http://users.ox.ac.uk/~magd1368/weblog/2003_11_01_archive.html#106804985419728983 from Jerry Cohen’s “Future of a Disillusion”. Norman Geras has a “post on Wollheim’s paradox of democracy”:http://normangeras.blogspot.com/2003_11_02_normangeras_archive.html#106804463992397189 . I have pleasant memories of Richard Wollheim from my time at UCL where I went to read for the M.Phil in philosophy in 1981. He chaired the research seminars there and I remember him mainly as a benign presence who asked penetrating clarificatory questions in a very plummy voice. A sad loss.
Bert Jansch is the interviewee on this week’s My Life on CD. I’m a big fan of Jansch, and this interview is fantastic because he is vitually monosyllabic — poor Tracey Macloed works for every word she gets out of him. Reminds me of the great Wogan interview with James Bolam in which Bolam sat in complete silence, apparently dumbstruck by the situation (and Wogan, masterfully, filled in all the gaps).
Why is it that people with ‘real’ illnesses like heart disease, cancer or ‘flu can receive unqualified sympathy and support, while those suffering from an equally organic illness like depression are so often told to ‘just snap out of it’?
A couple of follow-ups to things I’ve blogged recently: Tim Lambert has assembled “a chart of where various bloggers are”:http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/cgi-bin/blog/surveys/compass.html?seemore=y on the “Political Compass”:http://politicalcompass.org/ test. Three Timberites are listed so far. The two dimensions of the test seem to resolve to one in practice, with most people on a diagonal running from left-libertarian (hooray!) to right-authoritarian (boo!). In unrelated news, there’s an “op-ed at PLANETIZEN by Robert Steuteville”:http://www.planetizen.com/oped/item.php?id=110 on the new urbanism and crime issue (link via “City Comforts”:http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/ ).
Josh Parsons has found a hangover cure hidden in Zeno’s writings. It’s a rather clever variant on the “drink more suffer later” cure. If anyone actually tries it I’d be interested to see the results. As a rule taking medical advice from a philosopher is about as wise as getting involved in a land war in Asia, so I have my doubts about this ‘cure’, but I’d be very happy if it was to work.
Not much blogging for me at the moment; three courses to teach, together with sundry administrative and other responsibilities mean that I don’t have much free time. In the meantime, let me recommend:
“Cosma Shalizi”:http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/archives/000130.html on “Our Geopolitical Situation, Dispassionately Assessed.”
“Norman Geras”:http://normangeras.blogspot.com/2003_11_02_normangeras_archive.html#106781211321628977 on Emmylou Harris. I’m a _Wrecking Ball_ man myself, which probably marks me out as a hopeless Emmylou lightweight.
And finally, “Teresa Nielsen Hayden”:http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/003967.html#003967 has suffered a catastrophic disk crash, and is contemplating the horrors and expenses of professional data recovery. She’s politely soliciting donations – sounds like a good cause to me.
In a series of posts (“here”:http://www.curmudgeonlyclerk.com/weblog/archives/2003_10.html#000563 and “here”:http://www.curmudgeonlyclerk.com/weblog/archives/2003_11.html#000570) and comments, the “Curmudgeonly Clerk”:http://www.curmudgeonlyclerk.com/weblog/ has attacked Dahlia Lithwick, who writes Supreme Court commentary at “Slate”:http://slate.msn.com/. In particular, the Clerk doesn’t like this “column”:http://slate.msn.com/id/2090532/, in which Lithwick tries to explain why Justice Scalia, unlike many other judges and justices, frequently speaks out about the most controversial issues of the day. Suffice it to say, the Clerk doesn’t like Lithwick’s diagnosis. In fact, he disagrees with it so much that he’s decided Lithwick no longer deserves to be treated civilly.