For some of us, ’tis not only the season to get annoyed by some Christmas music. I’m wrapping up my 20s and planning a big 30th bday bash this coming weekend. I would like to play some fun/funny birthday songs and am looking for suggestions. I know there are some, I just can’t think of them.
Looks as though there’s a lot of “cheating”:http://wizbangblog.com/archives/001268.php going on in the Blog Awards. Various methods used – “Dive into Mark”:http://diveintomark.org/ seems to have employed a particularly cunning trick. The polls link directly to the websites of the nominated blogs, in order to allow people to check out the blogs that they’re voting on,. Apparently, the eponymous Mark set up a script to trap anyone clicking on the link to his website into voting for his blog automatically. Scroll down through the comments to see his justification for doing this – it’s a minor masterpiece of chutzpah. Fortunately, CT readers don’t seem to have been up to any mischief, either because you don’t have the skillz, or because you’re nice and honest people. Naturally, I prefer the latter explanation. (Via “Scripting News”:http://www.scripting.com/)
The new issue of Philosophy and Public Affairs contains a brilliant paper by A.J. Julius on the issue of the site of distributive justice. (Subscribers only I’m afraid). He argues against Cohen’s wide-scope construal of the basic structure, and in favour of a more limited scope construal, but does so in what seems to me a novel way — and also indicates that this construal is consistent with far less inequality than either defenders or opponents of the narrow-scope construal often suppose. Read it.
BBC Radio 3 is devoting the entire day to “a celebration of Hector Berlioz on his bicentenary”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/classical/berliozday.shtml. Some great music and much commentary on the life of a man who Ken Russell described (about an hour ago) as the most cinematic of composers.
Welcome to “Punishment Theory”:http://punishmenttheory.blog-city.com/ , a new blog on philosophy and the criminal law featuring some eminent scholars.
David Langford’s indispensable “Ansible”:http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Ansible/a197.html tells us about wirtiglugs, hwinis, and (my favourite) breekbridders.