“PZ Myers”:http://pharyngula.org/comments/562_0_1_0_C/ has a delightful short story on what scientists do when presented with a ridiculous supernatural hypothesis that has testable empirical consequences.
As a philosopher I’d have been quite happy to dispatch that one from the armchair. That’s (part of) why they don’t teach my stuff in high-school science classes, and rightly so.
As many bloggers have noted over the years, one of the weaknesses of modern journalism is that in a political campaign journalists feel compelled to try and present an even-handed picture when evaluating the claims made by the leading candidates, even when one side is exaggerating while the other side is simply making things up. This “CNN/Money”:http://money.cnn.com/2004/04/12/news/economy/election_incomes/index.htm?cnn=yes article is a classic of the genre.
Easter in Australia is a four-day public holiday, and coincides with school holidays, so it’s a good time to organise get-togethers. There are events for nearly everyone from poodle-fanciers to petrolheads (even, I believe, some major religious celebrations). For most of the past thirty years, I’ve gone to the National Folk Festival (held in Canberra since the early 90s). This always gets me into the kind of utopian mood where you think that the troubles of the world would be over if only we would all be like brothers and sisters to each other[1]. And lately, it always seems to coincide with particularly bloody events in the real world, making me very reluctant to get out of this mood and back to reality.
After watching his team lose three in a row to England, Brian Lara seems to have been inspired to return to his old form. As I write he’s on 361 not out. Now the big question is whether I’ll be able to get any work done today while I see what happens next. The game can be followed “here”:http://www.cricinfo.com/db/NEW/LIVE/frames/ENG_WI_T4_10-14APR2004.html. (“This story”:http://theage.com.au/articles/2004/04/12/1081621893367.html?from=storyrhs about Brian Lara and Matthew Hayden probably won’t appeal to everyone but I thought it was touching.)
TechCentralStation has “a piece by anti-egalitarian political philosopher John Kekes today”:http://www.techcentralstation.com/041204B.html . Kekes probably isn’t responsible for the way the article is illustrated, but it warrants comment. Insofar as any egalitarian thinker can be identified in the text of Kekes’s article, it is semi-egalitarian liberal John Rawls. But the little photomontage that accompanies the piece associates Karl Marx, the IRS, a sinister man in a ski-mask and another sinister hooded and bearded man who is brandishing a pistol.
I don’t know why it has taken me so long to realize my bed-rest destiny: re-reading Proust. Yes, it’s the perfect project, though I’m hoping baby will be born before I’m too far along the Guermantes way. When I read it the first time (which I did, rather disreputably, under the table in a series of boring seminars), I was also taking a very interesting seminar on the Greek novel with Froma Zeitlin, and I noticed a certain parallel to Achilles Tatius.
Warning: Contains Remembrance of Things Past plot spoilers! And Leucippe and Kleitophon plot spoilers, I guess!
Here are some random sites I thought people may find interesting. I maintain a mailing list (from my pre-blog days) and just sent these out in an issue.