Ashes open thread

by Chris Bertram on July 12, 2009

Phew! England (and Wales) “just about got away with it”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/8146497.stm despite Pietersen’s stupidity and arrogance. The really big difference from 2005 (so far) is the change in feel caused by Warne’s retirement. Four years ago, Warne was a feral presence, spooking the England batsmen with his cunning and aggression. Of course, Ponting was captain back then too, but this series has seen him come to the fore: planning, homework, probing the England weaknesses. Collingwood was terrific today, but, generally England were brainless. Still, no harm done yet and four tests to play to win back the Ashes.

Join the Friends of the SEP society

by Ingrid Robeyns on July 12, 2009

I haven’t blogged much in the last months — I had too much on my plate and blogging is an easy thing to drop if there’s much more work than can be squeezed into 24 hours a day. A few times something came on my path that I felt I had to blog about, and now, in this academic-off-season with more time (or rather: fewer urgent deadlines) the challenge will be to remember all those things that I felt were worthwhile throwing into the Blogosphere.

Here’s one. A few weeks back I joined “the Friends of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy”:https://leibniz.stanford.edu/friends/ (SEP). For philosophers, but also for other academics or thinkers/writers/readers who sometimes want to check out a philosophical theory, term, subfield or canonical thinker, this is a true gift. I use it in my teaching and have so far only had positive remarks from students. The SEP contains high quality refereed entries, generally well-written and enlightening, and always freely available to anybody on Earth with access to the internet. Anybody supporting the Open Access movement, or anybody seriously concerned about educational equality of opportunity on a global level, should therefore support the SEP if they can (the membership fees are $5 for students and $10 or 25 for professionals – much less than the fees of most academic associations). So now there is an easy way to support the SEP, and you’ll get something in return for your membership – nicely formatted PDFs of the entries. I hope many thousands worldwide will join, and that the people working hard at creating and maintaining the SEP will take it as a big ‘thank you’ for their work.