Posts by author:
Sign seen here in Tucson while on the way home, outside a pizza joint on Broadway:
bq. Mooninites Eat Free.
Insidious. Someone call the mayor of Boston. But — what they don’t know is that I ate there once and the pizza is terrible. Ha! Who’s laughing now, you little bastards.
“Al Franken will probably run for U.S. Senate in Minnesota.”:http://news.google.com/news?client=safari&rls=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&tab=wn&ncl=1113214687&hl=en Presumably because he’s good enough, he’s smart enough, and doggone it, people like him. This had better be his campaign slogan, by the way.
Via “Jason Stanley”:http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/01/steve_pyke_phot.html, a link to some “now classic photographs”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/philosophers_I.html of philosophers taken by Steve Pyke, together with a “new batch”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/philosophers_II.html by the same photographer. “Here”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/view/phil_I_05.html is the much-missed David Lewis. “Here”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/view/phil_I_07.html is a terrific shot of Elisabeth Anscombe and husband Peter Geach. Amongst the new batch, “here”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/view/phil_II_16.html is Rae Langton. “Here”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/view/phil_II_01.html is Anthony Appiah. And “here is Jason himself”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/view/phil_II_08.html, looking more intense than usual, and also unusually quiet.
Throughout the first batch and for much of the second, Pyke got the philosophers to provide a little statement about themselves and their field. Some are jokey, some gnomic, others quite straightforward. (“H.L.A. Hart:”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/view/phil_I_09.html “To be frank I think the idea of a 50-100 word summary is an absurd idea… I advise you to drop it.”) Amongst my favorites is that of “Geoffrey Warnock”:http://www.pyke-eye.com/view/phil_I_08.html, which elegantly captures the virtues that the analytic tradition strives imperfectly to embody: “To be clear-headed rather than confused; lucid rather than obscure; rational rather than otherwise; and to be neither more, nor less, sure of things than is justifiable by argument or evidence. That is worth trying for.”
But if that’s all too much for you, “here are some recent photos”:http://knowability.googlepages.com/arizonaontologyconference of philosophers having a blast pretending to be cowboys while riding uncertainly around on horses in the Sonoran desert. That’s what they’re _really_ like, you know, moody black-and-white headshots notwithstanding.
Well not us. But this guy.
Sometimes there’s no parochialism like Manhattan parochialism:
bq. This season “House” has reached as many as 17.5 million viewers a week. … Things might never have worked out had a largely unknown British actor named Hugh Laurie not sent in an audition tape at just the right time.
I’d be quite happy to be as largely unknown (and well-off) as the pre-House Hugh Laurie, but maybe that’s just me. Still, this example doesn’t quite match Alan Bennett’s recent experience after the premiere of _The History Boys_ on Broadway, when a reporter asked him whether he thought the success of the play would kick-start his career.
My book, “Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs”:http://www.lastbestgifts.com, is “reviewed this weekend”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/books/review/Postrel.t.html?ex=157680000&en=f390b3396e0ec28a&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink by “Virginia Postrel”:http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/ in the _New York Times_. Obviously, I’m delighted: Virginia’s review is generous and perceptive, and in many ways it’s hard to think of a better choice of reviewer. For one thing, as many readers will probably know, Virginia is herself an organ donor — she “gave one of her kidneys”:http://www.american.com/archive/2006/november/organs-for-sale to her friend “Sally Satel”:http://www.sallysatelmd.com/ — and now regularly writes about the organ shortage and market incentives. For another, she has also followed the growth of economic sociology as a subfield, writing “a very good piece about it for the Boston Globe”:http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/07/24/market_share/ a while ago. And last, she has a generally libertarian point of view, and the stereotype is that libertarians and academic sociologists should be flinging abuse at each other on the topic of altruism, self-interest and the market — especially when it comes to markets in things like human organs. I wrote the book partly in the hope that it would advance the debate beyond some of the entrenched clichés that both sides cling to. Virginia’s review encourages me that I might have been in some way successful in this respect.
An under-appreciated genre, from the golden age of Irish television before the arrival of foreign channels in the early to mid 1980s. I was trying to remember these today because they came up in conversation for no very good reason. I’m sure I can’t have remembered them all. Help me out.
1. _The Safe Cross Code_, with Judge.
Obviously the most famous one. All Irish people between the ages of about twenty and forty can sing this. If I remember, there are long and short versions. The long version includes the mythical Safe Cross Code wardens in their white plastic macs, and Judge saying “Unless you live next door to the school, you’ll have to cross the road sometime.” I believe it opens with Mr Crow complaining about Foxy’s abysmal efforts to sing the song.
Back during the Katrina Disaster, we learned that whereas black people _loot_ things _from_ grocery stores, white people find things _in_ grocery stores. Now that a container ship has “foundered off the English coast”:http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/world/europe/23britaincnd.html?hp&ex=1169528400&en=080d398c6b8cfbb0&ei=5094&partner=homepage we can see what it is the English do under similar circumstances. Not looting, obviously (perish the thought). But not passive “finding,” either. Truer to the Spirit of the Blitz, the Brits make the best of it and _forage_.
It’s snowing. Here, in downtown Tucson, Arizona. Just wanted to let you all know.
Exhibit A, Yale freshman Jian Li. He filed a civil rights complaint against Princeton for “rejecting his early application”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2006/11/13/news/16544.shtml, alleging bias against Asians in Princeton’s admissions process. Exhibit B, an “Op-Ed”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/01/17/opinion/17109.shtml by “Lian Ji” in the _Daily Princetonian_’s joke issue. An excerpt:
bq. Hi Princeton! Remember me? I so good at math and science. Perfect 2400 SAT score. Ring bells? … What is wrong with you no color people? Yellow people make the world go round. We cook greasy food, wash your clothes and let you copy our homework. Brown people are catching up, too but not before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Plus, two Princeton professors showed that racial preferences for black people and Hispanics hurt admission opportunities for me. I mean, Asians in general. The Great Wall Street Journal support my case. What more you want? … Princeton claims that it increase diversity by rejecting an Asian-American. You make joke?
I think that penultimate sentence should read, “Princeton claim it increase diversity,” not “claims that.” If you’re going to write Chinglish, at least make an effort.
What I like about these cases is the Kabuki-like quality of it all … here come the angry protests, there are the inevitable anti-PC people, here is the Dean late at night with a stiff drink, here’s the Asian guy who says he thinks it’s just hilarious and what’s the big deal, and so on. Let the fun begin.
I wrote a column for the _Daily Princetonian_ for a while in grad school, and as I recall (from the hate mail I got), the kids weren’t nearly so easily amused if you “made fun”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/columns/clones.html of their “beloved traditions”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/columns/bicker.html, “odd religious movements”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/columns/crusade.html or “high grades”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/1998/03/09/Edits/column.html. Some things are sacred, you know. Oh, and I once wrote a piece in “broken English”:http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/1998/02/03/Edits/edits1.html as well, so I know whereof I speak.
On the side of this box of McCann’s Oatmeal here it says: “Tip: Add liquid to oatmeal a few minutes before cooking. It will cook faster.” Now, I can see the benefits of doing this in terms of energy conservation. But the fact is, I’m not going to get my oatmeal any faster, am I? Sure, it’ll spend less time on the cooker, but the amount of time I spend preparing it will be the same, or maybe even longer.
This tip seems related to that recent finding that people were irrationally much more tolerant of an increase in shipping fees than the same-sized increase in the price of the good being shipped.
_Analysis_ publishes a lot of relatively short papers, but this one — by G.E.M. Anscombe — from 1966 seems close to the limiting case. The link goes to the JSTOR copy, which requires a subscription. No matter. I shall reproduce the paper in full here, including notes:
*A Note on Mr Bennett* _By G.E.M. Anscombe_
The nerve of Mr Bennett’s argument is that if A results from your not doing B, then A results from whatever you do instead of doing B.1 While there may be much to be said for this view, still it does not seem right on the face of it.
1‘”Whatever the Consequences”‘, Analysis, January 1966, p. 96.
That about settles it. (Indirect hat tip: Carolina Sartorio.)
“This thing”:http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/09/live-from-macworld-2007-steve-jobs-keynote/ just arrived from the future.What can I say? if this is the “RDF”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field, sign me up.
_Update_: If you think _I’m_ a Mac fanboy, check out “these photos”:http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/1/9/6547 of the faithful worshipping the holy relic (it’s behind glass, naturally) at the convention. A Durkheimian moment for the brushed-metal set. They look like the apes in _2001_ gazing at the monolith.
I have little interest in cricket, but — like snooker — it is enjoyable to watch because of its psychological element: you get to see grown men crushed psychologically without any violation of the Geneva Conventions. Though at the moment Australia are pushing it pretty close to a Human Rights Violation with England. Shane Warne got 71, this from the second-to-last man in the batting lineup. In the process he said to Paul Collingwood, “You got an MBE, right? For scoring seven at the Oval?” And now England are in. Over to Tom Fordyce and the BBC online commentary:
*1433: Eng 0-0* Right England – let’s see what you can do after that onslaught. …
*1439: Eng 4-0* McGrath opens the Aussie bowling for the last ever time in a Test. Writing those words has provided me with a small crumb of comfort. He beats Cook twice outside off, but the Essex tyro then cuts him tastily for four.
*1439: WICKET – Cook ct Gilchrist b Lee 4, Eng 4-1.* Oh no…
Chin up, Tom. It’ll all be over soon.