October 2008
1 post
Test Your Moral Intuitions →
Is this what all those X-PHI heads are emploring us to do? In vaguely related news, UCB lost Sam Scheffler to NYU. I will soon be hosting a public school vs. private school Hater’s Ball.
both via Leiter Reports
September 2008
4 posts
UC Press Online Sale →
Re-up on Wittgenstein! (The sidewalk sale is coming in October)
Supreme Court’s Global Influence Is Waning →
Homegirl Ginsburg briefly shines through, as she usually does. Could anyone tell me why someone would thing that it would be a mistake for U.S. courts to cite international cases when ruling on international legal issues such as torture? Especially since these citations are NON-BINDING and thus do not produce PRECEDENT! —“But these international courts are not bound by the American...
Evidence
me: hahaha
will you buy me a cheese pizza if I come?
Jessica: yes! I'll buy you three for that shitty ass deal from your fav dominos
me: fuck that
I want round table
minimum
August 2008
4 posts
Finally figured out how to
enable comments on this thing called tumblr. I don’t know how it works exactly - I had to sign up for some other service called Disqus (why can’t new tech companies just spell words correctly?).
This is potentially devastating... →
…until I figure out how to incorporate this piece of information into an alternative account of color. Any ideas?
P.S. How many philosophical assumptions can you spot in this article?
Orwell's Diaries →
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of George Orwell’s diaries, The Orwell Prize is blogging each of his diary entries in the exact sequence in which they were written (i.e., Orwell’s diary entry of Aug. 9, 1938 will be posted on Aug. 9, 2008, Aug. 10, 1938’s entry will be posted Aug. 10, 2008). His political diary starts September 7.
July 2008
1 post
Anosognosia →
It’s sort of the antithesis to the thesis of hypochondria.
May 2008
3 posts
In India
I’ve been in Kolkata for about five days now. The chaos of it all still unnerves me. I looked for an ATM inside the airport as soon as I arrived. There were none. I went outside, out in the heat that is not unlike Bangkok’s own stifling climate. A prepaid cabbie quickly noticed my absolute lack of competence in doing pretty much anything in this strange new country. “You need to...
Slick
It has been monsooning here in Thailand for about 2 weeks - on and off heavy heavy thunderstorms. As a result, the weather has been a bit cooler, but when I go out there is a good chance that I will get entirely soaked at least once. Songkran was great - I’ve now heard both sides of the debate about the appropriateness of the festivities. The ‘traditionalists’ don’t approve...
April 2008
8 posts
On the Way
Songkran, the Thai New Year celebration, is my new favorite holiday. I got a ride up to Lampang the day before the official beginning of the holdiay in the back of a pickup. The ride was nice at first. I was feeling all badass. About an hour into the trip all the sexiness wore off. I tried to cover myself from the sun as effectively as possible with my previously discarded shirt and socks, which...
Progressive Thinking
I met my cousin’s friend’s husband last night. This guy is seriously funny on several levels. First off, he’s an architect/fortune teller. Yes, that is correct: he designs buildings and tells fortunes, and makes money doing both. I never thought I would see those two professions slashed together into one man. Second, he kept talking to me about how I should settle down in...
Khao San Rd.
Khao San Road is located on the East side of Mae Nam Chao Phraya, the main river in Thailand. It’s just northeast of the Grand Palace. Most backpackers and tourists looking for lodging on the cheap stay in this area, so there are tons of dirty white people here. It’s equivalent to an extremely seedy Pier 39, one with more bars than family-oriented entertainment. The food here is...
March 2008
5 posts
Focus
My first and only post about my time in Bangkok was highly unstructured and unfocused. I’ve since decided that, for the sake of digestion, I should cut my posts into smaller bites. My trip to Pattaya was the most serious chillin’ I’ve done in my entire life. We left Bangkok around 7am and drove for about an hour to the coast. As soon as we got there, a young guy dressed in what I...
Not that I know anything about this, but... →
Ones and Twos
I am at an internet cafe in this huge shopping center called MBK in Bangkok. There is another gigantic shopping center - I am talking 7 stories and entire city blocks - called Siam Paragon that is basically the upscale version of MBK for tourists. MBK has a back section on each floor that is basically a flea market (AKA dirt mall) which I just got back from cruising. I haven’t been able to...
“In philosophizing, I have to bring my own language and life into imagination....”
– Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason
February 2008
6 posts
If it's all the same to you
I remember it clearly: sitting in an uncomfortable desk chair in a makeshift office cubicle anxiously staring at Joseph Barnes, my Metaphysics T.A. I was, as was usual, struggling to write a paper with a looming due date, and I decided to voice my concerns to the person who was going to grade what I was going to write. After an extended pause, he said one of those sentences that just stick with...
The Atlantic Monthly →
The Atlantic Monthly is now free online, with archives available going back to 1995. It has less of the “look at how clever we are” tone of Harper’s and much less of The New Yorker’s snobbishness.
Response.
At the behest of several trusted friends, I have begun the considerably slight task of occasionally writing something for others to read. I put my fingers to the keyboard for this reason with no slight amount of trepidation; not that my words are so weighty as to warrant this apprehensiveness, but simply that I have little to write that others would find worthwhile reading. Trust me when I say...
“And when it comes to regions of the soul like envy or charity or ambition or...”
– Stanley Cavell, The Claim of Reason