Last Thursday, Governor Scott Walker repealed Wisconsin’s Equal Pay Enforcement Act, which made it possible for victims of sex discrimination to further contest such discrimination in a Wisconsin circuit court–even if their cases were already on file with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or in federal court, or with the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development.Continue reading “The National Review Thinks There is No Sex-Discrimination in the Workplace”
Monthly Archives: April 2012
The Campaign Trail: Where You Go To Say Dumb Things
Could there be a stupider foreign ‘policy’ decision than the one to strike Iran, ostensibly to disrupt its nuclear weapons program? (If the strike ‘succeeds’ it will: encourage Iran to build a nuclear weapon for, as its rulers are likely to notice, only nations with actual nuclear weapons don’t get attacked by the US; consolidateContinue reading “The Campaign Trail: Where You Go To Say Dumb Things”
Tourism and the Invented Tradition
Ian Johnson interviews Tian Qing (New York Review of Books Blog, April 6th, 2012), the head of China’s Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, “an institution set up by the government to protect China’s native traditions in the performing arts, cuisine, rituals, festivals, and other forms of culture” in an attempt to figure out whether these culturalContinue reading “Tourism and the Invented Tradition”
Schopenhauer on the Pernicious Influence of Copyright on Writing
Modern debates on the ‘intellectual property’ front involve several, overlapping, recurring themes. One persistent pair of inter-related concerns is: How are creators, authors, artists, ‘content producers’, and the like to be compensated for their ‘contributions’ to our commons? and, How indispensable are the protections of the various legal regimes that are termed ‘intellectual property’ (andContinue reading “Schopenhauer on the Pernicious Influence of Copyright on Writing”
The Dirt on the Clean
Some three years ago, when I first started learning the clean at Crossfit South Brooklyn (CFSBK) my Coach Extraordinaire David Osorio said it would take two thousand repetitions to get the clean ‘right.’ As I’m fond of saying to my fellow CFSBK’ers, I’m not sure I am at two thousand reps yet, because I don’tContinue reading “The Dirt on the Clean”
Oakeshott, the ‘Practical Past’, Ancestors, and Psychoanalysis
For Michael Oakeshott ( ‘Present, Future, and Past’, from ‘Three Essays on History’ in On History, Liberty Fund, Indianapolis, 1999), the ‘practical past’ is: [A]n accumulation of symbolic persons, actions, utterances, situations and artefacts, the products of practical imagination, and their only significant relationship to past is not to the past to which they ambiguouslyContinue reading “Oakeshott, the ‘Practical Past’, Ancestors, and Psychoanalysis”
That Scalia Sure Chopped the Individual Mandate Like Broccoli!
I’ve now taught Philosophy of Law twice: first, in Spring 2007, and then later, two sections in Spring 2011. An important section of the class syllabus, once we have completed a comparison and discussion of natural law, positivist, and legal realist theories of the law, is legal reasoning. And invariably, an important topic in legalContinue reading “That Scalia Sure Chopped the Individual Mandate Like Broccoli!”
Breaking News: The US Supreme Court is a Political Institution
Yesterday in Florence vs. Board of Freeholders, the US Supreme Court ruled that if you are arrested–for any reason whatsoever–the law-enforcement officials in charge of you can strip-search you. Over at ScotusBlog, Lyle Denniston sums it up a little better: Insisting that it has no expertise in how to run a jail or prison, theContinue reading “Breaking News: The US Supreme Court is a Political Institution”
Incontrovertible Proof of the Corporatized University: Its Modern Architecture
In “Laboratory Conditions” (New Yorker, September 19 2011), Paul Goldberger waxes lyrical over the architectural details of new science buildings like the Rockefeller University Collaborative Research Center, Columbia University’s new “fourteen-story tower for scientific research,” and the University of San Francisco’s “new center for stem-cell research.” Goldberger clearly likes what he sees: [A]ll three ofContinue reading “Incontrovertible Proof of the Corporatized University: Its Modern Architecture”
Even ‘Degenerate Art’ Can Tempt: The 1937 Entartete Kunst Exhibitions
In July 1937, in Munich, the Nazi Party mounted the Entartete Kunst exhibitions of ‘Degenerate Art.’. The exhibit featured over six hundred paintings, sculptures, prints, and books, a collection put together by a six-man commission that had confiscated–from the collections of thirty-two German museums–art deemed ‘modern, degenerate, or subversive.’ The exhibition remained in Munich tillContinue reading “Even ‘Degenerate Art’ Can Tempt: The 1937 Entartete Kunst Exhibitions”
Samir Chopra 