Patrick Blanchfield examines some of the troubling constitutional questions raised by the gun-toting folks who showed up to protect Cliven Bundy in Nevada: According to open carry advocates, their presence in public space represents more than just an expression of their Second Amendment rights, it’s a statement, an “educational,” communicative act — in short, anContinue reading “Guns and Speech, Gunslingers and Writers”
Monthly Archives: May 2014
On Safe and Unsafe Academic Workplaces: An Email to a Colleague
Here, on this blog, I have often written posts about the academic life. Some of those posts have concerned themselves with the state of affairs in my discipline, philosophy, and yet others have been more generally directed–perhaps about academic publishing, for instance. A recurring concern in my posts on academia might be termed ‘workplace issues’–mattersContinue reading “On Safe and Unsafe Academic Workplaces: An Email to a Colleague”
Larry Gopnik: A Serious Man Dealt a Bad Hand
Ethan and Joel Cohen‘s A Serious Man is a very funny, very bleak movie. It is very funny because it points out that life is really quite ludicrous, a gigantic joke at our expense; it is very bleak because it points out that life is really quite ludicrous, a gigantic joke…you see where I’m going withContinue reading “Larry Gopnik: A Serious Man Dealt a Bad Hand”
“Look Out of the Window, Camel Jockey”
Twenty-seven years ago, I arrived in the US, and shortly thereafter, began graduate school at a small technical school in Newark, New Jersey. Once classes picked up speed, I spent increasing amounts of time in our grim library–rather inefficiently if I may say so–struggling to stay awake while finishing my readings and programming assignments. ToContinue reading ““Look Out of the Window, Camel Jockey””
Julian Young on Schopenhauer on Suicide
In his concise introduction to Schopenhauer, Julian Young notes he considered it “incumbent on any ‘ethical system’ to commit suicide.” Indeed, that Stoicism fails to do so, and indeed, even recommends it “in cases where pain is intolerable”, is for Schopenhauer, proof of its “intellectual bankruptcy.” Young rightly makes the obvious point: this seems like a strangeContinue reading “Julian Young on Schopenhauer on Suicide”
Tribalism’s Easy Allure: Brooklyn Does Not Like Toronto Anymore (in the NBA)
Tribalism in sports is a curious thing; it is especially so in professional sports, where as I’ve noted, we encounter: [T]he mystery of how millions of sports fans, here in the US, and all over the world, develop long-standing, passionately defended and articulated, emotionally infused, personal allegiances with large, profit-seeking, corporate entities, an enterprise thatContinue reading “Tribalism’s Easy Allure: Brooklyn Does Not Like Toronto Anymore (in the NBA)”
Relativity and the Immigrant
As a postscript to an essay explicating the theory of special relativity–written at the request of the The Times (London), Albert Einstein wrote: Here is yet another application of the principle of relativity…today I am described in Germany as a “German savant” and in England as a “Swiss Jew.” Should it ever be my fateContinue reading “Relativity and the Immigrant”
Samir Chopra 