This afternoon, overcome by a mounting frustration at being unable to get two monitors working on my new single-graphic-card-equipped home desktop personal computer, I blurted out the following on Facebook (only a couple of minutes before I entered a plaintive plea for help on the same forum, which resulted in several responses, and indeed, evenContinue reading “High-Tech, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
On Male Brazilians And Revealing Ethnic Origins Through Cussing
Today was a painful day; twice, I encountered good old-fashioned physical pain. None of that fancy, dark night of the soul, melancholic stuff. You needed topical balms for this, not therapy. (Though I suppose opiates would help both varietals.) Incident Numero Uno (in which I inadvertently receive a varietal of a Male Brazilian): Shortly after IContinue reading “On Male Brazilians And Revealing Ethnic Origins Through Cussing”
Step This Way For The Deunionized American Workplace
American unions look headed for another legal beating in the US Supreme Court. Pretty soon, we’ll be able to drop all pretense and just advocate beatings until the morale–of American workers–improves. The Supreme Court is about to hand their overseers a slightly thicker, more knotted, whip. Ten Californian teachers have sued their union–on First AmendmentContinue reading “Step This Way For The Deunionized American Workplace”
Workplace Dynamics And The Treatment Of Support Staff
A couple of days ago, my Brooklyn College colleague Corey Robin asked (on his Facebook page): How many academics would get tenure if the review took into account how they treated the department’s secretarial staff? A year or so after I had begun work at Bell Laboratories, I told a new hire that she shouldContinue reading “Workplace Dynamics And The Treatment Of Support Staff”
Freud On Group Production (And ‘Intellectual Property’)
In ‘Group Pyschology’, (Standard Edition, XVIII, 79; as cited in Peter Gay, Freud for Historians, Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 150), Sigmund Freud writes: [A]s far as intellectual achievement is concerned, it remains indeed true that the great decisions of the work of thought, the consequential discoveries and solutions of problems, are possible only toContinue reading “Freud On Group Production (And ‘Intellectual Property’)”
Mass Incarceration And Teaching Philosophy Of Law
This coming spring semester, as in the just-concluded fall semester, I will be teaching Philosophy of Law. As I get down to thinking about my syllabus, one imperative seems overriding: I must ‘do more’ on mass incarceration (and related topics like the theory of punishment and the death penalty.) No topic seems more important, pressing,Continue reading “Mass Incarceration And Teaching Philosophy Of Law”
‘Eva’: Love Can Be Skin-Deep (Justifiably)
Kike Maíllo’s Eva makes for an interesting contribution to the ever-growing–in recent times–genre of robotics and artificial intelligence movies. That is because its central concern–the emulation of humanity by robots–which is not particularly novel in itself, is portrayed in familiar and yet distinctive, form. The most common objection to the personhood of the ‘artificially sentient,’Continue reading “‘Eva’: Love Can Be Skin-Deep (Justifiably)”
Reflections On ‘Imagined Communities’ – II: Newspaper Reading As Modern Prayer
In Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, New York, 2006, pp. 34-35), Benedict Anderson writes: [T]he newspaper is merely an ‘extreme form’ of the book, a book sold on a colossal scale, but of ephemeral popularity. Might we say: one-day best-sellers? The obsolescence of the newspaper on the morrow of its printing….createsContinue reading “Reflections On ‘Imagined Communities’ – II: Newspaper Reading As Modern Prayer”
Richard Holmes On Biography’s ‘Physical Pursuit’ Of Its Subjects
In an essay describing his biographical work on Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Richard Holmes writes: [A] biography is…a handshake….across time, but also across cultures, across beliefs, across disciplines, across genders, and across ways of life. It is an act of friendship. It is a way of keeping the biographer’s notebook open, on both sides of thatContinue reading “Richard Holmes On Biography’s ‘Physical Pursuit’ Of Its Subjects”
Liberia, Iran, Gautemala et al.: Liberated By Coup D’Etat
In 1981 or so, as a schoolboy perusing my school library’s archives of LIFE magazine, I came upon a set of photos that–like other images in the past–showcased a brutality not immediately reconcilable with my rational understanding of the world: half-naked men, tied tight to poles with green plastic cords that bit into their skin,Continue reading “Liberia, Iran, Gautemala et al.: Liberated By Coup D’Etat”
Samir Chopra 