Many years ago, I taught the inaugural edition of my Philosophy of Welding seminar. I began the semester by introducing some of the problems that would hold our attention during the semester: What is welding? How is it distinguished from other activities that claim to be welding? Is there a distinctive being-in-the-world characteristic of the welderContinue reading “Marco Rubio And The Philosophy Of Welding”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
The Pleasures Of Comfort Reading
We eat comfort food when we are sick, angry, depressed, or unhappy: chicken soup, chocolates, <insert your own, idiosyncratic favorite here>, substances that satisfy cravings which tap into some deep nexus of the mind and body and momentarily elevate our mood. Comfort food is comfortable because it is ‘easy’; it does not tax you unduly;Continue reading “The Pleasures Of Comfort Reading”
No One ‘Conquers’ An Eight-Thousander
Despite the dozens, if not hundreds, of mountaineering tales that talk about the ‘conquest’ of mountains, especially the fourteen eight-thousanders that are the world’s tallest mountains, no one ‘conquers’ them. Not the mountaineers who climbed them first, who ‘deflowered’ their ‘virginity,’; not the ones who climb them by new routes, each selected to be harderContinue reading “No One ‘Conquers’ An Eight-Thousander”
Vilhelm Ekelund On Dogs And Literary Critics
In Nordic and Classic (reprinted in Dagbok och Diktverk by Sven Linquist, Bonniers, Stockholm 1966; excerpted in Vilhelm Ekelund: The Second Light, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1986, page 26), Vilhelm Ekelund, the master Swedish poet and aphorist, writes: Into the dog’s sense of life enters, no doubt as an essential fact, the joy thatContinue reading “Vilhelm Ekelund On Dogs And Literary Critics”
School Discipline And Socialization For The Carceral State
Schools are a buffer zone, artfully, strategically, placed between zones of dysfunction–the homes of ‘broken’ families, populated by the wrong ethnicity and racial category, which produce criminality and social pathology–and the rest of society. Here, a net may be cast, trawling through the swarms of schoolchildren, catching the bad, the misbehaved, the unrepentant repeat offendersContinue reading “School Discipline And Socialization For The Carceral State”
Our Police, Keeping Our World Safe From Young Black Women
The next time a video link passes you by on social media stop and take a closer look. Chances are, the dysfunction implicated in it can be traced back to one cause, and one cause alone: teenaged black women. And the police of this nation are on the case, keeping us safe by any meansContinue reading “Our Police, Keeping Our World Safe From Young Black Women”
‘Orange Is The New Black’ And Boarding Schools
As I make my way through the second season of Orange Is The New Black, Netflix’s original series based on Piper Kerman‘s memoir, Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison about her experiences at FCI Danbury, a minimum-security federal prison, I’m struck again by how much of the prison experience remindsContinue reading “‘Orange Is The New Black’ And Boarding Schools”
Debating Teams And The Prison-Industrial Complex
The news that a team of prisoners–incarcerated criminals from the Eastern New York Correctional Facility–had beaten, in debate, Harvard’s team, was not slow in spreading. After the initial informal reactions on social media–many of which expressed glee at Harvard’s comeuppance by plebes–had died down, a more measured response followed, one which stressed that such aContinue reading “Debating Teams And The Prison-Industrial Complex”
Mass Shootings, Gun Control, And Masculinity
Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. There is a great deal of truth in this, er, truism. But having acknowledged that, one can then move on to ask: why do so many people kill people in the US? What are the factors at play in the network of actors and causes and effects thatContinue reading “Mass Shootings, Gun Control, And Masculinity”
The Children’s Playground AKA ‘The Yard’
Parenting entails many unpleasant duties. Changing diapers and dealing with toddlers reluctant to eat, sleep, or behave like rational human beings–which they aren’t–are often ranked lowest on the scale of parenting unpleasantness. But for my money, little can rival accompanying your child to the playground. Here it may all be found: a mixed-age, mixed-gender spaceContinue reading “The Children’s Playground AKA ‘The Yard’”
Samir Chopra 