Lifting weights requires humility. Two weeks ago, a couple of days before I began a week-long vacation with my family–a road-trip to Cincinnati to visit my in-laws, that is, my daughter’s grandparents–I squatted 255lbs for three sets of six repetitions. (The sixth rep in there aims to add a little volume to my training.) IContinue reading “Very ‘Eavy, Very ‘Umble: Weightlifting And Humility”
Category Archives: Philosophy
Memo To NYPD: Don’t Let The Door Hit You On Your Way Out
Over the past few days the NYPD, offended by protests against their policing, and still in a huff at New York’s mayor, Bill De Blasio, for daring to suggest they might need reform, has gone on a work-stoppage of sorts, refusing to carry out arrests or hand out parking tickets or miscellaneous traffic summonses. Meanwhile,Continue reading “Memo To NYPD: Don’t Let The Door Hit You On Your Way Out”
That Guy, The One Who Picks Fights With Your Facebook Friends
Like many Facebook users, I have defriended ‘friends.’ Enough was enough, and the ‘Unfriend’ option got selected. Sometimes, it was because I was sick and tired of seeing their posts in my newsfeed–for whatever reason, perhaps they were politically or personally offensive, or just too silly to put up with anymore. (Pompous, self-inflated, pretentious, bonContinue reading “That Guy, The One Who Picks Fights With Your Facebook Friends”
The Dog Stars: The Apocalypse As Outdoorsman Fantasy
Peter Heller‘s The Dog Stars is one of those post-apocalyptic novels in which authorial fantasies are overwhelmingly transparent. The world is coming to an end; flu has stalked the land; millions have died. Violence is the currency of most human interaction; food is scarce; government is invisible. And so on. You’ve seen most of thisContinue reading “The Dog Stars: The Apocalypse As Outdoorsman Fantasy”
Dickipedia Was Invented For Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney‘s continued existence, his persistent and unconscionable consumption of space, oxygen, and sundry precious natural resources, has long been an airtight argument against the existence of an omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient God. To wit, does such a God know of his existence? If not, then he is not all-knowing. If God does know of his existence,Continue reading “Dickipedia Was Invented For Dick Cheney”
A Teaching Self-Evaluation
Today is the last day of classes for the fall semester of 2014. Today is the day for reviews, discussing paper plans (and in one class, surprisingly enough, answering questions from students who wanted to know a bit more about my personal background.) A week from today, I will administer finals in two classes andContinue reading “A Teaching Self-Evaluation”
Polygamy And Joseph Smith’s Convenient Revelations
In Under The Banner Of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer cites Fawn Brodie‘s No Man Knows My History, her classic biography of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism: Monogamy seemed to him–as it has seemed to many men who have not ceased to love their wives, but who have grown weary ofContinue reading “Polygamy And Joseph Smith’s Convenient Revelations”
An Old Flame (No, Not That Kind)
Writing about the adversarial disputation styles present in academic philosophy reminded me of the time I lost my temper at someone who worked in the same department as me. (I don’t use the term ‘colleague’ advisedly. This dude was anything but.) Then, I was in the computer science department at Brooklyn College, and had forContinue reading “An Old Flame (No, Not That Kind)”
The Dickhead Theory Of Academic Philosophy, Revisited
A little while ago on this blog, I posited something I jocularly termed The Dickhead Theoryas a possible explanation for the lack of women in academic philosophy (“there are too many dickheads in philosophy”). In response, one male reader commented: At the risk of unjustly downplaying its particular effect on women, I’ll note that theContinue reading “The Dickhead Theory Of Academic Philosophy, Revisited”
Bertrand Russell On Toddlers, The ‘Little Devils’
In ‘The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed’ (Unpopular Essays, 1960; Routledge Classics 2009, pp. 60-61), Bertrand Russell writes, Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of education reformers, have reverted to being little devils–not theological demons inspired by the Evil One, but scientific Freudian abominations inspiredContinue reading “Bertrand Russell On Toddlers, The ‘Little Devils’”
Samir Chopra 