Friday, February 27, 2009

A Hard Morning

Beatles trivia!

I have my own trivial story about "A Hard Day's Night". I used to have that album in my CD player and I set my alarm to play from my CD player. Thus, every morning, I'd wake up to that chord, and, if I wasn't fast enough, a few words of the song. To this day, the beginning of that song is as jarring as a splash of cold water on a sleeping man's face, for me.

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Oh Dear Me

I regret to inform the people who keep googling "Kant gay marriage" and "can gay marriage be justified by Kantian ethics?" that you've got some unfertile ground in Kant. That seminar gave me an excuse to buy The Metaphysics of Morals and things look pretty hopeless for gay marriage support in Kant.

This is not to say that Kantianism considered generally cannot be reconciled with gay marriage. But don't expect Kant to go to bat for homosexuals.

Sorry if I ruined anyone's day ;_;

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Road to Somethingdom

Lost gets depressing. Spoilers, if you care; I don't.

Reading the Second Treatise of Government lately reminds me how much I really like Locke. Too much time spent with An Essay Concerning Human Understanding can lead a man to loathe the empiricists; it's nice to return to the love aspect of the love/hate relationship. I said it some years ago: a great philosophy of mind and great political theory cannot exist in the same philosopher.

In other news...

Photobucket

It's coming out in March. DO want.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Don't blame me...

You asked for it.

Photobucket

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Empty Cap's Feather

Why attend a class called "Law, Politics, and Human Nature"? Even the students can't seem to tell.

Selections from Hobbes' Leviathan were assigned for this week's meeting. One of the two professors teaching the class raved over the prose style and the cleverness of the author. He also mentioned that, in his words, "I read it again over the weekend..." A student giggled at that.

I'm

stunned.

In a graduate program; no, more than that, in a graduate program dealing with subject matter related closely to the humanities, in a seminar, participation in which is voluntary, named "Law, Politics, and Human Nature", can you really be surprised if someone reads Hobbes in his spare time?

What else is reading Hobbes for, do you think?

A student who chose to take this class apparently has other goals than learning for its own sake. Now, if you're in law school to become a lawyer and make a pile of cash, that's understandable. But then you'd probably take Civil Pretrial Practice, for instance, instead of this philosophical seminar.

So why do it?

If it's inconceivable that someone could read Hobbes simply because he wants to know more about...Hobbes, then why would one read Leviathan? Because a professor tells you? Then we're stuck wondering why the professor wants us to read it, and why the professor reads it. Purely as a signal? "Look at me, I'm smart enough to read Hobbes"?

After four years of undergrad and two and a half years in a (technically...) doctoral program, why haven't you fathomed the bare existence of the vita contemplativa, much less the rich and full nature of its practice?

I admit that I sometimes chuckle at what my friends are reading for pleasure, and my reading material is a subject of ridicule sometimes for its abstruseness. But, you know, people get that hard books aren't things you just read in school.

Some people get that. Law students don't.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Wuzzle Wazzle

If the current lineup of Adult Swim is any indication, people took an odd lesson from the success of Aqua Teen - that randomness is funny per se.

It never was, and Aqua Teen was very hit or miss even in its heyday.

But hey, complete nonsense is probably pretty cheap to produce, so any advertising revenue returns the invested money.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

My Arbitrary Units Can Beat Up Your Arbitrary Units

Metric

Imperial

WHO

CARES

Debate something relevant.

Saturday, February 07, 2009

Weekend Thought

Contemporary philosophies of mind and logic would be a lot less retarded if grad students were required to read Gödel.