"You just said 'truth isn't truth!' That's not acceptable from a president's lawyer. It’s barely acceptable from a sophomore philosophy major who just tried molly for the first time." —@iamjohnoliver on Giuliani #LastWeekTonight
Sunday, September 9, 2018
Battleground academy
It's felt that way lately, in one class. All it takes is one belligerent combatant, to make things difficult for everyone else. But he'll soon realize it's a battle he can't win.
Friday, August 31, 2018
Monday, August 27, 2018
Poet, Biographer, Baseball Bard Tom Clark, RIP
Tom Clark, a prolific and empathetic lyric poet who hitchhiked across England with Allen Ginsberg, wrote a biography of Jack Kerouac, served as the poetry editor of The Paris Review and wrote verse about baseball, died on Aug. 18 in Oakland, Calif. He was 77.
His wife, Angelica, said he died in a hospital a day after he was struck by a car while crossing a street three blocks from their house in Berkeley.
Mr. Clark — whose influences included Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens — gracefully wed lyricism to modernism, added humor, cosmology and a love of the natural world, and demonstrated in his use of language a grounding in the poetry of British masters like John Donne and Andrew Marvell.
“His poetry was music to the ear — poetic, but not obtrusive like Dylan Thomas going ‘clang, clang, clang,’ ” Ron Padgett, a poet and friend of Mr. Clark’s, said in a telephone interview. “It was something subtler. You always came away elevated.”
His wife, Angelica, said he died in a hospital a day after he was struck by a car while crossing a street three blocks from their house in Berkeley.
Mr. Clark — whose influences included Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams and Wallace Stevens — gracefully wed lyricism to modernism, added humor, cosmology and a love of the natural world, and demonstrated in his use of language a grounding in the poetry of British masters like John Donne and Andrew Marvell.
“His poetry was music to the ear — poetic, but not obtrusive like Dylan Thomas going ‘clang, clang, clang,’ ” Ron Padgett, a poet and friend of Mr. Clark’s, said in a telephone interview. “It was something subtler. You always came away elevated.”
Friday, August 24, 2018
Go, Noodles!
 | WeRateDogs™ (@dog_rates) |
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This is Noodles. He had brain surgery earlier this year, and today, he returned to his favorite park. 14/10 nothing stops Noodles pic.twitter.com/kzqOR2cap8
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Monday, August 20, 2018
"Truth isn't truth"-?!
Interesting exchange with my friend Rob Talisse, in wake of Giuliani's "truth isn't truth" Orwellism on Meet the Press. I think Cousin John should get the last word... and Diogenes the Cynic the penultimate:
Difficult days for us old-school Cynics
You Retweeted
“Truth isn’t truth.” OK philosophers, prepare for at least a week of incompetent amateur epistemology from all sides.
Starring roles will be played by use/mention errors, confusions of doxastic and propositional justification, and conflations of truth with proof.
Gear up!
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Walk your path
 | Robert Macfarlane (@RobGMacfarlane) |
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"Paths have long worked on me like lures, leading my sight up and on and over. The eye is enticed by a path, and the mind's eye also -- drawn to the turn in the distance, the light at the end of the tunnel...". pic.twitter.com/E3h5MZ6TBe
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Sunday, May 20, 2018
Russell's river of life
The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.
Bertrand Russell, How To Grow Old
(Quoted by Michael Pollan in How to Change Your Mind
Monday, April 23, 2018
MALA 6040, Evolution in America
Summer 2018 MALA course:
A course studying the cultural, social, historical, and philosophical impact of the theory of evolution in America and specifically in Tennessee, possibly including a field-trip to Dayton, TN (site of the infamous 1925 Scopes "Monkey Trial" and of an annual dramatic reenactment). Texts include Edward Larson's account of that event,Summer for the Gods, and Matthew Chapman's Trials of the Monkey(he is Charles Darwin's great-great...grandson, a Brit who made a pilgrimage to Dayton himself, and wrote about it). We'll look at why the idea of evolution has encountered both enthusiasm and hostility in this country, and at the prospects for peaceful coexistence between evolutionary science and religious faith in the future.
Saturday, March 17, 2018
Resist!-a reading list
I'm assembling a Resistance bibliography. Additional suggestions welcome.
- Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History By Kurt Andersen
- How Democracies Die By Steven Levitsky, Daniel Ziblatt
- No Is Not Enough: Resisting Drumpf's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need By Naomi Klein
- One Nation After Drumpf: A Guide for the Perplexed, the Disillusioned, the Desperate, and the Not-Yet-Deported By E.J. Dionne, Jr., Norman J. Ornstein, Thomas E. Mann
- Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Drumpf By Michael Isikoff, David Corn
- Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic By David Frum
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