There was recently a lucid think piece in, of all places,the New Yorker, reviewing several current books touching on crime and violence in America - the place what I am in.   Many of these try to devise a plausible story about why our badness quotient is so murderously high.  As . . . (More)

  Or, what I should have said on the last day of my last class: Never stop.  Philosophy is a discipline, and it is imperative that you keep it up, and deepen the discipline.  Otherwise, as the saying goes, your life, unexamined, will not be truly worth living.  Indeed, a life with no philosophy . . . (More)

  I seem to be capable of being annoyed by the smallest things, even as the big things seem to become easier to reconcile to. There has recently been - at least here in the United States of Yee-Haw! - a remarkable up-tick in the number of commercials using jangly, acoustic guitar indie-rock cuts . . . (More)

DISCLAIMER:  A wise man once said that Beer + Coffee = Removing the Volume Control.  You have been warned.DISCLAIMER THE SECOND:  I am going to attempt an invasion of the South over the next week, so I will be on hiatus during this time. DISCLAIMER THE THIRD:  Jesus was way cool.  Leave me al . . . (More)

  In an effort to bring up the intellectual level of this 'blog, I now bring to the table a question of great weight, which shall take all our collective probity to resolve.  To wit:  What can explain the fact that the default color for bedsheets is white? Certainly, at one time, dyeing was a . . . (More)

 Chrysippus, a favorite and very quotable Stoic, once said that poverty teaches by force those lessons that philosophy tries to teach by persuasion.  In this I am inclined to agree with him.  Recently, the American news media have been much agitated over reductions in consumer spending, for exa . . . (More)

 I was going to wait until after the election, but now that it seems like a foregone conclusion, I would like to express my relief at the likely Obama victory. For the record, this is the first time I have ever felt any sincere enthusiasm for a presidential candidate for whom I have voted. Ob . . . (More)

 Here in Washington State, the race for governor has been contested with unrestrained hostility, probably due to the incumbent, Chris Gregoire, winning over her then, and current, challenger Dino Rossi by a scant 133 votes last time - after a trial, recount, charges and counter-charges, and, presu . . . (More)

 Far be it from me to advocate for child molestation - there are plenty of other forces in our culture doing that job already.  (Though, really, don't knock it until you've tried it.)  Nonetheless, I am amazed, given the relative prevalence of such crimes versus, say, murder, by how much of o . . . (More)

  Five things Barack Obama could safely do upon taking office without risking his significant advantage over the incumbent in credibility and public support: Sit motionlessly for four years. Hold a press conference at which he admits that he hung out with Bill Ayers because people who hav . . . (More)