This is the personal homepage of P.D. Magnus, a philosopher whom I like to refer to as me. I have a separate professional homepage that links to courses, my cv, and academic papers.

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Pitt! [permalink]

22aug2010: I arrived in Pittsburgh yesterday. I found the Trader Joe's last night and stocked up on edibles: both mainline stuff and Joe's exotica like spicy dried mangoes. Today, I got out walking. East and North for fifteen minutes put me at a coffee shop in Highland Park, from which I am writing this. Tomorrow or the next day, I'll make it down toward campus.

It's the terror, stupid [permalink]

18aug2010: Every August, Beloit College publishes a Mindset List. It began as a way of reminding professors that members of the entering class are just 18 years old and so don't remember all of that old-fogey stuff that old professors assume that everyone remembers. The list has become an internet meme that gets forwarded around like a picture of a cute animal, a virus warning, or a chain letter.

This year's list has this item: One way or another, "It's the economy, stupid" and always has been.

Although cute, the item is entirely wrong. The quote, of course, is from Bill Clinton's first run for president, the year that this class of freshmen was born. The economy now is worse than the economy was then. Yet the item overlooks an important and disorienting fact:

9/11 was half their life ago.

They were nine years old when the World Trade Center was attacked. For the part of their life in which they are most likely to have been cognizant of politics, it has been a discourse of fear. It still is, even if we hear less about 'terrorism' and more about 'muslims.'

'Adventures' on the move [permalink]

3aug2010: Several years ago, my friend Janet asked readers to design a masthead for her blog, Adventures in Ethics and Science. Mine was the winning submission. Preparing to move from Science Blogs to Scientopia, she asked me to update the image. (I've linked to the new URL.)

Here are the old and new images, for comparison:

Looking at them together, I am struck by how much better the new one looks. I think I made colour version of the Decktet between the first and the second version of the banner, and I think I learned a lot while doing that. Both versions make use of line art from an even earlier project, so it's mostly a matter of composition.

Although I'm not a professional graphics guy, it's nice to see signs that I might actually be getting better.

And good luck to Janet at her new blog home.

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