Richard Roundtree wanted to go to a science fiction convention, but he was worried that too many people would recognize him. So he decided to go in disguise. He dressed up as the monster bug that fought Godzilla, but his costume was so revealing that everyone could tell it was him.
They said the man who played Shaft was a bad Mothra faker.1
Author: P.D. Magnus
Admusement
“You’ve Never Worn Underwear Like This Before”
A poorly-drawn cartoon inspired by a sponsored link from somewhere on the internet.
Cyberpunk ambitopia
When I got my first iPhone, I wrote that its “compressed functionality underscores the extent to which the internet has changed things. If you had told me about it when I was a kid, I would not have been able to wrap my head around it.” It’s a camera, a calendar, an address book, a pocket watch, a GPS. It also takes calls, although I use it for text messaging more than voice.
When I imagined future technology as a kid, I often imagined smart houses. There was recently an on-line ad targeted to me for a front door lock that you can control from your phone. This is like the computerized houses of my elementary-school imagination. I should be excited, but I’m not.
The future has gritty problems that 1980s cyberpunk novels didn’t prepare me for.
Revisions to a draft about values and science
Over at Crooked Timber, John Holbo writes: “Remember when there were blogs? Ah, those were the good old days.”
Remember when I used to post just to say that I’d uploaded a new draft of a paper? Today was one of those days.
Sponsored links are the new spam
Steven Frank drew the webcomic Spamusement from 2004 to 2007. The schtick was “Poorly-drawn cartoons inspired by actual spam subject lines!”
It was a genius idea. Frank encouraged other people to draw their own, based on spam they’d received. Back in the day, I drew about a dozen. Drawing them was a pleasant kind of mental palate cleanser, doodling that was tethered loosely to the verbal part of my brain.2
The two wills to believe
Having just taught a seminar on pragmatism and reading a recent book review by Alex Klein, I realized that there’s a reading of William James’ “Will to Believe” which isn’t universally recognized even though it seems obvious to me.
Animals which are also transitive verbs
In a recent conversation with Cristyn, we somehow came to be talking about the sentence: Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.
This sentence, sometimes with a couple of extra “Buffalo”, is often used as an example of a grammatical sentence which is hard to parse.3 In a less perplexing form, it says: Bison whom bison baffle— they themselves baffle bison.
What might be said about pragmatism
Today was the last class meeting of my pragmatism seminar. I had the students each make a presentation on their seminar papers in-progress. Some students were further along in their thinking others, but it gave everyone a chance to try out arguments and to exchange ideas.
The course syllabus covered more than 20 authors, but student interest was fairly focused.
- 2 students are writing on issues of truth and objectivity.
- 3 students are writing on Jane Addams and ethical method.
- 2 students are writing on issues of ethical method and objectivity, one with an eye toward Nelson Goodman and the other by way of C.I. Lewis.
All the projects sound interesting, but I wouldn’t have expected this distribution.
Because this was me, the readings were weighted more toward philosophy of science and epistemology than toward ethics and value theory. But nobody is writing about philosophy of science. 😒
Jane Addams was a late addition to the syllabus, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out until the class meeting on her work. She was a hit. 😃
Now it’s just grading and administrative work between me and the end of the semester. 😰
1 review of 3 editors, 14 authors on collaboration
My review of Scientific Collaboration and Collaborative Knowledge: New Essays has appeared over at Notre Dame Philosophy Reviews. The very short version is that it’s an excellent collection. Gold stars for all involved.
Unsolicited blurb
P. D. Magnus’s forall x has been around for over a decade, and because it’s open, people can use it as a starting point for derivative versions with different features.
Richard Zach, interviewed in the latest issue of The Reasoner