One of my favorite stories ever was told to me by a colleague of mine in the Psychology Department, Dr. Julie Steel. Frustrated with end-of-the-semester appeals for better grades by wayward students, she figured there must be a better rejoinder than simply sighing in exasperation and staring-back with incredulity. So, when students ask that oh-so-familiar…
Read MoreI recently had occasion to read the application for a (to-remain-unnamed-for-now) reality television show. Most of it was pretty much what one would expect, namely, questions designed to identify potential candidates’ idiosyncrasies, fears, hopes, delusions of grandeur, pet peeves, and anything else that might make for interesting TV. Also as expected, there’s a lot of…
Read MoreWhat a long, strange trip it’s been! It’s almost time to bid adieu to the last year of the first decade of the new millineum. In case you weren’t paying attention, here are a dozen of the highlights (and lowlights) of 2009: 12. Sarah Palin Goes “Rogue” The Grand Dame of the Illiterati wrote a…
Read MoreThis following is the soundtrack of my life these days: Ennio Morricone’s The Mission: This is the soundtrack to the movie of the same name. Quite simply, some of the most breathtakingly beautiful music ever composed. This album made me love the oboe. The emotional rise and fall of the compositions carries its listener from…
Read MoreWhenever I’m grading papers at the end of the semester, there always comes a point when I am reminded of that peculiar conversation between Alice and Humpty Dumpty (from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass). After noting that there are 364 days of the year that one can receive un-birthday presents, Humpty Dumpty says to…
Read MoreIt’s no secret that one of my guilty pleasures is reality television. I was an early convert to this genre of entertainment, having come of age around the same time that MTV’s groundbreaking series The Real World was in its prime. (The first season of that show was broadcast in my freshman year of college.)…
Read MoreThis will be brief, as I am now in the midst of grading, but I wanted to address AnPan’s response to my response on the whole issue of (his) moral realism versus (my) moral relativism before too much time passed. I think we may have the beginning of a rapprochement after reading AnPan’s last rebuttal,…
Read MoreThe disagreement between AnPan and I that has been taking place on our blogs (here and here) has reminded me of why I feel fortunate to have good friends like him. As it just so happens, this also is the time in the semester (at my instiution) when most of the first-years are deep into…
Read MoreLest I get too comfortable with my tiny, marginally-significant place in the blogosphere, thinking that we’re all friends here and readers of this blog are basically in agreement on the stuff that really matters, all of us interacting virtually in a kind of harmonious echo-chamber of progressive philosophical wonderment… yeah, lest I get too comfortable…
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