One thing you CANNOT say about Memphis is that it doesn’t have a sense of humor about politics. Especially mayoral politics. Remember, this is a town that has not one, but TWO, mayors (one for the city and another for the county). We also had the same Memphis City Mayor, Willie Herenton, for five consecutive…
Read MoreLast night, I participated in a panel discussion of global issues entitled “What’s Wrong with the World Today?” as a part of Rhodes College’s “Think Globally, Act Locally” week. My co-panelists were two colleagues of mine, one from Economics and one from International Studies. It was a lively and productive discussion, I think, and I…
Read MoreIn all my busy-ness recently, I somehow missed the occurence of a major marker on this blog: ***OVER 30, 000 HITS TO DATE! ***If you’re reading this, then you’re one of those 30K. Thanks for stopping by. And thanks to all the rest of you who have kept this blog alive. To celebrate, I’m opening…
Read MoreI just returned home from four days in the hospital, having been taken there by ambulance last Friday morning. I should say at the outset that I’m not exactly a stranger to hospitals. I’m a Type 1 Diabetic and about 10 years ago I was also diagnosed with a mysterious condition that my doctors called…
Read MoreThe interwebs are all a-buzz right now about women in philosophy. Wait, correction: they’re all a-buzz about the LACK OF women in philosophy. An article by Brooke Lewis in The Philosopher’s Magazine entitled “Where are all the women?” confirms what just about anybody could have guessed: Philosophy departments in the U.S. and U.K. trail FAR…
Read More[Update: This post is the first in an ongoing series about the Uncanny Valley. Click here to read them all.] A couple of weeks ago when I was teaching Descartes’ Meditations, one of my students made reference to something called the “uncanny valley,” which I had never heard of before but which sounded really fascinating….
Read More[This is a continutation of my previous post on the uncanny valley. If you don’t know what the uncanny valley is, you may want to go back and read the previous post first.] In 1931, at the beginning of the dénouement of the Harlem Renaissance, conservative (some would say “reactionary”) African-American author George Schuyler penned…
Read MoreYou may remember my mentioning a couple of months ago on this blog (“Video Killed the Philosophy Professor“) that I had my first experience shooting a music video for one of my original songs. Well, here’s the final product. Directed by Dana Gabrion and Chris Morgan. Photography by Chris Morgan. Starring: Max Maloney, Marlinee Iverson,…
Read MoreI usually try to avoid recommending books until I’ve finished reading them, but I am so thoroughly enjoying Sarah Vowell’s The Wordy Shipmates that I’m going to go ahead and jump the gun on this one. Sarah Vowell (regular contributor to PRI’s This American Life and author of Assasination Vacation) is the very best kind…
Read MoreAs I recounted in my first post on the uncanny valley, I learned of this phenomenon from a student in one of my classes. I can’t remember the exact context of his bringing it up– it had something to do with our knowledge of the outside world as contested, and then proven, by Descartes in…
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