In late December of last year, the fourth season of Black Mirror was released on Netflix, which is why many fans (myself included) had been hoping to see the much-anticipated fifth season released over the holidays. As 2018 draws to a close, though, no official release date has been announced and we still haven’t seen any Season…
Read MoreWhat follows is the conclusion to a three-part series of posts detailing a pedagogical experiment that I tried out for the first time this term, which I call “An Experiment in the Redistribution of Grades” (ERG). You should read all the details of ERG in the original post here, but the basic idea was to give students…
Read MoreThis is another installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know! [Note from Dr. J: What follows is a guest post from Jeffrey Gower, a brilliant philosopher, dear friend, and VAP in Philosophy at Wabash College. Like me, Jeff also teaches the “White Bear” episode of Black Mirror in…
Read MoreWe’re nearing the end of the semester and I’m wrapping up two of the most exciting and intellectually invigorating courses I’ve taught in a long time. One of them was an upper-division undergraduate course entitled “Technology and Human Values” (syllabus here) The other was an intro-level undergrad Ethics course called “Contemporary Moral Issues” (syllabus here),…
Read MoreThis is another installment in my series of reviews of Black Mirror. These posts DO include spoilers. Stop reading now if you don’t want to know! [Note from Dr. J: What follows is Part 2 of a two-part guest post from Jeffrey Gower. You can read Part One here.] Near the end of “White Bear,” as Victoria sits bound to a…
Read MoreSince I posted my list of tech book recommendations a few weeks ago, several people have asked me to explain why I describe myself as a “techno-optimist.” I get this question a lot, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to give a quick account (and defense) of my position. But, first, a few preliminary remarks about…
Read MoreRecently, I took part in an excellent interdisciplinary symposium (hosted by Ted George and Kristi Sweet of the Texas A&M Philosophy Department) focused on “Hermeneutics, the Humanities, and the Future of Interpretation.” All of the presentations were great, but the one that has stuck in my craw, and which I suspect I will not be able to pry loose for quite some…
Read MoreA few days ago, right-wing blowhard and professional alarmist, Alex Jones (of InfoWars), posted a tweet announcing that “Democrats Plan To Launch Civil War on July 4.” If you lean to the Left and somehow missed the memo about our impending revolution, never fear, because it’s all over the Twitterverse now. On July 2, Amanda Blount…
Read MoreThis is a follow-up to my post last May, in which I explained a new pedagogical device I planned to introduce in my classes this semester. I called it “An Experiment in the Redistribution of Grades” and, as of two weeks ago, the experiment has begun. The basic idea is that I am giving students an opportunity to…
Read MoreThere’s an old dad-joke that goes something like this: A bear jumps out of the woods, in a rage, and starts chasing two hikers. They both start running for their lives, but then one of them stops to put on his running shoes. “What are you doing?!,” the other hiker exclaims, “You can’t outrun a…
Read More
Recent Comments