I posted my first blog post in 2006 on the first site domain I had ever purchased. I chose the name “ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore” for two reasons: (a) it was the first on a list of rules that I gave to my students every semester and, (b) it seemed like an unwieldly and clunky-enough site name that no one would ever try to buy it.

I was wrong about that second part. After almost 15 years of blogging on that site, the domain name was bought out from under me in 2022. I did my level best to try to recover it (even buy it back!), but it was a heavily-trafficked site at that point and I had to eventually come to terms with the fact that this particular digital garden of ideas, that I had tended and nurtured for so long, and which I loved, now belonged to someone else.

It’s taken some time for me to get all of that content transferred to this site, but it’s here now. Because I know I have lost many of the internet’s links that traced back to it, I’ve been working a lot behind the scenes to redirect as much of the old traffic as I can to this new site. I’m also  trying to organize that archive to make it more easily searchable, but that’s slow and tedious work.

At any rate, it’s all here now., and I’ve “tagged” all of the old RMWMTMBM posts in a way that most closely approximates their original categorizations, so I hope you can find whatever you might be looking for using the tag cloud below.

Say What?

Straight from the You-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me Files, we have this update from the Supreme Court of the United States: if you want to invoke your right to silence, you better say...

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Dr. J Answers Your Questions

A while ago, I invited readers to submit questions through my “Ask Doctor J” site over on Formspring and promised I would do my best to answer them here...

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Yes, Jessica, You CAN Do Anything Good

I’m not usually one to forward or re-post YouTube videos of cute kids doing cute things, of which there are literally hundreds of thousands, but I recently came across...

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Lazy Relativism, Again

As readers of this blog (and students in my classes) know well, I hate lazy relativism. I readily concede that there are lots of things about which we cannot...

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Why “Exile On Main Street” Gets My Rocks Off

There’s a contest going on over at No Depression (the greatest music magazine EVER this side of Rolling Stone) that they’re calling the “Exile On Main Street vs. The...

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Underdogmatism

I’m a total sucker for the underdog. I don’t even care what the domain is– sports, politics, games, academics, business, love, war– if there is an odds-on favorite, I’m...

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What Makes It “Art”?

In the documentary film Man on Wire, about French high-wire walker Philippe Petit (pictured left traversing the space between the World Trade Towers in 1974), Petit remarks several times...

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Here’s My “Top 25 Books” List, Now Build Me A Park

Inspired by Brooke Foy’s project for UrbanArt at Brent Ferguson Park, where she is building a maze of huge, concrete books as a public art installation, I tried to...

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The Political

When I was in graduate school, I had a professor who regularly bemoaned the habit, common among philosophers, of referring to (questions, theories, problems and issues of) “the political”...

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The Mirage

Recently, NPR had been hosting a contest that they call the “3 Minute Fiction” contest, in which contestants were challenged to write a short story that could be read...

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Ask Doctor J

Fellow bloggers Petya and Ideas Man, PhD have turned me on to a great new site called FormSpring, which allows blog-readers to submit questions for their favorite blog-authors to...

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Tempest In A Tea Party

Rather than simply dismiss the burgeoning Tea Party Movement (like I have done on this blog), some people out there are actually trying to understand it. Fellow-blogger and eminently...

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The Etiquette of Q & A

Anyone who has ever been to an academic conference is surely familiar with that strange, strange thing we so innacurately refer to as the “Q&A” period. “Q&A” is meant...

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Rainy Days and Sunday

Nothing particularly profound to say today, readers. It’s the second day of spring, and after an absolutely beautiful day yesterday, Mother Nature has delivered us a cold and rainy...

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Dirt-Cheap Ideas

In his seminal text Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous narrator, Johannes de Silentio, remarks: Not just in commerce but in the world of ideas too our age is...

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Hypocrisy, Hyperbole, Historical Inaccuracy and Hatred

I highly recommend Russell King’s “Open Letter to Conservatives,” which lays out a well-argued and well-documented case for how the American Right has gone so terribly, terribly wrong.

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Americana the Beautiful

Apologies, readers, for the paucity of new material here on the blog of late. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be back with more regularity. In the meantime, however,...

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Yes, Mr. Vice-President, This IS A “Big F**king Deal”

Nobody’s ever going to accuse Joe Biden of mincing words. Sometimes that mouth gets him into trouble… but you gotta love his uncensored enthusiam when introducing the President as...

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It’s Something In Our Souls That Makes Us Memphians… And “Miserable” Is Not A Part Of It

Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton recently released an “Open Letter to Steve Forbes” contesting the ranking of Memphis as the 3rd of America’s “Most Miserable Cities” in Forbes Magazine. I...

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Cadavers, Immortal Souls, and the Rest of Us

I just want to take a moment to sing the praises of Mary Roach, essayist and author of the trilogy of books pictured here. Her first was Stiff: The...

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Omaha (Somewhere in Middle America)

I’ll be giving the keynote address at the 12th Annual Midwest Undergraduate Philosophy Conference next weekend, hosted by Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. (That’s the Creighton campus in the...

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The Burnin’ Love Band Premiere

I don’t often recommend specific shows to see in Memphis on this blog, but I’m making an exception this time for Brad Birkedahl. For years, Brad was the lead...

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War Is A Drug

Nothing yet has made so crystal clear to me exactly how much I do NOT understand about what is going on in Iraq than this year’s Oscar-nominated film The...

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Sunset for Sundown Signs?

File this away in the E-for-Effort folder of “Things The New York Times Gets Wrong About The South.” There’s an interesting article in the New York Times today titled...

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Trials for Terrorists

Earlier this month, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-South Carolina) introduced a bill that would prohibit the use of Justice Department funds for prosecuting alleged 9/11 plotters in federal courts. The...

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Guess Things Happen That Way

I’ve often said that if God speaks to humanity, he does so through Johnny Cash. Unfortunately for the rest of us, Cash passed away in 2003, officially of diabetes-related...

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The Things They Take With Them From Class

I’m inclined to just post this image without any explanation at all. It’s a snapshot of a status update I saw on Facebook yesterday in reference to my colleague...

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Outbursts I’ve Considered, Then Thought Better Of…

I don’t think I’ve said so officially on this blog yet, but the NBC sitcom “Community” is one of the funniest things on television in a long, long time....

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More On Tenure

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a follow-up piece on the Amy Bishop story called “Reactions: Is Tenure a Matter of Life and Death?”, in which they ask several...

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Rove at Rhodes: A Master Class in Sophistry

This past Wednesday evening, exactly one year to the day after the inauguration of President Barack Obama, I attended “An Evening with Karl Rove” at Rhodes College. Rove was...

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Dark Side of Theory

A few days ago, I posted an entry on this blog (“The Orchid Hypothesis“) about an article I had read in The Atlantic and found interesting. The Atlantic article...

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This Is Now An “Award Winning” Blog

You can read the whole story here of how my blog came to receive the illustrious “Chuck Norris Stamp of Approval.” I’m truly honored, I think.

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Cornel West’s Note to Obama: “How Deep Is Your Love For Poor And Working People?”

Just a couple of days ago, BBC News posted a video message from Princeton Professor Cornel West to President Barack Obama, on the occasion of Obama’s first anniversary in...

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Et Tu, SOTU?

Not quite a year ago, Obama delivered his first address to a joint session of Congress. It was technically too early in his tenure to count as a “State...

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Another Milestone

Thanks to a nice bump in traffic today, courtesy of our friends over at Daily Kos (who linked to this blog’s transcript of Cornel West’s note to Obama), we...

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Understanding Health Care Reform In 16 Easy Steps

I’ve been too busy to post here since the State of the Union last week, but I’ve got a healthy backlog of posts forthcoming. In the meantime, I want...

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President Obama’s First State of the Union Address (Video and Transcript)

“Madam Speaker, Vice President Biden, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans, Our Constitution declares that from time to time the president shall give to Congress information about...

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Unscrambling Marx

I’m about to begin teaching Karl Marx in my 19th C. philosophy class this week. Although students usually get some (very elementary) introduction to Marx in most of my...

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The Deadly Serious Business of Tenure

Last week, University of Alabama-Huntsville Professor of Biology Amy Bishop opened fire in a faculty meeting, killing three of her colleagues and wounding three others. Despite our hopeful image...

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The Orchid Hypothesis

On my way back from the APA conference a week ago, I picked up a copy of The Atlantic in Laguardia to read on the plane ride home. In...

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Battle of the Sexists?

First, my apologies to regular readers of this blog for my extended absence of late. As some of you know, my department is hiring for a new tenure-track line...

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Quiet Desperation

The new film Up in the Air, directed by Jason Reitman of Juno and Thank You For Smoking fame, has gotten a lot of buzz lately, most of it...

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When Growing-Up Is NOT “The Bomb”

It’s been a while since I’ve recommended a book on this blog, the last one being Junot Diaz’s tragic and beautiful The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Part...

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The Peter Principle

I just read an article in NewScientist about the “Peter Principle” (based on the theory put forth by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1998 book The Peter...

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Follow This Blog!

As my first post for the new year, I want to send out an invitation to all of you lurking readers of this site to scroll down the column...

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Mulligan?

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...

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Liability Waivers

I 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...

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