politics

Vox Populi

With only 8 more days to go before the Inauguration, Slate magazine (in collaboration with MixedInk) has invited us, the people, to help write Obama’s inaugural address. The way it works is as follows: when you click on this link, you will be taken to a site where you can begin writing your own speech….

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Inauguration Day Quandary

This semster I’m teaching a “Philosophy of Race” course that meets on Tuesdays/Thursdays from 12:30-1:45 in the afternoon… which means we will be meeting in the middle of the Obama inauguration next week! I’m debating whether or not to cancel class, or at least to forego my syllabus schedule (would’ve been Bernier and Kant) in…

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More Medical Mysteries

I’ve mentioned my fascination with medical mysteries before on this blog (see: my post on Apotemnophilia). I suppose that part of that fascination is simply grounded in the strangeness of some of the conditions, but I am also particularly interested in the way that medical knowledge is stymied. A couple of years ago, I read…

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For Posterity

President George W Bush’s Farewell Address (Parts 1&2) You can read the full text of the address here.

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Horowitz at the MLA

Anyone remember the “culture wars”? Now that we’ve got all this change we can believe in, people don’t talk about them very much anymore, but the battle is far from over. One of the leading soldiers on the conservative side for years has been David Horowitz, who has a blog here and a “Freedom Center”…

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Sovereign Exception

As President George W. Bush’s time draws to a close, he will be spending some of his time (while he’s not dodging size 10’s, that is) deciding how to exercise his right to extend pardons and commutations. Just this past Friday, Bush awarded federal forgiveness to 17 “minor” criminals, 16 of which were pardons and…

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When It’s Not Funny Anymore

A mere 37 days before leaving office, our Lame-Duck-in-Chief President Bush was all the news yesterday. During a press conference in Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite Iraqi journalist (Muntadar al-Zeidi) stood up and threw one of his shoes– and then the other– at President Bush’s head, missing Bush by a hair…

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The M**ket

While just about everyone else is full of yuletide joy, this is a dreaded time of year for philosophers. It’s Job M**ket time. (The very word conveys so much Sturm und Drang that it feels like a profanity.) I imagine that this year is even more ulcer-inducing than years past because of the depressed economy…

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The “Public” Intellectual

Many of you probably read Daniel Drezner’s recent Chronicle of Higher Education article about the decline of public intellectuals (“Public Intellectual 2.0”), in which Drezner wants to contest the presumed Götterdämmerung that many–like Francis Fukuyama, Russell Jacoby and Daniel Bell— believe began in the 1950’s and has yet to abate. Specifically, Drezner takes to task…

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