Arbitrary Marks

I’ve joined HubPages, a community of freelance writers similar to About.com or Yahoo! Answers. My focus will be, naturally, philosophy. I’m trying to create pages that make getting into philosophy more accessible, including guides to what’s online and which books to read. You can click on the link below or in the sidebar to view [...]

Since Arbitrary Marks generally acts as my reading journal, where I bounce my own thoughts off the fully-formed arguments of others, here’s a peek at what you may expect over the next few months:
Buddhist Philosophy
I’ll be trying my hand at translating Nagarjuna’s Vigrahavyavartini and reading commentaries along the way. I’m currently reading Harsh Narain’s The [...]

A few weeks ago, returning from the U of C campus on the bus, I was grading exams for my ethics course. After about ten minutes of marking up essays on Socrates and Kant, I put them away, preparing to get off and transfer to the subway. The bus, as usual, was packed, so I [...]

I’ve been thinking about Jeong’s last comment as well as Dru’s (on animals and happiness, respectively). I have some things I want to say, but I’m quite busy this week.

As well, there is an impending announcement about the future course of my studies, but I’m waiting to have everything locked down before releasing it into the blogosphere. Hopefully some posts this weekend on these topics. Stay tuned!

There is a great new site for finding UU blogs, which it turns out is syndicating Arbitrary Marks.  It’s called “Discover UU” and is modeled after the Huffington Post kind of webzine which aggregates a lot of voices together.
While I’m self-promoting here, the UU Blog Awards are open for nominations and I’d like to continue [...]

No, I haven’t abandoned Arbitrary Marks, just settling into teaching and classwork. I have a Stephen Pinker draft in the hopper which I have to iron out this afternoon and then will post.

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Another semester has gone by, and I have to make room for more books. Rather than lug them down to my local used bookstore or sell them on Amazon.com, I’m making them available first to my readers–for free (just the cost of shipping). Leave a comment if you’re interested and I’ll email you to get your shipping info. First come, first serve. Whatever books aren’t gone in seven days will go to the local bookstore or be donated. (Please know that many of the books have some underlining and margin notes, but none are so marked up a to be illegible.)

Thanks to Andrew for contributing to the blog in my absence. I’ll have a few things to say about his posts later, but right now I’m uploading Flickr photos of my vacation to Arizona, watching Madagascar on ABC and enjoying Christmas lights.

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While I’m away at my undisclosed vacation spot next week, blogger and wine connoisseur Andrew Simone will be posting here.  I first made Andrew’s acquaintance via a mutual friend’s blog–we both attended the same seminary, but at different times.  He blogs at These Things Thought and Clusterflock, generally on topics related to language, knowledge, continental philosophy, and [...]

This lecture sounds interesting and is pertinent to my current paper topic.  While philosophical thought experiments are sometimes far outside of the realm of human experience, let’s not forget that reality presents us with difficult “thought experiments”, too–ones with dramatic implications.
Dr. Christine Overall
Queen’s University
“Conjoined Twins, Embodied Personhood, and Surgical Separation”
Thursday, November 1st 2007
3:30-5:30 p.m.
Galvin Auditorium, [...]