Arbitrary Marks

Last night I saw Religulous with some friends at the downtown Alamo Drafthouse. One good thing about the Drafthouse is, however poor a movie turns out to be, you’ve at least had some good beer and snacks during your two hour stay.
I won’t say that Maher’s recent docu-flick is atrocious, but I did have some [...]

As a plot mover, the Joker was less an agent of chaos and more like the TA for a freshman philosophy course, leading everyone through twisty little exercises in artificial circumstances that present the poor student with difficult choices. (link)

I’m not sure whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult.

If you haven’t seen Dark Knight, go see it. Now. It is the best Batman movie. Ever.
Regularly scheduled blogging will return later this evening.

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Last night I turned on ABC for a little mental break–I’ll write next about the article I was reading on eliminativism and intuitions. The show that was on provided a break of sorts, but was stressful in another way. Has anyone else watched Wife Swap? It’s a reality TV show, somewhat along the lines of [...]

Now I have to go back and read Jeremy Bentham to figure out just where he diverged from John Locke. Or I could just read Wikipedia.

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How do you distinguish the gender of these two individuals on the cover of April’s J Crew catalog? What visual cues differentiate “masculine” and “feminine”, despite the similar dress style (tie, khakis, blue shirt, etc)?
In 1978, Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna wrote a book, Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach that attempted to answer this [...]

This morning in class, as an effort to get the students thinking about John Stuart Mill’s Utilitarian philosophy, I asked them to make a list of five things they need to be happy. It could be as abstract as “freedom” and as concrete as “food”, I said. Then they were to rank them and turn to a neighbor to compare. I expected at least some major differences in rankings and/or happiness-needs. Take a minute to mentally do the exercise on your own: below the fold, I’ll talk about the results.

Unitarian Universalists are known for anachronistically “claiming” famous people as part of their own. Well, a few days ago, I discovered a legitimate UU who I think we should be advertising (or should be advertising for us)–Catie Curtis.  If you haven’t heard her song, “People Look Around“, you should check it out. She’s a wonderful [...]

Say it ain’t so, Ellen! Now that she’s taken over the number one spot for favorite daytime TV talk show host from Oprah, Ellen has decided it’s her turn to spout some feel-good mumbo jumbo from her media pulpit. Today she had Dr. Wayne Dyer on, and he was really wearing Birkenstock sandals with his long sleeve shirt and long pants! Ellen said that she believed in the “vibrations” that were sent out from her changed mental attitude. Or something like that. I switched the channel, even though it’s usually my post-Sanskrit relaxation show.

Sigh. Back to your regularly scheduled philosophy. Which, I might add, could make you feel better, but not because my blog is sending out quantum vibrational Daoist particles.

Because of my schedule and because we don’t pay for cable, I rarely watch television. Aside from Thursday nights (comedy done right on NBC), I tend to get my programming through iTunes or Blockbuster. Recently, since I completed season one of Damages, I decided to branch out, back into a genre that I [...]