Politics Is Sickening

Oh yuck:

During 14 years in the Michigan Legislature and 11 years in Congress, Rep. Nick Smith had never experienced anything like it. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, in the wee hours last Saturday morning, pressed him to vote for the Medicare bill. But Smith refused. Then things got personal.

Smith, self term-limited, is leaving Congress. His lawyer son Brad is one of five Republicans seeking to replace him from a GOP district in Michigan's southern tier. On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote. When he still declined, fellow Republican House members told him they would make sure Brad Smith never came to Congress. After Nick Smith voted no and the bill passed, Duke Cunningham of California and other Republicans taunted him that his son was dead meat.

Integrity is a precious commodity in Washington, so horray to those who did vote "no" despite this pressure cooker.

Read more...

Virtue and Vice

Wishing ill upon evil people no vice.

Read more...

Metaphysical Confusions

I've noticed that the arguments against gay marriage routinely confuse metaphysical facts with man-made facts. Case in point:

Gay marriage, gay marriage, gay marriage. I don't think I've ever written a column on gay marriage. Perhaps I should. Trouble is, I can't get my mind around it. In this zone, I am totally a dinosaur. When I hear people talking about gay marriage, it falls on my ears as if they were saying: "OK, from now on, we are going to have Mars revolving round the Sun in Venus's orbit, and Venus in Mars's." Oh, are you? That's nice. But how are you going to do it? By an edict from the Supreme Court?

I suppose that religious conservatives see marriage as a fact of nature rather than a human-created social institution because God is supposed to have established it. (Then again, God is also supposed to have put his stamp of approval on slavery, the subjugation of women, and many other delights conveniently forgotten.) In any case, the appeal to God doesn't make the argument any less stupid.

Read more...

The Overdue Update

My farrier came to trim the horses hooves today... and lo and behold, he caught me on TV! I'm famous! Okay, well, maybe that's a bit of an overstatement. But my first appearance as a talking head (discussing animal rights on "Drawing the Line with Reggie Rivers") was pretty exciting. Thankfully, I didn't embarrass myself with horrid arguments. But I found it harder than expected to get to the meaty philosophical points.

Ari Armstrong wrote up some commentary on the show and animal rights in general. He even posted the picture below, which I have duly stolen.

The official caption reads "Jennifer Melton, David Crawford, Ari Armstrong, Diana Hsieh, and Reggie Rivers discuss animal rights November 19 on Rivers' show, Drawing the Line."

Now I'm going to go add that "Media Appearances" section to my CV! :-)

Read more...

Gack!

Tonight, I'm slated to discuss animal rights as part of a panel for "Drawing the Line with Reggie Rivers," a local PBS show (on Channel 12 at 8pm). I'll be arguing against animal rights along with Ari Armstrong, who was good enough to think of me for this gig.

I'm quite terrified actually, so wish me luck!

Read more...

Advice on the Academic Job Market

This article details one Ph.D's search for the right job in the right location... and the need to settle for the right job in the wrong location. Given that Paul and I are bound to the Denver area by his job, this is a depressing bit of realism for me. (I really like Colorado, so I'm hardly dying to leave. But if it were just me, I'd be willing to move pretty much anywhere for a good tenure-track job. Then again, if it were just me, I'd still be programming and not philosophizing. Even philosophy is not worth enduring poverty.)

BTW, I found this article via the blog of Brian Leiter, the author of the ever-useful Philosophical Gourmet Report. As one would expect, he seems to comment fairly often on academic life.

Oh, and I just found this cool blog entry analyzing the latest Jobs for Philosophers. The results jibe with what I've heard around the grad lounge about the availability of jobs in the major areas (M&E, ethics, and history).

Read more...

Istanbul Synagogues Bombing

This post is being constantly updated with information about the recent bombing in Turkey. (The blogger is an American college student currently studying in Turkey.)

Read more...

Religious Strategy

Den Beste's commentary on varieties of religious strategy actually made me feel grateful for the rationality of modern Christianity. That doesn't happen often, I must admit.

Read more...

Red and Blue

These maps offer a financial perspective on the battle between red and blue states (courtesy of Andrew Sullivan).

Read more...

Ayn Rand in St. Petersberg

Oh, cool stuff (present-day pictures and information) on Ayn Rand's life in St. Petersberg, thanks to Don Parrish.

Read more...

The Path of the Jew

The Atlasphere's excellent interview with VodkaPundit contains this priceless gem: "I've always joked that Jews who don't stay Jews end up as either communists or Objectivists. There's no in-between."

Heh.

Read more...

Malevolence, Bare and Naked

Atrios blogged a short and glib post on the serious financial hardship presently burdening by Arthur Silber due to the LA transit strike. The comments in response to Atrios' post were voluminous -- and more awful and malicious than any decent person could possibly even imagine.

(To be clear, Arthur never asked for money... but such a request would not have been hypocritical according to the Objectivist ethics anyway. In general, the characterizations of Rand's philosophy as social darwinism would be laughable if not part of such a repulsive and depraved personal attack.)

I will not dignify the horrid comments by responding to them... but I will happily hit Arthur's tip jar... and hope that the strike is resolved soon. (If you want to contribute a bit too, use the PayPal link on his main page.)

Read more...

Flutie Magic

Drew Brees, the quarterback for the San Diego Chargers, has been playing miserably lately. Headed into this Sunday, San Diego had only won one of its eight games. So this week, my beloved Doug Flutie took his place... and played a kick-ass game. He led San Diego to victory over the Vikings 42 to 28. Under his leadership, the offense scored four touchdowns on the first four possessions of the game. It was glorious to behold. Flutie might be 41 years old now, but he hasn't lost his edge.

As luck would have it, the Chargers are playing at Denver next week. I've never seen Flutie play in person... and after Drew Brees got the quarterbacking job last year, I didn't think I'd ever have the opportunity to do so. But now I will... and all that I need to do is acquire some last-minute tickets from eBay.

Life is good.

Read more...

The Matrix Revolutions

Paul and I saw The Matrix Revolutions yesterday. It was absolutely awful. We left feeling cheated. Why? Because so much was incoherent or simply left unexplained. Sure, the story did resolve in a superficial way, but not in a way that made sense.

Essential to the greatness of the original Matrix was its tightly integrated plot and ever purposeful characterization. The second Matrix lost some of that and the third abandoned it altogether.

What a waste of time. Ugh.

Read more...

Um, No

According to this Fortune interview, Michael Shermer (the founder of the Skeptics Society) has a book forthcoming entitled The Science of Good and Evil. Based upon his answer to the first question, I won't bother reading it.

Q: What makes people good or evil?

A: All of us have, in our genes, the capacity for great good and great evil. Genetics determines roughly half of our behavioral tendencies, including personality, temperament, and moral and immoral behaviors. The other half is determined by culture and environment, including parents, siblings, family dynamics, teachers and mentors, and especially peer groups. As adults we are particularly influenced to do good or evil by the immediate social context and community. When you're surrounded by co-workers all hyped about a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme, it is truly hard to resist.

Notice that 1/2 genes + 1/2 environment = no choice, no character, no morals. And this is supposed to be scientific? *sigh*

Read more...

6th Annual Rocky Mountain Student Philosophy Conference

This post is simply an announcement for my fellow grads students (and undergrads too) in philosophy. (Even cooler: Our department will be hosting a virtue ethics conference this spring -- and Rosalind Hursthouse will be speaking. Yeah!)

6th Annual Rocky Mountain Student Philosophy Conference
Feb 20-21, 2004
Papers accepted from graduate and undergraduate students in all areas of philosophy.
Keynote Speaker: Stephen Yablo, M.I.T.

Submission Details

Papers must be:

• 8-12 pages, double spaced
  
• Accompanied by an abstract of no more than 100 words
  
• Formatted for blind review. The author's name should not appear in the paper or abstract but only in a cover letter including the author's name, school affiliation, paper title, and status (graduate or undergraduate)
  
• Documents must be in Word, HTML, PDF, or plain text format
  
• For email submissions, attach the documents to a cover letter indicating the author's name, title and school affiliation and send to David.Liebesman@colorado.edu
  
• For paper submissions, send three copies of both the paper and the abstract to:
  
  Rocky Mountain Conference
  Department of Philosophy
  Campus Box 232
  University of Colorado at Boulder
  Boulder, CO 80309-0232

The submission deadline is December 20, 2003. (Early submissions are encouraged.) No registration fee!

Read more...

The Culture Wars

Paul just pointed me to this long article on the culture wars. It is an excellent and detailed analysis of the rise of conservative opinion. Of course, I'm no conservative... although perhaps "South Park Republican" isn't so far off. Nevertheless, the broadening of this nation's cultural and political debates beyond liberalism is nothing but good news.

If you're looking for something lighter, Paul also recently pointed me to this terribly freaky page of horrid album covers. *shudder*

Read more...