More than a month ago, I agreed to an offer to be a visiting scholar at a private US university next year. This was no simple matter because of obligations to my own family and (somewhat more unexpectedly) my department. I have made no public announcement on it yet not because I am especially personally […]
Academia
I watched Attenborough’s latest blockbuster at the cinema last night with my family, and thought I’d collect some thoughts here. First off, it’s wonderfully put together. That’s hardly news with Attenborough. Of course, it’s beautifully shot, and captures marine animals doing things we haven’t seen them do before. Much of it is really entrancing. It’s […]
Tolstoy, Leo. 1996 [1897]. What is Art? Penguin. (p. 143) ***Since you find value in the content and resources shared by the ES/PE community, please consider making a contribution to help sustain our work. Your support is vital to maintaining our independence and carrying forward our mission. You can donate securely now via this PayPal link. Every contribution makes a […]
I was not invited to the meeting where the left coordinated their war on water pressure. Sadly, then, it was over before I even knew it was happening. One of those American executive orders (and gosh we’re getting tired of those, even from the other side of the world) to – seriously – make showers […]
Back in 2022, after my first encounter with ChatGPT, I suggested that it was likely to wipe out large categories of “bullshit jobs”, but unlikely to create mass unemployment. In retrospect, that was probably an overestimate of the likely impact. But three years later, it seems as if an update might be appropriate. In the last […]
I posted this on my (private) Facebook page a few weeks back, just to vent. Since it resonated with quite a few people, I am reposting it here. I thought it was a platitude, but given the sea of self-congratulatory discourse about Europe (here’s an example for those who read Italian, but there are plenty) […]
Here is a joke. A philosopher goes to a policy committee. Got it? Okay, okay, it’s probably a bad joke. It’s also outdated: these days, many philosophers do go to policy committees. The cliché is that a philosopher sits in the academic ivory tower, thinks long and hard about a problem, then writes a theory […]