Friday, March 13, 2020

A Tale of Two Philosophy Careers

Communism is the opiate of the intellectuals — with no cure, except as a guillotine might be called a cure for dandruff.
— Clare Booth Luce, born in 1903



That money talks
I won’t deny.
I heard it once,
It said goodbye.

~ “The Funny Side – 101 Humorous Poems” ed. Wendy Cope | Form in Formless Times



A Tale of Two Philosophy Careers

Behold the unstoppable Greg.
Where there’s a round hole, he becomes a round peg.
Behold how he fits with the team.
His path is unswerving; he rises like cream.
Behold Larry still down below.
Does Greg make him jealous? He doesn’t quite know

"Cities are complicated," said John. "They can be both the beautiful thing you believed them to be and the dark thing you did not imagine they could be. The one does not obscure the other."

"People, too ...

For Wirecutter, Roxane Gay talks about her love of baking and how her KitchenAid stand mixer helps her achieve the consistent results that baking demands.

 I’ve always loved baking, the patience and precision it requires, the end result when baking goes well, the lessons learned  when it doesn’t. It’s actually quite conducive to writing because it forces you to step away from your work and tend to the baking process at specific intervals. When I am feeling down, when I am stressed, when I want to procrastinate, when I want to nourish people I love, I bake, which is to say I bake a lot.  

I found this link via my friend David, who has gotten into baking in a big way over the past couple of years, perfecting his recipes for pizza dough and bread. I got a KitchenAid for Christmas this year, but I haven’t had a chance to use it yet. Maybe this week…


Don’t Panic: The comprehensive Ars Technica guide to the coronavirus [Updated 3/11] Ars Technica. Well worth a read.
Coronavirus: Why You Must Act Now Tomas Pueyo, Medium. A thoughtful post full of good information. For example:
South Korea cases have exploded, but have you wondered why Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand or Hong Kong haven’t? All of them were hit by SARS in 2003, and all of them learned from it. They learned how viral and lethal it could be, so they knew to take it seriously. That’s why all of their graphs, despite starting to grow much earlier, still don’t look like exponentials.

Yanis Varoufakis: “Syriza Was a Bigger Blow to the Left Than Thatcher” Yanis Varoufakis, Jacobin

Corruption In U.S. Military Academies Is Harming Our National Security The American Conservative

The Cultural Problem of Cheating & Lying Consortium News