Thursday, March 18, 2021

The power of a thread, or two, and a request

College admissions is one of the few situations in which it’s rich people scrambling for a scarce resource. The result: our insane system of private schools  private loathing 


The power of a thread, or two, and a request

Posted on March 8 2021

A week ago I noted that I had reached 70,000 Twitter followers, that number having increased by 10,000 over the previous ten months. Today I
Read the full article…


NFTs are setting the creative world alight. Are they also bad for the planet? abc.net.au 


How Sustainable is High-tech Health Care? LOW-TECH MAGAZINE


Deep-sea ‘Roombas’ will comb ocean floor for DDT waste barrels near Catalina Los Angeles Times

 with u

 

PM&C hires lawyer to fight attempts to access national cabinet documents

‌In September, Rex Patrick launched proceedings after his FoI requests for national cabinet meeting minutes and procedures were denied.

 

 

Ross Garnaut says Australia can’t reset without respect for knowledge

‌Garnaut says democracy is being challenged by a decline in knowledge and respect for the role of knowledge in 21st century policy-making.


EXCUSES IN THE TIME OF COVID: Zoom Escaper lets you sabotage your own meetings with audio problems, crying babies, and more.


 

… Nationwide analysis suggests masks increased the spread of COVID-19.


When comparing states with mandates vs. those without, or periods of times within a state with a mandate vs. without, there is absolutely no evidence the mask mandate worked to slow the spread one iota. In total, in the states that had a mandate in effect, there were 9,605,256 confirmed COVID cases over 5,907 total days, an average of 27 cases per 100,000 per day. When states did not have a statewide order (which includes the states that never had them and the period of time masking states did not have the mandate in place) there were 5,781,716 cases over 5,772 total days, averaging 17 cases per 100,000 people per day.

… 
Fact-Checking Facebook’s Fact Checkers.


There’s still much we don’t understand about the virus and its transmission and immunity. Yet Facebook’s fact-checkers “cherry-pick,” to borrow their word, studies to support their own opinions, which they present as fact. So let’s fact-check Facebook’s fact checkers.

 

Wall Street Journal, He Got $300,000 From Credit-Card Rewards. The IRS Said It Was Taxable Income.:

Tax Court (2020)Konstantin Anikeev, an experimental physicist, assembled everything he needed for an inquiry far outside his field.

His materials included American Express cards, the government’s view that credit-card rewards aren’t income, and his own willingness to spend time buying gift cards and money orders. He pulled the concept from personal-finance websites: Exploit the difference between unlimited 5% rewards and lower fees on gift cards and money orders. ...


  1. Clarence Irving Lewis, by Bruce Hunter.
  2. Value Theory, by Mark Schroeder.
  3. The Grounds of Moral Status, by Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum.
  4. Neuroethics, by Adina Roskies.
  5. Belief Merging and Judgment Aggregation, by Gabriella Pigozzi.
  6. Analytic Feminism, by Ann Garry.

IEP   

  1. Doxastic Conservatism, by Hamid Vahid.

NDPR     ∅

1000-Word Philosophy  

  1. Ethics and Absolute Poverty: Peter Singer and Effective Altruism, by Brandon Boesch.
  2. Formal Logic: Symbolizing Arguments in Sentential Logic, by Thomas Metcalf.

Recent Philosophy Book Reviews in Non-Academic Media 

  1. The Misinformation Age: How False Beliefs Spread by Cailin O’Connor and James Weatherall, reviewed by Michael Patrick Lynch at Boston Review.
  2. Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers by Cheryl Misak, reviewed by Andrew David Irvine at Times LIterary Supplement.
  3. The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalismby Jessica Whyte, reviewed by Rory Dufficy at Sydney Review of Books.
  4. Witcraft: The Invention of Philosophy in English by Jonathan Rée, reviewed by John Gray at New York Review of Books (may be paywalled).
  5. The Force of Non-Violence: an Ethico-Poitical Bind by Judith Butler, reviewed by Nicholas Bugeja at Australian Book Review (may be paywalled)

Is a workplace code of conduct pointless? 

A code of conduct alone does not guarantee   that employees will behave ethically. We all bring our own values and beliefs to work