Can we learn about social media from Dostoevsky?Do you want to guest blog on the metaphysics of love?
Michael Sandel: Public Philosopher — the BBC Podcast Series.
The head of Japan’s central bank, Haruhiko Kuroda, does a little philosophy on the side.
The art of live-blogging philosophy

What kind of person who believes Marxism explains Buzzfeed are you?
What should you do with the things you value most? (via Marginal Revolution)


Capa, Gellhorn, Hemingway, Imrich, et al.: For a talented young cohort, the Spanish Civil War offered a heady rush of idealism and opportunism… Idealism of our lives

Today’s successful author will sooner or later be invited to sell his or her personal papers - archives. Sooner rather than later most likely, and not just papers, manuscripts, typescripts, notebooks, but electronic data too, emails, chat messages, the lot. Everything you have written, then, but also everything you will write. Your emails to your children, your grandchildren, great-grandchildren, your ex-wife or husband, present partner, future partner, lovers, ex-lovers, dying parents, estranged cousins, needy friends, your application for this or that grant, your fencing with would-be publishers or agents, your self-promotional lobbying for the Pulitzer or the Booker, deluded dreams of the Nobel, half-truths for the taxman, heated exchanges with magazine editors when payment is delayed.

The Book Tour – Not For Delicate Egos

“Behold the book tour, which is an ordeal for many writers. They stand alone on a stage quaking and exposed, prepared to offer the world the results of years of hard labor, perhaps only to find that their audience consists entirely of family members.”

Via Baltimore Sun 

The Ineffable Something That Keeps (Some) Writers Famous Long After They Die

“The only reliable judge of a novel’s merits, as Martin Amis once declared, is that grim and exacting arbiter, posterity, and, set against the reckonings of the future, present applause is only a little light murmuring heard a long way off.”

Via The Guardian (UK) 

 Sisson - “The Trade” What and Who (1994): 

“The language fades.  The noise is more

Than ever it has been before,

But all the words grow pale and thin

For lack of sense has done them in. 

“What wonder, when it is for pay

Millions are spoken every day?

It is the number, not the sense

That brings the speakers pounds and pence. 

“The words are stretched across the air

Vast distances from here to there,

Or there to here:  it does not matter

So long as there is media chatter. 

“Turn up the sound and let there be

No talking between you and me:

What passes now for human speech

Must come from somewhere out of reach.”

Wild Murderers of Sydney

If Roger Rogerson was directing the traffic, I wouldn't leave the kerb. – Sydney Queen's Counsel, 1986

As Roger Rogerson awaits questioning by police over the murder of Jamie Gao, we revisit this 2006 Good Weekend profile of Australia's most infamous former policeman.

Talk of the Town; Rogerson & his Monopoly on Sydney

Fostering Reality of Life

I could be wrong, but I’m not.

~ jozef imrich, a well known failed poet in corridors of power everywhere ... From unpublished manuscript "Nothin’ Matters, and What if It Did?"  Time spent looking at screens spent each day by Czechs, Ausies and eyes-people in different countries, graphically illustrated

 
Winter Pilhov  Czechoslovakia 1979

The science of looking smarter, richer - just smile (that taxing grin)

 George M. Felis 

Maybe I shouldn’t admit this as a professor, but a significant part of what you demonstrate by earning a college degree has nothing to do with what you actually learn in college: completing college is partly about showing that you have the discipline to show up and do the work—whether you want to or not, whether you’re interested in it or not, and regardless of the distractions life presents—because whatever career you pursue, the first and most valuable qualification you can have is the discipline to show up and do the work, no matter what. That’s why many employers preferentially hire people with college degrees even when the work doesn’t require a degree — and that’s why I would be acting unethically if I let you pass this class even though you didn’t show up and do the amount and quality of work required to pass it. Finally, although I doubt you will appreciate this perspective now, I also honestly believe I would be doing you a disservice if I helped you avoid the negative consequences of your own choices and actions — because in the long run, no one can.

Platonic forms explained in an animation in the style of an old-fashioned video game. No, I don’t know why.

This paper holds that philosophy is and has always been relevant to life. The history on this matter is against the likes of Kripke and Soames who claim otherwise, even when it comes to the recent Analytic tradition. But, even more importantly, we argue that even if this history is not quite right, that philosophers have both moral and instrumental reasons for making their work public.

So argue two graduate students in philosophy, Matt Chick (Washington University, St. Louis) and Matthew LaVine (Buffalo), in a paper entitled “The Relevance of Analytic Philosophy to Personal, Public, and Democratic Life,” in Essays in Philosophy.

The Anthropology of Professors

Drunken Irishmen, crafty Jews, lazy Africans: Race has always been a convenient way to explain inequality. The genome era is no different... Sla(e)s

Anthropologist John Ziker (Boise State) applied the tools of his trade to the species homo academicus and reports the first of his findings on how professors use their time. Some excerpts:
On average, our faculty participants worked 61 hours per week. That is 50 percent more than a 40-hour workweek. It’s a good thing they love what they do. They worked just over 10 hours per day during the workweek and just under 10 hours on the two weekend days combined…

The most surprising finding of our analysis of practices was that faculty spent approximately 17 percent of their workweek days in meetings. These meetings included everything from advising meetings with students (which could be considered part of teaching or service depending on the department) to committee meetings that have a clear service function. Thirteen percent of the day was spent on email (with functions ranging from teaching to research and service). Thus, 30 percent of faculty time was spent on activities that are not traditionally thought of as part of the life of an academic. Twelve percent of the day was spent on instruction (actual lectures, labs, clinicals etc.), and an equal amount of time was spent on class preparation. Eleven percent of the day was spent on course administration (grading, updating course web pages, etc.). Thus, 35 percent of workweek days was spent on activities traditionally thought of as teaching. Only three percent of our workweek day was spent on primary research and two percent on manuscript writing… On the weekend, faculty spent 23 percent of their time on class preparation, 13 percent on course administration, 10 percent of their time on email, nine percent of their time at workshops/conferences, eight percent of their time in professional conversations, seven percent of their time on professional travel, four percent of their time on manuscript writing, and four percent of their time on what we termed housekeeping, which included cleaning up files, straightening offices and labs and updating computers, among a myriad of other more rare activities.

Remembrance - The Sikh Story Full

Documentary examining why followers of the Sikh religion were marked out as a 'martial race' under the British Empire, and how thousands of Sikh soldiers valiantly laid down their lives for Britain's freedom across two world wars.
With contributions from eminent historians, military experts and war veterans, the film features the last-ever interview with legendary WW2 Squadron Leader Mahinder Singh Pujji, and the first television broadcast of a rare audio recording of a WW1 Sikh prisoner of war, handed to Britain in 2010 after 94 years in German hands.

Martial Race


A philosopher’s proposal for how to get politicians to take the interests of future generations more seriously. 

A whisky war that harks all the way back to the 1870s is brewing over a modern-day trademark being claimed by both a giant Scottish spirits firm and a tiny New Zealand distiller.

A whisky war for the ages (a drink at my Sikh Wedding circa 2007)

How Russia Inc. Moves Billions Offshore “You can rely on our legal system!”

Italian journalist tells court that city makes it easy for former Slovak Communists to launder money
 through front companies Hong Kong Banks Enable Money Laundering

This is about an excellent Reuters investigation into a Russian state scheme to buy expensive medical equipment – and send money to Swiss bank accounts. It is worth reading in its entirety, but we will hone in on this bit:

“According to the customs data, Petromed paid $195 million to a British company called Greathill Ltd. Greathill acted as an intermediary in buying equipment from Siemens and other suppliers.

The arrangement worked like this: The Russian state paid Petromed to supply medical equipment. Meanwhile, Greathill bought equipment from Siemens and other suppliers, according to Kolesnikov. In turn, Petromed bought the equipment from Greathill at much higher prices, up to double the going rate, according to customs documents. Bank records seen by Reuters support that account.
. . .
A trail of documents reviewed for this article suggests that Greathill was an equipment supplier only on paper. According to Kolesnikov, Greathill’s real function was to act as an intermediary “where profits could be made.” Putins & Laundering Comrades

Bloomberg: How Russia Inc. Moves Billions Offshore -- and a Handful of Tax Havens May Hold Key to Sanctions, by Jesse Drucker, Alan Katz & Andy Hoffman:

Two years ago, a Dutch law firm prepared a pitch in Moscow to Russian businesses: come to the Netherlands and we can help you avoid taxes and keep your assets safe. “You can rely on our legal system!” the firm, Buren van Velzen Guelen, said in a slide presentation.

Such appeals have worked on a grand scale. Russia’s biggest oil, gas, mining and retail companies -- including some run by billionaires close to President Vladimir Putin -- have moved tens of billions of corporate assets to the Netherlands and other European countries often used for tax avoidance and capital flight, such as Luxembourg, Cyprus, Switzerland and Ireland. The firms include OAO Rosneft (ROSN), OAO Gazprom, OAO Lukoil and Geneva-headquartered Gunvor Group Ltd., which was co-founded by a Putin associate now under U.S. sanctions.

A Theory of Boardroom Justice. Something tells me Jerry Cohen would not have been surprised.

 There is a real danger that corporate leaders, making decisions that seem correct behind closed doors, end up being tone-deaf in a soundproof room. When the doors open and the decisions are announced, it is clear that board members are often deeply disconnected from the world’s economic and social realities.

Consider executive pay packages. Board remuneration committees can explain them logically with complex formulas to justify them, and yet often they are completely out of line with common sense.

The popularity of pets, nature films, zoos, wildlife tourism show how much we like to look at animals. Why? Evolution has an answer... With love from Russian Zoo Keeper Vlado

Putin & His Commie Comrades

Piketty Capital @ Der Doom

Doom for democracy? Judt, Habermas, and Piketty warn that our system of government is irrational, dysfunctional, in trouble. Has it always been? We are all doomed


“It is an arduous thing to plead against abuses of a power which originate from your own country,” said Burke. By that standard, David Bromwich has had a very arduous decade... Nothing New Under The Sun

Over the past 80 years, U.S. gross domestic product has grown, in real terms, by a factor of 16. But more wealth has not meant more leisure. Cue the yuppie Kvetching

Accountants and tax advisers have blown the whistle on multimillionaire clients exploiting tax concessions in self-managed superannuation funds, urging the federal government to act against "tax leakage". Tax leakage: Multimillionaires exploiting superannuation.

Prophesy of Piketty ~ There are 4,400 words here, mostly on the FT kerfluffle, and Neil Irwin summarizes it here: “The short version: He doesn’t give an inch.

The Continuing Debate Over Thomas Piketty'sCapital in the 21st Century

Following up on my previous posts on the new book by Thomas Piketty (Paris School of Economics),Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Harvard University Press, 2014):

Wall Street Journal op-ed:  Piketty's Numbers Don't Add Up, by Martin Feldstein (Harvard):

Thomas Piketty has recently attracted widespread attention for his claim that capitalism will now lead inexorably to an increasing inequality of income and wealth unless there are radical changes in taxation. Although his book ... has been praised by those who advocate income redistribution, his thesis rests on a false theory of how wealth evolves in a market economy, a flawed interpretation of U.S. income-tax data, and a misunderstanding of the current nature of household wealth.

In all the chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order

My first word, everyone’s first word, was air.

A house manifesting creativity has disorder at its heart. As Carl Jung once put it, “in all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order”.

Freeing a new order from a messy environment is precisely what a painter like Lucian Freud did with chromatic gunge. Gardeners everywhere mix tons of dirt with blood and bonemeal to achieve beauty. Cooking means broken eggs, spilled milk, scattered flour. So, even if we subscribe to order, chaos is its prerequisite, a crucible of potential.

The celebration of mess is at least as old as the Enlightenment age. Alexander Pope found the chaos of variety reassuring:

Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised;

But, as the world, harmoniously confused:

Where order in variety we see;

And where, though all things differ, all agree...

Bad tax laws are worse than the pop stars who skirt them

Politicians thrive on ambiguity that costs the economy dear, writes Paul Johnson

A much-loved pop star is judged to have invested in a tax-avoidance scheme. Pressure groups, opposition politicians and front pages demand the government make good its pledge to crack down on tax dodgers. The prime minister weighs in: let national treasure Gary Barlow – ageing boy-bander turned charity fundraiser – pay back the, well, national treasure but keep his gong.

Bad Tax Laws Encourage Avoiders

Howell House looks like a train wreck ...