“Genres, Categories, and Concepts in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art,” a workshop-style symposium. (May 16 - 18, 2008. Indiana University, Bloomington.) I'll be Presenting on Musical Nuances. The symposium website is here.
(click poster for full size pop-up)
Here is music created entirely with the sounds of Windows XP and 98. (The sounds we hate most made into something interesting.)
Here is a link to a portion of an interview with the co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, on the BBC UK program Hardtalk. The discussion centers on errors in Wikipedia. Two interesting points: (1) Wales admits to previously tampering with his own Wikipedia entry in order to remove Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger from the historical account of Wikipedia's origin (but Sanger is not referred to by name in the interview). (2) At another point in the interview, for a moment, it appears that Wales is attempting to downplay the seriousness of the fact that there are errors in Wikipedia by emphasizing that there are errors in newspaper articles too. Comparing reference works to journalism seems odd, to say the least. Wales goes on to claim that the way to make a reference work more dependable than a newspaper is to get "as many people participating as possible." —Doesn't the reasonableness of this claim depend upon how well the participants know the subject that they are writing about? Isn't this the most obvious problem with Wikipedia? And, of course, there is the problem that contributors remain anonymous. (For an example of a case in which the "editors" in charge of a Wikipedia page did not have an acceptable level of expertise, click here.)
This is a plug for the American Society for Aesthetics Eastern Division Meeting (April 4-5, 2008). The Keynote Speaker is Jenefer Robinson; Kwame Anthony Appiah will be delivering the Monroe Beardsley Lecture. Always held in Philly, this is a particularly interesting annual aesthetics conference, with rich Q&A sessions, due in part to the abundance of talented philosophers of art (both faculty and grad students) at Temple. There is also a burgeoning interest in aesthetics at nearby Rowan University. I will be presenting a paper entitled, "A Phenomenological Criticism of D. Raffman's Account of Musical Nuance."
In 2005, the New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman gave a talk at MIT that consisted of an impressive and polished synopsis of his book The World Is Flat. While this book is certainly not new, and he has certainly spoken about it in the media (e.g., on Charlie Rose), this talk is a particularly striking presentation of the thesis.
Here is a characterization of the book from the MIT site:
"In his latest book, The World is Flat, Friedman describes the unplanned cascade of technological and social shifts that effectively leveled the economic world, and 'accidentally made Beijing, Bangalore and Bethesda next-door neighbors.' Today, 'individuals and small groups of every color of the rainbow will be able to plug and play.' Friedman’s list of 'flatteners' includes the fall of the Berlin Wall; the rise of Netscape and the dotcom boom that led to a trillion dollar investment in fiber optic cable..."
This link will automatically open iTunes and take you to a free video podcast of that talk. This is a link to the MIT page. (I discovered this podcast through OpenCulture.)
Here are two posts of note-taking tips. If you already create indices in the back of books you read, then you will like Tim Ferriss's tips on indexing notebooks of your own writing. Here is a link outlining the Cornell note-taking method for students, at lifehacker.
This is a link to Mark Molaro's May 2007 video interview with Harry Frankfurt (Princeton Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, author of On Bullshit and On Truth). At the 6:25 mark, the discussion turns to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's criticisms of politicians and the media, and its impact. Frankfurt raises the example of Jon Stewart's 2004 appearance on CNN's Crossfire, which directly resulted in the cancellation of the program. Here is that Stewart appearance on Crossfire.
Here is one of the clever ways Ahmadinejad spins Iranian policies and social injustices. He re-describes an atrocity, lack of rights or lack of freedom in Iran in terms of something we value in the west. And of course, this results in a misdescription. In the following example (which you can watch here),* he re-describes women's lack of freedom in Iran as an exemption from responsibilities—out of respect !
"Women are respected in Iran.... Women are respected more than men are. They are exempt from many responsibilities; many of the legal responsibilities rest on the shoulders of men in our society, because of the respect culturally given to women, to the future mothers."
Watch raw video of the entire 81 minutes here.
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* This clip also includes the hilarious claim that there are no homosexuals in Iran.
That is the title of an essay in the NY Times Sunday Book Review (9/16/07) reconsidering the impact of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, and the value of the Western canon for American undergraduates.
Apparently, all of the lectures from the Hubert Dreyfus fall 2007 Heidegger course will be available as a podcast on iTunes. Clicking this link will open iTunes and take you directly to the Dreyfus/Heidegger page.
Broadcast on Dutch television in 1971, this is a thirteen-minute debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on justice, human nature, power, etc. This is a link to part 1.
On the weblog Philosophy Bites, Edward Craig and Nigel Warburton have an interesting ten-minute conversation (MP3) about the question.
Here is a link to a Crooked Timber entry that recounts the funny discussion between David Chalmers and a Wikipedia "editor." Chalmers is attempting to suggest improvements for an article on consciousness (some of which involves his own work), but he is met with replies like this from the "editor": "As can be seen above, most of your criticisms are not supported. Please demonstrate your familiarity with the field by supporting your critique with reasoned arguments rather than pejorative comments." (The editors didn't believe that Chalmers was really Chalmers.)
