11/30 Free flip flops for drunks: Since your mom can’t always go barhopping with you, the police will now help you with your footwear challenges. (Via InstaPundit.) Some diseases fail the political-correctness test: apparently, cystic fibrosis is just too white. (Via ifeminists.) Can you imagine the uproar, though, if they voted not to support breast cancer research? By contrast, how about opening a serious problem up to a market solution? Philosopher Stone has a round up of posts on paying for organ donors.
11/27 Many grains of truth here: Donald Frazell’s impressionistic survey of American art world. (Thanks to Michael for the link.) Two caveats: Frazell seems to mean by “individualism” a Peter-Keating type of “individualism”; and he brings to the discussion a background cynicism about money’s influence in art. And The Nation‘s art critic casts the recent history of art as a quest to answer the philosophical question: What exactly is art? (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.)
11/26 John Allison’s talk to the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina: Effective Leadership. My gloss on the Allison’s two integrating themes: the practical power of philosophy and leaders must be philosophers. Allison’s lecture is also available as a webcast. And on Reason.tv, former Enron-employee Robert Bradley, Jr., explains how Enron is a case study in politicized capitalism. Bradley is the author of the new book Capitalism at Work, from which he has posted online fifty-three appendices.
11/25 While I expect that there were a large number of uninformed voters on the other side, this is still ghastly. But as uninformed as many voters are about American civics, at least they did better than our elected officials. Meanwhile, a very funny four-minute YouTube video with a reality check on our expectations: Everything’s amazing, nobody’s happy. (Thanks to Karen, Marsha, and Anja for the links.)
11/24 Who would have thought that Venn Diagrams could be so fun? Some categories are unlucky in the dating scene. Speaking of dating, our wise government leaders now want to help us find sexually-compatible partners. (Thanks to Anja for the link.)
11/23 A Fast Company feature on Washington public schools’ “Iron Chancellor,” Michelle Rhee. And in the context of listing a number of steps he thinks will help fix the economy long-term, Rich Karlgaard makes this key point: “Step 12. Pay teachers more, based on merit. The politically incorrect truth is that smart American women subsidized K-12 education from the 19th century through the 1960s. Since the 1970s, smart women have had more career choices than teaching the three R’s. The talent pool in American K-12 teaching is fished out. By SAT scores and grade-point averages, would-be teachers are asked to clear a far lower bar than other professionals. Education schools are a disgrace, and are wholly unnecessary. If the U.S. wants better teachers, we must pay teachers more. To do that, we’ll have to break the teachers’ unions.” Also: Margaret Soltan reports on another example of how political funding of education leads to political control of education. Kudos to Professor McPherson for resisting the authoritarians.
11/22 Volition makes a comeback: Reena Kapoor links to two podcasts on the plasticity of human character and action and free will. And a fascinating 60 Minutes episode: brain power.
11/21 
Celebrating the great French champion of tolerance, modern science, and the English Enlightenment: François-Marie Arouet was born today in 1694. Here is Oxford University’s Voltaire Project, devoted to Voltaire’s works and eighteenth-century studies. Three of my favorite quotations from Voltaire: On the excellence of England: “Commerce, which has enriched English citizens, has helped to make them free, and this freedom in its turn has extended commerce, and that has made the greatness of the nation.” On the connections between freedom of religion, freedom of commerce, and tolerance: “Go into the London Stock Exchange — a more respectable place than many a court — and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son’s foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn’t understand mumbled over the child, others go to their church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy. // If there were just one religion in England, despotism would threaten; if there were two religions, they would cut each other’s throats; but there are thirty religions, and they live together peacefully and happily.” And on how France is still stuck in feudalism: “In France anyone who is a Marquis who wants to be, and whoever arrives in Paris with money to spend an a name ending in -ac or -ille can say: ‘a man like me, a man of my standing’, and loftily despises a businessman, and the business man so often hears people speak disparagingly of his profession that he is foolish enough to blush. Yet I wonder which is the more useful to a nation, a well-powdered nobleman who knows exactly at what moment the King gets up and goes to bed, and who gives himself grand airs while playing the part of a slave in some Minister’s antechamber, or a business man who enriches his country, issues orders from his office to Surat or Cairo, and contributes to the well-being of the world.” Those quotations are from my favorite of Voltaire’s books, his Letters on England from 1733. Naturally, the King and the establishment were not pleased with the work, so copies were burned and Voltaire, once again, was forced into exile.
11/20 Word-play and the rise of the coercive liberals: Will all the proposed national service programs be mandatory, compulsory, and backed by threats of fines and jail time? Lester Hunt is “just asking”. And speaking of “liberals,” why is it that school choice is strongly desired by the poor, but strongly opposed by their so-called political advocates (including, as Andrew Coulson explains, our president-elect)? Also: David Thompson rolls his eyes: Queen’s University is exploring new frontiers in attitude management. One skeptic thinks “It’s unlikely six facilitators in a crowd of thousands will have much impact on fostering dialogue in residences.” But there’s an obvious solution to that problem: hire 600 “[correct] dialogue facilitators”!!!!
11/19 Atheism and religion: Does religion make you nice, and does atheism make you mean? (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.) And for fans of the great movie Inherit the Wind, the theatrical version is being performed by The College Preparatory School in Oakland, directed by Salil Singh. Love the poster.
11/18 Fifty unusual buildings from around the world: some beautiful, some ugly, some whimsical, some just plain weird.
11/14 What I Learned about Atlas Shrugged from My Students This Semester (PDF).
11/13 My alma mater’s bragging rights among Canadian universities. Unfortunately, many talented professors are deeply unhappy, such as Professor “John Smith,” who explains why he is leaving higher education.
Perhaps he had one too many colleagues like the guy described in the first paragraph here. Or too many students who were victims of relentless and shameless indoctrination programs, such as this one at the University of Delaware, as described by David Thompson: ‘Staff members kept individual files on students and their beliefs — which were to be archived after graduation. Students with “traditional” beliefs had to become “allies” and “change agents” by their senior year. Posters and door decorations provided the politicized ResLife messages everywhere; one could not escape them. One administrator of the program, Sendy Guerrier, wrote that students “should be confronted with this information at every turn” and that the program should leave “a mental footprint on [students’] consciousness.” The program was called a “treatment” for students’ alleged moral illnesses of consumerism, inherent racism, and oppressive tendencies. UD was proud of this “treatment,” holding an annual Residential Curriculum Institute so that residence life officials nationwide could do the same.’
11/12 Walter Williams hopes the 2008 election will help guilty white fools. And Dick Armey explains bluntly why compassionate conservatism was a mistake. (Thanks to Karen for the link.)
11/10 An interview with Martin Durkin on Romantic philosophy’s dictating to global warming’s science. A key quotation: “the greens sit squarely in the tradition of Romanticism. Like the romantics, they hate industry, love nature, idealise peasant life, they think capitalism is wicked, they think people in modern society lead depraved shallow lives and have forgotten the true value of things, they don’t like cars or supermarkets or lots of proles taking cheap long-haul holidays.” (Thanks to Charlie for the link.) And how can we separate global warming science from global warming religion? That’s Michael Crichton’s question. (Thanks to Bob M. for the link.)
11/5 Is this the future? Philosophy as played out through video game avatars. (Thanks to Shawn for the link.)
11/3 Well, this is not encouraging: a Wilson Quarterly essay: voters are as ignorant and short-sighted as they were fifty years ago. (Thanks to Bob H. for the link.) And fear and trepidation one hundred years ago just before the 1908 presidential election. My view is that no matter how the election turns out, going on a four-year vacation might be a good idea, so these forty enchanting and majestic American parks are on my list.