Year: 2008
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The Fiberglass Chairs: Something of how they get the way they are
via, via.
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Individuality, Ensoulment, Selfhood
For a philosopher, I do a shockingly small amount of metaphysics. This is usually not a problem: I can handle basic issues in materialism and idealism, for instance, and tackle mind-body monisms and dualisms with my students, and my scholarship is in political philosophy and I generally argue, along with Rawls, that matters of justice…
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Mumbai attacks on Boston Globe’s Big Picture
Mumbai Under Attack. We know so little about what is happening there that these photographs are almost better than the print journalism. Beware: many of the photographs are difficult to see.
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Marriage Equality
I’ve been really troubled by Proposition 8’s passage in California. It’s a strange kind of melancholy, because I’m already married, and I live in the DC area, so there’s no practical impact on me at all. Trying to explain this weirdly vicarious disappointment, I realize that it was arguments about marriage equality that first convinced…
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Treasury Sums Up
Out of the mouths of babes: Hank Paulson, Treasury secretary, indicated that the US would accept some criticism. “We have in many ways humiliated ourselves as a nation with some of the problems that have taken place here.”
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Madagascar Saphire Mines
When Antoinette and I got engaged, I purchased a cultured (i.e. synthetic) diamond, concerned about the role that the diamond trade plays in provoking conflict. Here’s what it looks like. At the time, I seriously considered using a saphire, since I believed the trade in saphires was child-labor free and less tainted by violence, but…