Tag: stories
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Earthquakes and Providence
My old boss Ted Kinnaman has a piece in the Huffington Post on Pat Robertson’s claim that Haitians deserved the recent earthquake because they made a pact with the devil in order free themselves from colonial slavery. Others have developed the historical case for such a pact. Where many have taken Robertson to task for…
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Philosophy as Arbitrage
Arbitrage is the practice of exploiting price differentials for a profit. Arbitrage is based on the Law of One Price: “in an efficient market, all identical goods must have only one price.” From the arbitrageur’s perspective, price differentials are violations of the law, and they profit from correcting the differences. The most basic form of financial arbitrage…
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Veterans return to the Academy
My friend Dr. J recently wrote about the various transitions in the faculty, and noted in passing that we should be careful not to push the 60’s era faculty out before we’ve had a chance to pick their brains on instructing war veterans. I had a passel of veterans at MTSU (10-12?) and it was…
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On Beauty and Being Just Good Enough
Zadie Smith indicts herself for the failure that characterizes almost all writing: Bad writing does nothing, changes nothing, educates no emotions, rewires no inner circuitry – we close its covers with the same metaphysical confidence in the universality of our own interface as we did when we opened it. But great writing – great writing…