Latest on the I-91 Viaduct

Last year at about this time I wrote about the prospect of disruptive repairs to a stretch of the highway I-91 as it passes through Springfield, MA, just a short ways north of the border of the states of Massachusetts and Connecticut. This is a vital piece of infrastructure in my neck of the woods, so I'd like to keep readers of this blog up to date on it.

On June 25th, the Mass. Department of Transportation hosted a hearing on the project updating the community of those who drive there regularly, warning said community that preliminary construction work will begin any day now. J.F. White Contracting Co., of Framingham, won the bid and will serve as general contractor for the expected three year duration of the work.

The MassDOT is funding 20% of this work, the Federal Highway Administration will pick up the rest of the tab.

Finally, the project has become enmeshed over the last year with another timetable: that of casino construction. In the fullness of time, it has been decreed by the decreers of such matters, there will be an MGM Casino in downtown Springfield, so that Pioneer Valley gamblers won't have to undertake the long voyage to the coast of Long Island Sound and lose their wampum to Indian tribes gathered there. But the casino can hardly be expected to prove the engine of revitalization that MGM ensures us it can be unless people can get from the highway to their parking lots without too much aggravation and discomfort.

Comments

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a majesti

Five Lessons from the Allegory of the Cave

Please correct me if there are others. But it seems to be there are five lessons the reader is meant to draw from the story about the cave. First, Plato is working to devalue what we would call empiricism. He is saying that keeping track of the shadows on the cave wall, trying to make sense of what you see there, will NOT get you to wisdom. Second, Plato is contending that reality comes in levels. The shadows on the wall are illusions. The solid objects being passed around behind my back are more real than their shadows are. BUT … the world outside the the cave is more real than that — and the sun by which that world is illuminated is the top of the hierarchy. So there isn’t a binary choice of real/unreal. There are levels. Third, he equates realness with knowability. I only have opinions about the shadows. Could I turn around, I could have at least the glimmerings of knowledge. Could I get outside the cave, I would really Know. Fourth, the parable assigns a task to philosophers

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog