Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

GUARDIAN's style guide cautions writers about the "National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers". The caution is that the word "and" is not part of that title.  There will be a temptation to insert it after "Schoolmasters" because this sounds like a merger of two originally distinct groups, sort of like the Presidents' Day of educational unions.  The guide also suggests not using NASUWT.  Call it by the whole long name on first mention, then say "the union" rather than using those "unlovely initials".  This inspired a little research. NASUWT came into existence because of a secession in the first instance, and later a merger.  In the UK, a fair number of men put aside their schoolteaching jobs to go fight the Great War in 1914.  When the survivors came back, and sought a return to their civilian career, they found that women were dominating their field.  They were unhappy about this.  The men seceded from the N...

  Whitehead called his own view of the cosmos "the philosophy of organism." Over the nearly-a-century since he wrote the book on it, though, the name has become cemented as "process philosophy". That has also given rise to such related terms as "process theology." Nobody seems to say "philosophy of organism."  In the early going of his book, PROCESS AND REALITY, Whitehead quotes a Latin phrase he attributes to Augustine. He does not assist with an English translation. Securus judicat orbis terrarium.  I thought for a second it meant that Augustine had a turtle residing securely in his terrarium and that the turtle was getting judgmental. So I thought, "why would one name a pet turtle Orbis?" Hence the image for this blog post. But no, the Latin phrase means:  " the whole world judges rightly."  Don't put yourself in a position of saying "the whole rest of the world, but for me and my small cult, is wrong." Judgm...

  Richard Glossip still alive?  I heard about his case months ago, and only now decided to check up on him. The Glossip case is the one that led a state rep in Oklahoma, Kevin McDugle, to promise to "fight to end the death penalty if Glossip dies." Given how hard it has proven to be to achieve any other result, shouldn't McDugle reach that conclusion for himself anyway?  Does he need the sacrifice? Hmmm. Anyway, after some web searching, I have to say that appears he is still alive.  Either that or he died of natural causes on death row and the fact has been underreported.  On Jan. 22, the Supreme Court granted cert on Glossip's claims to actual innocence and whether "due process of law requires reversal ... where a capital conviction is so infected with errors that the State no longer seeks to defend it."    In terms of timing, my guess is that the Court hears arguments early next term, so that a decision won't come down until early 2025.   Glos...

 I have recently purchased a copy of Alfred North Whitehead's notorious volume, PROCESS AND REALITY.  I have long promised myself I would read this book some day.  It has long played a part in my own view of the history of philosophy through the 20th century, and I have had sporadic pangs of guilt over not having tackled it myself. I gather from the secondary literature that Whitehead tried to bring a philosophy akin to Henri Bergson's into the world of Anglophonic analytical philosophy.  Whitehead of course knew the latter tradition from the inside. The title page of a classic work therein, the PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA, three volumes on the logical foundations of mathematics, bears his name, along with Bertrand Russell's.  The third and final volume of PRINCIPIA appeared in 1913.  PROCESS came out in 1929. So there were sixteen years between them -- a lot of history (and one world war) and a lot of time for reflection.  So ... you might consider Whitehea...

  In a special election Tuesday, February 13, called because of the expulsion of former Congresscritter George Santos (R), the seat in the US House of Representatives for the 3d district from New York went to a Democrat, Tom Suozzi.  This drew a lot of attention: because the Republican margin of control of the House is already very thin, and this makes it thinner. There are possible worlds in which the Democrats end up taking control of the House before this session is over, and Hakeem Jeffries becomes Speaker. This election brings the actual timeline at least a little closer to one of those possible timelines. What came to my mind, though, while I was watching the returns come in, was that this is Gatsby territory. The district maps clearly show the two peninsulas that qualify as real-world analogs of East Egg and West Egg. Somebody should be able to make great symbolic hay out of that fact. I can't come up with anything good, though.  It was Santos who seems almost a Ga...

  In case you are one of the few to whom the news has not yet come: The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the San Francisco 49ers in overtime, 25 to 22. And yes, Taylor Swift was there. She had taken her private jet to Las Vegas from a concert in Japan. A bit of conversation during a post-game hub was captured by a mike. Her love interest, Travis Kelce, also known as the tight end for the victorious Chiefs, whispered to Swift, "How are you not jet lagged?"  She responded, "Jet lag is a choice." A lot might be said about that cheerful exchange, but I choose not to say it. Instead, I will define Kelce's job title.  A tight end is an offensive player who lines up close to the tackle and is used alternatively for two purposes. Sometimes -- on running plays -- he is a blocker.  At other times he runs a pattern in anticipation of a pass.  The name of the position suggests a distinction between the TE and the WR, or wide receiver, who is too far from the "action in the ...

  This year, the Super Bowl featured a match-up between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco Forty-Niners.  I'll discuss that tomorrow.  Today, I'd like to say a few words about the ads, which have long been a hallmark of the Super Bowl as entertainment and pop cultural event. The Super Bowl is guaranteed a massive audience, and the ads are expensively created with that audience in mind, at a cost of about $7 million per second of air time. That isn't what the ads cost to produce, ut is only the cost of airing them. Production costs of course vary wildly but there is no reason to try to cut corners on this.  This year what stands out in my minds were ads for Homes.com and Apartment.com., featuring Jeff Goldblum and  Dan Levy.  I think of them as ONE series of ads because the two websites they advertise are both parts of the portfolio of CoStar group.  Of course Goldblum -- famous among much else for his park in the Jurassic Park franchise -- ha...

The BBC did a report recently about how Russia is evading the sanctions intended to punish its invasion of Ukraine.  Apparently, UK law allows that country to import refined petroleum products without regard to where the crude came from. This creates a neat loophole.  India (whose foreign policy is at best ambivalent on the subject of the war in Ukraine) imports the crude, refines it, and sells it to the UK.   The BBC credits the Centre for Reseach o Energy and Clean Air (CREA) for the key research here.  CREA's Europe-Russia policy analyst, Isaac Levi, is quoted saying, "The issue with this loophole is that it increases the demand for Russian crude and enables higher sales in terms of volume and pushing up their price as well, which increases the funds sent to the Kremlin's war chest." Russian oil getting into UK via refinery loophole, reports claim (bbc.com)

  In 2022, voters in Oregon approved measure 113, which bars from reelection any member of the state legislature with ten or more unexcused absences.  The measure was pressed by public sector labor unions in the state unhappy about the tactic of blocking legislation by avoiding a quorum.  This year, the mousetrap snapped shut and the mice were caught. Ten of Oregon's state senators, each Republicans, have been disqualified from the ballot. Ten out of a total of twelve in the GOP caucus in that body.  What strikes me is something in the NATIONAL REVIEW story on this:   https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/court-disqualifies-all-but-two-of-oregons-republican-state-senators-from-reelection/   NR's Dan McLaughlin wrote that measure 113 was "barely even opposed by Oregon Republicans who were focused on the Governor's race."  What a case of strategic malpractice! I don't know if McLaughlin's account is true. But let us take his word for it for a second...

On Feb. 1, Watershed, a climate software company, raised $100 million from venture capitalists.  This was an all-equity round, i.e. none of the $100 million consists of lent money. Climate software, as you have probably already figured out by now. is software useful for such matters as tracking carbon emissions. An investor will put money into it only on the presumption that people and institutions are going to want to track emissions -- that THIS is a growth industry. It is, I think, good news for the planet that heavy-hitting VC investors like Sequioa and Kleiner Perkins do think so, and ponied up this money.  Watershed announced that the fund-raising valued the company at $1.8 billion.     What does that mean?  Well, it is an invitation to do a little arithmetic. If the new investors put in $100 million and this valued the whole company (100% of equity) at $1.8 billion the implication is that the new owners have taken roughly 5.5 percent of the whole....

  One of the dimensions of happiness is the relationship of obligation to power. Then word "obligation" here you can take as you like: it may be entirely voluntary. If a weightlifter has the ability, (which I like to think of as the power) to press X pounds, then pressing x - 50 may soon get boring, and trying to press X + 50 may soon get frustrating. Pressing at or trying to press just above your power is happiness.   If an office worker has overly difficult tasks and tight deadlines, he will typically feel frazzled, frustrated, burnt-out.  Give him overly easy work and you have to opposite problem.  Bored, listless and maybe again burnt out. Give him something in the zone, within his power or stretching the upper boundary of it and the work is fascinating and absorbing.  In precisely this connection, I think s omeone should write something elegaic about rejection slips. When writers used to send tangible manuscripts out by mail, they/we would get somethin...

   Helium has a bad habit -- unique among the elements -- of escaping our atmosphere.  It exists in individual atoms, (as a "noble" element) and those atoms have a very low mass so they can escape from the gravitic pull of our planet altogether.  As distinct from hydrogen, the only lower-mass atom. Hydrogen atoms naturally combine with oxygen, and fortunately for us all they fall to the ground as beautiful water! But helium, very useful stuff, (not quite so useful as water, but ...) literally floats away from us. We may soon need a new supply.  And mining the moon could provide it. Here is more:   Bing Videos Meanwhile, as I move further into the development of my philosophy of planetary emergentism, I have come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea for the human species to abandon plans to colonize Mars, or anyplace else.  But I have to concede that colonizing our own moon may be a partial exception.  The Earth-moon system is a far ...

  From the book SPEAKING FREELY by renowned first-amendment litigator Floyd Abrams, published back in 2005. He is discussing his involvement in the case of Landmark Communications v. Virginia (1978). A newspaper owned by Landmark had published an (accurate) story that a certain juvenile-court judge in that state was under investigation on a "fitness" grounds. There had not yet been a disciplinary hearing: the investigation might have concluded there was no need for one.  At this point, under Virginia law, the investigation was supposed to be confidential, for the protection of the reputation of the judge and other reasons. The newspaper was criminally prosecuted.   The matter went up to the US Supreme Court where Abrams argued. Abrams maintained that no accurate reporting about the performance of the duties of a public official can constitutionally be criminalized.  This brings us to the bit I want to quote.  Abrams reports that he was discussing this case...

  Interesting twist. Who dunnit?  "Telles has claimed that a local real estate company, Compass Realty & Management,  framed him for German’s  killing . The firm has denied the accusation and has said it is looking into potential legal action against Telles." I'm afraid Compass Realty is out of luck there. There is an absolute immunity from defamation liability for statements made in a judicial proceeding. It is one of the little protections lawyers build into the law for themselves.  Of course he had to come up with something. Authorities say that Robert Telles, formerly the Clark County public administrator, stabbed and killed Jeff German in September 2022.   Telles has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge. The motive, as per prosecutors, stemmed from unflattering articles German had written about Telles’ conduct as a public official. I don't see that Telles alleges that German either had written or was working on ANY negative story about Comp...

Now is a good time to wonder: do neoconservatives have any support in the broad voting population?  Or has the whole 'neocon" thing of the last 60 years or so been an elaborate game within the elites, intellectual policy-wonkish, and politically connected? This is a big question.  After all, the Cheney family is regularly classified as neocon. Dick and Lynne and Liz. Other prominent example of Trump-resisting Republicans fit the label pretty nicely: Bolton, Haley, the latest Podhoretz to be running COMMENTARY....  If we are headed for a rematch one would expect neocon sentiment to side with Biden over Trump after all the water under the bridge.  After Trump has made so clear his utter contempt for them. But ... does it matter? Do the neocons have the numbers to make themselves matter?  Here is a potentially relevant factoid. COMMENTARY says it has 1.2 million monthly page views on average. So there are at least that number of people willing to take neocon ideas ...

  There are fully-formed galaxies very very far away -- more of them than there 'ought' to be according to the Big Bang theory of cosmology as it has developed over the last century or so. When we look at far distances we are of course looking backward in time given the fixed nature of the speed of light. At the very great distances that the JWST can reach we ought to be looking at the early universe, before there had been time for a lot of galaxy formation. It appears that something about the theory will have to be re-worked.  Below there is a link to a story about new developments in astronomy/cosmology: https://www.vox.com/science/24040534/jwst-galaxies-big-bright-mystery-black-holes-cosmology But what I really want to talk about today is that the article in question is a very bad piece of writing. The author, Brian Resnick, takes forever to get around to the point.  Since Resnick buries it here, I just give you in the first graf what should have been his lede: There a...

Quantum mechanics seems a little bit less weird and counter-intuitive now than it did before November. Since around last Thanksgiving a scientific paper has been making the rounds, and gradually it has become grist for science journalists Now the idea has come to you, via my humble blog. The Cheshire cat and its smile do not actually separate in the quantum world.  It has long been thought that certain subatomic particles can be in one place and that certain of their properties can be in another. Ah, what a mystical idea! what a contribution to the reputation of quantum mechanics for sheer weirdness!  Indeed, no less a physicist than Albert Einstein objected to the "spooky stuff" in quantum mechanics in its early development.  Einstein wasn't wrong. There is spooky stuff and it does make quantum physics look like something less-than-ultimate, something that will be explained by something else deeper as thought progresses. If Einstein turns out to be right about that, thou...