Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

  I hereby inform my readers that I will not be doing the usual post-Supreme-Court term round-up this year.  Most Julys for many years now, I have devoted four long blog entries to the term of the US Supreme Court that has just ended.  This year, I'm not feeling it.  There have been a lot of intriguing decisions this term. I have written posts on some of they as we have proceeded.  But the elaborate round-up? No thanks.  And ...sorry to disappoint.  By the way, the fact that I have just been using the word "round-up" reminds me of the fact that one of the cases decided by the Court this term literally did involve a product named Round Up.  https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1068_n7ip.pdf 

    From Quora, question and answer How should I get started with philosophy? I'm 15 years old. That is a very good time for it. You might want to try to define for yourself what kind of philosophy problem most interests you and cluster your readings (and your early manuscripts) there. Many young people are driven by social/political concerns. Can philosophers say something foundational about these concerns? Can it help us get a Big Picture into which the day-to-day headlines and debates will fit? If that is what you mean by philosophy, you might want to look to John Rawls, Robert Nozick, and older figures like Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke. Others are feeling a more existential angst. What is the point of even getting out of bed in the morning? Do my actions matter? Are they determined anyway, so that I am just a ping-pong ball bouncing around? If those questions are what philosophy means to you, I suggest the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and a follow-up with the work of Willi...

As soon as Abraham Lincoln received a favorable battle report from Gettysburg in early July 1863, he at once paired the time of year with the time in which the United States had declared its independence from its mother country, and before long Lincoln did the arithmetic.  The two events were separated by 87 years. Months passed before Lincoln spoke on the subject of that battle and its consequences (in November), but his famous address on that occasion begins with the invocation of the length of time that passed between the two events: four score and seven years.  This is likely the only reason the word "score" in that sense remains in the English language.  All of which, as we close in on the 250th anniversary of the same declaration of independence, induces me to ask: what happened just 87 years ago as I write?  That would be 1939. What happened on independence day that year? Four score and seven years ago, legendary first baseman Lou Gehrig delivered a farewell a...

  In Isabellas County, Michigan, the Pung family lost its ranch style home due to a mere $2,242 in disputed taxes.  The country government sold the place for $76K at a public auction. The buyer then flipped it for $195,000.  I'm a recovering anarcho-capitalist, so I will try not to go on too much of a bender about how much this sucks.  But boy is the world of property taxation and enforcement offering up a delicious cuba libre to someone who is trying to get with the twelve steps, here!!! In May 2023, U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Tyler v. Hennepin County that home equity theft is unconstitutional. The Court determined that seizing excess value over a tax debt violates the fifth amendment's taking clause.   So was Pung simply a straightforward application of Tyler ? No such luck.  Lower courts essentially gave the Pungs the difference between the tax debt and the public auction value. But the Pungs asked the Supreme Court to affirm that (...

A poor third place finish for a Kennedy. And in the State of New York, no less -- the state where former Attorney General Bobby Kennedy served as US Senator. from his election in November 1964 until his assassination almost four years later.  The primary campaign for the Democratic nomination to be the Congress critter from the 12th district NY -- midtown Manhattan, along with both the upper East and West sides -- was the first ever political campaign for Jack Schlossberg.  Schlossberg is the son of Caroline Kennedy, and so he is the grandson of a President and the grand-nephew of the aforesaid AG and Senator.  Whatever.  Micah Lasher won with 39 percent of the vote. The second-place finisher was Alex Bores, with 35 percent. Schlossberg was far behind with just 10 percent. George Conway was in the mix, too.  [At least Schlossberg beat Conway].  Voting turnout was likely key here.  Lasher drew his strength from the Upper West side (pictured) where votin...

  One of the important financial economists writing today is Mohamed El-Erian, who grew up as the son of an Egyptian diplomat and was the deputy director of the IMF for three years in the 1990s. He is quite well known to folks like me, who look to his analyses to guide our work reporting day to day events.  But he is not well known at all to the "general public," where that term is taken to mean the sort of people who know that Paul Krugman or Robert Shiller are important economists.  I'm old enough to remember when Friedman and Galbraith were the economists whose name came to the tongue of many non-economists. They both passed away in the first decade of the new millennium, and the public attention has done what it does ... it has passed on. I may say more about El-Erian's non-celebrity work soon.  For now, I will only lay down that he has recently said that on June 24, "The most notable price action in US markets" was the fall by 9 basis points of US gover...