Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

In the US, politically conscious folk have been so absorbed of late in our own national soap operas --about the Putin-Trump relationship, about an open Supreme Court seat, about real or alleged discussions of the 25th amendment, about the political implications of the latest version of A Star is Born , about the midterm Congressional elections -- so much on our plates that we may have lost track of what is going on in the Mother Country. Some fascinating and dramatic developments are underway there, as the effectuation of the Brexit vote of 2016 comes to a head. I'll simply offer you some pertinent links today. If all goes according the schedule, Great Britain will cease to be part of the European Union in March 2019. What if you want to move some products across the Channel in April? How will this matter to you then? That remains surprisingly unsettled. The underlying idea in the minds of many of those who supported a "Leave" vote was that Britain could adopt ...

Does anyone else understand this? In the second debate, asked about energy policy, Trump responded with an example of his customary stream-of-consciousness. I won't quote it or try to dissect it all. But it ended with this. Trump talked about how foreign companies are buying US companies in the oil & gas market, in order to get a hold on their plants. They are "buying so many of our different plants and then rejiggering the plant so they can take care of their oil." Huh? I don't know what he means by this and nobody yet has been able to enlighten me. Let's take a stab at it: he means buying oil companies to get their refineries? Let's try to be specific. In 2011, a major international oil company, Statoil, spent $4.4 billion Brigham Resources, a small but innovative shale-oil firm active in North Dakota.  Statoil is 67% owned by the Kingdom of Norway. So is Norway having refineries (or "plants" in any sense) rejiggered so they can t...

I begin this year, as I seem to begin each year, with three calendars. I have a new desktop/appointment calendar from American Express; a month-by-month wall calendar advertising the Boston Red Sox baseball team, and a day-to-day calendar atop my dresser filled with trivia regarding a television program, The Big Bang Theory. The AMEX calendar, as is its year-by-year custom, tells me to travel to various exotic places where I can use my blue card to go into debt. Among the locales highlighted this year: Cancun, Mexico;  Oslo, Norway; Cusco, Peru. In connection with the latter, we're told amidst space for mid-September 2015 appointments that visitors to high-altitude Cuzco should keep well hydrated and avoid heavy meals and alcohol. Got it. The Red Sox calendar gives the stats for different players each month, starting in January with Jon Lester, Pitcher, #31. Lester also gets a very dramatic photo portraying him in full stretch, mid-pitch.  If you're curious, he was born...

Allow me to get in my own two cents (and yes, I realize I'm rather late to this party) about the EU's receipt of the Peace Prize. The Peace Prize is awarded by a committee that is selected by Norway's Parliament.   Follow that link for some particulars. It is fitting, then (nay, it is pragmatically compelling) to observe that Norway isn't a member of the EU. Norway has twice held referenda to determine whether it would join, and in both cases the go-it-alone faction prevailed: 1972 and 1994. The Peace Prize is apparently justified this year by a simple and seemingly pragmatic tie: Europe hasn't gone to war since the nations thereof became a single economic unit. That is pretty clearly a post hoc ergo propter hoc argument, and thus a fallacy. Heck, the US hasn't had a civil war since the EU was created either, but even the Nobel Committee doesn't seem to draw that connection. I'll only note as a counter that Norway itself has managed to s...