On the naivete of brain science
Author Archives: Luke Rodgers
6 questions for Richard Posner
March 17, 2010 – 3:11 pm
Interview from March 2010 issue of Haper’s with Richard Posner, judge on U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals and law professor at University of Chicago, regarding his apparent 180° turn regarding laissez-faire capitalism. Six Questions for Richard Posner on Capitalism and Crisis.
Why do all thesauri seem to suck?
February 25, 2010 – 10:43 am
When I’m using a thesaurus, it generally is not because I want to find, as a synonym for “sad,” a word like “gloomy” or “unhappy.” It’s because I’m looking for something like “lugubrious.”
Show me a thesaurus that will give me synonyms like “mendicant,” “tarradiddle,” “recrudescence,” “bowdlerize,” or “sigil,” and I will be happy convivial.
Unabomber weighs in on ancient Egyptian dwarf-worship
February 24, 2010 – 12:55 am
Letter to the Editor, New York Review of Books, Vol. 52, No. 12, July 2005
In “Survival of the Smallest” {NYR, March 10], István Deák writes on page 22: “In ancient Egypt, dwarfs were often venerated like gods.” Deák here is discussing pathological dwarfs. However, Paul Schebesta, Die Bambuti-Pygmäen vom Ituri (Brussels: Institut Royal Colonial Belge, [...]
Goethe-recognition FAIL
February 21, 2010 – 6:11 pm
Goethe in same room as unaware Hölderlin; hilarity ensues
Logic of post-modern thought
February 19, 2010 – 12:57 pm
The role played by “sympathy” in the middle ages, as Foucault develops it in The Order of Things, is today played by “contagion” (though we don’t know it).