So I just finished reading, writing the reader's report for, and submitting the reader's report for a manuscript that I agreed to evaluate for Very Good Journal, and I'm left feeling... Oh, I'm left with a lot of feelings.First, can I just say that this is service I really, really like. In theory. Even though it's basically invisible. I like reading stuff that may be the Newest Thing in my field, I like feeling like ...

Republicans apparently did not receive the memo about being down-mouthed and worried after the Democrat's remarkable week in Denver.

Gustav is intensifying again, and threatens to bring a destructive storm surge that will offer a significant test to New Orleans' rebuilt levees when it strikes Louisiana on Monday. Gustav tore across Cuba with 150 mph winds last night, but Cuba exacted a heavy toll on the storm. Passage over Cuba allowed wind shear to penetrate into the core of the storm, disrupting the eyewall and cutting the storm's winds by 35-45 mph. However, Gustav's ...

I've previously defended purely theoretical inquiry, but it's also worth noting that philosophical assumptions abound in ordinary folk and their ways of thinking about the world. Moreover, many of these assumptions are patently false -- the result of lazy conflation, perhaps, or simply not noticing an (obviously true once you see it) alternative possibility. So I think philosophy is especially good at helping us to notice and correct these common errors in our thinking. (It's ...

In anticipation of Gustav…. Here’s what Hurricane Dean looked like for the crew flying in a NASA space shuttle last August. You can check out more NASA videos on YouTube here. It’s also added to our YouTube playlist. Thanks to Bill for pointing this out. (Readers: If you see good pieces of cultural media, feel free to send them our way.) Related Content: What Genius Looks Like at Zero Gravity Subscribe to Our Feed

It's gratifying, somewhat, to find people from Glenn Greenwald at Salon to several bloggers at Firedoglake blogging about the creepy police state tactics that are going on here in the Twin Cities on the eve of the Republican National Convention, aka "The Also-Rans."A series of raids has swept across the city (the Uptake has a google map showing the raids) and they all follow the same pattern - a generic warrant (pdf) (sometimes shown or ...

Dear Joe Biden, This is your opponent. In case you hadn't noticed, she's a woman. John McCain's party is the party that doesn't give a shit about women. They don't want women to have ownership and control over their bodies, and they don't care whether women get equal pay for equal work. John McCain himself is an inveterate sexist, and it's written all over the way he talks about women, and the way he votes ...

Anthony Appiah's presidential address at the last Eastern APA, which was on experimental philosophy, can be read there. Edouard

Fifteen years ago, AOL was actually kind of cool. It provided email, shopping, entertainment, and chat applications through a slow internet connection to millions of people. But over time, the popularity waned as people realized they're better off bypassing AOL for the actual world wide web. To me, this seems quite similar to the state of the mobile industry, including the iPhone today. 1. It's slow. 2. The carrier acts as a gatekeeper to content ...

Gary Rhoades, who transformed our understanding of the professoriate with the publication of Managed Professsionals and Academic Capitalism in the New Economy, will join Cary Nelson at the helm of the AAUP in January. As director of the Institute for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona, he is already a leading international authority on the complex of issues most pressing for AAUP: the assault on faculty culture by administration via the ...

Today we have the pleasure of welcoming a guest contribution by Eleena de Lisser, who runs Voices en Español, a bilingual blog and conversational Spanish podcast (iTunes - RSS Feed). In this post, Eleena draws on her experience and offers an overview of the best free podcasts that will teach you Spanish (which happens to be the number one second language studied in the United States). Other Spanish podcasts can be found in our larger ...

Today we have the pleasure of welcoming a guest contribution by Eleena de Lisser, who runs Voices en Español, a bilingual blog and conversational Spanish podcast (iTunes - RSS Feed). In this post, Eleena draws on her experience and offers an overview of the best free podcasts that will teach you Spanish (which happens to be the number one second language studied in the United States). Other Spanish podcasts can be found in our larger ...

Here’s another good submission (many thanks) that came out of last week’s book giveaway… It’s an animated film called The Story of Stuff, which offers “a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something …. and it just ...

Christian Barry and Matt Peterson have just launched an interesting new audio podcast series: “We’re pleased to announce the launch of our new program, Public Ethics Radio and its website, www.publicethicsr.... The idea of this (roughly) 30 minute audio program is to engage ethicists in discussion of pressing practical dilemmas. Each program will focus on a particular theme—military intervention, international trade, political corruption—and take as its starting point some more specific issue that is prominent ...

Here’s another good submission (many thanks) that came out of last week’s book giveaway… It’s an animated film called The Story of Stuff, which offers “a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something …. and it just ...