Category: Philosophy as a Way of Life
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American Geographic Polarization
Research shows that partisans aren’t purposefully walling themselves off. There is no intentional Big Sort. Such geographic polarization—where supporters of one or the other party cluster together in homogeneous enclaves, producing localities with lopsided distributions of political preferences—has been growing steadily in the United States since the 1970s. According to…
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Nuclear Pasta: Strongest Material in Universe Discovered in Neutron Star Crust
The strongest material in the universe has been discovered: nuclear pasta from neutron stars. The material is so intense it could never exist on Earth—if somehow a tiny amount were transported here, it would explode like a nuclear bomb. Instead it can be found deep inside the crust of the…
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We need to understand that disaster is slow
Defining a disaster as an “event” has a history extending to the 1960s, when federal funds were spent to model the social impact of a nuclear attack. To do this, Civil Defense officials commissioned studies of proxies of an attack, like earthquakes, tornadoes and hurricanes, all disasters that affect multiple…
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This Changes Everything | Vanity Fair
Hollywood’s most powerful women appear in the Geena Davis-produced documentary This Changes Everything, which draws a direct line between the president and the industry’s sea change. — Read on www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/09/this-changes-everything-toronto-film-festival-documentary-weinstein-trump-me-too “Hours after This Changes Everything concluded to a standing ovation, director Tom Donahue told Vanity Fair why it was so…
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The neuroscience of nostalgia | Al Jazeera America
The term “nostalgia” was coined in the late 17th century by a Swiss physician named Johannes Hofer. He used the roots of two Greek words, “nostos” and “algos” — meaning “suffering” and “origins” — to describe what he thought was a neurological disorder affecting Swiss mercenaries. Although the clinical definition…
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Greek Natural Philosophy
The first edition of the text on Presocratic philosophy which I co-authored with J. Baird Callicott and John van Buren is now available for adoption from Cognella. Greek Natural Philosophy presents the primary sources on the Presocratics in a straightforward way in order to tell a coherent story about the…
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Max Liboiron at #AnthropocenePHL
The opening keynote at the Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia was Prof. Max Liboiron: How We Do Science on Permanent Plastic Pollution. Max Liboiron is a feminist environmental scientist, science and technology studies (STS) scholar, and activist. As an Assistant Professor in Geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Liboiron directs Civic Laboratory for Environmental…
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Socrates in the Anthropocene
I want to thank Scott Knowles for encouraging me to leave my little town of Denton, Texas, and come up here for the Anthropocene Campus Philadelphia at Drexel University. A word of warning as I follow up my colleagues on the roving plenarist panel: I never say anything new because there is…
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Forget Coates vs. West — We All Have a Duty to Confront the Full Reach of U.S. Empire
Even when our work is primarily focused nationally or hyperlocally, as it is for most organizers and writers, there is still a pressing need for an internationalist conception of power to inform our analysis. This is not a contradiction. In fact, it used to be foundational to all major radical…
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Abnormal Responses: Coaxing Animal Being into a Clearing
There is a great responsibility in being those who not only name things but gather the world. Surely a part of that responsibility rests in letting things simply be themselves and not be turned toward some human end. It means being silent alongside those who do not speak words yet…
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The Feeling is Mutual: Interview with scott crow – RABBLE LIT
…one thing is to recognize that there can be conflict. Anarchy doesn’t mean that everything will be conflict-free… If someone else’s desires and needs don’t impede on my own… in communal terms, if they’re not trying to extract resources, time, people, oil, or whatever, if they’re not using violence to…
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What Ph.D. graduates have in common with industrial Rust Belt workers (essay)
A PhD in classics mulls over the future of graduate studies and the need for alt-academics. Truth: The need to discover new outlets for those who continue onward in graduate studies has become most real. I myself plan to do what I can to become a Philosophical Counselor. But my…
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New Speculative Fiction Anthology Explodes the Mainstream Trans Narrative
A new collection of stories from trans authors who go well outside the status quo box in exploring how trans signifies more than assimilation to the main stream. Rather than make a meaningful difference in the lives and acceptance of transgender people, the Trans Tipping Point [of 2014] was a…
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Plants–the slowest of animals
I’m in a Philosophy of Animals class this semester. One of my last courses before I begin the dissertation process. Already by the second meeting, we got in a bit of debate about how we distinguish animals as more morally worthy than plants. Our readings focused on neo-Aristotlean phenomenologies of…
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New TV AntiHeroes as archetypes of the American nightmare
This seems right to me. The dark heroes or antiheroes of TV–and I would go back to The Sopranos for the beginning of this–represent the fundamental fear of the “middle class” losing everything in one fell swoop. Life becomes about the happenstance safety nets we weave for ourselves and the…
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Caring less
Andrew Taggart at QUARTZ… Once we’ve gotten the knack for embracing the idea that certain things in life are wondrous because they’re not focused on getting through, onto, or ahead of something, we can turn our attention to ourselves, inquiring into our own lives. Socrates’ great insight involved showing his…
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INTRO TO PHIL, fall 2017
I will be saving my white boards here for my students. From time to time, I will record by lectures. But I won’t be doing this everyday like I did in my summer Existentialism course. Questions raised in morning class Questions raised in afternoon class Monday, 28 August 2017–Happy St.…
CALL ME MAGGIE 
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