Wittgenstein on Whether Speech Is Violence
...meaning of a word? If you were one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy students, this question would have occupied the preponderance of your term, as it did Wittgenstein’s academic life. To...
Little People on TV: Educational or Exploitative?
...ATM machines. The organization has also fought exploitative forms of entertainment, such as dwarf tossing or midget wrestling. The philosophy of the movement has been to embrace dwarfism, much as...
Failure Has Always Been a Key to Success
...harmful) attitude towards failure as mark of shame. Now, the “fail better” philosophy has worked its way out of entrepreneurship and into curriculums. As universities find their students struggling to...
Scientific Researchers Need to Open Up to Collaboration
My day at lab used to start out with making a to-do list for the multiple projects I was working on. I was the only one working on these projects,...
The End of “Here And Now”
I am in an empty classroom at my kids’ school in Vancouver, where I’ve commandeered a desk and set up my computer. I can hear the music class underway next...
Suggested Readings: Fake Surgery, Unending Plastic, and the Enduring Jane Austen
...little about Chinese thought traditions. That’s because so few U.S. philosophy departments teach it. The upside of ugly (The New Yorker) by Alan Burdick Many studies have found that attractive...
Grief? There’s an App for That.
Science, philosophy and religion alike have all grappled with grief; its cause, purpose, and cure. After years of inquiry and investigation, we’re not far from where we started. The dystopian...
The Statistics of Coin Tosses for Theater Geeks
Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads. Heads, again. Tom Stoppard’s classic play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead opens with two Elizabethan players, some well-stocked prop moneybags,...
Frederick Law Olmsted: The Complicated Man Behind Central Park & The Nation
...his long-term opposition to creating space for athletic amusements. Olmsted dabbled in political philosophy. While a well-traveled man, he was concerned about the social and cultural implications of rootlessness. The...
The U.S. Representative Who Tried to Outlaw War
...the WPU, but she later embraced their philosophy. And though the idea of fighting war with laws is long gone, it’s a fascinating glimpse into what once could have been....