I Like Big Books

In honour of the start of research time: From here.

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Oh, Crud. I missed my own Blogoversary

So I guess this blog was two years old yesterday. What do you do when you miss your own blogoversary? Do you punish yourself? Make yourself promise to make it up to you later? I don’t know. I guess you can always offer yourself excuses, like ‘but I am marking, that takes all of my [...]

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The Utilitarian Calculus and Ordering Textbooks for Class

Utilitarianism is basically the moral view that in order to judge whether an action is good one should consider the consequences and then evaluate whether the act provides the most good to the greatest number of people. (It is more complex than that, as you can see from the description at this link, but the nuts and [...]

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What is Wrong with Wanting the Best for Your Kids?

When parents discuss their choices about their children’s education and extracurricular activities they often mention that they want the best for their children: I just want the best for my kids. I want my daughter to have all possible advantages. I want my son to have a head start. This attitude is usually taken to [...]

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The A-ness and the P-ness: Philosophy is Funny

Today at the writing centre we had several students come in who were taking their first ethics class. I was trying to explain that the task of the assignment was to identify some property (or set of properties) or principle that make the described case morally troublesome. I did not want to give away what [...]

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“What Teachers Make” Taylor Mali

A little bit of love for teachers, since last post was rather critical. “What Teachers Make” by Taylor Mali Also see his website http://www.taylormali.com/ for more poems and videos.

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Open Letter to Professors and TAs who are Grading Papers

Re: Please refrain from writing “who cares?” “so what?” and other similar statements when grading student papers. The writing centre gets busy at this time of year as the term draws to a close and essays and assignments are nearing their due date. Many students are coming in with earlier assignments to seek advice on [...]

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On Writing a Dissertation

My dissertation is like a long-term relationship, and right about now I would love to have a fling with a term paper. My dissertation, I love you, I think you are the most worthwhile idea I have tried to pursue, but you frustrate me. Why are we having this argument again? I thought last month [...]

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Elation

Today I finished a decent draft of my dissertation about a relational view of respect. I still have some things to smooth out, but it is now a coherent idea. I feel elated. Perhaps there will be more posts from me in the near future. Yippi!

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Male Studies and the A/~A Construction of Categories

There has been a lot of buzz about “Male Studies” this week, since the announcement of The Foundation for Male Studies, which won’t get a link from me. Now I am all for studying men and masculinities, but I don’t think it sounds like there is much value to this particular approach. I don’t want [...]

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