by Richard Farr

After I moved from the UK to the US it took me only a couple of years to cede to my friends’ pleas and start driving on the right. When in Rome, and all that. But I still like to irritate Americans by maintaining that we Brits are better at this essential mechanical skill. I mean, when we drive, we drive. Or, OK, we drive while texting, shaving, putting on makeup, or having sex. However, we absolutely draw the line at driving with a gallon of Coke in one hand and a three-pound tub of fries clutched between our sweating thighs, while using a dripping Deluxe Double Bacon MegaBurger with Extra Pepper Jack as the sole point of contact with the steering wheel. 

My wife still teases me about my unwillingness to eat while driving, and conceivably I’m wrong to suspect that getting a spear of dill pickle in the eye increases accident rates on American roads. But on a related safety issue my prejudices have been given support recently both by unimpeachably anecdotal evidence and, better yet, a random video I found on YouTube. 

The typical American freeway has three to five lanes. (If nineteen, you’re in L.A.) Widespread laws ban trucks from the far left lane. A large majority of states have at least something on the books requiring all traffic to move over unless exiting or overtaking. Even those members of the Union in a primitive stage of legal development (Hello CA! Hello MA!) at least encourage this behavior, because everyone who’s ever thought about it agrees that “lane discipline” improves both efficiency and safety.

Yet many American drivers seem never to have thought about it. Whether burger-steering at the speed limit or at that most annoying 4 mph less, they love to camp out in the middle lane or even the left one, sometimes for days at a stretch, strenuously exercising their Constitutional right never to look in the mirror or exhibit any awareness of the traffic around them. Recently on I-5 near Seattle my car and several others were stuck for miles, at sixty-something in a seventy limit, behind three cars that were flying next to one another as if in formation, one per available lane. It was like trying to shop in a hurry at Costco on Saturday.

A video explainer by Christophe Haubursin and Joseph Stromberg, available on Youtube, confirms my darkest suspicions: this one particular national driving tradition / habit / symptom / affliction / pathology, so immediately striking to foreigners, (a) messes with the national blood pressure averages, (b) makes Eisenhower’s magnificent highway system far less efficient than it might be, and (c) kills large numbers of people.  Read more »

Sughra Raza. Ephemeral Apartment Art. Boston January 4, 2025.

Digital photograph.

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by Bill Murray

The same media that warned us against Donald Trump now warn us against tuning out. Though our side has lost, we must now ‘remain engaged’ with the minutiae of Mike Johnson’s majority and all that, strap in, batten down and pay attention.

I was persuaded by media warnings against Donald Trump. Now that we must rise and shine and juice our kale, celery and Granny Smiths over Morning Joe at peril of losing our democracy, I am not so sure.

Last month The Atlantic declared “Decivilization May Already Be Under Way.” The Atlantic is perfect for an article like that. What do you bet the only difference between Jeffrey Goldberg and his readers is, somebody juices his apples and kale for him. Well, that, and that even his friends call him ‘Jeffrey.’

‘Decivilization’ is just overwrought. Except, when I raise my eyes to my bookshelves I find How Civil Wars Start, Why Nations Fail, How Democracies Die, Why Liberalism Failed, Liberalism Against Itself, Tyranny, Inc. and Autocracy, Inc.

Wait! Wait! Wait! What am I doing!?

It’s clearly time for a break. Not because I’m abandoning America. Not to flee MAGA (well, not entirely). It’s time for a little recentering and for the solace of a road trip. So where to go? Read more »

Fire in the Brain

God is a fire in the brain Nijinsky said
which is as close to the truth as
anything a dancer might dance
with a bonfire burning in his head

God may put you in a trance
with the fluttering of cardinal wings
or with the way the moon looks
mounting the mountain’s back
on the other side of the river
—a bright hole in the dark
a splinter of hope
a sliver

Sometimes beyond the blazing bars
of your incarceration
you hallucinate stars

You surmise the sun’s a substantiating eye
but fear that every distance is not near
(not close enough to make the untellable clear)

You dream days
You dream nights

Sometimes you lie without a clue
in the hour of the wolf
waiting for the wolf to bite,
or waiting for the blue to light.
When it does you see crocuses

You taste a cloud of honeysuckle
that sweetly drifts across the yard
where at a certain spot
between the garden and the shed
you swear paradise is here
—precisely here where a skunk
shredded grass the night before
grubbing while you were in bed,
grubbing with a skunky conflagration
in her head

God may burn a brain and brand it
God may shrink it or expand it

This is the bed in which
our ignorance reposes which,
by every blister on our brain,
is both a bed of coals
and roses

by Jim Culleny, 1/22/11
from Odder Still
Lena’s Basement Press, 2015

__________________________________________

(Fire in the Brain is one of 120 poems in my book Odder Still, available at Amazon)

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by Mike O’Brien

I recently read a post by Agnes Callard discussing a philosophical novel (how dreadful) entitled “The Man Without Qualities”. The titular character is an essayist, a figure standing in stark contrast to philosophers. The essayist seeks novelty and surprise, the ephemeral glitters of new and interesting “perspectives”. He lacks the courage for the philosopher’s burdensome and risky enterprise of seeking long and hard for answers that may never reveal themselves. “Thinking long and hard”, writes Callard, “makes sense if you want answers; it makes less sense if the highest reward you anticipate from your intellectual efforts is surprise”.

I was already conscious of the distinction between the writing that I do, and what is done by the philosophers whose work I discuss. But it stings a little more when someone else points it out. Thanks, Agnes.

Casting “The Man Without Qualities” as a cautionary tale of stunted intellectual life, Callard writes that “[t]he book … shows us what it is like to be a thinker without a quest; perpetually idle in spite of all one’s ceaseless, restless intellectual activity.”

Such a description could find no more unfitting targets than Jonathan Birch and his latest book, “The Edge of Sentience”. This publication, like the rest of Birch’s voluminous output, exemplifies the ethic of philosophy as productive work, rather than some kind of divine communion, or clever puzzle-building, or sly apologetics. Birch clearly explains his project to the reader, and frequently re-iterates the book’s key principles and criteria to keep that project firmly in view. He is not trying to surprise or dazzle, or hide gems for only the most insightful and subtle readers to discover through exegetical pilgrimage. This book is not trying to showcase Birch’s talents or seduce the reader into sharing Birch’s prejudices, but rather seeks to clearly convey relevant information and to articulate a consistent set of proposals with reasonable chances of implementation in public institutions. “The Edge Of Sentience” is a book with a public agenda, and Birch executes it well. A recent review in Nature called it “a masterclass in public-facing philosophy”, in case my opinion isn’t authoritative enough for you. Read more »

by Hari Balasubramanian

Ecology is quite distant from my academic work in engineering, but I’ve developed a great love for it in recent years. To learn the basics, I’ve tried many books and articles, but I often turn to the college-level biology textbook Principles of Life. Like many academic texts, this one is not suited for cover-to-cover reading – at over 1000 pages, it is too heavy even to hold comfortably! Still, every time I’ve flipped through its pages, there’s been something interesting to reflect on.

My favorite figure (below) is from the book’s ecology section, and it leads us to the biodiversity theme of this essay. The biological diversity of a region can be quantified in many ways. One intuitive measure is the number of distinct species of a taxonomic group in the region — for instance, the number of species of birds, mammals, or primates found there.

The bar graph on the right shows how the number of butterfly species in the swallowtail family (x-axis) varies by latitude in the Americas (y-axis). In the formal taxonomic system, the family is called Papilionidae and it contains over 550 species. The graph tells us that the number of swallowtail species in the Americas – and hence swallowtail diversity – increases as we move from the higher latitudes in the north and south toward the equator, where it peaks. It’s fascinating that the species count distribution follows a bell curve centered around the equator, but it’s skewed towards the north, perhaps because North America contains more land area. Read more »

by Barry Goldman

Because I serve as an arbitrator for FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, I have a Disclosure Report posted on the FINRA website. That 11-page document shows my employment history, education and training, and it lists every place I’ve had an investment account, every agency where I’ve served as an arbitrator, every professional organization I belong to, and it provides a link to each of my FINRA decisions.

Parties who have cases with FINRA can review that report when they are selecting their arbitration panel. If I am selected to serve on a panel, I am required to complete a more case-specific Arbitrator Disclosure Checklist. That 14-page document requires me to disclose:

1. any direct or indirect financial or personal interest in the outcome of the arbitration;
2. any existing or past financial, business, professional, family, social, or other relationships or circumstances with any party, any party’s representative, or anyone who the arbitrator is told may be a witness in the proceeding, that are likely to affect impartiality or might reasonably create an appearance of partiality or bias;
3. any such relationship or circumstances involving members of the arbitrator’s family or the arbitrator’s current employers, partners, or business associates; and
4. any existing or past service as a mediator for any of the parties in the case for which the arbitrator was selected.

There’s more. The duty to disclose is ongoing. We could be four days into a hearing when a witness appears who I recognize from a previous case. I have a duty to disclose that fact when it occurs. FINRA arbitrators are required to complete training programs periodically, and the organization produces several publications. The thrust of those training programs and many of the publications is the importance of disclosure. The rule is to disclose anything that may appear to present a conflict of interest. The threshold is low: if the potential for the appearance of a conflict occurs to us, we are required to disclose it.

There are two reasons for this. Read more »

by Derek Neal

What do swimming, running, bicycling, dancing, pole jumping, tying shoelaces, and reading all have in common? According to John Guillory’s new book On Close Reading, they are all cultural techniques; in other words, skills or arts involving the use of the body that are widespread throughout a society and can be improved through practice. The inclusion of reading (and perhaps, tying shoelaces) may come as a surprise, but it is Guillory’s goal in this slim volume to convince us that reading, and in particular, the practice of “close reading,” is a technique just like the others he mentions. This is his explanation for the questions he explores throughout the book—namely, why the practice of “close reading” has resisted precise definition, and why the term itself was so seldom used by the New Critics, the group of theorists most associated with it.

Guillory’s own proposal for a definition of close reading is “showing the work of reading.” If this definition seems slight and unsatisfactory, it should. Guillory wants to avoid endlessly theorizing close reading because like all techniques, he says, it is better understood via demonstration and imitation. I agree with Guillory. If one wants to learn how to dance, one does not read a book on dancing; instead, they watch others dance and then mimic the movements they see until they can do it on their own. Close reading is the same, writes Guillory—“cultural techniques…cannot be specified verbally in such a way as to permit their transmission by verbal means alone.” If we want to learn how to close read, we might watch a teacher model close reading—perhaps they project a poem or a paragraph from a novel onto a screen (the standard objects for a close reading), analyze the language in it by identifying various poetic devices, such as symbolism or imagery, reveal an interpretation of the text in this way, then write an essay explaining their reading of the text. This is “showing the work of reading,” and after students observe the teacher doing it, they can try it and refine their technique through repeated practice. One could, of course, attempt a close reading of a text from the example I’ve outlined here, but it would be a bit like showing up to a dance having read about dancing but never having seen it practiced: demonstration and imitation are much more effective than theorizing.

Most readers will have their own experiences of close reading; I have two that I remember well. Read more »

by Laurence Peterson

When I started as a Monday columnist at 3 Quarks Daily in July of last year, my debut piece consisted of an updated and revised version of a longer, never published essay I had written pretty much at the time the late Princeton Professor Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit appeared in book form in 2005. Back then, literary references to bullshit almost always took on a still cheeky, irreverent undertone at the very least, and I adopted the sentiment in the beginning and conclusion of my 3QD contribution. But now, I will suggest, bullshit is serious business.

Before I elaborate on that claim, allow me to, as concisely as I can, summarize the argument I put forth in the July article. Frankfurt made the case that the essence of bullshit involved, more than anything else, a distinction between bullshit and lying: that the bullshitter, unlike the liar, does not misrepresent the truth; s/he merely adopts an attitude of indifference towards it. Clearly, this definition allows us to appreciate the vast latitude that allows the bullshitter to, if you will allow me to use a word that has become fashionable in certain circles recently, “weave” between layers of reality (and, of course unreality) in a far less restricted way than is generally afforded the potential liar. But from the moment I read Frankfurt’s essay, I thought his definition left something utterly essential out of a proper conception of bullshit, something whose incorporation into discussions of the notion of bullshit would go a long way towards accounting for the visceral emotional states that tend to accompany its appearance in ordinary usage. And it would confront something Frankfurt didn’t even seem to believe constituted a problem, namely, what the phenomenon of bullshit revealed about social relations in which employing bullshit often made so much sense.

What I thought Frankfurt was missing was, going beyond the mere intention of the bullshitter, a place for a sentiment on the part of those subjected to bullshit that no effective means exist to challenge the statement, implied proposition or even deed being expressed, put forward, implied, relied upon, or whatever by the bullshitter. Inclusion of this place in the account would, in turn, shed light on the social relations in which lack of means to such challenges can be enforced in the first place. It would also account for the unique sense of frustration, and even rage that characterizes the experience of being, or at least feeling, bullshitted. Frankfurt’s definition didn’t seem to me to imply or address any of these things in an important way. Yet it remained, as far as I could see, the sole, almost canonical reference in literary and philosophical discussions of bullshit, even after twenty years. Read more »

Not sure what has caused this river-like pattern in the greenish growth on this vertical concrete wall near where I live. It looks like a path water might take through a flattish landscape but this is a vertical wall. Any guesses?

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by Rachel Robison-Greene

Public philosophy isn’t new. The image that many people conjure up when they picture a quintessential philosopher—the image of Socrates—is the image of a public philosopher. Socrates didn’t write articles. He didn’t publish in peer reviewed journals. He had conversations with members of his community about subjects that matter. The practice of public philosophy is thriving today in a surprising number of forms. Different approaches give rise to meta-level questions about the nature of philosophy in general and the nature of public philosophy in particular. I’ll provide a non-exhaustive discussion of some of these approaches and then I’ll discuss perks and pitfalls of one approach in particular.

One of the most common forms that public philosophy takes is work written for a broad audience rather than an academic one. Public philosophers of this type write articles for media outlets and blogs as well as books intended for consumption by non-specialists. This work relays information or offers arguments. One advantage of such an approach is that experts can (ideally) summarize a critical mass of information succinctly, making it possible for the community to get at the heart of a philosophical issue quickly. 1,000 Word Philosophy, for instance, presents enduring philosophical questions along with summaries of some of the most compelling answers on offer in easily digestible articles.

Another form that public philosophy can take is facilitating active engagement with the history of philosophy. Public philosophers of this type might host open talks and panel discussions with experts. They might put together community reading groups. In Italy, a group of public philosophers has put together a philosophy museum that is open to the public. This form of public philosophy emphasizes the enterprise as a great conversation taking place across the duration of human history.

The third type of public philosophy and the type that I’ll discuss at length here is the approach that brings communities together to facilitate important conversations. This occurs in many settings: street corners, libraries, coffee houses, pizza parlors, and this approach acknowledges the philosophical spirit in everyone: the ability to give and respond to reasons, the capacity to develop and react with apt emotions in particular circumstances, the potential to weigh evidence and evaluate the trustworthiness of sources, and so on. Community members are actively participating in crafting and critiquing arguments. My husband, Dr. Richard Greene and I have put on many such events. We call them “Ethics Slams.” We’ve discussed issues such as climate change, gun control reform, and cancel culture. We begin by presenting a list of philosophical goals and commitments and then proceed to moderate open mic public conversations. Read more »

by Eric Schenck

“Think you can beat me today?”

I don’t have to think about my answer.

“100 percent. Might even break the course record.”

It’s three weeks before Christmas. Overly happy music is everywhere and everybody is out shopping. In this time of jolly tidings, my older sister and I have decided to have the ultimate showdown:

18 holes of mini golf.

Hannah has dubbed herself Princess Putt-Putt, but I’m not impressed.

It’s time to win.

*

Hannah is the closest to me in age. In a family of four brothers, she’s the only girl. And, as luck would have it, the middle child.

Surrounded by sibling relationships built on farts and sex jokes, the relationship I have with my sister is different. A little classier. A bit more refined. In a loud family, Hannah is a breath of fresh air, and she’s been there for me more than just about anyone.

But today none of that matters, because I have one goal and one goal only:

To destroy her.

*

Hidden Valley Miniature Golf is where it’s happening. The place is extra charming because it’s the same name as our hometown.

When we get there, though, it’s locked up.

We are about to drive away when our salvation arrives. An old man is shouting at us, walking down the steps of the motel next door. He drags his foot when he walks and has a lazy eye.

“Glad I caught ya. Don’t get many folks out here this time of year.”

I reach inside the car and give Hannah a thumbs up. Apparently an old guy sits on a motel balcony and just waits for people to show up. This has serial killer written all over it.

It’s all very weird, but somehow, for a place specializing in putt-putt, it’s exactly what I’d expect.

We don’t ask questions. All that matters is that he’s letting us in, because we’ve got ten bucks on the line. Read more »

by Brooks Riley

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by Rebecca Baumgartner

I’m trying to read Walden. I also own a phone that gives me instantaneous access to the internet. These two things seem fundamentally at odds.

Whether our phone usage is a literal addiction that operates on the brain in the same way that alcohol and other addictive substances do, or whether the term “addiction” in this case is merely a metaphor, reasonable people agree that there is a problem with the way we use our phones. 

To own a smartphone is to look at a smartphone – a lot, often to the detriment of our happiness, productivity, relationships, social skills, and awareness of the world around us (both in the mundane yet potentially deadly “Hey, the light turned green” sort of way and the abstract “Look at that beautiful cloud” sort of way).

Most of us are worried about, frustrated about, and/or ashamed of who we become when our phones are in our hands. Obviously, this is not true of all smartphone users, but it is true enough, for enough people, that we should take heed of the insight underlying the generalization. 

While I haven’t fallen into the pit of Devil’s Snare that is Instagram or TikTok (or whatever the coolest data harvesting app is right now), I don’t consider myself at all virtuous when it comes to how I use my phone. This is because I let it consistently keep me from doing the things I truly love – first and foremost among them, reading. 

It’s not just that having a phone always at hand ruins my concentration and makes reading more difficult. It does that, for sure. But it’s also that having a tiny portal to the internet a few inches away makes particular types of reading even more difficult. If a book demands a level of engagement that seems deliberately calculated to drive a 2025 reader insane – as Walden does – it comes to seem philosophically impossible, or at least unreasonably hard, to make your way through it when your phone remains a viable option for your attention. As it always is. Read more »

Sughra Raza. Approaching Washington, November 2024.

Digital photograph.

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by Martin Butler

Behind many debates in contemporary culture lie two opposed perspectives on the human world. One argues that ordinary life consists largely of ‘social constructs’ in a sense ‘made up’ by human beings. They have no fixed reality beyond the human cultures and institutions in which they exist. Obvious examples are marriage, money and national borders. Others are more controversial: gender, standards of beauty, ethnicity, patriarchy, religious belief, adolescence, and so on. On the other side of the argument is the view that at least some of these concepts have a factual reality, whether based in biology, human nature, genetics, human evolution or some other deeper reality, an essential nature which is not merely the product of human culture. The term ‘essentialism’ is often used to describe this approach.

Social constructivism is a theory that has its home within the social sciences, it is not meant as a philosophical theory on a par with idealism, for example, which provides a global account of the nature of reality. Presumably describing something as a social construction contrasts it with what is not constructed. Few would want to argue that the atomic mass of carbon is a social construction. So social constructivism is a theory that sits within a broadly naturalistic account of reality. Despite appearances it has this much in common with at least the more scientific (usually biological) forms of essentialism. The debate, then, is presented as being about where to place the divide between the natural and the specifically human. We might say that money is uncontroversially a social construction and the atomic mass of carbon is uncontroversially not a human construction. The controversy exists in the middle ground.

I think this opposition distorts the issue. The language of ‘constructions’ obscures the fact that the human world is composed for the most part of normative practices. Normative practices are about what we do and say as we interact with each other and the world around us. A simple example is how we greet each other, something which shows considerable cultural variation. Crucially there is an appropriate and inappropriate way to greet someone, depending on relationship and context, and this is what makes such a practice normative. A construction of any sort suggests a static entity in the way that a chair is a physical construction, but it is these practices that matter and there is no sense in which they are static, nor do they ‘construct’ entities.

More importantly, the language of ‘constructions’ suggests artificiality in some sense, as if these constructions lack the reality of the natural world. Surely this is an empty comparison. To claim that national borders or marriage are only ‘constructions’ suggests a level of deception in cultures that treat these things seriously. To look reality squarely in the face, it is implied, is to recognise that they are not ‘real’. However, we may represent borders as lines on a map and regard these lines as in some sense fictional, but in no way does this get to the core of what a national border actually is. Read more »