Meta and Meta

Clinton Derangement Among the Democrats

At the risk of alienating myself from the entire civilized liberal blogosphere, let me state a concern about Obama's candidacy. As against the Clintons, Obama has by-and-large been the beneficiary of prevailing media narratives. E.g., The Clintons Are Playing The Race Card. E.g., The Clintons Are Twisting Obama's Words. E.g., The Clintons Are A Dynasty. Etc.*

I'm In-Tensed

Funny language error in this Slate piece on "natural language analysis" of our president's unnatural language: "[T]hink about that corrugated green line under a sentence in Microsoft Word reminding you to avoid passive tense...." (My emphasis.)

So nearly true (you should avoid 'passive tense').

From My List Of Things That Make You Feel Old Grown-Up

Number 13: When you find out your old primary school (in my case, Smale Preparatory School in Barbados, West Indies) has become a bona fide ruin:

All Men Are Created...Homogeneous?

David Frum, from Comeback Conservatism, "[W]hat is inequality but another form of 'diversity'? And what is 'equality' but another word for homogeneity?"

Indeed, what are words but noises that mean whatever hacks want them to?

Ali Oops!

Wow. I'd hate to have the majority construe this TSA notice:

"We encourage everyone to pack gel-filled bras in their checked baggage."

(HT to Jason Stanley.)

Alienation and the Private Dick

From Ken Worpole's "Dockers & Detectives":

Go Fly A Kite

David Papineau reviews John Searle for the TLS. I mention this only as an excuse to point to a "common sense"  ('cause Searle is big on common sense) refutation of Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment (well, actually, a refutation of Searle's reply to the systems reply to Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment; still, by extension...). You might call it the "Chinese Kite" thought experiment.

(Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

Jerry Fodor Caused This Post

"Weird" is right. In an exchange with Simon Blackburn et al., Jerry Fodor casts a routine feature of causal explanation as a knockdown objection to the theory of natural selection:

Orthography Is The Last Refuge Of Scoundrels

In his harangue against John Gray and Gray's book Straw Dogs, Carlin Romano contends that "[l]ike [Michael] Moore, Gray regularly gets facts and history wrong." Romano's leading example? That "[a]s [Gray] excoriates neocon intellectuals such as Allan Bloom, Gray spells Bloom's name wrong." [My emphasis.]

Strong stuff. Why, I'll even bet Gray once split an infinitive.

Seriously, isn't this sort of schoolboy Gotcha! embarrassing enough when you see it in a comment thread?

[Via Arts & Letters Daily.]

The Phenomenology of Belief Change

Odd that Colin McGinn's invitation to opine on the origin of values should (d)evolve into an amateur's inquiry into the phenomenology of belief change. (Well, not really all that odd -- one of the charms, and perhaps even virtues, of blogs is that their readers are so rarely able to stick to the point.)

In sum, my argument is that belief change about matters of fact is in some ways akin to shifts in aesthetic taste, in that a large part of the story takes place "under the hood of conscious rationality":