As we’re listening to Weekend Edition, the younger Free-Ride offspring asks, “Why don’t they ever have weekend subtraction?”
(I think it was the elder Free-Ride offspring, years ago, who asked why Morning Edition had puppet words. It took us a few long moments to figure out the “puppet words” was actually Bob Edwards.)
Category Archives: Passing thoughts
A question for those who teach.
Do you ever get to the point where if you haven’t checked your syllabus within the last few hours, you have no confidence that you actually know what day it is?
Or is it just me?
A tax-related question.
Actually, a few of them. Since we sent our tax return off already, the answers to the questions probably doesn’t have much practical import, but here they are:
Y’all know that I get paid a (pretty modest) amount for blogging. As such, Seed sent me a 2007 Miscellaneous Income report (Form 1099-MISC).
This form shows the modest amount that I earned in box 5, “Fishing boat proceeds”. Under “Instructions for Recipient” it says:
Box 5. An amount in this box means the fishing boat operator considers you self-employed. Report this amount on Schedule C or C-EZ (Form 1040). See Pub. 344.
My questions:
Silly hypothesis, meet snarky retort.
In case those readers trained in analytic philosophy managed to miss it, this comment at A Philosophy Job Market Blog gave me the giggles while striking me as an entirely appropriate response (given the audience) to a lazy reliance on speculative evolutionary psychology to justify the status quo (in this case, the lopsided gender split of folks pursuing philosophy in their studies and as a career). The italicized portion is quoted from the earlier (ev-psych-loving) commenter:
Maybe, just maybe, philosophy is something “inherently more valuable” to men qua hunters
Because chasing down those non-existent unicorns painted to look like zebras in fake barn country required the ability to discern whether one was a brain in the vat before throwing a spear?
Anonymous commenter, I think I love you.
Song chart meme: for two-two-two geeks in one.
Some screechy monkey or other tagged me on the song chart meme. The idea seems to be to come up with a visual/graphical representation of a song or some lyrical subset of it.
In other words, you can get your music-geek and your math-geek on at the same time.
I came very close to going through our entire record collection last night to pick the optimal song. But then I figured I’d just put up two suboptimal responses rather than laboring to determine what the optimal response would be. (Of course, because I’m a tremendous Luddite, both are hand drawn.)
Enough is enough. I quit.
It’s time to unplug from the ScienceBorg.
My world is collapsing to a singularity.
Well, light can still escape the gravitational pull of my world, but it does feel like it’s getting noticeably smaller.
Three recent data points:
A desk of one’s own.
Regular readers of this blog know that I am hoping to be on a sabbatical leave during academic year 2008-2009. Indeed, some of you have asked, “Where are you going to go?”
The answer:
The future of philosophical discourse.
Seen in a comment on A Philosophy Job Market Blog:
… instead of writing “QED” at the end of proofs, I think we should all start writing “pwned.” I want this change to be my legacy to philosophy.
Ask a ScienceBlogger, sort of: my life in half a dozen words.
Once again, Dave Ng at The World’s Fair issues a challenge:
If you had to write your memoirs in 6 words, what would they be?
Writing that memoir today, here are mine:
Chemist. Philosopher. Parent. Blogger.
Grown-up? Someday.
Six words fit very nicely in the comments field — what’s your life story?