While Santa put a Fats Domino record on the phonograph, Angelo, sniffling and looking a little confused, sat down on the kitchen chair across from Mrs. Reilly and Mr. Robichaux.
Fractal Localism: Political Rigor and Clarity under Complexity
Original Confederacy of Dunces Artwork
The original artwork for CoD was done by one Ed Linlof. Below is a letter of his to Thelma Toole.
Getting to the Hayekian Network
Last, but by no means least, Troy’s chapter.
False-positive neuroimaging
Here’s a piece courtesy of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s biology preprint server bioRxiv.
Undisclosed flexibility in testing spatial hypotheses allows presenting anything as a replicated finding
fMRI image of my own nut, 2001: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging Institute of Neurology, UCL
Bowie’s Piano Man and Guitar Man
I had the pleasure of seeing maestros Mike Garson and Earl Slick in a relatively intimate hall (less than a thousand capacity) from two yards away. What a treat to see up close the skill of the original musicians of two of the most challenging and memorable of instrumental pieces. Needless to say, one of the highlights was Slick’s guitar work on Station to Station — aware of my delight he handed me his plectrum. The other highlight was Garson laying into Aladdin Sane, Sweet Thing/Candidate (more on this below) and Young Americans. Instead of going into the rabbinate, the young Garson chose music instead, forging his chops on the Borscht Belt and NYC jazz joints. Unbeknownst to him (and the rest of the band), he appeared as the sole person on stage for what was to be “the Naz'” last outing (aside from The 1980 Floor Show). One can’t really add anything to what has already said and compiled in this book about Mike. Below are some salient extracts but first, in the beginning . . .
Shapiro’s Embodied Cognition
Larry Shapiro’s Embodied Cognition is about to be published as a second edition.
The Consolation of Philosophy
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Walker Percy, and the Age of Suicide
Taleb the Philosopher
Since I’m deeply in Boëthius mode for my forthcoming edited book of essays on A Confederacy of Dunces, this invocation of Boëthius and Taleb grabbed me. Here is Joshua Hochschild’s review of Taleb’s collected works.
Boethius the patron saint of bullshit detectors.
Taleb displays familiarity with many expected theorists of epistemological humility: Montaigne and Hume, Hayek and Oakeshott, John Gray and Michael Polanyi. But as a theorist of practical reasoning and virtue—especially justice—Taleb is closest to a philosopher not cited in any of his books: Alasdair MacIntyre.
manwithoutqualities 