Walter Sobchak: Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it’s an ethos. Continue reading

Here is the link. Enriquez studies the intersections of science, business, society, life sciences, and robotics. He founded Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project, and reformed Mexico’s economic system. So, a pretty interesting guy. This lecture is on the current banking crisis, the promises of biological research, and the future of human evolution. Continue reading

It is bracing to reflect from time to time on the utter senselessness of the very real institutions we inhabit. Take the university, for instance. The history of the university, as we now know it, is tangled and complicated (see here for an overview), but one of the central reasons for our universities being structured… Continue reading

It has been a learning semester. First, there was that whole thing about awards (embarrassing). Then there was also being promoted to full professor (liberating, in a way; no further promotions to seek). And each of the two classes I taught were disasters — nothing likely to land me in jail, but enough to throw… Continue reading

You may recall my ambivalence toward getting awards. (If not, see here.) I shamelessly chased after an award this year, and was lucky enough to get it, with the thought that the award would pay $500, and I could have the fun of calculating whether the prize was worth all the time it required. I’ve… Continue reading

The last few lines from Billy Collins, “This Little Piggy Went to Market”: By the way, I am completely down with going “Wee wee wee” all the way home, having done that many times and knowing exactly how it feels. Continue reading

“The human person, once perceiving that the Revelation of the Word is a condemnation of the self, casts away all thoughts of his own merit . . . . The more he examines his life, the more he looks into himself with complete honesty, the more clearly he perceives that what he has is a… Continue reading

For a while I wanted to be a history major. This was entirely due to a professor I had, Jack McGovern. He had a great mind, and a real passion for his subject, and was a true mensch. Then I realized that studying history didn’t just mean listening to McGovern lecture, and it meant figuring… Continue reading