* Susan Boyle recorded "Cry Me a River" for charity in 1999. You can hear it here. She apparently sent a demo using this song to a number of record companies a few years ago -- and couldn't find anyone interested.
* A fascinating and somewhat chilling lecture: Elizabeth Warren discusses The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class. (ht)
* Michael Flynn:
The best argument for final causes is the existence of laws of nature, like E=mc^2 or that a species evolves toward better fitness in a niche. In any case: a common course of nature. A causes the generation of B and not of C or D.
Exactly. The opposite of what occurs ex intentione is what occurs a casu; either things are simply coincidences arising from the unusual circumstances of unusual cases, or there is something that determines things to happen in a certain way always or for the most part. And that to which things are determined or disposed in this way is the end or final cause.
* The Alain Locke Society has a blog.
* The worrisome return of Mein Kampf.
* An internet list of the 50 most brilliant atheists of all time. As one might expect, there are a few errors (e.g., Epicurus was not an atheist, and the gods, despite being thoroughly uninterested in us and not being involved in the order of the world, seem to serve a vital function in his philosophy as ethical exemplars), a few odd choices (e.g., PZ Myers may have a certain charm if you are an atheist of a certain type, but putting him on a list like this makes it look like you are stretching to find enough brilliant atheists for the list), a few debatables (e.g., I wouldn't, but a lot of people, including a lot of atheists, would complain when it comes to Ayn Rand's place on the list), and a few strange omissions given the rest of the list (e.g., absolutely no eighteenth and nineteenth century atheists are listed except, oddly, for Andrew Carnegie -- no Diderot, no d'Holbach, no Eliot, Shelley, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche). It is an extraordinarily parochial selection, overwhelmingly white and male (there are, for instance, exactly three women -- an author and two actresses), and it seems to lean deliberately bourgeois and American. But despite the utter absurdity of the headline, there are some good selections. I came upon it through Sean Carroll, who seems to think Voltaire was an atheist. No such luck, Sean; you'll have to look for him on a list of 50 brilliant theists. Voltaire had almost no patience for atheists, even if he had even less patience for Catholics.
* The list does make you think a bit. I'm trying to think of major scientists prior to the late nineteenth century who were atheists, and the only one I can think of offhand is Halley, and even there I'm not sure whether he was an atheist in the proper sense, because his contemporaries usually applied it to him in the loose sense the term often had in those days. But one would imagine that there are a few more. (In the humanities it's very easy; I can name more than a dozen off the top of my head.) Does anyone know of any?
* A thermal lance made from bacon.
* An interesting article on cognitive enhancers. It makes a point that is usually overlooked but in fact is quite important: cognitive enhancers don't generally improve general cognitive performance, but instead intensify one particular cognitive function. Thus while they almost always make you feel like you are performing better, you might not actually be performing better -- and, indeed, might even be performing worse. And the effect varies considerably from user to user. (You can see this even with something quite mild like caffeine: lots of people get a wake-up from caffeine, because it makes them feel less tired; but others, like myself, don't get that at all -- it keeps me awake but doesn't seem to make me feel any less tired than I otherwise would. Drinking caffeine to stay awake has always been disastrous for me: if I drink enough, I don't fall asleep but I get increasingly tired and muddled.) Cognitive excellence really requires the integration of a number of rather different cognitive functions and activities; arbitrarily enhancing one of these is as likely to throw things out of whack as to improve things. For most people, the old ways are the only reliable ones -- lots of challenging intellectual stimulation, regular exercise, good sleep, good diet.
