Saturday, March 08, 2014

Links and Things to Note

* Filocracia is a relatively new online journal for philosophy.

An interesting article from the current issue is Guillermo Donisio's Natural Law Tradition and Confucian Culture (PDF). Donisio explores a number of ways in which there are 'resonances', so to speak, between the two traditions. I think one way of looking at the relation is that they are fundamentally consistent with each other; but Confucian thought tends to focus on the issue of authority (broadly speaking), while Western thought tends to think in terms of law.

* NASA has found a black hole emitting the note of B flat, 57 octaves below middle C. It's emitting sound in the sense that it is generating waves in a gaseous medium -- we do it with air, it is doing it with hot interstellar gases.

* Physicist Matt Strassler whips up a poem about black holes. Given that it's intended not to be too serious, it's actually not bad.

* Barbara Bush on dynastic presidencies:

Bush said in a recent interview for C-SPAN’s “First Ladies” series that it’s “silly” to think that America can’t find other people who aren’t named Clinton, Kennedy or Bush to run for public office.

“I refuse to accept that this great country isn’t raising other wonderful people,” she said in the interview.

She always was the most sensible member of the Bush family.

* The African Windmill Blog discusses food security.

* Princess Mary, daughter of Henry VIII, translates Concede mihi, misericors Deus

* Fulton Sheen's cause for canonization is moving forward

* Jutta Schickore discusses scientific discovery at the SEP. The discussion of Whewell is quite good.

* Cecilia Wee discusses the Confucian view of filial obligations in a free article from the journal Dao. (PDF)

* Scripture's heaven and the God of the philosophers at "Just Thomism"

* Catherine Addington on Christina Rosetti's Lenten Life.