I am going through David Papineau's beautiful little book, Philosophical Devices, and I've run accross a claim that I don't understand.   He claims the following is a contingent fact that I can know a priori: (J) Julius invented the Zip.   (Where 'Julius' is defined as "the inventor of the zip.") He notes that "The…

If you do, you must not live in California or West Virginia.     The water supplies of two different states are seriously threatened this year.   In West Virginia, we have two recent devolopments.   One is that the Governor has declared that he is not a scientist and has no opinion about whether his state's…

Everyone who follows NFL football has surely heard about the Richard Sherman "controversy" by now.   After making the game winning defensive play against the 49ers in the NFC championship game, Sherman gave the interview posted below.    I found the following blog post about the media coverage of this "controversy" to be pretty much…

This has been a semester of not just one but two courses based on a a big classic. As I explained recently, I gave a course on the whole of Montaigne’s Essays. I also gave a course on the whole of The Spirit of the Laws, by Charles de Secondat, better known as Montesquieu. I won’t…