The miraculous brain
[Old notes.] I’m reading Stanislas Dehaene’s Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014). Good book,...
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May 25, 202112 min read
Critiques of Richard Rorty (and postmodernism)
[Here are notes I took many years ago while reading Richard Rorty’s famous book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. As you’ll see from...
Apr 19, 202114 min read
Review of "The Young Lords," by Johanna Fernández
[This academic review was posted at H-Net.] Johanna Fernández’s The Young Lords: A Radical History could hardly have been published at a...
Apr 5, 202130 min read
The rise of right-wing libertarianism since the 1950s
Sometimes as I read books I like to simultaneously summarize them, to facilitate the intellectual digestion. And also to post my notes...
Mar 4, 20219 min read
Personal reflections on anarchism
Anarchism (anti-authoritarianism, love of freedom) is an essential thing, an essential guide for our thinking and action, but I have to...
Sep 24, 20204 min read
A despairing rant
These are interesting times. We have the "privilege" to be living in the era when centuries of capitalist evolution are approaching their...
Sep 13, 20206 min read
On how to live
When I was younger, I used to wonder: should I care what people think of me? I saw arguments on both sides of the question. And I still...
Sep 11, 202035 min read
The history of tax increment financing in Chicago
Here's a very dry paper I wrote for a class in 2012. I thought I should know more about urban public policy, so I decided to research the...
Sep 10, 202012 min read
DuBois's "Black Reconstruction"
W. E. B. DuBois’s great work Black Reconstruction in America: 1860-1880, published in 1935, isn’t a very easy read. But it’s important as...
Sep 8, 202021 min read
"Revolution in the Twenty-First Century: A Reconsideration of Marxism"
[An article from several months ago.] In the age of COVID-19, it’s even more obvious than it’s been for at least a couple of decades that...
Sep 8, 202022 min read
From Steve Fraser's "The Age of Acquiescence"
I just finished reading Steve Fraser's masterful The Age of Acquiescence (2014), which compares the popular responses to America's two...
Sep 7, 20207 min read
Old notes on "the foundations of Christianity"
Karl Kautsky’s book Foundations of Christianity: A Study in Christian Origins (1908) is quite good. Despite his flaws and mistakes (both...
Sep 6, 202019 min read
Journal-notes on cognitive science
[From 2015.] Reading a bunch of articles on cognitive development. A fascinating field. Interesting: Human infants who receive little...
Sep 5, 20205 min read
The commodification of education
David Noble's essay "Digital Diploma Mills," written in the 1990s, is a brilliant and still timely critique of the automation and...
Sep 4, 20202 min read
I was feeling rather metaphysical last night
David Graeber died. At 59. Tomorrow, you or I might die. At any moment. Meanwhile, we pretend life has meaning. Eventually, we will die....
Sep 4, 202035 min read
The Workers' Bill
Here's the last section of chapter 6 of my dissertation on the unemployed in Chicago during the Depression. The previous two sections are...
Sep 3, 202054 min read
On the Unemployed Councils and the Chicago Workers' Committee
The last chapter of my dissertation on the unemployed in Chicago during the Great Depression is, I think, more interesting than the...
Sep 2, 202026 min read
Travelogue from "down under"
Some bloggers like to post accounts of their world travels. So—why not?—I'll do the same. Here are some journal entries from almost...
Sep 1, 20205 min read
Biology and destiny
[Notes from ten years ago.] I’m amazed at the extent of our culture’s cult of secrecy in matters of the body. Even in this age, people...
Aug 31, 202010 min read
On Wittgenstein and Quine
Wittgenstein is an odd case. I've always had the impression that his early work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, is genius—and not...
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