One of the duller stretches between the combat sequences and alien life showcase moments of “Avatar: The Way of Water” gave me a few minutes to ponder what other movies produced visuals this stunning, this far beyond the Hollywood state-of-the-art of their era.

And that instantly brought to mind “2001: A Space Odyssey,” a landmark of science fiction cinema, a quaint artifact of the 1960s and undeniably one of the most beautiful, majestic films of all time.

It has been analyzed, parsed, investigated and written about more than virtually any other movie of its era. As a teen I devoured books on it and the obsessive eccentric who made it, Stanley Kubrick. So much had to be invented — effects tricks and low-light celluloid camera lenses — so much imagined, extrapolating from our “Space Race” present to thirty-three years into the future.

The new documentary “Jurassic Punk” brings “2001” to…

What is it with some philosophical and historical commenters who take sides against Galileo in his 17th century dispute with the Church?

Perhaps because we now have many documents from that period (17th century) – including Galileo’s original writings, official documents from the Inquisition and the church,  and the text of complaints made to the inquisition about Galileo’s beliefs and teachings. This itself can fuel different perspectives.

However, I think another source of this lively debate lies in the preconceived notions and beliefs of the modern protagonists. That, to me, is the only explanation for a trend (a trend – I don’t blame all) among commenters on the history of science that seeks to blame the victim (in this case Galileo) for the affair. To claim that Galileo was scientifically wrong. That the Church was correct to suppress research into a heliocentric model for the solar system. And to…

How damaging would in-person college be for the college population? I think we have some evidence to help us sort through this issue. Namely, there are some relatively closed communities where people lived in close quarters and were exposed to COVID. We can estimate the damage. These communities are similar to colleges in that they housed people together. We also know, months later, how many people got sick and how many died. Specifically, we can look at ships where people were in close contact and got a lot of COVID.

Worst Case Scenario: The Diamond Princess is a cruise ship that was at sea early in the epidemic. People got sick and it wasn’t allowed to port for a while. The result? According to the wiki, 700 out of 3711 tested positive (18%) and 14 died (.3%). This is a population with many elderly passengers and, also according…

YouTube has banned this video. Linked from my twitter account. Epic 2 mins.

The Guardian published a letter yesterday signed by 100 Jews objecting to a previous letter by more than 100 Labour MPs protesting the Labour Party’s decision to readmit Derby North MP Chris Williamson, an ardent Corbyn ally, back into the party after he was temporarily suspended for suggesting Labour was “too apologetic” about antisemitism.

The letter (Jewish support for Chris Williamson, July 8) repeats the familiar smear that the real aim of Jews and others who accuse Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters of antisemitism is to undermine the Labour party’s leadership and “all pro-Palestinian members” – a version of what’s known as the Livingstone Formulation. This term, coined by Professor David Hirsh, refers to a line of argument insisting that Jews raise the issue of antisemitism cynically and dishonestly in order to silence criticism of Israel.

The full list of signatories to the letter includes extreme (non-British) anti-Israel, pro-terrorist…

I recently came across this excerpt from a longer interview of Milton Friedman conducted by Brian Lamb on Cspan in 1994. In this excerpt Lamb asks Friedman what he thinks of the Fed, and Friedman, barely able to contain his ideological fervor, quickly rattles off his version of the history of the Fed, blaming the Fed, at least by implication, for all the bad monetary and macroeconomic events that happened between 1914, when the Fed came into existence, and the1970s.

Here’s a rough summary of Friedman’s tirade:

I have long been in favor of abolishing [the Fed]. There is no institution in the United States that has such a high public standing and such a poor record of performance. . . . The Federal Reserve began operations in 1914 and presided over a doubling of prices during World War I. It produced a major collapse in 1921. It had a…

Rawls, John. 1993. “The Law of Peoples.” Critical Inquiry 20 (1). University of Chicago Press: 36–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1343947.

• This is the kind of paper that must be chewed and digested, not merely tasted and swallowed.
• It is necessary that you have at least a cursory knowledge (although familiarity is recommended) of the author’s work on justice as fairness, especially the notion of the original position behind the veil of ignorance. For an interesting introductory discussion on the concept, check out Michael Sandel’s lectures from the course: “Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do?” The topic is introduced here and continued here.)
• Sections under square brackets and cast in monotype font can, perhaps must, be skipped on first reading. End notes, on the other hand, must not be skipped.

Introduction

The essay seeks to develop a “law of peoples” out of “liberal ideas of justice”.^[1] By a…