fieldus

‘… if one were to probe into them, one would surely find that the feeling which dominated him and excluded him from the river party was alive in them too, but of course with the difference that it was very far from dominating them and merely haunted some darker corners of their being.’
A strange confluence: [...]

Semi interesting musings on the difference between unhappiness and despair from Kieran Setiya.
The nub of the argument:
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…if despair is unhappiness about the impossibility of achieving some good, the good must be an object of commitment – or else irrelevant to one’s happiness – and so it must be something one thinks one could achieve. At [...]

You couldn’t have made recent headlines up. Poor lib dems. First Charles Kennedy, then that gay rent boy habit, there’s Menzies Campbell generally, which has the unfortunate habit of giving the whole party the air of a nursing home, and now Lembit Opik, weak-chinned ‘wild-man’ of the Liberal Democrats, is dating one of the pair [...]

An interesting piece in the NY Times about ’soft’ paternalism. The idea is a simple one. Lets say you have a gambling problem. In one of your more lucid moments you decide to sign a self limiting ordnance, that says simply if you enter another casino you will be arrested and any winnings you might [...]

Browsing and noticed that the admirably blunt Simon Blackburn has written a review of Pinker’s BLANK SLATE for the The New Republic.
Worth a look, I’m sure.
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