Lectures done! 22 Oct 2007 Today was the final lecture in my Introduction to Cognitive Science course. Thank the fates it is over. I started this having no real idea of the topic, never having taught what Americans are pleased to call “freshmen” and we call “first-years”, and with the first two lectures occurring in my absence as I was at a conference in the UK. So it has been a bit like surfing a wave of magma. Anyway, I dropped my hindbrain (17″ MacPowerBook G4) on Friday and shattered the LCD. This has made it hard to (i) prepare the lecture, (ii) give the lecture, and (iii) post blog entries. Now that I have time, and it is being repaired, I am to fix this. Administrative
Administrative Sick… again 4 Sep 2008 Once again I have manflu, the most despicable disease known to man (and to women, who also suffer indirectly from it). So blogging is patchy. Also, I have to do some teaching stuff, which involves thinking about what the essays say. I am writing, slowly, a piece about the recent… Read More
Administrative Competition prizes found at last! 11 Sep 2012 Last November (November!) I ran a competition for some spare copies of Species: A history, but then I moved, and my prize copies ended up in storage. I was living in a one room granny flat, as we call them in Australia, and had no access to the boxen in which… Read More
Administrative Changing commenting system 3 May 2011 I am trialling the Disqus commenting system, since it means you do not have to enter your details every time if you are registered. Some have told me they cannot see the old comments. If you are having trouble, let me know. Read More
I used to think it was a terrible thing that life was so unfair. Then I thought, ‘what if life *were* fair, and all of the terrible things that happen to us came because we really deserved them?’ Now I take great comfort in the general unfairness and hostility of the universe. Marcus Cole Babylon 5: A Late Delivery from Avalon (#3.13) (1996)
You don’t know the convenience of a laptop until you are without it, for whatever reason. Craig Venter has done some terrific work on DNA, and artificial life is getting closer. How will Philosophy handle that side of science?