Inadvertently funny line from a press release for the new Americanised Torchwood: His choice of career is significant. Someone like Rex could make a fortune in Wall Street, or Hollywood. But choosing the C.I.A. says a lot about him: that for all his swagger, he does believe in justice.
I was just watching part of a Congressional presentation on C-Span honouring the slaves who built the u.s. capitol – not by making restitution to their heirs, of course, but by setting up some sort of plaque. What especially bugged me was the speakers’ continual references to expressing “thanks” and “gratitude” for the slaves’ “sacrifices” [...]
I just saw Olbermann calling for Rick Barber to be imprisoned for exercising his right to free speech. I wonder what percentage of anarchism that is?
From an info page about the 1996 Doctor Who tv-movie: Due to complicated licensing and ownership of the telefilm, no North American (a.k.a. Region 1) home video release has occurred in either VHS or DVD formats as of 2009, and no such release is expected in the foreseeable future. Ironically, several of the featurettes on [...]
Among our President Incarnate’s various witticisms at tonight’s White House Correspondents’ dinner was this gem: The Jonas Brothers are here; they’re out there somewhere. Sasha and Malia are huge fans; but boys, don’t get any ideas. Two words for you: predator drones. You will never see it coming. You think I’m joking? I think jokes [...]
As though the state doesn’t already do enough to magnify the power of the rich by its very nature, Walter Williams suggests that people with more money should have more votes. Because, y’know, them pore ole bosses ….
Gosh! What if substantial portions of the pro-IP lobby aren’t motivated by a passionate concern for property rights after all? Next I expect we’ll hear that copylefters are violating their own rights. Or, um, something.
Wouldn’t you know that a politician’s idea of a solution to the problem that no one’s allowed to compete with X would be to mandate that X is allowed to compete with no one? In T. H. White’s words: Whatever is not forbidden is compulsory.
Just caught a clip of Joy Behar talking about Joslyn James, the porn star who claims to have been pregnant by Tiger Woods. Behar said, inter alia, that a) of course Joslyn James wouldn’t have wanted to raise a child, because she’s a porn star and so has no “maternal instinct”; and b) it’s not [...]
So law prof Karin Calvo-Goller writes a book with the catchy title Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court: ICTY and ICTR Precedents; and fellow law prof Thomas Weigend pens what seems to me a rather mildly negative review. Whereupon Calvo-Goller reacts by writing to journal editor (and likewise law prof) Joseph Weiler demanding that [...]
The Empirical Me
I’m Roderick T. Long, Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University. I’m an Aristotelean/Wittgensteinian in philosophy and a left-libertarian market anarchist in social theory. (More about me here.) This blog, Austro-Athenian Empire, is a continuation of my earlier blog, archived here.
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