Here’s another trailer for the second half of Doctor Who series 6. It overlaps heavily with the previous trailer, but there are a few new scenes in there.
Author Archive | Roderick
Anarchy In Seattle: Call For Papers
The Molinari Society
Call for Papers
for the Society’s Symposium to be held in conjunction with the American Philosophical Association Pacific Division meeting, April 4-8, 2012, Seattle.
Symposium Topic:
Explorations in Philosophical Anarchy (II)
Submission Deadline:
September 30, 2011
The past two decades have seen a resurgence of interest, both in activist and academic circles, in Anarchist politics and theory, with new and challenging work from several different directions. Renewed academic interest in Anarchism has drawn attention to the importance, vitality and philosophical fruitfulness of key Anarchist arguments and concepts – such as the conflict between authority and autonomy; tensions between collectivism and individualism; critical challenges to hierarchy, centralized power, top-down control and authoritarian conceptions of representation; and the development of concepts of spontaneous social order, decentralized consensus, and the knowledge problems and ideological mythologzing inherent in relations or structures of domination.
Most of this discussion has, naturally enough, taken place within the field of political and moral philosophy. But Anarchist theory (like marxist or feminist theory) embodies more than a policy orientation or a system of moral or political theses. The Anarchist tradition offers a wide-ranging, diverse and vigorously argued literature, concerning the nature and foundations of human society, with implications for every aspect of philosophy, including not only political and moral theory but also aesthetics, social-science methodology, epistemology, and the philosophies of science, religion, history, language and logic. We are looking for papers that address possible connections, approaches, challenges or insights that anarchy and its conceptual environs may suggest for philosophy broadly – or that philosophy may suggest for anarchy – beyond the familiar territory of political and moral theory, especially in such areas as epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, and metaphilosophy or philosophical method. Papers from all analytical and critical standpoints (both with regard to philosophy and with regard to Anarchism) are welcome.
Please submit complete papers of 3,000-6,000 words for consideration for the 2012 Symposium by September 30, 2011. Papers should be of appropriate scope and length to be presented within 15-30 minutes. Submitting authors will be notified of the acceptance or rejection of their papers by October 10, 2011.
Submit papers as e-mail attachments, in Word .doc format or PDF, to longrob@auburn.edu or feedback@radgeek.com.
For any questions or information, contact us at the above email addresses.
* * *
Some possible topics include – but are by no means limited to:
- Authority and Epistemology
- Anarchy and Logic
- Illusions of control in philosophy
- Decentralism or spontaneous order in philosophy of language
- Philosophical implications of the work of “canonical” Anarchist theorists (Godwin, Proudhon, Molinari, Tucker, Spooner, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, De Cleyre, Goodman, Bookchin, Rothbard, Wolff, Zerzan…)
- Anarchy and Rationality
- Hierarchy, legibility and knowledge problems
- Philosophical Method and Anarchism
- Claims of representation and claims of knowledge
- Etc.
Please spread the word to anyone who you think would be interested in the symposium topic!
Addendum:
More info here.
Familiar Faces
A lot of people are calling Captain America: The First Avenger the best of the Avengers film franchise so far. I can’t agree; I enjoyed it, but for me Iron Man still surpasses it. (Does that mean I find wisecracking supergenius assholes more fun to watch than earnest self-sacrificing patriots? Yeah, I guess it does.)
Two nice touches in the movie that I haven’t seen anyone else mention (I suppose these are spoilers, especially the second one):
1. When we first see Dr. Arnim Zola (the Dream Lord, for Doctor Who fans), it’s as a distorted face filling a viewscreen. I’m pretty sure that’s a nod to Zola’s eventual fate in the comics, where he eventually becomes reduced to nothing but … a distorted face filling a viewscreen.
2. When Rogers wakes up in the 21st century, he’s greeted by a woman with the same hair colour as his lost love Peggy Carter. And when he goes on the run, this woman calls in a “Code 13.” Comics fans will recognise why a woman who resembles Peggy Carter might be associated with the number 13. (Others have made the same guess as mine as to this woman’s identity, but I haven’t seen anyone mention the association with “13,” which for me is what clinches the hypothesis.)
Locked Out
One of the triumphs of government schooling is that most educated English-speakers nowadays cannot read this sentence from Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education:
The age is not like to want instances of this kind, which should be made land-marks to him, that by the disgraces, diseases, beggary, and shame of hopeful young men thus brought to ruin, he may be precaution’d, and be made see, how those join in the contempt and neglect of them that are undone, who, by pretences of friendship and respect, lead them to it, and help to prey upon them whilst they were undoing: that he may see, before he buys it by a too dear experience, that those who persuade him not to follow the sober advices he has receiv’d from his governors, and the counsel of his own reason, which they call being govern’d by others, do it only that they may have the government of him themselves; and make him believe, he goes like a man of himself, by his own conduct, and for his own pleasure, when in truth he is wholly as a child led by them into those vices which best serve their purposes.
Wanna Think Some Liberty?
I’m going to be on Thinking Liberty tonight, with hosts Darian Worden, Tennyson McCalla, Bosco, and bile. The show will be livestreamed from 8-10 Eastern (7-9 my time), during which I believe you can ask questions via chat room; the episode will also be available for download later.
I’d assumed that they wanted me to talk mainly about the prospects for a Smurfs / Jar Jar crossover, but apparently the discussion will focus on “philosophy and left-libertarian market anarchism,” whatever those are.
I think I can guarantee that listeners will get more out of this episode than the last time I was on.
Anarchy Not In the U.K.
“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.” – London Metropolitan Police (plagiarising Wikipedia for the first sentence).
(CHT LRC.)