New look

Amazingly, this blog is approaching 15 years old. I don't update as actively as I used to, but I still plan to keep it, if only as a repository of useful links for my own benefit. Anyway, I thought the layout and design was starting to show its age - and often rather cluttered.

I've selected a new theme, which to my mind looks a lot cleaner. It seems to have come at the loss of my 'blogroll' but many of those links were dead anyway. If there are actually any readers out there, then any comments on the new look at welcome. Especially any relating to navigation on other devices. (I assume the standard templates should be fine, but I haven't been able to test this myself.)

Organ Donation in the News

The other day I had an email from Toronto-based journalist Julia Belluz, asking some questions about organ donation (a topic I've previously written on). Her article, featuring quotes from me, has now appeared on her Science-ish blog at Macleans.ca.

Imported Notes

Judging by the comments I get, it seems that far more people view this blog via Facebook than actually visit the blog itself. Unfortunately, Facebook are withdrawing the facility that automatically imports blog posts as notes.

"You currently automatically import content from your website or blog into your Facebook notes. Starting November 22nd, this feature will no longer be available, although you'll still be able to write individual notes."

This policy seemed surprising at first, given that Facebook seems to want to take over one's whole internet experience. I did think that maybe it was because Blogspot was owned by Google, but as far as I know this policy applies to all blogs and not only Blogspot.

I may post blog posts manually to my Facebook wall, but we'll see how it goes...

News Spreads

I've mentioned my up-coming move to Stirling a couple of times here (e.g. one, two). Obviously, news is spreading, because my academia.edu page (EDIT: now moved/updated to here) just got its first hit from someone searching for 'Ben Saunders Stirling'. Hopefully a few more posts like this will help it in the search rankings!

Anyone looking to contact me from 1st September (by email or snail mail) would be well-advised to check for my new address, as I'm not sure how long I'll be getting stuff forwarded from Oxford.

Amazon Speculating

If you leave items hanging around in your Amazon shopping basket, you'll occasionally find notifications that they've changed price (particularly if on sale). This in itself isn't too surprising, though I do find it odd that sometimes things change by just a few pence and wonder whether it's really that important. I assume some of the fluctuations are linked to exchange rates, though that probably isn't all.

Anyway, this can make it rather hard to know when - or even whether - to purchase. I've recently noticed several items in my basket gradually edging downwards, but periodically one will shoot up drastically. This means that, on the one hand, there's an incentive to wait hoping for further falls, but also an incentive to buy once you're happy that the price is low enough in case it rises.

A month or so ago I bought this for £4.09 only to find it's now fallen to £1.86. On the other hand, just today I received this, which I'd caught at it's lowest price (£1.76) days before it shot up to £12.99. It seems that prices, like those of shares, can go either up or down. I'm curious whether there's any pattern to it though - and would welcome insight from anyone with knowledge, or even a hypothesis.

I've heard that Amazon may be deliberately trying to gauge customers' price sensitivity. I wouldn't have thought it would be particularly worth their while, but it occurs to me that I have no way of knowing whether price discrimination is occurring (Do I get offered what's in my basket at a different price than others? It would be possible to check, by logging out, but I've never tried...)

In any case, there's something curiously satisfying about the feeling that you got a bargain, whether by skill or luck - but caveat emptor.

UPDATE (23/7): Scored a pretty decent success today. Just found four albums before dinner that looked interesting and decided to take a punt at £7.28 the lot. By the time I got back from dinner, three of them had gone back up to normal, full price (between £10.49 and £14.49) so the same four would have cost over £40. Bargain!

Rights Inflation?

Critics of Human Rights often argue that many supposed rights - like that to paid holidays - are really aspirations, rather than fundamental rights. Well, now it seems that many people regard internet access as a fundamental right.

Admittedly, though, this BBC article isn't the clearest. It seems that the question asked was not 'is internet access a right?' but 'should the internet be a fundamental right?' Moreover, the report states that "Countries such as Finland and Estonia have already ruled that access is a human right for their citizens" - I do think that human rights are fundamentally legal creations rather than moral, because I doubt morality tracks something as arbitrary as species membership, but I'm not sure how a human right can belong only to citizens of certain countries.

Maybe there really is a lot of rights confusion out there...

Web Searches

One good point about my academic website is the ability to see the keywords people use to stumble across it via search engines. Often they're relatively uninteresting, e.g. 'Ben Saunders Oxford' and sometimes they're clearly searching for someone else (e.g. one of my contacts). Last week though there were, interestingly, several hits for 'Ben Saunders Law Ethics' (presumably related to a job application) and this morning I was found by someone searching 'i need help to write my philosophy paper on derek parfit innumerate ethics'!

How Many Friends?

As if freshers' week wasn't enough, the anxieties of many students are no doubt added to by the who-has-the-most-'friends' competition that is Facebook. This BBC article discusses how many friends one should have - or, perhaps more accurately, one is normally likely to have (further discussion on CT).

I guess from my experience it's reasonably true, although I would note that the internet is changing the nature of friendship. In sixth form I was part of a very close group of about eight and we saw each other almost every day. Since coming to university, I've found it seems more normal to have different friends from different circles (college, department, extra-curricular interests, etc). One advantage of social networking sites is that they enable you to stay in touch with people, even separated by distance. I'm no longer so close to old friends from school, but still talk to several that way and it's good to always have the avenue of communication open and be able to follow news in their lives.

Personally, I'm happy to use facebook fairly indiscriminately - for example, adding people I've only met once at a conference, or perhaps not at all in real life (provided I know them 'virtually'). Obviously this means that many aren't really 'friends' in any but the most extended sense, but networking is important in life (and academia particularly), and I can certainly vouch for the benefits of keeping in touch with people I've met at conferences.

Taking Up Smoking

It seems the PJMB is no more; they're now to be found at a new site: The Philosophy Smoker.

Now, what was it being said about smoking on the market?

UPDATE: Job-seekers may find some of this advice useful.

Metafizzix

Thanks to Rob for pointing me to PhiLOLsophers - in particular, this one suggests I may have made the wrong career choice in choosing moral/political philosophy...

How Not to do How To

Phil Anon directs us to the so bad it's good WikiHow.

The entry 'How to Agree With a Majority' is particularly amusing.

Step 3 clearly provides a sufficient but not necessary condition: "If there are two thirds or more people siding with one topic, choose that one." It seems that the author may have been mislead by considering only one, six-person, example: "Make sure you do your math correctly. Three out of six is not a two thirds majority, four out of six is. Five out of six is also a majority."

Now That's Exposure

Compared to the Leiters and Crooked Timbers, or even PJMBs, of this world this blog doesn't get much traffic so a decent comment thread - like this recent one - is pretty rare.

My friend Milan's blog, however, has achieved national press coverage! (See here for his relevant post)

Pedantry

This is one of my favourite XKCD comics. The irony is that apparently it's wrong. That someone would go to the bother of pointing this out - including Google hit stats and polling their friends - points to the deeper truth however.

Popular Culture and Philosophy

This post over at Philosophers Anonymous leads to two interesting links - one, two - on 'philosophy and X' series.

Offline

Something's fouled up with our internet at home, so I won't be online much until we get it sorted.

Abortions and Ageing

Rob briefly touches on abortion here. This comes at the same time as shocking figures about how many under 14s are having abortions. There's also a very interesting piece about ageing on Colin Farrelly's blog. If I understand him rightly, all those under 14s reproducing early are diminishing the effects of natural selection and thereby preventing humans living longer...

Graduate Junction

I already have an academic webpage here, but now there's a new(ish) social networking resource for graduate students (via).

Carrots

I'd seen this on Facebook, but I didn't go and buy carrots. Did anyone?

Miller Bites

My supervisor, talking about national responsibility (topic of his recent book) over at Philosophy Bites. Thanks to Sarah for the link.

See also G A Cohen - whose valedictory lecture will be given this Thursday. I'll also have to listen to Melissa Lane on Plato and totalitarianism soon.