Sunday, November 30, 2008
Scolari on Arsenal
Chelsea 1-2 Arsenal
30/11/08: "We lost because one goal was not a goal, and it was a goal which changed the result. If we won, Arsenal would have been 13 points behind us and their championship would have been finished."
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Liverpool 1-0 Marseille
It's enough to guarantee our progression, though it remains to be seen whether Benitez will go all out against PSV to top the group (which will require us to overhaul Atletico Madrid's goal difference) or whether he'll rotate to keep our stars fresh.
Vegetarianism and the Job Market
Then again, others are more sceptical (here and here).
Monday, November 24, 2008
Morison to Princeton
I didn't know Princeton was the place for ancient philosophy, although I know several Oxford ancient philosophers trained there - including my colleague Ursula Coope (albeit only as a visiting student). I'd have thought that Oxford would rank fairly highly, with Terry Irwin, C. C. W. Taylor, Richard Sorabji, David Charles, Chris Shields, etc and its new M.St in Ancient Philosophy.
Public Reason Podcast Symposium
London Forum (CFP)
CALL FOR PAPERS
3rd LONDON FORUM IN MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
27th March 2008
STEWART HOUSE, LONDON
Supported by the Institute of Philosophy and UCL Philosophy Department
Following the success of the previous two years of the London Forum in Moral and Political Philosophy, graduate students working in any field within moral and political philosophy are invited to submit papers for the 2009 meeting. This will be held on 27th March at Stewart House, Bloomsbury, London.
The Forum aims to provide a friendly and supportive atmosphere in which graduate students can present their work and receive constructive feedback from their peers.Submissions should be in the form of abstracts of 300-400 words, and should be sent to LFIMPP@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is 15th February 2009.
Paper selection will be by the Organisation Committee and Prof. Veronique Munoz-Darde.
This years keynote speaker is Dr. Thomas Pink (Kings College London)
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Liverpool 0-0 Fulham
Lecturer at Lampeter
Fixed Term Lecturer in Philosophy
Salary: £30,594 pro rata
Job Ref: PHIL/04 - Closing Date: 12 noon Friday 28th November 2008.
The Department seeks to appoint to a fixed term lectureship from November 2008 (or as soon as possible thereafter) - September 2009.
The person appointed will contribute to Philosophy teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels and will be prepared to be research active in this field. Candidates able to offer expertise in any area of Philosophy will be considered, but we are particularly interested in applicants working in the area of Philosophy of Mind or/and Modern European Philosophy (broadly construed). The position will incorporate some thesis supervision, and usual non-teaching duties.
An application form, job description and person specification may be obtained by contacting the Personnel Office, University of Wales, Lampeter, SA48 7ED, telephone 01570 424700; fax 01570 424988; e-mail applications@lamp.ac.uk or www.lamp.ac.uk/vacancies.
We are an equal opportunities employer and welcome applications from all sections of the community whilst affirming that appointment will be strictly on merit.Thursday, November 20, 2008
World Philosophy Day
I'm giving a talk to the Balliol PPE Society this evening, so I guess I'm doing my bit!
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Lottery Voting on CT
Death on Queen Street
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Bolton 0-2 Liverpool
Friday, November 14, 2008
A Good Way to Settle Debts
Wonder if it will work for my battels?
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Tottenham 4-2 Liverpool (League Cup)
Still, at least it's better to focus on the league - from which point of view, it's a shame that Chelsea also went out.
In other news, I was playing football myself at the University Club: making the regular philosophy game for only the second time this term...
Monday, November 10, 2008
Lacuna Coil
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Phil Grad Conf
Democracy Means All Things
Obviously, this is not a new trend. Last Monday I saw Bonnie Honig give a paper on mourning and membership in Sophocles' Antigone - which is certainly not my normal kind of political theory - but it raised interesting questions about the nature of Athenian democracy. Although Pericles celebrated Athens for permitting individuality and freedom - the very features Plato condemned - her claim was that Creon represented an equalizing and collectivizing democratic tradition going back to Solon.
Athenian democracy, of course, operated by lot rather than election - so it is important not to conflate democracy with elections. There are still some present writers who would advocate sortition; while deliberative democrats sometimes aspire to 'talk as a decision procedure', hoping that we can reach unanimous consensus and thereby avoid the need for voting.
This BBC article focuses on elections, and correspondingly seems to adopt a minimalist understanding of democracy as the power to 'throw the rascals out': Any election that can actually depose a government fulfils the minimum requirement of democracy, by which no oligarchy can count on maintaining itself in power because the electorate might decide otherwise... A government should be certain that it has been elected, but never certain that it will be elected again. All kinds of benefits flow from that uncertainty. (As Adam Przeworski notes, these benefits could actually be achieved by a lottery).
Interestingly, however, it then goes on to make a number of rather inflated claims about the connection between democracy and openness, freedom, equal opportunity and justice. For example: In 1995 a young right-wing zealot called Yigal Amir murdered [Israeli] Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin... In a non-democratic country he would have been quickly dealt with, but in democratic Israel he is still alive. If democracies cannot have the death penalty, then the US (despite widespread coverage of their recent election) is no democracy.
The article goes on to talk about how democracy allows men of colour - such as Martin Luther King Jr, Lewis Hamilton and Barack Obama, to come to prominence. I'm actually writing a response to a paper on citizen leadership for the Public Reason Podcast Symposium that touches on this - to which I'll link in due course.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
Liverpool 3-0 West Brom
I was hoping we'd be able to kill the game off in the second half, but it remained two until Arbeloa sneaked into the area and curled in a left-foot shot (that had me thinking it was Benayoun at first) to put a more satisfying gloss on the scoreline. The other welcome sight was the return of Torres as a sub - although he hardly did anything in his 15 minute cameo (I barely even saw him run), it will be some useful match minutes and help his return to fitness. Imagine having him and Keane both scoring...
Friday, November 07, 2008
Adultery
The OED defines adultery as follows:
Violation of the marriage bed; the voluntary sexual intercourse of a married person with one of the opposite sex, whether unmarried, or married to another.
If we focus on the first part then, provided we are willing to describe civil partnerships as marriage, then adultery should be possible. If we take seriously the latter description, then adultery can only take place with one of the opposite sex. Even so, it would remain possible for there to be adultery in a gay relationship (e.g. one of the two men sleeping with a woman). Also, interestingly, if the husband in a heterosexual marriage sleeps with another man that wouldn't be adultery either.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Student Funding 'Lottery'
I've pointed out before (e.g. here) that postcodes aren't allocated by lottery. The problem with distributing certain goods by postcode would be that the rich have more choice over where they live and can thus buy access to things like good schools or medical treatment via the back door.
This case is even worse as it's not as if the difference in funds is attributable to different LEAs or where one chooses to study (Oxford and Oxford Brookes, for example, may involve the same postcode). The problem is that traditional 'good' universities have more funds than modern ex-Polys. One would need a substantive debate to settle whether this was a fair meritocracy or whether competition for the best academic tuition should be of any relevance to funding, but it has nothing to do with postcodes.
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Liverpool 1-1 Atletico Madrid
I must say, one thing I found disappointing was that Stevie G looked determined to produce one of his performances of match-saving heroics and kept shooting from 20-30 yards and missing the target. It reminded me of having Riise back in the team. Then again, with Keane and Ngog leading the line, maybe Stevie can't be blamed much.
It was, at least, Stevie who won and converted a 94th minute penalty to give us a deserved point. It's true that the award was possibly soft, but only in the sense that Stevie didn't have full control of the ball and was heading away from goal, so there was no need for the defender to barge into him - it's not like Stevie threw himself down without contact; he made sure he got to the ball first and then let the defender take him out. In any case, we'd been denied a fairly clear handball shout around 50 minutes in, which if converted may well have led to us winning the way things were going.
Still, one point each means that Liverpool and Atletico are both well-placed (although not guaranteed) to go through. Interestingly, if both are still level on points after playing PSV and Marseille again, the group could go to goal difference to decide 1st and 2nd - which is a blow for any plans Benitez might have had to rotate the squad.
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Ox-er
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Tottenham 2-1 Liverpool
Even so, it looked for long periods like we would retain our winning start. Kuyt put us ahead inside three minutes and then, with the score at 1-0, we went on to hit the woodwork three times. Oh what a difference some clinical finishing would have made... As it was, Benitez introduced Babel shortly after the hour to threaten the Spurs defence with pace - but sadly things went wrong when soon afterwards Carragher inadvertently deflected into his own net to level the scores, thereby nullifying our game plan.
From that point on, Spurs seemed to have more belief and we lost our shape a bit. The commentators had pointed out earlier that we hadn't lost a league game from a winning position (or scoring first) in around two years - and that curse struck, when Pavlyuchenko scored a late winner.
The BBC described it as the least deserved victory of the season, but one can't complain too much - after all, we've won several that we didn't really deserve to with late winners ourselves (such as Middlesbrough). I'm not saying luck evens out, but individual games don't always go the way that the 'ought' to. At the end of the day, we're still the last team in the Premiership to lose our undefeated record and level with Chelsea on points despite having played several of our trickiest fixtures (Man Utd, Chelsea away and Everton away).
In fact, if anything, this might prove a reality check on any unrealistic expectations (one idiot on the Liverpoolfc.tv messageboards had already asked whether we could go the season undefeated...). The fact is that Liverpool are still working to catch Man Utd and Chelsea, and it's been far too long since they've really had to deal with the pressure of a title race. It's too soon to expect them to win anything this season; what I want is for them to challenge - to still be within reach of the leaders until at least March. Unfortunately, I remember the way that Arsenal made so much early running last year only to fall away, and the disasterous November we had in 2002 after leading the league. My concern is to see how we bounce back from this defeat...