Theory/Philosophy Debate reaches Amazon

I've seen many a discussion get bogged down in the difference between 'political theory' and 'political philosophy' (most memorably here, though a moderator since seems to have deleted it all as unproductive). As far as I'm concerned, there's not really a difference, since what I do could be called either, though I accept that there are some - like the girlfriend - who would claim to do the first and not the second.

I raise this because it seems that the distinction has even reached Amazon shoppers, as seen from this forum thread. Since it concerns one of my supervisor's books, I felt compelled to weigh in (even though the issue seemed to have been resolved). I don't know why someone felt the need to try to distinguish political theory from political science, or why he chose to do so in such an inept way (not sure I should quote it here, since it wasn't put out in public, but it strikes me as quite funny).

Virtual Graduation

I finally graduated my D.Phil just over a month ago - after a wait of over a year (and my M.Phil at the same time, after somewhat longer). The University of Edinburgh, however, has come up with an interesting alternative: virtual graduations. I wonder what the photographs will be like...

Library Fines

An anonymous American (former) high school student returned two books that were 50 years overdue. The £600 doesn't really seem enough to cover realistic fines to me (whatever 4c/day was back then it isn't much now - and what about compound interest?), though I suppose in fairness the fine should probably have been capped at the replacement cost of the book.

Colleagues in the News

I've known about Toby's plans for a long time, but it's good to see it getting publicity - hopefully it will encourage others to do the same.
Eloise asks how long he's counting on living. He does hang out with the human enhancement crowd, so maybe to 150... (There's an interesting discussion with several philosophers on the issue in the latest Oxford Today.)

Problems of Impact

There's a nice piece here (via Leiter and Philos-L) on the REF which, among other things, nicely points to the important difference between 'impact' and 'benefit'.

A Monkey Could Do It

My old school economics teacher insisted that the average monkey ought to get 10/40 in the multiple choice part of our exam and a lucky monkey would probably get 17-18/40, in order to castigate anyone who scored less than this.

I was reminded of this on hearing that a South Korean woman passed her multiple choice driving theory test at the 950th attempt. I wonder what the odds are of a monkey passing in that many attempts? (Unfortunately, even if I knew how, I can't work this out as the article doesn't tell us how many options there are for each question.)

I wonder if the same monkey would go away and write some Shakespeare afterwards...

Are Train Fares Fair?

Apparently you can now pay over £1,000 for one train journey in the UK (albeit from Cornwall to Scotland).

What bothers me is not so much (or only) the extravagant cost, but the complexity of ticket selling. It's often seemed to me that what I've paid has depended on the seller in question. A couple of weeks ago my girlfriend and I got returns from Oxford to Coventry, which I was expecting to pay almost £50 for (with her railcard), for less than half that because the conductor sold us separate tickets from Oxford to Banbury and Banbury to Coventry. Where's the sense?

Will We Be Haunted?

Apparently the new Radcliffe Observatory Quarter (ROQ) - the new Humanities site, which will house Philosophy along with other disciplines - sits on a Bronze Age burial site... Details here.

Witch

I wonder if this is an example of academic impact?

Is It Really A Sale?

Where can you find a full price sofa these days?

Brand Awareness

Another post highlighting lack of common sense...

St George's Tower

Percy's taken a few photos of places around my house lately: now I know what this tower's called.

Common Sense?

I've been somewhat distracted today by looking through the examples of complete idiocy (mostly from shop customer) on this site.

Some personal favourites:
What's wrong with the music industry
Homophobia and lesbians
An Englishman in NZ
A second bite at the sandwich
Change channel

UPDATE: Some more...
Not suitable for nut allergies
One way to keep your PIN safe
How not to approach college
Emergency marshmallows
Free legal advice
Superior parenting
Expensive tantrum
Cheap computer
Foolish scammer
Directions
DIY repairs
Cable guy

Cash For Jabs

Another example of incentives/bribery here - patients being paid to take their medicine...

Stipendiary Lecturership

Finishing a PhD and looking for a job in Philosophy 1st January 2010-30th June 2010? Then check this out. Over £16,000 for the six month position! AOC: Ethics.

Language and Etymology

I was somewhat amused to see this post on the Liverpool FC messageboard, in a discussion that began on the meaning of homosexuality and in which someone had appealed to the Greek root:

The issue is usage, not etymology.

If we go round saying all words mean whatever there [sic] etymological root means, everything will actually mean something else, and language will be destabilised.

Is that what you want? Who the **** are you? Derrida?

Maybe there is a market for Soccer & Philosophy after all...

They're Talking 'Bout me Round the Smoker

This post got picked up on here, as a result of my comment.

The Accident of Birth

Those of us who've studied political theory will be used to some, like Rawls, making a great deal of the fact that one's birth is a matter of chance, and thus morally arbitrary. Today, I saw that a BBC editorial blog - weighing in on the question of who should pay for university, students or tax-payers - appeal to the same idea:
"there is also an issue here of inter-generational social justice... More by luck than desert, the generation of Lambert, Balls, Laidlaw and even Peston have had it pretty good... thanks to the accident of when we happened to have been born"

Plato's Cave Animated

Here. (via John Holbo).

(It strikes me that this is pretty good, but I haven't watched the many other videos).

UPDATE: I think I actually prefer this animation, but by making it much shorter they skip out the fact that there are two (main) stages of enlightenment. The shadows the prisoners see are - importantly - copies of copies (i.e. shadows of statues).

CV Organisation

What should go on a CV and how should it be organised?

This is something that's stressing many on the market, even to the point of debating membership of professional bodies.

One friend of mine told me that he'd had more interviews since lumping all his publications into a single list (peer review journal articles marked by an asterisk). Nonetheless, it seems that that's not the consensus view on how best to structure a CV. My eye was caught by the discussion here.

Spiros suggests that some things, including conference proceedings, popular culture books, online reviews (except NDPR) and any edited volume not by a big name editor/press shouldn't be included on the CV at all. That seems a bit extreme to me, although I think it probably is best to clearly distinguish these items from peer-reviewed research.

My CV has a section for 'research and publications'. (This allowed me to list, in a separate sub-section, working papers and those under review, without being accused of trying to pass them off as publications). Until recently, that was simply divided into 'research articles' and 'book reviews'. The problem with this is that there are one or two items in the latter category that are quite substantial (e.g. I wrote a 2,500 word book review for Res Publica that underwent - an admittedly fairly light - peer-review). On the other hand, not all of my research-related publications are really that impressive. I recently had a summary of my PhD published in an online journal (see here); which is clearly research but it feels a bit wrong trying to pass that off alongside my articles in ETMP, Philosophy and Utilitas.

My latest CV, prepared for another assault on the job market, divides publications into 'scholarly research articles' and 'other pieces' (which includes notes, replies, reviews, introductions, etc). This allows me to put the pieces I want to draw attention to up front, while still including things like the EJPE piece or popular philosophy contributions in the latter, along with my book reviews (I'd consider them to have about equal weight - which I know is virtually none). I also put my 'working papers' sub-section between the two, so people associate it with further scholarly research on-going.

I'm quite happy with the current layout, but others should feel free to discuss their preferred layouts or advice.