“Reagle surveys this varied landscape in pursuit of a goal he calls ‘intimate serendipity,’ his term for successful online communities, places where people are able to express themselves electronically in a civilized way... But in the main, the Web conversation Reagle considers suffers from tendencies similar to the ones Turkle identifies: narcissism, disinhibition, and the failure to care about the feelings of others. It’s a world devoid of empathy.... How can we enjoy the pleasures and benefits of mobile and social media while countering its self-depleting and antisocial aspects? Turkle keeps her discussion of remedy general, perhaps because there aren’t many good solutions at the moment. She thinks we should consciously unitask, cultivate face-to-face conversation, and set limits on ourselves, like keeping devices away from the family dinner table.... Harris wants engineers to consider human values like the notion of ‘time well spent’ in the design of consumer technology... These are helpful suggestions—more thoughtful apps, and apps to control our apps. They also seem wildly inadequate to the problem. ”

"We Are Hopelessly Hooked" - http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/02/25/we-are-hopelessly-hooked/

“And yet in 2013, despite positive growth overall, the world reached ‘Peak Paper’: global paper production and consumption reached its maximum, flattened out, and is now falling. A prediction that was over-hyped in the 20th century and then derided in the early 2000s – namely, the Paperless Office – is finally being realised. Growth continues, but paper is in retreat. Why did this seem so unlikely only a decade ago?... While the production and consumption of paper has slowed and declined, there has been an explosion in the production and distribution of information of all kinds. That includes digital versions of traditional publications, such as e-books and online newspapers, as well as new kinds of publications such as social media. ”

"Doing More with Less: The Economic Lesson of Peak Paper" - https://aeon.co/opinions/doing-more-with-less-the-economic-lesson-of-peak-paper

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilites; Truth isn’t”

— Mark Twain, Following the Equator; A Journey Around the World, 1897

http://www.archive.org/stream/followingequator00twaiuoft#page/156/mode/2up. I wonder what Derrida might make of this.

“Not as much, I grant, as philosophers need music, but nevertheless the need is real. In the past our musical culture had secure foundations in the church, in the concert hall and in the home. The common practice of tonal harmony united composers, performers and listeners in a shared language, and people played instruments at home with an intimate sense of belonging to the music that they made, just as the music belonged to them. The repertoire was neither controversial nor especially challenging, and music took its place in the ceremonies and celebrations of ordinary life alongside the rituals of everyday religion and the forms of good manners. We no longer live in that world.”

Roger Scruton, "Why Musicians Need Philosophy," - http://www.futuresymphony.org/why-musicians-need-philosophy/

“Roberts seems to be suggesting that physics is a realm apart from say, the humanities, where unique cultural perspectives would be more obviously valuable—and in doing so, he gives voice to a widely held misconception about science. Roberts’s error is to treat physics as a discipline that sits outside its own history and the larger culture, when of course it does no such thing. This was not the view of physics that 70-year-old Albert Einstein described as he looked back across his own life experience [From the time he was 12, he wrote, ‘The contemplation of this world beckoned like a liberation.’].”

"What Chief Justice Roberts Misunderstands About Physics: Science Is Not a Separate Realm that Sits Outside Culture" - http://theatln.tc/1OyuVzt

“The average annual salary of ‘welders, cutters, solderers, cutters and brazers’ was $40,040 in 2014, according to data from the United States Labor Department. That is basically the same as the median starting salary of newly graduated philosophy majors, which was $39,900, according to data from PayScale Inc. But that compares new college graduates at the start of their careers to welders at all stages of their careers. The median midcareer pay for philosophy majors was $81,200, according to PayScale. In the Labor Department data, postsecondary philosophy and religion teachers earned $71,350. In other words, a college graduate, even in a field that is not commercially oriented like philosophy, typically earns substantially more than a welder by the time they advance beyond the entry-level point of their career.”

"Fact Check: Marco Rubio on Philosophers vs. Welders" - http://nyti.ms/1IKTHKc

“Part of the discomfort generated by some of MacFarquhar’s case studies is to do with a sense that some people are looking almost obsessively for a scheme of ideas that will assure them beyond doubt that they are doing what is right. The more sympathetic figures in this book are those who ruefully acknowledge that their moral maximalism cannot ever quite deliver this and that the human cost along the way may be disturbingly high; or those whose generosity has about it some dimension of warmth or joy as well as effectiveness.”

"Grace Notes," - https://literaryreview.co.uk/?p=8474

“Eight years before, a Cal State San Bernardino student named Syed Rizwan Farook was enrolled in the World of Islam course. Doueiri had to dig to discover this fact: He’s not sure he taught Farook, and if he did, he has no memory of him. Now Farook’s identity was, with that of his wife, Tashfeen Malik, seared into recent history as the architect of the worst mass shooting in the U.S. since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Federal officials have said they are investigating the attack as an act of terror. And so Doueiri was in class late on a Monday to deliver something more than the typical class lecture. ‘At this point in time, some of you may be so traumatized,’ Doueiri told the class. ‘We’ve just got to be careful how...we express our sorrow.’”

"Cal State San Bernardino Class on Islamic World Grapples with Students' Questions about Shooting" - http://lat.ms/1P8bo5L. I'm often asked what university studies of religion can do in response to such violence. The San Bernadino case provides sobering evidence that the perpetrator actually studied Islam at the regional university. The difficulty is that studies of religion depends on a context of reasonable reflection, cognitive empathy and a willingness to take perspectives other than one's own. Sadly, educators have little more to say to the insanity of violent extremism than to mourn and call for peaceful restraint. Nonetheless, our imperative after such events remains to help those wishing to think more constructively about such matters. It seems to me that this is precisely what Professor Doueiri is providing in his classes. Moreover, this is what motivates the American Academy of Religion to provide two responses against both anti-muslim rhetoric as well as recent changes to campus concealed gun carry laws. 

“In the continuing debate over how to stop mass killings in the United States, Australia has become a familiar touchstone... ‘Firearm suicides fell more in states that had more guns bought back than in states with fewer guns bought back,’ Ms. Neill said in an email. ‘Firearm homicides also fell more in states with more guns bought back, but the effect was smaller than for firearm suicides.’ The data also indicates that overall homicide and suicide rates fell in the decade after 1996, meaning Australians did not respond to the gun control measures by killing one another or themselves using other weapons at higher rates. Over all, Mr. Leigh and Ms. Neill estimate that at least 200 lives are saved annually because of Australia’s gun buyback program.”

"How a Conservative-Led Australia Ended Mass Killings" - http://nyti.ms/1OC1T0u. 

“But the problem college advocates face as they try to shift the conversation to the public good is that there is little agreement on the means and measures to show those benefits. In contrast, state and federal governments have established several ways to link wages to college degrees and, in some cases, have criticized majors they perceive as having little economic value. The associations at the meeting have begun various efforts to change how college success is measured. In particular, the land-grant-university group has started the Post-Collegiate Outcomes Initiative to examine both the public and the personal economic and social capital that is generated by higher education. In an era of increased accountability, higher education needs to include both perspectives, Jonathan R. Alger, president of James Madison University, told attendees. ‘Our philosophy majors do a lot with the skill sets we give them,’ he said. ‘We need to tell that story.’”

"The Challenge of Restoring the ‘Public’ to ‘Public Higher Education,'" The Chronicle of Higher Education -  http://bit.ly/1RT5OXw