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See the “Announcements” sidebar on the right. We’re planning four events over Thursday and Friday —

• On Thursday, Louis Menand and Alison Simmons, both from Harvard University, will be on campus. Together they will present a talk entitled “General Education and its Discontents” from noon to 1:15 in Library 101. A little later, at 3 pm, Professor Simmons will present “Re-humanizing Descartes” in FL 109. She informally describes her lecture as arguing that “Descartes has a bad reputation because of his commitments to dualism and the search for Objectivity (capital “O”), which both, or together, seem de-humanizing, but that this is only a part of the Cartesian story (the part without humans no less!), and that when we look at what he actually says about human beings (we’re unions and we have a sensory and passionate nature) Descartes looks less cold and stony.” Should be fun!

• On Friday, Richard Greene, Professor of Philosophy at Weber State, will be visiting. Weber has an excellent Ethics Bowl team, and Richard will be discussing with us strategies and insights about participating. This informal discussion will be from 2:30 to 3:30 in Main 203. Then, right after that, Richard will present a philosophy lectured entitled “Epistemic Standards” in the same room, Main 203, from 3:30 to 4:30. See you there!

We are approaching the time of year for the spring induction into Phi Sigma Tau, our honor society. If you are interested in joining, check out the “Honor Society” link, and send me a note: charlie.huenemann@usu.edu.

bell hooks is an interesting, influential author and theorist about sexual and racial oppression. More info about her here. More information about her lecture here.

This, from Justin Beiber (well, according to The Onion):

Your adoration or loathing of me, a 17-year-old entertainer from Canada, is no more significant than a grain of sand on a beach, disappearing when Earth’s mighty oceans rise and then retreat—as they will hundreds of thousands of millions of times until the sun is extinguished and the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Rick Ross, the Great Wall of China, and everything else even remotely related to our feeble, fleeting species are but forgotten whispers in one planet’s geochronology.

Forgive me. But please don’t think that because of my fame I place myself above the futile scrabbling of mankind and its ephemeral perception of me as being either “adorable” or “the worst”; quite the contrary. In fact, it is because of my celebrity that I know I matter no more or less than any other human being among the many billions living or dead. When I tweet about the fact that I have cut my iconic hair and it is re-tweeted 300,000 times in a day, there is no better juxtaposition than to place that trifling 24 hours against the 10,000 years it will take Byrd Glacier to move across Antarctica’s vast expanses of silent white.

Sorta makes you think, doesn’t it?

I am sad to relay some tragic news. Emmett Corrigan, USU Philosophy major and lawyer in Boise, Idaho, was shot and killed last Friday. He was 30 years old. Story here. Corrigan was an unusual student: really smart, and at the same time a rowdy, brawling tough guy – genuine fightin’ Irish – and at the same time a devoted father and husband. He specialized in criminal law, and it looks like some difficult criminal matter ended up getting out of hand.

Corrigan graduated from Gonzaga’s law school, and kept in occasional contact with me. When he was a student at USU, he told me that a professor in another discipline had told him that philosophy was no preparation for law school. Later, when he was in law school, he sent me a note to let me know: “Anyone who says philosophy doesn’t prepare you for law school is talking horseshit.” A vintage Emmett comment. I am so glad to have known him, and so sad to think of the world without him.

UPDATE: Obituary here.