Last night I read one of the best essays that the NYT’s current philosophy column, The Stone, has produced to date.  In this piece, Andy Martin suggests that there may be some link between philosophy and autism–and here he uses the word “autism” broadly to mean the inability to communicate, to make oneself understood and to understand [...]

The week’s best links that we didn’t get to: 1. How do you prove over the phone that you’re the President? 2. Even PBS dabbles in censorship every now and then. 3. Your email address is more revealing than you think. 4. Apparently when fat people are killed in a car crash, it’s partially their fault. 5. Slate [...]

Earlier this week the U-M Women’s Studies Department hosted Dr. Leslie Schwalm from the University of Iowa. Her field of research is the investigation of post-Civil War Reconstruction in the Northern states. Her research findings stress that there is no factual basis for Northern claims that the North offered a safer, freer, less racist environment [...]

I must preface this post by writing that I do not know much about football. I do know, however, that my four years at Michigan have not been the brightest in Michigan football history. Does this mean we should fire Rich Rod? I’m not sure yet. Ryan Kartje of The Michigan Daily predicts the final [...]

A blog post by Shafeen Charania’s discusses how society’s high hopes of fidelity lead to an overall decline in our morals, ethos, and behavior.  Society’s aspirations have turned a “blind eye” to wrong doing while generating an expectation of failure.  Consequently, good behavior is not encouraged. “…the precepts of society and the canon of law [...]

At least, Jonah Lehrer doesn’t think so.  He wrote a piece in Wired last week where he argued against the idea that Facebook somehow makes friendship thinner and more superficial; he cited an article he wrote last year about the whole thing: On Facebook, though, the average user has approximately 110 “friends,” which has led some [...]