So a few days ago I made as if to joke about Andy Egan picking Wisconsin to go all the way in the tournament, and suggested that real men submitted brackets consisting of who they actually thought would win, not who they wanted to win. Now it’s always tricky when writing deadpan satire to ensure that everyone will get the jokes, but in this case it seems most of the mortals who read the posts actually understood the point (or lack of one). Not so, it seems for the relevant deities, who responded by knocking my picks for tournament winner and runner up out in the same day, _in the same building_. What’s even more ironic is that the team I’d picked to win, Stanford, is also the team I’d picked to knock out my preferred winner, Syracuse. It seems I need to use “irony tags”:http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001494.html so as to not bring on the wrath of the basketball gods. (Or not – given how well Syracuse did out of yesterday’s shenanigans.)
“Mark Kleiman”:http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/policy_briefs_/2004/03/taking_the_bottle_away_from_dangerous_drunks.php makes a modest proposal to scrap underage drinking laws in exchange for people needing a licence to drink. A licence that could be suspended for too many drunken misescapades. (Or at least for too many drunken misescapades that involve breaking the law. Telling really unfunny jokes or waking up in the wrong place shouldn’t be grounds for licence revocation one hopes.) I tend to be fairly libertarian about booze laws, but I think this might be a decent trade-off. If he throws in scrapping open container laws, I might sign on.
“Geoff Nunberg”:http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000614.html has a very funny piece on grammar, but since this blog plays by FCC rules I can’t really tell you what it is about.
Robert Crouch emailed yesterday to suggest I write something about the “philosophical shrink”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/21/magazine/21SHRINK.html?ex=1395205200&en=b240cba139275575&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND, but I don’t really have a lot to say. Frankly I’m a little sceptical that anything anything like what I do could have therapeutic value, but maybe there are connections I’m not seeing. I did think it was quite unfair to lump “Philosophy Talk” in with the philosophy shrinks and the like, though since I believe any publicity is good publicity I suppose I shouldn’t be upset on their behalf.
If I’d followed Robert’s advice on this promptly I may have had a scoop, but as it is the “blogosphere”:http://www.matthewyglesias.com/archives/002858.html “philosophers”:http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2004/03/put_me_down_for.html have already “mocked”:http://strangedoctrines.typepad.com/strange_doctrines/2004/03/philosophical_c.html it quite enough.
Oh, and the “papers blog”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/Opp/ is up with new papers by Istvan Aranyosi, Ingo Brigandt and Uriah Kriegel.