tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-108409342012-01-29T10:26:43.222-08:00"I know this is in questionable taste, but you know that won't stop me." -- Paul KrassnerDoc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.comBlogger7251100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-86220173041059070492012-01-29T10:26:00.000-08:002012-01-29T10:26:18.320-08:00

This morning, I'm thinking about my depression and anxiety in relation to my perma-temped job. I am in my 13th year of teaching at Cow State Santa Claus as a temporary faculty member. I do not have the opportunity for tenure, and have very reasonable assurance that I will never have that opportunity. While the support for humanities education collapses, and while 75% of college faculty

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-39942947520336235732012-01-26T12:37:00.000-08:002012-01-26T12:37:28.101-08:00

Okay, I'll admit it, my last post about the end times was motivated entirely by self-interest, namely, my self-interest in having the Spring semester somehow not happen. I didn't have any good backing for that assertion. Sorry. (Say it like a Canadian! "Sore-ry!") (Ooooh, I smell a meme! "Say it like a Canadian!") Now that I think about it, my selfish desire to have the world end in order to

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-27585302220108438902012-01-23T10:13:00.000-08:002012-01-23T10:13:56.290-08:00

In the days following a predicted date of the end of the world, one is often asked to explain how it is that one mistakenly made such a prediction. This is understandable, and I for one certainly promote critical thinking by all of my followers, but these questions are, in truth, out of order. First of all, the notion that once the date passes, a prediction is proved "wrong," is so simplistic

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-2859326434094004852012-01-17T15:45:00.000-08:002012-01-17T15:45:43.458-08:00

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.                              - Revelations 21:1 Saturday, the 21st of January - 21/01/2012 - is very likely to be the end of the world. No, it's not because Saturday is the sabbath of the chosen people. And it's not because Jon Huntsman dropped out of the Republican

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-30230427765281962122012-01-13T13:46:00.000-08:002012-01-13T13:46:27.783-08:00

As many readers are likely aware, the world did not end in the first intermission of the Winnipeg Jets - San Jose Sharks NHL game last night. I apologize if this led to any inconvenience, but to be frank, the world actually ending would be far more inconvenient than being prepared for a predicted end of the world that was not forthcoming. I have discovered two minor errors in my previous

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-63895135794554278242012-01-10T18:27:00.000-08:002012-01-10T18:27:10.957-08:00

Obviously, if you're reading this, the world did not end on Tuesday, the New Hampshire primary victory of Mitt Romney notwithstanding, and notwithstanding his call to restore Murrka's moral core. Anyway, the main problem in my calculations had to do with what happened at 18:21 of the second period of the Winnipeg Jets-Boston Bruins game. Nothing happened at 18:21 of the Winnipeg Jets-Boston

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-7921659238235811392012-01-08T12:28:00.000-08:002012-01-08T12:28:32.974-08:00

And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. Revelations 18:21 New Hampshire - the Granite State, named for that stone of which many millstones have been made over the centuries - is, of course, a border state to Massachusetts, wherein lies Boston.

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-67135403126242715692011-12-30T18:31:00.000-08:002011-12-30T18:32:07.798-08:00

My National Novel Writing Month project began with a simple premise. What if major corporations decided that planned obsolescence wasn't aggressive enough a strategy for provoking consumer purchases of new goods. What if, instead, they had teams of people who broke into our houses, broke our stuff, and made it look like normal wear and tear? I wrote a brief scene of this last summer sometime,

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-10600255410472968092011-12-28T09:21:00.000-08:002011-12-28T09:21:31.959-08:00

Mood's been uneven. The Christmas trip down to LA was good. The Penguins keep winning. I'm knee-deep in a gorgeous book, The Elements of Typographic Style, by Robert Bringhurst (an acclaimed Canadian poet as well as a typography nut). It's not quite a textbook, and not quite a treatise, on the art of typography. The book follows its own stated axioms, and does so beautifully. Even the paper is

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-48925819451959021092011-12-20T11:04:00.000-08:002011-12-20T11:04:49.079-08:00

Thanks, everyone. Elizabeth, whom I believe I know through the kind auspices of Sharon and Dave's famous annual cocktail party, suggested a connection between depression, fear, and capitalism. I'm not super hip to Marxist analyses of the phenomenon we call depression, and with regard to myself, a psychiatric account makes so much sense it's hard for me to see past it. I mean, I was first

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-83671590726077751972011-12-17T09:31:00.000-08:002011-12-17T09:31:47.927-08:00

This has been, all told, a terrible and painful year for me. Nothing in particular has happened, not among what we might call the objective facts of my life. Seven years ago, due almost entirely to Lauren's being wonderful and lovely, I was able to make the biggest leap of faith I ever had. I turned my life around, and became happy, deeply happy, for the first time. The demonic rage in my mind

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-69291914553554239042011-11-09T20:30:00.000-08:002011-11-09T20:30:01.028-08:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Twelve: Tenure All of your academic skills having been honed through these other steps, the last and most important hurdle is left before you. Why is tenure so important? Why is any permanent job with no supervision and no real duties important? Why did you enter academia in the first place, to study great ideas and literature? The process

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-77235653725867951072011-11-08T20:30:00.000-08:002011-11-08T20:30:00.715-08:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Eleven: Teaching Teaching is a necessary evil on the track to success. To legitimate your work, you must have an institutional affiliation; and in order to maintain an institutional identity, you must teach. There are two ways out of this unfortunate situation: ONE: Reduce your teaching work. Demand an assistant to grade exams. Settle your

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-32419740536511778682011-11-07T20:30:00.000-08:002011-11-07T20:30:00.357-08:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Ten: Your Work/Volume Now that you have found an editor and publisher willing to "look at" your work, you need to produce it. As has already been mentioned, no one "writes books." However, volumes are put together. What, you may ask, does this phrase refer to? Take all of the material you have composed in your young academic career: your

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-19856778130714229072011-11-06T20:30:00.000-08:002011-11-06T20:30:03.405-08:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Nine: Hustling Do you know how many academic books are published every year? Do you know how these books get into print? If you've ever read an academic book, you may wonder about these questions. But even if you haven't, it's important to note that every academic book, before being published, is proposed, or "pitched" to a publishing house.

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-66470956948921722312011-11-05T20:30:00.000-07:002011-11-05T20:30:01.950-07:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Eight: Hitting the Job Market Often the most frustrating experience for young academic wannabes is the absolute despair and futility of entering the job market flooded by the excessive production of Ph.D.s by mills. (Think: supply and demand.) Once you have an appropriate c.v., have done a thorough job of schmoozing, have attended enough

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-26637570511663619462011-11-04T20:30:00.000-07:002011-11-04T20:30:00.124-07:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Seven: Writing Your C.V. Everyone must have a c.v. (curriculum vitae), which lists achievements, education, and other qualifications. The question is, what should you put on your c.v.? Assume that the person reading your c.v. does not know you, and has not attended the same conferences, nor met you in the restroom. You need to be memorable and

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-40675727804759146902011-11-03T20:44:00.000-07:002011-11-03T20:44:00.092-07:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Six: Follow these Conference Attending Guidelines There are two kinds of conferences: extremely large, concurrent-session conferences, and small, plenary session conferences. In larger conferences, more Academic Big Shots attend than in smaller conferences. You do the math. Rule 1: Go to sessions with the biggest names. Do not attend sessions, or

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-49173940671302331362011-11-02T20:42:00.000-07:002011-11-02T20:42:00.214-07:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Five: Stomp On Others Look, it's you or them. Human beings are animals, animals of great tenacity, cleverness, and savage viciousness. It's part of your genetic makeup. You can send your emotions to the cleaners, but you can't make anything but hot red blood flow in your veins. Kill or be killed. Take no prisoners. EXAMPLE: "Professor

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-56778813977174233912011-11-01T20:30:00.000-07:002011-11-01T20:30:01.398-07:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Four: Schmoozing The importance of schmoozing can hardly be underestimated, and it hardly ever is. The true questions are when, how, and to whom to schmooze. WHEN: Always schmooze. There is no inappropriate time. For men, one of the best times is when you happen to meet your schmoozee at a lavatory urinal. This is ideal, because obviously the

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-34447818313276767992011-10-31T22:01:00.000-07:002011-10-31T22:01:17.732-07:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Three: Go On -- Take Drugs! The initial euphoric and mind-expanding effects of intoxicants are often considered beneficial by liberals and other perverts. But the serious aftereffects of long-term abuse of dangerous and mind-altering drugs -- bipolarism, paranoia, mood swings, death, and chronic withdrawal -- these are the true benefits.

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-1922233813768323732011-10-30T09:19:00.000-07:002011-10-30T09:19:26.912-07:00

The 12-Step Program for Academic Success Step Two: Hire Out Your Emotional Life The pressures of Big Time Academia have crushed many otherwise happy marriages and relationships. Your perpetual motion of publishing, conference attending, hustling, and schmoozing will inevitably destroy your soul. The process is painful and can cause skin irritation. But you need not suffer, or indeed

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-32937224993771459472011-10-29T10:42:00.000-07:002011-10-29T10:42:28.223-07:00

Back in grad school, I wrote this satire, mainly as a response to some rather overly careerist behavior I witnessed. I'll post one step per day for the next, let's see, how about twelve days? I won't change name or dates, because there are no innocents, and some of this stuff is clearly dated (for instance, the antiquated references to something they used to call the philosophy "job market").

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-47139326195287051052011-10-28T15:31:00.000-07:002011-10-28T15:31:04.475-07:00

I have just now submitted an article on body/embodiment to Studia Phaenomenologica. I am fairly confident I won't get published, and here are some reasons why. 1. What I wrote is a critique of the orthodoxy in the field. This might be publishable, except that... 2. I do not have sufficient academic clout to publish something critical of the field's orthodoxy, plus 3. I do not have a lengthy...

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-58542930553797597942011-10-20T11:52:00.000-07:002011-10-20T11:52:15.412-07:00

Before coming to school today (and installing my new column - check it out on Facebook!), I collected a couple days' worth of mail from our box. In it was my copy of the American Philosophical Association's Jobs for Philosophers. I'll refrain from a lengthy diatribe on the moral cesspool of the academic hustling market, because that wasn't the first thing on my mind this morning. In fact, the

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-69536668852070737732011-10-19T08:58:00.000-07:002011-10-19T08:58:17.522-07:00

Today with my classes I'm reading a 2003-ish article about public policy and ethical responses to pregnant women who use illegal drugs and alcohol. The main line of argument is what the author deems a feminist approach, focusing on the experience of the women instead of applying abstract rationalistic ethical principles on their cases. What this reveals, she argues, is the states of oppression

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-11705480658657041932011-10-03T12:48:00.000-07:002011-10-03T12:48:15.615-07:00

I went on a brief walk just after my office hour this morning, since I had been reading about phenomenology of the body and wanted to clear my head and re-orient myself. Plus, I wanted to see if I had something right in my own analysis of the way the lived body "disappears" from awareness. Naturally, I spent a lot of the time mentally critiquing the university's entry signage. A few years ago

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-2739653712069225072011-10-01T13:27:00.000-07:002011-10-01T13:27:55.545-07:00

After bouts of stomach flu and grading, I'm having an average weekend. Following a gratuitous Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet reference, I shall return to struggling with my conscience and my philosophical consciousness over whether and how to proceed with writing a paper to submit to Studia Phaenomenologica's special issue on "the phenomenon of the body/phenomenology of embodiment."

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-82402264827689121882011-09-16T15:39:00.000-07:002011-09-16T15:39:17.792-07:00

Jackson asked me what my ethical position is, in relation to the practice of consuming the flesh of non-human animals. I realized that it wasn't something I'd taken up and thought about in a while, so I asked my loveliest why it's okay for us to eat animal flesh. She laid out what we regard as our position, and I think she's more accepting of it than I am on the whole. It goes like this. Humans

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-1115865411978106722011-09-15T16:43:00.000-07:002011-09-15T16:43:24.554-07:00

I have a prevailing dissatisfaction with Western philosophy: its obsession with words. In a basic way, philosophy is how we grapple with meaning - with how and why there is meaning, with how and why we could be said to create or constitute meaning, with the meaning of experience, and so on. Overwhelmingly, the tradition of Western philosophy has discussed meaning in terms of words. Semantics,

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-8704009887623056342011-09-05T22:05:00.000-07:002011-09-05T22:05:54.278-07:00

Today I submitted an article to an actual, honest-to-Pete peer-reviewed academic journal, something I haven't done in nearly a decade, for a variety of highly complicated reasons. A main reason I haven't done is a main reason I finally did. (If you are already having trouble with the logic, or indeed the syntax, of that sentence, then the actual article might not be your cup of tea.) The paper

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-75063574838571472882011-08-25T11:30:00.000-07:002011-08-25T11:30:14.099-07:00

I've spent some time this morning looking back over notes I wrote this summer on phenomenology and embodiment, in a typescript and in a bound notebook I keep as a kind of commonplace book. In my book, I reserve the last two or three pages to list things I want to look into - there's a list of phrases, titles, or potential lines in a song or poem; there's a list of music, books, and other media

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-43198250529404888872011-08-24T13:11:00.000-07:002011-08-24T13:11:21.073-07:00

Towards the end of summer I started writing what I thought was going to be an article to submit to the journal of the Romanian Society for Phenomenology (yeah, no kidding) about phenomenology, bodies, and embodiment. It got weird on me. I now refer to this document as "the goofy paper." As I was writing it, my appellation of the audience shifted, from the Romanian Society (and academic

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-64960161267622080982011-08-20T08:49:00.000-07:002011-08-20T08:50:03.981-07:00

Yesterday I spent the day at the CFA Fall Kick-Off, where we learned of plans to protect faculty rights through contract bargaining and political activities. It's a fairly dire situation, because the CSU administration's hired union-busting consultants are taking advantage of the bad economic times to attempt to gut basically every protection of faculty. Most frighteningly, their attacks have a

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-61756365163429715782011-08-16T13:00:00.000-07:002011-08-16T13:00:41.709-07:00

Yesterday was Debra Messing Day at the House About Town. That's because yesterday was Debra Messing's birthday. Mine too. I got dozens of birthday greetings, which was very nice and made me feel well-stocked with friends and loved ones. Last week we hit Vegas for a sort of Duquesne philosophy alumni bash, and I am slightly abashed to say that "bash" is an appropriate term for it. I don't care

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-84171625040417676732011-08-01T09:33:00.001-07:002011-08-01T09:33:53.294-07:00

Now that the debt deal has passed, promising more restrictive domestic spending and not much economic hope, it's time for the good news about the US economy. The good news is, it looks like the economy is going to get worse again! Here's why Americans should not only embrace this fact, but get ready to delebrate! (1) The economy is what makes Americans have to go to their lousy, stupid jobs.

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-72396396275263951912011-07-27T12:18:00.000-07:002011-07-27T12:18:44.359-07:00

Phenomenological accounts of pain invariably regard pain as abnormal and aberrant. Perhaps my own life experience, of nearly constant physical pain, makes me a bad phenomenologist of pain, but I find the move to “abnormalize” pain is made just a bit too quickly. Ultimately, I agree that an appropriate way to interpret the experience of physical pain phenomenologically would draw from the analysis

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-59409695379001474912011-07-19T14:02:00.000-07:002011-07-19T14:02:09.382-07:00

I'm back to Shaun Gallagher's book How the Body Shapes the Mind. He seems to be doing what Michel Henry forbids, namely, taking clues from natural science in order to understand human embodiment and perception. Strangely, there's some similarities regarding their conclusions about perception, even if the language is totally different. I think Gallagher is easier to understand and has his head

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-86295936888736272692011-07-18T16:20:00.000-07:002011-07-18T16:24:33.635-07:00

I finished reading Michel Henry's Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body. The conclusion very unhelpfully develops a theological position on the finitude of the body and the infinity of the transcendental life (i.e., the body that I am as a transcendental subject) in relation to the Christian concept of sin. Henry seemed particularly miffed about sexuality being taken as a naturally occurring

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-91438370182976063452011-07-16T15:45:00.000-07:002011-07-16T15:45:00.754-07:00

I've been poring over Philosophy and Phenomenology of the Body, Michel Henry's weird, insinuating, slantways critique of the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. These are rambling notes, but I wanted to post them anyway because it's been driving me crazy today. Henry seems to interpret “classical” phenomenology as making the body an instrument of the ego’s act of perception

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-25733649127017883352011-07-13T11:17:00.000-07:002011-07-13T11:17:10.393-07:00

Regular readers of this feature, and some people who just know me, and a few people whom I've grabbed at random and told about it, know that for several years I've been trying to work out a phenomenology of subjection. What I mean by subjection are all the ways that the conscious active subject or ego is susceptible to suffering and affectivity of all kinds. In relation to the phenomenology of

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-61052961687322532372011-07-11T17:12:00.000-07:002011-07-11T17:12:32.597-07:00

Dire Straits were, of course, a seminal post-punk, roots-revival band, at least in the first phase of their history. Their first album was released in 1978, when the top-selling album in the US was the soundtrack of Saturday Night Fever. That is to say, Dire Straits came on the scene at the height of, and at the beginning of the end of, disco. Good timing, boys! It's hard to imagine an album

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-40559459081553806702011-07-11T09:37:00.000-07:002011-07-11T09:37:14.647-07:00

As I've been thinking about how big my body is, and especially about the phenomenon of feeling myself to be taller than normal, I've hit on two fundamental difficulties of phenomenological description of embodiment. One is the huge issue of accounting for a norm in experience. I'm working out something on that. The other is the ambiguity of embodiment. One way it is often put, that I don't find

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-20050026498633843412011-07-07T18:59:00.000-07:002011-07-07T18:59:07.294-07:00

I had an interesting, brief conversation with one of the proprietors of the horse trail ride outfit we patronized in Sonoma County yesterday, about what I do for a living. He said he thought everyone should take a course in ethics, that people needed it, he said, in order to understand that what they do matters and that they should always be thoughtful about what they do. That sounds about right

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-31392736693722585652011-07-01T15:55:00.000-07:002011-07-01T15:55:01.490-07:00

Husserl's lectures on passive synthesis (which is what everybody calls them) were actually entitled Lectures on Transcendental Logic. What he's trying to get at in them is the source of meaning and truth. Big time stuff. What I was reading today included a remarkable section on the paradox Husserl saw at the heart of knowledge of all kinds, but especially scientific knowledge. He says that we

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-40449374905861791722011-06-30T15:51:00.000-07:002011-06-30T15:51:20.936-07:00

Here's an initial description of the experience of my own body feeling taller to me. The other day, walking home through downtown Turlock, I had an experience of my body as taller. As I’ve mentioned, I love this feeling, and I was able to focus some attention on it and possibly prolong it. We were walking along the south side sidewalk on Mitchell Avenue, from Denair Avenue to Palm. The sidewalk

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-81772369909027208942011-06-27T13:40:00.000-07:002011-06-27T13:40:43.830-07:00

Bill Readings makes what I think is the right argument regarding the de-legitimation of higher education in The University in Ruins. Previous structurally legitimating notions of the university were rational (the Kantian model) and cultural (the Humboldtian model), but these have collapsed under the weight of the university’s core function as a bureaucratic corporation. His analysis of the

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-14198551209400700752011-06-26T17:41:00.000-07:002011-06-26T17:41:05.204-07:00

The last year I spent in Pittsburgh I was in the habit of listening to Harry Shearer's weird weekly radio program, Le Show, every Sunday night on the local NPR station (which happened to be a unit of Duquesne). In between Shearer's bits of satire and tongue-in-cheek reading of bits from the LA Times "hot property" column and trade publications, there were delightful musical fills. Among other

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-80688426858573398812011-06-25T13:49:00.000-07:002011-06-25T13:49:21.570-07:00

This week I finished reading a 90-year-old book, and wondering why I had read it, and what it had to do with philosophy today. The feeling scraped at a previously acquired irritation regarding philosophy in the academic setting. During my recent conference travels, I ended up in a conversation about maintaining currency in the field of philosophy. I said something about feeling like I should

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-67281788910535348112011-06-24T12:05:00.000-07:002011-06-24T12:05:45.860-07:00

In the end, I’m a little disappointed in Ideas II. Some of the most difficult issues Husserl raises with regard to the lived Body he either resolves to my dissatisfaction or doesn’t resolve at all. From my previous experience of reading the lectures on passive synthesis, I’m pretty sure that’s where I need to go next. Meantime, I should state what I think are the key issues. Husserl’s discussion

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-67388886338758437462011-06-22T16:28:00.000-07:002011-06-22T16:28:57.528-07:00

We heard Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews on some late-night program, and the performance was just terrific. So we bought the disc. I ain't got much to say about it. It's terrific. My only criticism is that I wish at least a few of the numbers were extended jams instead of the tight 3-minute jobs they are. I'm not sure if that would defeat Trombone Shorty's purpose here: he might well have a

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-58557343724863219982011-06-22T11:45:00.000-07:002011-06-22T11:45:13.887-07:00

Today I've been reading Ideas II, on the constitution of the world of nature and of the human world. It led to some probably not terribly novel thoughts about ethics, of all things, in relation to what Husserl was doing on the general question of world-constitution. So, three quotations from Husserl that frame my thoughts. What is educational in the phenomenological reduction… is also this: it

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-89785861460110795812011-06-21T11:33:00.000-07:002011-06-21T11:33:12.324-07:00

I'm reading a book by a guy named Bill Readings, called The University in Ruins, published in 1996. It's the book I've been waiting for, examining the contemporary situation of universities, basically through a Situationist lens, with a good dose of Lyotard. I’m amazed that this book is 15 years old, and yet none of the current discussion of university crisis in the US refers to it. Perhaps I

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-31458619351700309902011-06-20T18:24:00.000-07:002011-06-20T18:24:02.522-07:00

i like my body when it is with your body. It is so quite new a thing. Muscles better and nerves more. i like your body. i like what it does, i like its hows. i like to feel the spine of your body and its bones, and the trembling -firm-smooth ness and which i will again and again and again kiss, i like kissing this and that of you, i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz of your electric fur,

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-45658280930801310132011-06-16T12:16:00.000-07:002011-06-16T12:16:53.037-07:00

I’ve decided to spend some time this summer considering the question, “how big is my body?” I like this question. It strikes me as sounding peculiar, and I think it’s a good thing for philosophers to consider peculiar questions. One way it seems peculiar is that, from a certain overly literal and physicalist standpoint, there is a very simple series of answers that puts an immediate end to the

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-81455581212057721072011-06-09T14:54:00.000-07:002011-06-09T14:54:40.942-07:00

I turned on my hotel TV this morning, like I always do when I’m alone in a hotel room, and the first thing that confronted me was the Andrew Wiener “sexting” scandal. Not only did he tweet his underpants to a woman somewhere or other, but he also apparently had an ongoing text flirtation with a casino card dealer. On my screen was an outpouring of moral revulsion and condemnation. It was quite

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-45288630569064013572011-06-06T10:56:00.000-07:002011-06-06T10:56:06.431-07:00

I've been thinking that my presentation at the AAUP conference on Thursday needed more bite. On the plane from Newark to Portland, and then again on the flight back from Newark to San Francisco, I took some notes. Here's a bit of the 2000+ words I've added to the behemoth paper I'm presenting. (By the way, I'm doing this without including what will now have to be a massive scholarly apparatus.

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-61990435341852888182011-05-24T17:35:00.000-07:002011-05-24T17:35:30.715-07:00

So, what happened to the legitimation of higher education? How did we reach the point of incredulity? The series of events I believe is as follows. (1) The Holocaust. (2) The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (3) The GI bill. (4) The civil rights movement. Incongruous list, eh? Lyotard gives me the first two. The Holocaust and the rise of the nuclear age shattered forever the dream of

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-47193087067377439052011-05-20T12:17:00.000-07:002011-05-20T12:17:38.214-07:00

Tuesday morning, we attended the “watch party” for the press conference to launch the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education. CFHE’s goal is to bring the voice of the faculty into public debate, to provide an alternative vision to the narrow, exclusive, and ultimately exploitative plans of public policy elites. I’m certainly supportive of their goals, and will be a loyal footsoldier for them

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-62068664550219063482011-05-18T08:53:00.000-07:002011-05-18T08:53:28.146-07:00

It's the last day of classes for Spring semester, and for the academic year. That means it's time to start fighting with Excel to make it calculate grades for my classes. I'm not computer illiterate, and I'm not math illiterate. But something about the Excel interface is so counter-intuitive to me that I feel like I am. This morning, considering the prospect of my semi-annual battle, part of my

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-88448129426769628952011-05-03T14:45:00.000-07:002011-05-03T14:45:31.540-07:00

On my walk home, contemplating Manuel Castells' brilliant analysis of al-Qaeda in The Power of Identity, I started thinking about basic contradictions in cultures, and the way they instigate crises. Al-Qaeda's main ideological origin is the contradictions in Middle East political and cultural life - the accumulation of wealth and power by those who own the means to access petroleum reserves,

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-30581985364609895292011-04-27T22:01:00.000-07:002011-04-27T22:01:07.971-07:00

Every day I read news of reductions in classes, students, faculty, and funding of some institution of public higher education. I mean every single goddamn day. This has to mean something. The easy answer, which I propose is dead wrong, is that states have run dry, and higher education is a place where cuts can be made. One reason I think that's dead wrong is that budgets for those institutions

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-16968827034396328962011-04-26T12:54:00.000-07:002011-04-26T12:54:29.576-07:00

The Department of Homeland Security (Abteilung der Heimatsicherheit in the original German) has adopted a new advisory system to replace the color codes. I'm not entirely thrilled, because the infantilization of US citizens implicit in the old system was its main appeal to me. That, and you could describe your day's outfit as "Elevated," which was fun. I have a good idea for a replacement

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-56636745736830493212011-04-19T17:15:00.000-07:002011-04-19T17:15:04.132-07:00

It's always precarious to write about music as expressing ideas. Especially in the case of a symphony, which is really just a series of notes, and especially in the case of Shostakovich's Fifth, which is not only just a series of notes, but a series of notes he wrote in an attempt to continue his composing career and not, you know, get executed by Stalin. I forget exactly how I got hooked on

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-3022751635563348402011-04-17T13:46:00.000-07:002011-04-17T13:46:17.534-07:00

I was informed on Friday that I am not a finalist for the tenure-track position in my department. I have heard that I "deserve" a tenure-track position, as well. Just, you know, apparently not here. This is very strange, given my 13 years of contributions to the department, the university, and my active records of scholarly achievement in academic philosophy. I am not a great scholar of the era

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-32435784737588426292011-04-14T13:01:00.000-07:002011-04-14T13:01:31.456-07:00

Since 90% of folks in the US live on a median income of $31,000, we all try to economize and live on a budget, but especially in these difficult economic times, it's critical. Perhaps, then, you'd like to follow these handy tips to family budgeting, based on the best practices in California. 1. Reduce household income If two people in the household both work full-time, your wages may be so high

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-4302805745816234792011-04-08T10:29:00.000-07:002011-04-08T10:29:11.089-07:00

Now that the official deadline has passed for the state to hold a special election to keep some taxes in place, and the state senate has started holding hearings on a cuts-only deficit reduction that would lead to massive layoffs of faculty and staff and huge increases in tuition for students, I'm headed to the CFA Assembly this weekend. Good timing. I decided last night that I would practice

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-84927879700197975662011-04-03T09:13:00.000-07:002011-04-03T09:13:39.655-07:00

Over the last couple of weeks, a series of questions have been on my mind. In fact, I keep waking up thinking about them, as though I had been wondering about them in my sleep. I think these are really fundamental philosophical questions, and the way I'm thinking about them strikes me as odd. Let me say what I think is obvious about meaning. Our brains have evolved in a way that makes our

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-33508339345741554612011-03-26T13:48:00.000-07:002011-03-26T13:48:27.674-07:00

People used to make records As in a record of an event The event of people playing music in a room - Ani Difranco, "Fuel" When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time riding my bike out to a shopping center in Greensboro that had a really good book store and a decent record store where I spent a lot of the money I made on my paper route. Among the great finds was a cassette tape of Modest

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-27478641931342457752011-03-24T12:00:00.000-07:002011-03-24T12:00:36.860-07:00

I'm working on a book review for an academic journal. I won't say what journal or what the book is, because, to be blunt, the book is really bad (so far - I'm about halfway through it). In fact, it's so bad, it's making me angry. Back in grad school, I wrote a satire called The 12-Step Program For Academic Success, spoofing the career-building behavior of some of the academics I knew. One of

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-41290323976867482652011-03-22T09:36:00.000-07:002011-03-22T09:36:25.704-07:00

I rarely write anything about hockey. There are 28,309,146 hockey blogs out there, and around 98.3% of what anybody writes about hockey is blather - like all other sports. Anyway, in addition to being a lifelong hockey fan, I'm a Pittsburgh Penguins fan. Lately, that's been great, because of players like Sidney Crosby, Kris Letang, Marc-André Fleury, and so on. Crosby has been the best player

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-39601482257795595822011-03-14T20:42:00.000-07:002011-03-14T20:42:44.994-07:00

In two of my classes this semester, we've been spending an inordinate amount of time on an article about academic freedom, its distinction from freedom of speech, and the way economic pressures threaten academic freedom. The article defines academic freedom as the right to teach and to research as an academic sees fit, without undue pressure to conform to some extrinsic production measure. I

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-41345729285202735392011-03-03T08:31:00.000-08:002011-03-03T08:31:15.469-08:00

Well, ladies and gentlemen, Doc Nagel is in a bad way. I blame a large part of this on the confluence of recent events - the department tenure-track search, looming budget cuts to the CSU (yet again), daily news of the unconscionable exercise of power. I blame another large part on the unrelenting propaganda demonizing organized labor, in particular in public higher education. It feels lately as

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-71121524822773014942011-02-26T10:21:00.000-08:002011-02-26T10:21:49.291-08:00

I'm in two faculty reading groups this semester. One is reading a history of the CSU, written by a long-time administrator and CSU president, and has precisely the kind of perspective you'd expect. When that group gets together, we're awfully cranky about the book, the author, and CSU administrators. The other group will be meeting for the first time Wednesday to begin to discuss a book by

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-32200740762962072712011-02-25T07:25:00.000-08:002011-02-25T07:25:08.700-08:00

Late last night, as it started to drizzle, I stood looking out and down on the townhouses that form our complex. Newly wet, in the orange-yellow haze of the dim streetlights, they looked very little but enough like the condos my friend Doug lived in in Northern Virginia almost 20 years ago. The feeling of looking down through the rain was not significantly but sufficiently like my Card Lane,

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-11893370061900488162011-02-11T10:50:00.000-08:002011-02-11T10:50:17.567-08:00

I have two classes this semester that are focusing on justice, morality, and freedom of speech. We're looking at the First Amendment, exceptions to it, and the difference between the legal right to free expression, and the moral question of what one should or should not say. Later, we're reading the Republic. But for now, I'm presenting them some material on obscenity. In addition to being a

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-66591846262051198282011-02-08T18:49:00.000-08:002011-02-08T18:49:05.788-08:00

This will likely be my second and last post on Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa's recently heralded critique of higher education in the US, Academically Adrift. I've about had it. Psychologists used to employ the term idée fixe to name a certain mania for constantly repeating or returning to the same word or concept, regardless of its relevance to the situation. It's a kind of mental illness, a

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-69973907010823768012011-02-06T14:31:00.000-08:002011-02-06T14:31:52.018-08:00

I'm getting flak for buying an iPhone. Some of it is because it's an Apple product, and Apple is considered a purveyor of evil in some circles - of which more anon. Some of it is because the two networks you can use with iPhone are both supporters of neo-conservative political groups. AT&T infamously gives money to the Tea Party, for instance. The rest of it is just because of the in-crowd,

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-83561408302009511442011-02-04T10:53:00.000-08:002011-02-04T10:53:27.802-08:00

I've begun this widely-discussed book which claims that colleges don't educate and college students don't learn. I'm deeply suspicious. For instance, the second chapter begins by noting that in the last 30 years or so, access to higher education has been extended (the data they cite include the number of people with plans to attend college). They turn to discussion of data about high school

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-4335459030782563012011-01-28T14:53:00.000-08:002011-01-28T14:53:10.027-08:00

Today I reminded myself that I need to get more done on the paper on faculty ethical and social responsibilities in heavily bureaucratized institutions. It occurred to me that a recent academic senate discussion on our campus gave me a pretty interesting example of one of my key claims in the paper: At a certain point, bureaucratic division of labor responsibilities makes it so difficult for

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-14522609054783445602011-01-27T12:56:00.000-08:002011-01-27T12:56:52.779-08:00

Typical pre-semester anxieties last night woke me at 4 AM, from a bizarre dream in which the Chancellor of the CSU had imposed a policy on remediation involving providing milk to students. (This is a highly expurgated account of the dream. I don't want to go into more detail. Please don't ask. Imagine the weirdest possible ramifications of this. Now make it weirder, and ultimately cruel. There

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-49529653115222349412011-01-25T10:46:00.000-08:002011-01-25T10:46:40.630-08:00

Classes start in two days, and my schedule for the semester is not finalized. Consequently, I have opted not to put my syllabi together for the classes that might still be canceled. So there could be a little confusion as the semester starts. Lauren is in surgery even as I write this. It's nothing major, it's outpatient, but still, it's surgery. Thanks, I'll tell her you said so. I've drafted

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-28228577819103636232011-01-19T20:37:00.000-08:002011-01-19T20:37:42.995-08:00

We went back to Ohio for a visit. Chrissie Hynde notwithstanding, at least some parts of my city were not gone, though on balance, a lot of it was. For the first time in probably about 10 years, my sister, my brother and I were all in the same place. There might be a long story behind that, but I'm not really sure. My family is like that. I was about to write a quick gloss on the general

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-54674189599176995282011-01-04T08:00:00.000-08:002011-01-04T08:00:51.658-08:00

What kind of a year will 2011 be? Well, if headlines like Obama exhorts Republicans to put politics aside is any indication, it's going to be a politically annoying year. I don't do partisan politics that much in this space, because the "two-party system" is utterly broken and predictable. But as I mulled over the GOP's early effort to repeal last year's health care reform bill, while the

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-67821552431026010912010-12-31T09:52:00.000-08:002010-12-31T09:52:39.592-08:00

This will be the last in my series emulating the banal, creepily nostalgic pop culture artifact of reviewing the past year as it reaches its end. I won't use a headline like the San Francisco Chronic did today (Explosive losses, Giant victories), because eywwh. Instead, I'll do a reverse-order top 5 kind of list. Those are always really uninteresting, aren't they? Gee, whatever could the top 5

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-67735284299311715972010-12-29T14:32:00.000-08:002010-12-29T14:32:22.190-08:00

My series of entirely useless summing-up posts continues, this time taking up these spent and emptied examples of the genre. Apparently, the OED added 39 words in 2010, including the vomitous defriend and staycation, the oddly old-fashioned fussbudget and buzzkill, the ubiquitous exit strategy, and the rarely-useful steampunk, quantitative easing, and microblogging. One imagines the difficulty

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-32105398461890676372010-12-20T22:15:00.000-08:002010-12-20T22:15:55.776-08:00

The following review interprets and determines threat levels regarding the relevant ongoing concerns. Threat #1: Job Security Despite constant threats to Job Security during 2009 and early 2010, Employment has remained intact. Current threats to Employment include long-standing political attacks on humanities, specifically philosophy, and ongoing state budget crises, coupled with withdrawal of

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-53527664868759270272010-12-18T13:19:00.000-08:002010-12-18T13:19:09.693-08:00

A few random items. It's been a while since I posted anything about food or cooking. Last night was pizza night here, which can mean some combination of things. Last night I made my famous notorious gorgonzola béchamel sauce and schmeared one pizza with that, adding fresh mozzarella, parmigiano reggiano, scallions, kalamata olives, and crimini mushrooms (which I always pronounce like a euphemism

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-34996997592885649012010-12-15T08:22:00.000-08:002010-12-15T08:22:29.540-08:00

I think I'm finally over the rotten head cold that forced me to teach the last week of classes via charades. Apparently, people don't play charades any more. I joked that I was playing charades in class, and proceeded to make the charades sign for "movie," but not one person played along. It's also pretty hard to perform charades of ethical concepts or abstractions like "obscenity." The week

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-245165097062521342010-11-30T22:57:00.000-08:002010-11-30T22:57:58.408-08:00

Today was a good day. My Bioethics class was pretty good – there were some good questions about Foucault’s critique of scientific discourse, and its application to the scientific discourse of medicine (through Canguilhem). My class is populated largely by nursing students who take the course to fulfill both the humanities GE requirement and their own program’s requirement for ethics education.

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-47578709888860834732010-11-07T21:22:00.000-08:002010-11-07T21:22:08.982-08:00

So, I'm writing a 50,000 word novel this month. I started on Tuesday, and I've reached 23,000 words. More later on this insanity.

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-39788629146186470612010-11-03T14:52:00.000-07:002010-11-03T14:52:04.753-07:00

1. Long December - Counting Crows. Studio version. The live versions from either the VH1 show or the MTV show (we've got a double CD incorporating both of those) are vastly superior. I've never seen Counting Crows in concert, but I imagine they'd be tremendous. 2. Lord Granville - Al Stewart. Nobody sees Al Stewart in concert, of course, and Lord Granville, among all the songs on The Year of

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-75873876401894683892010-10-27T15:34:00.000-07:002010-10-27T15:34:10.124-07:00

1. Lapsing With Drainpipe - Grogshow. 2. Last To Know - Neil Finn. 3. Laughing - Winterpills. Three mopey indie/alternative tunes in a row. I needed this? 4. Lazy Line Painter Jane - Belle and Sebastian. That's more like it. I love the ambiguous gender/sex/sexuality stuff in the chorus as the song progresses: "You will have a boy tonight/ You will have a girl tonight / On the last bus out of

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-14419690862052240452010-10-26T11:22:00.000-07:002010-10-26T11:22:09.816-07:00

A few weeks ago, my loveliest and I started talking about and listening to more classical music - in particular, cello stuff, and in particular, Bach. About that time, I heard about the music streaming site Pandora, and added Bach to my list of musicians (along with Beth Orton, John Fahey, Bert Jansch, Land Of Talk - a very weird list). Pandora uses something they call musical DNA to identify

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-22957018199410218302010-10-25T08:19:00.000-07:002010-10-25T08:19:42.101-07:00

We went to our fourth Bridge School Benefit concert Saturday night, through the kind auspices of our pals Jennifer and Andrew. It was, as every year, jammed (the grass seating area was entirely full), chock-full of excellent performances, and very long. It was also rainy at the beginning. After seven hours of Neil Young, Jackson Browne, Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, David Lindley, Lucinda

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-85591269118468622522010-10-21T08:51:00.000-07:002010-10-21T08:51:27.118-07:00

For the last couple weeks I've suffered an unaccountable bout of depression. All depression is unaccountable, as anyone who's had any kind of treatment for it can tell you. There are only "factors" in depression, no "causes," and no "cures." One such "factor" is having previously been depressed, which is kind of like saying that there's a correlation between the sun rising Wednesday and the

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-35696776361304737142010-10-15T12:49:00.000-07:002010-10-15T12:50:15.167-07:00

1. I Was Meant For The Stage - The Decemberists. Quick, name three other songs with the word "derision" in them! 2. I Will Follow - U2. Way back in the day, U2 were a proto-alternative band with a unique sound. 3. I'll Be Back Up On My Feet- the Monkees. Kind of genius: the staccato rhythm of the lyric and the punchy rhythm guitar give this recording a tremendous forward momentum. 4. I'll

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-48969444092498343782010-10-13T16:36:00.000-07:002010-10-14T19:55:15.528-07:00

My favorite "early" Dylan album includes several well-known songs - "Maggie's Farm," "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "Mr. Tambourine Man," and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" being among Dylan's best-known. These songs were very influential, as well. "Mr. Tambourine Man" was famously and popularly covered by the Byrds, who sang one inconsequential verse of it. "Maggie's Farm" and "It's All Over

Doc Nagelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07240297041650481905noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10840934.post-87405629328523556842010-10-12T15:34:00.000-07:002010-10-12T15:34:00.156-07:00

Now, for the letter I! 1. I Am A Rock - Simon and Garfunkel. 2. I Am Also A Walrus - Biff Nerfurpleburger. Written because I realized my character/alter ego Biff believes he was a member of the Beatles, and needed to write a post-Beatles self-referential song (like all of the actual Beatles did). I'm pretty sure Biff is not deranged, though most of his fans may believe otherwise. The whole

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... more skipping... Today's list is brought to you by the letter H. 1. Hey Stella - Paper Cats. I write songs for cats. It's just something I do. Stella is one of the cats that lives at Lauren's mom's house in Harbor City. It dislikes everybody but me and Lauren's mom. I almost always greet her by doing a bad Stanley Kowalski, hence the title of the tune. 2. Hideous Towns - The Sundays. One

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