Noteworthy reads from the last week:
“Finding Your Way Home,” Peter Godfrey-Smith
“Dreyfus and Taylor think that philosophy constantly invents new ways to falsely intellectualize our relationship to things that we do. Philosophy itself does not subside once we see these issues clearly; philosophy has tasks beyond merely diagnosing errors.”
“The Accidental Diorama of a Novelist’s Life,” Mary Duffy
“In the face of this older, employed, nearly-tenured professional person who would probably write real things, publishable things in this chair, I suddenly worried that I would have to relinquish it, that I had done something rude.”
“What Is the Point of College?,” Kwame Anthony Appiah
“As higher education expands its reach, it’s increasingly hard to say what college is like and what college is for.”
“Speaking in Science,” Christine Mitchell
“Scientific Babel, it might be said, now confronts us on seemingly different fronts—the human and the machinic.”
“Inside The Mermaid Economy,” Elizabeth Segran
“As someone who has tracked mermaid culture for about a decade, Wolbert says that fascination with mermaids has always been there under the surface.”
“The heartland has been emptying of large-animal vets for at least two decades, as agribusiness changed the employment picture and people left the region. Many vets simply close shop when they retire; private practice is too hard a way to make a living. Meanwhile, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has become the nation’s largest single employer of vets, most of whom work in meat and poultry plants, where they oversee not animal husbandry but slaughter.”