Category: education
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Reflections on two months of blogging, on page clicks, referrers, searches, and, above all, anonymous readers
A blog seems to me a curious thing. One day you set up shop and natter away. The next nobody looks over your shoulder while you do so. You can write in public, but there’s no public. You urinate in the park without getting caught. Then, for no apparent reason, someone stumbles upon your blog,…
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Why being laid-back may not be a virtue
Being “laid-back” has become something of a buzzword. Roommates are laid-back. So are managers–good ones. And boyfriends–the ones worth holding onto anyway. Apparently, being laid-back is a great virtue. About what topics are those who profess to be laid-back truly laid-back? About another person’s actions or behaviors; about her choices in life; about his values…
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On Richard Rapport’s Nerve Endings
A philosophical review of Richard Rapport, M.D., Nerve Endings: The Discovery of the Synapse (New York: Norton, 2005). Richard Rapport’s remarkable book returns us to the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century where amateur science hewed more closely to aesthetic vision. The main characters are the cantankerous Italian, Camillo Golgi, and the pensive, ardent…
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Brooks’ modesty manifesto
In “The Modesty Manifesto,” David Brooks argues that over the past 50 odd years our culture has overemphasized self-esteem with the result that we do not know ourselves and we have failed to become virtuous citizens wedded to common causes. Further Reading Thomas Nagel, “David Brooks’s Theory of Human Nature” Andrew Taggart, “Who is David…
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On the saying, ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat’
So far in New York, I haven’t found that any direct route takes me to my desired goal. Many are the paths that terminate in dead ends; many are those that, after a time, start resembling circles; many seem to lead nowhere and then, after I’ve begun trying something else, present themselves differently; a few–the…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 