the Timpest

From Crooked Timber I found out about Worlde, which makes text clouds based on the frequency of words in some text.  Here is a pictoral representation of my free will book:

I think this is pretty neat; in particular, I like it that Allison's name makes an appearance (top middle).  Worlde allows you to play with colors, font, number of words, etc....  But I'm trying not to sink even more time into it.

One of my tasks for this summer was to prepare for a new course that I'm teaching in the fall: Metaphysics (departmental description here, then scroll down).  The faculty member who taught this course in past years, now retired, tended to teach it historically (e.g., pre-Socratics on the one/many, Plato on the Forms, Descartes on mind/body, etc...).  I learned from talking to a number of our majors that, given the required courses in the history of philosophy for the major, many (most?) of the issues covered where ones they had already encountered in earlier courses.  So I've been looking forward to building the course as one in contemporary metaphysics. 

I'd hope to get the majority of my notes for the lectures prepared this summer, but I'm quite sure now that that's not going to happen.  I did finish up the first draft of the syllabus this morning (available

I'm going to try two new methodological approaches in this course.  First, while I've required substantial writing in past courses, I'm going to devote part of this course to teach students philosophical writing, in part by using Vaugn's good volume on the topic.

Second, I was really intrigued by Nadalhoffer and Nahmias' recent article on "Polling as Pedagogy," and so am going to devote a number of class periods to some thought-experiments and exercises meant to get students thinking about certain metaphysical issues before we read the chapters on those issues.  (Two of the exercises are

Thoughts or suggestions for improvement are welcome.

This quiz is hysterical.  Here is my score:

I'm hesitant to know what my score adjusted for the current decade (century) would be.  I also took the test as a 1930s wife and scored less than half as high.

(HT: Feminist Philosophers)

Routledge asked me to do a glossary of opproximately 20-30 terms for the back of the textbook I recently sent them. I have my doubts about the usefulness of such an addition, but I'm working on it anyway.

1. additional terms it would be good/helpful for the reader to add
2. suggestions for improvement on extant definitions
3. the minor grammatical stuff that I'm so very bad at

"I don't think you can ever really get over the death of the few people who matter most to you.  It's too big.  Oh yes, the badly broken leg does heal, and you walk again, but always with a limp" ~Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions

Two summers ago, I wrote about our continued struggle with the grief and loss of Allison's mom here.  Looking back at that posting now, I see that in some ways Jameson has changed how I view things.  For example, he makes it easier to look toward the hope of the future and to sometimes escape the gravity of the loss of the past.  But in other ways, every good vision he blesses us with is also a reminder that our joy can be, at best, incomplete; that our family is deprived of a great and wonderful good; that this world is fractured; that we limp, and always will.

Even more so now that she's a mother herself, there is much about Allison that reminds me of Jeanene.  I love Allison for giving me a constant reminder and image of her mother to live with, even if it is painful to see it at times. 

For some reason that I don't understand, I'm having problems posting new stuff on the Singleton blog.  Hopefully it won't be much longer, as I have new cute photos of Master J waiting for public viewing.

This afternoon, I completed a

My second blurb on the back of a book is now out, on my friend Tim's book on relativism:

(My first blurb is here.)

I also noticed that Continuum has put an endorsement of my free will book by John Fishcer on their website: 

Today, I sent the completed* manuscript for Arguing about Religion to Routledge. 

As with this earlier similar post, a few pictures are below the fold...

------------------------------------------------------

*Complete, that is, other than the glossary I found out last week I have to do and the index.  But I can't do the index until I have the page proofs.

...and for many reasons.  One of my favorite things about Amazon is their 'search inside' feature, which lets you look inside many of the books they sell.  For some books, this is just to see the table of contents or a few sample pages.  But some books let you search the entire book for a word or phrase; this must mean that the entire book is part of Amazon's database.  I've used this feature to do research in books that my university's library doesn't have, and just this week compiled a bibliography for a selection in the anthology I'm currently finishing  by using this feature rather than going to the library.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I discovered today that you can now 'search inside' my Free Will: Sourcehood and Its Alternatives.  They must have a completed copy of the book, which means I should be getting my early copies soon.  Using the 'search inside' feature, you could read a few sample pages.  Or if you wanted, you could find out that I first mention 'moral praise' on page six or that Allison is mentioned on 20 different pages, usually as an example.  (She kills Riley on the first page of text.) 

Jameson isn't mentioned in this book at all, since we didn't know he was a he, and thus hadn't yet named him, when the manuscript was finished.  But the book I'm wrapping up this week is dedicated to him.

From an email from one of my colleagues:

Kevin, you are just not cynical enough.

That's funny.

Last fall, I was in a meeting with the new dean of our school of peace studies, or whatever it's called; it was a roundtable to get input from faculty on possible directions for the new school (Supposedly, that is.  I actually think the purpose of the meeting was to engage in some serious self-justification and internal political spin.  But that's another story).  After the meeting was over, the new dean made a bee-line for me, and the first words out of his mouth were:  "You're too cynical." 

I'm tempted to forward him the above email and tell him that he was wrong.

UPDATE II: Section II's introduction is now posted.

UPDATE: Section VI's introduction is now posted.

For about the past year, I've been chronically my progress on a textbook entitled Arguing about Religion for Routledge.  (See here, here, and here.)  The manuscript is due to Routledge 15 June, and so I'm coming up against my deadline in the next few weeks.  I'm hoping that some of you will be willing to give me feedback on my section introductions.  Are they too short?  Too long?  Do you think they'd be helpful to the average undergraduate?  Etc...

I'm currently done with 4 of the 6; I'll post the others in the next week or so when I finish them.  I'm also wondering if I need a general introduction to the volume.  I'd initially planned on one, but now I'm not so sure given the other introductions.  Thoughts/comments/constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated.

Table of Contents

Section I: The Nature of Philosophy of Religion

Section II. God's Existence and Nature

Section III: Evil and Hiddenness Introduction

Section IV: Providence and Interaction Introduction

Section V: The Afterlife

Section VI. Religion and Contemporary Life

I've long thought that a B- paper is often the hardest kind of paper to grade, as it is not so obviously bad as a C (or worse) paper; at the same time, it is often hard for students to see why thier paper isn't an A- paper if there isn't anyting fundamentally incorrect in it.

Now there is another reason to worry about B- students. 

Other than 2 independent studies I directed this past term, I have my grading done and reported.

Now it's on to writing (and hopefully so much missed reading) for the summer.

Split a pint with someone you love.

UPDATE:  Allison wanted me to make it known that she got the small half.

Ugh.  Fortunately, I've already worked through a significant portion of this pile.  Unfortunately, I'm not done yet.