(AP) Can Art Save the World?

Interesting question:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julia-moulden/can-art-help-us-save-the_b_478416.html

Clive Bell: "...art may prove the world's salvation."

(NHN) Facebook World

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23651

Liberalism Lost in the Framing Wars

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/26932

David Michael Green:

"By not refuting the false accusations that he is a liberal or even a socialist, and by running an abysmal presidency, Obama has done as much as the scum on the right in service to wrecking a set of ideas that are not only noble and correct, but are desperately needed now by a country imploding under the weight of the regressive politics which has been ascendant for thirty years now. Worst of all - and quite by design - Americans are forgetting what any sort of progressive politics would even actually look like. Orwell understood the significance of this phenomenon so well he made it the existential nightmare of his protagonist, Winston Smith. All Winston wanted to do was to hold onto some sense of a tangible reality. O'Brien, his torturer, showed him what happens when power not only wants to win battles, but better yet end them forever by eliminating the very opposing ideas people might embrace."

Re-Inventing Reality

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/24-5

Norman Solomon comments:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/25-2

War as Public Relations Stunt

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/23-8

(CR) Peter Singer's Ethics

One (very) critical review of Singer's utilitarianism and redistributionism:

http://www.peterberkowitz.com/otherpeoplesmothers.htm

A Rose is a Rose...

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/19

(NHN) Small "t" and large "T" Terrorists

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/19-1

Nuking all Hope

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/18

Happy Meals

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/17

The Internet, Art, Culture, and Human Nature

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/15-1

The Institutionalization of Fear

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/15-0

The Limits of Spell-checking

http://faculty.smcm.edu/mstaber/spellche.htm

(CR) Constructing Reality on a Snow Day

CR Seminarians: We meet again next Wednesday (Monday is a holiday). We will finish the naturalism/supernaturalism discussion then. I will post a new reading assignment in the CR Blog this weekend (or before).

Q&A Pickup for Absent Students

Throughout the semester, all Q&A's (and other papers) not picked up on the day I return them are stored in a folder outside my office door.

(NHN) Building a Permanent Presence in Afghanistan

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/10-0

(CR&NHN) National Prayer Breakfast?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/08-3

Update:

From the NYT, 2/11/10:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=10&hp

A Specter is Haunting the USA

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2010/02/05-2

Notice to all Multi-stage Persuasive Essay Writers

All official deadlines are now included on the handout for Multi-stage Persuasive Essays.

Intergenerational Economic Mobility in the US.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html

$2,000,000,000+ /day

Sheer madness:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/02/02

(AP) Art and Intentionality

Short essay on defining art in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions (listing intentionality as a necessary condition of all art):

http://users.ipfw.edu/strayerj/Phil-Art/Handouts/def-of-art.PDF

(CR) Dutton on Kant on Beauty

Thoughtful, accessible essay by Denis Dutton on Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment:

http://www.denisdutton.com/kant.htm