Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with a column by Ann Coulter.

Here is an essay about Hillary Clinton.

Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret (G. E. M.) Anscombe (1919-2001) was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, and almost certainly the greatest female philosopher ever. I wrote the entry on her for Alan Soble’s two-volume work Sex from Plato to Paglia: A Philosophical Encyclopedia (2006). Jenny Teichman was one of Anscombe’s students. Simon Blackburn is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge. In a 2001 review of a book about Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, Blackburn made some nasty (and gratuitous) remarks about Anscombe. See here. That fall, in a publication called Quadrant, Teichman defended her beloved teacher. In 2005, Blackburn reviewed a collection of Anscombe’s essays for the Times Literary Supplement. He didn’t mention Teichman by name, but he alluded to her with disdain in at least one place. He went on to make additional nasty remarks about Anscombe, who was, by then, unable to defend herself. I will link to the second and third of these items in the next two days. When I link to Blackburn’s review, I will criticize it, for in my opinion he is grossly unfair to Anscombe. In the meantime, read Blackburn’s review of Wittgenstein’s Poker, to which I linked.

Addendum: Here is an image of Anscombe and her husband, the philosopher Peter Geach.

Here is Peggy Noonan’s latest column. Here is Peg Kaplan’s latest post.

Addendum: Professional writers didn’t used to write “didn’t use to,” as Noonan did in her second paragraph. She needs a copy of Garner’s Modern American Usage (2003).

Addendum 2: What is the point of Noonan’s recitation of presidential religious denominations? Quaker, Baptist, Episcopalian, Disciples of Christ, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian. She makes it sound as though we have had every sort of religion under the sun in the Oval Office. Nope. We’ve had only Christians. No Muslims, no Jews, no Buddhists, no Hindus, no Zoroastrians, no Mormons, no atheists.

My friend Alan Soble founded the Society for the Philosophy of Sex and Love in 1977. Here is the Society’s web page.

LSU goes down! How does Kansas versus West Virginia sound for the BCS title game? The network bigwigs must be cringing.

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox argues for an individualist reading of the Second Amendment. The United States Supreme Court will accept this argument, but rule that reasonable restrictions on gun ownership are permissible. (The Court will, in the process, rule that the Second Amendment applies to the states as well as to the federal government. In legalese, the Court will incorporate [embody] the Second Amendment into the Fourteenth.) In other words, the Second Amendment will be interpreted just like the Free Speech clause of the First Amendment, which has never been held to be absolute. Subsequent cases will allow the Court to refine the restrictions, just as it has done in the case of free speech.

Here.

Here is a review of the latest book by philosopher John Gray. The book sounds like a critique of progressivism. I am eager to acquire and read it.

To the Editor:

The United States pork industry shares the public’s concerns about illness-causing bacteria that are resistant to treatment with antibiotics.

The industry has financed research to determine if MRSA is present in the domestic swine herd and supports additional epidemiological research and strong surveillance systems in hospitals and health care facilities to monitor the disease.

But the pork industry would not support testing of all livestock or livestock products for MRSA. A thorough risk assessment conducted by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment concluded that MRSA present in food animals such as pigs is not a food safety threat.

Pork producers take very seriously the responsibility to ensure that their farms and the way they raise animals protect the health of neighbors and the general public, and that the food they produce is safe and wholesome.

Jill Appell
President, National Pork Producers Council
Altona, Ill., Nov. 21, 2007

Note from KBJ: Not seriously enough to test all livestock or livestock products, evidently. Seriousness ends where loss of profit begins.

Here.