Entries by Colin McGinn

Tom: In Memoriam

Tom was a feral cat that lived on my property. I fed him every day for two and a half years, two or three times a day. He was half blind and quite lame; he often had wounds on his head. I used to pat him occasionally, but then one day he bit me, so […]

Share

The New Madness

The world has been becoming steadily more insane for the last few years, but the era of the Great Orange Blob marks a new high. It would be funny if it weren’t so scary. Are we seeing the dawn of a new fascism or is it just a passing phase of the overheated media? I […]

Share

Prince

I just want to note the death of Prince. I found him quite possibly the most brilliant pop artist of the last thirty years–as a songwriter, performer, and guitarist. “Kiss” is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. I also liked his look and height. I have nothing original to say about him, […]

Share

Absence

For those wondering where I’ve been recently the answer is that I’ve been working on a collection of new papers which I intend to publish soon. The thing is there are 125 of them, so it took a lot of work to finalize them.

Share

Downton

It ended and we must go back to reality. What the show was really about, though I have never seen it mentioned, is virtue. It was about good and bad people doing good and bad things. It was about personal vice–greed, lies, envy, malice–and dealing with it. And it took a very literal and direct […]

Share

Penguin Genes

I was watching (as is my wont) another nature program yesterday, about penguins. Among many marvelous things I was struck by one scene in particular: after showing the remarkable parental devotion of the parents, the camera caught them feeding their chick for the last time and then waddling off to leave it to fend for […]

Share

Awakenings

I bought two chrysalises a few weeks back and put them in my butterfly container. One was quite fat and housed a moth; the other was thin and dead looking and housed a delicate butterfly. I was told the moth was hibernating and would take weeks or months to emerge while the butterfly would be […]

Share