People tend to project their bad qualities onto other people, but not so much their good qualities. Why? One explanation is that they are lazy and find it easier to assume that everyone is like them. Freud’s explanation was that projection is a mechanism of ego defense: we can’t bear the thought of our own […]
I have to concede victory to Usain Bolt: he has achieved the triple triple. I have only achieved the double triple. But I console myself that I am taller, younger, and can run faster than him. (I hope readers can detect the irony in these remarks, but if they cannot I give up. Compare a […]
Simone Biles!
He has been remarkably durable, given his failings, but surely now he has no way to claw back the ground he has lost. He lives in a fantasy world; he has no idea when he is lying or not. I am always fascinated by the white circles round his eyes (probably the result of tanning […]
“I have one of the world’s top temperaments, believe me. It’s right up there with Putin’s. He admires my temperament by the way–compares it to caviar. I say gold caviar. I have a hundred times the temperament of Hillary Clinton. She has no temperament really. My temperament is soooo presidential, I can tell you that. […]
When Wittgenstein said “the world is the totality of facts” he obviously hadn’t anticipated the “fictional turn”: the world is now the totality of feelings, fears, wishes, prejudices, allegations, insinuations, ideologies, inventions. I liked Bill Clinton’s simple contrast in his speech of last night: there is the “real Hillary” and there is the “made up […]
I’ve written about a hundred book reviews in my life (I haven’t counted exactly) beginning when I was 22. I believe the book review is a valuable form and not easy to do well. I would encourage everyone to do them and take them seriously. It’s important in a book review to convey accurately and […]
McKenzie Revisited I happened upon Kerry McKenzie’s review of my book Basic Structures of Reality recently and was struck anew by her final paragraph: “For me, then, the one pertinent question this work raises is why all of this went unrecognized [the badness of the book]: this book, after all, […]
What a great Wimbledon this year! I was glad to see Raonic in the final against Murray–with no Federer or Djokovic in sight (great champions and excellent guys, but enough already!). Andy really hit his form and showed that his best tennis is at least as good as anyone else’s best tennis. On a more […]