16/366: Monday, 01/16/2012 (Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
I have to admit that I read the NYTimes book review usually INSTEAD of reading the actual books themselves, because well who has time????
Case in point was the review by Peter Singer (one of my favorite people) of Steven Pinker's new book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Singer did a such good job of describing the book's contents, that I don't really feel the need to go read it on my own.
I do remember when Pinker came to Albion College and gave a racy talk all about swearing and swear words, in which most of them were mentioned on numerous occasions, yet he did not swear once during the whole.talk. It was amusing to see the various AC dignitaries squirming in their seats on the stage. I think the students enjoyed it.
And since I was part of the small faculty coterie who had met to discuss his somewhat annoying book "The Blank Slate" I got to participate in the breakfast he came to have with the coterie participants. That's where I took his picture.
I have to admit that I read the NYTimes book review usually INSTEAD of reading the actual books themselves, because well who has time????
Case in point was the review by Peter Singer (one of my favorite people) of Steven Pinker's new book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Singer did a such good job of describing the book's contents, that I don't really feel the need to go read it on my own.
I do remember when Pinker came to Albion College and gave a racy talk all about swearing and swear words, in which most of them were mentioned on numerous occasions, yet he did not swear once during the whole.talk. It was amusing to see the various AC dignitaries squirming in their seats on the stage. I think the students enjoyed it.
And since I was part of the small faculty coterie who had met to discuss his somewhat annoying book "The Blank Slate" I got to participate in the breakfast he came to have with the coterie participants. That's where I took his picture.
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