I Like the Cat

I like the cat's tail
It goes swish, swish
I like cat's whiskers
They go twitch, twitch.
I like cat's eyes
They go glisten, glisten.
I like cat's ears,
They listen listen.
I like cat's fur
It's so soft, soft.
I like when cats jump
They go aloft, aloft.
I like cat's paws
They go pad, pad.
I like mysterious cats
They make sound just a tad, tad.
I like cat's mouth
It goes yawn, yawn.
I like all cats

Ways of Silencing, Reasons for Outing

For my course on procreation and parenthood, tomorrow's reading is a chapter from Jenny Saul's book Feminism.  It's about "the politics of work and family" and starts with an important distinction.  A workplace can be discriminatory on the "difference model"--that involves blatant discrimination on the basis of gender.  A workplace can also be discriminatory on the "dominance model."  Everything

The Evolutionary Psychology of Gender

Wednesday I'm giving a talk about why there are so few women in philosophy, so I've been reading around, thinking about various hypotheses.  For people who find the question interesting, this report by Helen Beebee and Jenny Saul is a must-read (I wrote about it here).  They draw on the book Delusions of Gender: How our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference, by Cordelia Fine -

Who's Being Indoctrinated?

I'm starting to contribute to The Secular Outpost, starting with today's post about indoctrinating children. Next week that will be the topic in my class on procreation and parenthood, so stay tuned (maybe) for more on the subject.

If you're wondering, Kitty is resting comfortably.  His surgery went well, and now we're waiting for the pathology report.

Animal Ethics Comes Home

For the past 6 weeks or so, we've been struggling with one of our cats' health  - he vomits about once a day, eats little, hides under beds. He's lost a lot of weight, and this is clearly life-threatening.  We started with blood tests and x-rays, which didn't identify the problem. Then our vet put him on the steroid prednisone, which helped a lot for a few weeks, but the problems came back. Next

Hammers and Songs

So, seven billion ... and counting!  I really enjoyed Toby Ord's recent lecture on population (here) and find much that he said convincing, but what about the hammers and songs? 

Ord argues that there are advantages to there being seven billion people, not just disadvantages.  One of the advantages comes to light when you contrast hammers and songs. One hammer is not easily shared with an

Number Magic

Something interesting and important is bound to happen today, don't you think?