Boobs n' Beards -- What are you looking at? Janet's feigned expression of horror? Her bizarre nipple accoutrements? Not me! The most interesting thing about this picture is . . . J. Tim's "beard"! Timberlake is but one data point in my embodied argument that the beard is now the height of fashion. Start yours now or be like the guy who finally decided the goatee is "cool" some time in 2002 and ended up looking like some jackass relief pitcher for the Astros.

Reading is Fundamental; Buying is Holy -- Please note some updated books advertised at your bottom right. Though I've just cracked it, the new Gibbard seems outstanding. I'm very much on his wavelength. The Adams bio of Gouverneur Morris so far is also excellent. (G. Mo is a stud!) More comprehensive, but therefore less breezy, than the Brookhiser. I'm excited by the Skyrms book on the Stag Hunt, but it has yet to arrive. And I'm learning a lot from Samuel Bowles's Microeconomics.

I bring this to your attention because, apparently, I have earned seven whole dollars through the Amazon Associates program. However, they don't send the money to my bank until I hit $10. So I'm hoping a couple folks who happen to want some of the books down there will click through and put me over the top. So I'm happily offering this editorial service (I have excellent, I won't myself say "cutting egde," taste) to relieve your anxiety of choice.

I'd like to buy a couple pints.

Designated Reading -- I'm happy to see that my former advisor, Michael Devitt, has made his book, Designation, available on his website. Designation is one of the best works in the philosophy of language published in the 80's (perhaps the only systematic working through of the Kripke/Donnellan casual theories), yet has been out of print for a number of years, and is almost totally impossible to find through used booksellers. Check it out. Devitt is an exceptionally clear, even punchy, writer who is able to make a very dry subject matter come (somewhat) alive.

Also, check out the many papers on his CUNY website. "There is No A Priori" is nice, and "Worldmaking Made Hard," which begins "In part I of this paper I shall demonstrate the horror of a doctrine I call 'Worldmaking'," gives something of the flavor of a Devitt seminar, wherein he rails against philosophers who would sacrifice the world of stones, cats, and trees for a world of words. (It's always "stones, cats, and trees." If in a more theoretical and scientific bent, we almost always get "electrons, muons, and curved space-time." This comforts me.)

Denis Dutton Fans Rejoice -- Good stuff from the our man at Arts and Letters Daily. A thoughtful discussion of the role of skeptical doubt occurs in Dutton's review of Jennifer Michael Hecht's The Great Doubters and Their Legacy From Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson. Besides being eminently sensible, Dutton slips in a few good swipes at Freudians and Marxists. This, also: "These days, except for a few aging professors who still teach postmodern literary theory, few skeptics reject the overall validity of science." Nice.

And then there's this outstanding, appreciative, but critical, review of Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment in the New Criterion.

Google me This -- I'm jacked about the announcement that Google plans to scan everything in the Stanford library published before 1923. That should make a huge chunk of the important (and unimportant) works in philosophy available for free. Go Google!

This is, by the way, what Microsoft is really good for. It puts the fear of Jesus in the Googles of the world, and makes 'em hustle to make us happy. So what I'm really hoping for is that Microsoft comes close in the search war, and succeeds in creating a superfast integrated search in Windows that allows me to search my own measly 30gb hard drive at something close to the speed that Google manages to search the whole goddam internet, but falls short in the end because of all the glorious innovations the Google geniuses lay at our feet in order to keep us from straying.

Who loves markets? I love markets!