20 February, 2010

Professional Philosophers on Twitter


Twitter is a great place to find stuff you're specifically interested in. And since philosophy is one of my great loves, you can rest assured that my twitter feed is filled with philosophy-oriented tweets.

To aid in my search for great philosophic inspiration and discussion, I created a couple of twitter lists that make finding great content that much easier. The first is a list of people interested in philosophy — the list is large enough that it becomes a bit unwieldy to browse thoroughly, but you can definitely find a few gems in there from time to time.

The second list, however, is a bit more useful. My Academic Philosophers list has only those people actually working in the field, or those in grad school who are aiming at that profession. At first glance, such a list might be seen as elitist, but in actuality it is a good resource for reaching out to the academic philosophy community.

If you qualify for the list, but aren't yet on it, please feel free to @reply me with a request; I'm @EricHerboso.

Finally, Insurance Rescues Eric

Fire damage is limited to my roof.

A fire in the apartment above mine caused many of my possessions to get wet from excess sprinkler water. Thankfully, most of my stuff is okay, barring items left carelessly on the floor, such as awithings wifi scale and a first edition voltaire bio from the late 1800s.

Though everything is ultimately replaceable (even the first edition is not too terribly rare), the lost items that have affected me the most are surprising to me: power cords.

My iphone and my macbook are both fine, but the cords which power them are ruined. This has made it extremely difficult to go online, except in spurts when I get a spare charge from the iphone car charger, because snow has prevented me from being able to go to a store to replace the cords. As a result, I've had to go through a form of internet withdrawal, and trust me when I say it is not pretty.

Has both "with almond"
& "contains no nuts" text on back.


This entry, in fact, is being written by pen, and will only be transcribed later to my blog. Life without internet here is unexplainable. I cannot read, for my books are still in my room, while I'm stuck in a hotel for the next week. I cannot really write, for I only have scraps of paper that are quickly running out. So boring is my non-internet existence right now that I only find delight in reading all thecomplimentary soap packaging at the hotel.

I seem to remember, back when I was young and my experience of the internet was mostly confined to AOL 1.0 chat rooms, that tv was a good way of whiling away the time. But since the dawn of napster (and now btjunkie), I have become accustomed to the miracle of zero commercial interruptions, and this experience has made tv watching completely unbearable to me. Even if a story starts to interest me, the first appearance of commercials makes my body seize up w/ irritation. Just thinking about it is making my spine shiver. Ugh.

Without Applecare, this costs $76!

Thankfully, Applecare has come to my rescue. Although I do not think that technically my power cord should be covered in this situation, the kind Apple rep I spoke to over the phone took pity on me and expedited a replacement cord free of charge. Now if only the snow would let up enough to allow the mail to come through unmolested.