new pages added

As you can see, I’ve added two new pages to the top of this blog.

“Books” is fairly self-explanatory. But I should mention that I’ve added links to the titles of the four already published books, and those links will take you to the affordable prices of those books at the pages of the publishers. The three from Open Court are often listed at utterly ridiculous prices on Amazon.

I’ve explained the story before, but here it is again… All of my Open Court books are sold out. And Open Court has wisely decided to enter the new era by printing new copies on demand, rather than via a large 2nd printing. But Amazon apparently doesn’t list print-on-demand prices unless the publishers agree to use Amazon’s own print-on-demand service. Open Court doesn’t use it. And that’s why the gouging third-party sellers are able to price, say, Guerrilla Metaphysics as high as $220 sometimes. (I will scream if anyone actually paid that much, though I strongly doubt anyone did.) So, interested readers are probably better off getting my Open Court books directly from Open Court.

“Coming appearances” is perhaps even more self-explanatory. There are currently three on tap for Spring Semester: Dundee, Amsterdam, Atlanta. And that’s probably as many as I can handle this semester, given my new range of interesting activities at the American University in Cairo.

By the way, that DRIFT festival in Amsterdam is run by the students. And one can have nothing but praise for the philosophy students in Amsterdam. When I arrived there in Fall 2007 as a visiting faculty member, I was stunned to learn that they had 140 freshman Philosophy majors. Even more amazingly, they didn’t seem to see it as that big a deal. I was mostly hearing comments like this: “Well, a lot of it is just fashion right now. It won’t always be 140 every year.” Ha! Yeah, maybe once the fashion wears off it’ll drop to 95 students. Don’t you just hate those superficial philosophy fashions that sweep like wildfire through the populace?

But DRIFT is a wonderful event. I happened to catch it last year by accident, and was stunned by how well organized it was. Essentially, the students take over a large multi-story building, not too far from the Vondelpark, that may even be a squat. They set up multiple rooms, some of them containing lectures, others housing live musical acts. There is of course food and drink as well. And it runs possibly all night long; I had to leave at perhaps 11:30 PM for reasons of travel itinerary, and it was still booming. I saw at least 5 faculty members there joining in the fun, and there may have been well more than that. (The Department is so huge that I never managed to meet even half of my colleagues there.)

Bruno Latour was also a visiting professor in Amsterdam, in around 2005 I believe. And he told me in advance that the students there are smart as heck, and he was right. It’ll be good to see them again in April.