Off topic

The last week has been kind of a snooze-fest from a research perspective. I've actually done some useful stuff, but it all falls into a couple of categories:

1) Too close to my core thinking for the thesis; don't want to post online.
2) More review of Copenhagen 2009 news; continues to confirm stuff I've already said; not interesting from a posting perspective.

Other than that, mostly on the side I'm doing reading for my next TA gig. So have some quotes:

Most favorite political philosopher quote from Week 2 readings:
Bertrand Russell: "Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is the Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships of philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships." (Power: A New Social Analysis)

Least favorite political philosopher quote from Week 2 readings:
Emile Durkheim: "...woman can endure life in isolation more easily than man. When a widow is seen to endure her condition much better than a widower and desires marriage less passionately, one is led to consider this ease in dispensing with the family a mark of superiority; it is said that woman's affective faculties, being very intense, are easily employed outside the domestic circle, while her devotion is indispensable to man to help him endure life. Actually, if this is her privilege it is because her sensibility is rudimentary rather than highly developed. As she lives outside of community existence more than man, she is less penetrated* by it; society is less necessary to her because she is less impregnated* with sociability. She has few needs in this direction and and satisfies them easily. With a few devotional practices and some animals to care for, the old unmarried woman's life is full. If she remains faithfully attached to religious traditions and thus finds ready protection against suicide, it is because these very simple social forms satisfy all her needs. Man, on the contrary, is hard beset in this respect. As his thought and activity develop, they increasingly overflow these antiquated forms. But then he needs others. Because he is a more complex social being, he can maintain his equilibrium only be finding more points of support outside himself, and it is because his moral balance depends on a larger number of conditions that it is more easily disturbed." (Suicide)


* Ooh, clever, Durkheim.