I am going to make a prediction–a possibility not a certainty. The sybaritic businessman will quickly find that he is (a) not up to the job of president and (b) he doesn’t like the job. He doesn’t have the knowledge or the patience or the skills to do it adequately, and he chafes at the […]

Why do people pronounce “ing” as “in” in such words as “singing”? This is often called “g”-dropping, though there was never any “g” sound there to start with. One answer is that it is a form of laziness or sloppiness, as if it takes more effort to say “ing” than “in”. But there is a […]

Just to keep my faithful readers up to date, I’ve just been correcting the copy-edited ms of my book Philosophical Provocations: 55 Short Essays for MIT Press. There are seven sections on Mind, Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Biology, Ethics, and Religion. My sense reading the essays over is that they are pretty damn provocative, though often quite […]

It’s hard not to be obsessed by recent American politics. I try not be, but I fail. Every day I have to keep my eye on the news. Clinton’s recent illness terrified me. Trump’s support seems horribly solid, no matter what he says or does. I do thoroughly approve of Colin Kaepernick’s protests, though.