Friday, February 26, 2010  Links for Thinking  * A long lost
letter by Descartes has been found; it's to Mersenne and
discusses the publication of the Meditations. You can find more
details at the website of Erik Jan-Bos, the discoverer.  * A
macroeconomics cube of opposition. I lack sufficient grounding
in a number of the positions to know how accurate it is, but it
looks interesting.  * A good post by Paul Gowder on a common
error about shared responsibility.  * Dog jousts rabbit. Poor
rabbit.  * Burying the dead in Haiti. Burying the dead is one of
the traditional corporal works of mercy.  * Christopher
Tolkien's translation of, and commentary on, The Saga of King
Heidrek the Wise. (PDF)  * Erasmus's Anti-Polemus.   * James
Chastek has a good post on good taste.  * Lindsay Beyerstein has
a sensible post on the Austin plane crash and terrorism.
Thursday, February 25, 2010  Virtue Analysis  To wrap up the
virtue ethics section of my ethics course, I had the students do
the following assignment:  Pick a virt