Bad Philosophy

How did you feel about the staff at your university when they enforced policy? When they told you that something wasn’t in your best interest? When they offered to help you through tough times? It’s been a while since we’ve visited the subject of Higher Education, and we’ve perhaps never approached it from quite the same vector as this episode. Student Affairs veteran and resident synesthete Shawn Brackett joins me and Kevin for an insider’s look at institutionalized paternalist / maternalist practices in public universities, historical precedents for them, and some questions around the ethics of their implementation. So settle in for some free pizza, free condoms, and free thought in this week’s BF.

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adulthood, alcohol, Alexander Graham-Bell, Arthur Chickering, autonomy, bachelor’s degree, childhood, drugs, economics, education, Fermat’s Last Theorem, high school, higher education, in loco parentis, Kevin, maternalism, paternalism, Reed College, sex, sex education, Stephen, student affairs, Texas Tech University, The Purge, The Simpsons, University of California System

To quote a tired but relevant saying, we like to believe that “our courts are the great levelers.” They exist to ensure that criminals be punished, that the innocent are heard, that justice be done for one and all. But every once in a while someone goes through our courts and gets away with murder. […]

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alcohol, Bones, Breaking Bad, caffeine, Carson, Casey Anthony, Caylee Anthony, chloroform, cigarettes, cocaine, coffee, crime, crystal meth, CSI, death sentence, democracy, Dexter, drugs, epistemology, ethics, firearms, guns, Hitler, JonBenet, law, law enforcement, legal positivism, legal validity, marijuana, Matt, meta, methamphetamine, Monty Python, morality, Nancy Grace, natural law, NCIS, OJ Simpson, punishment, separation thesis, Social Thesis, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stephen, tobacco, vigilantism

As I hope many of you are already aware thanks to various sources around the Internet, FOX recently announced that the best sci-fi series currently on television, Fringe, will be moving to the “Friday Night Death Slot” when American Idol returns. Obviously, we here at BF are upset about this, so we assembled a panel […]

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4chan, advertising, alcohol, American Dad, AOL, Archimedes, Aristophanes, ASL, chauvinism, Cialis, Coca-Cola, Comedy Central, CPM, democracy, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible, DVR, engagement, Family Guy, Firefly, Formspring, FOX, Friday Night Death Slot, Fringe, Futurama, Ghost Hunters, God, Honeymooners, Hoverround, How I Met Your Mother, Hulu, instant gratification, Jeopardy!, Kevin, long tail, Mad Men, Matt, McDonald's, mead, Nielsen ratings, PBS, POGs, poop, PopEater, privacy, Rhapsody, Simon, statistics, Stephen, supernatural, Syfy, TechCrunch, The Cleveland Show, The Guild, TSA, TV, TV ratings, Twitter, unions, value, Viagra, vinyl, Wheel of Fortune

In these tough economic times, it’s always nice to be able to take a break from all the chaos and watch the demented apparition of a shark tear through the souls of Peter Jackson’s brethren. Not sure what the hell we’re talking about? Well, here’s the dealio. Kevin and I reconvened for another romp into […]

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3D, alcohol, books, Britannica, comic books, cyber-terrorism, Dave Chappelle, drugs, education, elementary school, Ghost Shark 2, Glenn Beck, Gregory Brothers, harm principle, John Stuart Mill, justice, Kevin, Kickstarter, law, Live Free or Die Hard, lunch, malt liquor, marijuana, Martin Luther King Jr, movies, New Zealand, Oxford English Dictionary, philosophy of law, Reefer Madness, Rifftrax, Shakespeare, Star Wars, Stephen, The Internet, The Pirate Bay, The Room, The Wire, The Yes Men, Troll 2, Westboro Baptist Church, Wikipedia