I’ve started this blog because my wife is making me. She’s making me because, as a philosophy professor at a research university, I spend – some would say waste – the lion’s share of my time writing. Writing what? Well, in the language of the laity, opinions. But we don’t think of them that way. We prefer to think of what we do as offering arguments. Good arguments when it comes to our own. Bad arguments when it comes to those of our colleagues, colleagues we secretly – and sometimes, as in this blog, not so secretly – regard as idiots.

In any event, most of what I write I don’t bother trying to get published in the journals, mostly because I don’t have to, because I’m already tenured. But this drives my wife – herself also a philosopher but not yet tenured – apoplectic.

I’ve told her that nobody really cares what some obscure academic thinks. So I think this blog will be stillborn. Even my own son, with whom I am well pleased, won’t read it, because he has … I think it’s called a life.

But my wife begs to differ. She thinks it’s going to go viral or something. If she’s right I’m asking for a divorce.

I’m new at this, so I’m just going to make up my own terminology. I’ve divided this blog into four sub-blogs – see what I mean? – the plan being to have already loaded in a rather sizeable backlog on opening day, and then contribute at least one entry a week under at least one of these four headings. They are

1) Why My Colleagues Are Idiots,

2) Notes from the Curmudgeon,

3) Everything You Wanted to Know About What’s Going on in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, and

4) the papers my wife thinks I should have been submitting for publication years ago.

Needless to say I welcome any and all comments. As I tell my own students, if all you’ve got to say is “Ditto”, keep it to yourself. I’ve never been completely right about anything in my life. The A+ goes to whomever can show me where I’m wrong. And it goes with gratitude.

So please feel free to attack me, as viciously as you can muster, at vimip0@uleth.ca.