Wide Scope A philosophy blog that ranges over philosophy and other fun stuff.

What Google Can Do For You

I gave a presentation to faculty and staff today called about Google services. I focused on 5 cool things academics can do with Google Forms. Below is the slide presentation I used for the talk. I’ll be adding You Tube video in the little boxes soon to turn the presentation slides into a narrated presentation. ...

Young Philosophers Schedule: 2009-2010

11.30.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

UPDATE: Moved to Front We’ve selected five young philosophers to come speak in our Young Philosophers Podcast Lecture Series. Competition was very tough this year, but we’ve managed to select five. Meet this year’s Young Philosophers. ...

Kent State University Switched to Google Apps

11.30.2009 · Posted in educational technology

It turns out Kent State University has already switched to gmail for their mail services. Now all students and faculty will be able to use a wide range of additional Google Apps services. Story here. The dominoes are starting to fall. I really hope that SUNY-Fredonia is somewhere next in that domino line. In case you haven’t ...

Testing Audio Plugins

11.30.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

I’m playing around with some wordpress plugins. If this works, an audio player should be embedded here with a brief test recording. Update: Wow. That was painless and easy. ...

Wisdom Teeth and Thanksgiving Hiatus Over

11.29.2009 · Posted in Uncategorized

Alright. I’m finally starting to feel better from the wisdom teeth removal, and Thanksgiving break is nearly over. Blogging will continue soon. I’ve actually been working on a few posts periodically throughout the break. I also have a couple new idea that I’m going to start incorporating into this site that I’m pretty excited about. More on ...

Hello Droid. Bye-Bye G1.

11.21.2009 · Posted in android, educational technology, google phone

Two things happened yesterday. I had my wisdom teeth pulled, and FedEx brought me my new smartphone - the Motorola Droid. So on balance, yesterday was awesome. That’s how great this thing is. Don’t get me wrong, ...

November Must Be Philosophy Survey Month

11.18.2009 · Posted in the profession

There’s a lot of surveying going on in philosophy, and it’s not the X-Phi guys. All of these surveys are designed to generate interesting data about the profession. Survey on Publishing in Philosophy Sally Haslinger is gathering data about publishing in philosophy. Word on the street is that she’ll report about the results at the Eastern APA. ...

What is Magic?

11.10.2009 · Posted in fun

I don’t believe in magic. At least, I thought I didn’t. Then I started worrying that I might not actually know what the heck it is that I am denying the existence of. So…let’s try to analyze it. ...

“Believe That” and “Believe In”

11.08.2009 · Posted in metaphysics, philosophy of language

I’m attracted to a traditional account of the semantics of belief reports which holds that the semantic content of a belief report of the form ‘S believes that P’ is a two-place relation that holds between a person and a proposition. I’m curious about other common phrases in English that (a) use the word ‘believe’, (b) ...

SUNY Wide Google Apps Contract

11.05.2009 · Posted in educational technology, teaching, the academy

I spoke with an IT person at one of the schools from the list of SUNY schools that appeared to have made the switch to Google Apps. Here’s an interesting update. The switch was put on hold and will take effect soon, because…and this is the exciting part…in the next few weeks there will be a ...