The Idea of a Newsletter

"Not just a newsletter, but the Form of Newsletterness."

• For a picture of Adam riding a unicycle, as well as a link to an interesting interview with him, fire up your browser and surf to
  http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/philosophy/

• News from the Graduate Program, courtesy of Graduate Studies Coordinator Robert Burch: John Simpson won a SSHRC PhD Fellowship; Ian Drummond won a SSHRC PhD Canadian Graduate Scholarship; Marianne LeNabat won a SSHRC MA Canadian Graduate Scholarship;Matt Barker won a Province of Alberta Scholarship.

• News of new books. Rob Wilson had a good year. Cambridge University Press is publishing within a few months of each other both his Genes and the Agents of Life: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences: Biology (available September 2004 in paperback and hardback) and his Boundaries of the Mind: The individual and the Fragile Sciences: Cognition (available May 2004 in paperback and hardback).

• The Department's Modal Operators Slo-Pitch team has begun the spring schedule with two losses. On the other hand, it's free of steroids, and there's free pizza after the games. Manager and coach Dave Sharp sums up the team's commitment to excellence on the T-shirt he always wears to games, inscribed with the not necessarily Socratic maxim, ``Life is simple: Eat, Sleep, Play Slo-Pitch.''

• The URL above will take you not only to Adam on a unicycle but also to news about the conference travels of Karen Houle and Amy Schmitter, Cressida Heyes becoming a certified Yoga teacher, Wes Cooper winning a teaching award, and more.

• Also worth a look is Richard Bosley's new web page, TheMean.ca; there is a link to it on his Departmental web page.

• Kenneth Crook has co-authored a book, Ethics for clinical psychologists, published by the University of Alberta Press in 2004. He was an Honours student here at the beginning of the 80s and reminisces in a letter that Rawls's book A Theory of Justice ``has likely been the most important book of my life.'' He writes that Nagel's Mortal Questions, used in his introductory philosophy course, is still on his bookshelf. He became a member of the British Columbia bar in 1986 and took his final case to the Supreme Court of Canada, before ill health obliged him to remove himself from the court room.

• An In Memoriam notice for Kevin O'Brien can be found on the Department's web pages. There are also obituary notices for prominent philosophers who died in the last year.

• The Seventh Annual Herman Tennessen Undergraduate Philosophy Essay Contest is underway. Awarding of a $300 First Prize and a $100 Second Prize is expected in June. Contact Undergraduate Studies Coordinator Alex Rueger if you would like to make a donation to the fund that sustains this important event. The late John King-Farlow made a start-up donation, which has been extended through the generosity of his widow, Liz King-Farlow.

• Finally, if YOU have news, send it to wcooper@ualberta.ca for inclusion in our web pages.

``I do not say with Socrates that the unexamined life is not worth living--that is unnecessarily harsh. However, when we guide our lives by our own pondered thoughts, it then is our life that we are living, not someone else's. In this sense, the unexamined life is not lived as fully.''
Robert Nozick, The Examined Life