The New SchoolSeptember 14, 2011Free and open to the public

January was apparently Andrew Ross month over at Dissent.  Two articles, Jeffrey J. Williams's "How to be an Intellectual: The Cases of Richard Rorty and Andrew Ross" (in the Winter 2011 issue of the magazine) and Kevin Mattson's "Cult Stud Mugged" (an online original), track Ross's evolution from a so-called cult-stud into someone more akin to an academic labor reporter.

No, they shouldn't. At least according to Douglas Hofstadter, who holds Ph.D.s in Comp. Lit. as well as Physics and has published extensively on artificial intelligence. His reasoning? Does making swooshing sounds while holding a toy plane qualify you to be a pilot? (That's exactly how he put it to me in an impassioned message.)

Tomorrow I leave for RMMLA, which should be a blast. My new friend philosopher Peter Gratton will be there. I'm going to do a panel with object-oriented philosophers Ian Bogost and Levi Bryant. Ian and Levi have books that are imminent and marvelously complementary, both on OOO.

Hello everybody. Since this is my first post I thought I'd just tell you my big news.