Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!  Here’s this week’s installment:

• Simon Critchley discusses the relevance of Heidegger here, here, and here. (A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for these.)
• The June 2009 book reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews are in.
• Update: I received word this morning about new changes to Project MUSE:

“– A ‘Search this Journal’ search box. This search box appears on each journal’s home page, on the Table of Contents (TOC) of each issue, and on each article. The ‘Search This Journal’ feature enables a user to quickly check all issues of the journal in MUSE, with a single search, for all articles in that journal pertaining to a particular subject.

– Summaries (abstracts) for articles. MUSE now provides a link for the summary of each article. Users know that the ability to scan summaries of articles is essential to determining which articles are relevant to their research. That ability is now available in MUSE. The Summary links appear on the TOCs and in search results, next to the article format options of HTML and PDF.

New Option for Custom Print
–Custom Print is a service provided by Sheridan Press that allows a user to click on a link from MUSE and purchase an article or groups of articles for the purpose of creating a custom publication. MUSE is one of the first online providers to activate this service. The user may choose either print or electronic format for the purchased articles. At this time, articles contained in ‘The American Indian Quarterly’ published by the University of Nebraska Press are the only articles in MUSE for which this option is available. On the article page, look for the link ‘Custom Print’ to initiate the transaction.

MUSE on Facebook
MUSE has been on Facebook for some time now, but we just secured our own URL and wanted to pass the word on to MUSE users. Find MUSE at www.facebook.com/ProjectMUSE. Become a fan of MUSE! You can also follow us on Twitter, @ProjectMUSE.”

I will be on vacation starting next and will be away for two weeks.  I’ll resume posting on 24 July.  Until then, have a happy and safe Fourth of July, and I’ll see you when I return!

Good morning, readers!

I came across this article yesterday while browsing through bookforum.com — “Thomas Aquinas would have loved genetics” — and found it fascinating.  I think you might, as well.

Next week, readers, I will be posting on Thursday, because of the July 4 holiday.  See you then!

The intellectuals: in God’s menagerie, are they necessary?  For what?  Are they mediators or producers?  If the latter, what do they produce? The word?

– Lesek Kolakowski, Modernity on Endless Trial.

I will be out next Friday, so next week’s post will be on Thursday morning.  See you then!

Good morning, readers!

Lots of great items in this week’s Library News & Notes. Some of the most interesting include:

• A Bing/Google comparison
• “The end of theory in science?”
• “How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data”
• “58 Essential Resources For Every Mac Geek”
• More on Twitter and Wolfram|Alpha

Enjoy!

Good morning, readers!

For your reading pleasure this week:

The new May 2009 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews are now available.   There’s quite a variety of philosophers and topics covered this month — Hegel, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, al-Kindi, Simplicius, Epictetus, the liar paradox, the will, aesthetics, and more.  Are any of these worth considering for the Robbins collection?

I came across this article, “The Case for Working With Your Hands,” by Matthew Crawford, several days ago, via Brian Leiter and a few friends posting it on Facebook.  It’s a very thoughtful and profound essay, on work, education, and where our culture places its priorities.

Next week, we’re back to our regular Friday posting schedule.  See you then!

Good morning, readers!

Five items of interest today — the first, third, and fourth items are via Bookforum.com:

• Julian Baggini reports on Jonathan Israel’s attempts to get analytic philosophy to reconsider an historical and contextual approach to philosophy.
• Simon Critchley writes about happiness.
• Nathan Schneider looks at how scientists and theologians are coming together on questions about the multiverse problem.
• Along a similar vein, in terms of theoretical physics, Paul Steinhardt and Peter Galison discuss philosophy, physics, and truth.
• Microsoft is rebranding its search engine to “Bing,” and restructuring how its searches are performed.  If I’m reading this story correctly, the new Bing engine is the next attempt to topple Google’s dominance in the search engine market.

Next week’s post will be on Wednesday, since I will be out for commencement exercises next Thursday and Friday.  See you then!

Good morning, readers!

I’m curious to know if any readers have been using Wolfram|Alpha, and what they think of it.  I have only used it a little bit so far.  From my (limited) experience, it seems a great engine for quantitative data.  Not quite the Google killer that some made it out to be, but definitely a useful auxiliary search engine.

In other news: there is a two-day conference on themes from the political philosophy of T.M. Scanlon in the UK this coming weekend.

Once I’m done with the end of term (today), I should have more time to write more in-depth posts starting next week.  Please feel free to send me ideas.  I have some, but I’d love to hear from readers.

Good morning, readers!

This week, I have a number of items on search engines that may interest you:

Via Garrett Eastman’s Library News & Notes, several articles on Wolfram|Alpha, which I mentioned last week.

• Impressive: The Wolfram Alpha “Fact Engine”
  http://searchengineland.com/wolfram-alpha-fact-engine-18431
  (Source: Pandia Search World)
• See also: Ask Alpha: Quizzing the world’s first answer engine
  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227075.600-ask-alpha-quizzing-the-worlds-first-answer-engine.html
  (Source: Science in the News)
• See also: Wolfram Alpha and Google Face Off
  http://www.technologyreview.com/web/22585/
• See also: Wolfram Alpha vs. Google: Answers to Your Queries
  http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23495/
  (Source: dweinberger)
• Wolfram Alpha vs. Google = Power vs. Simplicity?
  http://ow.ly/5N9N
• See also: Little search engines that could
  http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/05/07/little-search-engines-that-could/

It’s my understand that Wolfram|Alpha will launch this coming Monday, 18 May.

I don’t think Wolfram|Alpha will be a “Google killer.”  The data it collects and parses is somewhat different from the majority of Google searches.  My guess is that it will become a very useful niche search engine, to be used in conjunction with Google.

In other search engine news:

• Google announces that is offering “smarter” searches
• CNN.com/technology looks at alternative niche search engines to supplement Google.

Good morning, readers! Today we’ll start with the weekly posts.

Here are two links to philosophical reviews to amuse you this week:

• The April 2009 reviews from Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
• A link to Philosopher’s Digest, a site that provides “Timely Reviews of Current Philosophy Articles”

I recently learned about a new search engine, Wolfram|Alpha, which is set to launch this month.  What exactly is Wolfram|Alpha?  According to a post on the WolframAlpha Blog,

So what is Wolfram|Alpha? To begin, we’ve named it a computational knowledge engine.

The heart of Wolfram|Alpha is a computational engine able to draw on terabytes of curated data and synthesize it into entirely new combinations and presentations. The stock of systematic, structured data in the world is vast, but finite, and the efficient processes developed for Wolfram|Alpha have allowed us to make real progress towards the goal of incorporating all of it.

Our overarching goal, the “higher purpose” of this project, is to make all computable, factual knowledge available to everyone. What Wolfram|Alpha does is compute on top of those facts—answering questions, solving equations, providing insights, projecting future behaviors, and more.

We believe the result is an extremely powerful way of harnessing the world’s knowledge and making it possible for anyone to benefit from that power.

My interest is certainly piqued, and I will be curious to use this new search engine when it is launched.

Good morning, readers!

Two administrative things to report today:

1. I will be away from 1 May 2009 - 5 May 2009, and will not be posting during this time.
2. More importantly, I will move my posting schedule from daily to weekly posts.  I’m simply not getting enough feedback or requests, and I am not finding enough quality material about which to write such that I am justified in keeping up posts on a daily basis.  Thus, starting next week, I will post only on Fridays, and perhaps other days, if something special warrants my doing so.  If feedback and demand pick up, I will consider going back to daily posts.