UCC students pay for the use of the Mardyke Arena in our capitation fee; it’s been closed for weeks and we’re not getting any compensation for it.

Secondly, all the roads in Cork are covered in snow, the buses are all cancelled, anyone who usually drives to UCC is in no position to make it in tomorrow, and yet college is still open. If the SU can’t successfully bat for students on a softball issue like this then what use is it?

Statement of Purpose

I am applying to this MA program so that I can resume studying philosophy after a disastrous year of medical school. I always enjoyed philosophy as an undergrad and I would like a place on this program so that I can gain some experience in dissertation writing, perhaps in preparation for doing a philosophy PhD someday. Honestly, I do not know quite what I would like to end up doing career-wise, but I think that doing this MA would definitely help me make up my mind about whether I want to pursue a career in academia.

My academic research interests lie mainly in the areas of ethics and political philosophy. I’m interested in competing ethical frameworks, their foundations, and their comparative strengths and weaknesses. I’m particularly interested in Utilitarian theory and the dilemma that arises in situations where certain conceptions of the theory call for actions that run counter to common visceral notions of justice and morality. I’m also fascinated by Friedrich Nietzsche’s thundering denunciations of Christian morality, but I’ve yet to study his work academically.

The areas of political philosophy that interest me most are social contract theory, and ideas concerning rights. The rich history of social contract theory is something I’ve long found intriguing, and I’m especially interested in variations of Rawlsian social contract theory that expand its parameters so as to include non-human animals. This is related to my interest in theories of rights, which is centred on how such theories can be adapted and applied to interactions involving humans and other species. Other areas of philosophy that appeal to me are existentialism, Marxism and determinism.

Although I do not yet know exactly what shape my dissertation would take, given my interests I would love to write something on the matter of animal rights. The areas of philosophy that appeal to me most are usually ones with direct application to everyday life, and I have found that my time spent studying philosophy has altered not only how I think about life but how I live it. Ideas about individual autonomy and a broad conception of Utilitarian theory were significant in my decision to switch to a vegan lifestyle, and I would relish the opportunity to develop a strong philosophical argument in favour of this lifestyle.

Furthermore, I would like a place on this MA program so that I can take another module with Dr. Bufacchi, and hopefully even have him supervise my dissertation. I always found Dr. Bufacchi’s classes engrossing as an undergraduate due to their content and his lecturing style, and so I would be delighted if I could persuade him to oversee my thesis preparation and its composition. Finally, I feel that I learned an enormous amount from my first year philosophy tutorials, and I’d love the opportunity to teach some tutorial classes of my own if this is still possible next year.

(Disclaimer: utterly inebriated post, but the sentiment still stands. One of my best friends does med, and he’s one of the nicest, most considerate guys I know. And everyone in my class is really nice too. I genuinely feel bad for dropping out of the course, because
all the other students in it are so goddamn nice. Seriously. Med students, in my experience, are a terrific group of people, and my only regret is that, well, that’s more a personal failing than anything else… But yeah, med students are jolly good folk).

{ – redacted – }

{ – redacted – }

I’m probably going to go disfigure myself with some dumb piercing tomorrow. Speak now or forever hold your peace, those who think it’s a stupid idea.

Go. I promise to be bound by popular consensus come the morning. Or I’ll just do whatever I feel like. I don’t know. Regardless, let’s have some debate.

What kind of piercing should I get? I think that a nose ring like this looks pretty cool, but so far the reception to such an idea has been positively hostile. So again, I put this issue to you, my dear readers.

To pierce or not to pierce?

Update: Here’s the picture. Yes, I know that just because it looks good on someone else does not mean it will look good on me. Still, all drunken assertions aside, I’m quite keen to get this done.

Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress.

They’re both written from a left-wing/progressive perspective, and they can be very, very funny too.

To launch RAG Week we are opening the SU Common Room on Sunday afternoon at 1pm to show the following: Spurs v Arsenal 1.30pm, Scotland v Wales (rugby) and West Ham v Man Utd 4pm. It is Common Room policy not to air those Liverpool scumbags! The Old Bar will also be open for the afternoon showing live games and there will be a free Comedy night in there at 8pm.

My emboldening (yes, that’s the correct word for it; I looked it up).

Please be advised that Dr Lucy James requested that the Signpost session on Friday 30th January is from 09.30 – 10.00!

Kindly amend this in your timetable, thank you.

I used to see it far too often in text messages too. Thankfully that girlfriend left me because I’m insufferable.

– Redacted –

– Redacted –

Rah-rah…

I’m not trying to denigrate the protesters’ motives, and there are good reasons to demand more of Israel, a democracy, than of a military junta in Burma, but sometimes it seems like people are only too eager to lash out at Israel, but then fail to muster the same level of indignation when other countries commit atrocities. Maybe I’m guilty of this too.

Of course, this observation does nothing to undercut the fact that the Israeli government’s bombing for votes in Gaza is disgraceful, and I find their wanton disregard for Gaza’s civilian population appalling, but I find it a little peculiar that so much opprobrium gets heaped on Israel while the vile behaviour other, arguably far more dastardly, states goes unremarked upon.

General appeal is obviously not universal appeal however, and Clive Crook at The Atlantic is not impressed.

Since the first chapter of “Tipping Point” I have been enduring Gladwell out of an increasingly weary sense of professional obligation. This is what they pay me to do, I tell myself. The man has a nose for interesting tales, I grant you, but his unfailing combination of intellectual parasitism, credulity, false modesty, and self-importance repels me. In “Tipping Point”, “Blink” and those of his New Yorker pieces I have read, the formula is always the same: find a scholarly opinion; sanctify said opinion with Gladwellian approval (transforming it from a disputed theory to something “we now know”); season with Madison Avenue terms of art; then deluge with anecdotes of questionable, if any, relevance. And let there be color. Always, the color. Please tell me about that man’s wry smile, interesting foreign accent, and cluttered desk (often, as studies show, the sign of a creative mind). I need to know all that.

Crook then proceeds to give Gladwell’s latest book Outliers a jolly good hammering based on David Brooks’ review of it (Crook admits that he has yet it himself, which I suppose somewhat undermines his takedown’s validity, but doesn’t make it any less enjoyable).

There’s hundreds more of these fine graphs here.

Also, why the hell am I so paranoid about my appearance? What the fuck is with that? It seems that I’m quite capable of scoring hot girls when I’m drunk, so what on earth is my problem? I ought to just start each day with a shot of Jim Beam. See you in the New Bar on Monday at 8.45…

More than the sheer embarrassment that comes with making an absolute spectacle of myself in front of my peers, I have long stopped considering it funny to wake up in my bed with no recollection of how or when I got home, and this happened to me too often of late. Still, under certain circumstances it may well be for the best that I can’t recall much of the night before; for instance, had I known what a disgraceful mess I’d been on Sunday night I may well have just stayed in bed yesterday morning rather than face my class at 9 a.m.

At this point I probably should provide some context for the events of Sunday night. My class contains a large Canadian contingent, and so a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner had been organised for which everyone in the class was to prepare a dish. The food was fantastic and everything was really, really nice. In this relaxed and civilised atmosphere I had been steadily working through my 6 bottles of Bulmers, and, upon finishing them circa 9 p.m., moved on to one of those small bottles of Jägermeister. Then someone from the class showed up with a bottle of Jameson and that’s pretty much the last thing I recall.

Unfortunately for me, that’s not the last thing everyone else recalls, and I apparently spent the rest of the night hollering and hassling people about going to town (I don’t know why). I also came perilously close to spilling wine (which seemingly followed the Jameson) all over carpets, and I got sick in the host’s flowerbed. When we eventually did get to town, after much shouting and raving on my part, I charged over to a bench and fell sprawled across the pavement on Grand Parade. I don’t remember much about the time spent in the bar, except for the moment my instinct for self-preservation got off its ass and told me to leave my pint where it was and get the fuck home.

In summation, I think I have a problem with alcohol because when I drink I tend to get way too sozzled for my own good, and I made an ass of myself at a class party the other night where everyone was too polite to pack me off in a taxi home at 10 p.m., which is exactly what I deserved for being such a clown. So sorry guys, if any of you are reading this, and I’d also like to extend heartfelt thanks to Anthony, Eoin and Shane, who’ve been putting up with this shit for years. I’m going to sort myself out, I promise.