Author Archives: samuelbarbour

Nassim Taleb tells this story about a bunch of fisherman who catch some turtles one day. They try to eat the turtles, but the turtles taste bad, so instead they offer the meat to the god Mercury, who happens to be passing by at just that moment. Mercury, an immortal being with supernatural powers, perceivesContinue reading “Turtle Soup”

Justice is fidelity to language – the most precise virtue and the one most resistant to arrest. Justice is not coercive or violent – it is non-violent – and yet often delivered by violence, clothed in violence, called into being by violence. Justice is sacred because it must be believed before it can be seenContinue reading “Economic Justice”

Bulls and Bears. They’re animals – I almost wrote wild animals but bulls (male cows with testicles, and maybe also horns?) are domesticated, despite their reputation for violence. They’re also sports teams in Chicago, where they are refered to as Da Bulls and Da Bears. It was kind of exciting to me the first time I heard someone inContinue reading “Bearish”

So I have a lot of friends on the left who just hate Hillary Clinton. And I love that they hate her so. Why? First, because to me their hatred says that they want progressive policies, but without the politics necessary to get them. Everybody should just realize that single payer health care and environmental regulation andContinue reading “Hillary Clinton and the angry left”

What was on my mind when I thought about writing a blog post earlier this evening was something about an oncoming political crisis – but then I got distracted by the rest of the blogosphere. So much to read, so little time. Within the last year I’ve made it a point to read fiction again.Continue reading “Reading fiction is great!”

[This is a slightly modified Facebook post from yesterday] Alright, so Betsy DeVos is going to be Secretary of Education. And I basically think that’s a disaster. But some part of me genuinely wants to know: what is it her supporters think is going to happen? Or, more importantly, what is it they want toContinue reading “Betsy DeVos”

So, I’m thinking about a conversation I had with a student in Justice class yesterday. I was saying that one of the objections to big government is that it stops small towns from enforcing prayer in schools. And he got turned around on it – he doesn’t think a school should have to force anyoneContinue reading “Freedom from…wait, what?”

So, I’m teaching a class on Justice over at Roosevelt University in Chicago. It’s a bit surreal for me. When I was a student there I took it twice, once as an undergrad and once as a grad, in the first and last semesters I was there. It was a signiture course of Professor Ziliak,Continue reading “Fairness”

My feed over on the ‘book is presently a litany of fear and loathing over the incoming administration – but I think folks ought to chill the fuck out. Trump was never going to be thoughtful about running the country, and I do not think the people who voted for him were hoping that heContinue reading “Don’t freak out about Trump’s cabinet of horrors”

Well here it is, the end of December and I’m just now writing a post. And I’ll start with a resolution to write more in the New Year than I have in the last three months. I was looking over the numbers for this year – because one of the best parts about blogging isContinue reading “New Year’s eve”