humorist (and underappreciated philosopher of life) Erma Bombeck.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/15731/...

small lunch table afterward he doubled down on racism. I can't recall his specific words, but I remember being shocked, even just as an ordinary high schooler who hadn't thought much about race relations.
I met several other famous people on that trip. By far my favorite was 2/3

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/11/deba...

want to change without changing, to move along without moving, never to age. Memory is insufficient, a tease, horribly semisweet -- itself fading, dying, the resonances of a bell that will not be struck again.

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/10/lett...
5/5

Daoism teaches that the world is processes that rise and fade, turn a few circles and depart, that growing is always also losing, living is the reanimation of mounds of substance many times dead before -- but I can't see it that way. I dwell in a world of things and people, who I paradoxically 4/5

and plumbers' phone numbers in lopsided handwriting -- calendars I'd grabbed after he died ten years ago, desperate to save a piece of him, though I still can't bear to look at them. I need to hold shreds of what he'd left, but now those shreds only remind me of their inadequacy.
3/5

and shelved in the garage -- and their bicycles from when they were ten, and their high school trophies. And our high school trophies, and Pauline's diaries from middle school in the 1970s, and appointment calendars of my father's from the 1980s with haircuts and meetings with his students 2/5

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/10/two-...

It's possible. The PPE can't be separated in this dataset. But UCLA and UCSB, the #2 and #3 places in both the 2024 and 2010-2019 data don't appear to have PPE (correct me if I'm wrong!). It's also not clear (but certainly possible) that PPE is disproportionately available in elite universities.

schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2025/10/eek-...

Yes, that’s right! I’m surprised we implied otherwise; I’ll recheck.

Thanks!

I took some classes with Dreyfus in the 1990s. Perhaps surprisingly, he took his criticisms to apply to GOFAI and thought that connectionist networks might escape them.

Thanks for the suggestions, and I look forward to your more detailed thoughts!

I'm glad you're enjoying it!

Sure! As long as it's helpfully intended and addresses the whole book. In the unlikely event that more than 50 people take me up on this offer, I might need to rethink, because the press will only give me probably about 10 free copies. (About a dozen people did this for my previous book.)

Thanks for catching these!