Chicken joke: Leibniz

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? Gottfried Leibniz: In accordance with the principle of pre-established harmony, the phenomenon of the chicken appearing to cross the road was caused by the action of monads following instructions given by God. The sufficient reason for the action may be known to God alone. [More chicken jokes]

Chicken joke: Thales of Miletus

Today’s chicken joke makes idle fun of the earliest of the Seven Sages of Greece, Thales of Miletus (ca. -624 to ca. -546). Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? Thales: Probably to advise another chicken. The answer to the riddle is based on Diogenes Laërtius’ account of Thales’ answers to two questions: When […]

Stumbling into Žižek

About a year ago I was browsing in a book completely unrelated to my Ph.D. research; it was about criticism of Shakespeare plays on film. I happened on a phrase that summed up an unexpressed insight I’d had about my research subject (a Swiss traveler in the U.S. in the 1820s). It was a well-turned […]

Perfect day in Alabama

So on Friday my wife and I strolled beside a lake in north Alabama. We admired blue herons and Canada geese, we marveled at a stray sandpiper and a loon from the northern lakes, the way it vanished under water like a thought, and the wild calls it made. It was a perfect day to […]

Chicken joke: Foucault

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) was a French philosopher and all-around intellectual whose work has perhaps been more often cited than understood. Q: Why did the chicken cross the road? Michel Foucault: The discursive practices of the farm, which led to the development of chicken wire, the fenced barnyard, and the institution of the chicken coop, also […]