On BullshitHarry G. Frankfurt Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005, 67 pp., $9.95

Abstract

When the editorial assistant for Dialogue informed me of this book, I was immediately intrigued: How was a booklength philosophical treatment of bullshit even conscionable?Who would do such a thing? And how could one trump Frankfurt's 1986 essay [Raritan 6 (1986) 81-100], which I remember having read with delight, if not complete agreement? But then she told me the author was Harry Frankfurt and the book was "short, about the size of a prayer book", and I knew. Frankfurt has reformatted his twenty-page essay, once free for the xeroxing, by the single copy, for personal use, by dedicated scholars, into a sixty-some-odd-page hardcovered stocking-stuffer (Bah! Humbug! -of which more below), word-count unaltered, now for only ten dollars US! What kind of bullshit is that? But seriously folks, Frankfurt's essay is ever thought-provoking and apropos, especially now, with George W. & Co. in charge south of the border and with the antics of our own

Friendship theory for public health research and practice: a critical realist review

“…Such factors include those who have access to socially recognised fora for a variety of friendships, civil mistrust, ill-health, and geographical change due to other factors such as employment. 22 The theory places emphasis on the event-like nature and temporality of friendship encounters.…”

“…In this theory, friendship is understood through other forms of capital, yet friendship’s considerable variety, diversity, distribution, temporality, and changeover 22 make it difficult to be precise about what ‘capital’ friendship produces across the life course, except that it is a response to deficiencies or redistribution in other forms of capital. In this view, friendship emerges, complements, and merges with other types of social bond/capital, yet also potentially conflicts with them as its mutual-definition resists ‘full’ incorporation into the conditions and dispositions that it emerged in relation to.…”

“…As predicted by this theory, identification with people who are similar to ourselves is more actively sought or needed under conditions of insecurity, such as when experiencing mental ill-health or disruption to our overall social position. 22 The theory also accounts for how categorical assumptions about others may affect friendships: people often do not wish to be associated with members of groups that are stigmatised, such as those experiencing mental ill-health. 28 Conversely, the theory accounts for the accumulation of positive identities on the basis of security and similarity, such as when associating with people with mental ill-health, which may account for why multiple identities are formed across a range of friendship partners, not just those with a ‘mental ill-health’ identity.…”

Information Security Risk Assessment on Complex Information System

“…Dempster-Shafer theory [8] has been effectively used in risk assessment. It has many advantages over the conventional probabilistic approach.…”

A Fuzzy Dempster Shafer Method and its Application in Plant Location Selection

“…First, the present model can efficiently represent experts' opinions through fuzzy sets theory (FSS) [5]. Second, the performance of criterion given by domain experts can be fused through Dempster Shafer evidence theory (DSeT) in our proposed model [6].…”