walto
My blogs
| Gender | Male |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Retired Insurance Regulator and Philosophy Professor; Improviser of Often Confused Words and Sometimes Unlistenable Music |
| Location | Arlington, Massachusetts, United States |
| Links | Audio Clip |
| Introduction | I've published articles in the areas of epistemology, metaphysics, value theory, democracy, religion, and aesthetics (in such journals as JP, PPR, and Perspectives of New Music), and have edited a book on the philosopher Everett Hall, whose work I've championed for over 40 years. I've provided research and expert testimony to both the legislative and executive branches of Mass. government, and have been an occasional philosophy professor since 1978, when I received my Ph.D. from Brown. Some of my papers can be downloaded from academia.edu. I've written a book on democratic theory and review democracy books for 3:16 AM Mag. I've put out some CDs of improvised and composed music and appeared on disc (including Leo Lab, Tzadik, and Ogre-Ogress) with such talents as Gary Lucas, Mat Maneri, and Glenn Freeman. I used to interview musicians and review recorded music and books on music for Cadence Magazine, Signal to Noise, Bagatellen, and Paris Transatlantic. Some compositional and keyboard output can be heard on Spotify, Apple Music, and at youtube. |
| Interests | My fam (including dog), Books, Music, Philosophy, Democracy |
| Favorite movies | Meet John Doe, Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt, Turtle Diary, Stalker, Synecdoche, NY, Where Angels Fear to Tread, Beauty and the Beast (Cocteau), 3 Women, A Married Couple, Woman Under the Influence, Mulholland Drive, Dinner at Eight, Cape Fear (Mitchum), Blair Witch Project, Importance of Being Earnest, The Women (Fontaine), Priest (Roache), King of Comedy, Stevie, Big Lebowski, The Servant, Dracula (Lugosi), Waking Life, Spirited Away, Annie Get Your Gun, Last Emperor of China, Parasite, Last Picture Show, Horse's Mouth, Suspicion, The Devils, Pulp Fiction, All Quiet on the Western Front (orig.), Glengarry Glen Ross, Carrie (Spacek), Tales of Manhattan, Last Holiday (Guinness), Being There, Home for the Holidays, Fairytale: A True Story, Sixteen Candles, Chimes at Midnight, Being John Malkovich, Margaret, An Ideal Husband, Sophie's Choice, Dr. Strangelove, Uncle Vanya (Olivier), Tropic Thunder, Little Big Man, The Dead (Huston), Major Barbara, My Dinner With Andre, M, Gangs of New York, Barton Fink, October Sky, Strangers on a Train (Hitchcock), Defending Your Life, Juno, Double Indemnity, True Stories, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Bridge on the River Kwai, Pee-wee's Big Adventure, The Wizard of Oz, Psycho (Hitchcock), Parting Glances, Betrayal (Irons), Dead of Night, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Philadelphia Story, Return to Oz, Napoleon Dynamite, King Lear (Brook), Throne of Blood, The Snapper, Cinema Paradiso, Satyricon, Othello (Fishburne), The Bitter Tea of General Yen, Rosemary's Baby, The Tenant, As You Like It (Branagh), Life of Brian, The Ring, Key Largo, Handful of Dust, Heartbreak Kid (Grodin), Twelfth Night (Nunn) |
| Favorite music | Too much to name. Here's a bit of my own stuff: https://www.youtube.com/user/tougis https://framed-ophelia.bandcamp.com/ |
| Favorite books | Too many to list. But here are my go-to authors on democracy and political philosophy: Marsilius of Padua, Thomas Hobbes, Tom Paine, Emmanuel Sieyes, Anthony Trollope, J.S. Mill, Henry George, Victor Chernov, Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt, Franz Neumann, H.L.A. Hart, Everett Hall, Robert Dahl, Margaret Canovan, and Roslyn Fuller. |
Compose the lyrics to a new national anthem that features an animal sound at least once:
Nearer, my dog to thee, nearer to thee! E'en though it be a human that raiseth me Still all my song shall be Nearer, my dog to thee, Nearer to thee! [BARK] Though like the United States, Darkness be over me, Yet in my dreams I'd be Nearer, my dog, to thee Nearer, to thee. [BARK!]