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Colin McGinn and Ted Honderich’s very public spat has made headlines in Canada:

Philosophical difference: A remark about a girlfriend decades ago may have set off philosophers’ feud

Incidentally, the author of the article appears unaware that C. McGinn is not a Dr.
Here’s more:
The Nature of Reasons: Two Philosophers Feud Over a Book Review

And in Liverpool:
Pub philosophy is just the ale talking

What (other than the experience of tasting of Irn-Bru) do the Scottish Philosophers know that we don’t?

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1927668.0.Huge_rise_in_study_of_philosophy_at_school.php

And

http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Lessons-in-why-we-are.3628350.jp

The Connecticut Post has a brief profile of a Philosophy / Business undergraduate whose net worth is over a million dollars. It comes from real estate, not reflective thought, but nonetheless is impressive: http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_7794871

There are a couple of responses to Appiah’s letter about X-Philosophy in the NY Times on Dec. 8th have recently appeared. You can read the posts here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/magazine/23letters-t-002.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin  read more »

A little light diversion for the holidays:

I found this on a French technology blog I keep an eye on. It is an online gallery of animated gifs - you know, those annoying little flashy images that used to fill poorly designed websites back in the early nineties.

It of course raises the issue of their status as art. One could argue that should be classified as a kind of ‘folk art’ of that period in time. That may be stretching the analogy a little - folk art is typically intensely regional and produced by people with little contact with outsiders. This kind of early internet art (a contemporary analog may be the ‘lolcat’ phenomenon from last year) was produced by people with a global vision. One may be tempted to classify the early pioneers of internet ’space’ as a kind of sub-culture with their own customs, but I’ve always been a little wary of running the virtual space metaphor too far.

You can visit the whole gallery here:
http://www.nogallery.info/promo.php