Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol

I am interrupting my beach vacation to share this “infamously difficult” syllabus from 1941. It was for an epic class titled “Fate and the Individual in European Literature” at the University of Michigan, and the professor was none other than … Continue reading →

I thought I would post this catchy summer anthem since one of my favorite parts of the Florida Panhandle thus far has been highway “30-A” (State Road 30A), a two-lane scenic stretch of road the runs along the Gulf of … Continue reading →

I have been on a family vacation these last few days in the Florida Panhandle — we have a great view of the beach, but it is unbearably hot over here — and putting the finishing touches on a book-length … Continue reading →

Have the student editors of the prestigious Harvard Law Review (HLR) unfairly boosted Black and Latino authors to the detriment of Asian and white authors? What if we combined Google Scholar, a search engine for academics, with ChatGPT or Google … Continue reading →

The music of this great jazz legend will live on …

Earlier this week, I stumbled upon this stirring tribute to many of the now-deceased cast members and guest stars of the original Star Trek series: “Remembering the Original ‘Star Trek’ Stars We’ve Lost, From Spock to Scotty and Beyond“. Shout … Continue reading →

I want to conclude my series on “Kurt Gödel and the Leibniz Conspiracy” with the following observation about Franz Neumann’s influential 1957 essay on conspiracy theories[1]: Neumann, with his focus on “anxiety” and “politics”, has opened up a veritable Pandora’s … Continue reading →

Yesterday, we turned to Franz L. Neumann’s influential 1957 essay on “Anxiety and Politics” to explore the inner logic of Kurt Gödel’s conspiracy theory, or what I like to call “The Leibniz Conspiracy”. In brief, according to Neumann (1957, p. … Continue reading →

In my previous posts (see here, here, and here), I provided some historical background regarding Gottfried Leibniz’s efforts to develop a universal symbolic language (characteristica universalis) and universal thinking machine (calculus ratiocinator), and I also mentioned how one of Leibniz’s … Continue reading →