If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device

Just today, I started getting this weird error message when trying to play videos on my computer that are embedded in a web browser. I'd try to start it and the thing would just sit there, and eventually I'd see the error message: If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device. This was with every browser and even with a new user.

Well, it turns out that the audio device on this machine was messed up. I'd somehow managed to break that setting. Fixing it allowed the video to start.

Thanks to this page for the clue. Posting this in the hope it might help someone else.

DIY Audio

I've put a bunch of photos and such here of audio gear I've build over the last couple years. I've gotten very into doing this. It's fun, and the equipment sounds amazing!

Published: "Introduction" to Crispin Wright's "The Riddle of Vagueness"

I'm honored to have been asked by Crispin to write the introduction to a collection of his essays on vagueness, The Riddle of Vagueness. That has now been published by Oxford. My contribution can be found here.

Two New Papers on Truth

My earlier paper "Against Disquotation" got too long and unwieldy, so it has now been split into two other papers. The first is "Disquotation, Translation, and Context-Dependence". Abstract:

It has been known for some time that context-dependence poses a problem for disquotationalism, but the problem has largely been regarded as one of detail: one that will be solved by the right sort of cleverness. I argue here that the problem is one of principle and that extant solutions, which are based upon the notion of translation, cannot succeed.

Get that one here.

The second is "The Failure Argument". Abstract:

Perhaps the most important argument against deflationism is the so-called Success Argument: The success of certain behavioral strategies depends upon the truth of a person's beliefs. If so, then the notion of truth appears to play an important role in psychological explanation, contradicting the central thesis of deflationism. I argue here that this type of argument poses a particularly difficult problem for disquotationalism, but that the important case concerns the role that the falsity of a person's beliefs plays in explaining behavioral failure. 

Get that one here.

Published: How Not To Watch Feminist Pornography

In Feminist Philosophical Quarterly. Read it here.

Abstract

This paper has three goals. The first is to defend Tristan Taormino and Erika Lust  (or  some  of their  films)  from  criticisms that Rebecca Whisnant and Hans Maes
make of them. Toward that end, I will be arguing against the narrow conceptions that Whisnant and Maes seem to have of what “feminist” pornography must be like. More generally, I hope to show by example why it is important to take pornographic films seriously as films if we're to understand their potential to shape, or misshape, socio-sexual norms.

The Great Blowjob Debate

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Controlling the Zoom Whiteboard on an Android Tablet

There does not seem to be much documentation for Zoom whiteboard. And, to make it more confusing, it is quite different on the desktop and mobile platforms (at least in the PC/Android world). Here, then, is a quick guide. This is all verified on an Android tablet, but I'm hoping it also works on Apple etc.

When you first open the whiteboard, you won't be able to do anything. If you tap on it, though, you should see a small pencil icon at the lower left. I guess that means "Edit" (as if you wanted to stare a white screen instead). Press that. Now you should be able to write on the screen.

If you switch away to some other application, then the whiteboard may lock again, and you'll have to click the edit button again.

You will also see a row of icons across the bottom. 

 At far left:

• An 'undo' button
• A 'redo' button

At far right: 

• A trash can: options for clearing the screen
• A kind of rounded square with a plus sign: For creating another whiteboard. You can have up to 12. This can be convenient if you want to do something else and come back to what you had before.
  
• Once you have more than one whiteboard, you will see to the left of the 'create' button a 'stack' of whiteboards with a number indicating how many you have. Press it and you will get a screen letting you select which whiteboard you want to use.
  
• Three dots that expose more options, including "Smart Recognition") whatever that is, and an option for saving the whiteboard.
  

Most useful are the buttons in the middle. (You may need to click the > symbol at the right to see all of them.) From left to right:

• A pencil: For drawing lines.
• An eraser: For erasing stuff.
• A series of colored dots or circles: For choosing the color of the pencil or highlighter.
  
• A T: This allows you to type text on the whiteboard. Let me know if you can figure it out. I can't.
• A squiggly line: For selecting the size of the pencil.
• Something like an exclamation point tilted over: I think it's meant to look like a highlighter, since that's what it does. It uses a lighter, transparent version of whatever color is set.
• A light stick: Works like a laser pointer.

One further note: If you intend to use this for serious teaching, you will want to get a high-precision stylus, such as this one. (It's just the one I happen to have.) Most laptop styli (let alone fingers) are too difficult to control with enough precision for writing.