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In response to the petitions mentioned recently, the UK government has issued an apology. The statement in full, as published on the 10 Downing St website:

Next week it's back to the classroom for me, and I'm teaching intro logic again. I've been thinking a bit about what to do on the first day, especially in the "why you should take this course" department. There's the obvious reason: it's required (at least for philosophy and CS majors). So I'm really talking about "why you should want to take this course". And here, the textbooks usually don't do such a good job. First there's the "you'll learn how to think correctly and identify logical errors" line.

Exciting new entry in the SEP on Hermann Weyl, by John Bell.

David Johnston, of the University of Victoria Philosophy Department, has just released three apps for the iPhone (and iPod Touch), which will be of interest to students (and teachers) of introductory logic courses:

As you probably know, logic pioneer Alan Turing invented the Turing machine model of computation, proved the undecidability of the halting problem and (independently of Church) the undecidability of the decision problem, and played an important role in the work at Blechley Park that broke various German ciphers during World War II. He was also gay, and committed suicide following his criminal conviction for "gross indecency" and the chemical castration he was forced to undergo.

I had to look up a Russell quote the other day, and that's when I noticed that many of his books -- including the Foundations of Geometry,

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Here's another article in the "you might not have thought it but philosophy undergrads are actually doing well in careers in business and law" mold, from a Canadian perspective.

Philosophy’s makeover: Why job prospects for philosophy grads are brightening, by Daniel Drolet

Ah, if it only were that simple:

A long time ago I posted on Richard Statman's dissertation work on the geometrical complexity of proofs: take a proof in natural deduction, interpret the formulas in it as nodes of a graph with edges going from premise to conclusion of an inference and from assumption to the (conclusion of the) inference where it is discharged.

The BBC 4 radio program "In Our Time," presented by Melvyn Bragg, has archives of previous features on a range of topics, including some relevant to logic. Haven't had the time to listen to them, but it you do, let me know what you think. Might be the kind of thing you can tell your relatives to listen to when they want to know what you are interested in.