epistemology and the Panopticon

Last night I proctored an SAT that contained the word "epistemology." I couldn't help but remark to my students afterwards that I had majored in epistemology (more or less), and someone remembered that I had said I'd been a philosophy major. So now I've augmented aggregate world knowledge about the study of knowledge itself, which is one meta-level off from doing something actually useful.

In a most apropos fashion, I was reading the Village Voice while proctoring, and came across an article on Derrida, who is recently deceased. Apparently, despite his many public appearances, he was loath to have his picture taken, and relented only when a newspaper ran a picture of Michel Foucault with the caption "Jaques Derrida."

Incidentally, my senior seminar was on Foucault, and that particular copy of the Voice also had an article on rethinking prison spending, and I'm thinking "build panopticons! save money!" Oh, Foucault. A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.