My Brain is Open

Back?

2008-05-05T20:00:00.000-05:00

Test 1, Test 2, Test 3.

nothing

2006-11-12T01:28:00.000-06:00

It's cold again. Became cold on Friday after having been almost 80 degrees the day before. And cloudy, occasionally there was some drizzle, and it did rain a bit on thursday night.

Today stayed in all day and did nothing but sleep and play video games. I had planned on going out and getting some art supplies so perhaps I could start drawing again, but I kept putting it off and putting it off until it was too late to go out. Of course I still have homework to do but after last week the thought of doing any mathematics makes me sick. Tonight started, finally, to read the biography of Joseph Campbell I bought nearly three months ago.

anything

2006-11-09T23:23:00.000-06:00

time, time, and time. "Of what manner of stuff is the web of time wove?" --Thoreau's journal. How shall I say this...I'm tired. This will be another long night--of staying up merely because not all the problems are solved, not because I care, but because that old good student still inside me somewhere says I should be working (he has since been beaten into a small corner). Time always seems to slip away more quickly when it is seemingly an ocean of possibility. And becomes barren. Suddenly the roar of water falling off the edge of the flat world becomes audible. And your pencil cannot write quickly enough, even if your mind could tranverse the logical connections and implications fast enough to squeeze it all in, in time. This ocean of possibility is but a sickening glut. A glut of possibility is as good as impossibility. Unless one has the courage to make a decision. To begin to make an incision in this glut of time to cut it down to size.

But today, perhaps for the last time, it was warm. Probably 75 degrees. And the air smelled of warm leaves. As I walked home from school I looked out across the hills to the north-east of town to see the hills browning, and the turnpike weaving its way toward Kansas City. I've been living here three months now. I never tire of being able to look out on this vista to see how it has changed but stayed the same.

working on take-home exam

2006-11-08T22:52:00.000-06:00

the dreaded week is well under way. the week of the MATH 790 take-home exam number 3. Last night I spent five hours working on one problem and got nowhere. there are ten problems total and I've only solved three completely. About three more should be easy and I'm working on those now, but the remaining four I still have no idea how to solve. One of those was the one I spent five hours on, by far the hardest since the others I think I know at least where to start. The hardest one I thought that about before yesterday, but then turned out that the natural approach yielded nothing. Or at least I don't see if the natural approach is even right or not. (That's precisely what I mean by accomplishing nothing on it: I'm not even sure if my approach gives me a solution or not.) Luckily I have all day tomorrow to devote to this thing. The test is due at 1:00pm on Friday. So i have roughly 38 hours to work on it minus, say, being liberal, 10 hours for sleep = 28 hours, and minus all of friday morning since I have to teach and go to class and whatnot, so that's like 24 hours left, which sounds like a lot until you remember that I said I worked for five hours on a problem and got nowhere. Hopefully some sort of enlightenment will come before then. Quite honestly I think mathematics should be considered a religion because I feel like a monk meditating over sacred texts and symbols day and night depriving myself of sleep trying to divine a meaning that the guru says I should be getting out of them. Right now the floor of my apartment is filled with notes and sheets of paper displaying all sorts of cryptic things chanted out to us in the holy halls of the Divine Department. Furthermore, one is, as a mere postulant [as I am] embarased to admit while within the presence of the novice students [those holy ones who have passed the qualifying exams] or the ordained ones [those holiest ones with PhDs] to any activity, e.g. watching a movie or reading a work of literature, that doesn't bring one closer to mathematical enlightenment because you are looked upon with suspicion. I can't wait until this week is over.

developments

2006-10-31T20:42:00.000-06:00

dropped the probability class officially last week, but didn't go to it at all the previous week since I had a Linear Algebra take-home exam that was occupying all of my time. Barely got the teaching done, my students certainly didn't like me that week. The last week was better and this week is easy (for me, not for them) since it's a testing week. So i only have to teach two out of the three days. Tomorrow is just a review day so basically I just ask for questions and if they don't ask any right away I just stand and stare at them like a perturbed teacher--i've grown to like playing that role (it's about the only fun in my week)--until someone breaks the awkward silence by asking to look at some problem and I launch into explaining to them how to solve it. Then after a while I give them some review problems to work on and I usually sit there pretending to be working through them too, and most of the time I actually am, since otherwise when it comes time to work through them together I might get tripped up by one of them and that's not good in this sort of class because the students are like sharks or wolves or something: you show them any fear or whatever and they pounce.

Overall teaching is the least of my worries though right now. I have lots of homework to do and no desire to do it. Frankly I don't give a shit about the problems. I've tried to force myself to sit down and do them but I can't get away from the fact that my mind doesn't want to work on them. I guess its like a sort of math block or something. It's more like a blindness. Up until a few weeks ago I could either see a route to a solution ("see" it as one "sees" a route in one's mind from point A to B, with various legs of the trip) or if I didn't see it I was able to evaluate the possibilities and eliminate them and process them until one proved to be a success. Now I can't even see the possibilities and keep getting dead ends right at the beginning. I've experienced this before and it never ceases to amaze me how others misunderstand this. Anybody here (i.e. my fellow students) I talk to about this doesn't understand it, ironically--they're all too smart for that. The last time this happened to me was in Budapest, and it's why i decided to focus on philosophy instead of math. Look how that worked out. If this doesn't clear up soon it's going to get interesting: another take-home exam on monday and an Analysis homework due on the same day.

fall break

2006-10-11T18:29:00.000-05:00

So i'm on fall break now. Going to drive back to H-boro as soon as I get the energy to do so. I'll be working a lot over the break...catching up on school work that's had to go by the wayside lately. And figure out what I did wrong on the probability exam had last week thursday. Got like a C on it. Worst math grade I've had since 7th grade. There's something new for ya. But a week before on that analysis exam I got the second best score in the class. More soon.

exam

2006-09-29T23:12:00.000-05:00

had an analysis exam today. overall it went well i think but i did completely blank on one of the more involved problems (that required one to give a complete proof of a simple result--all but one of the other questions were short answer type questions). I stared blankly at it for like 7 or 8 minutes (keep in mind this was just an hour (i.e. 50 minute) exam) and then decided to move on. So i ended up being rushed on the other involved problem, but I think I gave a complete solution for it--or rather complete enough for the requirements of the exam. This is why I hate exams, the pressure of having to perform freezes my mind. All through it I knew what I needed to do but just couldn't get myself to write it. If I had had the same problem as a homework problem I would've gotten it done probably in not much more time than would be required to get it on the exam. On Thursday there is a probability exam, and a homework due on Tuesday. All the while I've been neglecting work on one of my classes that has been all review material until now. The new stuff is a hell of a lot more interesting but it takes a lot longer for me to understand. This is going to be a really full working weekend. Linear Algebra and Probability tomorrow, and hopefully get to work on the new Analysis homework on Sunday. Thankfully there is a Math department picnic on Sunday afternoon--with free food and, yes, free beer. I'm there.

another one done

2006-09-28T01:20:00.000-05:00

I just completed another probability assignment. Not much to say about it but I don't understand this material with any kind of real understanding. Other classes going well though, for now. I've fallen into a routine here and it is less than exciting each day. Hence the lack of blogging; contrary to my anticipations. I was home last weekend. I got home on Friday night and went for a long walk around Hillsboro. The trees were beginning to change color already in H-boro--they are just now doing so here in Lawrence. As I was walking I actually managed to write a few lines of verse, which I will not be copying down here.

As far as teaching is concerned my afternoon class has become a real drag. Nobody asks questions so I end up getting through the material really quickly, and when I pause for questions or even ask a question right out I usually end up standing there for 30 seconds. When I try to get them to do group work on some problems they just fidget awkwardly like they don't understand what I'm saying. And at that point of the day I have no energy to keep myself going, let alone keep 23 students who don't want to be there interested.

here's where it gets tough

2006-09-12T23:18:00.000-05:00

So yeah I have a new probability assignment that I cannot get written down. All round this class has been kinda' shitty already. By "cannot get written down" I mean I've worked with people in the class about the solutions to the problems but I can't seem to get my own understanding of the solutions. Some of the problems are solved in a suplement that someone in the class found online, but the solutions given there are just the same. I can't fully understand them. Sure, I could just copy them down but that wouldn't really be doing me any good. In fact it would probably be doing more harm than good even if I lose points for giving a wrong answer when writing down the correct answer would get me those points because when it comes time for the exam I wouldn't have a fucking clue.

So basically for the last three hours I've been trying to no avail to understand the solutions, and every time I've tried to write out the solution for handing in and every time I have to stop and go on to the next problem because I find I haven't a clue really what the solution is.

It's a really shitty feeling. In the other classes I actually know what I'm doing...for now. I have a Linear Algebra take-home exam that's due on Friday at 1:00pm but I teach and have classes from 9:00am til then so I have to get it done Thursday night at the latest and this shitty probability homework is due Thursday at 8:00am and tomorrow is teaching and classes all day.

Basically it's things like this that make me apathetic. There's always some goddamn fly in the ointment.

I wan't so much to give a shit about it even when it's like this. But, you know what, it's just not there.

2006-09-04T12:41:00.000-05:00

Being a student in a state school, I have today off--from teaching and going to classes that is. However, I should be working on writing up my Probability Theory homework. I've got most of the problems solved but now I have to actually write up the solutions in format. There's also a bunch of Linear Algebra needing to be worked on. But today there's a M*A*S*H marathon--until 2:00 am. Luckily I've seen most of the episodes before so I can sort of just put it on as background noise while I'm working.

Last night I ate supper at one of my Indian friend's apartment. Unfortunately I don't remember all the names of the dishes, but it was all really good. I'm going to try to get her to teach me how to make them, but I don't know when either of us is going to have time. The Americans at this little gathering were in the minority--just me and one other student--so after dinner and desert they all asked about American perceptions of India and its history--and vice versa.

belly-dancing and math and ouzo

2006-09-02T23:21:00.000-05:00

So last night I went to a party at which there were belly dancers and ouzo and everybody there was a math graduate student. The belly dancers were the ones throwing the party. Shortly before that we played a game similar to mafia. At one point I was in the center of the room with two beautiful Turkish women trying to teach me how to dance like them. I'm convinced that they must have extra vertibrae or something. My mennonite bones prevented me from moving as gracefully as them. The people at the party were an interesting mix of Americans sitting on the fringes sipping wine and Ouzo and Indians, Chinese and the Turks in the middle. And just outside there were rednecks sipping on bud light and washing a giant red 4x4 pickup.

I just have to say that Ouzo must have a very high alcohol content because I had only one shot and two hours later it was still effective. So I ended up walking about two miles back to my apartment through the KU campus, making sure to dodge all the frat boys wandering around loudly.

Unfortunately I haven't got any work done today. Need to work on probability. There's an assignment due Tuesday. And there are other due dates looming already. A take-home exam on the 11th that I need to prepare for (even though it's a take-home exam all the problems will be derived from the homework problems so I need to work through the homeworks in order to prepare). I don't have to prepare for class until Friday though--just a review day on Wednesday. Though I'll need to do some grading on Tuesday probably even though I have a grader. He's on vacation and didn't get the afternoon assignments collected on Friday.

Today I didn't do much other than take a few short naps and go back and get my car. And grocery shopping. I still have to go to the laundromat--tomorrow probably.

Sea Change

2006-08-30T22:11:00.000-05:00

Today was an excelent day teaching. I got through all the material I needed to get through with a couple of minutes to spare, so there was no rushing and fretting over what examples to cover and which ones to ommit. In the first class I did have to ommit a couple of examples but they were merely additional examples trying to hit home a topic that is very foreign to non-math people: taking an equation in two unknowns and algebraicly determining if it defines a function and not merely a relation. Of course in both classes I taught the "vertical line test" which I really hate because its just a crutch. But that is the most one can offer students at this level of math class. However, I did try to give them some sense of the algebraic method for some simple examples. I think I got through to them. Today my grader finally made contact with me so I will no longer have to grade homeworks. Furthermore, last night I stayed up late writing my lecture notes for both today and Friday. So tomorrow's preparation will simply involve going over the notes making sure I've covered everything needed.

This weekend will be a three-day weekend so I will have some extra time for homework. I did start on my Probability Theory homework during my office hours, but by 4:30 I couldn't concentrate any longer so I went back to my apartment. After watching some TV I fell asleep for about an hour and a half, woke up groggy and watched some more TV. I will probably do some more work on probability before going to bed.

Now as I write I'm listening to Beck's "Sea Change" album--now playing "Lonesome Tears", my favorite track on the album. Especially the line "How could this love--ever changing--never change the way I feel." and then further on "How could this love--ever turning--never turn its eye on me."

first whole week

2006-08-25T18:14:00.000-05:00

Today ends the first full week of the semester. One of the benefits of being really busy is that the time goes by really fast. Unfortunately I don't feel like I've really done much math. I've done a couple of homework problems and read some of the texts but honestly I have been much more busy with teaching and figuring out all the crap that goes along with the teaching. I just got back from "supervising" the KAP workroom/help room. Basically I'm supposed to tell all the undergrad TAs and tutors what to do and where to go. But I'm also expected to pitch in. Thankfully I have to do supervising only once a week--supervising is by far my least favorite thing to do but i'm sure it's good for me in that it "builds character" and all that jazz. Luckily I heard it directly from the director of the program that I'm getting a replacement grader (the one assigned to me originally backed out at the last minute). Yesterday I tried to get all the grading done, but then that made me not get the lesson planning done until late at night. The upside of all this is that it makes me more motivated to study math because it's a joy compared to teaching and going to all those meetings, etc.

2006-08-24T00:02:00.000-05:00

So today things were reversed. In the 9:00am class I didn't cover all of the material I needed to cover. There were two sections in the textbook that we were supposed to go over but for some reason or another there was a strange time-warp in my mind and when I looked at the clock realized there wouldn't be enough time to do the second section in enough detail; then as I was working through that realized that I had forgot to present a very important example from the first section. So after my analysis class that followed just 10 minutes after the 9:00am teaching I took some time to ... what? eat lunch ... no way, rework my lecture notes and after that do some homework. Then after linear algebra I had to jump in and do the lecture again at 2:00pm. That time went much better. I actually finished the essential material 5 minutes early and had some time to include some of the less important material at least in brief. I think the 9:00am class was pissed off that I didn't have time to take questions from homework. There wouldn't have been time for that though even with the better 2:00pm lecture.

There are lots of people with iP0dz (i purposefully misspelled it so the goddam search engines won't list my blog) around here. I guess they're the standard hipster wear out here like Pabst Blue Ribon is elsewhere. One guy in my 2:00pm class was listening during class. They sell them in the KU bookstore as well.

2006-08-22T00:10:00.000-05:00

Tonight I bought a CD completely on an impulse. I was walking through the aisles of the Best Buy here in Lawrence looking for materials to setup my internet connection so I could have my cable connection in the same room without disconnecting cables everytime i wanted internet or TV. I was looking for a splitter and finally found them but was disgusted to find out that they were 10 dollars. So i wandered off and bought a Radiohead cd instead (Kid A) for 13 dollars. I had been eye-ing it for a few months but just decided to go ahead and get it.

Then i went to wal-mart and bought a splitter for 3 dollars. Although the wal-mart one isn't really meant for splitting a digital signal; seems to work but i'm sure there's some degradation of signal.

I always feel depressed after buying a CD. I usually never like a CD the first time I listen to it. It was the same when I bought OK Computer, but after a month or two came to like listening to it.

Today taught the first full 50 minutes of my class--once at 9:00am and again at 2:00pm. After the 2:00pm class I was drained...didn't go as well as the 9:00am class did. Then i actually had some energy, but by the time 2pm rolled around I had also attended a class, went to one of the many meetings I have to go to for KAP, then went to another class, with a frenetic jaunt over to the Kansas Union to get lunch somewhere squezed in there. Mondays, wednesdays, and Fridays are all going to be like this, and then Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be filled with all the stuff I couldn't do on the other days--e.g. doing homework and studying and preparing for the next day's classes (oh and going to another meeting on Tuesdays). To be honest I don't mind being busy in and of istself but its the mundanity of it all that really kills me and the blank looks of students sucking me dry as I drone on about solving equations.

Today I felt really shitty after the 2pm class. At that point I didn't want to think about teaching on Wednesday let alone for a whole semester. Shortly thereafter I actually got to start working on some homework, which cheered me up actually because I got to spend some quite minutes alone with the text and a pen and paper working steadily on a problem.

2006-08-19T13:31:00.000-05:00

Yesterday saw the beginning of my semester of teaching MATH 002 (Intermediate Algebra) here at KU. I didn't have to teach a full 50 minute class, however, for reasons involving the following: I am a part of what's called KAP (Kansas Algebra Program) which, you might say, is the analog of a writing center for math, except that the program actually teaches classes as well as providing extensive tutoring services. There are approximately 2200 students in the KAP program. This includes the class I teach as well as the standard MATH 101 course. I'm not sure how many sections there are of each class but there are about 22 students in each of the two sections I teach. In addition to this , for 2 1/2 hours per week I supervise the whole operation (Help room and testing center [the tests are given in large groups outside of class]), which is to say I make sure all the undergrad TAs and tutors are where they should be (all of whom know more about working in the program than I do--and I get paid more). I've only done this once so far (yesterday) and it was pretty lax, which will change once students actually start doing homework and taking exams.

So the reason I didn't teach a full class period was because yesterday (being the first class) my class along with many others were all in one group going over the syllabus with the program coordinator (my boss). I just went over some really basic operations as taking a sentence like "subtract twice a number from -15" and translating it into a mathematical expression like

-15 - 2x

And doing simple calculations like 9 + 2[(12 - 20)^2 + 10*2]. Amazingly some have trouble with even this.

On monday the real work begins. We'll start doing things like solving linear equations like

10 = 3x - 2

Which I can do in my head. x = 4

But one needs to go over with them the steps involved: Adding 2 to both sides of the equation and then dividing both sides by 3. The whole process is so simple but learning it one needs some vocabulary so that'll take me a chunck of the class to explain things like: what do I mean when I say add/subtract/divide/multiply both sides of the equation? what's a solution? what's a solution set? At least these are terms in the text book and from what I've seen of the tests the students are going to have to take they will need to know explicit definitions of these things.

Today I finally called the cable/internet people to setup my connection. I'm tired of having to come all the way to school to check email. And because my apartment is in a deep valley the TV reception is not so good. The best of the two PBS stations comes in poorly and not at all today for some reason.

They're supposed to come tomorrow to hookup the connection and give me the cable modem and other hardware. I'm glad they could come on the weekend because my Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule is chocked full; Tuesdays, Thursday's aren't much better because I'll be doing class preparation (both for teaching and taking classes) all day even though I only have one class in the morning.

So far I'm looking forward to being busy. Perhaps it's still too early to tell, but I don't think I'm going to be too busy this semester. The class prep looks like it'll be easy--the hardest part is the teaching: yesterday I felt beat after each of my classes even though the material is easy; it felt like the students were vacuums sucking my energy. Furthermore I've been assigned a grader so I won't have to do grading. I'm definitely going to take advantage of that. So really my only work is prep, teaching, holding office hours (~3 hours/wk), supervising, and going to the three meetings per week that I must go to since I'm a GTA (two meetings for KAP, and one for all math GTAs).

The classes I'm taking look rather interesting, though I've heard from many people who have taken the classes that they are incredibly hard. Two of the classes are over subjects I've already done at Tabor, the other is completely new: Probability Theory. Sure I've had the useless sort of probability theory they teach in high school, but this is a completely different (and more interesting) level--much more work though. Right now I'm looking forward to it.

Sometime today I'm going to work on some math.

live from the KU math department

2006-08-11T13:57:00.000-05:00

So after some agonizing months I've finally decided to commit to an academic program after waffling around for what seems like to have been an interminable amount of time. Despite my previous apprehensions about doing graduate mathematics I am enroled in the KU graduate mathematics program. We'll see how this goes. Right now I'm telling myself that if I can at least get an MA here then I'll decide what to do next. Perhaps transfer to another program for a Ph.D. but I don't want to commit myself to that track either yet; who knows? i might find myself interested in some sort of applied mathematics in which case being here for the full PhD would be ok. I guess I've always been interested primarily in a pure mathematics mindset; but in the back of my mind I don't wonder if it isn't a bit too ivory tower for me to really flourish since I'm no math genius.

So I'm enroled in three classes and still waiting for my teaching assignment. Yes I forgot to mention that I have got a GTA appointment so I'll be getting a paycheck as well as not having to pay any tuition...that's nice. Teaching is going to be interesting. Probably have two sections of 35 students each for one class. In a way I'm glad they aren't telling us (GTAs) our teaching assignments until a few days before classes because I know I would be too tempted to start preparing right away and then I would have a warped view of the amount of time I'm going to have to prepare during the semester. I'm not so much worried about the act of teaching but it's all the administrative crap that one has to deal with. So far the math department has been really helpful. At the university-wide GTA/RA (research assistant) training conference yesterday there were a few grad students handing out small yellow flyers for a GTA/RA Union meeting sometime soon and on the flyer were certain statements "Did you know ...?" Wanting to get people involved in changing some of the stuff surrounding GTA's status/pay at the institution.

2006-02-23T21:07:00.000-06:00

Finally I roused myself from the comfort of my little house on C street, from the sleepyness brought on by a good meal of beans and rice, and from the safe glow of the TV to go for a walk on this strangely warm evening in late February.

Originally planning only to take a slight detour on my way to the campus to use the internet I managed to walk pretty much around the town. From one end to the other, in a somewhat rectangular path.

There was quite a strong smell of wood smoke in the air, as it was warm, but not so warm that one wouldn't desire the crackle of a fireplace. For myself I know that I have never had such a good time just sitting and reading as when I was sitting in front of a warm fire, tending it, keeping it going all afternoon and into the evening. I remember a couple of years ago sitting in front of the fire for an entire day reading Thoreau's Maine Woods; reading almost the whole book in two days. All simply because of the sense given by the fire. A desire to remain still.

finally getting out a little bit

2006-01-14T01:16:00.000-06:00

last weekend went out to marion reservoir and took some pics, then drove around the country-side a bit like i used to do so much back in high shcool but now that gas isn't so cheap i don't do it very much. anywho...i'm pretty tired and don't feel like waxing poetic about going to the reservoir (for that matter i've gone out there so many times that there isn't much to say). Yet there is something possibly to say. last saturday was sort of overcast so there was some nice flat lighting with an occasional burst of sunlight trying to break through the clouds. it was rather warm as well--around 75 degrees F or so. earlier in the day i did some digging in the garden back home. have to get back there sometime and do some more digging up of the plots so the ground'll be nice'n mellow in the spring which isn't too far off.

still nothing

2005-12-10T22:50:00.000-06:00

still nothing to say here really. moved into my own place finally. feels nice, but also lonely at times, but feels like i've got a handle on that after my experience in budapest. i think, i guess.

the snow was nice while it was here. really peaceful large flakes fell as i walked into work on wednesday. never got around to taking any pictures. to be honest i'd rather be posting pictures of the snow here than rambling on about it.

tried hanging out with a friend tonight, he's still a student here at Tabor. he was in all day today playing computer games. one of those Sim games, the one where you're able to simulate a person living somewhere. I did actualy hang with him for about two hours--had some good conversation while his slow computer was rendering some graphics or something.

still working on grad school applications. just about to finally submit a writing sample to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee philosophy M.A. program. It's taken me forever to finally get a paper that i feel reasonably comfortable submitting to represent my writing. The thing that sucks is that the whole thing feels half-baked.

looking up

2005-11-17T01:29:00.000-06:00

IM001259,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

each time i walk out of the house to go to work i look up at this tree to see the sky filtering through the branches. Now the tree has no leaves at all.

leaves lying on the sidewalk

2005-11-17T01:28:00.000-06:00

IM001261,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

these were just in front of our house. saw this during lunch one day.

morning glory

2005-11-17T01:25:00.000-06:00

IM001247,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

these are in our backyard these days. they have finally flowered nicely--took them a while to get there. (this picture is from like two weeks ago--i haven't had time to go look at them closely since then, but i think there are a couple of blooms still hanging on).

tomatoes hangeth on

2005-11-17T01:23:00.000-06:00

IM001255,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

even a couple of weeks ago there were green tomatoes. now they've frozen.

ok

2005-10-11T00:42:00.000-05:00

The time has finally come for me to ramble aimlessly about the changing of the season. Instead of that however I think I will just leave a big blank space on that subject since in any case I lack the taste for rambling. A couple of Sunday afternoons ago I spent some hours at the local reservoir, taking in some of the sand and sun there. Now it is getting cooler; I've been able to wear a sweater now. Happiness to me is sitting in a chair wearing a good sweater and drinking green tea while leaves fall outside.

I haven't been very reflective for the past couple of months--not verbally anyway. Because every single time words are put down, you want to revise them. At least that's the case for me. Not to mention the fear of sounding pretentious. Fortunately i've gotten as far as realizing that those who fear pretentiousness and so avoid saying anything high-sounding (e.g. any sort of philosophizing) are actually being pretentious themselves. So in the end I want to say what I feel like saying. Now i need to put this into practice with a good measure of moderation.

Those of you who are always sure about your words will of course pooh pooh this sentiment of mine. Perhaps this is because it is assumed that this sentiment comes from aprehension about what people will think about what I will say (which is foolish). I want to say that it is not, but I cannot say what it is. I could say what I think it is, but you will not believe me. I don't have the stomach for it. You will not believe me. There will be all sorts of psychological reasonings that even now resonate in my mind, even in parallel with the philosophical ones.

Everyone has his or her own personal reasons and pseudo reasons about why someone did this or that or the other thing instead of doing what he/she thinks is the right way to do things. It's just like the cycle of violence. Dialogue can be just like violence.

I won't state this solidly. Because it is only part of the truth. Everything is a perspective. I say this because I feel it now, not because I set it up against truth like one holds a color swatch up to an item to tell if the item is a certain color but because of a feeling. This example provides not only my juxtaposition of two ways of judging something but also an example, though not a good one, of what I am now putting into words. The color swatch example is a feeling also (which of course has both a psychological [conditioning] and physiological [brain patterns, etc.] explanation, but this does not disount its content as a feeling, since both of the explanations are feelings as well even though they could be described as being a more 'granular' explanation).

This demonstrates a point I am now feeling out, like feeling out a dark room--only having just come from another room that I felt out to see what it was like then found a door leading me into more confusing shapes and categories of thinking etc.

What point does this demonstrate? Even if you think you have some item to point at, some criterion, some element of your experience, some proof text or other miscellaneous phenomena, or some formula which says this is true it is also possible to look at it in the way of a feeling: just like the color swatch example uses both feeling (my sense perception which makes the test usable) and formula (which is the test itself--i.e. the 'formula' [of sorts] of taking a color swatch and comparing it to an item [this is a formula because it is a general prescription for action that proposes to give a desired result: answer the question is this item that color?]).

Now I must apologize, but I have to slip into a different mode of speaking that many seem to find offensive. I am, at this point in time, a supporter of this mode of speech because making things clear (or at least feeling like I am able to grasp them solidly if only for a few moments) is an itch that I must scratch. We all have our itches, let me scratch mine. Please. Note that I do not actually claim that I am making things clear because that is not something it is possible for me to really do per se. Rather, clarity is something which comes between two people (or perhaps entities) when they somehow mesh or come into synch with each other and is not possible only for one person (entity).

Okay. Now. What i am trying to feel out has the following resemblance.

You set up a definition of truth, say,

(DT) We say 'p is true' if and only if (1) p is a complete sentence and (2) the concrete relationships attributed to any concrete objects in p hold in reality.

Technically this isn't circular (because DT is a meta-statement about a language which just so happens to resemble English). But practically it is impotent--which to my ears is to say that it doesn't help you solve much.

Anyway lets leave the merits of the definition alone, because that's not the point. The point is that we have some, any, definition of some thing--it doesn't have to be truth--it could be the Good, or whatever your favorite topic might be, Galois groups for all I care.

But let us use DT as our example. It has two parts: (1) the concept defined and (2) the terms which define the concept to be defined. There are some technical words for these two things but I can never remember them and it isn't important.

The point of the definition is to help us pick out the concept defined. For example if there is an argument about whether something is true we are, it is supposed, to refer to the definition to resolve the dispute. Just like a fucking dictionary.

In DT we want to be able to resolve disputes about when to say 'p is true'. So we set out some definition and refer to it thinking we have solved the problem. But yet another arises. When do we say that the definition has been satisfied? How do we use the definition? How do we evaluate whether the right side of the definition is satisfied (i.e. true)? This involves evaluating the truth of another statement. Which we will, presumably, do by refering to our definition of truth once more. But then again we must evaluate, evaluate, and so on. So...where does this stop? It doesn't unless we make it stop by a direct evaluation. I'm not sure what else to call this other than a feeling. It's like this. We can rewrite our definition:

(DT2) T(p) if and only if T(a) and T(b).

Where T(p) means that p is true, etc. So that if we want to evaluate whether T(p) we must evaluate T(a) and T(b) and to do that we must evaluate T(a1) and T(a2) as well as T(b1) and T(b2), etc.

O.K. This is boring. That's all a very hackneyed foundationalist look at the world. Of course it is. But the point is that it doesn't matter whether we think we are foundationalist or not, but if you believe that there is truth of any kind then you must believe in a certain phenomenon which indicates its presence. Even if you don't believe in any particular classical notion of truth there is a criterion you believe in. Even if it's just 'This is what I'm doing' and you pride yourself as some open-minded enligtened person.

I don't feel, as I used to, that this says that truth doesn't exist, but it leads me to an even more awkward conclusion. In the end our feelings are what define what we say is true or false. Even if we set up a definition of truth, and believe that truth is absolutely this--even then the application of that criterion is an experience. A feeling. You can't break out of the experience.

This is awkward because feelings are pretty shaky. I don't mean this in the traditional sense of saying that feelings lack veracity. I'm just saying that feelings don't contain their own witness, nor do they stick around forever.

Keep in mind I'm not disparaging feelings here. Just voicing my apprehension about them. I'm sure other people have different opinions about their own feelings. Perhaps for them their feelings are not so shaky as I am making them out to be. However, I can attest to my feelings about my feelings and they attest that they are not reliable. So even if someone elses feelings are reliable, merely because I feel that mine are unreliable, it is valid to say that feelings in general are unreliable because if that were not the case then everyone's feelings would have to be reliable and since I am part of everyone I have proven by contradiction that that is false.

Or some such nonsense. Because proof by contradiction is just a feeling. Or so I feel.

These feelings come mostly from my being pissed off at the authors of the texts I read for one of my independent studies last Fall. Epistemology. It really pissed me off when the author wrote a paragraph or two about skepticism and then just dismissed it with an arrogant remark like, well, no rational person believes in that shit. But, admittedly, the complete skeptic (which, I think, doesn't exist--I mean no real person is such a person since everybody has to live) is a bunch of crap too.

Please relate this back to the color swatch example. We apply the formula of putting up a swatch to see which of two colors it is the best to attribute to some item, e.g. a set of curtains you are arguing about with someone whether they are lavender or purple. (I realize of course that we don't actually use color swatches in such a situation, but probably you might refer to some commonly known object--e.g. a flower called lavender.) The practice of using the color swatch is also an experience. Using the color swatch doesn't suspend experience and bring us outside to some realm of direct awareness.

Now, there is a way in which there is yet another 'room' to be felt out in all of this. Namely, there is a way of fencing our experiences in so that the situation again tends toward being formulaic. But I suspect that it goes back again to feeling, because the fences themselves are elements of experience.

Okay so what all this means to me is that my sentiment about my words (as mentioned above) comes because in the back of my mind I always know that I might be wrong, but so might you be, because there is always a remaining factor which isn't fenced in.

window, cup, book, eye, text

2005-10-08T21:53:00.000-05:00

turn around

2005-09-08T20:50:00.000-05:00

Today I turned in my signed contract to work full-time at Tabor (mostly for the tech department and partly for the library, doing catalouging, etc.) until the end of this school year.

This is all I could've asked for when I aplied for the other full-time tech job. Interesing how things do that.

another

2005-08-22T17:49:00.000-05:00

another rejection from trying to find a semi-decent (i.e. at least half-time) job at tabor. applied for a library assistant job, didn't get it, but librarian said he wanted me to work for him like 10-hours/week doing some other more techie type stuff for him (database administration or some such thing). At least that's 10 hours/week. I think i'll go talk to the principal at the middle school here to see if he needs any math tutor or something. Oh, and I am now the assistant manager at the Newton, KS Ten Thousand Villages. My training was on Friday, and my first day was Saturday. Both days went rather smoothly, but I felt really worn out after each of them, being as I've never even done anything like clerking at a retail store or anything like that, becoming an assistant manager is jumping the gun somewhat.

Interesting thing about working at Ten Thousand Villages is getting to know the volunteers (they do most of the selling and interacting with customers, basically I open and close the store and make sure other important things get done). One of the volunteers from saturday used to be co-pastor with her husband at Trinity Mennonite back in the '80s here in Hillsboro, but she grew up in Brooklyn. She was a real hoot to talk to. I think i was able to actually get into the whole thing of interacting with customers too. Now, i don't have a problem helping a customer find what he/she wants, but I do have a problem with (what I am told I am supposed to do) try to get them to buy more than just what they want (i.e. so-called 'add-on sale'). I know it's 'for a good cause' or something, but somehow that doesn't make it okay to use those tactics.

anyhoo...

cooler

2005-07-26T16:19:00.000-05:00

yesterday it was 100+ degrees F and today it is 63 degrees: roughly 40 degrees cooler

and it is raining, heavily off and on, now just sprinkling

a while ago i thought i'd try opening the window and shutting off the A/C so i don't have to sit in here with a window A/C running all the time, but the poor nice breeze couldn't keep up with the humidity and big monitors in here, so now the A/C is back on

short-lived fantasy

Heat Cold

2005-07-21T21:40:00.000-05:00

it has finally happened what I knew would eventually happen in the later part of the summer.

i have come to be annoyed with the heat and i start to fancy that i smell the sharp smell of freezing when you step outside in the morning, the lasting taste of coffee in your mouth. it's as if you can taste the bermuda grass going dormant on the short breezes that confront your face. i'm ready for sweaters again. or sometimes i imagine that i'm sitting in a dank room, not dark, but with just a desk lamp on or something, wearing a sweater, and seeing out a window a foggy cold scene, and hearing downstairs the sounds of someone listening to the NPR all things considered theme.

in other matters i've randomly started listening to (some of) Madonna (i.e. some music she made when she was Madonna, not whatever her name is now, or at least I think i remember hearing that she calls herself something else these days). One day here at work there was a playlist file on the desktop of one of the computers here, so I played it, listened to it a couple of times that day, and am listening to it now. funny how things like that just happen.

2005-07-10T17:09:00.000-05:00

Now it's been two whole weeks since harvest ended. this does not seem to be a long time, just as the general concept two-weeks does not really seem to be a long time, nevertheless the reality seems to be a long time. It is not clear, however, why this seems to be a long time. I think perhaps it could be because the last two weeks have been marked by some frustration at work since I've been learning PHP and using it to interface with MySQL to create a web database application for Tabor. Two weeks ago I didn't even really know what either of those things were, so i've been cramming my brain with all this new stuff, learning how to create an authentication system for users of the database to log into, etc. Turns out it's not really that difficult, but learning all of this in a short time is rather draining.

Today went for a walk out at the farm. Two weeks since harvest. I look at the fields where wheat once stood to see bright patches of weeds growing up above the stubble. And other fields: already burned and worked under, to begin a new cycle: till, sow, grow, reap. It makes me tired to think of all the cycles that have been completed in the span of existence. I mean, to think of all of this history, makes one realize the insignificance of one completion of the cycle; in this sense I find it tiresome. Complete the cycle so that another will begin: so that we can live of course, but this is yet another cycle.

As I walked down the pasture road that is shown in one of the first few pictures I posted a while ago, I came to a field of milo (i.e. sorghum). And since the leaves of milo are much larger than the leaves of wheat, the sound is much more like lots of papers clapping together in the wind as opposed to the finer texture of the hush of the sound of wheat in the wind.

The stalks are growing large with fresh heads beginning to pop out in some places. The smell is sweet when this happens so that when you walk by you are hit by the wind, sun, smell, and sound of this field, all at once, yet silently, alone, out there.

I was not walking in this field but rather alongside an old fence row of a pasture which borders this field of milo. During harvest there were winrows in this pasture, also giving off their smell as they sat baking in the hot sun. During harvest Jess mentioned how she likes the word 'winrow.' I hadn't thought much about that word other than that when I was younger I remember being confused how to say it, for I was uncertain wheather it was 'winrow' or 'windrow'. Now, looking at Dictionary.com I see that it is apparently both, 'winrow' is a contraction for 'windrow.' So I guess it whould be spelt "win'row" if you use the contracted form.

These win'rows have been baled and arranged in rows since the end of harvest. So now the pasture looks stark, but decidedly not dead since the grass doesn't waste any time in starting growing again.

I wanted to say more about the milo, how it grows more quickly than the wheat, and how this makes me like it better than the wheat. But nothing seems to come to mind to say other than just that.

Another thing which caught my thought today was how the harvest always seems so dreadfully looming inevitably there before it comes, but now I find myself two weeks past it and it seems almost pitiful what's left of it: far from its original splendor is just the rotting stalks in the fields.

Cherries!

2005-07-08T00:44:00.000-05:00

Cherries!,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

I think I mentioned something about picking cherries a long time ago (it seems) so here is a picture of the results of picking those cherries.

job

2005-06-29T16:17:00.000-05:00

So I didn't get the permanent position working at Tabor. So I guess I'll roof for a month or two after my summer contract is up and then move somewhere else since there aren't a lot of interesting job oportunities in Hillsboro. We'll see.

It's about time I got out of Hillsboro anyway. Most of my other peers have done that long ago. Furthermore, I've done it before--in Budapest--and I loved it. When I lived there, even though school sucked to a certain degree, I liked the resolve it gave me to be organized and not a slob like I am living at home--e.g. hitting the snooze button for an hour or more and not getting up in time to get to work until 9 am. (of course, part of that is also because I work at Tabor, and there's not exactly a nasty boss here yelling at me for it, maybe that would be a good thing, for me). In Budapest I actually got up early enough to make a real breakfast and do some reading/praying(/meditating/directed thinking) before I went to class. At home I was lucky to get up five minutes before class.

The thing that sucks is that it would've been nice to get this job so I could gain more experience working as a sys admin in an environment conducive to me learning more and more, instead of coming to a place where nobody knows me and I'm expected to know everything already. I'm thinking about getting some certifications, maybe renewing my CCNA certification, which has lapsed. Of course there's always those vo-tech schools advertising on television. One of them around here advertise for courses in programming. I've been developing a projector manager application (that controls projectors mounted on a ceiling in a presentation room), putting to good use all those nerdy hours I spent in high school teaching myself C++ instead of having a social life, but I think I need some formal education if I could hever hope getting a job doing programming, I've only taken one programming course here at Tabor, which didn't do much to teach me anything more about programming, but did give some experience developing a project in a team environment. We'll see; that, or maybe I'll just do odd-job things until I go to school again.

birds

2005-06-27T21:19:00.000-05:00

The starlings are flocking in the trees--that is, in a tree. I was reading Rabit, Run on the steps of the Lohrenz Building and noticed them; thought it was strange they should be flocking at this time of the year since I am so used to seeing them flocking so much during the months of September and October in the milo fields, eating and shitting all over everything the powdery white color of ground grain. Today they were suddenly in the air overhead, then swept into a small tree.

The sun setting, the air cooling from the day, I imagined that it was actually September or October, but particulary October, at the end of which there is a sweet cold smell that begins. I'll have to wait until that time to get a better description of it. But I'll forget to do this.

And the firetrucks went out tonight; they seem to go out more and more than I remember they used to. Another field fire, aparently. Some twenty minutes after I heard the sirens and about the same time the birds began flocking, I noticed one, two, then more pieces of charred grass slipping down out of the sky. Yes, a field fire, most likely. One that was planned but got out of hand.

I have more pictures to post--but no harvest pictures; I took none, in fact. I will leave that to my brother's blog. I have pictures of a bowl of cherries; they are not yet posted anywhere, but will be soon.

Hopefully I will write more here in the comming weeks. Ever since school has got out I have dredded the thought of writing anything--everything sounds wrong to my ear when I read it to myself. Furthermore, there has been an inscesant bitterness, for the most part, hanging upon anything that would be written. I have written nothing, therefore, not even in a personal journal, because they would be worthless words--un-edifying words would be a different way of putitng it.

Finished reading Rabbit at Rest yesterday while in Kansas City taking family members to the airport to go back to their homes. I think it is a good book, not great, but then again I don't think much is great these days, but just good at least. But in making this value judgment it seems rather empty because I lack any idea of what it would mean for this book to be bad, other than the idea of me not liking it, but this would not be nearly enough for me to say it would be bad, nor would me liking it be enough to make it a good book, and as far as I can see that is all the criterion I am using in saying that it is a good book, so perhaps I should say that it is just a book that I like a little bit but not necessarily a lot instead of using the terms good or bad at all. Does it count in favor of believing that there are objective (i.e. absolute, not just the possibility of consensus) values on such matters that a person could say that something is good (truly believing it) but yet not liking it? I mean, does it make sense for someone to say "I don't like this book but it is a good book"? or to say "I like this book but it is a bad book"?

I fully realize that there are entire books and theories and careers developed trying to answer this question. Me pointing myself to them or someone else doing this will not interest me now though. However, being aware that they exist does count for something. So there is some value to having studied these things--I think. I mean, if I hadn't taken at least an introductory course in these things then I would be like someone stumbling into a dark room not having any clue what was inside this room: whether it was large or small, wheter it had windows or none, whether there were objects in it or none, etc.

I'm trying to think of examples where we normally say that we like something but we also say that it is bad. I mean that we truly say (believe) these things: this is different than we like something but it is bad. I mean we like something but we also believe it is bad, and admit this is so. If there are no examples, then this does not by any means serve to refute any idea of objective value, but it does force one to admit that our likes and dislikes always coincide with our beliefs about good and bad. To my thinking that is significant; for, in all our talk of good and bad, if we cannot say "This is bad [observation statement about good and bad], but I think it is good [belief statement]" nor "I think this is bad, but it is good" we can never escape from our beliefs to the reality. This is the important point: our likes and dislikes always coincide with our perceptions of what is good or bad, so that if our likes are ever wrong (i.e. liking something that is objectively bad) we will never become aware of it because they only way to become aware of something is by perceiving it through some phenomenon--i.e. instance of experience, e.g. "this situation now." For example, you cannot be aware that there is a book on that table without perceiving that there is a book over there in some way. Some would counter that it is possible to be aware of something and yet not perceive it, but they are using an overly empirical sense of the word 'perceive' where I am using it to mean anything that ever enters one's stream of consciousness. Again some might say that it is possible to be aware of something in the sub-conscousness, but this cannot be since if you are going to be aware of something in the sub-consoucness, some image of it must be projected into the conscious. Even spiritual experiences must conform to this. I cannot even think I have had a religious experience without being aware of it in some way. Or, at least I cannot imagine how this could be at the present time, which of course may change at any moment when a new thought crosses my mind as brought to my attention by some particular soul out there.

My present point in all of this tangle is this: that you can't get at reality except through perception of it, nor can reality get at you except by way of your perception of it. Stated this way it seems obvious, but really there is lots of explaining to do in order to counter certain spiritual or religious objections. Of course, however, if you think that religious experience is not perception, then you will disagree with me, but this will result from a different understanding of the term 'perception' not because you are right and I am wrong, or vice-versa. I mean, we use the same word with different (mutually exclusive sometimes) meanings but don't say that this person is contradicting him/herself, rather we say that he/she is just a competent user of language--i.e. one who is capable of using all the intricacies of a language--and some will emphasize one meaning sometimes and another at other times.

I might even speak of religious experience sometimes as being somehow beyond perception, but in saying this I am using a less strict notion of 'perception' than when I say that even religious experience is a datum of perception. The latter is a strict use. Both are right, but one must be clear about which sense is being used, or else confusion and stupid argument will result. Which sense I am using at a particular time depends upon what I am doing, and what I want to do. Really it is, almost, or even actually, a different word, even though the symbols (both spoken and written) are the same.

There is an obvious counterexample to my main idea (that we never like something that we believe is bad): food. We often eat things we like and even admit that it is bad for us to do so.

But I think I can counter this counterexample.

When you eat something you like but agree is bad for you, why do you agree that it is bad for you? Because you perceive that it is bad for you, or because you've read it somewhere or heard someone tell you that it is bad for you? Remember, the question is do we ever like something that we perceive is bad for us or vice versa? Hence I should not have used the word 'agree' or 'believe' as I did earlier. So the idea is stated clearly by saying that we do not like something and at the same time perceive that it is bad. Of course someone will still offer the example of addiction (drug or otherwise). But I don't think that the addict likes that which he/she is addicted to once it becomes something perceived to be bad. If I drink, I will not like my drinking if I perceive that it is bad (at that time); however, I may like it until that point. This does not mean that I will not drink of course, because it is obvious that people do things they do not like.

Even if it is refuted that we never like things we perceive are bad, I still hold to my earlier claims about not being able to get to reality save through our perception (conceived strictly as the phenomenal field of anything experienced), but I will have to strive for a different way of explaining these things.

To summarize things: If it is granted that we never like something that we perceive to be bad, nor dislike something we perceive to be good, then our likes and dislikes coincide with what we perceive to be the reality of good and bad, so there can be no, what I would like to describe as, escaping to reality from our perceptions. This does not mean that I think our perceptions are reality, I do believe in objective reality (even objective values), but that our access to this reality is rather limited, more so than what people would like to think.

This does not rule out the aid of a higher power such as some deity in guiding us perception bound creatures to the truth, but that deity, being part of reality, must provide aid through perception whether it be every-day experience or some spiritual/super-natural experience.

Of course this might all seem obvious and therefore be worthless (non-edifying). I don't think so, however. Why? Because before writing this I would have said very casually the main idea contained in it, without any reservations. But now I have thought about it, identified some pitfalls of what I am saying, and become less arrogant in my claim: now that I have thought it through I don't even believe it as heartily as I did before. Some would say this is a bad thing, I would disagree of course, but I won't discuss it now.

Getting back to the book, if you're even still reading, this all means that it's hard to say even what it means for the book to be objectively good or bad; our access to this reality, if it exists, is not something we can claim to have, even indirectly perhaps, and certainly not directly.

A Bee

2005-06-25T23:52:00.000-05:00

IM001110sm,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

More tomato

2005-06-25T23:51:00.000-05:00

IM001112,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

Our first ripe tomato!

Tomatoes!

2005-06-10T00:46:00.000-05:00

IM001099sm,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

I took these around lunch time today when there was a lot of great flat lighting because of the clouds.

Walking

2005-06-05T14:14:00.000-05:00

Scan0002sm,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

Just before sunset

2005-06-05T14:08:00.000-05:00

Scan0004sm,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

Just before sunset--again, on the farm.

Looking at the wheat

2005-06-05T13:47:00.000-05:00

Scan0001sm,
originally uploaded by dp2005_.

Ok...don't have anything to say except those sunglasses are great.

back on the blog

2005-06-04T09:04:00.000-05:00

I don't have anything significant to say, but I'm thinking about things a lot, trying to come up with something to say here. I guess I could talk about the insane amounts of rain falling upon Kansas these days. Well...not much more to say than that. Last night I actually tried going out for a walk despite the fact that it was still raining and the track record of these rain storms has been if it's not absolutely pouring right now, it will be in a bout two minutes. This was no exception; wel...it took like maybe ten minutes. I was out walking and it was raining very lightly, but the lightning was out in medium force--as in, I didn't feel like the hand of God was going to smite me at any second; rather, I could see the smiting going on in the distance and up in the sky. At one point, however, there was a bunch of veiny looking lightning (I think it is usually called "crab" lightning, but I don't like that word) nearly above me in the clouds, so I did feel a little miniscule at that point, but pressed on nevertheless because I was so damn tired of either (1) sitting in my "office" of sorts at Tabor writing C++ code and burning my eyes out staring at a screen for hours, or (2) sitting at home being too tired from (1) to do any reading or any productive activity. Kept walking, but tried to keep a certain distance from trees and lamp posts etc., keeping close to buildings when I was near them. I don't know if this even makes a difference, but somewhere I recall being told when there was lightning to stay close to the house. So in my strange self I apply that admonition, given long ago, to my suposedly adult life. Strange. Some would say wise--whatever.

Where was I going with all this.........now I remember. As I was walking back, it started pouring and the lightning became much more crackly, like the sky was a big bowl of Rice Krispies (i forget the spelling of that)--snap, crackle, POP. Ok, that's a shitty simily, but seriously though. It was crazy. So I took shelter underneath the entrance to the Wohlgemuth Music Education Building and stood there staring at the rain hitting the concrete.

growing wheat

2005-04-17T23:43:00.000-05:00

This afternoon I went out for a walk in the country. I walked in a field, along the edge of a field of wheat about 10 inches tall. The wind was the sort of wind that says Kansas when you hear it blowing against the fresh leaves of wheat, surprisingly nearly the same sound the wind makes when the wheat is ripe, I hadn't noticed that before.

And the dirt. As I was walking back to the pasture from which I entered the field I noticed the soft dirt, mellowed by many nights of freezing temperatures and wet days thereafter. This is the sort of dirt that makes one smile. Occasionally there would be a clod about the size of a tennis ball; stepping on it is like stepping on...a piece of foam, I don't know--can't think of a better image than that at the moment, but it just gives way to your weight in a way that you don't expect, because it's a big clod and when it was originally formed--some months before, September perhaps--it was hard and you would've felt it in your foot, but now it just squishes down like a piece of foam under your foot.

Spring

2005-04-14T22:27:00.000-05:00

Maybe one of these days i'll have a really nice productive post to make...it's been a big long dry spell these past few months. School. So i'll just confine myself to talking about the weather.

Today it hit me that it was spring. It wasn't anything in particular that hit me, just that IT (whatever that is) is spring. I guess it might've been when I first noticed that suddenly--honestly, in the past day or two--lawns are beginning to get shaggy in places. I was out for a short walk this evening and I was walking in an alley behind my house and I noticed a shaggy mess of growth over by a fence and that's when it might have hit me, but I can't be sure.

Spring: it's like a hit and run. But lots of things are like that

2005-04-13T15:18:00.000-05:00

don't talk politics and don't throw stones living in a glass house

--Radiohead, Amnesiac, last track

2005-04-13T08:45:00.000-05:00

I like kitties. I like cardinals that sit on juniper tree branches.

okay...now, somebody argue against me for that. why don't you quote some bible verses or something.

seems these days you can't say anything without pissing somebody off.

just let it go.

from me lots of affirmation going to "the woolf" about her comments about faith. maybe somebody will argue with that. but we've all just got to let it go. disagreement is fine, conversation is fine, even being passionate is fine, but ...

I guess the only thing I could add to the comments about faith is that i see faith as being somehow beyond one's system of beliefs (i.e. propositions one assents to). This isn't to say that faith has nothing to do with believing something.

I don't know, this is my thought, this is my prayer, that people will listen and not be hostile or feel attacked. Feeling like what I'm saying is scary is OK. it scares me.

this is how i see it...now if someone sees otherwise, there is no need to give me a diatribe about what the bible says faith is, at least that's how I see it.

Hmmmmmmmm...

2005-03-11T22:55:00.000-06:00

Well shit. I haven't posted here in a month. Oh boy. Now i've lost all the readers i ever had.

It's funny. The more I feel comfortable about the idea of going to school five more years to get a Ph. D. in philosophy, the more I feel like telling people they're stupid for believing most of what they believe, because they haven't "thought" about it enough. It almost makes me want to forget all that pacifist crap and actually start fighting to rid the world of stupid people.

But this can't work.

But perhaps nothing works. We blindly fumble through darkness hoping that something'll be the magic key, the one thing that'll make existence "Okay."

This doesn't exist. Or: you'll find it, then tell people to do the same; they'll say no; you'll say "you're stupid--you're loss...to fucking bad for you."

A: I think this is true because of this.
B: You're nuts. I don't see that at all. In fact I see it's like that because of that.

Over and over again we go. But maybe we can hope to be spiraling inward instead of just going around in circles.

That's my hope right now, and why i'm doing what i'm doing...i.e. going to do, i.e. go to school.

Re-update

2005-02-06T17:58:00.000-06:00

I just transfered all the old comments to the new commenting system. Note: you don't have to have a Blogger.com account to use the new system; just hit the "post anonymously" link when it asks you for your Blogger.com username and password.

Update

2005-02-06T17:29:00.000-06:00

I've just decided to use the built-in Blogger comment feature. Eventually i'll transfer all the comments (the very, very few that were made...hehe) from the old thing to the new thing and everything'll be swanky or something. Ok...that's all.

correction

2005-02-02T15:42:00.000-06:00

I just realized that the email address I gave in the last post for people to send extra comments was actually the wrong email address. I have two email addresses: one with Hotmail and one with Yahoo and occasionally I get the two crossed so the email address i gave is my yahoo username with the hotmail domain. The address I ment to give is pennedav@yahoo.com

prayer

2005-01-28T14:30:00.000-06:00

Well. I was about to write about the whole prayer dispute, and when I clicked 'Save as Draft' I got an error message after i was redirected to an error page and consequently I lost the numerous paragraphs of tightly argued prose elaborating the position I had articulated in sweeping strokes on the entry of 8 December 2005. I will attempt to reconstruct these here, but after working on it for like 30 minutes (without saving it, yeah, i'm a dumbass) i'm rather tired, so its bound to be somewhat sketchy.

First we ask what it means for there to be "scientific evidence" that "prayer works." Here's the obvious answer. Either (1) one can show by repeatable experiment that there is a positive correlation between the event (P) "A prays that E occur" and (O) "E occurs" or (2) one can show for any person A, and any event E, that there is a chain of scientifically observable events E1, E2, E3, ..., En such that Ei causes Ej (when i does not equal j) and such that P causes E1 and En cuases O. Most likely (1) will obtain before (2) in the course of scientific inquiry. And by "there is evidence that prayer has instrumental value" we simply mean that at least (1) is the case.

We must make a distinction. It may seem obvious and inconsequential at first, but in my opinion it lies at the heart of the matter. If we are not strict materialists then we may distinguish the super-natural world from the natural world. Think of these "worlds" as sets. So the set super-natural world is merely the complement set of the set natural world. Note that this is merely an analogy to illustrate how these two "worlds" are mutually exclusive.

Now, here's why this distinction is important. By definition, the business of science is the investigation of the natural world. Science simply cannot allow any notions from the super-natural world. Consequently such statements as "God does not exist" or "God does exist" are not statements belonging to a scientific arena of discourse (the scientific agon). Similarly statements such as "Prayer works" or "Prayer does not work" are not statements belonging to the scientific agon.

This conclusion may seem strange especially since we have already seen a clear condition under which we have evidence for the "instrumental value" of prayer--i.e. the condition (1). That is, it seems I have specified a clear criterion under which one is allowed to assert "Prayer works"--i.e. when condition (1) holds, so how can I then say that science cannot make a statement about prayer when clearly I have shown it can do so? The first, intuitive, response is to say that science is not really talking about prayer but an idealization of prayer. By itself this claim does not really amount to a refutation of the objection just stated. But it does gain some validity if we rephrase it in the following way: certainly, if condition (1) holds, then prayer works, but that does not mean (we have not yet investigated this) that if prayer works, then condition (1) holds. We cannot yet claim that the concept of prayer is exhausted by condition (1), therefore condition (1) is not really a criterion for prayer working but is merely a sufficient condition for prayer to work.There may be something to prayer which (1) does not account for.

Consider the following argument: "There is no statistical evidence of the instrumental value of prayer, therefore prayer does not work." (I am not quoting anybody but just giving my rendering of Mr. Cline's argument against prayer...unfortunately at this time I am not able to access his web-site so I cannot give a direct quote...if I have misrepresented his argument I would gladly accept correction on this matter.)We may render this argument in the following way:

(A) Condition (1) does not hold.
(B) If condition (1) does not hold, then prayer does not work.
(C) Therefore, prayer does not work.

This is simple modus ponens so the argument is obviously valid, but for now it is not clear whether or not the argument works since we have not yet settled the question as to whether (B) is true. But deciding whether or not (B) is true leads us into an interesting quandry. This is because the truth of (B) hinges upon the meaning of the term 'prayer.' What concept does this term denote? According to a scientific world-view the concept of prayer involves, essentially, what we have already stated as condition (1). Prayer consists of a person A desiring that E occur (e.g. someone's being cured of a disease or so and so being (not) elected to the Presidential office), and so A prays for E to be the case. And, according to this same scientific outlook, it is absurd to say that this sort of thing would be successful if E in fact did not occur. I can identify with this sort of scientific intuition about prayer: in what sense is it possible to say that prayer works even if E does not occur? It would seem to be the height of folly to say that a prayer "worked" and yet E did not occur. But this is only a scientific outlook, not the only possible way of looking at the situation. It is only the "height of folly" for the scientist/logician. So according to the scientific world-view, (B) does in fact hold true simply because the concept of prayer is identified (made equal to) the concept of condition (1) holding true. So according to the scientific outlook the argument is also a sound one.

But is the concept of condition (1) holding true the most just rendering of the concept of prayer? Many would disagree with such a statement, I think, and this is why the above argument cannot be accepted by all: (B) is not true for those who understand 'prayer' to mean something more/entirely different than merely (1).

Furthermore, science, by its very nature, cannot possibly say more about prayer than (1). This is because of the distinction we made earlier between the natural and the non-natural worlds. The condition (1) is given entirely in naturalistic terms--observable, documentable events--and this is all that a scientific statement can ever do. But in order to provide a just rendering of the concept of prayer perhaps one must cross the barrier between the natural and non-natural worlds into the non-natural.

I must stress that my mind is not as clear about this distinction as about some of the other things I have said. I'm not even sure at this point (as I was when I first started writing this entry) that the natural/non-natural world distinction is really a distinction at all. To be sure it is one that gets thrown around a lot, but often I wonder if its all just a linguistic trick and that there really isn't a hard and fast distinction between the two. But such a reservation comes from my more scientific personality, so I cannot allow that free reign just yet. I think the argument that I have given against Mr. Cline's argument can be leveled even without the notion of natural versus non-natural by using the notion of a world-view or world-outlook which is something that can be understood a little better because, e.g., you can ask someone about their world view and thereby come to undersand their belief system as the result of that framework. The argument becomes, then: (B) is true for the scientific world view but not for world view X, therefore the argument does not work.

Really, this is an even better argument than before. The notion of natural vs. non-natural is not really an absolute distinction but a relative one: one's world-view will determine its validity or if it is valid what things go into which category.

Note also that I am applying a principle of argument critique which, according to many perspectives is dubious (perhaps even from my own perspective at times): If a proposition P is true for world view X, but not for world view Y then P is not objective and its truth is un-decidable from either perspective X or Y. This principle was just used in my argument that the argument concluding (C) is not sound.

At least a few comments about this principle are in order since it seems to be some sort of relativistic principle. Well...it is. I am unapologetic about that because I have my moral reasons for holding it which stem from my own world view which could be characterized as a sort of philosophical altruism with respect to other world views. I can sum this philosophy up in the "motto" (though I hate mottos) that all perspectives are valid but it is not the case that "anything goes," but it is also not the case that what does go is held by any privileged world view. Well...i guess that's not really a motto...too long and complicated. Anyway, this is the basic assumption which informs my critical principle mentioned above.

This implies that while it is fine for world view X to hold that P is false, X cannot criticize world view Y for holding that P is true, nor vice versa. You can be a scientist and hold that prayer is a bunch of nonsense because there is no insturmental value to it but that does not give you the right to criticize those who think that prayer is anything but nonsense. This is because to do so is to deny their experience as human beings. If there is anything evil in this world it is surely this: to deny the experience of another human being simply because it does not square away with your own experience.

Anyone wishing to comment on this at length can do so by sending me an email (pennedav@yahoo.com) since the commenting feature on this blog is pretty poor. I'm hoping to change that sometime.

Anyway, now it's snowing outside real nice and I want to go get some lunch.

Melting

2005-01-19T13:59:00.000-06:00

The ice cap that's been covering central Kansas for the past couple of weeks is finally beginning to melt. The streets have become streams lined with piles of dirty snow that's been plowed up by tractors trying to clear them. The sun feels very warm; it's finally above freezing after having been in the 10 - 20 range for over a week. Stepping outside feels like one giant sigh and stretch after a good night's sleep. Unfortunately I'm writing all this in choppy sentences. But I still like the cold, I think, even though the warmth is nice. The past week I've loved going out and bracing the single digit temperatures with my scarf and cap; now it's over for a time and I can go out without having a scarf or cap or my coat buttoned up tight. The wind blows over my head. The side of my body turned towards the sun feels the warmth of the sun after not knowing this phenomenon for some time. I am torn between the oposing forces of the sensual comfort of the warmth and the seductive masochism of the cold.

discussion

2005-01-17T19:39:00.000-06:00

Today in Earth Science we had a "forum" discussing issues of faith and science. It's easy to see how it could be frustrating to be involved in such conversations where just about every single other student is a traditional age freshman who hasn't really ever thought about these things before nor have they even begun any sort of training in how to think clearly (i.e. to be a philosophy major). The major difficulty with this is that it's hard to keep the discussion focused. That's the difference between someone who's capable of thinking clearly and someone who's not: keeping focused during a discussion and searching for a mutual understanding of the meanings of terms (or at least what are the possible meanings of those terms). Of course this is something which is difficult to do. Some people can do this naturally, they're the best people to talk to. I think I have maybe one or two friends who can actually do this. (I can't...i.e. i'm not a natural). But I think it's possible to develop it as a skill, but you have to do a lot of writing, thinking, and discussing. And it requires one to hold a lot of information in one's head at a given moment during a conversation. If one cannot do this then the discussion deteriorates into a mere wandering without any overall direction. This didn't happen today, fortunately. Unfortunately, I don't think it's because people in this class are clear thinkers, rather, the conversation didn't deteriorate because only a few people (out of like 30 students) were actually talking. These people don't seem to care too much. Maybe they do...i don't know. We'll it's almost 8:00pm here...time for 24.

waves & intuition

2005-01-13T13:44:00.000-06:00

We talked about oceans today in Earth Science class and waves and all that stuff. But all the while my mind was on intuitionism...a philosophy of mathematics. this particular philosophy focuses on the constructive nature of mathematics. it remedies the antinomes of classical mathematics (e.g. Russell's paradox) by disallowing the use of infinite totalities taken as entirely given. the theory's rational for this is that one cannot ever fully construct (in any way) an infinite totality, e.g. the numbers 1, 2, 3, so on (since there's always something more to be constructed...i.e. the nature of being infinite). The paradoxes arise because of classical mathematics' taking an infinite totality as given absolutely and actually. This goes beyond what one's mind can "see" and so one cannot hope to be sure that one's constructions using these infinite totalities will be consistent whereas if one remains with what one can see clearly, i.e. the method of constructing the numbers 1, 2, 3, ..., 10, 11, 12, 13, ..., 100, 101, 102, and so on then one cannot ever arrive at a contradiction because what one sees clearly cannot admit of a contradiction. contradiction arises only when we try to say something about that which we cannot see clearly, e.g. the set of natural numbers taken as a completed whole, the set of all sets taken as a whole, etc. because we have no grasp of these things except in a very nebulous metaphysical way. Interestingly enough a lot of mathematics can be done this way, though it comes at the cost of a little more complexity. I find it highly interesting because it considers the only true mathematical meaning of a statement such as "M exists" (where M is some mathematical object such as a set or a number or a triangle) to be "M is constructible" (i.e. one can effect a construction in one's mind [possibly using paper and pencil as aid to this]). All other possible meanings are "metaphysical" and therefore not mathematical. This is good.

I don't know why i tried to say all that because the ideas are incredibly complex and I myself am only beginning to see them. Just thought i'd say something about what the hell i'm doing these days intellectual-wise.

Aaaaahhhhhh

2005-01-07T14:23:00.000-06:00

Interestingly enough I still cringe at the thought of doing any serious writing after last semester. Hopefully that feeling will go away by the time Spring semester rolls around. This is bound to be a rather banal post, unfortunately. It snowed a bit, iced a lot here, but now it's beginning to melt--not in one of those crazy Kansas ways where one morning the temperature decides to skyrocket above freezing and all the snow and ice just melts of in like six hours; today it's just a little above freezing--enough to make the ice on the roads into dirty slushy stuff.

Relative to last Interterm, this one sucks. Last January I took Philosophy of Language (if I wasn't a philosophy nerd before that class, I certainly was after it), and this January I'm taking Earth Science to get my damned lab science Gen-Ed requirement out of the way finally. I find it highly annoying that the labs I had to do for Calc I (and then taught those same labs two years later) don't qualify as a lab science class even though the math major is officially named "Mathematics/Mathematical Sciences." I guess math labs don't count as science. Strange. Oh well. The only thing that sucks about Earth Science is that between all of my middle school science classes and like four years of watching Bill Nye the Science Guy I've heard it all before so it gets pretty annoying to sit in a class three hours each day and hear it all over again. Oh well.

Last night I went to a basketball game.

Paper: A rough draft

2004-12-17T13:15:00.000-06:00

So I handed in the final paper for my epistemology independent study just now. It's a piece of crap with some good ideas stuck on it, a few good moments, many, many gaps. But I learned something in the sense that I feel like there's a new space been hollowed out inside me for all those thoughts. I guess that's a good feeling. Just yesterday as I was trying to write the little concluding paragraph on the paper...i was like yeah i'll have this wrapped up in like 15 maybe 20 minutes. I wanted to make a comment on some thing that this guy in a book had made a comment on. I was flipping through the book, went to the first chapter, lo and behold, there was a few pages of critique on some of the parts of the Meno i had talked considerably about and used to develop basically my whole theory. I was only slightly scared at that point. Then i read on and discovered that the guy who wrote the book was critiquing some other philosopher who had used the same portions of the Meno to develop a theory similar to mine as far as the basic intuitions are concerned. I was like...hmmm should've looked back at the first chapter. I read that chapter like back in September so I forgot clean about what it was about. Long story short...I think i was able to recover from the critiques since the theory of the other philosopher wasn't exactly the same...like I said, just the same basic intuitions. Mainly I think I discovered that the guy who wrote the book and was making these nasty critiques was using one big assumption for all his critique of the other guy...and it is an assumption that both I and the other guy reject...so really the critiques aren't so much critiques as good analysis. So i think i was able to recover and not get blown away by the simplest of arguments. Unfortunately the three pages I had to add to my paper to show this were written all in the space of like an hour or so and in a sort of frantic haze, so it's bound not to be the best writing ever...need to think much more about those critiques and that big-ass assumption.

A Dispute

2004-12-08T14:44:00.000-06:00

I have been reading the dispute which has arisen on a couple of blogs: My sister's blog and The blog of someone my sister knew in college. The issue about prayer having no "instrumental value" is that to which I refer. The argumentation on the latter's blog is misleading--asking for statistical evidence. This sort of request, of course, misses the whole point. And perhaps the proper response is unsayable, I don't know. But asking for statistical evidence isn't the way to go at all. I mean, you won't have any productive dialogue arguing that way. The whole thing about prayer is that it doesn't fit into all those nice analytical boxes one would like to use to analyze everything. I mean...that's the nature of prayer...if you could analyze it then it wouldn't be what it is. There is much more to say about this issue. This is only my first intuition: more thoughts later when I'm not writing papers and finals are over.

Fall Break is Over

2004-10-20T16:20:00.000-05:00

Fall break just ended...now back in school...done with classes for the day...homework for tomorrow is done mostly, not completely, but many projects to be thinking about since the semester is half over. This contributes to the general lugubriousness of days: should be working...no motivation...but just suck it up. I was rather motivated this morning; hence, I got all my homework for tomorrow done, but when it comes to earnestly working on stuff in the one to two month range, I lack motivation, unless I get really excited. I'm not too worried actually...because things almost always work out. I've been in this situation numerous times and each time I've succeeded in working it out. Absolute failure has never really happened to me (though very nearly in Budapest), but the thought of it looms very often, but not as much now as has in the past...doing better at letting go of attachment, not perfect yet though...can't expect it all at once though. Part of my success in this has come from willfully not doing assignments. Of course, in Budapest when I did that (actually did) it just freaked me out, but here it has a calming quality...so can't make a general principle that not doing homework helps one release attachments, but it has worked here...making progress in that. Life is too short to have attachment...got to be cool even when things are down, down, down. Even when the whole fucking world is passing you buy shouting imperatives at you...just be cool, let it go, move on, progress, transcend their universals like a good Kierkegaard Abraham, take sabbath, not enough sabbath in this fool's palace, this palace of fools, wrought from red-eye toil. The ousia is more, to get to the parousia. Indeed.

In Anticipation

2004-09-19T22:33:00.000-05:00

Even though the past few days have been warm and windy, the atmosphere has taken on a more autumnal feel. One feels it especially in the evenings when the clouds are thinning in the west as the sun goes down.

I anticipate one morning getting up and shaking off a chill, looking outside to see that it is time to put on a sweater. I wore sweaters for three of the four months I was in Budapest--I got really tired of them (and they of me, perhaps). Now I'm ready for them to be back. And coats! don't forget the coats. They're good too. And hats.

On an entirely different note: Now that I'm taking a grammar class and actually understanding it (unlike all through middle and high school) I notice the structure of my sentences. I find myself actually thinking: "Oh, that's an adverbial phrase" and "Hmm, that really isn't grammatical the way I've written it." Reminds me of the first summer I roofed: when I wasn't on the job I found myself looking at roofs as I passed by walking.

The Weekend is Deep, Dark, Lonely, Arduous, but Press On...I guess so

2004-09-17T23:57:00.000-05:00

The weekend hasn't really even started yet but I'm feeling like it's Sunday night. On Monday there's supposed to be a meeting for the peace and social justice group that's here on campus of which I am the president and I am supposed to present some issue for discussion. Why? Because I said I would. Why? Because I think it would be really cool, but with school and all the other crap going on I haven't even thought about the thing until now and I should be sending out an email about the idea by like, well, today really. Oh...epistemology paper not going well either: I always think I've got a cool idea, then it takes a nice big plunge into the ocean and I feel like shit about it. The thing is, I like studying and thinking, but I hate being BUSY! That's all.

In other matters, the town is starting to jump already for the "art" fair tomorrow. I walked down main-street and with all the people and stores open when it's actually dark I felt like I had dropped into an actual city with a night life...that was weird. Usually when you walk down mainstreet in Hillsboro after eight o'clock the only night life is a cat crossing your path.

School Etc.

2004-09-14T22:56:00.000-05:00

School has been taking a lot of my time; though not enough since it always seems like I'm behind in my school work. I guess that's the pessimist in me. That pesky pessimist also tells me that nobody's reading my blog anymore, as if anybody ever did. I should stop listening to that guy.

Everyday I try to study a lot (mostly reading, some math homework). Reading is one of those things you think is easy until you really try to do it well. Especially when you're trying to read hundreds of pages of epistemology which involves so many ins and outs that the mind is lost unless you take some notes to filter out the important points. This is why it's important to start reading something long before you need to have it "read"--i.e. have the information understood to some significant degree. Reading is much more enjoyable when you can do it at a reserved pace, instead of wildly trying to push through it. So...that's what I'm doing most of my time, reading, then every once in a while I have to do some math homework for my last math class. So far I haven't gone crazy with it. I was really afraid of that, given the shit that made me suffer in Budapest.

I have a mind to publish some thoughts about my ability to have relationships with females--i.e. my lack thereof. But someone reading it might consider it to be mere ravings having no value. Instead I might put up a "poem" that I wrote some months ago, which doesn't necessarily have any explicit relation to the topic I have a mind to discuss. So here are some "ravings" of doubtful but not non-existent value. It has no title, but it has an epithet...

Happy are those ages when the starry sky is the map of all possible paths—-ages whose paths are illuminated by the light of the stars.
-—Georg Lukács (“Integrated Civilizations”)

the feeling of sandy beach hands
is for those worn from work
in a world whose essence is static
not those who sit forlornly and doubt
the existence of any goodness
or peace of mind, but they cannot help
it or even find some remedy to
heal the blisters of the rocky currents
of the universe which tosses about
in all directions to no end or goal
or observable point for all is nothing
for all is seeming relative for all is
no thing whatsoever to be had or
upon which to sit or cling or attempt
to find some secret solace for we
are all naked to the light and dark that
continually sparks in and out, flickering
and bringing to light our grotesque
gargoyle bodies perched upon the
superfluous gargantuan globules
and not much more than a suffocated
gargling comes from each throat
as they drink up the poison of the
lie in which they all partake and so
are kept from that comfort which might
bring some gentle warmth of hands
some simple conversation of days
and work between friends of
simple things of simple virtues
and traditions binding us within a
realm intelligible to humans--of
those things the Enlightened taught
us to deny and reject for some freedom,
for the absence created by the dumping
of so much tradition and history like
so much accumulated dung dried fast
to the roof of the world where gods
once strode and kept us in awe and
in place of those golden palaces in some
distant realm, in place of the Good of
Plato is erected the god Reason to
which daily sacrifice is made of our
minds and the denial of our nature

Work

2004-08-12T16:53:00.000-05:00

I'm not a "techie." People call me with problems or ask me about them and look to me to do some wizardry--but, I have none, and I stare blankly.

Just a few minutes ago I helped someone connect their laptop to the internet via a modem through the school's phone system. So...of course you have to do some special dialing in order to dial out. Not complicated stuff, but apparently warranted calling the tech office. So they called me, fumbled around with words trying to tell me what was the matter, I finally give up trying to understand and decide to come over to their office...I mean, it's not like I'm overloaded or anything. So I go over and see what's the situation. There's this cute little Mac laptop (iBook, or whatever they're called...I don't know) sitting on the desk in the office. And sitting in front of the comp is a guy I don't know, and I know doesn't work for the school, so I'm thinking why am I helping this guy? Why do people think that they can just wisk a techie away at any moment? For me it's not such a big deal, except people do the same for my boss (by the way this is a two person IT department right now: my boss and lowly me) who really is overloaded. Anyway...I look dumbly at the machine wondering "what's up?" And I don't even make any gestures like I plan on doing anything: I just stand there blankly in the middle of the room while one person I do know sits in a chair along the wall diagonal from the desk. And there next to the laptop is a digital camera with a USB connection from it to the laptop and there's the phone line plugged into the comp. I stare blankly. The guy I don't know tries to connect via dialup. Meanwhile I know this won't work because I see what he's entered, but for some reason I don't say anything. The screen looks hopeful...it might connect..."keep your fingers crossed" says the guy I don't know. Oh, Ok as I stare at a cable coming out of the ceiling.

Eventually I lean over the screen to look at the numbers he's entered. I mutter something about needing the long distance access code to dial the number, because even though the call isn't long distance it doesn't look like a local number so the school phone system won't let you call it without account codes. The guy I know sitting says it's ok to use his access codes (it's his office). But then there's some unwarranted confusion, and the guy I don't know says something about connecting his comp through the network. I mutter something about not being able to do that due to network policies, which is sort of true or something...I mean, the way we have things set up is so that not just anyone can use the network...like, um, we have things set in place that makes it more complicated than just connecting your comp to the computer. I mean you have to configure certain things and I'm not going to do that just so someguy who doesn't work here can upload a few pics.

Eventually the guy puts in the access code. He forgets one zero, so there is a moment of hope but ultimately we are disapointed. I spot the missing digit, and he tries again...it works. All the while I have not moved from my position in the middle of the room...clutching to my watter bottle and sucking at it like one perpetual drink...suddenly I am praised for coming over. I have done nothing, nor have I attempted to do anything, but get out of the uncomfortable situation.

Back in the 'boro

2004-08-01T19:48:00.000-05:00

Now back in Hillsboro; I was in Kansas City for the weekend visiting friends again. Really depressing comming back to Hillsboro after being around a good portion of my Tabor friends. Of course if I'd want to stay, that'd mean getting a job, and an appartment of my own.

It is August 1 and I need to get on the ball with my independent study in epistemology for this semester. Need to think about getting the contract made up and filed; that's not hard, just getting all the hoops set up so's I can jump through them is something I generally dislike doing. Call it laziness; call it whatever you will, whatever you will, will, will.

While in KC went to B&N and found an interesting book, by Derrida, called Glas. The proportions of the book were more like that of coffee table read than of a work of philosophy. and the first sentence, structure, strange, deconstructed, was enigmatic, uncapitalized. Derrida! Your such a crazy one! The text was heavily peppered and salted with inset paragraphs in a much smaller typefa e. like C ptions for pictures, and garnished long--quotes--in Deutsch. Rather, the book did not get eaten; it's faded side sitting there still. And I think often about picking it up again.

Cold July Rain

2004-07-24T19:57:00.000-05:00

Rained since Thursday afternoon; stopped this morning sometime about mid-morning. The clouds look wet and Octoberish. Something within wants it.

Now wearing a jacket and it is cozy to be wearing a jacket and wearing comfortable socks and shoes and for my feet to be dry. Not much more does a body need than a cozy jacket; not much more, not much more.

"Where there is only coarse rice to eat and water to drink and only an arm for a pillow, still there is happiness." Ah, but this is tricky; but not a trick, indeed true, but hard; true, hard, to the point of appearing false.

"Most people dislike having their deepest beliefs questioned, but they are quick as wolves when it comes to maintaining material wealth." This is hard to swallow. It is cold. Some say truth is cold. But truth may also be hot.

Someone asks, "What should I do and not do?" And someone answers: "Keep to the road; bend toward your task."

"But what should I do?" "Do not keep to one road, and in that way inhibit the operation of that which cannot be named. I mean to tell you, it can be named, but in that name we will not be speaking of that which can be named, but a straw dog only."

Work & Miscellanea

2004-07-19T23:27:00.000-05:00

Finally tomorrow I'll hopefully get keys. Haven't been able to do much without asking Chris (my boss) to borrow his keys just so I can go do some simple task. It's rather frustrating not being able to go off and do some task when it needs to be done because I don't have keys. Instead I have to sit and wait untill Chris comes around and ask him for his keys. I think I've been doing pretty well considering, however. The summer is over half over already, unfortunately.

Listening to Dido's No Angel album for like the tenth or twentieth time. I'm not sure what that says, but I can be rather obsessive about music that strikes me in a certain way: I listen to it over and over. Sometimes I get sick of it, but other times not. Counting Crow's album August and Everything After was one of those albums I didn't get sick of. Quite the contrary, in fact. I began listening to it and only liking a few of the tracks, but after five months of listening to the whole album I got to like the whole thing. I guess that's one way to be a good album.

When I started this post, I thought I had something actually interesting to write, but I guess I got distracted by downloading the newest version of MSN so I could actually use it again. Probably in vain anyway, since I'm not going to be living in the dorms any more...won't have the benefit of Tabor's T1 always being there: my computer'll probably never be online. Oh well; too much internet is a bad thing anyway, maybe not as bad as too much TV, but certainly just as addictive: that tempting glow of unreality that never really touches you.

Well...at least tomorrow I'll be getting my keys (I hope) so I can actually go to the "office" at nine, instead of having to wait around for my boss to come around. It's not so bad when you're on salary, but when you have to clock in and out, it's better to keep predictable hours...at least I think so. I guess that I feel that my world has been so lacking of structure and discipline lately, I want to have at least one thing disciplined: getting up and going to work at nine, getting off at five, going home, relaxing, reading, etc. The whole thing. Now if I could just find a real job that will allow me to live on my own...but philosophy majors don't have such a luxury, not untill some sort of terminal degree is in hand anyway...but that's a dogged path yet to travel. Some spirit inspires me to optimism about that path, however--different indeed to my feelings most days these days.

Set in Stone

2004-07-09T12:51:00.000-05:00

Monuments. Yesterday I was walking past a small stone monument (on the Tabor campus) that was erected on the tabor campus sometime in May (I think) and I considered the granite or marble or whatever sort of stone it was. I considered the actual material and its being used to communicate a few words. Here we have the literal meaning of the phrase 'set in stone.' Words are carved into the surface of granite and the words are set in stone--you cannot erase them, unless you destroy the monument. And you must completely destroy the monument: smash and grind the whole stone into a fine gravel, so that no pieces remain which might give some fragment of what it was that somebody was trying to communicate to the distant future.

The words become set in stone so that generations from now, the words will still be there and can be read to pass on some bit of history. This is what we often want to do: to set something in stone so that it is immovible, or at least it has some semblance of unchangability. Of course, and this is trivial in the case of the monument, this is only an illusion, because we must acknowledge that nothing of the sort is possible in the manner we imagine it is: nothing is immovable: all is subject to change.

Frames of Reference. Einstein made us give up the idea of an absolute frame of reference with respect to our notions of space. I would like to do something similar with respect to our notions of knowledge: knowledge is just like the monument: appearing to be beyond change, beyond reproach, once it is discovered. There is not an absolute frame of reference for knowledge. This is the idea: we are only constructing our meanings, our propositions, our beliefs and we erect them as knowledge.

Science, e.g., supposedly uncovers the structure of the world, but in reality it is merely constructing a framework: the structure is not being discovered but is being built upon whatever foundation we have put in place. But this foundation is not resting upon anything but an abyss of assumptions, getting more and more vague as one sinks to the bottom. At this bottom is the problem of existence of which I have spoken before. This is one way of thinking about the problem: to locate it in some metaphor. It is the soundless depths of assumptions upon which all our structures reside.

But that isn't even the most important aspect of the structures we build during inquiry. The point I want to emphasize is the constructedness of the results of inquiry as opposed to the results being conceived as things "already there" in the world, external, just waiting to be discovered.

Something particularly annoying is the idea that the truths of mathematics, science, logic, etc. would "exist" even if there were no people to discover them. This is an idea one sees very often in contemporary writing. Indeed this is often the objection made to more social theories of truth which give primacy to people's truth judgements as opposed to a more propositional ("objective") theory of truth which gives primacy to the abstract notion of the "proposition." But the objection rests on the assumption that truth must exist even if there had been no people. This assumption is curious indeed, especially when the concept of truth is such a human phenomenon. At the moment I cannot think of how there is anything like the notion of truth manifested outside the realm of humankind. And if one thinks one has an example, one must be careful; this is a tricky situation.

Of course, we can conceive of the world as existing without people and everything else remaining the same. Trees will fall the same way: gravity will operate just as it does. All the biological processes of the living things that are present would be exactly the same way as we observe them now. The sun would still glow and get its energy from fusion of atoms of Hydrogen. The earth would still orbit around the sun in a slightly elliptical orbit. Everything would be the same except that humans are absent. Now we must ask the question whether or not the laws of science, the theorems of mathematics, the principles of logic, etc. would exist under this scenario? Certainly there are those who answer in the affirmative. Indeed, there is something satisfying about this--something intuitive; somehow it works. For example, the earth would travel around the sun just as it does now, apples would fall from trees just as they do now; hence, the equations which model the motion of such entities now, would still model the motion under the hypothetical situation. Hence we would say that the laws of science would still remain. The same reasoning seems to work for the theorems of mathematics. Certainly two points would still uniquely determine a line. Certainly we still have two and two equals four. It is hard to think how it would fail to be the case that the Continuum Hypothesis and the Axiom of Choice are independent of the axiom system ZF. And what about modus ponens? reductio ad absurdum? It seems, even to me, to be absurd to think that all of these principles and laws would fail to "work" even if humans were absent or even if nothing existed but empty space and there was nothing to exemplify them. Somehow it seems like the laws and theorems and principles would persist. But at bottom I cannot accept this.

The only justification I can give at present is that all of the aforementioned principles, theorems, and laws are manmade things and if man is absent then they are absent. Of course, there are those who think that man has not made these things but has discovered them as some structure of the universe and this is why they would persist in man's absence. So how do I justify saying that man has not discovered them? I can, at present, merely assert that man has constructed them. And to justify this assertion I can, at present, only say that these things (theorems, and laws) are analogous to the cars and buildings and tools etc. that man has made during his existence as a tool making creature.

If man did not exist, surely it would be absurd to claim that automobiles would yet exist. Why do we not say, then, that it is absurd to say that the Continuum Hypothesis and modus ponens etc. would yet exist? I can see that an automobile would remain possible to exist (even in the extreme case, perhaps, when nothing but empty space exists--I am not speaking of physical possibility, but of possibility of form--i.e. if the resources to make such a thing as an automobile existed, then one could make an automobile) and in this sense we might be compelled to say that this is sufficient for existence. But really that would be absurd to say so because actuality and potentiality are two different things, though they are related. An automobile would potentially exist but would not actually exist.

All of these considerations leaves me with the feeling that I am getting nowhere. I have strayed into metaphysics too far without realizing it.

Metaphysics. Trying to uncover the absolute structure of reality. Or: trying to study the properties which are universal to existence; the categories of existence.

But I do not admit that such a structure exists to be studied. But isn't asserting that there is no such structure itself a claim about the structure of reality?

Well...I have reduced myself to a sort of Socratic perplexity--aporia.

However I know what I want to do. Something akin to what Gianni Vattimo does in his After Christianity in explaining Nietsche's saying that "God is dead." Vattimo says that this is not intended as an atheistic thesis (i.e. Nietsche is not claiming that God does not exist) but "means nothing else than that there is no ultimate foundation" (Gianni Vattimo, After Christianity, trans. Luca D'Isanto, New York: Columbia University Press, 2002; p. 3). Of course to claim this is just what I wondered about above: this too is metaphysics: saying that there is no foundation. I read Vattimo's book once, last summer, I shall have to read it again to get the full details of what he means.

As a final note: Vattimo has an interesting claim in his work which should make anyone stop worrying about the absence of absolute foundation. It is the idea that the absence of the philosophical (metaphysical) God actually promotes a rebirth of the true God of the Scriptures. From what I remember reading the first time this means that the God of the philosophers (Aquinas, Ansealm, Augustine, et al) is "dead" in the sense that it never was alive but was an extrapolation of the philosophers from the Scriptures, and hence we have reclaimed room for true faith: faith in the sense of Abraham. (I am interpreting quite a little bit here what Vattimo says, but I am not stretching it too far.)

2004-07-06T17:34:00.000-05:00

Last night I hung out in Hutchinson, Kansas with some friends. We were celebrating the birthday of one of those friends (which is actually today). Anyway, the point about my writing about this is that we went to the fireworks display that had been postponed on the fourth to take place the fifth due to rain. As the fireworks began to pop and boom and echo off of the many and massive grain elevators of Hutch, I found myself wondering why this was happening: why do we feel the need to have lots of noise, smoke, and light in order to "celebrate." I found myself feeling untouched by the incredible force of the sound. This is strange because I have been to fireworks displays before and somehow it had the desired effect on me: I felt somehow made alive by it's power: the awe. But last night I found myself feeling quite untouched, and I almost began to laugh at the absurdidy of it all, the utter emptiness of the formalism of having fireworks on the fourth of July. This isn't something I have against the fourth of July either, nor patriotism for the U.S. or otherwise, because I can remember feeling the same way when, just a couple of months ago, I watched the fireworks display to "celebrate" the joining of Hungary to the European Union.

2004-07-05T13:32:00.000-05:00

I've actually been able to recommit myself to doing some serious philosophy reading and actually having respect for it and not just gagging on it's dryness. W. V. O. Quine's Word and Object is what I'm muddling through right now. He's very much of an empiricist. It's interesting to see some ideas I've had in an underdeveloped stage come to some actual development in his writing. To be less general he uses the concept of a class of sense experience time intervals in order to come to some clearer idea of what it means for two sentences (the degenerate form--i.e. one word sentence such as "Ouch."--is all that I have seen him deal with so far) to be synonymous and thereby he could derive the idea of meaning. Actually he does away with "meanings" per se altogether (see e.g. his "Two dogmas of empiricism.") and focuses on gaining a precise notion of what it means for two terms or sentences to be synonymous. I certainly find myself classing myself under the heading of "empiricist" these days, which is possibly due to my rationalist tendencies of yore: I'm just swinging to the opposite end like a pendulum; but I don't feel myself at the extreme end of the empiricist side. Perhaps I've already done that: with my late infatuation with the equation "use = meaning", which is very radically empiricist since it equates meanings with something very much observable in contrast to the ethereal atomic propositions.

In the paper I referenced below (like the second entry of this blog) I have already fallen out someone with that equation, and I have supplanted it with some sort of correlation: "use -> understanding -> meaning" to which I still hold very much for a number of cases. I have not, however, completed a sufficient investigation in order to say that such a correlation is helpful (let alone correct, whatever that might mean) in most or all cases. We shall see, hopefully.

Actually I've sort of been thinking of some sort of general purpose of meanings, whatever they may be; however they are defined. This derives from how we apply (use) the word 'meaning' or 'mean.' I haven't been able to consicely state in literal terms what my idea is but I do have a rather good metaphor I think. Meanings are castles, or houses, or generally any place for a person to live (i.e. some structure fashioned for that purpose). Ironically for me (being somehow empiricist) this is a very unempirical way of saying what meaning is. Once again, it is a metaphor. This theory of meaning works very well for religious texts or other doctrinal matter, but it seems to be a stretch to bring it down to sentence meaning or word meaning. But I don't have to do this because who is to say that 'meaning' should be reduced to one formula?

I say that meanings are like houses or shelters because people really do live in meanings, or through meanings, or by meanings. Meanings are a sort of shelter from some sort of problem of existence. I.e. without meanings we are homeless in an undifferentiated universe.

Just like real shelters, meanings come in many styles and sizes. Christianity is quite possibly the biggest and most ornate (i.e. diverse) structure in the Western world, but it is slowly beginning to deteriorate and the temple of Capitalism and Democracy has been put up on a higher hill and somehow the former has been established as a gate to the latter.

Other examples abound, more later.

2004-06-28T00:05:00.000-05:00

Harvest is sort of over, finally. Really, it's just fizzling out. There are a few more acres to be cut yet, but my obligations to devote all my time to this activity are at an end. This morning I'll be starting work at Tabor doing computer stuff--we'll see how that goes after three years of not doing anything with computers and computer networks.

Last Monday I went to Kansas City to visit some friends--it had rained the evening before, so, too wet to cut wheat. We went to a couple of bar type places. One was more of a pub with out-door tables on a deck type thing underneath trees with dim lights hanging around. There were some noisy types there but the beer was pretty good--some sort of Kansas City home brew. When they set out the glasses they had a slice of lemon on the edge of the glass, like we were going to be drinking iced tea or something. I'm not too sold on drinking beer with a lemon taste, especially the cloudy wheat beer they're brewing up in KC.

A sort of realization: Each generation has this big idea that it's going to "save" the next generation by preaching all their "wisdom" gained in their "long" experience. Unfortunately this won't do. Why? Because people don't learn by being told what's what, but people learn by their own experience. If some old fart tells you not to live a certain way or such and such will happen, what're you going to do, just take it on faith that he's right or are you going to figure it out for your self? Which option is true life? In my opinion, the latter. I don't like this idea that somehow the previous generations pass on some sort of gained wisdom. Why? Is it because I'm a disgruntled 21 year old (I'm not a disgruntled teenager anymore, I suppose)? No, rather I think there's a wealth of evidence to show that this world is pretty messed up and has been ever since there were people grabbing for power and wealth over and more than others. Just look at it! I don't have to point it out to you. Living in this world shows that that is true. Of course, if you're good at playing this game of grabbing then you'll protest to my saying this. But I'm particularly bad at playing this game: it sickens me. As long as people are playing this "game" then the world will remain as it is and the cycle of birth, life, and death will continue and the cycle of the generational conflicts will continue on and on repeating itself. I guess if everybody just quits trying to steal what everybody else has, then this world might make a turnaround, but I don't think that will ever happen. If some generation were to successfully pass on this as gained wisdom to a following generation, then perhaps I could say that it was worth the effort of an older generation preaching to a younger one, but untill that happens, I will remain skeptical.

Please note that these are not intended to be rational thoughts. Don't try to trip me up by finding "contradictions." If you think you've found one then that's wonderful for you, you're pretty good at playing language games. But as for me and myself, I will not serve the god of the law of non-contradiction.

2004-06-21T12:48:00.000-05:00

In random snatches I've been reading The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art by Joyce Carol Oates. I've also been reading (haven't for a few days now though) John Updike's In the Beauty of the Lilies. And I have been reading Boccaccio's Decameron in a sort of King James English translation. Oh...and finally...I think...I have begun reading Joyce's Ulysses, but I think I might quit that for now and read some of his earlier work first.

As it turns out I haven't read any philosophy (the subject I'm supposedly interested in) for a good week now. But I have done some writing on my other blog--about the whole business of truth; it is more of a business than one might like to admit--but that ultimately leaves me wondering about my ability to really come up with something to say that is somehow interesting. I'm not even thinking about novel ideas, but at least novel ways of explaining old ones. Honestly, all that I have said leaves me feeling empty. All the philosophy I've ever read (most of it anyway) leaves me feeling empty. Especially the very analytical stuff that one has to read like a math text: not really getting at the issues of life, just beating around the bush perpetually, never coming to grips with the real question of existence. All of that stuff really sets my stomach to churning, because of it's elegance but utter futility.

Perhaps this is why I have taken to reading more literary matter: each time I have done so, I feel like the writer is actually getting somewhere trying to see something of value in the existential quagmire, whereas the analytical philosophers are just making some crude line drawings, which are like so much dried excrement on the walls of Dante's bolgia.

How, or when, does one know? I am not posing a philosophical question here, because the lack of an answer is the horror of not knowing, of fragmentation, of being left to drift in this world of clocks and dollars, not the mere lack of a theory. Philosophy cannot even begin to detect this result of not answering the question. You can build some theoretical framework in order to write some book on epistemology, but will you really live in that system? You cannot live in a theoretical framework. "Oh, but there is the application of the system!" cries the obstinate professor as if life were like so much science that yields to a mathematical treatment--so much applied mathematics! so much delusion.

There is beauty in the cryptic statements of Confucius et al and even in those of Wittgenstein; never really putting into a formula just what they are saying (if they do it's just as cryptic as what they've said already). There is a sort of character in never quoting a thesis, like a notebook whose pages are comfortably worn, and whose words are all written in fits of inspiration, instead of dogged persistence in worship of some god--efficiency, completeness, clarity, application, production.

2004-06-19T02:14:00.000-05:00

Harvest is still on hold. This is the first harvest in a long time that has been different from routine. Today I was in the Tabor library looking at their collection of DVDs and CDs, and somehow I felt like I was delinquent in my duties, I felt somehow that I should be out in a field contemplating how long I should wait before I needed to unload the combine onto the grain-cart so as to have just the right amount of wheat on the truck (not over-full and not under-full) and not in the air conditioning of the library considering whether to check out Casablanca or Citizen Kane or both--I chose the latter, along with a 1926 making of Göthe's Faust.

It's about 60 degrees right now (in the evening), and there are low hanging clouds, almost like a fog. It's hard to see how the wheat could do much drying tomorrow if this sort of damp weather holds, which will be the case according to the forecasts.

2004-06-16T11:19:00.000-05:00

Harvest was at one point well under way, but now has been severely stalled due to rain. There was a very windy storm on Tuesday morning with a couple inches of rain. This morning there is a large band of storms moving in from western Kansas--inching slowly eastward as one looks at the radar screens.

I remember so many nights as a child glued to TV screens watching the radar loops and listening to the voices of weathermen (sometimes women) tell about where a particular storm was moving, and who should be taking cover at that particular time. All the while I imagined that suddenly, unexpectedly, our house would be blown off its foundations in some thundering kick of wind and thunder and lightning. I've had dreams about this, even just as recently as a couple of weeks ago, when I was still in Budapest. I had a dream where I was standing out in an open field of grass--short but stout clumps of green grass, like an imense lawn that had not been mowed--and I remember looking back and seeing a large dark cloud with fingers clutching at the ground moving towards me. I remember ducking to let it pass over me, as if that would work, and suddenly there was such a large thump, like a large shoe being stomped on a wood floor, but the noise was so powerful that it almost knocked the wind out of me; the large force of a tremendous amount of air being flung against some resistent barrier. This is all that I recall.

Now it is cloudy; harvest is being delayed, and will not end within this week unless the atmosphere dries out very soon.

2004-05-26T06:58:00.000-05:00

So there are only two more full days of being in Budapest until going back to a world which is but a faded memory in me now. And, somehow, I am fearful of what I will say to people and how I will interact with them. Mostly: I am fearful that I will say things about what I feel I've realized here and people will just stare blankly at me and say, "Yup, that's life." And give me no more attention than that, as if I had just learned that two plus two is four. But the things I realize are more significant than that because of all the pain that went into their realization. Indeed, this is a universal condition--everyone goes through such painful realizations--I am no special than any other human being but doesn't that make it all the more important that whenever we see this development that we treat it as something sacred? Isn't any sort of development sacred, no matter how seeminly small and insignificant? Why should we just say, yep that's life, as if "life" is something one studies in a book or takes a course on and everybody learns the same thing? This is another confusion of the general mass of people: that if you find life painful, you should just keep quiet about it because you're not the only one, or if you're going to say something, write a story, or be creative, but until then you must keep silent and earn your right to speak out abot the human condition. To be sure it's wrong to just cry and cry out ("Oh woe is me!") because it does nothing really good, and hence it seems that if you are going to say something then you should do something creative that turns the pain into something communicating the truth of this universal condition. But I don't know. But I do know this: the development happens incrementally and in the "trenches" of the existential battle, but the creative result (e.g. the work of art) is merely the result and comes far short of depicting the real struggle of the existential battle that occurs each day--and I mean each day! This is why it may be wrong to tell someone to keep quiet and don't complain, or else make something good out of it: because the creative act remains mute about the real truth about the existential condition of the human (this is not only a fight for survival, which is primitive and which modern society has rendered impotent, but the fight against an emptiness which puts the individual in grave danger of becoming meaningless, void, out of date). Indeed this may be what modernist art is attempting to overcome: to find the true expression of this latter day battle for existence, but somehow, I find that the real solution has remained from the grasp of modern or even contemporary art. Perhaps the true solution is the community.

2004-05-20T03:13:00.000-05:00

For anyone interested in a summary of my conclusions about my foray into the jungle of Budapest academic life, see my little piece "Community at Tabor" which was published in the Tabor Mathematical Sciences department newsletter recently. There's no talk of mathematics--interesting, but done on purpose.

For anyone interested in what I've been doing in Budapest (other than studying mathematics I don't understand) see my little piece on Georg Lukács, a 20th century Hungarian philosopher. I wrote this little piece as the final project to the history class ("Making of Modern Central Europe") I took here. Lukács (the 'cs' in Hungarian is pronounced like 'ch' in English) is a philosopher who, I think, will affect my thinking for some time to come. I've even been contemplating picking up where he left off (when he joined the Hungarian Communist party in 1918) as far as his trying to develop a synthesis which transcends the fleeting moments of the aesthetic but yet isn't offensive to the "enlightened" mind. Yes, unfortunately, this implies some sort of absolute metaphysics, this is whole problem he was trying to deal with in the first place! Anyway, the thing you can read is just me getting to know the Lukács of pre-1919. After that, he gave up, and never again went back to, his work on the problem of aestheticism.

2004-05-18T06:19:00.000-05:00

Here's an esoteric moment.

On Sunday I was visiting one of the many museums here in Budapest. This museum is called the House of Terror which is comemorating the victims of Communism in Hungary. The museum is run, however, by the Right wing of the Hungarian political scene. Consequently it is painting a somewhat obscured picture of the facts about Communism in Hungary. My history professor called the museum the "Disney Land of the history of Communism in Hungary." After only a few minutes in the place I came to realize the truth of her statement.

Here is the esoteric moment. At one point in the museum my professor was commenting on one part of the exhibit which was particularly misleading about the numbers of individuals murdered by the various regimes which took power after World War I in Hungry. Commenting about this my professor said "I am a post-structuralist historian, but, come on!, there are some facts."

No one responded to this comment, and she didn't really care. I thought it was the funniest thing I had heard in a good long while.

2004-05-17T05:32:00.000-05:00

I'm going to try to be a little less a.r. about what I post here. I.e. try to be a little more open, or random, or free-wheeling or whatever.

Right now there are only like 11 days until I leave Budapest, and I'm really getting to hate the city. Call me a crybaby or whatever but this is how I feel: each morning is just another day I have to get up and go outside and contend with an environment that I don't understand. I feel completely alien in this place. I am not a citydweller. I have no interesting experiences to tell...i am reclusive, I live a life of the mind, which some would say is no life at all. But I will argue against those who say so. But you can argue back and forth forever and where do you get? Each party just has its own interests in the end and will claim to be right no matter what an argument says. So much for dialogue or dialectic or whatever one wants to call it. It's hard to see how there can be any development without a leap of some sort, a leap to finality, to metaphysics or something.

I have to take two math finals yet and I don't care. The first is on Thursday--today is Monday and I have nothing to do really since I got the paper done early for my East European history class, so I should be studying...theoretically. I have emailed so many people about these ideas, so it feels really crazy to be writing them here now--like I'm just rehashing old shit that everybody knows about and I'm just burdening everybody with all the time because I don't have the balls to really stand up to this existential mess that I have got to deal with--this mess that every human being on the planet has got to deal with.

About the paper I wrote. I feel like it's just worthless. Actually it is. I didn't really do anything but just quote a few things and write a few things--boom 1700 words of notes basically, and somehow that get's me a comment from the instructor that I can consider the paper done. (I submitted a rough draft early.)

I want so desparately to write but each time I begin, I feel like I won't really get anywhere with any of it: not "real scholarship", "not serious scholarship", what the hell is that anyway? Does it mean someone sitting at a desk pouring over books and papers and such for hours and hours, perhaps weeks, and months, not knowing where he or she is going with his or her ideas until one day there is a manuscript ready to be sent to some publisher? Is that what it really is? But how does one do all of that? Each time I think about it, I'm afraid I don't have what it takes to really do something like that.

But then perhaps it doesn't matter if I don't.

Well...have I been too personal? I did call this blog "My Brain is Open" afterall.

2004-05-06T03:06:00.000-05:00

My time in Budapest has convinced me even more so of the validity of my ideas about use, understanding, and meaning in language. These ideas are explained in a not incomprehensible way in an essay I wrote for Philosophy of Language (Interterm 2004) at Tabor called "Use, Understanding, and Meaning". There are some points at which this paper needs significant improvement, but as it stands it gives a pretty clear picture of my thoughts on these issues. Perhaps the weak points will receive further attention in the coming months.

2004-05-04T08:45:00.000-05:00

My first blog (The Social Construction of Truth) while having a definite purpose is a little bit restrictive--too much so for free and open thought. Hence I have created a second blog in which to place thoughts that don't really fall under the subject of "truth" but which I deem worthy of publication.

I can think of a few thoughts that I have had since the creation of my first blog which would certainly have found their way onto this blog had it been in existence. Unfortunately, at the time of the creation of ths blog, I cannot think of any of them--hopefully I will remember some of them, but more than likely not.

So...my brain is open.