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A Long Way From Anything

A guy trying to find a home that never was.

Love

Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Why is it, that in today's society, we think love comes so quickly or so easily? Listening to Dave Loggins' "Please come to Boston" tonight got me wondering. I keep thinking about American history from the Victorian era to the present. It seems to me that we have inadvertently sped up the process of love and fixated upon it to the neglect of all of the other aspects of a relationship. Out the other night with someone I've been dating for a couple of months a friend mentioned something about us being in love. It created an awkward moment as she and I just looked at eachother.

How in two months time are you supposed to know that you love someone? The one and only time I have ever been in love in my life it took much more time. Is it possible that by speeding up the process we have cheapened and made shallow love? In the world of cell phones, high-speed internet, ATMs, and drive-through have we fotgotten how to slow down? Bertrand Russell though as much in his book "The Conquest of Happiness" when he said that in the present era "every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel" (see page 50).

Maybe there are some things in life that we still need to take our time with.

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Smoke

Tuesday, April 19, 2005
White smoke and Bells! Woot! Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum! Habemus Papam!

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gah

Monday, April 18, 2005
Being as that I am the student liaison between the Dean and the philosophy department students, I try to talk to most of the students. I was doing so ealier today when I asked a cute redhead what she thought of the professors/classes/etc... Her reply was something along the lines of "I don't like Dr. XXXXXX, he makes us shut off our cellphones in class."

Blah.

I think some people simply were never told the definition of "courtesy."

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Collecting

Sunday, April 17, 2005
Okay everyone, I'm collecting addresses and putting them in my notebook for my trip. If you want a postcard, just drop me your address either here, in the comments section, or email it to me at enki.mail AT gmail.com. Who knows? You might just get something from a strange country you've never heard of before...

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Me

Well, I was surprised. This is actually pretty accurate:

Your travel type: Culture Buff

The culture buff needs to see a museum, an art gallery, a 16-th century church every day during his holiday. When he travels he is always well prepared. He has read history books, speaks a few words of the lingo, knows about the strange habits the locals have.

top destinations:

Alice Springs
Ciudad Perdida
Alaska

stay away from:

Venice
Paris
Tokyo
get your own travel profile

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hrrmmph

Saturday, April 16, 2005
Well, my Logic teacher will be happy...and you can't say this wasn't expected.





You Are Incredibly Logical





(You got 100% of the questions right)





Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic

You think rationally, clearly, and quickly.

A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer!



How Logical Are You?

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Language

Friday, April 15, 2005
Well, it's more Dixie than I'd like, but I have been living in the south for quite some time now.



Your Linguistic Profile:



70% General American English

20% Dixie

10% Yankee

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern



What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

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Sign ze papers!

Thursday, April 14, 2005
Well, it's getting to be that time in the semester when all of my papers are coming due. One of the multitude (and really there is a multitude...5 papers in total, over 60 pages of writing) is a paper I am working on for my epistemology class. I am writing a paper defending Quine's Naturalized Epistemology in reply to Susan Haack's book Evidence and Inquiry: Towards reconstruction in epistemology. To complicate matters, the professor who teaches this class got his doctorate under Haack and still speaks with her (via telephone) on a fairly regular basis.

Needless to say I currently have checked out from the library every single book about Quine. I have 7 books and about 8 journal articles scattered across my desk at the moment. I should have never been this foolish...

UPDATE: He's going to call Haack and mention my criticisms to her...ack. Oh, and David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs" is an awesome song.

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Language help

Sunday, April 10, 2005
Does anyone know any of the following in Italian (I've filled in what I know)?

Excuse me, Hello: "Mi Scusi, Salve"

Would you mind if I took your picture?:

Please just keep doing what you were doing:

Thank you so much: "Grazie Mille"

Dangit. It's hard to photograph people when you don't speak their langauge.

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Plans

Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Okay, here's a very rough sketch of my upcoming trip across the globe. Hell...nevermind. Just look at the damn map. I'll be visiting a bunch of places whose names are merely a bunch of consonants crammed together. Places like Llubljana, Bratislava, and Zagreb. Red is for air-travel and blue is for groubd-based-travel.

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Books

Well, I have finally received my travel books ($75 ouch!) so it's time to start planning details. Here's what I got:

Let's Go Eastern Europe
Rick Steves' Eastern Europe
Lonely Planet Eastern Europe Phrasebooks
Eyewitness Guide to Berlin
The Rough Guide to Rome

Overall, a pretty good collection. I'll let you all know my itenerary as it develops.

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Academic Progress

Monday, April 04, 2005
Well, in the past week, I have received an award for my service to the Philosophy department, an award for my conference presentation, and presented a paper at an academic conference. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of participating in this particular sect of academia, let me enlighten you.

Imagine working for a few months on a paper, citing 15 or 20 credible sources (try to only use books or journal articles, the latter especially...it'll show you're at the tip of your field), ending up with a paper that's about 20-25 pages in length, struggling to condense the paper down to 15 pages, then travelling a long distance to stand in front of about 30-45 people, reading your paper, and then have all of them take potshots at you to try to disprove your theory. It's a hoot I tell you. But I survived and apparently I did pretty well, as I actually got applause and compliments at the end. So at least now I've got something to put on that grad school application.

I'm pretty happy with this. It's starting to seem that my devotion to my schoolwork just might be paying off in some obscure way.

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Government

Saturday, April 02, 2005
I think most people know that I am (to corrupt Susan Haack's phrase) a "passionate moderate", especially when it comes to politics. I am a moderate libertarian, but I am damn passionate about it. But lately I've been pondering. You see, I tend to have any sort of large government. My philosophy radically reduced to a one-liner is "That government is best which governs least." But lately I've been worrying about the eventualities of my position.

The way I'm thinking, any sort of Laissez Faire capitalism is bound to end up with the creation of monopolies. By the way, I like to think of Walmart when imagining this. The most ferocious of companies is bound to swallow up all of the other companies now that interstate commerce and information flow have virtually eliminated geographical barriers to expansion. So, basically what I'm starting to think unregulated capitalism ends up being is corporatism. Which leads to my next problem.

I don't like big corporations. Maybe it's the fact that in some distant way I'm related to a guy that created the largest union in all of Ireland, but I'm concerned about workers. Maybe because I'm one of them. For examples, check out Congressman Weiner's website. But that's what you end up with when you don't in some way regulate corporations.

So now what? I don't like government and I don't like corporations. What the hell am I? I would say a rational anarchist, but most anarchists are whiney suburban kids who try to get attention from mommy and daddy by going goth. Aww hell...I just don't know.

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