Things falling into place

Little Rock, Arkansas; Airport.

It would have cost $500 dollars to get a flight a day later to Baltimore on Southwest. Funny. Southwest just paid ME nearly $300 to take a flight 4 hours later because they overbooked my original flight. If I am bumped again, I may very well get to fly a day later anyway, get a free hotel, and another flight voucher. That is unlikely, but at least I got $300 toward another ticket.

Though my original plans fell through, something has finally gone my way. A former colleague of mine who will be at the APA meeting in Baltimore has offered to let me share her room with her. I just found this out. So, it seems that I will not have to sleep in the airport tonight, as my anticipated hotel costs were just drastically diminished. Happy day.

I saw Matt Dunn's doppelganger in this airport. It was scary. I wish I had my camera on me. This is moment #3 in which I have wished I had a camera phone. Matt, this dude totally looked like you. You need to hunt him down. There can be only one.

Down to The Wire

Tomorrow I leave for Baltimore. This is it. If things go well, then by this time next year I will be far from Indiana. If things don't go well, then hopefully I will still be far from Indiana. We'll see. Mostly I am just sad that tomorrow morning will mark the beginning of 4-5 months without Sebastian. It is killing me; it is probably thrilling him. I wish he had been a bastard during all this shuffling around from place to place, but he's been so well-behaved, and especially mindful and tender. He's just doing it to torture me, I'm sure. I shouldn't have taken the spots in Tilburg and Amsterdam. I'm leaving too much behind. But on the other hand, it is unlikely that I'd finish the dissertation in a timely manner if I were stuck in Bloomington.

Christmas produced a bountiful haul of DVDs, books, cds, dolla' bills, and a handheld gps system to keep me from getting lost in europe.

I still don't have housing arrangements in Baltimore. The person with whom I was supposed to stay backed out at the last moment, leaving me up the creek. I really do not want to have to fork out 120 a night to stay in the hotel reserved by the APA. I would not have gone a day early had I known that the prior arrangement would be revoked. I think I might try to camp out in the airport to save some cash.

NB: If you promise to host someone 4 months in advance, and something happens (even something terrible, as the case may be), and you give only a week's notice to the person, you have, it seems to me, an obligation to help the person find other arrangements. It is just wrong to leave the person high and dry. I say this because I once believed it to be common sense, but apparently my would-be host does not find it so.

In preparation for departure (not a job post)...

OK, so FINE, I've decided that I will miss Bloomington. I've seen almost everyone that I need to see before leaving (Hollingsworth, ahem). Tonight while packing up my place it finally hit me that I'd be gone for 4 months, and it seemed that things were just starting to get good again.

Packing has been a real bitch. I'm so grateful that Matt and Grant have allowed me to store my stuff at their place, but if I have to make that trek across town again with a carload of stuff, I am going to scoopy my own eyes out. I hate the Grand Marquis, but one thing it has going for it is ample trunk space and an expansive back seat. I can't imagine having to do this with my Altima (RIP). It'll be awesome driving 14 hours to Florida while the vehicle's gluttonous gas consumption slowly starting eating away at my dining budget for the first week in Amsterdam.

Matt and Grant leave tomorrow, so today was a whirlwind of moving ass-painery. I'm not sure that I should make just one more trip tomorrow morning, as I'm uncertain that I will be able to fit the items left in my apartment into my car. Many possessions have met their end in the neighboring apartment complex's dumpster for the simple reason that I didn't feel like moving them. However, I'm not sure I want to toss one of my lamps or my desk chair, neither of which made it over today. Also, the guitar on which most of the Grandpa's Man songs were recorded is threatened to end up in the heap if I don't take it over tomorrow morning. It is not a fancy guitar (far from it), but it is legendary. No other guitar I've owned has kept the same strings on it for 8 years. It sounds completely dead, completely Grandpa.

My back is killing me, I got 3.5 hours of sleep last night, and I wore shoes soaked through (because of the snow) all day.

Go see "No Country for Old Men."

Parents Eat this Crap Up

Tonight while googling myself, I found this abstract of the talk I gave in the Netherlands in November. A mighty fine talk, if I do say so myself. Great audience, good questions, lots of beer afterward.

I also found this page which contains an excerpt from my review of a book. If you click on 'more endorsements', you'll see that my review beat Ted Porter's. (NB: the typo in the quotation of my review is not mine)

And here I pop up trying to lay some smack down. I didn't reread my post since I'm sure that now I don't agree with what I said back then. Since I posted this, I am not that surprised that it is on the web somewhere, but I didn't expect it to come up in a search.

Of course, I'm still a nobody, but it is cool to find serendipitously stuff about yourself posted on this here interweb. The mere fact that I find it cool tells you how insignificant I am. But one day, oh one day, I will be an internet movie star...wait, that doesn't sound so good, or does it?

And all this time I thought the Devil was on my side.

That's right, you guessed it, Duke has turned its back on me. Coach K, we were so close to realizing our dream of forming an unstoppable, platonic basketball coaching deadly force.



Northwestern, I'll miss you dearly. You are a beacon of hope amid the tyranny that is the city of Chicago's ban on foie gras. I had imagined evenings in Evanston dining on succulent seared foie gras with a 25 year balsamic vineger as I peered at the Chicago skyline pittying the poor souls who allow their city government to legislate morality and diet. This ban on what is nothing short of artistry, is cenorship.

Siena, you are a small Jesuit college in upstate New York. No hard feelings.

UNC, I thought for sure that you and Duke would, for the mere sake of rivalry, fight over me. It seems that the only rivalry going on in this area is who can reject me faster. Sadly, the tar heels take it.

Wisconsin, it is very cold where you are, and your rejection has, I'm sure, a Sobering effect.

NYU, I'm out of your league. (implied by 'x is out of y's league if and only if y is out of x's league')

So, it is a race to see who will be next. Will it be the Jersey boys from New Brunswick? Those beautiful belles from Charleston? Perhaps it will be the liberal artists from Carleton (also cold there). The Buckeyes are looking strong this season as are the fighting Irish. The scene in Seattle still has not died, and Davis may yet call. And we can't discount o' fair New Mexico or [getting lazy] Southern California.

That leaves 9.

UPDATE: Buckeyes just came in! Thanks for the implicit rejection!

That leaves 8.

UPDATE: I apparently forgot that I also applied to Bryn Mawr, Princeton, and UCLA. Also, New Mexico has scheduled on-site interviews, so I can mark them off my list.

That leaves 10.

You can't build a fence around the soul of a man.

I don't know what that means, but it was in a great movie I saw last night entitled "Henry Fool." It is a very quotable movie and I recommend it to all (except my mother who hates every movie I like, even "Little Miss Sunshine").

So, here's the most recent in job news. I applied to 29 schools. Here are those who have set up interviews (with others) already (meaning they have no love for me):

Wells College
Tilburg University
Rice University
Yeshiva University
University of Connecticut

This leave the following schools:

Princeton, Rutgers, NYU, Cornell, UNC, Duke, U of South Carolina, U of Western Ontario, Cal State, Carleton College, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Siena College, Syracuse University, UC Davis, UCLA, U of Washington, Washington U, Virginia Tech, U of Southern California, U of Wisconsin, and U of New Mexico.

The first 6 of these schools are almost certain to reject me, especially if I couldn't even get an interview with Yeshiva (though not being Jewish might have hurt me there, who knows) or Wells, neither of which have a philosophy department that approaches the caliber of those 6 institutions. I'd say my chances are also pretty slim at UCLA, Northwestern, and Wisconsin. It would be totally awesome if I had to do this all over again next year. Part of the problem is that this year there were very few philosophy of science jobs, and what jobs there were, tended to be at very strong departments (i.e., not for the entry-level candidate such as myself).

"Compare/Contrast," or "Why Ronald McDonald Hates Freedom"

Ok, there's a lot going on in this post, so you'll have to pay attention. I probably should have split the post.

First a couple pictures from Amsterdam, including a crappy night photo:




Now, I decided to take some shots looking out the front and the back of the apartment where I was staying. Here is the view out the front:


The following two pictures are the view out back. I direct the reader to this link to compare the view out back in Amsterdam and the one I had in Georgia. Interesting. This post is all about compare/contrast. It is our lesson for the day. Keep on reading.



And this is what I look like in Amsterdam (pretty much the same as how I look in America, no duplicity here (I can't say the same for Ronald McDonald)):


Before leaving Amsterdam, I decided to do a little comparison shopping, so I went to the McDonalds in the airport and ordered a "Big Tasty McMenu" which is basically a Big n' Tasty value meal made up of fries, a "Big n' Tasty" burger, and a soda. I recalled that in Tbilisi the McDonalds was actually much better than it is in the US, and I wanted to see if our friend Ronald McDonald really was a janus-faced traitor. He is. Again, I was impressed by the freshness and size of the sandwich. I could not even finish the meal. My only complaint was the chemically taste of the cheese on the sandwich and the mysterious mayonaise-based sauce. Here are some notable points of departure from the American counterpart:

1. Size (about as big around as a Whopper),
2. Meat was thicker,
3. Comes with bacon and 1-2-3 slices of cheese (no cheese OR bacon on the American version),
4. Made to order,
5. No pickles or ketchup, praise Prophet Smith,
6. Unlike in America, where the Quarter Pounder is the largest single-patty burger on the McDonalds menu, in Holland the Big n' Tasty is the largest single-patty burger,
7. The meal was 6.65 euro (about $9.87).

Just to make sure I was not romanticizing European McDonalds, I stopped at a McDonalds in Albany, IN on my way back from Celina to have an American Big n' Tasty meal. It was terrible. I've decided to include pictures to accompany this post, but I don't think the difference in size shows up well. You just have to take the fry container as your reference point.

Dutch Version:





American Version:


Grammar: "I'm Lovin' It!"



Let's get a closer look at that



Today I headed back from Celina, OH where I stayed last night after getting in to Columbus from Amsterdam. A real bed was nice. I had been up for 25 hours by the time I went to sleep. The flight back was uneventful. The woman sitting next to me for 8 hours and 45 minutes (Amsterdam to New Jersey) was a thirty-something school teacher named Marie N. She wore hip glasses, which she put on after removing her contacts, and tights. She uttered not a word the entire flight, choosing to focus on writing report cards. It was a boring flight; however, I did get to watch the movie "Elf," and episode of "House," and some terrible movie starring Catherine Zeta Jones in which she played the executive chef of a fine dining restaurant. I arrived in Newark, rushed through customs, and broke a sweat to find that my flight to Columbus was delayed 1 hour and 45 minutes, which left me with way too much free time (about 5 hours). I spent an hour walking around the food court deciding which slop-hole would win the die toss and get my patronage. The "Wok-n-Roll" won. I then went to the Mexican place to take the edge off with some Coronas. Little did I know they were nearly 6 bucks a piece. The flight to Columbus was equally uneventful.

A little update on the job market. UConn has made their calls for interviews and I am not on their list apparently (UConn never calls anymore).

Returning Home

Tomorrow I leave Amsterdam at 1:25 p.m. and head back to the US. It has been a productive trip. I've met lots of cool people and made some good professional connections. With regard to the latter, I spent an evening in Tilburg with the philosophy of science group, and while it looks like they are not going to offer me a job, the department head said that the search committee was very impressed with my work. Consequently, they would like to sponsor me in an application for an NWO grant (Dutch science foundation) so that I can be there for an entire year. This grant, if awarded, would make me eligible for another grant that provides 3 years of funding. 4 years of research and no teaching...nice. In the meantime, they are happy to support me for 3 months in the spring (feb-april) while I finish my dissertation. The psychometricians want me back too and they are going to try to help me make arrangements so that I can return in January (since I didn't get the funding intended to support such a trip).

My power adapter for my Mac died several days ago when I stumbled in late and plugged it in upside down (also causing a power outage in the apartment). Luckily the adapter was not plugged into the computer. That will be an 80 dollar replacement. I was going to get a new adapter here but at the Mac store they were 90 euro (roughly 10,000 dollars, if my estimation of the exchange rate is correct).

Last night I had the best meal of my trip when I went to a traditional Dutch place. Meatballs and mashed potatoes have never tasted so good. Best of all it was very cheap. My wonderful host, Harald, suggested the place and I packed my belly for the first time since I arrived. I've been living off one meal per day and about 4-5 hours of sleep per night. Mostly what I've been eating is stuff I grab at a convenience store at about 9pm on my way home from psychmetrophilosophizing. The exception, of course, is the Japanese pancakes I had the first night, but that did not leave me sated, even if it was wonderfully tasty. It is probably the calories from that first meal that have kept me from collapsing all week.

I'll post a couple pictures once my computer is back up and running.

Hold on, Basty, I'm coming home.

Planes, trains, and bikes

I'm now in Amsterdam. Sebastian is serving 10 days. I love it here. I work so much I have to force myself away from the office long enough to eat. The weather is dreary, but I love even that. Today I walked to work (15 min.) in the rain and didn't bitch to myself one bit.

The plane trip was nice. My flight was delayed in Ohio, but that just made for a shorter layover in New Jersey. When I got on the flight, I was sat next to a very hip looking young lady, but I pretty much kept to myself for the first hour. I was next to the alcove where the flight attendants hang out. What a gossipy bunch! I had no idea that they were real people. I always figured them to be robots like your humble narrator. Finally, I remarked that they were a chatty bunch and 6 hours of conversation began. Turns out Dawn is a tour manager for a band, lives in Jersey, and is contemplating a move to CA. She has good taste in music (i.e., likes skinny puppy and old industrial) and was a loquacious, but extremely pleasant flight companion. Her band is on a european tour right now. Anyway, we took probably 10 pictures, but she only approved one of them (the other she took of my orange juice, and didn't undergo peer review). I've posted them below. When we landed and people stood up, a meaty man in front of us mumbled "$500 for a ticket and they couldn't shut up." I guess you're not allowed to talk on flights that cost more than a certain threshold. He was probably just pissed because he was sitting next to a tight-lipped Dutch lady and because of his awful Syracuse University sweatshirt (though I doubt he was ever a student there). It seems that most of the times I fly I get very unlucky in spinning the wheel of freaks and land an elderly woman with too much perfume, or a business man with too much cologne, or a person of considerable size who helps himself to the inner sanctuary of my personal bubble, or I get a whole row to myself (which is not that bad). I don't usually lament not having anyone to talk to, but I had a good time on the trip.

I'm going to try to remember to take more pictures while I am here.

Do not pass 'go', do not collect $200

Basty, you stand accused of the following crimes:

1. having breath that smells like something that should not be
2. several acute neuroses including, but not limited to,
a. fear of hot air balloons
b. fear of the oven door
c. fear of the vaccum cleaner
d. generalized paranoia
e. some strange perversion that requires that you sniff every stranger's crotch
f. severe aversion to cleanliness
g. coprophagia (esp. as pertains to bunnies)
3. being extremely unportable.
4. 3 counts of walking into my room when you hear my alarm go off in morning, farting, and then leaving the bedroom (it isn't funny anymore).

For these and other crimes I am sentencing you to 10 days in jail beginning November 17 and ending November 27. Conveniently the execution of this sentence coincides perfectly with the time I will be in Amsterdam doing research. I've spoken to Jeff, the warden at Hacker's Creek Penitentiary, and he'll see to it you get your meds and whatnot. I will pick you up after you have served your sentence. Please do not join any gangs, get any tattoos, or get killed. Watch your back especially when in the shower. Keep your head down and your thoughts to yourself, and you should be safe. Reflect on your life and the things you've done.

Ok, now let's go for a walk.

Also,

I'm quite curious who the person from Poland is who keeps reading my blog. Do I know someone in Poland? I can't imagine this blog appealing to anyone much less a person I don't know from Poland.

In the interest of keeping my foot free of bullet holes, I am deleting this post about the punctuality of certain folks.

Typo Update

Praise Moroni! I sent an urgent email to the secretary about the unfortunate typo mentioned in my previous post and she was able to retrieve the application from the outgoing mail. This is one time when her leisurely way of doing things has actually been beneficial. This means I don't have to overnight a new cover letter to the search committee that otherwise would have received the defective letter. This victory is made all the more sweet by the knowledge that a very prominent faculty member in my department (someone with whom I actually have little contact) recently put in a plug for me with the head of the search committee at that very school. I found this out today as I was signing the revised cover letter.

Think psychometrics is hard? Try doing it in a well.

Another typo recently came to my attention after the application went out. This cover letter was to a university that wanted someone who seriously engages with the relevant science.

Version 1: In order to do this research in an intellectually responsible manner, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

I didn't like this version since it might have made my work seem more controversial than I'd like for it to seem.

Version 2 (intended): In order to do this research well, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

Carelessly, I did not delete all the words necessary to make the revision.

Version 2 (actual): In order to do this research in an well, one must seriously engage with the relevant science.

Message conveyed by Version 2 (actual): Either this guy wishes never to work with others in the field (he prefers the isolation that one might find in a well), or this guy surely can't write philosophy if he can't even write a simple cover letter.

In other news, I added UC Davis, Carleton College, and UCLA to my list of schools.

t.A.T.u., Ya tebya lyublyu

Dear t.A.T.u.,

I just wanted to write an open letter to the both of you expressing my gratitude for writing such wonderful songs. Among my favorites are "Robot," without which I would have never learned to roll my 'r's and would not have learned about artificial love and artificial honey (?) and artificial ice; "Bylo i Proshlo" which makes wonderful use of the lately underused vocodor; and "Ya tvoya ne pervaya" (I am not your first) in which you lament a one-sided relationship. Lena Katina and Yulia Volkova, I don't care that you are not really lesbians. It was a great marketing gimic (credited to your producer Ivan Shapovalov) at the beginning of your burgeoning career to pretend to be lesbians masquerading as two girls who just really love each other a lot. The only thing cooler than Russian lesbians is faux Russian lesbians, because that means that all hope is not lost that I might one day wed Yulia (or Lena, if Yulia is taken). Your ruse on the world was something out of perhaps a latter day incarnation of Bret Easton Ellis' _American Psycho_. It was a clever expose of the early aught's fixation on a transgressive fantasy. It was a brilliant trick, and when you came out as heterosexual on the video "Anatomy of t.A.T.u" in December of 2003 and further corroborated the fact when Yulia had a child with Pavel Sidorov in September of 2004, I'll bet that you alienated that segement of your fanbase consisting of 50 year old single men living in their mother's basements, but those were not your true fans. Those of us to whom this makes not matter appreciate your artistry and don't need a gimic to sell us your music (great music has neither sexual orientation nor statutory rape clause). Though as I stated, that you had such a gimic, as such, makes me love you only more. It was a device for facilitating social self-consciousness. We learned a bit about ourselves as a culture when you kissed on Mtv and we cheered and purchased your albums because of the spectacle only to find it was all a charade. It took me a while to see the genius in your work and by the time I came around, the lesbian facade was dropped. Once we were ready to be truthful with each other, we were ready to love each other.




-Brian

Thesis Statement: Awesome

It looks like several applications have gone out with a typo in the first line of the cover letter. I'm a champion.

More about jobs

Here's what little news there is:

I've decided to apply for a position at Virginia Tech.
I've decided to apply for a position at the University of New Mexico.

The majority of the schools to which I applied had Nov. 1 deadlines. So, I expect to hear nothing very soon.

Like most application processes, once the application is sent, there is little one can do. For this reason, I don't have much commentary on the process. Like last year, I'm not terribly stressed about it. Now, if December rolls around and I don't have an interview, I might start getting a little anxious. However, worrying at this point is premature and achieves nothing. There are lots of annoying things about the process, but it is just part of it; you can accept it and work with it, or you can rant about it and imbitter yourself. Of course, were it not for the modicum of support I get from my department, I'd probably be singing a much different tune. I'm lucky that my department charges me only $2 to send out my dossier (even to programs overseas), and that the secretary prints off my cover letters on letterhead for me and stuffs my envelopes. From what I understand, that is more than a lot of places do for their graduate students, and if I had to pay $5 bucks per application (as some do) and do my own envelope stuffing (as some do), I'd probably be as bitter as this guy is.

Will Philosophize for Food

So it is job market time, and for those who are interested I have listed the preliminary candidates below.

Washington University*
University of Washington
Rice University*
Wells College*
Yeshiva University*
Bryn Mawr
Siena College
Duke*
NYU*
Rutgers
Princeton
Cornell*
University of Southern California
California State University*
Northwestern University*
University of Wisconsin*
Notre Dame*
Ohio State University*
Tilburg University*
University of Western Ontario*
Syracuse University*
University of Connecticut*
University of South Carolina

(* application has already been sent)

I will probably add at least 10 more to this list over the next month, which is probably a good thing since NYU, Princeton, and Rutgers would never consider interviewing me (they are top 5 schools). I'll go ahead and throw in Cornell, Duke, and University of Washington as completely hopeless too. So that's 1/4 of my list. Time to lengthen the list.

Dear Snappleknt,

I don't know your real name, but your mischievous attempt at trickery was a failure. As I left the Crazy Horse and approached my car from the rear, found your snapple bottle (containing a straw) positioned under my rear passenger side tire. You must try harder next time. I give you an 'A' for audacity since you had to attempt your ruse directly in front of the Alley Bar, Irish Lion, and Crazy Horse; however, I give you an 'F' for the execution. A more clever foe would have put the bottle under the front passenger tire where it would likely be obscured by the body of the vehicle.

-Brian

Sorry, Basty

Please believe me when I say that it was not by design that in the middle of the night the cello case (cello and all) crashed down into your bed while you were sleeping. It was as much of a surprise to me as it must have been to you--well, probably not, but it still startled me. I do my best to provide you with a controlled environment free of unpleasant surprises to make living easy on your fragile nerves. I suppose now the cello case, deservedly, will join the ranks of the vacuum cleaner as a suspicious item.

-Brian

Dear Basty,

Tonight I came home from Soma, where I was working on chapter one of Latent Variable Realism in Psychometrics to find that you had gotten into the trash. This displeased me very much. It has been so long since you misbehaved in this way. Our relationship has taken a step backward. How can I trust you to be on your own when you do such things? Now, I realize that scraps of my dinner must have been quite the temptation. It is not every day that someone so masterfully whips up pasta with a balanced blend of cajun spiced sauteed mushrooms, asparagus, roma tomatoes and mustard sauce. I myself could not resist such as artistic creation and ate all but a few scraps. You must have been thinking the following: what pefectly prepared angel hair pasta, neither too firm nor too soft, and how creative of you to think of making a sauce out of course ground mustard and butter and olive oil, what insight in to the culinary world you must have had to make such an unlikely pair (tangy, yet smooth) harmonize. You, Brian, make the paradoxical divine. And the mushrooms(!): quickly sauteed in cajun spices,butter and olive oil to the point where they just became slightly crisp. You displayed particular foresight and aptitude when you threw the asparagus in at the last minute so that it would not be overcooked; after all we both know it takes longer to cook mushrooms than asparagus, even the thin kind which you know to be superior to the logs of asparagus that they sometime sell. As if it was not already a sauce befitting the most fastidious of palates, you added fresh and chopped roma tomatoes. How did you know the acidity of the tomatoes would complement so well such a daring dish? Did you not worry that the acidity of the tomatoes and the spice of the mustard combined would overpower the mushrooms' delicacy and drown out their subtle melody? I am bewildered at what a complex and virtuosic symphony you have composed.

I know these things must have been going through your head while it was stuck in the garbage bag. But please, in the interest of keeping peace among roommates, you must not dig in the garbage. I hope the coffee grounds were a nice addition to the dish.

Yours truly,

Brian

Under the Knife

It was recently pointed out to me by my lovely cello teacher that the bridge on my instrument was warped and was probably affecting the sound quality. For those of you who don't know, the bridge looks like this

My bridge, instead of standing perpendicular to the top of the instrument, was taking on a sort of parenthesis shape. For those of you who don't know, a parenthesis looks like this

(

Anyway, so I took the cello into the shop today to get it repaired. Unbeknownst to me, this is a major repair since it requires cutting a new bridge to exactly fit the instrument. So the cello is having an operation. The violin repairman must also get into the guts and adjust the sound post. The sound post is a cylinder that is situated under the bridge inside the cello. It provides structural support and aids in sound production. For those of you who don't know, a sound post looks like this (in a violin, but the idea is the same for the cello)




Well, It turns out that this little procedure costs about $220. Pretty awesome. Anyway, Matt, there has been little to report, so sorry if this post bored you.

Oh, I did manage to predict the bottom three in last night's episode of America's Next Top Model as well as the big loser for the night (whom I picked as the loser for this week last week when I first saw her)

Aftermath

Several weeks ago I posted an entry about my neighbors and their slippin', sliding adventures. I thought a picture of the aftermath might be in order. This picture was taken this morning. In this photo you can see the neighbors' pool (the blue, ufo-ish looking thing in the background) and the girls' slip n' slide in the foreground. Though temperatures have been dipping into the high 40's, they have kept the pool filled and the slip n' slide in readiness mode should the desire for summer fun strike them. I anticipate readiness mode will extend into November.

Bad philosopher, good friend

Last night I was at a departmental party to welcome the new students and our guest speaker/closet Discovery Institute apologist. As the night wore on, the party thinned out until it was just Matt Dunn, my advisor, and a post-doc from the Cognitive Science department (Karola). We got on the topic of whether psychological states can be ultimately reduced to neurons firing and such. We also were discussing whether computer programs *really* play chess or if they are simply manipulating symbols (the presupposition being that the former requires some "idea" of chess or understanding which is not present in the latter). Matt Dunn was pushing the line that Deep Blue does not play chess, and that there is something special about consciousness or being human. It was a light discussion and at 2 am after many beers, rigorous thought is supererogatory. Well, Karola begins to lay into Matt Dunn, calling him illogical and whatnot (imagine it in a German accent). Also, Matt Dunn made no pretension to being an expert on AI, philosophy of mind, or philosophy of psychology. I, ever the protective momma bear, jump in and say, reasonably I think, "Hold on, basically what Matt (Dunn) is suggesting is something along the lines of Searle's Chinese Room argument [a very famous argument in the philosophy of mind], and if he IS illogical (which he is not), he's in pretty good company being so." Well, Karola did not like this response to her polemical treatment of my friend's untutored position. Her reponse: "You are a bad philosopher. You think because Searle said it that it must be good. Searle has been refuted..." and it went on like that for a while. Of course I interjected that in fact I was not making some fallacious appeal to authority (Searle), but that I was sticking up for my friend and that I was merely pointing out that Matt Dunn's intuitions jibe with what some very smart people have said about the subject. Calling his intuitions "illogical" when he is not immersed in the literature (so he's unaware of the shortcomings of Searle's argument) is a bit unfair to him. Secondly, there's nothing wrong with having false intuitions. You have to start somewhere. I wish MY intuitions would stumble upon ingenious theses in the philosophy of mind ex nihilo.

So the lesson for this post:

Brian: good friend, bad philosopher
Justification: appeal to (self-appointed) authority, Karola

Rawwwwwk! Raining Blood, from a Lacerated Sky!

Headbands are the new Uggs. This is the sort of thing Sebastian and I do after listening to too much Slayer late at night.

This weekend

This weekend's adventures involved a slip n' slide, an inflatable pool, and a troop of undergraduates.

My neighbors on either side got together to celebrate the first week of class at around 4 on Friday. The boys next door had spent the previous days filling a 600-gallon inflatable pool. They filled it as much as they could considering that they did not have the foresight to put it on level ground. Consequently, the pool was probably only 3/4 full. They encouraged me to jump in, but I chose to watch the beer pong match instead, which I also declined to participate in (though I had the night before).

The 5 girls who share the house with me set up a slip n' slide, extended with a large tarp, in the backyard. They did not have the foresight to remove all the sticks and rocks beneath the tarp and slip n' slide. Consequently, every girl scraped and bruised herself as she went down. Also, the tarp was not slick enough, so they lubricated it with baby oil and dishwashing liquid. This made them soapy, greasy messes when their battered bodies reached the end of the slip n' slide. They ecouraged me to join in, saying "come on brian, that slip n' slid has your name on it," but I chose to watch them repeatedly, masochistically, abuse themselves with each slide.

Later that night I went to a graduate student party, which ironically was busted by the cops and my former roommate and his roommates were fined a total of 200 dollars. I venture to say that if I phoned in a noise complaint where I live, the cops would just laugh at me. Keep those unruly grad students in line! The last thing they need is a break from work.

Early on Saturday I was walking Sebastian to the empty lot next door off his leash, but bound by the power of his e-collar. He minds well. But I saw the neighbors' dogs and told him to go say "hi." As his disappeared around the corner I heard screams and clamor. I did not know that the girls had a group of people in the porch, most of whom were sitting down playing a game of cards. Sebastian proved to be quite a disruption, destroying the card piles and accidentally scratching a girl. Consequently, I felt inclined to buy the kids a 12-pack of Corona or some other mediocre beer that they would think was fancy, but I decided not to when I heard a girl say "someone's fucking dog scratched the shit out of me." I still felt bad, but not inclined to buy them beer in order to smooth it over.

Tonight I went and saw Superbad, which was decent. Consequently, I enjoyed my movie experience other than the youngins next to me who would not quit talking. I declined to say something to them. I guess that puts me partially at fault. The Bourne Ultimatum was a better movie.

It is 2:02 and the neighbors are still going at it. At least there are no fights as there were Thursday night, which woke me up. Consequently, I did not get a good night of sleep, but it was entertaining to listen to the rumble.

I'm still enjoying a stint of productivity. I ran into my statistician/educational psychology friend at Matt's party and she gave me a good idea for the current section of my dissertation. One more name to add the the Acknowledgements section. 'Acknowledgements' is a long word for just 4 syllables.

And stuff...

A Recent Conversation with Sebastian

b: Okay, Sebastian, what do you think about this proposition? I just spoke to Todd and apparently he had no troubles getting Gustav to Berlin. So I was thinking that perhaps you'd like to move to The Netherlands with me.

s: I hate you.

b: But really, buddy, as long as I could find a place in Amsterdam and a place in Tilburg where dogs are acceptable, you'd totally be able to come with me.

s: *rolling eyes* What make you think that I'd want to come with you?

b: Oh Basty, don't do me like that.

s: And, oh dear master, where will I go when you go to Russia? I suppose you'll just fly me all over the world waiting for some airline to lose me and send me to Cambodia. And then where would I be? All alone, unfamiliar with the language, unaccustomed to the cuisine. This conversation is just a bunch of b.s.

b: Phnom Penh, probably. But just think about it. I'd probably ship you back to the States before heading to Russia. Call your peeps and see if anyone would want you from May until mid-June. I'm still not sure if it is a possibility, depends on the housing situation. But we'll see.

s: I hate you. Go to hell. Bring back the big one you call 'Matt'; I liked him better, even if he was a bit loud and scary.

Tales from the Shoebox

Where do I live? Is this Bloomington? This is no Bloomington I know. Immodestly dressed young ladies parading the streets, knuckle-dragging young men cat-calling. And this is all right outside my door on the street. There are more SUV's on my block than I recollect ever seeing when I lived on the south side of town. Basty looks at me disapprovingly as though I knew ahead of time that this would be our lot. He looks at me saying "I thought you said we'd never have to live in Panama City Beach again. Our daily existence is smack in the middle of spring break. Even one of your 5 coed neighbors has an airbrushed license plate on the front of her SUV." Yes, Basty, I know, and I'm sorry. But at least our internet is free. At least our water and gas seem to be free. "But, Brian, it is so noisy here and walks are so boring and ugly." Again, buddy, I know, but there is nothing I can do about it. "But Brian, what do you plan to do with me when you go to the Netherlands? Do you intend for me to stay here in the shoebox, listening to the rabble-rabble of voices outside the door, unable to freely run in a back yard to make poopies?" No Basty, I don't know yet what will become of you, but I am certain that it either involves becoming a menu item at Dragon Express or going on a long vacation from me. "Brian, do you see this look in my eyes? Look closely. This is the glare of disappointment." Basty, don't do that to me. If you want to eat tomorrow, you'll just go to (YOUR OWN) bed and sleep. We'll talk more later.

With a tinge of regret, a couple more pages of the dissertation, and a longing for Primanti Bros.,

B

A Breath of Fresh Air

This delightful 3-page article is probably the best thing I've read since Cafe Rabelais' menu and winelist.

Summer Ends

I live in a shoebox. It is a comfotable shoebox which I have furnished with a chair, a small antique desk, a futon pad on the floor on which I sleep, and a table. My bedroom is more of a storage facility than a place to sleep: boxes are stacked agains the wall and floorspace is sparse. My place is just large enough for one, but a bit cramped for one and a dog. My apartment is an addition onto a house that is yet unoccupied; however, in a matter of days a gaggle of undergraduate girls will take up residence on the other side of my wall. I live next to the football stadium in what is known as the "undergraduate slums." Next door to me live several undergraduate boys and two unruly dogs. Their backyard is decorated with tiki torches and empty bud light cans. The only place to eat within walking distance is a mongolian barbeque where I once ate 4 or 5 years ago. I have not been back since because it made me ill. My office is 14 blocks south, making it too far to walk, but too close to drive to work. Though the neighborhood is quiet now, the kids are trickling in, and I expect mass convergence next weekend. The traffic is bad and broken bottles litter the foot of every other driveway, making walks with Sebastian precarious. And though I am a bit alienated this far north of where I used to live, and though I am struggling a bit with not having Matt around anymore to keep me from working and take me grocery shopping, I think being here will be good for my productivity. This year really needs to be about finishing up the dissertation and that it will be. Right now my sights are set on getting to Amsterdam and joining up with Tyson in St. Petersburg in May.

Tyson left today which for me marks the end of the summer. The summer began in May this year with my trip to Georgia and, appropriately I think, terminated in my friend's 5am departure this morning. Several days ago Todd left for Ohio and then Berlin (for 1, possibly 2 years). With the departures of Tyson and Todd, the end of NAPSS Hendrick's Nights, and leaving the nest at 928 S. Mitchell, I feel like this is a bittersweet new beginning. Strangely, I feel like a stranger in Bloomington. It is probably a good time to leave and I'm excited to take the next step.

From my shoebox, this is Brian. Over and out until our next installment.

Pictures from Nino

Nino sent me the above pictures of our trip to Mtatsminda. Tomorrow I head to NY for the remainder of the summer.

Gori&Mtskheta

Above is a picture of me at Jvari church which overlooks Mtskheta. Below is Khinkali, which is what I eat for almost every meal. It is a large pasta pocket stuffed with spiced meat and meat water. They cost about 20 cents a piece and 6 is sufficient to fill you up.

Blow is Stalin's house where he grew up in Gori. It is surrounded by a monument. Gori is very proud of old Joey.

This is Stalin's private rail car.

This is me with tyson and some girls who attended my talk there. They stuck around for coffee and treats. The talk went well. The venue was a library. As you can see, this library in Gori is no Herman B. Wells library. The ride to Gori was heartstopping. On the way back we were weaving in and out of traffic at speeds sometimes as fast as 160 km/hour. I figured that since it was an Embassy driver, I'd be spared the anarchic experience of Georgian driving. Little did I know, the Embassy's drivers are Georgians.

Next week I am off to Telavi for another talk.

Pictures

Above is the view outside our apartment, below is the view inside our apartment.

A juxtaposition of Georgian church architecture and Soviet residential architecture.

Me and Gypsy-boy just before I gave him a lari.

And back again.

I just got back from Florida. What a long haul. Coming back seemed a bit lonely. I left my canine companion with my brother. I'm trying not to think about it too much. Luckily the pain in my back from sitting for so long is effectively distracting.

We have a place in Tbilisi. What a load off! However, my travel companion was supposed to call me the morning he left, which he did not. He did not answer my phone calls, so I don't know if he is aware that he is supposed to meet the landlord today. Hopefully he received my messages. I'm a bit miffed that he did not call. We agreed that he would call during his layover in Denver just in case anything came through at the last minute, which it did. People are so unreliable. I'd trust this guy with my life, but I wouldn't trust him to take out the garbage. Ironic. Like rain on your wedding day or a free ride when you've already paid.

Make that 14 and a half hours...

and still no word on our apartment in Georgia.

In preparation for departure...

So tomorrow I make the 13-hour trek to Florida to drop off the hound. It seems like there are a billion things to do before leaving for Georgia. For one, I have yet to find a place in Tbilisi. Our orginal plan has fallen through and so Tyson and I are scrambling to ensure that we are not living on the streets. I also have to finish a grant proposal in the next week and make arrangements to get my rent paid, etc. Most of this could be done today, but 1. I'm writing this blog instead, 2. I have commitments today that leave no time except between 6 and 7. I also have to do laundry today and pick up enough dog food for sebastian to survive for 6 weeks. To top it all off, I am hung over.

Tbilisi

In two weeks and 5 days I leave for Tbilisi, Georgia. There I will reside for approximately 5 and a half weeks. The goals of this trip are manifold. First I would like to get away to some place completely foreign to me. I need a taste of alienation. For some reason I have this idea that such an experience will stimulate productivity and I will be able to make considerable headway on my dissertation. The other reason for my inclination toward alienation is that Bloomington has become a bit small and distracting. Perhaps is my own lack of discipline, but I need to be somewhere without all the people, routines, and familiar places. Now, I will not be completely alone. I am going with my good friend Tyson, who will also be there to work. But Tyson is more a source of encouragement than he is a diversion.


I will arrive at 3am on May 7 and head directly to my flat and get to sleep. This will follow a 5 hour flight from Munich, which in turn follows a 15 hour layover. I suspect the first few days will be filled with sight seeing and sleeping and eating. We will celebrate my birthday with kinkhali, mukuzani wine, and khachapori. We will visit the embassy to register ourselves so that good ol' uncle Sam knows where we are. After the first few days things should calm down a bit and then I'll get to work (after my morning visit to the sulfur baths, of course). I don't know how often I will be able to post or send emails because we will not have internet access in the flat most likely. In the interest of being maximally informative to the greatest number of people, I will probably rely on this blog for updates and not email, especially since internet cafes usually charge by the time. So friends and my worried family should check back often.

In addition to seeing Tbilisi, we will visit the mountains in the north, particularly in Kazbegi, which is one of the last few areas in the north where tourism is safe. Here is a picture of Kazbegi




I found this picture on a travel blog, which you can find here. I enjoy reading those travel blogs and viewing the pictures of all these places that I'll soon be visiting.

Anyway, I don't have much else to write. It had been a while since my last post and I was a little excited about my upcoming trip, so here you go.

Typhoid Fever, Anyone?

Hungry for a snack, I went foraging for yummies in my fridge. What should I find there but live attentuated typhoid. Anyone for dinner?


I will say this, however. My typhoid doesn't scare me nearly as much as what my roommate stores in the fridge. Observe:

To Amsterdam

Well, travel to Amsterdam has been nothing short of eventful. Let’s start at the beginning. With plenty of time to spare I arrived at the Indianapolis airport. Once boarded, the crew informed us that there was some auxiliary power issue, but that it should not create any problems. Just we were about to pull away from the gate, we were delayed an hour on the tarmac. Finally the captain came to his senses and permitted us to deplane. No more than 10 minutes later we reboarded the aircraft. The jet was small and the flight was nearly two hours to New York. Luckily I still had 1 hour to catch my flight to Amsterdam.

At 6:30pm I had a slice of pizza at the New York airport.

The plane to Amsterdam was nice and large. The bathrooms were spacious and I befriended a cognitive scientist from NYU. Dinner was served on the plane at about 7:30 pm (eastern time). One glass of wine and two zanax later, and I was flyin’ high above the Atlantic. Apparently, sometime during the past 8 years since my most recent transatlantic flight, they started charging for wine. $5 for one glass of Jacob’s Creek Shiraz-Cabernet. I slept very little on the 6ish hour flight over. 4 hours after dinner, breakfast was served. Within an hour we were on the ground.

With the aid of a travel agent, I found the train from the Amsterdam airport to the central public transportation station. It took me 20 minutes to purchase a tram ticket (strippenkaart) because, in part, I was using the wrong machine so I could not find the option to purchase the card. Finally I figured it out and headed out to where the trams stop outside the station. I was searching for tram 9, but it seemed never to come. At this point it was about 9am Amsterdam time and I was feeling a little punchy from lack of sleep. A little wandering around revealed that the tram 9 picks up passengers from the other side of the station. I got on the 9 and watched the stop board for my stop (Tropenmuseum) to appear. It never did and I found myself at the end of the line, alone on the tram. With justification, the tram operators were peeved. On the way back I got my stop. Following directions given to me by one of my hosts, I went south on Linneausstraat waiting to find my street Dapperstraat on the left (one or two streets). Dapperstraat never came. Finally I buckled and asked a local where Dapperstraat was. She pointed not up or down Linneausstraat, but across it. Turns out Mr. Borsboom, my academic contact here, did not mean by “1st or 2nd street on your left” that Dapperstraat crossed Linneausstraat. Rather, the two streets were parallel. Only after walking up and down Linneeausstraat for about a half hour did I figure this out (with the aid of a nice Amsterdamer). I arrive at the apartment, but the last name of my host is not on the buzzer box. It takes me 10 minutes to get up the nerve to randomly ring one of the buttons. Luckily for me it was the correct one. Apparently the label on the buzzer had fallen off. A friend of my host let me in, gave me the tour, and he was on his way. Hungry I set to the streets for a bite. At this point it had been 12 hours since the croissant they gave me on the plane. Few places were open and of the places that were open, not a word of English was to be found, not even at McDonald’s (which, by the way, looks infinitely better than American McDonalds. Frustrated I returned to the apartment hungry to await the arrival of my host who has been away in Austria on a skiing trip. It is now nearly 9:15 pm Amsterdam time and still nothing to eat. Something tells me that by the time he gets here, it will be too late to get dinner. I did manage a 3-hour nap, which helped with the jetlag. There are at least two wireless networks that I’m picking up, but unfortunately both are password protected, so it might be some time before I get to post this.

Tomorrow at noon I have lunch with Denny Borsboom, so eventually I will eat something.

Flavors From My Childhood: Part 2

I now continue with Flavors from my Childhood, focusing on dishes from the mother. The mother has never been that interested in the culinary arts. She’ll tell you she hates cooking; however, she probably hated my attitude when my blood sugar would fall even more. The mother has a more traditional approach to cooking.

1. Tuna Casserole: This dish is a family favorite. Apparently my father hated this dish when he and my mother were together, but all the children loved it. This used to be my favorite mother-dish, but my preferences have gone the way of my father’s. This concoction consists of egg noodles, Velveeta, milk, canned tuna, and peas. When I ate this, I also liked to add hot pepper juice and lots of black pepper. May be the reason I liked it so much was that I never actually tasted it; I just liked the taste of pepper juice and black pepper. May be it is my disdain for milk and Velveeta, but I lost my taste for tuna casserole. It remains a favorite of my brothers.

2. Chicken and Dumplings: During the height of my tuna casserole craze, my older brother’s favorite dish was chicken and dumplings. This would probably rank among my current favorites, not just for the taste, but because I now have some idea of the labor that goes into it. Pressure cook one chicken (personally, I’d roast it), strip the meat off the bones, add meat, chicken stock, some other stuff, and uncooked biscuit dough, and voila. Dinnertime became tense when this dish was prepared. We were like ravenous soviet youths spying on each other, making sure that none of us was fishing for dumplings as we filled our bowls. Fishing was a huge faux pas in my mother’s house. Both she and my stepfather tended to prepare dishes that begged for fishing. Perhaps they were trying to teach us some lesson by putting the children in these awkward positions. We’d all sit down to the table and eye each other’s bowls, counting the number of dumplings to ourselves. About the labor: I roast chickens from time to time to make my own soup or chicken stock. I can tell you that a chicken retains its heat for a long time after cooking. You can let it sit a half hour and the thighs and breast will still threaten to burn off your fingerprints. Now, there is no way that my mother, an enemy of the kitchen, was going to spend any unnecessary time cooking, so I know that she did not let that bird cool before stripping it. I can’t help but think that she must harbor some resentment toward us for always wanting such a painful dish.

3. Breakfast: A favorite dinnertime mother-dish was breakfast. Who says that you can’t have the fattiest, tastiest meal at night? Biscuits and sausage gravy (the best part of which was being allowed to pop open the tube containing the biscuits), fried potatoes, chicken fried steak, eggs, etc., were common dinner fare. Oats and cream of wheat were personal favorites (see blog on oats below). It sounds so wrong, but it tasted so right. To this day I will still eat oats for dinner with a slice of slice of toast to scoop up the first few bites from the bowl.

4. Pot Roast: Again, here is a dish that remains a family favorite. I admit, there was a time when I did enjoy this dish, but it was not so much for the piece of meat that had been pressure cooked to hell as it was for the accoutrements: carrots and onions boiled in the beef water. I savored those grayish orange carrot spears and slurped up the translucent onion slivers as though they were from the kitchen of a 3-star Michelin restaurant. Gravy of a brown variety usually was used to drown this dish and reconstitute the beef.

5. Blueberry Cheesecake: A graham cracker crust, canned blueberries, and some Philadelphia cream cheese somehow conspired with my mother to create this dessert. Yet another crowd-pleaser.

6. Brownies and Blueberry Muffins: These are the best things my mother didn’t cook for me. She would leave a fraction of the batter uncooked for me because I preferred my brownies and muffins extra rare. I’d get the mixing bowl and beaters generously caked with tasty, gooey, doughiness. Who says the middle child is the most neglected?!

Meals at the mother-table were typically served with water or iced tea so sweet, you gulped it down as quickly as possible for fear that it might dissolve your teeth.

Flavors From My Childhood: Part 1

My recent entry on oats has made me want to recount other memorable comestibles from my early years. Being a child of divorce, I was exposed to a diverse array of dishes. I will not include in my selection dishes that I got at restaurants. There are many of those, seeing as I was raised mostly by a single father. I’ll divide things up into two categories: dishes from the father and dishes from the mother. In a later entry, I will cover dishes from the mother. The reader will note the astonishing difference in character between the two cooking styles.

Dishes from the Father (in no particular order):

1. Super _____: Prefixing the title of any dish with the adjective ‘super’ meant that whatever food was denoted by the term filling the blank was probably covered in Wolf Brand Chili and shredded cheese. The most often served “super” dishes were Super Chili and Super Hot Dogs. I grew up in Oklahoma where it is customary to cover everything with chili. How I miss the chili cheese burgers at Goldie’s in Tulsa.

Super Chili was a bowl of Wolf Brand Chili (no beans) covered with melted, shredded, yellow cheese. Adding to the super character of this dish was the layer of crushed crackers at the bottom of the bowl. Seeing as it was the crackers that got the chili and cheese, This dish would be more aptly titled “Super Crackers”. Sometimes slices of cheese were embedded in the chili, which was nice. You’d get a spoonful of chili and find a huge, thick glob of melted cheese. Super Chili, while filling, is not a particularly exciting dish.

Now, it was special time when it was Super Hot Dog night. Imagine two plump franks, usually microwaved, atop a buttered and toasted open-faced hot dog bun. Slather them in Wolf Brand Chili (no beans) and melted shredded yellow cheese and what you have is nothing short of a heart attack masquerading as perfection. People laugh when I tell them about this delicacy, but it is a culinary feat no Oklahoman can pass up.

2. Mexican Squash: I don’t know what this was, but it seemed that no matter how many times I told my father I hated squash, he continued to serve it.

3. Strange Macaroni Dish (SMD): I cannot recall the exact name for this dish, though it did have one. Now, mind you, this will sound a bit disgusting, but I ate it up like there was no tomorrow. This treat consisted of usually overcooked noodles (kids don’t like it al dente), melted Velveeta (note, Velveeta is NOT a cheese), and Hunt’s tomato paste. The acidity of the tomato nicely balanced with the Velveeta, often sending me back for seconds. SMD was typically a side dish.

4. Spaghetti: Now my father will tell you that his spaghetti is from some family recipe, but don’t believe it. Spaghetti nights were very frequent until the Hasty Bake smoker joined the family and steaks became regular fare. Here’s how you make the father’s spaghetti: go to the grocery store, get some ground round (preferably frozen, if not, then you have to freeze prior to preparation), one of those green boxes of Kraft spaghetti mix, take it home and follow the directions pretty much, except brown the meat (while it is still frozen). Follow the directions for making the sauce, but do it in the same pan as the browned beef. Serve with the noodles that come included in the green box (which I loved to eat raw), cover in melted shredded yellow cheese (not Velveeta), and enjoy. I never complained about spaghetti night, especially if there was a lot of cheese involved.

5. Steak night: As mentioned before, my father acquired a large Hasty Bake smoker/grill. Dinner was never the same, but it, strangely, never differed. Let me explain. I conjecture that at some point my father got a significant promotion, as the Hamburger Helper meals became less frequent and steak dinners became the typical weekend night fixins. And there was the Hasty Bake. Steak night, as I remember it, usually consisted of a giant filet mignon wrapped in bacon and smoked with apple wood or cherry. The dish was a tasty, albeit bloody, mess. A baked potato (which became stained pink with blood by the time you finished your meat) usually accompanied the steak and some steamed vegetable, most often asparagus, brussel sprouts, or broccoli. Through these dinners I learned to love veggies that most kids would slip to the dog under the table.


I’ll add, lastly, that all dishes were served with a cup of water, on green plates.

Injustice

I'm not much on posting activism blogs, but a very timely dream last night about my friend Janet Danahey made me want to scribble down a little something. It has been 5 years since Janet was locked away.

Her sentence: life without parole.
Her conviction: 4 counts of first degree murder.

I will post a link, for those of you who are interested in reading about the story, so I'll not go into the details. The skinny of it is that she played a prank that got out of hand. She ignited a box of christmas decorations and a futon on the patio of an ex-bf's apartment early in the morning on Feb 15, 2002. The fire got out of hand and the entire apartment building burned. 4 young people died. Because of North Carolina's Felony Murder Rule, according to which if someone dies while you are in the act of committing a felony (in this case, arson), then you are automatically charged with 1st degree murder for the death of the person, Janet was convicted of 4 counts of first degree murder.

The Felony Murder Rule ties the hands of judges who might otherwise attend to particular facts about the case, e.g., that the deaths were *not* premeditated, that Janet was a university graduate who was active in the community, etc.

Recently there was a similar case at Seton Hall University where two undergraduates, also playing a stupid prank, set a fire that got out of hand. 3 people died. 1 was badly burned. I should also add that there is a Felony Murder Rule in New Jersey, where Seton Hall University is located.

Their sentence: 5 years a piece with possibility of parole in 16 months.
Their conviction: arson (murder charges were dropped)

Whose sentence is unjust? Whose conviction is the appropriate one? Are either just or appropriate? Should not comparable wrongdoings receive comparable punishment? Janet is no more of a murderer than these two men. Granted, 16 months seems a bit on the lean side of a sentence, but life without parole for someone who is a first-time offender and who did not intend to harm anyone seems especially egregious.

Janet's Case

Seton Hall Case

Dems-good-oats

I've always loved oats. In fact, I just finished a heaping bowl of oatmeal and I feel toasty, cozy, and good. Since I was a child my mother would cook oatmeal and cream of wheat for me. A bit of sugar, cream, and butter and before you is steamy goodness. I know many people who do not like oats, but I don't get it. But my most recent bowl (about 2 minutes ago) sent me on a quest to answer the following question: what is the difference between traditional and instant oats? My oaty friends tend to gravitate toward the instant variety, but I've always been a traditional kind of guy, nothing too fancy for me. It turns out that instant oats are better for cookies because they do not take as long to cook, but otherwise are inferior. They are cut up, thin, and not as chewy as the traditional oats. I don't believe they are any less nutritious (especially if prepared without the additives I mentioned above), but you are cheating yourself by gulping down a mushy mash. Non-instant, rolled oats are much more flavorful than instant oats and they have a delightful texture. Instant oats do take about 30 seconds to make (just add microwaved or boiling water) while traditional oats take about 5 minutes to prepare. But trust me, that additional 4 and a half minutes is worth every second when it comes time to chow down.

Up Oats!

A New Bloomington Bus Driver

I have given up on understanding the bus system in Bloomington, IN. On Thursday I was returning home from my dissertation meeting on the #4 bus. The bus driver is a recent addition to this route. I've seen him but once prior to this occasion. The bus comes to a halt at the stop sign (before which I am not allowed to pull the wire unless I want to be dropped off at the stop sign (not a bus stop)). The bus accelerates through the turn and I signal the alert to stop at the intersection of Mitchell and Maxwell (where there is a bus stop). I watch as the bus continues to accelerate past my stop. Readers will know that this is not an unusual thing (though it is completely inexplicable). What does make this a bit odd is that this bus driver has managed to stop at my stop before. Confused, when the bus does stop at the next stop (Maxwell Terrace), I approach the driver and ask him if my stop is not a legitimate stop. He apologizes and remarks that he thought I wanted off at Maxwell Terrace. I responded that I had rung for my stop. He then advises me to tell him beforehand the next time I want to be dropped at that stop. My mind nearly explodes in a big bang of bewilderment. How else does one alert the bus driver ahead of time to stop at a certain stop if not by the preordained protocol that is pulling the wire? Why must I have to not only pull the wire but employ some auxiliary signal? This renders the wire epiphenomenal. Can you imagine the chaos into which a bus ride would devolve if everyone alerted the drivers to stop by some means other than that provided by Bloomington Transit? Follow protocol! Don't drop passengers off at stop signs, assume all requests for a stop are for the next stop after the alert, and do stop at said stops! Your job is a simple one, bus man. If I wanted to walk home, I would not ride the bus.

Diamonds in the Rough, and the Rough

For no particular reason I thought I would list some of what I consider to be culinary gems of Bloomington. All are tasty, though some are included because of the value in addition to the taste. So here they are in no particular order:

1. 3 dollar pints of Upland Winter Warmer at the Alley Bar (versus over $4 per 12oz at Upland).
2. Cheese sticks at the Crazy Horse.
3. Fish and chips at Coaches (Coach's?) (NB: it is half price on Friday).
4. Chili at Lennie's.
5. #40 at Esan Thai with chicken (medium hotness).
6. Mongolian Chicken at Dragon Express ($4.35) (one of the few things there with its own distinct flavor).
7. French pressed coffee at Cafe Ami on 4th St.
8. (Attempted) Eggs Benedict at Runcible Spoon (unfortunately the egg is not poached, it is fried).
9. Rockit's Pizza.
10. Falafel sandwiches at Falafel's (for some reason, if you get it to go, it is not only cheaper, but the price of the sandwich includes a soft drink or bottled water).

Though not consumable, I feel obligated to add:

11. The interior design at the Copper Cup across from the big Big Red.
12. The atmosphere at Tutto Bene.

Now, I suppose for the sake of being thorough, I should include a list of what I consider to be some of the most offensive pieces of crap littering the culinary scene in Bloomington.

1. Fries at Hinkle's.
2. "Bananas Foster" at Scholar's Inn (overall a piece of garbage).
3. Dinner rolls at Truffles (the quality of service matches that of the rolls).
4. Irish Lion prices for beer and scotch.
5. Grazie (overpriced, mediocre food and deplorable atmosphere).
6. Anything from Bear's Place, especially their cheese sticks and guac.
7. The Tudor Room at the IMU (glorified cafeteria food, I'm always embarrassed when I have to take a guest speaker there for lunch).
8. Since when was a stromboli a sandwich?
9. The service at Tutto Bene.
10. The atmosphere upstairs at the Irish Lion.

Difficult to see, the future is

Anyone who knows me knows that I need to have a plan. I put everything in my iCal, and I am unfailingly punctual. It should come as no surprise that these days I am quite anxious, for my not too distant future is more uncertain that I'd normally allow it to be. Anyone who knows me also knows that I like to maintain pretty tight control over my immediate environment. It should come as no surprise that these days I am quite anxious, for my not too distant future is, as a result of its resistance to my iCal, more out of my control that I'd normally allow it to be. Let me count the ways:

1. Anyone who knows me knows that I live with Matt Dunn. Well, the honeymoon is over and we must go our separate ways. Have either of us started looking for a new place? No. The only certainty is that we will not continue to live in our current home.

2. My uncertain domestic future is a result of my uncertain vocational future. My department, barring some act of a flying spaghetti monster, will not be offering me funding next year. It is time to kick this bird out of the nest. This situation invites a host of uncertainties. For example, will I stay in Bloomington? If so, where will I live? Where will I work? I've considered staying here, even though it means that I'll probably end up waiting tables somewhere. I've also considered moving to Amherst, MA to live with my friend Kelly Trogdon. I'm not really sure what all my options are. Moving is expensive, so I can't really afford any arbitrariness in my selection procedure.

3. Anyone who knows me knows that in the summers I usually work for a program dedicated to educating precocious youths. Last summer I did not. I took Georgian here at IU. This summer will I go back to the nerd camp or will I take Georgian level 2 or Arabic? No one knows. I have, however, alerted the summer program that I intend to return.

4. In the more distant future is a fairly significant uncertainty. It has occurred to me that I might have options other than an academic career (which might not actually be an option).

Anyway, in case I end up staying here, I am accepting self-nominations for roommates.