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...