Arbitrary Marks

Here’s what I’ll be working on this semester:

Wittgenstein and Kripke with John Deigh
A first year seminar (covering topics like philosophy of language and mind) with Adam Pautz
Indian Philosophy with Stephen Phillips
Sanskrit with Harzer Edeltraud
Grader for Jeff Leon’s Medical Ethics undergraduate section

If I have any free time (ha!) I may try to do some reading with [...]

The photographs I took throughout the conference are at my Flickr set, here. I took sparingly few, compared to most events I photograph, in part because I was giving my attention to the content rather than framing it aesthetically. Further, my Alpha 100 has a very loud shutter click, and I really didn’t want [...]

Philosophers of language will appreciate this one. I recently had a Fregean moment when I realized that Hannah Montana is Miley Cyrus. Yes, make fun of me in the comments all you want. I had heard about the Miley Cyrus photo and knew she was some Disney star. And I’d heard about Hannah Montana. But somehow I never connected the two together.

(In this moment I also got a glimpse of my future self as a parent, struggling to keep up with my kids’ pop culture consumption…apparently reading science and philosophy blogs, listening to NPR and reading The Atlantic Monthly isn’t going to cut it.)

I haven’t taken stock of my general “life” to do list in a while. At this point, it includes:
Move to Austin, start PhD program, get paper(s) published
Approximately two years ago, my to do list looked like this:

Metaphysics and epistemology comprehensive exam (high pass)
Philosophy of science and logic comprehensive exam (pass)
Complete coursework (Two left: Ethics, Nietzsche in fall [...]

Out of curiosity, I clicked over to RateMyProfessor.com this morning (another blogger had mentioned their ratings on the site). Although I’ve taught at several community colleges, no one so far has bothered to rate me. That’s okay, because I have official student evaluations for my file.
But now the Internets are evaluating me — I [...]

As the time for my move to Austin draws closer, I am starting to sort through all of my books. Well, at least all of the books I have in Chicago–I still have hundreds back at my parent’s place, mostly related to my undergrad degree.
I’ll be in a teeny-tiny efficiency outside of UT, where [...]

It isn’t often that I write about anything related to the city of Chicago, but this has been on my mind over the past week and I thought I’d bring your attention to it.
I’m on Flickr quite a bit, putting up my own photos and watching those belonging to my contacts. Some of those [...]

Does anyone know how many philosophers a) have partners that are in an academic field of some sort and b) how many relationships are long-distance? Examples of successful couples–I know about Martha Nussbaum and her spouse–would be helpful.

We’re not planning to be long-distance past the next year, possibly two, but it’d be nice to see beyond the upcoming semester.

This post by MoxieLife may explain why I haven’t been regularly attending Unitarian Universalist services in nearly a year. True, I’ve been busy, but when I find myself in hard times I tend to lean upon Buddhist teachings and praxis. That doesn’t exclude being a member of a Unitarian Universalist church, but I think I [...]

The official countdown for my move is at 61 days. That means I have two months to find an apartment, figure out how I’m moving, pack my stuff and–most importantly–mentally adjust to the Austin temperatures.

It also means that my ability to focus on the course of study I set for myself this summer is pretty poor. You may have noticed that my Vigrahavyavartani translation efforts have stopped. I did finish Jaegwon Kim, but haven’t gotten around to posting further reflections. My copy of W.V.O. Quine’s Word and Object arrived in the mail Saturday, but despite my excitement at reading this important work, I’m hesitant to start and stop mid-way.

(Working in cube-world part time, teaching online and taking two courses has also pushed into my erstwhile free time…)

So I’m posting this as an open thread until I get back on schedule with some academic content. Has anyone visited or lived in Austin, and if so, any advice or stories to tell? I’m looking forward to the program, to the city and its culture, but dreading the heat. What do y’all think? (And should I start using that word, “y’all”?)