Some years ago, this university was a powerhouse of logic. Then Jon Barwise died and Anil Gupta (with whom I have had dinner!) went to Pittsburgh and now Indiana can only dream of its former glory. They are actually a little bitter about it. Especially the Badger.
Today in Set Theory the Badger barked, "I was lucky enough to attend a university where logic was considered to be everything. Unlike this university, where logic is NOTHING!"
I was warned about this before I came. But it turns out they really meant it.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
What I Am Doing Here
"So, are you going to drop out?" Value Theory Lad asked me the other day. It was sort of out of the blue, but it came shortly after a pronounced bout of internal What-Am-I-Doing-Here anxiety, so I figured Value Theory Lad was just being perspicacious. Perhaps it is something they learn in Value Theory.*
"I don't know," I replied glumly. "Maybe." Then I realized he'd been joking. Now he looked a little distressed.
"It's just," I went on, "what am I doing here? Philosophy? Where did that come from? I have no real reason to think I'm any good at it, and I'll never find a job, and there is no philosophical logic nowadays ... sometimes I think I'm just here because I couldn't think of anything better to do, and that's a terrible reason."
"Maybe it's not," Value Theory Lad replied. "Maybe if there's nothing else you'd rather be doing, that just shows it's what you're meant to do. I mean, that's what they say about musicians - you don't become a musician because you want to; you become a musician because there's nothing else you can do. Or political leaders - you don't want to elect a leader who really wants to be a leader, who has that as their life's goal."
I was unconvinced.
"Anyway," said Value Theory Lad, "The last two fellowship students before you both dropped out and now one of them is teaching yoga. So you should hang in there for awhile or the fellowship committee will really get discouraged."
*Note to non-philosophers: Value Theory is a branch of philosophy which includes Ethics and Aesthetics. More information about Value Theory can be found on the internet.
"I don't know," I replied glumly. "Maybe." Then I realized he'd been joking. Now he looked a little distressed.
"It's just," I went on, "what am I doing here? Philosophy? Where did that come from? I have no real reason to think I'm any good at it, and I'll never find a job, and there is no philosophical logic nowadays ... sometimes I think I'm just here because I couldn't think of anything better to do, and that's a terrible reason."
"Maybe it's not," Value Theory Lad replied. "Maybe if there's nothing else you'd rather be doing, that just shows it's what you're meant to do. I mean, that's what they say about musicians - you don't become a musician because you want to; you become a musician because there's nothing else you can do. Or political leaders - you don't want to elect a leader who really wants to be a leader, who has that as their life's goal."
I was unconvinced.
"Anyway," said Value Theory Lad, "The last two fellowship students before you both dropped out and now one of them is teaching yoga. So you should hang in there for awhile or the fellowship committee will really get discouraged."
*Note to non-philosophers: Value Theory is a branch of philosophy which includes Ethics and Aesthetics. More information about Value Theory can be found on the internet.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Bacon Digression
I absolutely adore my epistemology professor, the Horse. The Horse is perhaps the handsomest man I have seen so far here in the Hoosier State (and he is from Montreal) and he is simply hilarious - he never seems to be listening to a word anyone says, but just sort of rolls his head around and pulls on his lower lip and gazes into nowhere when spoken to. The Horse almost never finishes a sentence, which makes it very hard to take notes in his class.
Today I was in the lounge drinking a cup of tea and the Horse came in. "I'm worried that you'll peak too soon," he said, apropos of nothing, in his delightful rumbling, scratchy, nasal voice. "I mean, you'll peak really early and then ... and we want you to kind of -" he made a gradual swooping motion with his hand - "what's that you're drinking? Is that tea? Well, that's okay then. I was ... I was being facetious ... I guess you can't tell, okay, see you later." Then he trotted off.
Today in class he was talking about Descartes' requirement that we must rule out the possibility that we're dreaming before we can truly say we know things about the world around us. He said, "Of course in everyday life we're perfectly justified in saying that we know where the nearest hospital is, or who we are, or where you can get a flatbread with what R.J. Apple referred to as 'the Beluga of bacon' ... 'the Beluga of bacon,'" he repeated, almost dreamily. "It's this bacon called 'nueske's' and you can get it at a place called 'Trulli's' which is on ... is it 10th and 3rd? No - it's - it's 10th and the overpass - Trulli's - " and he wrote "Trulli's" and "nueske's" on the board. "Or you can get it at a place called the Butcher's Block. It is the caviar of bacons.
"Once," he went on, "we were in Memphis - I think it was Memphis - walking down the street and we were suddenly - beguiled by this smell of bacon and it drew us in to this little hole in the wall where we had this bacon, and you can actually get it here in Bloomington. Where was I?"
"You were talking about the Cartesian requirement," I prompted him. And he was off again, galloping away in another direction.
Today I was in the lounge drinking a cup of tea and the Horse came in. "I'm worried that you'll peak too soon," he said, apropos of nothing, in his delightful rumbling, scratchy, nasal voice. "I mean, you'll peak really early and then ... and we want you to kind of -" he made a gradual swooping motion with his hand - "what's that you're drinking? Is that tea? Well, that's okay then. I was ... I was being facetious ... I guess you can't tell, okay, see you later." Then he trotted off.
Today in class he was talking about Descartes' requirement that we must rule out the possibility that we're dreaming before we can truly say we know things about the world around us. He said, "Of course in everyday life we're perfectly justified in saying that we know where the nearest hospital is, or who we are, or where you can get a flatbread with what R.J. Apple referred to as 'the Beluga of bacon' ... 'the Beluga of bacon,'" he repeated, almost dreamily. "It's this bacon called 'nueske's' and you can get it at a place called 'Trulli's' which is on ... is it 10th and 3rd? No - it's - it's 10th and the overpass - Trulli's - " and he wrote "Trulli's" and "nueske's" on the board. "Or you can get it at a place called the Butcher's Block. It is the caviar of bacons.
"Once," he went on, "we were in Memphis - I think it was Memphis - walking down the street and we were suddenly - beguiled by this smell of bacon and it drew us in to this little hole in the wall where we had this bacon, and you can actually get it here in Bloomington. Where was I?"
"You were talking about the Cartesian requirement," I prompted him. And he was off again, galloping away in another direction.
Monday, September 17, 2007
In
You're not supposed to choose a grad school based on your hope of working with one specific professor, they told me. He or she* might move on to greener pastures (ahem, JC I am looking at you), or it might turn out that you don't work very well with this person after all. I pretty much ignored this advice, and I came out here with the notion that I would be working with the Badger, our resident logician. (I am calling him that because he is badgerlike and probably Google searches his own name from time to time, because don't we all, and he doesn't need to read what I say about him.)
The Badger is extremely terrifying, a quality I appreciate in a professor. He has very courtly manners but always seems to be shouting. He calls me "ma'am." His photograph on the faculty faceboard in the lounge shows him from behind, looking out the window, and probably brooding. I feel a subdued wish to have him tell me how to run my life, and for this reason it is probably for the best that the Badger is not my adviser ... yet.
Therefore I am pleased when the Badger appears to take an interest in me - when he says things like, 'as one logician to another' or offers to let me read the drafts of a paper he's working on, or invites me to participate in a Philosophy of Mathematics discussion group. Because of this last, I am reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It is every bit as long and confusing as the Philosophical Investigations, but without the classic thought exercises and compelling
metaphors. Not to mention, who is more dreamy:
or
*On the subject of "he or she," I read an interesting article yesterday in Bitch about gender-neutral pronouns, as an alternative to the clunky "he or she", the "ungrammatical" singular "they", or the sexist "his." Although I am, on the whole, supportive of attempts to make our language as inclusive as possible (for instance, I supported Smith College's decision to change "she" to "the student" in our school constitution), I cannot get behind these gender neutral pronouns. No one uses words like "zie," "per," or "hirself," and speaking as a linguist, rather than a feminist, they should not be made to. New words are introduced into English all the time, but as a rule they are not these sorts of words. Pronouns are structural, and while new pronouns can evolve naturally (the article points out that "they," "them," and "their" were originally from Scandinavian) they cannot be introduced artificially.
That said, if I should meet somebody who really wants to be addressed using gender-neutral pronouns, I'd probably give it the old college try, because I am nice like that.
The Badger is extremely terrifying, a quality I appreciate in a professor. He has very courtly manners but always seems to be shouting. He calls me "ma'am." His photograph on the faculty faceboard in the lounge shows him from behind, looking out the window, and probably brooding. I feel a subdued wish to have him tell me how to run my life, and for this reason it is probably for the best that the Badger is not my adviser ... yet.
Therefore I am pleased when the Badger appears to take an interest in me - when he says things like, 'as one logician to another' or offers to let me read the drafts of a paper he's working on, or invites me to participate in a Philosophy of Mathematics discussion group. Because of this last, I am reading Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. It is every bit as long and confusing as the Philosophical Investigations, but without the classic thought exercises and compelling
metaphors. Not to mention, who is more dreamy:
or
I thought so.
*On the subject of "he or she," I read an interesting article yesterday in Bitch about gender-neutral pronouns, as an alternative to the clunky "he or she", the "ungrammatical" singular "they", or the sexist "his." Although I am, on the whole, supportive of attempts to make our language as inclusive as possible (for instance, I supported Smith College's decision to change "she" to "the student" in our school constitution), I cannot get behind these gender neutral pronouns. No one uses words like "zie," "per," or "hirself," and speaking as a linguist, rather than a feminist, they should not be made to. New words are introduced into English all the time, but as a rule they are not these sorts of words. Pronouns are structural, and while new pronouns can evolve naturally (the article points out that "they," "them," and "their" were originally from Scandinavian) they cannot be introduced artificially.
That said, if I should meet somebody who really wants to be addressed using gender-neutral pronouns, I'd probably give it the old college try, because I am nice like that.
THINGS I LOVE:
- The way my subconscious mind is busy cranking out answers to things even when I am not paying attention: I tried to take a nap this afternoon but was shaken from a doze when I figured out how to do one of the proofs on my set theory homework.
- The skin that forms on top of milk when you heat it
- Baked lentils with cheese
- Watching due South
Reading Laurie Colwin with a cup of cocoa-- I mean, reading Kant. Yes.
The Bells Are Ringing
I like the bells that I can hear from my bedroom. On the hour, they play a 16-note melody, and this fills me with satisfaction because 16 is the perfect square of a perfect square, and four is the number of sides of a square, and so I hear those sixteen BONGs every hour on the hour and it's pleasant. But I HATE hearing the twelve BONGs at quarter till, especially since they end on an open note, and it just keeps on being open for fifteen minutes, unresolved, and it makes me tense. And I also hate lying in bed, unable to sleep, and being able to time my insomnia in fifteen-minute units.
Went for a run today. It was hard going, but I pressed on. I love the Bryan Park run, because I can go straight through or I can break in the middle and use the exercise equipment, as I did today. Is playing on the jungle gym (excuse me: the "horizontal ladder") really working my arms? I don't know; but it's fun.
Went for a run today. It was hard going, but I pressed on. I love the Bryan Park run, because I can go straight through or I can break in the middle and use the exercise equipment, as I did today. Is playing on the jungle gym (excuse me: the "horizontal ladder") really working my arms? I don't know; but it's fun.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Midwestern Weekend
I'm kind of compulsive, and sometimes this is good and sometimes it is bad. I always wish that I could put my need to stick to a schedule to good use, for instance, by ritualizing exercise so that I have to go for a five-mile run every Monday at 8 a.m., but this rarely works. Instead these rituals only seem to develop for activities which, though pleasant, are inconvenient when they cease to be optional. For instance, whether I need anything or not, I have to walk half a mile and back to the grocery store on Saturday morning, and when House comes back on next week I will have to go to the Student Union and hope I can commandeer one of the TVs near the Burger King. (There's never more than one person there at that time in the evening, and there are two TVs, so this should be do-able, but it irritates me that I don't have a choice in this matter. I actually bought a television exclusively to watch House and schlepped it all the way out here to the Midwest, but was, when it came to the point, too cheap to spring for cable, so it doesn't get any channels. It just sits in the living room and makes the place look lowbrow.)
For better or for worse, I have also developed a ritual of getting up early on Sundays and baking bread. This is a good thing, because I love having fresh bread, and store bought bread is either really expensive or not very good. And it's such fun to choose a different recipe each week and purchase small quantities of various flours at the Sahara Mart, and the kneading, and the thrill of watching it rise, and the pleasant, homey scent of baking bread. (This last only applies when I am not also scheduled to set the apartment on fire.)
This week's bread is a high-protein whole wheat loaf, made with soy flour. Since K and I eat so little meat (though we do drink more milk than you'd expect of 20something grad students), I felt the extra protein would not go amiss. I had a slice today for lunch, along with a bowl of Laurie Colwin's black bean soup, and it was quite good - nice crumb, good crust, and a pleasant wheaty flavor. But what I am really craving is sourdough: a daunting prospect.
Laurie Colwin has this to say about sourdough starters: "What with stirring them or using them once a week and taking them out for an airing and keeping them in the right place in the fridge... who needs a sourdough starter? You might as well get a dog." She gives a recipe in Home Cooking but states that the results were mixed and no one really liked it. (I love this about Home Cooking, that it includes recipes that don't really work and encourages the reader to have a bash anyway, but in this case it's not very helpful.) K's copy of The Joy of Cooking recommends undertaking a starter if you are "adventurous, persistent, and leisurely." I am not accustomed to having a recipe make demands on my character like this.
Anyway the only kind of sandwich K and I ever have is peanut butter and jelly, which would be rather nasty on sourdough bread, although I have an ongoing desire to roast a chicken. A cold chicken sandwich on sourdough would be very nice. I need a roasting rack and possibly a baster before this can happen, however.
In the meantime, I am enjoying polenta with black bean and corn salsa. Learning to cook is fun.
For better or for worse, I have also developed a ritual of getting up early on Sundays and baking bread. This is a good thing, because I love having fresh bread, and store bought bread is either really expensive or not very good. And it's such fun to choose a different recipe each week and purchase small quantities of various flours at the Sahara Mart, and the kneading, and the thrill of watching it rise, and the pleasant, homey scent of baking bread. (This last only applies when I am not also scheduled to set the apartment on fire.)
This week's bread is a high-protein whole wheat loaf, made with soy flour. Since K and I eat so little meat (though we do drink more milk than you'd expect of 20something grad students), I felt the extra protein would not go amiss. I had a slice today for lunch, along with a bowl of Laurie Colwin's black bean soup, and it was quite good - nice crumb, good crust, and a pleasant wheaty flavor. But what I am really craving is sourdough: a daunting prospect.
Laurie Colwin has this to say about sourdough starters: "What with stirring them or using them once a week and taking them out for an airing and keeping them in the right place in the fridge... who needs a sourdough starter? You might as well get a dog." She gives a recipe in Home Cooking but states that the results were mixed and no one really liked it. (I love this about Home Cooking, that it includes recipes that don't really work and encourages the reader to have a bash anyway, but in this case it's not very helpful.) K's copy of The Joy of Cooking recommends undertaking a starter if you are "adventurous, persistent, and leisurely." I am not accustomed to having a recipe make demands on my character like this.
Anyway the only kind of sandwich K and I ever have is peanut butter and jelly, which would be rather nasty on sourdough bread, although I have an ongoing desire to roast a chicken. A cold chicken sandwich on sourdough would be very nice. I need a roasting rack and possibly a baster before this can happen, however.
In the meantime, I am enjoying polenta with black bean and corn salsa. Learning to cook is fun.
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