introducing wittgenstein

i’ve realized that one of my favorite things about the philosophy classes i took at carleton was hashing it out in class with the other students. somehow, reading a condensed version of philosophy like this, without the knowledge that i’m going to take some kernel of understanding with me into a classroom, the words just don’t resonate the same way. plus, the average person you talk to will treat you like a joker if you engage in the kinds of philosophical ramblings that wittgenstein will induce. still, it reminds me of my first classes on epistemology, thinking about thinking, in a good way.

rebecca

i must admit that i am a hitchcock fan. i quite enjoyed this movie, as i did dial m for murder and rear window. for some reason, though, olivier constantly reminded me of cary elwes, which had me at times thinking of elwes in a shakespeare production, and at times thinking of olivier in men in tights.

indictment: the mcmartin trial

mcmartins aren’t bad people.

kabul

tasty. i had the lamb couscous. i’d certainly return, and bring others with me. many thanks to noah, and noah’s dad, for the recommendation. (daily page)

hoops

i have fallen prey to my more male side, and watched basketball all night. at least, the part where i wasn’t cleaning and shuffling cardboard downstairs to make room for new roommate. best of all, both of my teams won! even though they came off to a slow and depressing start, a bit into the bottom half of the game the badgers rallied hard and fast to clinch the win. the wolves, as well, managed to turn around a 2 game losing streak. and szczerbiak, my roommate’s favorite player, managed to toss up 24 points on the game. who knows - maybe we’ll even make it out of the first round this year. all in all, an excellent evening.

bj tahoe

for whatever reason, there are a lot of vanity license plates here in madison. this in itself is no surprise: what better way to trick out your phat ride and proclaim your hottness than by getting a license plate that labels you as 2 PHATT (the extra T is for hott)? sometimes, though, i wonder if these people have any idea what they’re doing. to wit: the tahoe i was driving behind on my way home for lunch today, with the license plate BJ TAHOE. what shall we surmise from this? now, there are already websites devoted to the tracking and providing an explanation of what various vanity plates might mean, but on none of them could i find anything quite like the plate i saw today. unsurprisingly, google is similarly unhelpful in untangling this little mess. whoever thought it’d be funny to drive around with this plate affixed to their car’s ass must have thought they were being unimaginably clever. the thing is, this is the sort of plate i’d expect to see on a lower-rent car, e.g. BJ FSTVA or BJ CIVIC, or a car more typically driven by male twits, like the C6LI9T i saw on a mazda with giant yellow rims the other day. who the hell buys a tahoe, and then gets stoned before going down the the DOT? and, given the plate, why not go for a van? or, if it’s not a stoner, who brings home their car and says, “check out this sweet new license plate i got! i’m BJ, and this is my tahoe!”? and who, at the DOT, thought that this plate was not “obscene or otherwise offensive?” i suppose the answer to all these questions is that somewhere in this fine city of madison a certain robert johansson is just proud of his vehicle, and either immune or oblivious to the snickering.

high fidelity

if good will hunting was the sponge i soaked up with melancholy, listlessness, and lack of direction resulting from an awkward desire to refactor myself and a failed stab at a relationship the summer before my senior year in high school, then high fidelity filled much the same niche two years later, at the next breakdown. these movies are resonant because they paint such a vivid picture of boys confused, not quite ready to step up to plate of manhood. it is somewhat remarkable how potent this film has remained over the three years since i saw it first.

dalai

apparently, my political compass, at -4.4/-3.7 (moderately economically left, moderately socially libertarian), falls more closely aligned to the dalai lama than to any of the other world leaders listed at the site. whatever that means.

children of the mind

i don’t really feel like the payoff for reading this book, and thus its conjoined twin xenocide, was quite enough to warrant the effort. ender’s game is a masterpiece, an easily accessible yet wholly worthwhile read, and certainly one of the crown jewels of science fiction literature. speaker for the dead is also, in its way, an interesting book, and a bold and worthy follow up to the original. though it in no way surpasses the first book, it at least holds its own as a decent book. when i finished children of the mind last night, i was glad to be done, partially because i was glad to see how the series wrapped up, but just as much because i was ready to be finished reading the series.

i am tempted to read the ender’s shadow line of books, but i think i’ll chew on something else before i do that.

a short history of nearly everything

i like this sort of thing: a broad overview of the history of science, with lots of stories of its humorous proponents, and a liberal sprinkling of explanation of the various theories, presented in layperson terms.