Jon Cogburn's Blog

last Sunday school class in series

Tomorrow is the last adult Sunday school class in the Clint Mitchell and my series on Biblical authority and interpretation at University Presbyterian Church. I added one last handout on the Presbyterian guidelines (with two pretty serious criticisms of those guidelines, which I now think are in need of further Reforming). Anyhow, the whole thing is HERE.

It's 54 single spaced pages. I think if Pastor Mitchell and I do this kind of thing again in the next few years, we'll have enough MS for the beginning of a book project.

I like it quite a lot actually. I like philosophy with a lot of practical friction that nonetheless brings you right to the heart of fundamental and abstract matters. The video game stuff and computability theory does that. The D& D stuff and Priestian problems of expressing the inexpressible does that too. From these handouts, I think it's becoming clear that issue of biblical authority is becoming another instance of that for me.

updated c.v. and abstracts of all published work

Today I updated: (1) my official LSU-Policy-Statement-Number-36 vita, and (2) the set of abstracts of my published work.

The LSU vita is pretty ugly and it's clear I'm not on the market from the fact that I've decided to stop updating my aesthetically pleasing vita. Not having to do that is one of the many gifts of tenure.

I used to have abstracts of stuff that was under review, but decided to stop doing that too. It's pretty depressing when something stays on there for years at a time. Weirdly, it's always my best stuff (imho) that I have the hardest time getting published. I think that's because: (1) the less trivial a piece is, the easier it is for a blind reviewer to trash it, (2) some of my best stuff is too much logic for first tier generalist journals but too little logic for first and second tier logic journals.

I don't think there's a better system though. The things I have gotten published are much better for being rewritten as part of this process.

everybody finally keeping food down

Boy last week sucked. Luckily Emily and I took turns having the worst of the stomach virus so one of us could watch Thomas while the other one was incapacitated. Now this week is going to be crazy-busy getting caught up on all the stuff we let slide last week.

Emily felt good enough to take Thomas to a petty zoo, pumpkin sale thing yesterday. I'll put some pictures up in a bit.

devil in my pocket youtube playlist

I just figured out how to make a playlist for the weird videos I've been making using public domain content and music from me and Emily's rock band. The playlist is HERE (the one's that work best video-wise are probably Santa Sangre, Zombies, and the Zoo). The general webpage for the band with lots more MP3s of songs  is HERE. I"m decent at playing guitar and writing melodies, barely adequate at singing, bad as a lyricist, and even worse at getting a decent mix and timbre when recording these things on my computer.

When playing live I can keep an audience's attention if I am wearing a wrestling mask. Once it comes off they start drunkenly talking to one another and ignoring me. There's probably some Levinasian reason for this.

Music has mostly been on a hiatus with very young children. During the sabbatical year I could be a decent father to a baby, play music, and write philosophy. When we came back to Baton Rouge and I had to teach again while trying to be a decent father to a toddler it took me a year just to figure out how to write philosophy again (as much as possible do it two hours every morning very, very early- then the rest of the day is grading, teaching, prepping lectures, administrative stuff, helping students, and being a dad). I think it's going to be another year at least before I can work realiably rocking out back into the mix. Other musician friends of mine with full time jobs tell me that when your youngest hits three things open up in a way that gives you one or two hours a day rocking out time without being a bad father.

thoughts about Alabama Philosophical Society conference

(1) The contingent of people associated with Ohio State was really large: Adam Podlaskowski, Eric Carter, Andrew Choi, William Melanson, me, David Merli, Joshua Smith, and Nick Jones. 

(2) Mark Silcox was not there this year, which was a pretty major bummer. When he was at Auburn we used to go to this conference every year and it was a good chance for me and Emily to hang out with him and Heidi.

(3) The sheer ugliness of public architecture in the United States is overwhelming, and even more so when you contrast it to the natural beauty of the ocean. The generic thing in places like Orange Beach, Alabama and Destin, Florida is to have concentric layers from the ocean: beach, condos, pedestrian unfriendly highway, and then strip malls. The hideous strip malls are like a hundred yards from the beach, but you still have to combat traffic in your car to get to them. I wish the whole Seaside thing had caught on. . .

(4) This was my first philosophy conference as a non-drinker. It made taking in more papers during the day easier but socializing at night harder. I'm not really sure why. Maybe professors holding court about various things are just more tolerable when your mind is lubricated? Maybe the sugar in the alcohol just gives you an extra burst of energy after a tiring day of thinking.

(5) At least I am not a vegetarian. A big part of the socialization in these things is eating meals together. Actually a big part of socialization for human beings is eating meals together. [I don't mean to be criticizing other people's lifestyle choices here; I'm just noting that being able to enjoy the good seafood with other philosophy professors was a good-making feature of the conference.]

(6) Presenting a co-written paper is always weird. This time Jeff Roland read the paper and then ended up answering almost all the questions.

(7) I didn't like the format of 25 minutes for the paper, 15 minutes for questions/discussion. Several of the papers were good enough to where that was not enough time for questions/discussion. But I guess the fact that the discussions were that good is a good thing.

(8) Thomas no longer thinks that the beach is metaphysically unacceptable. The last few times we visited my folks in Naples, Florida he'd sometimes stare down at the sand with a kind of horror, as if the Earth's solidity was degenerating. He's much more confident with it now.

weekend blogging hiatus

This weekend I'm going to be presenting a paper with Jeff Roland at the Alabama Philosophical Society meeting (schedule HERE). I used to do this conference every year when Mark Silcox was at Auburn. This year OSU is well represented with David Merli and Bill Melanson giving papers.

I'll turn 39 during the trip and Thomas will turn 2 right after the trip. With Thomas being born 2 days after my birthday I don't really need any birthday presents any more. And Audrey is due to be born around Christmas so I'll have that covered for the rest of my life too.

Another picture from Minnesota

Everybody is back in Baton Rouge now, but we just got this picture from Emily's friend that she visited in Minnesota, Holly.

If this was a frame from a horrible film, Thomas would be walking in slow motion with the camera slowly panning upward from his feet. Some kind of dramatic song like Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle Again" would be playing. The day blogging technology catches up to that will be the day that the internet officially has begun to suck.

Here's another great one of Emily and Thomas from the same trip.

The two most beautiful people in the world!

The Tao of Asperger's Syndrome

I'm really interested in this movie about surfer Clay Marzo. It explores his phenomenal surfing talent as well as the role that Asperger's Syndrome might play in his abilities.

The understanding of Autism as a spectrum and the ability to operationalize the new definition has led to some surprising results, e.g.

[For faculty members] college campuses are a perfect incubator for high-functioning autistic individuals. Research suggests that about a third of autistic Americans out of a pool of roughly 2 million may possess exceptional skills.

People with autism, who tend to have troubles connecting emotionally with others, often possess the sorts of abilities that make for superior researchers. They often are blessed with strong memory skills and visual acuity, they can perform calculations in their head and they excel at sorting information. In short, an autistic professor who fails miserably at small talk at a cocktail party could possess a scrapbook full of accolades.

Actually, it’s not surprising that autistic adults would prefer hanging out in ivory towers. One of their common characteristics is that they recoil from changing environments that bombard them with too much stimulus. Autistic professors can spend much of their time working in their own offices or at their homes where there are few distractions to keep them from single-mindedly focusing on their work.

Every academic I know that is aware of these correlations is examining their own and their coleagues' particular brands of weirdness in light of these findings. 

Happy Birthday Gustav

I forgot to wish Hurricane Gustav a happy birthday yesterday. It's hard to describe the particular kind of awfulness of a week without  electricity in a swelteringly  hot, humid, pedestrian unfriendly city with high crime and poverty. It's hard to describe the alien landscape of fallen trees and debris and mutilated buildings. And your one year old has bad heat rash and you are terrified about him overheating, and stores where you might purchase pedialite or baby powder (he's never had heat rash before) are all shut and without power.

It really sucked, and the national media totally dropped the story after it was clear it was not going to be another Katrina (which even in Baton Rouge also really sucked). The reporters for ABC News stood in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and after the levees failed to breach pronounced Gustav "a fizzle;" Reuters said that it "lacked punch." 

Thanks to youtube though we have access to films that non-media types made. The first (from Thibodaux) shows the destructive power of wind strong enough to peel off brick facade.

And here's a nice photo essay of what Baton Rouge looked like for months after the storm. Before viewing this, it is essential to note that. (1) These are not just the worst of the worst. Any place you were in Baton Rouge you saw multiple vistas of scenes like those in these photos. (2) A large portion of these photos were taken weeks or months after the storm. You can tell because the roads are not blocked by huge trees.

The thing that's truly appalling to me is that after the storm there was a little bit of talk about actually burying the power lines the way they are in many American cities that don't even suffer the double whammy of periodic hurricanes and lots of trees. But that completely disappeared. The private companies that run all of the electricity now have dictated that yearly extended power outages for millions of homes due to storms (usually winter storms in the north east and mid west) are just going to be part of the equation in the United States. And the rest of us accept that as inevitable.

When did we become the country where everything is impossible? Somehow, countries with much less per capita GDP than us have vastly nicer power grids, telecommunication infrastructure, airports, health care, prisons (and at least Christians are explicitly supposed to be concerned about this), roads, hurricane and flooding protection, and public transportation. At the current rate of degradation it will be less than twenty years before we lose out in our comparative advantage in space development and our university system. It's really bizarre. No country with near the per capita wealth of the United States is anywhere near as murderously dysfunctional as we are on any of these metrics. But any time someone tries to substantially improve anything in the United States for the past twenty five years the collective wisdom solidifies around the theme that it's impossible.

When did that become our national ethos? Why did it become our ethos? In the vast majority of the above things we until very recently (through the early 1980s) were the envy of the world. Now Americans accept (and virulently defend!) mediocrity and worse as our birthright.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina I increasingly feel like I don't recognize this place. I still love it (every time I've travalled abroad I choke up when the border agent says "welcome home" when I finally get back). I mean, you don't stop loving a person when they become diseased. There's no reason it should be any different with countries.

musings on Queen

I just discovered my colleague James Rocha's fantastic interpretation of Bohemian Rhapsody (possibly the best rock song, and hence possibly the best song, ever) that he posted last year on his blog. It's HERE. And here's the original video for the song.

My older brother Chris turned me on to Queen and the Beatles when we were kids in the early seventies. He had the red and blue Apple greatest hits Beatles albums and a whole mess of Queen 45s. He, my sister, and me used to have long discussions about whether Strawberry Fields Forever or Penny Lane was a better song (Strawberry Fields was ultimately proclaimed better by a unanimous vote; and I'm pretty sure we'd all vote the same today). Bohemian Rhapsody sort of hovered over everything though.

Most of my friends' older brothers ended up in the Kiss Army. We stuck with Queen and the Beatles, and expanded into Elton John and Cat Stevens (both the influence of our Dad). And though I'm jealous of my friend Neal Hebert's good standing in said Army, I still think we ultimately got the better deal. Here's another 45 we wore out with repeated playing.

I remember being incredibly impressed by the fact that Freddy Mercury had the cajones to admit to not liking Jaws or Star Wars. It was scandalous, but also my first intimation of real freedom.

trust your mechanic

Tomorrow morning I go to the doctor about something I should had looked into months ago. My right shoulder hurts all the time to varying degrees, and it has less mobility than the other one. I've bought a new desk, learned to use the wiji board on my computer instead of the mouse, taken a couple of bottles of ibuprofen, and tried all sorts of yoga things. Nothing's worked reliably. I hope they can fix this with surgery or physical therapy well before our new kid is born in late December/early January.

My friend Mark has a pretty healthy Cartesian attitude about doctors. Think of them as your allies against your body, which is going to betray you in all sorts of horrifying ways during your brief time on this planet. The good thing about this attitude is that if you can instantiate it, then you don't get too hung up on quaint notions like dignity while they poke and prod at you. The bad thing is that it's not really true, any more than your auto mechanic is your ally. . .

Also, your bodily dignity is not the only thing violated- (1) having to get permission in the other areas of your life to make all the different appointments, (2) having to mess with traffic to get to the various health-industrial complexes, (3) being assaulted by television during the long period in the waiting rooms, (4) being ushered into the examination room and having to wait there for interminable periods of time, (5) losing hope for humanity while surrounded by the downwardly mobile barbarians to whom Reaganist destruction (of small manufacturing on the one hand and unions on the other) has ceded this country (see this book for an explanation of how it worked out in rural America), (6) trying to communicate with an overworked doctor who spends most of his time negotiating with insurance companies and who might be compromised by pharmaceutical company payola, (7) trying to communicate honestly with the doctor when you are always suspect of trying to get the him to violate some bit of the war on drugs. Even if you can forget about the humiliation of removing your clothes and being poked at by a stranger, all of these things dehumanize and infantilize the soul.

My friend Ty tries to view these things as Buddhist meditations of some sort. The good thing about this is that it works. The bad thing is that it only really works if you've spent years in a monastery. I wish I had.

Back in Baton Rouge

Here's Thomas pondering the nature of self-reflection in Florida. Today he's getting reacquainted with all of his toys in Baton Rouge.

I brought a bunch of work with me (some of it actually on self-reflection) but just ended up reading Brian Ruckley's two fantasy/adventure novels and hanging out with family instead. It was nice.

blog hiatus

I'm going to be in Florida visiting my folks and sister's family from tomorrow until July 5th. Since my parents don't have the interwebs in their condo, blogging will be non-existent during that time.

Please avail yourselves of the Braver on-line reading group and contribute to the discussion. My post on Braver's chapter on Hegel will be up this Monday.

I don't know how big a lie it would be to say that I am looking forward to flying tomorrow. Please read this earlier insightful post.

posting lite

Posting for the next few days will be light. I'm working my butt off to get a serviceable paper on the change in the alignment system from  Edition 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons to 4th Edition before the reading group starts.

I love it when philosophy has non-trivial consequences for stuff like this. If I'm right then the unassailable force of reason is going to lead to another revision in the system. Actually, the fact that this is every gamer's fantasy means it almost certainly won't, any more than my philosophically proven ideas for storylines are of any interest to the good people at World Wrestling Entertainmnet. That's fine, I'm just interested in getting closer to Truth anyhow.

I do, however, have a subset of good friends who ask me why I waste my time on such things. Now that I have tenure they bug me less about it I guess on the assumption that the point of tenure is to waste your time (and I write just as much philosophy that is not about popular culture in any case).

But it's not a waste of time! Norman Malcolm wrote that one of the most embarrassing moments in his life is when he and Wittgenstein saw a newspaper with a story about British attempts to kill Hitler. Malcolm said something to the effect of, "That can't be true. It's not in the British spirit to do something like that." Wittgenstein responded that he was filled with despair that someone who knew as much philosophy as Malcolm could say something like that (and it is to Malcolm's immense credit that he left the story for posterity).

Philosophy is supposed to creep out of the narrow confines of whatever dialectic in which you find yourself. It's supposed to creep up from whatever you are passionate about. And that does not just mean using it to have witty conversations. That doesn't just mean being less likely to say incredibly stupid things. It means getting it on paper, getting it reviewed, and rewriting it.

I hereby get off my soapbox. So know that refuting this will not knock me over.

2nd update of list of crap to accomplish this summer

I'm going to keep reposting this as I get things done.

1. Proofread chapters of a friend's book [finished on 5/14/09].
2. Review an article for Australasian [finished on 5/24/09].
3. With Jason Megill, resubmit paper on Church's Thesis [finished on 6/1/09].
4. Write a sample article for a proposed Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy book (on the alignment system) [working on now, hope to have draft to Mark within three weeks]
5. With Mark Silcox, craft and submit proposal for D & D and Philosophy book [working on now, hope to have revised version to Mark within three weeks].
6. With Jeff Roland write a paper on epistemic modality and informative conditionals (submit a truncated version to the Alabama Philosophical Society Conference). [I'm insanely hoping to get this done by July 15th.]
7. With Mark Silcox, rewrite and resubmit paper on ontological versus epistemic emergence. [Mark is taking the lead on this; at this point I'll just correct for typos and run on sentences.]
8. (Possibly with Salvatore Florio) write a paper on applying Williamson's thoughts on Fitch's Proof to Mavrodes' solution to the paradox of the stone (and submit a version to some other conference). Thinking over this will give me a chance to read Graham Priest's Beyond the Limit's of Thought and Jonathon Kvanvig's book on Fitch's paradox much more closely than I have [If I can get 4-6 done by July 15th I can get this done by August 24th].
9. Starting on June 3d, inaugurate local pragmatics/semantics/philosophy of language reading group with close study of Kadmon's Formal Pragmatics.
10. Starting June 15th help run an on-line reading group on Lee Braver's A Thing of this World at Perverse Egalitarianism.

It's optimistic to think I'll get all that done by the end of summer. Even more optimistic but as far as writing in Fall and Spring I'd like to get some subset of the following done in probably this order.

1. Write a book review of Lee Braver's A Thing of this World.
2. Resubmit with Mark Silcox a paper on Searle's APA presidential address about computation.
3. With Jeff Roland write a paper on Putnam's model theoretic argument (taking into account Stich's Deconstructing the Mind and Lewis' 1984 Australasian piece).
4. Write a paper using Okrent's new book on animal cognition to contrast the early Heidegger and Brandom's account of content (some earlier posts showed how this will go, this will also give me a chance to read Okrent's first Heidegger book and Mark Lance and Beka Kukla's pragmatics book).
5. Write another paper on dialetheism, getting up to date on classical recapture (this will give me a chance to go through Beall's new edited anthology as well as Priest's original book).
6. Write another paper on Fitch's paradox, but this one about it in the context of different kinds of idealism.

Those  will almost certainly bleed into next summer (I've also got two papers on vagueness, one on modality and theism, one on mysticism and Austin's critique of sense data (they are actually related) in various stages of being written). The trick is to keep getting things back out when they get rejected. If the rewrites take too much time then everything else will be slowed down. But that's just the way it is.

During all this I'm going to keep chipping away at Heidegger.

Spring of 2010 I'll teach a class on Lee Braver, Graham Priest, and Quentin Meillassoux. In Fall of 2010 I'll teach one on John McDowell (using the material from the previous class to critique analytic neo-Hegelianism), and in Spring of 2011 I'll teach one on Speculative Realism (as an alternative to neo-Hegelianism). Maybe I'll get another book ouf of these three classes. I have lots of ideas for after the D & D anthology (e.g. on: (1) paradoxes of totality and speculative realism, (2) against neo-Kantian religious epistemologies, (3) for a Harmanesque Heideggerian philosophy of language), but I'll just see what is most pressing after that's done.

nice weekend

My parents were in town this weekend, and everybody had an absolute blast.

Here Thomas is staring sagely into the future.

After playing with the chalk a bit he spent thirty minutes meticulously walking across the yard, removing one leaf from a bush, walking back across the yard, handing my dad the leaf, and then repeating the process.

Church was nice. During the part at the beginning where everybody shares joys and griefs Dad stood up and told everybody that Emily was pregnant. One of the great things about grandparents is how excited they are about their grand-kids.

We're nervous about being able to get someone to come over and stay with Thomas while Emily gives birth in late December or early January (in the past this would not have been an issue, because the Dad would just stay with the other kids; now you're a "partner" and are there for the birth; it's just part of your job). One of the really good things about a church is that even in a highly mobile society where you may live apart from other family members, you have a community to draw on to help you deal with issues like that.

Updated list of crap I hope to accomplish this summer

I'm going to keep reposting this as I get things done.

1. Proofread chapters of a friend's book [finished on 5/14/09].
2. Review an article for Australasian [finished on 5/24/09].
3. With Jason Megill, resubmit paper on Church's Thesis [working on now; it only needs minimal tweaking so should be out in a week].
4. Write a sample article for a proposed Dungeons & Dragons and Philosophy book (on the alignment system).
5. With Mark Silcox, craft and submit proposal for D & D and Philosophy book.
6. With Jeff Roland write a paper on epistemic modality and informative conditionals (submit a truncated version to the Alabama Philosophical Society Conference). [I'm insanely hoping to get 4-6 done by July 15th.]
7. With Mark Silcox, rewrite and resubmit paper on ontological versus epistemic emergence. [Mark is taking the lead on this; at this point I'll just correct for typos and run on sentences.]
8. (Possibly with Salvatore Florio) write a paper on applying Williamson's thoughts on Fitch's Proof to Mavrodes' solution to the paradox of the stone (and submit a version to some other conference). Thinking over this will give me a chance to read Graham Priest's Beyond the Limit's of Thought and Jonathon Kvanvig's book on Fitch's paradox much more closely than I have [If I can get 4-6 done by July 15th I can get this done by August 24th].
9. Starting on June 3d weeks, inaugurate local pragmatics/semantics/philosophy of language reading group with close study of Kadmon's Formal Pragmatics.
10. Starting June 15th help run an on-line reading group on Lee Braver's A Thing of this World at Perverse Egalitarianism.
11. Starting July 1st help run an on-line reading group at the Philosophy of Video Games blog.

It's optimistic to think I'll get all that done by the end of summer. Even more optimistic but as far as writing in Fall and Spring I'd like to get the following done in probably this order.

1. Write a book review of Lee Braver's A Thing of this World.
2. Resubmit with Mark Silcox a paper on Searle's APA presidential address about computation.
3. With Jeff Roland write a paper on Putnam's model theoretic argument (taking into account Stich's Deconstructing the Mind and Lewis' 1984 Australasian piece).
4. Write a paper using Okrent's new book on animal cognition to contrast the early Heidegger and Brandom's account of content (some earlier posts showed how this will go, this will also give me a chance to read Okrent's first Heidegger book and Mark Lance and Beka Kukla's pragmatics book).
5. Write another paper on dialetheism, getting up to date on classical recapture (this will give me a chance to go through Beall's new edited anthology as well as Priest's original book).
6. Write another paper on Fitch's paradox, but this one about it in the context of different kinds of idealism.

Those five will almost certainly bleed into next summer (I've also got two papers on vagueness and one on modality and theism in various stages of being written). The trick is to keep getting things back out when they get rejected. If the rewrites take too much time then everything else will be slowed down. But's that just the way it is.

During all this I'm going to keep chipping away at Heidegger. The next couple of years I hope to be able to teach a couple of classes on the Speculative Realists (writing something on them and on the problem of the scheme/content distinction as set out by Michael Friedman), on MacDowell, on Brandom, and on different conceptions of faith in the Christian tradition (I'd like to write a book tying the literature around eliminativism about belief and religious faith after the D & D book; but then again I'd also like to write a satirical self-help book called Unleashing the Stalin Within: Lessons in Life, Love, and Leadership from the Man who Defeated Hitler, a serious book called  Martin Heidegger: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, as well as a fantasy novel based on the recent phase of our D & D campaign and two other works of magical realism, one that involves stopping demonic summoning in a K-Mart and another that involves amnesia in Mexico, so take my book plans with a grain of salt; this being said I did manage to (co)-write a book about video games, so who knows?) and use all of that to think more clearly about the fate of transcendental idealism. I'm also hoping that all the Fitch stuff leads into a bigger project on modality.

Crap I hope to accomplish this summer

Lot's of family members and friends will tell me "it must be nice to have summers off." I don't get too steamed, because it is nice to have more control over your time. However, no summer is "off." Here's what I plan on getting done this summer.

1. Proofread chapters of a friend's book. [Finished on 5/14/09.]
2. Review an article for Australasian.
3. With Jason Megill, resubmit paper on Church's Thesis.
4. With Jeff Roland write a paper on epistemic modality and informative conditionals (submit a truncated version to the Alabama Philosophical Society Conference).
5. (Possibly with Salvatore Florio) write a paper on applying Williamson's thoughts on Fitch's Proof to Mavrodes' solution to the paradox of the stone (and submit a version to some other conference).
6. Write a sample article for a proposed D & D and Philosophy book (on the alignment system).
7. With Mark Silcox, craft and submit proposal for D & D and Philosophy book.
8. Write a book review of Lee Braver's A Thing of this World.
9. Starting in three weeks, inaugurate local pragmatics/semantics/philosophy of language reading group with close study of Kadmon's Formal Pragmatics.
10. Starting June 15th help run an on-line reading group on Lee Braver's A Thing of this World at Perverse Egalitarianism.
11. Starting July 1st help run an on-line reading group at the Philosophy of Video Games blog.

Next Fall I want to first re-read the relevant early Heidegger through Being and Time with Graham Harman and Theodore Kisiel's fantastic works as my guide. Then I want read Braver's book on late Heidegger as a reading intro to the late essays. I want to finally revise and resubmit an article of me and Mark's that we should have done last year. I want to write another paper with Roland. Both of these papers involve Reason, Truth, and History era Putnam. Then I'd like to spend a year further boning up on Heidegger as Mark and I edit the anthology (assuming someone bites). Hopefully I can follow up my weird ideas about what anti-Cartesianism properly comes to in the philosophy of languge, and how Heidegger is helpful here, with a cool book. If not I'll get at least a couple of cool articles.

in transit

Well, we're almost completely moved in to the new house, which is pretty fantastic. I can bicycle safely to campus, yoga, church, and a local cafe and park. Across the street in one direction is a Catholic school so architecturally pleasing that you will want to convert. Our immediate neighbors in all directions are elderly. I actually have a back yard and an office (not unlike that of Ward Cleaver's) for the first time in my life. And if you think that doesn't excite me, then you don't know Cogburn men.

taking stock ofyear

Stuff I accomplished in my thirty-seventh year-

(1) Helped take care of Thomas (who is one year old today),
(2) Wrote a book (coming out in December with Routledge) with Mark Silcox,
(3) Started doing Yoga,
(4) Started going to a liberal (social gospel big, God often referred to as "she," gay people considered human beings, and prominent sign out front saying "torture is wrong") Presbyterian church,
(5) Lost forty pounds.
(6) Quite drinking and cut way down on refined sugars and prepackaged foods (I guess that rare meat is my last vice of this sort now),
(7) Proofread Emily's fiction,
(8) Helped teach Emily bass guitar.

Stuff I did not accomplish in my thirty-seventh year (and will work on with renewed diligence in the coming year)-

(1) Failed to finish and submit several co-written articles (child, book, and gall bladder removal conspired against me),
(2) Failed to transcend self-defeating moral outrage and severe irritability at hypocrisy, insensitivity, and failure to look out for the less powerful (I don't want to start approving of these things, I just want to stop being made ill by them),
(3) Failed to transcend hypersensitivity to certain sounds, unfortunately many of those my too close neighbors make, and to certain distracting movements (leg bouncing, gum chewing) that people who can't sit still fall into.
(4) Failed to record music.

I'm confident that (1) and (4) will be taken care of, and that (2) will continue to improve with yoga.

Part of (3) is just physiological, I have really bad tinnitus in my right ear and loud bass exacerbates it to the point of pain. And the inability to tune things out is probably part physiological and part psychological. Yoga/meditation is helping already, but for the sounds we're actually also going to replace the windows on one side of our house in the next month.