Today I attended my last lecture as an undergrad. If I'm lucky, I'll audit a million classes in the Fall. (There didn't seem to be a sufficiently compelling reason to stick around and pay tuition.) There's the remote possibility of going to grad school (toward which end I have collected zero letters of recommendation). But, basically, the fun part of my existence as a student ended today. Where I am now, I can think of lots of ways to have improved on my strategies as a student. So at least I learned that much.
It occurred to me, though, as I walked away from class for the last time, that I have pretty sweet bookends for my two years at Berkeley. The first class I attended there was my Theory of Knowledge class, taught by Barry Stroud--probably the best all-around philosopher at Berkeley. And the final lecture was Barry Stroud presenting a paper he contributed to an upcoming anthology of commentary on Wittgenstein. You could have worse bookends as a philosophy student at Berkeley. In fact, I'd say I'm willing to claim that you would have to do worse, if you had it any different as a philosophy student at Berkeley.
Tomorrow morning will be the last tutoring engagement at San Quentin. It will quite possibly be the last time I set foot in that prison. Or maybe not--we'll be working on expanding the program to other programs and schools. Maybe I'll have reason to go back there, who knows. A large chunk of my identity from the last few years is disintegrating before my very eyes.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
No more teaching in prison
Last prison class was tonight. I go to tutor in the prison Friday morning for the last time. Then office hours. A week later, our end-of-semester party. Then, apart from working to expand the program to other schools and finishing the facilitator handbook--apart from all that extra-extra-curricular stuff--it's over.
I can hardly believe it. I have been ready to be done for quite some time now. But of course it's a bit sad and surreal.
I can hardly believe it. I have been ready to be done for quite some time now. But of course it's a bit sad and surreal.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
School is impossible
3 final papers due in what feels like 5 seconds. All of which require generation of topic. I spent the weekend poring over what I thought would be the logic paper topic, and today decided that it was a dead-end. But starting tomorrow, I must turn in topics for all the papers.
Metaphysics will be something about the relationship between composition and fundamentality. I am pro-universal composition (for any two non-overlapping objects, there's a further object composed of them). I am anti-fundamentalist (there is no "bottom level" of matter; it is infinitely divisible). I will write something about the relationship between these views, or rather which commitments are compatible with which, or something like that.
Logic will probably be something about natural language conditional statements. But I just threw out the argument I was trying to develop over the weekend--I think I can only make a very boring claim, compared to what I was aiming for. Maybe there's a way to switch teams and make a paper out of the failure. Or maybe I can clear up some of my half-formed thoughts about what kinds of natural language statements can't be translated into first-order logic (e.g., "There are some cowboys each of whom shot one of the others in the right foot").
Wittgenstein--who in the hell knows. Perhaps something about rule-following, and the purported (but plausible) impossibility of explaining a sign with another sign, etc. Or what that has to do with the possibility of a language being developed in the first place.
Some shit like that. In short, it will be nifty once graduation has happened.
Metaphysics will be something about the relationship between composition and fundamentality. I am pro-universal composition (for any two non-overlapping objects, there's a further object composed of them). I am anti-fundamentalist (there is no "bottom level" of matter; it is infinitely divisible). I will write something about the relationship between these views, or rather which commitments are compatible with which, or something like that.
Logic will probably be something about natural language conditional statements. But I just threw out the argument I was trying to develop over the weekend--I think I can only make a very boring claim, compared to what I was aiming for. Maybe there's a way to switch teams and make a paper out of the failure. Or maybe I can clear up some of my half-formed thoughts about what kinds of natural language statements can't be translated into first-order logic (e.g., "There are some cowboys each of whom shot one of the others in the right foot").
Wittgenstein--who in the hell knows. Perhaps something about rule-following, and the purported (but plausible) impossibility of explaining a sign with another sign, etc. Or what that has to do with the possibility of a language being developed in the first place.
Some shit like that. In short, it will be nifty once graduation has happened.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The recently streamed
Blogs. One more thing to fall behind on?
Watched the movie Agora the other night. Better than its description had made it sound, but of course a bit loose with filling in the imagined events of history. Still, always nice to watch someone's take on the darkest moment in human history, and nice to see someone pin the blame on the spread of Christianity. Not an American movie. But of course really, given the myriad accounts of its destruction, the Library was probably whittled down in a series of separate events. But of course from our perspective, there once was a Library and now it's gone, and because of that our view into the past ends a lot sooner (how much sooner? I am tempted to suppose that we'd have accounts stretching a couple of millennia further back) than it would had its works survived.
Have also been watching the occasional episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, which is a great way to feel nostalgic for a time when such a show stood a chance of being put onto television. Surely I saw some of that show when it originally came on? But I am not having any strong memory stirrings as I watch it. Anyway, although its contents are pretty well-known to a nerd like me, the show was quite well put-together, and even if you have a respectably strong grasp on, say, evolution or astronomy, it's nice to hear someone like Sagan talk about it.
Just a few weeks before my final papers are turned in. Two and a half, I guess. I am almost ready to get started writing them. It is a dreadful prospect.
Friday, April 15, 2011
3D Hackerspace
Last night, checked out a local hackerspace that had advertised itself on reddit. Something like 5 blocks away, cool! Brought my craftier friend along. Nice enough bunch of guys; the exact group you expect to find at a Maker Faire table (they will in fact be at one). Was glad to see that their membership dues are cut in half for the unemployed. Still, no real chance to get involved in that stuff until school's out. But tempting to go check out their mini-wood shop, look askance at their MIG welder, and maybe check out their occasional electronics workshop. Anyway, call it one more cool thing about the neighborhood.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Understanding outstandingly bad works of fiction
I occasionally have cause to wish that I didn't feel compelled to finish most every story that I start, regardless of its quality. Either the story is good, so I finish it for plain enjoyment, or it's bad, so I finish it so I can feel smug and superior (I suppose). Only in a handful of cases do I chuck the book across the room, or peel my lazy ass off the couch, or whatever--those times when I can't even get that sort of negative pleasure from absorbing the fruit of someone's creative labor.
Unfortunately, my threshold is such that I've been subjected to S. King's The Stand three times now, enjoying none of them. Back when I was a middle-schooler or whatever, I was rather devoted to the guy. I would have said that his appeal stemmed from the sympathy he could elicit for the characters, or something like that. I knew that lots of his fans were big into The Stand, which was a big, fat book. (I don't know how I knew that, or anything, in the days before the Internet.) Eventually I got around to it and, well, it fizzled around a third of the way through. I don't really remember that well what I didn't like about it, I just remember not really seeing what the fuss was about. It was no The Shining or Skeleton Crew, say.
Not much later, a friend liberated a copy of the new, extended version of the book. He'd sped read it without much interest, but knew I liked the guy, so he passed it on to me. Perhaps the added 700 or however many pages would add whatever the story needed? I read it again and still: meh.
So who knows why I started the 90's mini-series the other night, when I saw it available on Netflix streaming. I probably guessed it would be so bad I'd switch it off within 5 minutes. Maybe my schadenfreude tank was getting low. Well, I didn't remember enough of the original story to compare them, but it certainly was shorter this way. That's probably the best thing I can say about it.
At least I can now remember better what was so unsatisfying about the story. I would probably describe myself as agnostic in the days I first read it. I had a pretty deep opposition to religion, but big mystical matters in general were a bit more of an open question. And maybe some of the incessant, insipid chatter about GOD'S WILL wasn't quite as noticeable if spread over 1200 pages. But the tedious manichaean sorting of all people into two camps, and the complete absence of consideration of those parts of the planet outside the US, would have been equally pervasive.
That story has claimed enough of my time, I suppose. I just find it a little bit funny that I gave it another 6 hours of my life these past few days.
A friend of mine told me an anecdote he'd read somewhere about something that happened during the production of Kubrick's The Shining adaptation. (I remember I didn't much care for that movie, seeing it fresh off of reading the book. But now I love Kubrick to death and have written King off, so I suspect I would like it more now.) Creative differences between K&K had led to a fairly strained production, I guess.
CUT TO: INT, NIGHT. A phone is RINGING. An ALARM CLOCK-RADIO reads 3:17. A tousle-haired STEPHEN KING picks up the phone and switches on the LIGHT.
KING. Hello?
INTERCUT WITH: INT, NIGHT. VERY CLOSE on a mouth surrounded by dark stubble. A glass filled with ice and an amber liquid is raised to the mouth, which drinks. PULL BACK to reveal STANLEY KUBRICK.
KUBRICK. This is Kubrick.
KING. What the... it's three o'clock in the morning!
KUBRICK. Listen. Do you believe in God?
KING. What? Is this some kind of joke?
KUBRICK. Well?
KING. I don't know, who can say...?
KUBRICK. Just yes or no. Do you believe in God?
KING. Er, I don't know... er... I guess so*.
KUBRICK. Oh.
KUBRICK hangs up.
ROLL CREDITS.
* "Ayuh"
Unfortunately, my threshold is such that I've been subjected to S. King's The Stand three times now, enjoying none of them. Back when I was a middle-schooler or whatever, I was rather devoted to the guy. I would have said that his appeal stemmed from the sympathy he could elicit for the characters, or something like that. I knew that lots of his fans were big into The Stand, which was a big, fat book. (I don't know how I knew that, or anything, in the days before the Internet.) Eventually I got around to it and, well, it fizzled around a third of the way through. I don't really remember that well what I didn't like about it, I just remember not really seeing what the fuss was about. It was no The Shining or Skeleton Crew, say.
Not much later, a friend liberated a copy of the new, extended version of the book. He'd sped read it without much interest, but knew I liked the guy, so he passed it on to me. Perhaps the added 700 or however many pages would add whatever the story needed? I read it again and still: meh.
So who knows why I started the 90's mini-series the other night, when I saw it available on Netflix streaming. I probably guessed it would be so bad I'd switch it off within 5 minutes. Maybe my schadenfreude tank was getting low. Well, I didn't remember enough of the original story to compare them, but it certainly was shorter this way. That's probably the best thing I can say about it.
At least I can now remember better what was so unsatisfying about the story. I would probably describe myself as agnostic in the days I first read it. I had a pretty deep opposition to religion, but big mystical matters in general were a bit more of an open question. And maybe some of the incessant, insipid chatter about GOD'S WILL wasn't quite as noticeable if spread over 1200 pages. But the tedious manichaean sorting of all people into two camps, and the complete absence of consideration of those parts of the planet outside the US, would have been equally pervasive.
That story has claimed enough of my time, I suppose. I just find it a little bit funny that I gave it another 6 hours of my life these past few days.
A friend of mine told me an anecdote he'd read somewhere about something that happened during the production of Kubrick's The Shining adaptation. (I remember I didn't much care for that movie, seeing it fresh off of reading the book. But now I love Kubrick to death and have written King off, so I suspect I would like it more now.) Creative differences between K&K had led to a fairly strained production, I guess.
CUT TO: INT, NIGHT. A phone is RINGING. An ALARM CLOCK-RADIO reads 3:17. A tousle-haired STEPHEN KING picks up the phone and switches on the LIGHT.
KING. Hello?
INTERCUT WITH: INT, NIGHT. VERY CLOSE on a mouth surrounded by dark stubble. A glass filled with ice and an amber liquid is raised to the mouth, which drinks. PULL BACK to reveal STANLEY KUBRICK.
KUBRICK. This is Kubrick.
KING. What the... it's three o'clock in the morning!
KUBRICK. Listen. Do you believe in God?
KING. What? Is this some kind of joke?
KUBRICK. Well?
KING. I don't know, who can say...?
KUBRICK. Just yes or no. Do you believe in God?
KING. Er, I don't know... er... I guess so*.
KUBRICK. Oh.
KUBRICK hangs up.
ROLL CREDITS.
* "Ayuh"
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Old-ass TV
We watched the final episode of "The Riches" tonight. Not the best show, and no tragedy that it was canceled. But still a courageous show--maybe none other has quite reached the squirmy, cringy level of "fuck! abort mission! abort!" tension that it did. Unfortunately, some of that tension came at the expense of its main characters' rationality ("I will now lie and put us all in unreasonable danger in order to keep things exciting"), but I suppose I don't know how stupidly I might act if someone dangled a $13M purse in front of me, either. However, it is a bit unusual (paragraphically worthily so) to see a show dropped mid-stream like that, 7 episodes into its 2nd season. Maybe that's how they still do it in network world, with no warning. "Fuck this, we're going with reruns of 'Wizards of Waverly Place' or whatever it is that kids watch these days."
(Aside: Granted, there is no such thing as good taste in television programs. But you would be apalled by the crap that my nieces watch. I have racked up a few millennia in purgatory just learning what "Wizards of Waverly Place" refers to. If you, fortunate soul, feel out of the loop right now, stay there. I have never been less ironic.)
But that's not old-ass tv. What I was thinking of when I titled this post, which I now raise as a palliative for the images I've conjured to my own mind, is the 1950-or-so Burns & Allen show, of which I watched my second episode tonight. I'm slightly fascinated by first-generation television, the stuff that is still tightly knit with radio and vaudeville entertainment. It's not great programming by today's standards, and I have no idea what I would have thought of it had I been born 50 years earlier. Nothing remotely like that exists now, is my point. I'm thinking of these facets:
That's what occurs to me worth mentioning, anyway.
We also watched some of the 6th season of "Weeds." Agreed that "Riches" might have done better to follow this show's willingness to move the characters around every season or two, half a step ahead of the firestorm. There really wasn't that much to plumb in the plot they'd opened up in the first season of "The Riches," no need to stay locked in to the set of characters that they had. Or maybe if that daughter had taken off her clothes as often as MLP does, we'd have a few more seasons left to go. Oh right, network TV.
(Aside: Granted, there is no such thing as good taste in television programs. But you would be apalled by the crap that my nieces watch. I have racked up a few millennia in purgatory just learning what "Wizards of Waverly Place" refers to. If you, fortunate soul, feel out of the loop right now, stay there. I have never been less ironic.)
But that's not old-ass tv. What I was thinking of when I titled this post, which I now raise as a palliative for the images I've conjured to my own mind, is the 1950-or-so Burns & Allen show, of which I watched my second episode tonight. I'm slightly fascinated by first-generation television, the stuff that is still tightly knit with radio and vaudeville entertainment. It's not great programming by today's standards, and I have no idea what I would have thought of it had I been born 50 years earlier. Nothing remotely like that exists now, is my point. I'm thinking of these facets:
- a stage set which relies on an audience's imagination, which interposes an unseeable, slightly implausible hallway between front door and living room, an invisible fourth wall into the living room which the narrator is free to cross whenever no other character is watching
- a narrator who monologizes about the action, who hops through that imaginary wall to come answer the door, play straight man to some joke, and then cross back from the porch to his downstage perch
- the smallness, almost triteness, of the jokes, which really I just take as an interesting window onto past culture (like the in-script advertising, but a little more general than a mere indication of past television business models)
That's what occurs to me worth mentioning, anyway.
We also watched some of the 6th season of "Weeds." Agreed that "Riches" might have done better to follow this show's willingness to move the characters around every season or two, half a step ahead of the firestorm. There really wasn't that much to plumb in the plot they'd opened up in the first season of "The Riches," no need to stay locked in to the set of characters that they had. Or maybe if that daughter had taken off her clothes as often as MLP does, we'd have a few more seasons left to go. Oh right, network TV.
Friday, April 8, 2011
A droid of principle
I'm beginning work on a few side pages. Almost done with the preliminary version of one of them, but it's time to retire for the evening. Right now I'm trying to take a survey of what I take to be the principles which determine the way in which everyone ought to act. I also would like to start canvassing my commitments (things, unlike principles, that do not support themselves but which must be argued for). And along those lines, breaking down the various shades of "isms" that I come across could be nice, too. Most of which has to live on the back burner 'til I'm outta school!
Anyway, I am sleepy and hanging up the hat on a half-built peg for now. I hope I haven't said anything completely retarded on those pages. I certainly ... I certainly ... what was I going to say? Who knows. It's time I hung up my hat.
Anyway, I am sleepy and hanging up the hat on a half-built peg for now. I hope I haven't said anything completely retarded on those pages. I certainly ... I certainly ... what was I going to say? Who knows. It's time I hung up my hat.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Apparently I'm rambling about prison tonight
I don't really have anything to say, but I feel like I have to say my little nothings every so often in order to prevent myself from saying nothing whatsoever. Let's see now.
Li'l Miz and I cranked thru a whole disc of Dexter tonight. Second disc of season 4. I enjoy the show. Somewhere in the middle of the marathon, I wondered, why do I watch this? Do I relate to a serial killer? Of course not. But a guy who would rather cordon off a whole section of himself... ah, I begin to see. That and the appreciable acting talent on display, I suppose.
And of course sometimes I can feel the hatred of people. Tonight in prison class we had Jeanne Woodford as our guest. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Fighting to kill the death penalty in California, former warden of San Quentin (who originally approved our program, I might mention), former undersecretary of corrections in California. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Of course our class was generally quite interested and attentive. But I look around. I look to see who's tuned out, who doesn't look amazed that we roped this particular fish... and I hate them. Not quite to serial killer level, happy to report.
Speaking of our program, we just found out that we won the--I won't remember the actual name--Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Community Service, or some shit like that. I guess I'd better learn the name or I won't be able to self-aggrandize with it much over the years. Of course, we've applied for others too. I accept partial credit for helping keep the trash compactor walls apart, but I really have to take my hat off to my partners for doing the groundwork that keeps our program's lights on--certain tasks which, if left to me, would result in the untimely termination of the program or a dearth of amazing guest speakers. Damn if I don't have rock stars for partners. I really don't do squat, once the first few weeks (the main shit storm of the semester) are over.
Last night went down to bro-ville with prison program homegirl alpha to meet folks from Project Noise, who are working on raising awareness about various oft-ignored social issues. They are working on a documentary called Prisonocracy. Gonna hook them up with Ms. Woodford and a few other rock star stud contacts we've got.
Seems like a possibility that our expansion plans for the program (into other prisons and schools) will require some meetings in Sacramento with whatever undersecretaries. That's fine, but it seems those meetings (or the follow-up meetings with the various wardens of CA) would go best with various data that we just don't have about how wonderful (i.e., effective) our programs are. Anecdotal evidence? Scads available. But we're too busy just keeping the lights on to collect actual statistics.
That's what's happening. As soon as the semester is over, and we've accepted our awards and diplomas, I've got to finish this goddamn handbook we're writing for the program. Thanks to the miracles of LaTeX, it's up to 30 or so pages already, but there is so much more content to add. I guess I think it'll be around 50 pages long before I hand it off. Then there will still be flesh to press in Sacramento and whatever prison we expand to first. Our goal is basically to get into one more prison + school, and hope the momentum carries on through there. Folsom makes sense, since (a) it's the other Johnny Cash prison, and (b) it's next door to Sacramento. One of the Salinas area prisons would also make sense.
I really like and respect a lot of people I've met at Berkeley (almost all of whom are from my philosophy classes, since that's about all I've done there). But my die-hard homies, who I want to have contact with to the grave, all came from the prison program. Fuck yeah.
Li'l Miz and I cranked thru a whole disc of Dexter tonight. Second disc of season 4. I enjoy the show. Somewhere in the middle of the marathon, I wondered, why do I watch this? Do I relate to a serial killer? Of course not. But a guy who would rather cordon off a whole section of himself... ah, I begin to see. That and the appreciable acting talent on display, I suppose.
And of course sometimes I can feel the hatred of people. Tonight in prison class we had Jeanne Woodford as our guest. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Fighting to kill the death penalty in California, former warden of San Quentin (who originally approved our program, I might mention), former undersecretary of corrections in California. Fucking Jeanne Woodford. Of course our class was generally quite interested and attentive. But I look around. I look to see who's tuned out, who doesn't look amazed that we roped this particular fish... and I hate them. Not quite to serial killer level, happy to report.
Speaking of our program, we just found out that we won the--I won't remember the actual name--Chancellor's Award for Outstanding Community Service, or some shit like that. I guess I'd better learn the name or I won't be able to self-aggrandize with it much over the years. Of course, we've applied for others too. I accept partial credit for helping keep the trash compactor walls apart, but I really have to take my hat off to my partners for doing the groundwork that keeps our program's lights on--certain tasks which, if left to me, would result in the untimely termination of the program or a dearth of amazing guest speakers. Damn if I don't have rock stars for partners. I really don't do squat, once the first few weeks (the main shit storm of the semester) are over.
Last night went down to bro-ville with prison program homegirl alpha to meet folks from Project Noise, who are working on raising awareness about various oft-ignored social issues. They are working on a documentary called Prisonocracy. Gonna hook them up with Ms. Woodford and a few other rock star stud contacts we've got.
Seems like a possibility that our expansion plans for the program (into other prisons and schools) will require some meetings in Sacramento with whatever undersecretaries. That's fine, but it seems those meetings (or the follow-up meetings with the various wardens of CA) would go best with various data that we just don't have about how wonderful (i.e., effective) our programs are. Anecdotal evidence? Scads available. But we're too busy just keeping the lights on to collect actual statistics.
That's what's happening. As soon as the semester is over, and we've accepted our awards and diplomas, I've got to finish this goddamn handbook we're writing for the program. Thanks to the miracles of LaTeX, it's up to 30 or so pages already, but there is so much more content to add. I guess I think it'll be around 50 pages long before I hand it off. Then there will still be flesh to press in Sacramento and whatever prison we expand to first. Our goal is basically to get into one more prison + school, and hope the momentum carries on through there. Folsom makes sense, since (a) it's the other Johnny Cash prison, and (b) it's next door to Sacramento. One of the Salinas area prisons would also make sense.
I really like and respect a lot of people I've met at Berkeley (almost all of whom are from my philosophy classes, since that's about all I've done there). But my die-hard homies, who I want to have contact with to the grave, all came from the prison program. Fuck yeah.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Whining I recommend you ignore
About a month until I am a college graduate, and I really, really wish it were over. The well has run dry, folks. 10-page Wittgenstein paper? Completely impossible. 7-page logic paper? No idea what to write about. 10-page Metaphysics paper? Hopefully I can stumble through that. Plus a 2-page Wittgenstein paper and a logic problem set due tomorrow, more problem sets and another short paper to come. I am over it, folks.
Maybe it just seems bad because I seem to be struggling against a cold. And I was rather hung over yesterday. Boy... Friday night, we prison class folks put on a pot-luck. One of the students in the class volunteered his place--a 60-person co-op up on the hill above campus. Besides us facilitators and our host, two other students showed up. That means I didn't share my wine with a crowd and only ate one bowl of pasta salad. Not too much later, after perhaps the worst couple of games of pool I've ever played (the one ball I sunk belonged to the other team), there I am atop a precarious rooftop with a great view across the bay...
Another co-op resident, whom I dimly recognized from some philosophy class or another, comes out with a friend of his and a wee water pipe. I accept it, they hang out for a minutes and have a couple of the cookies I baked, and then they take off. A couple of minutes later, I notice I have got the shingles in a death grip, and everything feels wrong--what was in that stuff? Afraid I am going to lose my shit and either get dizzy or nauseated on a rooftop, I beat a hasty retreat and walk about 7,000 miles down the hill to the downtown BART. At this point I am convinced that I just unwittingly smoked something very... deluxe. Good thing I only had to ride one stop, because the deceleration into my destination undoes every bit of intestinal fortitude that I have been mustering for the past hour. I paint the tracks on both side of the platform a royal purple, stagger the rest of the way home, and collapse.
I think it was just a case of having had more wine than I'd realized. Don't try this at home, especially not on the roof of your home.
Or maybe the problem is that I recently 'discovered' (that is, allowed myself to try) Minecraft. No more Minecraft until the work for tomorrow is done! Not one little delve, no. And very minimal interaction over the coming month, YOU HEAR ME, ME?
Aaaahhhhhh jeez. Enough. Philosophical Investigations §258 is calling me, and I just can't ignore it any longer.
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