First Day of School!

[ellaguru]

And that's the bit I feel a little guilty about, because it turns out that after 5 years of philosophy grad school you can pretty much beat up on any argument (that's what they put Socrates to death for, after all)

You're not joking. You might be glad to hear that in the antipodes this (Doing philosophy can be very annoying! They killed Socrates for asking questions like this!) is also a taken as a truism.

Oh, it's a truism the whole world over. But most of the time I use my powers for good, though. Or at least for neutral.

[ellaguru]

I guess I seem to have gotten through the first term of this little thing. Everything completed except doing my 2 1/2 minutes of a 10 minute group presentation on an already-complete project dohickey.

[Bernard]

give a philosophy student a glass of limeade
and he'll say Is this a glass of limeade
and then he'll say Why is this a glass of limeade
and after a while he'll die of thirst

[Antero]

Federal Jursidiction test tomorrow!

I expect that it will be an absolute beast!

[Ignatius]

I'm currently studying for a nasty probability exam tomorrow, and then I have a Data Mining (ie fun with matlab) final on Thursday. As well as an assignment along the lines of 'plug in some data this way/write a generalized function automating what you just did.' It's kinda fun, but moreso when you're not worried about a semester's worth of material in addition. And since my girlfriend  took matlab away with her computer when she moved out. I hope that I can find a secret copy to run on this here video game machine.

Really though, I can't believe how quickly this CS minor thing went from "implement own version of java code for that thing we talked about in class" to studying and thinking about reasonably interesting problems on your own.

[ellaguru]

One of my courses this term - or half this term, it's only a six week workshop - is to play Second Life. I guess our task (us being our six week workshop + the following six week workshop) is to study and make some sort of recommendation to our department with regard to establishing a 'Toronto iSchool' presence in Second Life. I intend to refer to this class as "playing video games".

[Good Intentions]

Oh, you're at Toronto? I applied to your graduate programme. Tell Thomas Hurka it would make me happy to work with him.

Also, people still do Second Life?

[andronicus]

Second Life is just the right combination of retarded, overhyped, and fundamentally non-functional for the academic world to jizz its pants over.

[ellaguru]

Yeah, Second Life strikes me as pretty dumb, although that's on the basis of no research at all.

And, Marinus, while, yes, I am at U of T, I have wised up and no longer have anything to do with Philosophy departments, so I can't help you, except of course to show you where all the good bars are if you end up coming here.

[Good Intentions]

And I had such a nice pun going as well. But I'll certainly take you up on the bars suggestion if I end up going.

I can't imagine what it would take to push me off this philosophy course (I can't sleep tonight, and I finally gave up and got up after spending two hours staring at the ceiling with arguments running through my head), but perhaps I only say that without having undergone 5+ years of graduate study.

Maybe I'm losing sleep at the dismal job prospects that lie ahead of me. It wouldn't be the first time.

[ellaguru]

Well maybe you have a calling or whatever.

As for me, my problem with philosophy as that I really have no interest in convincing other people of anything. Which, it turns out, is quite a lot of the job.

[hannah]

Hey, cheer up, Marinus, a philosopher is one of the best gigs out there, right after dental hygienist: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/st_BESTJOBS2010_20100105.html

[Good Intentions]

I've seen that, yeah. The historians still rank higher, the bastards!

'Nice work if you can get it' is how I think of the profession I'm in. Right now people are paying me quite well for it, I hope that becomes a habit.

[andronicus]

Historians at 5, bitches.

xpost

[hannah]

In other depressing news my MA exams are on Thur and Fri — only one and a half books left to read, a few articles to review, and I'm set! Jameson, I'm ready to rumble. (Fredric, that is. Liquidish Jamesons will have to wait until Friday, when I'm doing a combined post-MA-exam/belated-birthday bash shindig shitshow, AKA falling asleep at 9 PM with a guinea pig pooping on me.)

[Bernard]

He's going to be at UCLA next term, along with Zizek and god knows which other beard-spitters. I'm bummed I'll miss it.

[andronicus]

Before class started today, this guy is sitting right up front, talking, probably trying to impress this girl, telling her about how he got a 79 on his term paper last semester and bragging about how 10 out of his 12 pages he got from Wikipedia (not sure if he was referring to out-and-out plagiarism or just summarization and bullshitting a source, which is still plagiarism, but not as easy to nail down).

All within earshot of me.  I am clearly, very clearly, the instructor.  What kind of person does that?  I mean, obviously everything this dude writes I'm going to go over with a fine-toothed comb, put it through the magic plagiarism detector and compare the relevant wikipedia entries closely, not even because I have have a vendetta or am an anti-plagiarism fanatic, it's just this guy is a dumbass and I feel like cosmic justice needs me to give him a helping hand.

Class went A++ well though, and everyone except this douche seems to be enthusiastic and academically ambitious.  Two guys stayed after class to shoot the shit with me about the problems of faith claims in historical method.

[elpollodiablo]

In other depressing news my MA exams are on Thur and Fri — only one and a half books left to read, a few articles to review, and I'm set! Jameson, I'm ready to rumble. (Fredric, that is. Liquidish Jamesons will have to wait until Friday, when I'm doing a combined post-MA-exam/belated-birthday bash shindig shitshow, AKA falling asleep at 9 PM with a guinea pig pooping on me.)

I relied pretty heavily on Jameson for my thesis, and my thesis adviser was an old protege of his.

[Greg Nog]

All within earshot of me.  I am clearly, very clearly, the instructor.  What kind of person does that?  I mean, obviously everything this dude writes I'm going to go over with a fine-toothed comb, put it through the magic plagiarism detector and compare the relevant wikipedia entries closely, not even because I have have a vendetta or am an anti-plagiarism fanatic, it's just this guy is a dumbass and I feel like cosmic justice needs me to give him a helping hand.

Please continue to update us on this front!

[Bernard]

He can't tell you're the instructor if he can't look it up on Wikipedia.

[auto-da-fey]

He's going to be at UCLA next term, along with Zizek and god knows which other beard-spitters. I'm bummed I'll miss it.

does that mean you won't be near there around early afternoon tomorrow? because I will, but I don't have a phone (I was too dumb to bring my battery charger, and it died today). let me know if you want to hang--I'm in town till Wednesday evening or so.

[auto-da-fey]

oh, and I almost got arrested there today! I was taking digital camera shots of my 16mm porn stuff, and narrowly averted having campus security called on me by producing email from the filmmaker giving me permission to make reproductions. what a relief, I had visions of tasers and sitting in county trying to come up with something more badass than copyright violation.

[Bernard]

Don't fuck around with library materials at UCLA! I'm on a weird schedule and rarely know when 'tomorrow' is. I will email and see if you've left already, but if not, can you come by the Marina area? I'm partially housebound.

[andronicus]

All within earshot of me.  I am clearly, very clearly, the instructor.  What kind of person does that?  I mean, obviously everything this dude writes I'm going to go over with a fine-toothed comb, put it through the magic plagiarism detector and compare the relevant wikipedia entries closely, not even because I have have a vendetta or am an anti-plagiarism fanatic, it's just this guy is a dumbass and I feel like cosmic justice needs me to give him a helping hand.

Please continue to update us on this front!

Mr. Wikipedia didn't show up to class today!  Either he's taking advantage of my basically telling the class I'm never going to take attendance and they can't make me, or I intimidated him enough on Monday that he dropped the class.  Everyone say a prayer for me tonight that it's the latter!

[C of heartbreak]

Man but I really wanted to hear about how his papers were full of weasel-words.