Since leaving Bethel and beginning graduate school I noticed the need for some distraction that could be entertaining, engrossing, and distracting from my work (and not be TV).  Until now, playing my college football video game on PS2 has met this need as it is challenging and requires enough concentration that I cannot be thinking about anything else while I am doing it but does not leave me tired when I am finished.  Several times I talked of quitting playing, but every time Katie stepped in and stopped me saying that I needed something in my life that was not related to academics or some kind of learning.  I generally buy that argument but have recently decided to ditch the PS2 as I have found a suitable replacement: chess on my computer*.  One day this summer I stumbled onto the game on my computer and found that it seems challenging and engrossing enough to replace College Football.  Plus, though it is different enough from philosophy (logic, arguably, aside) and what I read otherwise, I really like the way it seems to sharpen and shape my thinking (after playing for an hour or so I find myself looking at objects around the room and strategizing how to move them if they were various pieces, etc.)  Anyway, I am going to try to play chess instead of football once school starts, but, given that I haven’t had too stressful of time this summer, I will see if chess can a sufficient de-stresser during my school year.

Note: For those concerned, Katie did sign off on the idea of replacing the football game with chess.

*I'm still not that good and have only beat the computer on the third level so far, but can usually win on the second.  I keep thinking about going to the library and getting some chess strategy books, but always think that I probably should not as I might get too into it and thus lose the ability to relax and enjoy myself while playing.

Currently Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning By Kathleen Burk see related

Written Last Night but the Internet Was Down

After finally completing my Wooden Allen challenge (seeing all of his directed movies) over dinner tonight, I suggested to Katie that we go and get a quick drink at Starbucks.  Though she thought that it would be just a normal evening out enjoying our tea and books in the calm of the store, I instead surprised her with the news that I was taking her to the late showing of Julie and Julia (a movie about Julia Child and a modern Julie character who decides to blog about her experience of cooking all the way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the course of a year).  We had planned on seeing it at some point (given Katie’s love of cooking), but we hadn’t really planned precisely when.  Well, she was quite surprised when, at about 9:45 when the store was about to close and I suggested that she get some coffee as we were going have a long night.  I even suggested that we get a treat while we were there as all of the reviewers of the film I had read made special mentions NOT to show up to the movie hungry as it would be a torturous few hours if you did. 

I will not say too much about the movie except that, as far as films in its genre go, I thought it was pretty fair and it wasn’t too painful to watch (though the previews were).  There were two points I especially liked about the film.  First, the movie focused on two married couples who were not (contra-Woody Allen films) on the verge of affairs or divorce and were instead quite satisfied with their respective partners.  Each couple seemed to have a passionate love life as well as a good deal of thoughtful support and respect from their respective partners.   One does not see such things in movies very often.  Second, the film portrays each couple as both childless and quite content with their lives.  Yes, it is possible for a married couple to be happily married without children…at least according to this Hollywood narrative and several real-life couples that I know quite well.  That said, there are at least two scenes in the movie when it is implied that Julia Child wishes to be a mother, but she and her supportive husband seems to be generally satisfied with their lives even without their own bundle of joy.  Again, this is fairly unusual in American cinema and I imagine that it actually makes some people uncomfortable. So be it.     

Currently Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Third Edition By Ernst Breisach see related

While I have definitely enjoyed, in certain ways, my time off this summer, I don’t think I would want to live my life as I have these last few weeks.  I decided early on that I wanted to try to get the most out of this time off as I didn’t know if I would get to have a summer like this again anytime soon and I think   My day usually begins with getting up at 6:30-7ish, eating breakfast, and then taking Katie to work and then returning to the apartment for a workout or bike ride.  After recovering from such, I usually do some blog/news reading and then move onto book reading.  Somewhere in this sequence I get a text from TJ and we decide to go to some coffee shop and read and talk about what we are reading either over a cheap lunch (or leftovers) or (and this last ‘or’ is inclusive) over an extended session at one of coffee house haunts.  We then usually read and talk until five when I pick Katie up from work.  After picking her up I come home and we usually watch some documentary for about a half hour or so (we watch these usually via on-demand Netflix so it keeps track of our progress…we have been on a Ken Burns kick for a while but lately we are watching one on the history of Native Americans since Jamestown called We Shall Remain…pretty shameful behavior by white people if I do say so myself) and then we either stay in the apartment and read or go to some other coffee shop and get tea (so we don’t stay up too late).  More often than not, I use this time to read various parts of a few books and Katie knits (she’s working on a big project for one of her colleagues).  Then we come home, usually talk for a while and do devotions (both Katie and I are night devotion readers) and go to bed (and occasionally blog). 

In a certain way, by my own strange standards, these days are fairly productive (getting fiction, nonfiction, news/blog, and philosophy reading accomplished as well as regularly exercising, spending quality time with my wife, learning new ideas in history by watching documentaries, etc.) they lack the real intellectual rigor and broad community that I suppose I really want in my life.  With regard to the latter, though I could hardly ask for better conversational companions in Katie and TJ, I think it is good for me to talk with a larger group of people that are, in important ways, not like me in the ways that Katie and TJ are like me.  I think I really need (and often want) the diversity of opinion and worldviews that come with talking with a large number of smart people who disagree with me over quite a number of issues.  With regard to the former, though I daily try to read (parenthesis= reading from today) intellectually engaging works in nonfiction (a biography of Cicero and browsing through a history of historiography), fiction (Proust and Susan Sontag’s last novel In America), philosophy (Copelston’s History of Philosophy Vol. 2 and some essays by Daniel Dennett) , and current events (various philosophy and political blogs, The New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and listening/following up on stories at NPR.org) , I know that it is really tough for me to slog through some of the harder readings that I really know that I should if I had the intellectual diligence to do so (such as long and hard philosophy books and articles).  I really need the pressure of a class or (as a teacher) lectures to get to me to really buckle down and do the really hard reading.  Plus, as much as I love reading, I don’t particularly care too much for writing though I know here as well that to intellectually grow like I want to I know that I need to write and not just read.  All of this to say, I think I am doing the right thing by being a college professor as I should get to do a lot of things I already do in my normal day, but get nudged into both a larger community of people and more intellectually rigorous work. 

Currently Cicero: The Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Politician By Anthony Everitt see related

Now, one might think, how do you know so much about this kind of thing if it annoys you so much?  Well, for one, I married a great listener who will often let me prattle on about whatever I like without much complaint.  I don’t really like this about myself and this is probably why it annoys me so much in other people (the reason why I don’t like it about myself will be revealed below).  Two, I see how it hurts my wife when other people act as conversation hogs in their interactions with her as she, as listener in the conversational monologue, doesn’t really feel as if she matters that much to the person who is talking as they just need someone, it doesn’t really matter who as long as they have the properties of not being the person or persons being talked about and can be expected to maintain some degree of discretion, to give their monologue to.  One might say that this is a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of what is going on as it might come about that Katie will need to “dump” on this friend and then she will be the conversation hog.  This one might think, is a natural part of friendship: sharing various grievances with one another.  This might well be right but only, so it seems to me, if the situation is genuinely reciprocal.  Now I realize this is a subjective generalization, but, in my limited, experience, most of the people I have known to be conversation hogs (or observed in prolonged encounters, which, in virtue of not having earphones, I can only try unsuccessfully to ignore, at coffee shops) will usually not stand for someone else’s conversational hogging (dumping or no).  There are a number of possible reasons for this, but, my guess, based on the reason that I occasionally act as a conversation hog, is that the conversation hog really believes that what he or she is thinking or feeling really is more interesting and/or important than what their conversational partner might say.  In rare cases this (that what one says is really more important than one’s partner) may be true, but, in most cases, especially my own, it is certainly not.  In closing, I say, take care, conversationalists, to not be a conversation hog and to share the opportunity to speak with your partners as what they will have to share is often worth hearing and, though we don’t often like to admit it, be much more interesting and important than one’s own musings.    

A few days ago Katie and I measured how long my hair had gotten.  From the top of my head to the ends were about 16 and half inches or so.  I wanted to see how long it was because I decided that I wanted, after three years of growing it out with only an occasional trim for reshaping, to cut my hair.  I decided to do it primarily because of how Texans usually treated me in public.  To some degree, I wanted to say, “hey, yes, there are people, in Texas no less, that look different than you do…and the world will not explode because of this fact,” but after a year of it I am worn out.  Also, Katie talked about how when she would go out without me, she would notice how much more kind people were to her than when I came along.  Of course, it could be that they were just nicer because she was alone; so we will have to see what changes. 

Also, I finished two books today which makes today a pretty good day.  One of them, the Jesse Prinz book I have had on here, was especially good and was, in my mind anyway, among the top five pieces (articles or books) of philosophy I read all year.  Reading that book and talking with my officemate TJ has gotten me much more interested in the empirical research as it relates to ethical views and I am interested to see how my own thinking about ethics will continue to change as a result of knowing more about moral psychology.