Tag: Filler

On a Fun Run

No time for posty-posty; I’m finalising the smaller, slimmer, less carbon-costing coursebook for the Critical Thinking course I teach (which is now booked with people on the wait list, so no need for me to advertise it any further) as well as getting the first lecture ready for the Medical Humanities paper I start teaching (again) in just under a week’s time. It’s busy-busy-busy and I’m really only popping online to change the Event Calendar to reflect that the next episode of ‘The Dentith Files’ (where the Freemasons get what was always coming) has been delayed a week. Something about people going away on holiday, yadda yadda. Probably Them conspiring against me.

So, in lieu of content, here’s some research topics for the future, from an unfinished Brainstab post:

The Ethics of Parallel Universes – (You could quite happily replace ‘Parallel’ here with ‘Artificial’ or ‘Possible…’)

Imagine a world where Objectivist Ethics was actually true… I know, impossible, but bear with me; it’s a bit of a jokey example but it does highlight a possible use for parallel worlds; speciate out your ethics, apply them to your sets of worlds and, well, what you do afterwards is probably up to you.

Counterfactual Geography

What would the world have been like had, say, the continents existed in different places (I realise that Geography as a discipline is a lot more than maps, but, well, no one outside the discipline thinks it is anything other)? This started off as being an example of the kind of topic even philosophers wouldn’t touch, but on closer inspection this is, actually, an interestint topic. We already know that counterfactual history is interesting (even historians engage in ‘What if’ scenarios so to show their expertise in a time period) so it really isn’t surprising that counterfactual geography could be informative. Imagine if Africa and Europe, during the migration of Homo sapiens sapiens, had had no connecting landmasses? What if the crossig between Asia and North America had never formed? Oh the fun I could have with this topic.

I was going to say that Counterfactual Geology would be an example of a pointless topic, but as it seems to be in use in regards to the whole Creationism debate it may have some merit after all…

02/28/2008

Angela’s Theme

What a week. I’m finally no longer a menial worker and a good friend has fled the country for pastures turning brown.

I used to do some part-time work in the library at the University of Auckland, but no more. With the Med School paper starting in a fortnight I’ve decided that in the combination of library work, thesis work and teaching one of those three had to go. I did think about giving them all up and becoming a South Seas pirate, but the loss of limbs thing is disturbing and who has a sloop nowadays anyway? So ditching Lending Services really was the only way to go. Presumably this will up my thesis work quotian, but who knows…

And now I am further alone. My good friend Mel, a Canadian of some lewdness, has gone to Sydney to start her PhD (in Dreams; no, I mean that literally. She’s working in the Philosophy of Mind and looking at dreaming states). The Department here won’t be the same without her, although with the new intake this semester… And the move to a new building… But I jest. Happy travails, Mel. Hope those sexist bastards across the ditch don’t get you down.

(This is really just filler, this post…)

In other news, this Sunday (as shall be becoming as per usual my bFM slot will be at about half eleven rather than eleven. Synchronise those Swatches.

Message Ends.

02/21/2008

Back, back, back from the…

Well, I’m back from me holidays. I spent the last few days at the Parihaka Peace and Music Festival, which was rather interesting; a whole lot of different Conspiracy Theories with ranging plausibility were uttered and news of disturbing import to our future survival was shared. The only thing I’m going to pass on is that no matter where you come from on the Political Spectrum(TM) you will enjoy Robert Newman’s ‘A History of Oil.’ I’m sure the internet has copies if you care to look.

01/15/2008

Link with meagre comment

This has been sitting in my unfinished posts ‘drawer’ for a while now and is no longer current, especially since the author in question is about to not set the world alight with a book that resurrects the old chestnut that you can find the presence of god in just about anything if you look myopically enough. So, to bolster the post count and to make the thing go away, I present ‘Zombie Post #1.’

Ian Wishart is making mountains out of molehills out of legitimate criticisms from the people who run Richard Dawkin’s website (registration unfortunately required); perhaps Wishart should read ‘Historic Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte’ before he gets himself too ensnared in smugness.

10/23/2007

Updatery

Back in March, when I enrolled or re-enrolled, depending on whose story you believe, an almighty error occurred in my candidate registration. Technically I failed my PhD at the end of August due to non-submission, despite the fact that my submission date is in 2009. I’ve just spent the last six weeks trying to get what should have been a trifling, easily-fixed error sorted out, but in the process I found that no one actually wanted to take responsibility for the error and thus six weeks of being ‘at war’ have passed.

Which goes some way to explaining the somewhat sporadic nature of my updates recently. In theory everything should be back to normal by the beginning of next week, but that was meant to have been true a month ago, so I’m pessimistically optimistic.

It’s been a ‘flavourful’ year; the actual enrolment process was fraught with stress and terrible things back in January and February and then a series of unfortunate events occurred. Things brightened considerably in May but the middle of August; not good. Hopefully November will see an absolute boon in new and exciting material, especially since I have novel material I am trying to put into words-arranged-as-sentences (as opposed to amorphous ideas made up of signs and signifiers).

And talking about Conspiracy Theories, head over to Bad Archaeology for fun, excitement and Phoenicians.

In 1920s France!

10/03/2007

Blatant Self Promotion

My Scholarship has safety features:

Safety Features

In other news; the Continuing Education course is now over; it went well. My next gig is a talk to a group of Underwriters at Vero late next week. Corporate speaking gigs; very tasty.

08/30/2007