blah blah links blah blah smashed car blah blah

Self and World is a good blog.

This Robert Pippin video Currence linked to is pretty great for a short lecture.

I haven't seen anyone link to Sorting Out Wittgenstein yet; if you liked Vexations With Wittgenstein, well, it's like that. Except black instead of pink.

(Blog&~Blog) looks promising.

I'm not sure what Graham Priest can say about a sentence T="This sentence is neither true nor both true and false" where "this sentence"=T. Priest's paraconsistent logic is four-valued: True only, false only, neither true nor false, and both true and false. But if T is true only, then it's not true (and so not true only). If T is false only, then it's also true (and so not false only). If T is neither true nor false, then it's true (and so not neither true nor false). And if it's both true and false, then it's both true and not true, both false and not false. So none of Priest's four truth-values can be assigned to it. So it looks like Priest also has to deal with a "strengthened liar", while one of the selling points of dialetheism was supposed to be that it didn't have to worry about strengthened liars.

Bosphorus Reflections gave my blog's RSS feed its own subheading, which is how I found it. I've liked what I've read of his blog. Clear writing that discusses Foucault/Derrida is still kinda hard to find.

Incidentally, the "partner site" which he links to (which I take to be run by the same guy, based on the URL) has a link to a PDF version of Zizek's "The Indivisible Remainder" on MediaFire. I'm actually curious what Zizek thinks about his stuff being pirated; I'd be surprised if he was much opposed. I'm not sure it's hurting Verso to have a book or two of Zizek's floating around, either; I suspect that a free version of "The Indivisible Remainder" might serve as fine advertising for some of Verso's other offerings. This of course does not make it any more legal, but I really doubt anyone would try to take this to court. It's worth noting that the "Facts, Ideas and Logic" site is legal; it's not a crime to link to a site that violates copyright. And most of what he links to is not pirated material; it's just articles that have been posted in places where he can link to them. I'm curious how he came across the MediaFire links, though.

Oh hey, I just noticed that he added a link to a PDF of "Glas" sometime in the last few days. At least that one makes more sense to pirate; Glas costs upwards of $60 and is somewhat hard to find, while The Indivisible Remainder is a $12 paperback at list price. Though PDFs make for lousy coffeetable books. Huh, the PDF has "Copyright 1986" circled in it. Maybe Turkey has really liberal copyright laws, such that a book from 20 years ago whose author died recently is in the public domain? Still, it's published by University of Nebraska press, so I'm pretty sure this is also illegal. US copyright lasts forever, because of Mickey Mouse, and I'd be surprised if Turkey has not signed some sort of copyright-respecting treaty. But hey, if you don't mind it being illegal: Free unreadable Derrida book. (It's not the scan's fault that it's unreadable. The quality is tolerable. But the book is infamous for being, uh, creatively presented.)

Philosophy things I have found via BitTorrent: Several of Fodor's books, most of Foucault's books, Frege's "Foundations of Arithmetic" and various essays, "Being and Time" and "What is Metaphysics", "The Sickness Unto Death", Kripke's completeness proof for modal logic, public domain works by Hobbes/Hume/Locke and public domain translations of Kant/Hegel/Leibniz/Spinoza, "On Denoting", various Quine essays including a full PDF of "From A Logical Point of View", PDFs of "Philosophical Investigations" and "Zettel", Wittgenstein's collected works in both English and German (though missing a few odd bits, mainly the ones collected in "Philosophical Occasions"), the Zizek! movie, the Derrida movie, what looks like a site dump of marxists.org, and recordings of Dreyfus's existentialism lectures. And that's just the stuff I bothered to look at. I'm actually curious where the Wittgenstein collected works thing came from; it's in some weird e-book format and claims to be an ISO rip. I have no idea who that could have been marketed to, given how expensive the collection would have to be; were there libraries that got jazzed up about e-books? I don't know who else could afford something like this.

I recall reading a "London Review of Books" article by Fodor where he mentioned that he occasionally goes into bookstores to check out the philosophy sections -- he then proceeds to stare at the shelf-full of Foucault books, which are just to the right of where his books would be, if they were there at all. At least BitTorrent likes you, Fodor!

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is posted a few places online; the sites it's on seem to all claim that it's in the public domain. I am fairly certain this isn't the case. "From A Logical Point of View" had its copyright renewed, and so I'm pretty sure that at least the revised 1961 version of "Two Dogmas" isn't going to be public domain until 2060, 60 years after Quine's death, under current US copyright law. At least, this is what Wikipedia has lead me to believe.

It's worth noting that "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" is online legally; the site hosting it got permission from the University of Minnesota to reprint a paper from 50 years ago.

also, I have some pics of my car! Ignore the black bars; I only have MSPaint to edit with on my laptop.

This gives you a look at how smashed it was. The back door on the driver's side is the only door that still works, and that's the only good tire. The engine's shifted over to the passenger's side of the car. The white stuff is where battery acid leaked all over the place. The car was worth $400 as scrap, at least.


I just liked the guy's face here. He owns the tow-yard. He was pretty happy to see me walking after doing that to my car. Also, you can see my leg in this photo; most of it looks purplish like that now. That's really the only injury I got, apart from some nicks & bruises on my other leg and my right hand. But you can see I'm still standing, so it's all good. Though I'm anxious for my knees to be the same size again.

Blogging may be light for a bit

This evening, my car spun out, and a tree stopped it. The car's totaled. I'm fine, though my shins are pretty bruised up. No broken bones at least. Paramedics said I was awfully lucky to not end up with my head through the windshield or what-not. Thank God, it's just some bruised shins. I'm sure this will seem like a bigger deal when in a day or so; they said the blood that pooled at my right knee will slowly drain out, and my foot/leg will turn purple. Fun stuff.

My glasses went flying when I hit the tree; no one could find them until right before the ambulance left. I'm not sure if they were in the car or got thrown through the windshield, but they're unscratched. My DS is also fine, though I think it might've gotten some small scratches on the outside. The rest of the stuff I had on me was in my pockets. Basically, all I lost in the accident was the car itself. I mean, it sucks that my car is gone now, but I am really thankful to have my glasses back. That was a rough half-hour without them. And the DS is not immediately replaceable; I have all 493 pokemon on that copy of Pearl! I would not want to lose it. Plus the firmware's been flashed, and that'd be a pain to do again.

But, I figure I'll be pretty scatter-brained for the rest of the night, and they gave me a prescription for vicodin. I figure my post quality would probably not be so hot while I'm on vicodin. I'm on percodine or something right now; they offered me morphine or vicodin, but I figured I wasn't hurting that bad. (This post is also kinda weak, but who cares -- I just mean to be informative. I no needing for to write gooder 4 it~). I have a post on Kenneth Westphal's "Kant's Transcendental Proof of Realism" all written up, but I wrote it before finishing the book. After finishing chapter seven (the last one, where Westphal sets forth in detail what he thinks can be retained from Kant after we look at why transcendental idealism fails, and why Kant's failures don't vitiate his system generally), there's a few details I'd like to touch up. (I finished the chapter last night, but was too tired to write the post. I might get around to it; there's not a huge amount that needs rewriting, I don't think. I figure right now I'm just frazzled from the adrenaline and such; maybe I'll be more clear-headed on vicodin that I expect. Never been on it before. I guess Dr. House does OK with it. Fox television is a reliable source for medical information right)

A few random thoughts:
*Thanks to whoever it was that helped out at the scene of the accident. I couldn't see any of you really, but you were life-savers. (Not literally, that I know of. But you were helpful. And hey I could've been hurt worse than I was. I think the gas-tank was leaking, for instance. Who knows how close I was to being on fire.)
*Seatbelts really do work! I recall seeing the airbag coming out, thinking "OH CRAP THAT IS GOING TO HURT", and then my shoulder-strap caught me. Looks like I got a friction burn on my shoulder, but it only hurts if I stretch it a lot.
*I wish I hadn't filled up the tank this evening. That's $30 I did not need to spend!
*The ER nurse with glasses was hot. And she got me a cup of water! I had to ask seven people before I managed to get a second cup of water. Hot nurse, cromulent performance. 5/5 would recommend to others
*Do car wrecks make the news, or is that just the really bad ones? I was the only one involved and I just spun out through a construction yard (according to the people at the scene; I couldn't see well myself, it was dark), so I guess it's probably not newsworthy. Probably still check the paper tomorrow just in case.
*I was lost at the time of the accident. I was trying to find the Half-Price Books on S.Lamar when I got lost; when I realized I wasn't going to find the store before it closed for the evening, I decided to just drive around for a bit, since it's a nice evening. Then I kinda got lost; apparently I had made it to Caesar Chavez when I spun out, so at least I had almost found my bearings again. (CC is old 1st street, and if I ran into the numbered streets then I could get back home. I guess I don't need to recall Austin's street layout now.)
*I still want to go to that bookstore! I've been to the other three in the area this week; got a lot of nice stuff. Was considering posting a list when I'd hit the fourth store, just 'cause. I found the Pierce book Clark kept recommending, for instance; $4. And I finally have a copy of Theory's Empire, for... $15 I think? Not going to walk across the room to check because my knees hurt. But it was a nice price. I also found some random anthology on "Philososophy in History" with stuff from Rorty, McIntyre, and some other cool dudes, for $15. It actually has two of the essays from "The Original Skeptics" in it.
*My copy of "The Original Skeptics" finally showed up in the mail yesterday. Took it long enough.
*Holy crap I totaled my car what the fuck ;_;
*I have to write my final-essay for Legal Writing before friday afternoon. I'm not coming back next semester, so I'm not sure what I'll do there. I need to remain a "student in good standing" this semester for loan purposes, so I guess I have to turn in something.
*I hate law school. I do not want to do this stuff for a living.
*Graduate school applications for next fall are due pretty soon! I need to figure out what I'm doing about that writing sample. One of the drawbacks about getting a theology BA is I don't really have anything suitable lying around. The best part is I'll have to get two pieces put together, since some schools want 10-15 pages and some want 20-25 pages. Chicago's deadline is the 17th. This will be a fun week ;__;
*Oh hey, I should ask for recommendations. Bad enough I'm asking less than two weeks ahead of time; every extra day is just going to make me more rude. At least I'm not worried about being turned down by any of them; SNU's profs are good guys, and I only really decided I wanted to go for grad stuff after all about a week or so ago, during thanksgiving break. Hopefully I am lucid enough to type an e-mail, there. I guess if I'm not, then I'm not; might as well try.
*There, e-mail sent.
*I was covered in a lot of little sand-sized bits of broken glass for a while. I don't know how Spinoza managed to stand the stuff. It's like pointy dirt. Ugh. Gives me the heebie-jeebies.
*This was my first accident! I haven't even gotten a speeding ticket before. I guess when it rains it pours. And destroys your car. Stupid rain.