sumi, LJ has been sucking for me for a while. I even switched browsers, and it didn't help much.

They did a maintenance project last night that was supposed to help the load balancing across their servers. I think there's still a few bugs in the system. (FWIW, I had no problems with LJ until they started the project last night.)

I read the Leviathan in college and remember NOTHING. that's all I can add.

All you really need to know is that Hobbes thinks that the best government is one where people form a social contract to protect themselves from their neighbors, and that the best social contract is when people put aside their own desires in favor of the desires of the head of state. Cheney probably thinks Leviathan is a stroke book.

Anyway, from a philosophy of science standpoint, I think Hobbes's method, which he nakedly cribs from mathematical proof, is probably the most relevant aspect.

She's nuts, right?

In a sudden act caught on video surveillance cameras, Hilton tore up a poster advertising 1 Night in Paris and stole a copy of the infamous movie shot by ex-flame Rick Salomon and sold without her permission! The tape is a best seller, with close to half a million copies sold so far.

I mean, I get the whole "that's my goolie!" thing, but didn't she angle for a share of the profits based on co-direction? Or was that nasty rumour?

Y'all must have discussed his theories at some point, right?

He keeps being mentioned, but we never actually read a text by him alone. The lecturer (who is excellent) is a self-declared lapsed Popper-ian, so we get to hear quite a lot about him, as well.

The other week, after talking about Rationalists and Empiricists (and their responses to Newton, and how math developed after that), he went on to describe how "Gulliver's Travels" were an answer to all these philosophies, both in criticizing and in offering a new way (experiments of the mind).

Are you enjoying the class?

See the paragraph above. I can't not enjoy such a class, even though it takes so much time to prepare for each week, and I still feel like I'm not fluent with the language all the others speak. But it's fascinating stuff, and I absolutely love the opportunity to think in a different way than the physics way, to try to enrich my vocabulary.

How is your wife doing, by the way?

I have to say, the first time I got licked electronically, I was a little startled.

Oh, me too. Esp. since it was someone I didn't know (Nos'). I don't get a lot of it anyway, since I don't reciprocate. Although I do throw around a fair amount of *wants to eat X's spicy brains* and that sort of thing. It seems less stalkery, somehow.

I've been having trouble with LJ for the last few days. Which probably is the cosmos telling me to stop reading it and get back to work, dammit.

So in two weeks my brother's girlfriend, whom none of the family has met, is coming to SF for a month (or more) to study English. She's Chinese. My sister is incredibly stressed by this, especially since I get the distinct impression my brother never actually *asked* if it would be okay for his girlfriend to live here for six weeks. While he stays in Beijing, because he's working. Did I mention we've never met her?

Argh. This is going to be... interesting. I hope we're able to communicate.

Excellent, Nilly! The class sound absolutely great. Kuhn is a pretty dry read, but his philosophies are endlessly fascinating. I think I originally read him in an epistemology class, in which he mostly killed the very idea of a hierarchy of knowledge. Rorty has taken Kuhn's philosophy (which boils down to saying that even the scientific method is not an objective tool) as proof that pragmatic relativism (which Rorty calls "anti-essentialism") is the appropriate stance towards views of the world. Things are not true because truth exists in a God's-eye view of the world; things are true because they are generally accepted to be true by this or that consensual authority.

How is your wife doing, by the way?

She's great. And by "great," I mean she's healthy and carrying around a big ol' baby in her belly. We're only 6 weeks out from the due date! Jeez, I feel like I'm never going to get everything ready in time. But we took a class on the Bradley method of natural birthing, and we feel fairly confident that we can handle whatever we face.

She's using the immersion approach, huh? Good luck. To me, that sounds neat, but my family is all about unexpected guests we've never met before but are friends of some relative, but if you aren't used to it, I imagine it could be rather uncomfortable. Or if you are me and the idea of houseguests has you hiding under the couch. I'm the odd one in the family.

So we started our annual survey and are getting in results already. They make me laugh. Especially when many of the "complaints" can be characterized as user error. Hahaha! You suck, we're so cool. Luckily, they can't read my mind and think me a whole lot nicer than I really am.

She's using the immersion approach, huh? Good luck.

Well, she's been studying English for a while, it's just she's never left China. She must be nervous: I certainly would be. It'll just be weird, because my sister's family is busy-busy-busy and highly verbal. I don't know how much time they'll have for her.

As it is, she'll have to take public transportation into the city for her classes, and won't that be fun the first few times.

A four song streaming concert of the Magnetic Fields:

[link]

ETA:Fixed link

All those damp pixels are kind of funky...

And it leaves streaks on the monitor.

I don't get a lot of it anyway, since I don't reciprocate.

Yeah, I don't get it terribly often, but it keeps happening, despite the fact that people seem to expect me to be a six foot tall terror in black leather, and I don't pepper my online conversation with hugs and pounces and smoochies.

But personal space bubbles don't really exist on the Internets.

There ought to be a personal space bubble emoticon!