Welcome.............
People seemed to be having a lot of problems viewing the msn journal I've been using, so I decided it was time to jump ship. For those who haven't been able to read the previous entries, I'll post them in the wrong order (don't ask) below. So to be read from the bottom up. I'll start properly posting onto this site in the future.
16 October "To Indiana and beyond......"
It's been a while since I last updated this, but fortunately that means I actually have something new to write about. I'm not sure anyone really bothers checking this site anymore, but I want to keep a record even if I'm the only one who'll ever look at it. It's the price I pay for having a crap memory.
Last thursday I flew north to Chicago, where I spent a couple of hours in the airport. I know I've talked about it enough already (if not too much), but I still haven't gotten used to flying over american cities. Firstly, we flew directly over Austin. It's surprisingly green from the air, with the exception of the built-up area that runs from the river up to around 24th street, around the most northern point of the university campus. It was particularly strange seeing the UT tower from that angle - I'm used to it dominating the skyline, rather than being a tiny - though instantly recognisable - feature of the landscape below. Flying over Chicago was a similar experience. That city is vast, and again very flat except for the main downtown area, where skyscrapers seem to just spurt out of the otherwise smooth ground. A rather bizarre way to see the famous skyline of the city - I definately hope to visit sometime and see it properly.
I flew from Chicago straight to South Bend. I'd been a little nervous about visiting Notre Dame for the conference there, as I think I mentioned in my last post, because I so nearly decided to go there instead of Austin; I might have decided I had made a terrible mistake. I'd been warned when taking advice on where to go that South Bend itself wasn't very nice, and I think that's a fair enough judgement based on what I saw. The campus of the university was another story all together - it's gorgeous, and the golden dome that caps the main building provided a useful, but also spectacular point of orientation (
http://www.nd.edu/~ndphilo/). I was kindly put up by a couple of people Tomas knew from his masters program a couple of nights, who also provided intense but interesting conversation. I spent thursday night at their place, then on friday I spent most of the day on campus. Each week members of the faculty meet with the new students to discuss an area of philosophy in which they are interested. Last week was philosophy of religion, which is an even bigger part of the philosophical culture at Notre Dame than it has proved (somewhat surprisingly to me) to be at UT. In the afternoon I went to a talk by Daniel Garber of Princeton on Leibniz, which was interesting if not my area.
In the evening, I met up with Roy Cook at the hotel, my roommate for the weekend and friend from St. Andrews. Later that everning we met up with Stewart Shapiro, once Roy's supervisor at OSU and my Professor at St. Andrews. Two of Stewart's current students were with him, Julian Cole and Eric Carter, who I had gone to lunch with two years ago when I visited Stewart in Columbus. I had seen Julian briefly in St. Andrews (where he had originally done a PhD in maths some years ago) in february, but it was good to get a chance to talk to both of them again. Another surrpise was to see Darren MacDonald there - he visited St. Andrews last year from Western Ontario, and was down in Indiana with a very nice group of people with whom we spent a large past of the weekend. We spent friday night in the bar next door to the hotel - it was interesting, featuring a staggeringly loud cover band called 'The Soul-Shakers' fronted by a man wearing a base-ball cap over a mullet. Knock-out stuff. Saturday night was spent mainly in the same bar.
The philosophy of maths conference was really enjoyable. I met the organiser Mic Detlefsen (
http://www.nd.edu/~ndphilo/faculty/mdet.htm), who I liked immediately - he struck me as warm, good-humoured and very very smart. He insists that the money they have for organising the conference goes towards accomodating the graduate students, rather than the professors, who would like to attend each year, a policy which I really approve of (and hope I would do even were I not a benefactor). The papers were varied in topic and generally interesting (particularly for me Roy's talk, which I thought was excellent). I also got to meet and talk to Hartry Field of NYU and Geoffrey Hellman, as well as some other prominent philosophers of mathematics based in the US. All in all, very glad I made the effort to go to the workshop, and I intend to be back next year. On the monday I attended a class on the history of logic by Paddy Blanchette, who had been my contact in the department there throughout the application process. It seemed like a really interesting class, and I really enjoyed the seminar. Between the philosophy, the people, the campus, and the blissfully cold weather, I think I had ample evidence that I would have been making a good choice had I decided to spend the next period of my life at Notre Dame.
That's not to say I regret the choice I did make, and I despite a fantastic weekend, I wasn't sorry to fly back to Austin on monday. On thursday night, I gave my vagueness talk at the first of what we all hope will be many post-graduate colloquium meetings. Of course I'm not the person to give an objective take on how it went, but I felt very positive afterwards. I felt relaxed throughout the two hours, enjoyed myself, and got a good reaction from those there. None of the staff turned up, but several of them asked to read the written version of the paper I gave. I've sent it to three of them, so here's hoping they like it. We'll see soon enough.
Tonight was spent drinking beer and tequila with Briggs, whilst watching a potent combination of boxing, Woody Allen and tv with Tristan and Sharmane. I'm not feeling drunk, but it sure has made me sleepy, so since it's just gone 3am I think I'll call it a day.
29 September "Sorta quiet on the western front"
I haven't been good about updating this month, partly because I've actually had some work to do (I know, I know), but mainly because...............well, sheer idleness in fact.
A week ago last friday Briggs (class-mate from Virginia, Chris Morris and Alan Partridge fan, and all round good guy) and I went to 6th street to see And you will know us by the trail of dead. The were totally OTT, nothing like as dangerous or original as they seemed to think, and some of the songs weren't that impressive. That said, I had a really good time - for all their flaws, they are an exciting live act, and they played with two drummers at all times. That could go very very wrong, even with two decent drummers, but it was really impressive to watch and hear. I'm not going to rush out and buy a AYWKUBTTOD (catchy) album, but I am really glad we went, and I'd certainly go see them again if the opportunity arose. And this did mark the first night when I felt properly drunk in Austin - not very drunk, but enough to have a real hangover the next day.
The following night was the annual Asher-bash. Nick Asher is our head of school, a fact of which I am very glad, because he's very nice, extremely smart, and interested in areas of philosophy which I'm here to learn more about. Each year he and his wife hold a party for the staff and grad students at the start of the year, and we'd heard it usually gets pretty messy. In fact, this year the party was pretty tame, though personally I got pretty drunk and enjoyed myself. The Asher-bash finished, as it is supposed to every year but never does, early (10-ish), so we headed back to Briggs' apartment complex for a pool-party of sorts.
Since then, well, there's not been an awful happening. Brandy, who I met at a conference in York this summer, was up from Houston at the weekend to avoid getting caught in Hurricane Rita. The hurricane didn't affect Austin at all, though people were very nervous in the days leading up to it because of Katrina. We went for coffee at a nice place down on the north shore of Lake Austin (which is what the Colarado River becomes at the point where it cuts Austin), and it was good to catch up with her, though strange to meet her in such radically different circumstances from the ones in which I last encountered her. Then a few days ago Sharmane and I headed to Zilter park, apparently 'Austin's favourite park'. In the guide to Austin I bought just before I left, they had a picture of a bridge spanning this beautiful looks creek somewhere in the park. But it's actually pretty small and dull in reality - it's the first time I've seen something in Austin and not had it be at least as impressive as it looked in the photos. Oh well.
Next week I head to Notre Dame for the Annual Midwest Philosophy of Maths workshop. I know that'll sound as exciting to you all as it does to me. I'm really looking forward to it. It'll be nice to get out of Austin for a little while, and I'll get a chance to catch up with a some people who used to be in St Andrews, Roy Cook and Stewart Shapiro, plus there's some other really interesting people going. It'll also be interesting to see the university and South Bend (the city it's in) since I wasn't all that far away from going there instead of UT.
Two weeks today, when I'm back from Indiana, I'll be giving the first talk at the newly-formed graduate colloquium here. The talk is called 'The Price of Bivalence' (a reference to a paper by Quine called 'What Price Bivalence?', and it's going to argue that theories that hold onto bivalence, the principle that every sentence is either true or false, for vague language are in trouble (that is, take a patch of colour which we just can't decide whether it's red or not. The view I'm attacking says that 'the patch is red' is either true or false - despite the fact that humans can't tell if it is red even in good conditions in which to judge the patch's colour.) It should be good fun, and it's based on some of the material in my mlitt dissertation, so I won't need to write much new material at all.
Yesterday we were told there would be a 'cold-front' hitting Austin, which I totally ignored, but it actually is a pleasant temperature outside for once. So I should probably go somewhere and make the most of it.
14 September "The view from nowhere"
I mentioned the view south from the plaza in front of the tower building to the Capitol Building. The university site has a nice picture of the plaza and view here:
http://www.utexas.edu/opa/pubs/facts/index.php 11 September "Tinseltown in the Rain"
I complained last time that Austin was far too spread out, but I've realised that I wouldn't want that changed at all. It is this that accounts for one of my favourite features of the city; it's very low. As the city has grown, it is clear that unlike most cities it has grown out the way, but not up the way. Most of the buildings are only one storey tall, and it is this feature that in part gives Austin its distinctive skyline.
Of course, only in part. The other factor is the handful of buildings which tower above the rest - these can be seen from an amazing distance even standing at street level because there's no two- or three-storey buildings obstructing the view. First of all, there is the UT tower (see the photo to the right). The tower has seen its fair share of tragedy. It used to be a favourite spot for UT students to jump from, and in 1966 a sniper shot dead (I think) 16 people from the observation deck. Today the observation deck is only accessible as part of a pre-arranged tour, and a metal-grille prevents people from taking the fast way back down. But it is a striking, and somewhat unreal building. The plaza in front of the building is my favourite place in the whole city so far. To the north the tower stands over you, and across the main building which forms the base of the tower is written 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free'. I'm wary of the epistemology implicit here, but it's a nice sentiment. To the south you get a view, carefully framed by trees, of the Capitol building, and beyond it the handful of tall buildings that stand in downtown Austin, the business centre of the city.
The Capitol building itself is impressive - perhaps not so much as Capitol Hill in D.C., but still much much bigger than it looked in any of the photos I'd seen (
http://www.turbophoto.com/products/dfw/9.jpg ). Running directly south of the building is Congress Avenue. On thursday I took a bus down to South Congress Avenue, or SoCo for those who want to sound self-conscious. It's the section of Congress Avenue south of the Congress Avenue Bridge, famous for the million-odd bats that swoop out every night to hunt for insects (I've yet to see it, but for some photos - with the skyline of downtown in the background, see
http://www.batcon.org/discover/congress.html ). SoCo itself is one of the strangest streets I've ever walked. I can't really describe it, and I can't find a good photo, so it'll have to wait. The view from there is incredible - facing north you look across the bridge to the Capitol building , framed this time by buildings that dominate the downtown skyline.
On friday night we headed downtown, to 6th Street, one of the centres for live-music in the world, and home of the south-by-south-west festival each year. The buildings at night are strangely lit, they've gone for bright colours, and they've tended to emphasis the unusual shapes of the buildings instead of lighting them directly. It's hard to describe, but I'll attach a photo I found to this post. We saw one pretty average band (no idea who) in a fairly crummy venue, but I'm glad to finally be able to say I've been to a gig here. There's some better things coming up over the next while.
The weather has turned a little in the past couple of days. It is pissing it down today and it was cool enough to allow me to wear a light jacket. I'm really enjoying the break from the heat, and it's still warm enough outside to wear shorts without discomfort. From what I gather, this isn't untypical weather for december here, which would be pretty bareable.
Ok, I need to go to a metaphysics reading group. I can't attach the picture of downtown lit up at night, so here is a link:
http://www.panoramafactory.net/albums/cityscapes/Downtown_Austin_Small.thumb.jpg 03 September "Cradle of the best and the worst......................"
I haven't posted this past week, mainly because there's been little to post about. I've just been trying to get used to life here, for the most part reasonably unsuccessfully, but there's been little worth reporting.
Austin is taking some getting used to. First of all, it's much bigger than it needs to be. From what I hear, this is to a large degree due to the speed at which the city and its population have grown in the last twenty or so years. But even given that, Austin is sprawling. Glasgow, to take a contrast, has a pretty compact, well-organised town-centre, with greater-Glasgow spread all around it. Austin lacks even a well-defined centre - even downtown, arguably the heart of the city (to the extent it has one) is poorly organised, and it's hard not to feel a tremendous amount of space is being wasted everywhere. It's like the city needs defragmented.
This makes it very pedestrian unfriendly. There's no central shopping area, so to find a chain bookstore or musicstore, or whatever, you need to drive to a shopping centre that has one. The bus system is ok - not great but fortunately there's a decent service from where I live to the campus. Getting the bus, however, is an experience (as it is in most cities I guess); every time you get on a bus it's hard not to think that those 'Keep Austin Weird' slogan's are working. To use Bill Bailey's wonderful phrase, they are 'a mecca for those with, shall we say, no agenda'.
The street that runs from my flat to the campus is one of those distinctively American streets (at least from what I saw when I was on the east coast two years ago). The defining characteristic of such streets is the level of advertising that's thrust in your face as you drive down it; there's just a staggering amount of rubbish and misinformation everywhere you happen to look. Everything here is 'the original' of whatever the product is - I'm reminded of Spinal Tap 'We called ourselves 'the Originals', but then we found out there was another band called 'the Originals', so we became 'the New Originals'. Bottles with pictures of fresh fruit plastered all over them say on the back 'Contains no fruit juice'. The signs down the street range from the intriguing, such as my local 'Metaphyscial Volkswagen Repair', to the unfortunate ('Groovy Lube' for example), to the outright moronic (one sign makes the impressive claim 'If it's in stock, we've got it!' No shit, Sherlock.)
That all said, I'm very aware these last few days that this is a sad time to be in the United States. The situation in New Orleans and elsewhere just seems to be getting worse everyday. What I've found so hard to cope with hasn't been the scale of the damage done by the hurricane (though, of course, that's difficult enough), but what I've heard called the 'human storm', that is, the human reaction to a natural disaster. Firstly, there's been what seems to be the complete failure of the government to make a semi-adequate response; the press over here have only been slightly less damning of the current administration on this issue than what I've seen of the recent British press. People over here are angry, very angry.
But what I've found most chilling have been the reports of rapes, murders, assaults, and other acts of violence in the city. Wittgenstein wrote in his notebooks that just as he sometimes found it hard to discern anything recognisable as a element of language in spoken Chinese, sometimes he looked around at his fellow men, and found it hard to discern in them anything recognisable as humanity. Now, Wittgenstein was talking of his fellow soldiers in (if my memory serves me right) the first World War, but his point sometimes seems horribly relevant. It's just impossible to imagine the thinking processes that could lead one to target the survivors of one of the worst natural disasters of recent times. Each day I read the reports, and each day it's harder and harder to comprehend that this is happening in a city that probably wasn't all that different to the one I'm in now.
Ok, I'll stop there. I'm out of my depth talking about this stuff (though who isn't??).
23 August "Feeling hot hot hot...................."
Ok, so I got into Austin last night after a 16 hour journey. It wasn't much fun, though actually certain bits of the flight were pretty spectacular. Flying into Houston was the weirdest part. The most striking thing about the Texan landscape is just how flat it is, and yesterday there wasn't a cloud in the sky. You could see for a staggering distance, and from that height the effect is really strange. The flatness creates this optical illusion - the gound looks close enough to touch, and so everything looks like a model. You'd swear that the colours of the fields was painted on. I know people will be tempted to teach me the small/faraway distinction with the use of miniture plastic cows, but it was pretty much worth spending all the time on the plane just to see that.
Austin itself is in the "Hill Country', so called because, I presume, the area is not quite the Euclidean plane that the rest of the state is. It's still pretty flat though, and I'd hoped to catch something of the Austin skyline as we flew in. Just as I'd resolved myself to the fact that I wouldn't, the plane banked, and from my window you could see the distinctive UT tower, and all those weird buildings of the Austin skyline that I've been looking at pictures of for the last 6 months (those of you who've seen my old desk-top backgrounds will know the ones). I'm staying with another of the incoming class, Tristan, and his wife Sharmane. They met me at the airport too, and they really couldn't be nicer. They moved here from california a couple of weeks ago, and it's going to take me the five years I'm here just to make the last 2 days up to them. A few of the other guys (Briggs, John and Alex) have just got into town too, so we met in a bar last night. They all seemed nice, and we talked shop for most of the time which made me feel more at home. We sat outside, and the place was all decked out with huge fairy lights - it made for a really nice atmosphere. The beer was terrible, and drinking when you've been up for 20-something hours is a strange experience, but I'm definately glad to have met people. Today I visited the flat I'm moving into when my lease starts tomorrow (neighbourhood seems nice enough, from what I could tell) and headed to the UT campus. I was expecting big, but it's even more vast than I'd imagined. The day was spent running around on errands (thanks again to Tristan and Sharmane for driving me, and helping me find everywhere). I'll spare the details, but I saw the famous UT tower close up at last, and visited the department.
The heat has just been incredible - it was stupidly hot all last night, and today it hit over 100 degrees in the afternoon. We were trailing around campus, and we had to keep ducking into buildings to take AC-breaks before moving on. It's been intense. In general, I've found it very hard to get a feel for the city, but that was to be expected of course. At the moment, it feels like I'm a visitor here, and I can't find a way to convince myself that this is actually where I'll be spending the next 5 years of my life. It's clearly going to take a long time to readjust, and I'm just really looking forward to classes starting next week so that there's a bit of academic structure to my life - we don't really have much interaction with the department this week, and I really need it. The people have been really friendly. People from this area have a reputation for it, and they've lived up to it so far.
And I think that's all I have to report just now. I'm not really sure what to make of everything - as what I've just written will convey, my experience has all be great so far, but I'm just finding the scale of both the place and the change really hard to get to grips with. It's worth saying once again, without the guys I'm staying with, this would all have been unimaginably more difficult. Tomorrow brings with it more errands, and I move into my flat, where I'll be on my own 'til my housemate Tomas arrives on Thursday. I'm guessing that will be one of the slightly more difficult spells, since I'll be on my own for the first time since I got here, and I'll lose even occansional internet access, but I have some books and my iPod with me, and I'm looking forward to meeting Tomas soon. So that's it until then.
17 August
This is the first proper, (hopefully) non-pointless and rubbish post I'll make. It's been a weird few days, really full of highs and lows. Thanks to everyone who turned up to the cellar last night for my last night in St Andrews - I'll put up some of many pictures Marcus and I took when I get them. It's been sad leaving St. Andrews today - I've been there the last 5 years of my life, and it's certainly felt like home for most of that time. There's been some tough goodbyes last night and today, which was to be expected of course, but still difficult.
I spend 2 more days here in Glasgow, seeing my family and trying to get organised, then I fly out on sunday morning. I really don't know how I feel about the move - very mixed feelings. I can't even tell if I'm properly nervous yet or not. There still seems like so much to do in the next couple of days, sorting out money and books and packing, etc. I hope I get some decent time off before classes start in Austin, between my thesis and moving I haven't really properly stopped for a while. My dad's advice about the next few days was 'don't look down' which seemed like good; I'll try my best.
Ok, I seem to have missed non-pointless by some, but I'm tired, still mysteriously slightly hungover, and missing people badly already, so I'm not going to be fussy tonight. I'll certainly have something more interesting to write in a couple of days, if the world cooperates for once.
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