Conferences, Journals and Whatnot

The upcoming BUPS conference I'm organising (thanks to a very helpful committee) won't be our biggest one yet, but it should be fun nonetheless. It was perhaps one of the more stressful ones to run, as it involves more personal preparation than the past ones since I'm writing the part of the skills talks (something I don't really feel qualified for, which is why they'll be more about general methodological concerns, which I hope will be helpful), and because this time of year is historically (i.e. from experience of the past years) a very busy time of year, and therefore not the best time to attract loads of people. It's also a time of year where I have a lot on my plate as well... Therefore I'm really looking forward to the conference itself (and the organisational break afterwards). Nothing quite beats seeing effort pay off (let's hope it does).

It's also an important turning point, as it's the last 'big' conference I'll be organising. All that's left after this is a summer conference, which will be a day conference, and an essay competition to run, followed by the annual conference, the preparation of which will be the job of the next chair (and for which I will offer my help, but only as a 'consultant'). This means that my job as chair after this will principally involve preparing BUPS for the shift in management, and ensure that it will thrive next year (and the years to come – touch wood).

It's crazy how quickly this year (and all of university, as a matter of fact) has gone by, but it's nice to note that the optimism that I held about the now-over-two-years-old project that is the British Undergraduate Philosophy Society hasn't proved to be too naive. We've done some good, solid work this year, thanks to the toil of the committee, and ran an increased number of conferences, expanded membership, built the foundations for next year's committee, and several other things... The realisation that it's almost all over, along with undergraduate life as a whole, is a fairly strange feeling. I suppose all one can do at this point is hope that both the society and my academic life fare well in the coming year(s), and reflect back upon what I've gained from it.

These past seven months have been a bumpy ride, with moments of doubt, a few sleepless nights, and some really good times to balance things out. I don't think I would have expected things to get so complicated so quickly, a few years back. On the other hand, I'd be hard pressed to claim I regretted any of it: the organisational stress applied by the running of this society and its events, in conjunction with the workload of a third year, have been higher than what I've experienced in my life, but there is no doubt that the skills I've acquired along the way (in keeping track of so many factors, so many deadlines, and so much correspondence), and the mere fact that I've survived it all with my sanity and nerves left (mostly) untouched, are all in all quite a reward, and will come in useful during the next few years as I face increasingly higher workloads and pressure from the academic environment.

But more than all that, I now know that I can safely face the next person to tell me that philosophy is all about dawdling about, smoking joints, and asking "Why?", and kick him in the face.

Peace out.

Christmas (philosophical) jam in St Catz!

If you read this blog, are into philosophy and have some free time on the weekend of friday 15th to sunday 17th december, and of course live (or can travel to) the UK, I strongly recommend that you come down to the British Undergraduate Philosophy Society's 2006 Winter Conference, which will be held at the gorgeous St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and the the keynote speaker will be Cambridge's own Professor Simon Blackburn.


The amazing part is that this conference will cost the delegate approximately the same price the BUPC registration costs, despite the fact that most Oxbridge colleges were asking for at least the double. This is thanks to the generosity of St Catz (and the fantastic cooperation of its Junior Bursar, Stuart McLellan). So hopefully we'll manage to find enough delegates and authors across the UK to make this conference worth the place it's being held in (although I have little doubt it will be).

Anywhooo, if you're interested, check out the Call for papers. Don't hesitate to pass it along to your friends/colleagues/faculty. Hopefully, you'll consider registering for the event, and perhaps even submit a paper yourself. In any case, get in touch if you have any questions. Hope to see some of you there!

Back on the internets!

Man oh man, it's good to be back on the 'net at home. Lemme just get this out of the way then: if you're in the UK, don't go with BT. Broadband being set up should not involve 10+ phone calls and a two-week delay...

Anyway, moving on. So much has been done in the past few weeks, so I'll stick to the really recent stuff. It's term time again! After the summer I've had (especially the last two/three weeks), it's a welcome change. Of course, it means I have added constraints on my timetable and have to get up early (occasionally), but I can live with that. My new courses are quite groovy as well, and a rather heteroclite bunch that range from the really easy, such as programming (managed to finish the first 5/6 weeks of lab work the day before the first lab, which frees up my thursday afternoons for a while), to the really hard, such as nuclear physics (which is expectable, I suppose), to the really interesting, such as philosophy of maths (Bob Hale has a hypnotic voice, too). Plus, if I play my cards right (and am prepared to write a dissertation of Xmas), I can get away with having only two 10-credit exams this semester, which would be quite a treat. In other (academic) news, I've just been assigned my physics project today, which will be to design a 10 lecture course for 3rd years on a general physics topic. Whoop-dee-doo... At least it's theoretical (in that it will involve no labs... will it?).

In terms of extracurricular work, I'll probably have enough to keep busy as well. As victim chair of the British Undergraduate Philosophy Society (Facebook link), I'll be spending the next few weeks trying to set a date and venue for our next conference, and get the ball rolling... As well as checking in on some other projects (all currently in the expert hands of people who know what they're doing).
I've also founded a local Wittgenstein Reading Group (Facebook link), to read through the Philosophical Investigations (which we could have done as a module, but the professor teaching it retired), based on recommendations by my pal Robbie (props).
Finally, I can imagine the usual SSC stuff will take a bit of my time. Aaaah it's nice to feel active again.

On the personal front, all is well (I believe). I've actually gotten off m'lazy arse and joined the gym (hell, might even go today). The house is nice, too. I have the smallest room, but it has the biggest storage space (which in the end works out for the best) as well as the most pimpin' skylight (I can't say that with a straight face), and unlike last year, a really great wireless signal (which, knowing me, is a necessity). Now the internet is working reasonably well, let's hope it stays like this.

Righto, enough dilly-dallying about. It's nearly 10:30 am, and that means it's time for sweet sweet espresso (of which I need to order more) + breakfast.

Damn Straight, Steve!

Work work work. Still need to finish writing this presentation for the BUPC. Loads of stuff on the side. No rest for the wicked.

I was watching the WWDC keynote the other day, and have nothing more to say than the obvious "wow". Amazing stuff.

Speaking of which, I've just come across this video, after a few days of reading comparisons between Vista and Leopard (no contest, if you ask me), and what Steve is saying in this video still strikes me as amazingly true.

Click here to expand movie player.

There. I hadn't posted anything on this blog that clearly identified me as a machead. Mission complete.

Poor Chrysler: We hardly knew ye...

Man. Who knew putting together a conference could be so tiring? (answer: a lot of people, it's fairly obvious, and I'm probably stupid for asking myself the question). Have just (3 days) been asked to give a 5000 word~ talk on the first night of the conference (friday 8th) on a work/research in progress, and had to give the title off the top of my head. So it looks like I'll be giving a talk on whether or not language is contingent or or conventional (a cheeky jab at Chomsky, through the exclusion of "necessary", I suppose... although something could well be conventional and necessarily so, although that doesn't really fit the bill for universal grammar). Gotta re-read my notes on the matter, and try and fit that particular debate into a presentation on my research interests, and make it seem plausible, and make it seem non-boring... sheesh. I've got work to do (and was not expecting a deadline before the start of term.

In other news, I've finally got the respondents, and the final version of the programme sorted out (lightweight version available here). It's nice to see so many budging academics being so ready to help, and to be able to rely on them for some good quality philosophy I certainly cannot always produce (at least not for such a variety and depth of topics).

Moving on. Got the vacation pictures sorted out.
Click here to see them...


No, I had no idea the arrow was pointing to me at the time. I'm not that narcissistic.


'Tis only a flesh... errrrr oil wound.


The other car (aka "Chickenfuckermobile").


From Newton's First Law: "[...] objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless an outside force acts upon them".
I'm not lazy, I'm a physicist.


My new cousin Liuba and I, demonstrating our obvious resemblance. I've got a PhD in Pout-ology. She's still going for the BSc in Pout Studies.

A series of (really rather) unfortunate events

Ever get that feeling that everything is going wrong, whatever you do? Well, that sort of feeling is always an exaggeration to a certain degree, except this time that degree is a little smaller than usual.

The setting: Atlantic Coast of France, somewhere between Talmont and Thaims (are these places even on the map?).
When: Errrr, last thursday.

We were driving back from a series of Roman ruins ("Le site du Fâ") in our trust Chrysler voyager (my father at the wheel, me in what the french call "the seat of death", and loads of kids in the back), and we come down at a regular speed towards an intersection where we have right of way, but those having to yield (coming from the left) have little visibility of the oncoming road to the right (and must stop accordingly). Some jerk decided the law didn't concern him, cut us off at a what I'd call a "beyond cruising speed", and the inevitable crash happened, sending us ploughing into our airbags and him, his fat wife and fat kid (seriously) flying into the ditch (180 degree turn and all). Fortunately no one was seriously hurt (a bit of a stiff neck for the next few hours, and some bruises) but our good ol' Chrysler is no more.

Three days later, we're at the beach. My brother had bought one of these cool new skim boards and was playing with it on the sand. My mother wanted to try, my brother gives her the talk about it being more dangerous than it seems and requiring proper stretching, she insists and next thing you know, she's being whisked off the hospital with a severely broken right-wrist (being right-handed), where she still is at this time (having been operated upon sunday night).

Same day, my sister goes out with her bike (the non-motorised kind) to pick some blackberries, only to return with loads of (thankfully non-serious cuts) all across her, having fallen into the blackberry bramble with her bike.

To add some spice to things, there are a few (possibly viral) strains going around the house, with two boys who were visiting the other day displaying symptoms of gastroenteritis (and having seemingly passed them on to at least one or two people), and my sister's friend Margaux having had weird flu-like symptoms for the last week (touch wood that we won't get some o' that).

And to put the cherry on top, I had to whisk off to Paris this (monday) morning to take care of some BUPC-related work (of which there is a lot), and am now going to take the earliest train back down to Saintes, with my laptop and workload, to continue in our summer house (with a crappy 56k connection) and tend to my aching family members.

Other than that (which is a lot) we still manage to have a rather smashing time, with some occasional warm sunny days at the beach, and good food, and good company.

Life could be better, but it's still pretty damn good (which is easier to say when you're not the one with a broken wrist or car to replace).

Be kind to your web-footed friend

Not that there's any particular need to apologize, but sorry for the stint of absence on my part. I've spent the last few days oscillating between the couch and the router (with occasional jogs in Versailles). Nothing too exciting.

The couch serves the purpose of providing a reading and writing space for my BUPC-related correspondence. Had one hell of a day processing all the submissions (an activity rendered much less painful by my helpful assistant for this task), reviewers, and getting it all to work (hopefully). One of my pet-peeves when I used to live back here (or anywhere, but the french administration and its love of red tape seems to best express this feature) was being impeded in my enjoyment of everyday life by base incompetence. Well, it is now I am on the other side of the fence, in being surrounded by people who not only do their job(s) well, but are keen to do so, that I realize that the opposite also holds to be quite true: it's very soothing to see things go smoothly.

So all's good in that hood. The router thing, however, is another matter. We've gone through quite a few netgears, and I've become well acquainted with the (thriving and friendly) netgear-gone-wrong support community, but to no avail. Fact of the matter is, our phone lines are archaic, and our router is fitted with a crappy over-sensitive Texas Instruments (who make damn good programmable calcs, go Ti89+!) chipset which reboots the damn thing every twenty minutes or so. We ordered one of those nifty Linksys WRT54Gs (that you can tinker with the firmware of) to replace it. Hopefully that'll be less stressful to deal with. Fixing the damn thing just sucks my energy away, meaning I haven't been so good with my reading as of late.

In other news, I had to go to the doctor a few days ago, on my mother's orders, because I've had a tickly cough since June. He put me on 8 different meds (mostly anti-allergic stuff) and wants me to have a blood test... ugh. Hate the damn things. The meds taste like crap too (and I'm not a huge fan of putting all that crap in my body).

But no worries, I can get faulty routers and vampiric needles out of my head for a few days, 'cause I'm a-headin' down south(-west) to our summer home in Cozes, to catch some rays on the beach with my buddies Swann and Eduardo, and his mother Helene (also a good friend). So life's good in the end... I just flippin' hate this 19th-century grade house.

Ooh, and one more thing: I got published again, but this time it's a paper, not a book review (Free e-copy of this edition here. *PDF warning*). Yay.