So two weeks after tuning into CSPAN radio during local NPR affiliates fund drive, I find myself still tuning into CSPAN. I'll do the NPR thing in the mornings and in the evenings but during the mid-day and afternoon, I tend to go with CSPAN. It's a different kind of news, being rawer but at the same time much more in-depth. For example, I got to hear most of the head of the OMB address a conference at New York University. Reading the newspaper and listening to the NPR accounts of his speech afterwards highlighted that such reporting seldom does justice to what was actually said. I also caught somebody whose name I don't recognize from an organization I've never heard of give some of the most compelling and interesting testimony on corporate governance at a conference at the University of Maryland. She laid most of the problems with corporate malfeasance square at the feet of the boards of directors and shareholders of the malfeasant corporations. Although, she did allow that deregulation made some parts worse.

On the other hand, listening to mark up committees on this or that bill is pretty dry stuff. It gives a far better sense at how things actually work, but it's a lot of listening for very little information.

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Sunday school went smoothly this past week. The lesson was on the geography of ancient Palestine. Geography tends to bore people. But one thing that fifth and sixth graders find fascinating is drawing on the white board. So the obvious solution was for me to draw the map in the work book up on the white board and then have the kids do the lesson by taking turns on the white board rather than doing it in their workbooks. I was a bit amazed at how well this worked. The white board kept their attention in a way that I'd yet to see their attention kept this school year.

It's a challenge. Not just keeping control. But also presenting the material. At the age I'm dealing with, there is a lack of capacity for certain types of abstraction. Yet the material in the curriculum calls for precisely that. Trying to explain why Eastern Orthodox prefer the Septuagint over the Massoretic text but nevertheless use Bibles with the Old Testament based on the Massoretic text is not the easiest thing in the world when the audience understands a fair amount of history.

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So about a week and a half ago, I proposed a topic for a term paper to one of my professors. He seemed confused by it and wanted clarification. So I spent a good deal of time developing and writing my explanation and sent an email with the details. He came back with a terse reply that amounted to: a `bound variable' is a technical term and you should read up on it because it doesn't mean what you think it means.

And he was correct. My entire thesis in the proposal was based on a misunderstanding of what a bound variable was. And, well, I've known what a bound variable was for almost two decades now. I don't know what I was thinking. (Or, more precisely, what I wasn't thinking!) It's been quite some time since I've thought that I've had a fantastic idea that was so wrong that it wasn't even worth addressing. Nevertheless, better to sort these things out now than after the paper gets turned in.

So with my bad idea shot down, I spent the weekend coming close to a panic attack over what I was going to do for a term paper. But then in the early hours of Sunday morning, I dreamed about writing on an interesting topic. So I put together a new proposal before heading off to Church. The paper will be about how Quine's form of extreme nominalism solves one of the cardinal difficulties of trope theory. My argument is that for any trope F', what we really have is a universal F with the idea of thingness (or particularity added to it). This obtains for all situations where a is F' and a exists. This is because once it is admitted that a exists and that a is F', one has to concede that F' exists in some fashion in a. (Or if existence is problematic, F'ness is some real property or quality of a. Further, one must then also concede that if a and b are both F, that this reduces to two statements:a is F' and b is F'' where F' and F'' have nothing in common outside of  the mind. But if any commonality between F' and F'' is entirely mental, then one is at a loss to explain why we are able to say a is F' and b is F'' at all.

In WVO Quine's language from `On What There Is,' this is why saying that sunsets and roses are both red is true only in popular and misleading manner of speaking. It would be better to say that a is F' and b is G' because the redness of the rose is not really the same sort of thing as the redness of the sunset. For sunsets and roses, this isn't so objectionable. It isn't really that controversial to say that the redness of a sunset is entirely different than the redness of the rose. But what of the redness of this rose versus the redness of that rose? What of the 5kg weight of a box of sand versus the 5 kg weight of a box of rocks? In these sorts of situations, it is hard to see how giving voice to the fact that they seem similar is a misleading manner of speaking.

But in some of Quine's texts there is a way to resolve this problem. If a and b are both convenient fictions no less than F' and F'', then whatever similarity that they share is entirely in the mind and not anchored in reality. Quine goes down this road on two levels, the phenomenological (out of the flux of sensory input, we abstract perceptions of a and b as things) and the ontological (out of the flux of all there is, we abstract this or that thing as beings). So any  commonality between F' and F'' is entirely conceptual because a and b are now both conceptualizations rather than real things.

So in a way, we have Quine arguing the viewpoint of Nagasena.

And, of course, in another class, I'm going to give the proper rebuttal to Quine (and therefore Nagasena) that comes from the philosophy of Ibn Sina.

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Last week my weight was remarkably stable at 166/167. This week I started at 169, and it took all of one day to drop back down to 167 where it hung for the rest of the week until Friday when it popped back up to 169. I blame too much tuna casserole. And candy.

Running wise, I think I am just about entirely acclimated to running in my Vibram Five Fingers. It's a bit odd to have the tops of my feet a bit sore rather than the soles of my feet after a three mile run. I'm no longer getting cramps in my calves. My hamstrings aren't excessively sore anymore. My calves are starting to get in some serious muscle definition. (Muscle definition isn't one of my goals, not even a secondary or tertiary goal. Nevertheless, it's fun to watch.) I don't think my speed is what it used to be when i was running in normal cross trainers. But that will come back with time. The time change has been nice with regards to running. It's still pitch black when I wake up but by the time I putter around enough to be ready to run, it's fully daylight which eases the fear I'll get smacked by a car not paying attention while I'm crossing the street. Perhaps I should invest in some non-black running clothes. A long sleeved tee shirt and shorts from my alma mater would be sweet. But I'm a tight wad.

In the weight room, I through an extra plate on the machine I do lateral pulldowns and rows on. That makes it hard again. I'm not really fond of hard. In fact, I go into the weight room in the morning thinking about how much I hate doing this. But hard keeps my interest in a way that boring and same-o, same-o does not. I find myself more motivated to do something hard that I hate than I do to do something that is boring. Between that extra plate and the extra plate I through on the bench/shoulder press machine, I've been having a bit of shoulder and neck stiffness. It's irritating, but no more than that.

A young lady in the weight room put me to shame. She was probably six to eight inches shorter than I and likely twenty to thirty pounds lighter. Yet she was pushing around about a 20% heavier load than I do. She also runs faster than I. I've seen her running around the neighborhood in the mornings from time to time. And to judge by her preferred reading matterial while on the elliptical machine, she's studying law.

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A friend of mine pointed me to a skate park in Louisville, Ky. The web site cracks me up. First, there is the detailed list of attractions, 24 foot full-pipe, 40k square feet of concrete skating surface, wooden vert ramp, and restrooms. I for one, don't envision many people skating in the loo. But, on the other hand, is this news notice right next to the list of features: ``Because of vandalism, the restrooms at the Louisville Extreme Park will be closed until further notice.'' So I guess skating in the loo is a popular pastime there.

The human body is built for endurance sports. Awesome quote, ``Your butt is a running muscle; you barely use it when you walk.''

I am absolutely shocked, shocked. It turns out that with regards to losting weight ```It all comes down to energy balance,'' or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out. ' The article points out a few other pretty intuitive things like that all the calories burnt off by a nice brisk walk can be replaced, and then some, by drinking a single bottle of Gatorade.

A man literally steals our precious bodily fluids. I'm still trying to suss out a sensible motivation for this one.

That Freakonomics guy defends his position on the fix for global warming. Normally the Freakonomics guy drives me up the wall. In this case, I think it fair to say that his positions have mostly been unfairly attacked. This does not mean, of course, that his positions don't deserve to be attacked. Rather, it just means that many of the attacks to date are for the wrong reasons.

The dead shall arise in Maryland. ``I was slashed in the head and eaten by a waiter. I didn't tip him enough so he ate my brain and made me a zombie.''

ChryslerFiat's US business plan looks interesting. The Washington Post also has a few details.

I am baffled by this argument for Michael Moore as `Catholic of the Year'. But maybe that's because I don't pay close enough attention to Michael Moore. I don't think that the argument that ``For Catholic Michael Moore, identifying capitalism as the only patriotic option for America is a form of idolatry. People are always more important than any `ism,''' is worth the cost in intellectual dishonesty displayed by Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko.

A while ago in this space I typed up a bit of cursory thought on the idea of studying philosophy as if it were the psychology of the philosopher rather than philosophy qua philosophy. I ought to have known that was a good amount of prior art on the topic. In a `review' of the new biography of Ayn Rand, Sam Anderson explores a good deal of just that topic pulling mostly from William James who ``once argued that every philosophic system sets out to conceal, first of all, the philosopher’s own temperament.'' It's a nice review if one is at all interested in things Randian. Just keep in mind that it's more of a review of Rand than of the biography and it's not a review by a friendly witness.

Non traditional beliefs more likely to have intelligent adherents. The centerpiece of the argument is pretty interesting, the idea that non-conformist ideas are disproportionately held by people of above average intelligence. So in places like Japan, non-standard belief systems like Christianity will be composed mostly of very bright people. But in places like the US, it is the atheist groups that will be above average in intelligence.

An  interesting idea I never put together is that reversing the curse of Babel means languages have to die out. Actually, I think `dying out' is probably a little too strong of a phrase. But it is interesting that the `curse' of a myth explaining in part why there is division and animosity among the nations is now seen as a net positive by many.

Pope Benedict XVI as a reactionary.  I've noticed a  in many ways he is pulling some both `liberal' and `conservative' moves that trend towards consolidating power in Rome. I think this article does a good job at trying to puzzle out a plausible reason why.

The stupid things presidents sometimes say: part 2084k, ``Only in America could the adopted son of Crow Indians could become president of the United States.'' Funny how that works, no?

Franky Schaeffer remains on the warpath against his former fundy BFFs. Schaeffer's colorfully acerbic wit always cracks me up. `` If I had to choose companions to take my chances with in a lifeboat, and the choice boiled down to picking Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, or Christopher Hitchens, I’d pick Hitchens in a heartbeat. At least he wouldn’t try to sink our boat so that Jesus would come back sooner.'' It cracks me up more so now that it's directed in the right direction.