So, here in DCia we're in the endgame of the snowpocalypse. My biggest inconveniences were having the cable go out for a few hours and having all the restaurants and stores in the neighborhood shutdown before I got to them on Saturday night. And even with the latter, we found a drug store with a small grocery section open so we could buy frozen pizzas and hamburgers and avoid making dinner the hard way. My heart goes out to people who've lost heat and power and don't look to get it back for days because the repair crews have to fight their way through three feet of snow.

Grocery shopping on Saturday was weird. The store was almost empty, very few shoppers. Some items were just gone. Table sugar was gone. Spinach was gone. Ramen was gone. The meat section was almost entirely empty. Everything else was well stocked. Well, except I couldn't find an eggplant. But expecting eggplant in February probably has more to do with me being spoiled by the availability of produce at grocery stores in Ohio than with snowmageddon.

It was fun running through the piles of snow on Saturday morning. My neighbors were in an unusually neighborly mood. Had I not lived in a properly managed municipality in a properly managed state, I might not have been able to make it through a single mile. The bits where I was running through snow up to my knees were tough. But most of my route was plowed and I was running through four to eight inches of snow. In a couple places, I was even hitting the bare pavement. I must admit, however, that I didn't wear my Five Fingers but dug out my old regular running shoes instead.

A while ago we has some new neighbors move in across the hall. Perhaps coincidentally, our roach problem got far worse about a week later. In addition to having more of them, we also had new species move in. We had bait stations out prior to this but they didn't seem to be working. So two weeks ago, I switched brands. Having tried Raid, Combat, and Black Flag, the roaches in my house just didn't seem interested. I found a brand I'd not seen before, Enforcer. The roaches love it. Now I'm seeing dead roaches all over the place. A couple of the bait stations are about half way emptied. (They're designed to provide three months of food.) I really like roach baits. If you're patient, they'll solve just about any roach problem so long as your house is reasonably clean. If you leave out enough food for the roaches so that they don't eat the baits, though, you're screwed.

Anyway, I guess my roach problem was far worse than I had thought. But with the right tools in hand, it'll get cleared up in relatively short order. Thatis, at least until I get another new batch of neighbors. That's one of the few things I don't like about apartment living. Sometimes you're at the mercy of your neighbors' habits.

I've cobbled together a decent topic for my term paper on Kant. In a nutshell, I'm going to argue that the way he puts the sovereign outside of the social contract (which results in the sovereign having no legal constraints, that is to say that the sovereign cannot be coerced into taking or refraining from any action) creates a problem for rational agents by making the social contract potentially self-defeating. If the only constraint on action by the sovereign is moral constraint, the sovereign's own will, it isn't clear that being obedient to the sovereign is a rational idea. So the challenge, then, becomes finding a way that the sovereign can be legally limited in a way that does not impinge upon sovereignty. I think the way to do that is through a combination of the concept of personation, Kant's public/private dichotomy in the use of reason, and a constitutional separation of powers. If the sovereign is an artificial person composed of an aggregate of individuals acting in their private (rather than public) roles, it can effectively limit its own will through constitutional law and thereby be subject to the law without having its sovereignty diminished.

This is a pretty far cry from my original idea involving libertarians. But it should be an interesting paper to write nonetheless. The new topic is also quite a bit more interesting to my professor. It gets at one of the things that bugs him about Kant's political philosophy, the lack of any constraints on the sovereign other than his own will.

I've also noticed that I really ought to start packing dinner to take to eat before my Kant class. It starts at 6pm. I don't end up at home and eating something yummy until nine or ten. At the very least, I should take something more substantial that the few pieces of fruit I bring with me to nibble during the hours I spend at the office.

So now it's time to try to puzzle out what I'm going to write on concerning the problem of evil in Neoplatonic philosophy. Unfortunately, I'm mostly constrained to Plotinus and Proclus. I found an interesting paper that argued that Dionysius synthesized the view of Plotinus and Proclus on being into something new, albeit dependent on both. At first I had hopes of doing something similar on the topic of evil. But that's a dead end (or a really promising dissertation) as the consensus view is that Dionysius came close to plagiarizing Proclus almost verbatim when it comes to the discussion of evil.

I'm wondering now if I can reconcile Plotinus and Proclus, at least in their end if not in their means. I think I'm on terra firma with regards to what I want to say about Plotinus. But I only started reading Proclus about a week ago. But he seems to be going in the correct direction for what I want to do. I shall find out as I get closer to the end of his treatise.

I'm still drawing blanks over what I'm going to write about with regards to Hume. But that's okay. Hopefully by the time I have my topic on evil sorted out, I will have read enough Hume to start getting ideas.

The work week started out cold enough for me to skip running outside in favor of hitting the treadmill and I zoomed through a sub-seven minute mile. I feel like I'm cheating whenever I do this. It's so easy to run fast on a treadmill. But it does give me hope that I'll work my way back up to consistently having sub-seven minute miles on a regular basis. On Wednesday, I managed an eight minute mile through four inches of snow. On Thursday, I did four miles in 34 minutes. I think the largest difference is that on a treadmill, it's easier to be mindful of maintaining speed. If you slow down while really running, you just run slower. If you slow down while running on the treadmill, you get jettisoned off the back.

The super-circuit was unexceptional. Shoulder presses continue to give me problems.

I clocked in on Monday at 168 pounds. That went up over the course of the week to as high as 169 and down to as low as 167.

The world needs more news stories that contain the phrase After consuming an unknown amount of alcohol, he constructed . . .

Does your Stupor Bowl party violate copyright law? I find the answer pretty funny.

The average US SEAL is 5'10" and 175 pounds. That's half an inch shorter and 5 to 10 pounds heavier than me. The bit of that article that gets me is that having been a water polo player in high school or college is the number one predictor of passing the training.

A bit surprising is a recent study that suggests the right sort of abstinence only sex education might be the best form. The interesting bit about the program that was studied is that the focus was on not having sex until one was personally ready.

From 2005-2006, the number of abortions performed increased for the first time in decades. Planned Parenthood blames programs like the aforementioned abstinence only sex ed programs. I dunno. My money's on the poverty rate.

A new guide to eating is out, this one written by the author of The Omnivore's Dilemma. Most of the rules seem fairly common sense. I'm not so certain about the emphasis on eating plants, though. I think there should be an emphasis on eating plants, just not such a strong one.

France denies citizenship to a man whose wife wears a burqa. I'm not quite convinced that the burqa is the real reason. I suspect it may have more to do with stating that women were inherently inferior to me. I could be wrong on that. But I do think it uncontroversial to suppose that highlighting the burqa issue will sell more eyeballs to advertisers.

I found an atheist bursting myths about New Atheism to be ironic. Jacoby does have some good points. But over all it looks to me like the equivalent of someone from a liberal Christian group bursting myths about Christianity that more or less accurately describe Watchman Nee's local church movement.

Good guys who don't draw first, draw faster, still get shot. ``Although players reacting to an opponent's draw completed the sequence more quickly, they still didn't win the duel because the increase in speed wasn't sufficient to make up the time they lost by starting later.''

15,000 78s sold for 12,000. That's less than a buck a pop. I've owned turntables able to play 78s but I've never had one to play. OTOH, I've owned 8 tracks but have never owned an 8 track player.

State governments are collecting and storing DNA from infants without parental consent.

The NY Times has an interesting bit on traitors as heros in film.  I've long been of the opinion that the notion that group's freedom fighter is another group's terrorist has long one of the most understated narratives in history and the portrayal of such in the arts. Far less attention has been paid to the issue of heroic defectors from one side to the other being traitors to their homeland.