The aquarium in Riverhead, New York—as small as it may be—served me up the most tasty dose of nautical wonder and enchantment that I’ve had for quite some time. Usually, I am overwhelmed by a sense of fear and discomfort when it comes to anything that is both living and submarine; most underwater creatures strike me as fantastic and bizarre given their flaky scales, rubberlike tentacles, translucent fins, goobley eyes, and strange ability to breathe underwater. However, the trip to the aquarium reminded me of the balletic side of water-life: the sea critters appeared calm, poised, fluid, and graceful—thalassic dancers with born-talent. I was particularly impressed by the rays: crowded in a shallow petting pool with a couple of docile sharks, they glided smoothly over to my viewing-point begging to be stroked and cooed.

Each of the animals on display reinvigorated my appreciation for the diversity of nature and the uniqueness of a given species: seahorses, angle-bodied and swirly-tailed, propel themselves with a small fin situated square on their back. Horseshoe crabs, which I learned have ten eyes and are actually related to scorpions and spiders, adjust themselves with a tail that functions as a rudder. Cuttlefish, a cephalopod not unlike a squid, are equipped with an internal shell and w-shaped pupils. Sea lions—my favorite of the bunch—can slow their heart-rate to five beats per minute as a means to conserve oxygen during deep fishing dives. …the range of variety and skill was impressive and belittling to say the least. Poor, terrestrial, human me.

Overall, I really enjoyed my experience at Atlantis Marine World, and I highly recommend a trip to your local aquatic museum in hopes that you too will revel the big shiny blue gems that are the waters of Earth. Seventy-five percent of our planet is covered with water, might as well get to know your neighbors that swim within!

…and now here are a few photos:

I use to think that life was like a marathon.  Life was long and difficult so pace yourself.  Don’t go out in a blaze of glory.  Be in it for the long haul.  You have no doubt heard these sayings or thought these thoughts.  This view of life sounds very good…but it is not really true.

Life is so much more like the title of this post, “City Driving During Rush Hour And We Are All Late!”  We are all in hurry to get from point “A” to point “B” but there are traffic lights everywhere.  Between lights, we quickly get up to the speed limit (or maybe a few miles per hour over it), and then we have to abruptly slow down and stop because of a red light.  Stop and go.  Fast and slow.  Surrounded by others.  All trying to get somewhere.

To go back to our running analogy, life is a series of sprints.  There are times of incredible business and times for rest.  There are times we are running as fast as we can go.  Then there are times when we can stroll and enjoy a much more relaxed pace.

We certainly see this in the life of Christ.  There were times when the masses gathered around Him and He healed, taught, questioned, and ministered.  There were also times when He visited in the houses of friends and relaxed or went to a quiet place to pray and rest.

I think we can learn a great deal from our Lord.

I once heard a minister proudly say, “I would rather burn out than rust out!”  He was talking about doing ministry at a break-neck pace.  I have to say, when I first heard this saying, it really sounded spiritual.  It sounded bold. But the more I thought about it something became very clear, either way (rust out or burn out) we were going to be OUT of the race!  I don’t know about you, but I want to FINISH the race.  I don’t want to burn out from over activity.  I don’t want to rust out from inactivity.

So I think it helps to remember that life is like city driving during rush hour and we are all late.  Life is a series of sprints.  If this is true, then the key is to know when to go fast and when to slow down.  It is to understand the difference between the urgent and the important (for they are often not the same).  And THAT, my friend, is where the real challenge lies…and that is a message for another day!  I’m tired.  It is time for me to slow down

Today I did a really good bargain and bought books for 20 kr/ea at Akademibokhandeln at Kista Galleria.

1. Den andra kvinnan by Jane Green

2. Fallet G by Håkan Nesser

3. Löpgravsvägen by Kari Hotakainen

4. Vänninorna & Kung Carl by Kicki Norman

5. De skamlösa by Sisela Lindblom

I bought books that are easy to ready so I can enjoy them on the subway, to complex books are heavy to read in that kind of environment. I think I will start with Löpgravsvägen since the reviews sais it’s really funny to read!

I wanted to discuss the “house cut” since I feel it’s the epitome of any suit jacket and what defines a suit brand. Bottom line is, if you are quite literally not “feeling” the house cut, then move on – that brand is not for you.

The “house cut” is the intellectual property if you may of any suit brand – all patterns or off the rack sizes are based on it. It defines a suit as having a slim or baggy waist, tight or loose arm hole, boxy or soft shoulders and long or short jacket length.

The current trend is an overall slim and fitted look and it appears the demands for fit are getting tighter over time. The slim fit includes a slim waist, tight armhole, soft shoulders and a shorter jacket. Many hip/trendy brands and fast fashion brands have based their house cut on this particular look – even the Savillian cut is based on this current trend.

The beauty of men’s trends and hence, house cuts is that fashion is so slow that it takes a few years for anything to change. My suggestion is to not take any trend too literally but always keep it classic.

I am reading Mark Batterson’s book, ‘In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day’.  I am really being challenged by the writing in this book and wanted to pass along a thought that struck me last night as I was reading.

Batterson writes that there are over 2000 phobias listed in the psychiatric world with anything from photophobia, which is the fear of not looking good in pictures, to arachibuytrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.  There is even phobiaphobia, which is the fear of phobias.

He points out the interesting part is that psychiatrists believe that we are born with only two innate fears: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises.  The rest of our fears are learned behaviors.

Let me ask you a question, ‘What have you not tried because you were afraid of what might happen, or what might not happen?’  Being courageous is not doing something with the absence of fear, but it is doing something in spite of the fear.  There are a lot of things that we can be afraid of, but if we never tried them we wouldn’t have those stories to tell.

What story does God what to tell through you? What fear must you conquer to be able to tell that story?  Leave your thoughts.

Well, not entirely.  I am significantly better than I was last week but I am still under par.  However, I got back in the gym yesterday and did my normal Monday routine.  I missed my morning light and dynamic stretches but I managed to get the second hour long session in later.  Today is more dynamic stretches, conditioning for kicks and karate later, which I’m really looking forward to.  It seems, though, that turnout is still low.  Karate will end with stretching – I am hoping there will be plenty of pad work too.

Happily I haven’t put on any additional weight from the week off I had.  Potentially, my muscles have had a chance to regenerate from the rest and continued enhanced levels of protein, so it may have worked in my favour.  Anyway, I intend to crack on now without a break in lifting weights until March (save for the break in taking supplements).  My diet is likely to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future.
I am taking the links to mens health and fitness down.  While I will continue to buy these for the useful information they contain, I have definitely changed my philosophy on training and these are no longer commensurate with them.  The covers always sell articles like lose 6 kilos in two weeks with no effort.  Gain 5 kilos in lean muscle in three months.  It’s really these I object to.  I’m not qualified to comment on whether it is possible to bulk up or shed fat quickly, but that is not what I am trying to do anyway.  I am attempting to become a fighter, and that is something entirely different altogether.  You cannot become a warrior in six weeks.  A good fighter has many attributes, none of which are easy to come by.  All have to be hard earned.  The more I train and the more I research I put into conditioning, fighting, et cetera, the more I appreciate what a long an arduous path all good fighters have to walk.  There really are no short cuts.  I have a few blogs to write about this.
Me and June.  In all honesty I am undecided about whether to fight in this June’s competition or next.  However, I am leaning towards next June for a variety of reasons.  The paragraphs above should give an insight into that as well as my previous post on my degree.  I will go into more detail later on.  The only complication about fighting next year *was* my fifth anniversary (1st June).  We were intending to have a reunion in Venice.  Happily my lovely wife has agreed to postpone this until August, by which time I will be considerably less purple.  June 2011 is on it is just a question of whether 2010 is too.  There are conditions attached to that.  I must be managing with my degree and I must be putting in the time to train too.  The time to train is quantified by being ready to fight.  Being ready to fight means getting further than the first round.  I really do want to place somewhere, at least third.
I genuinely believe that I can do well – I certainly have the right support and I’m at the right dojo – but I sincerely do not believe I am ready yet.  My change in philosophy will see a change in focus in my training and in this blog.

Cheers,

Ryotoken

Wake up to a sunny day, not a cloud up in the sky
Then it starts to rain, my defenses hit the ground
And they shatter all around, so open and exposed
I found strength in the struggle
Face to face with my trouble

When you’re broken in a million little pieces
And you’re trying but you can’t hold on anymore
Every tear falls down for a reason
Don’t you stop believing in yourself
When you’re broken

Little girl don’t be so blue
I know what you’re going through
Don’t let it beat you up
Hitting walls and getting scars
Only makes you who you are
Only makes you who you are
No matter how much your heart is aching
There is beauty in the breaking
Yeah

When you’re broken in a million little pieces
And you’re trying but you can’t hold on anymore
Every tear falls down for a reason
Don’t you stop believing in yourself
When you’re broken

Better days are gonna find you once again
Every piece will find its place

When you’re broken, when you’re broken

When you’re broken in a million little pieces
And you’re trying but you can’t hold on anymore
Every tear falls down for a reason
Don’t you stop believing in yourself
When you’re broken
Oh, when you’re broken
When you’re broken
When you’re broken

Yesterday it as sunshine, at least for a couple of hours in the morning. I just had to show you that we actually had a blue sky.

I love snow, but we have a lot already and that is enough. Do you want to know why? because our apartment is facing a street with traffic, we have solid double glass windows, which let’s almost no sound in. But one sound is heard even though you live in a basement, he sound of the snowplow. As soon as a little bit of snow has fallen they start cleaning the streets, AT NIGHT. And they push their plows into the pavement, very hard. It sound like the sounds that comes from the jungle in the TV show LOST.  It has gone so far that we have a traditional “arga lappen” on our door. someone living in the neighbourhood has written an “arga lappen” and attached it all over the block. “Arga lappen” sais that we should call in to the departement of maintenance of the City streets, and complain. I will do that if we have any more snow and the beast from LOST will be back during night, then I will call.

As it turns out, the rest day couldn’t have come on a better day.  Weather was crap outside all day today.  Cold, snowing, windy, no sun, etc.  Things are supposed to warm up a little (relative today, of course) tomorrow, so that will be nice.

I think I’m going to use the rest days as a reflection on the past week, and turn right back, and look at what’s coming up for the current week.

Last week started off nicely with the beginning of the real weekday workouts starting with the tempo run.  Went through a couple rest days, a couple longer runs during the week, and capped it off with a 13 mile run Saturday, and a PR 5K on Sunday.  41 miles total.  All of the runs felt good, no pains, breathing is doing good.  I guess if I were to rate the week on a scale of 1 to 10, it would have to fall somewhere in between a 7 and an 8.

The week ahead starts with some tempo running, rest day, half-mile repeats on Thursday, 6 on Friday, and then the big test, 15 miles on Saturday.  After last Saturday’s “adventure”, I’ve already planned out the route and I’ve got pit stop areas lined up…just in case.   To date, 13 miles is the longest distance I’ve run…ever.  Shouldn’t be a huge deal.  On an out and back style route, it’s just one more mile.  However, the one thing that I know I need to get figured out is fueling during the long runs.  Up until this point, I haven’t taken water or food during any of the longer runs I’ve been on (10+ miles).  Load up a couple hours before I head out, and refuel when I get back.  This isn’t a viable solution for the marathon, and no better time to work on it than now, I guess.

Til then…

Goes a long way baby. I admit, I got it a little small. It was a banner day when I got it on yesterday and when I saw myself in it…

For the first time in a long time, I felt beautiful.

I’ve had well over two weeks to process what’s gone on between myself and my now ex-girlfriend, and even though I’m still completely stumped as to why she went from telling me she wanted no one else just before New Year to saying it was over three weeks after that, I’ve come to realise that the loss of this relationship is more like a bereavement than just a break up.

Anyone reading this (now no one reads this, at least the blog title’s living up to its name) may think that statement is very melodramatic but I assure you that it isn’t. She still lives with me at the moment, and the girl I’m seeing in my house now is not the same girl I knew and loved for over five years. Maybe its skewed because of my point of view, but I don’t think it is, its honestly like living with a stranger. Within the space of three weeks, her habits have completely changed as has her friends, her attitude and her outlook on life. It’s a startling occurrence and whilst I did hope for some sort of reconciliation, I know that isn’t possible because the girl I loved and wanted to spend the rest of my life with isn’t there anymore. There’s this strange woman living in my house, she’s constantly on Facebook (seriously, honestly, who has over 500 ‘friends’ of Facebook?), she’s smoking just like she used to before we went out and she’ s looking to go out drinking all the time.

If she had led a cloistered life than maybe I’d understand why she was becoming like this, a sort of need to cut loose like she never has done before. But the truth of it is that from between the ages of 17-21 she was out on the town three nights a week every week, she had her own pint glass behind the bar of her local and the number of men she’d slept with probably numbered higher than 40. So it’s more a case of her reverting to type, she was like this before, she flitted from man to man, she smoke and drank heavily and she moved from place to place regularly. I gave her stability for the first time in her life, I gave her the confidence to believe in herself and the support when things went wrong, now it looks like she’s used that (plus her excessive weight loss) to lift herself above how she was and now she wants to play the single game with a new skill set, so to speak.

I’m guessing (obviously), she’s constantly contradicted  herself in one way or another and if she knows exactly what she wants then I’d be very surprised. She had her new tv delivered this morning, she even sent me a text asking me to make sure I don’t miss the delivery, the cheeky bastard! I intend to get away again next weekend for Valentine’s Day, I’ve always thought it a crass, overly commercial celebration anyway, but that doesn’t get away from the fact that everything makes you feel like a complete prick when you’re on your own on that day.

I started to think earlier about whether I would ever find someone else, but I realised that I should stop being so impatient, and that maybe I should try to let the wounds heal from the last relationship. What is the saying? Patience is a virtue, I don’t feel very virtuous at the moment.

With all the bad press Mel gets it’s good to know his movies are still worth seeing.  I went today to see Edge and was surprised at how good it was.  I really didn’t expect too much maybe a standard action shoot em up but instead got a pretty good thriller.  Oh it’s not Oscar stuff but entertaining and interesting. 

Basic plot As homicide detective Thomas Craven investigates the death of his activist daughter, he uncovers not only her secret life, but a corporate cover-up and government collusion that attracts an agent tasked with cleaning up the evidence.

I found the name of the Clean up man very interesting, Jedburgh.  Look that name up if your interested in military and special operations (OSS) history

My rating four out of five stars.  Or, yeah I’d see it again.

Sitting here in my office on yet another very cold winter day with the wind howling a couple of thoughts occurred to me.  I am ever glad I don’t train racehorses any longer.   There can’t be a tougher job than winter training and racing and I am still in awe of  those who do.   Waking in the early hours when it’s still dark, heading out to feed then get ready to jog or train but after you’ve perhaps cleaned the track and tried to  scratch out enough cushion so it’s not too hard on the less than sound ones.    Then after your days work is done  you head out and drive maybe 2 or 3 hours on less than ideal roads to race get home late and tomorrow you start all over again.  Racing people must love what they do, how else can you explain it.

The other thought I had was a week after the O’Brien Awards showcasing excellence in Canadian horse is how poor really everyday Canadian racing has become.   Mediocrity does not describe what I have seen on the track for several years now.   Was it ever as bad?  I don’t think so.  There used to be a time when your bottom end claiming horses were that, older horses who had run their course, maybe had a few issues but always had a little class in the end and could put on a good show.   This was the twilight of their career and yet they seemed not to know it.   Today by contrast we have horses starting out with zero or little ability and never improve so that they begin their life at the bottom and stay there.   I’m guessing it might have something to do with the amount of money thrown at the worst quality with no incentive for owners or trainers to get better stock.   Recently Nick Eaves the CEO of Woodbine Entertainment stated “there is simply too much harness racing product” and I agree however I would add “too much bad product”.   If we are ever to start attracting new customers we surely have to present a better show on track.

How do we carry out this?  It will take better minds than mine to come up with solutions.  However one thing I will say is the current purse structures at most tracks are not about rewarding competitiveness  they’re about equalizing the money doled out.  Could we compare harness racing to any  sports league who see an increase in attendance and perceived demand so they add more and more teams, with less quality players to go around the quality of the game is impacted and seeing this your customers look for newer pursuits.   I would say we need a different business model to work from, of certain tracks being open during certain times of the year and a much reduced schedule from the current.   How can having more of the same old grow anything.

I will have more to say on the matter later after another cup of coffee or three.

I am doing some research on mea culpa and the role of mitigating circumstances when it comes to being held responsible for crimes. In 1978, Harvey Milk, a Californian activist was shot dead by Dan White. This case was famous not only for the murder of America’s first openly gay politician, but also for the “Twinkie Defense” where  his defendant lawyers successfully claimed that White acted out of character and persuaded the jury that he had experienced a mood swing exacerbated by his consumption of sugary foods. The jurors found White incapable of the premeditation required for a murder conviction, and instead convicted him of voluntary manslaughter.

Similarly, in the Jamie Bulger case, where two 10-year-olds, Jon Venables and Robert Thompson abducted and murdered the two-year-old toddler, questions about who and what to blame were raised by the public whipped up by the tabloids. Every week, there seems to be some unbelievable crime that is attributed to television, pornography, horror videos or poor parenting. It is our human nature to look for a culprit.

Now we have the return of the supermale syndrome myth where males born with an extra ‘Y’ chromosome (‘XYY’) are thought to be more aggressive and violent then the rest of us ‘XY’ lesser males. In a report from New Zealand, Michael Knight (17) left a party around 1am, broke into a house, stole jewellery, cameras, money and guns, and made his getaway in a $280,000NZ Audi (are they really that expensive) that he later crashed. When questionned by the police he had no explanation for his behaviour because he did not hold a driver’s license or a gun license. How bizarre and strange that a young man would act in such a way after a party. Roger Philip his lawyer however entered a plea of not guilty because he claimed that his client had reactive attachment disorder, ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, and an extra Y chromosome.

The supermale syndrome was discredited years ago, and so it is right the judge promptly gave Knight a year in prison. Nevertheless, we are entering a new era where genetic predisposition is increasingly going to be used by lawyers to argue that their clients are not guilty. “Honest, m’lord, it wasn’t me but my genes what done it!” Interesting times.

the snow this weekend didn’t feel to ME like Armageddon, or I’m sorry… SNOWmageddon. You news-type folks need to get out more.

Just checked my Poem A Day count, to see if I was remaining on top of things. I’m already short several poems. I could go back and write poems for the days I missed, but honestly, wouldn’t that be cheating? Bygones. It’s MMS to the poetry blog from here on it if I can’t get in front of the computer.

Time to warm up toes, and go boldly into the environs of North Philadelphia for class. Huzzah!

For a Super bowl this was a pretty good game.  The point spread was never very far apart.  Now I’m not a Colts or Saints fan but since global warming caused yet another round of snow here I really had little else to do.  So with a  bowl of chips, salsa and a beer I watched the game unfold.  I liked both quarterbacks (wish my Oakland Raiders could find someone like either of these guys). 

The Colts took the lead and seemed to hold the Saints defense in check the first quarter.  The second quarter the saints started their comeback.  I was glad to see the fourth down attempt near the end of the half.  Settling for three I figured the Saints weren’t too far behind.  Then surprisingly they made a third quarter onside kick and recovered the ball.  Talk about adding excitement to the game.   From there on out they seemed to have the edge. 

In the fourth quarter with time dwindling down and the colts on the march the win was pretty much sealed when Manning threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown.  This put them more than a touchdown behind and there just wasn’t enough time to make up the deficit. 

One of the things I noticed was the lack of penalties.  This was a pretty good game on that score also.  While there were a couple key yellow flags there weren’t that many.  Also Saints kicker Garrett Hartley just couldn’t miss making 3 field goals of 40+ yards each.  

And of course Drew Brees was on all night and tied the Super bowl completion record with 32.

The colts played well and frankly I figured they would tie the game in the fourth and it would go into overtime but luck wasn’t on their side. 

The only downside for me is that I think all Super bowls should be held in the snow.. just saying…

Best comercial for me: Doritos Kid:  Don’t touch my mama , don’t touch my doritos…

Monday!  Feels very nice with a new week, I started of with major stripes of fake tan on my hands. Not that beautiful and I can’t get it off. To prevent anyone to see it I have a lot of bracelets, a clock and a ring on my hands, jut to try to hide it. Life can sometimes be very hard =)

the weather has lately been quite boring, nothing happens. Look for your self:

just cold, cloudy and boring.

tomorrow (Monday), we turn (again or finally) to Dummett on realism and anti-realism. I welcome any comments you have on this: I am teaching Dummett but that doesn’t make me expert in all the debates he is reviewing. That said, I take his work here to be paradigmatic of a certain approach in Anglo-American philosophy in the last thirty years. This doesn’t mean that other relevant figures wouldn’t have much to debate in Dummett, but overall it leaves what Meillassoux dubs correlationism firmly in place. Thus, in order:

1. What is correlationism? I’m glad you asked. As Meillassoux explains, it’s the view that all that is must be the “correlate” or mean something or be referred to from within human thinking. Thus, the question after Kant is less about “what is the in-itself,” but under what conditions can we know what is. For example, Kant argues that ontology (the study of what is) is less important that the study of how we come to know what is. Thus, he spends a lot of time on how we know cause and effect and how sense impressions enter into our understanding, all in the end to say what we cannot experience: the in-itself.

2. The move that Dummett makes is to say that epistemology (or better, philosophy of language) trumps questions of “what is.” In this way, he shares a dominant view in Anglo American philosophy (and one dominant in Continental as well) that before we can ever take up “what is” we must first answer the question of how we can be said to “refer” to something in the first place. We use language to refer to things: we use car signals to refer to the fact that we plant to turn, and we use the word “dog” to refer to an actual dog. We also engage in language with “sense“: we are not just referring to “dogs,” but use the word “dog” to talk about dogs in general. For example, I may say, with a factual reference to a “state of affairs” that “the dog just peed on the carpet.” Or I might just talk about how “dogs [in general] pee on carpets.” In this last sentence, I’m not referring to some dog you know—I’m talking about you, Scruffy!—but to the “sense” or meaning of the word. This sounds rather uncomplicated, but philosophers such as W.V.O. Quine spend a lot of time (rightly) on noting just how difficult this idea of “reference” is: Quine notes in his own work that in order to make any “reference” we must know the language we are using quite well. We tend to think reference is the simplest thing in language and Quine is quite convincing that in fact it might well be the most complicated—the last step you can make in a language is knowing that the general word “dog” refers to some entity right in front of you. (I’m simplifying quite a bit.) Why is this important? Well, if we are engaged in realism, someone might say that we are just using language to “refer” to what is “obviously” right there in front of us. (I mention this because Continental thinkers are often joked about for talking about “discourse” and “social constructivism” as blocking our way to what is “real.” And they are treated like idiots for that: well, just try to talk about discourse when you meet your real death, as one quip goes. But a similar claim from a “naive realist” could be done with a number of prominent Anglo American philosophers.)

3. What Dummet says is that the difference between realism and anti-realism is really a question of language: independent of any mind, a set of certain entities exists (he talks about the different types of realism one finds in Anglo American philosophy: psychological realism, mathematical realists, moral realists, etc. These realists are saying that our language “correlates” to a state of affairs independent of thought of language. If I am a “dog realist,” I am claiming that my words about dogs refer to existing entities called dogs who are there in the world whether I talk about them or not. He says that anti-realists do not believe that nothing is real, but rather say that a particular set of entities are not the ultimate reality. He says they are “reductive.” For example a lot of philosophers hold that consciousness is “epiphenomenal,” meaning that it is something that is really the result of material entities in the brain. Thus they are anti-realist about minds, but may be realists about “matter.” In a similar way, I might be a dog “anti-realist”: I say that the dog doesn’t exist, but there are indeed real particles of light hitting my eyes that I then talk about as a “dog,” but are really just phenomena or particles of light.

4. Where Dummett gets really confusing is in his account of truth. Here is where it’s clear that Dummett is really arguing that ultimately and counter-intuitively, realism isn’t really about existing entities, but is rather a statement about other statements (I have to figure a better way to put that). In other words, I could build a whole dog realism, which is a set of statements set to prove that the ultimate reality is made up of fur, the smell of wet hair, and fluffy tales. But Dummett notes that this last set of statements (about the size of dogs, their fur, etc.) would be the same whether or not dogs were real. (Replace dogs with “unicorns” and you get the point.) What you are saying is all this about dogs and one more thing: there are dogs and they exist in reality. They are independent of thought. And what you say about dogs can be “true or false” (this is what he means by “bivalence,” which only means that you are saying that a statement is either true or false), in other words, the person who says dogs lie on couches, poop in litter, and clean themselves is giving a set of statements about dogs that are false—they don’t “correlate” to reality. (Unless you are talking about cats.) But an anti-realist about a set of statements is saying that they aren’t true or false according to an external state of affairs: there are a lot of statements about unicorns that aren’t referring to an external state of affairs. (Yes, I am a unicorn “anti-realist.”)

5. Reductivism: a side point is that Dummett argues that most (or all, depending on which Dummett you read) anti-realists are “reductivists.” This will be a term that will be useful when studying the speculative realists: some will be reductivists; others won’t be and this different perhaps is the most crucial. The reductivists, for Dummett, are saying, this set of statements isn’ttrue or false (e.g., everything you read about consciousness, since for some it’s not “real”), but rather is better explained if you ‘reduce’ it to another set of statements. Thus, in what is called “eliminative realism,” consciousness is reduced to discussions of brain matter (synapses firing off, etc.). Thus all that comes with the language of “consciouness’ is neither true or false: you are not really depressed, it’s just that your chemical balance is off in the brain; you don’t really make a choice, but rather a certain set of synapses fire off; you are not experiencing memories, neurons in your hypocampus are firing off, etc. (I should really look up the mechanics of depression…) And it is this last set of statements by the “reductivist” materialists that can be said to be true or false: either your synapses are really firing off or they are not…. In other words, Dummett is claiming that most philosophers are realists about something but about other things they are “anti-realists.”

6. But Dummett also argues that all questions of realism are about how language correlates to states of affairs. In this way, philosophy of language is more important the metaphysics or ontology. And most importantly, Dummett accepts that in the end all realism is ultimately a “correlationism.” At best—and this really is the best one can hope for—you have a language that correlates to a real state of affairs. And to think seriously about this state of affairs, you work on how it make sense within a given language.

For tomorrow, we’ll hash this out more clearly, discussing the philosopher Frege and his influence here. We will then talk about why Dummett is ultimately and anti-realist, in fact, perhaps the only genuine one, since he isn’t arguing that there is one state of affairs that is real and others are “epiphenomena,” but rather that he realizes that since these are all questions of language, there is no statement that is not ultimately referring to anything but more language. We’ll talk about this point, which is not clear as I’ve rendered it here. We’ll also, if we have time, show some parallels and non-parallels with Kant. (Dummett makes the “realist” above a describer of the world who says exactly what Kant says is all we can say about the in-itself: that it is non-contradictory and that it exists. This makes Kant for himself an idealist and for Dummett this is what the semantics of realism means. Don’t worry if you didn’t catch this.)

What to say, what to say. Not much really, she’s been out on the weekend and probably shown herself up (so I’ve been told by people who’ve seen her facebook page), I’ve been staying with friends and licking my wounds, that went pretty well. The girl wanted ‘to be on her own’  looks like she’s having some girl go live with her because she probably couldn’t survive otherwise.

At the moment I kind of feel like the girl I loved for five years has gone, replaced by the goodtime girl that existed before, guess leopards really don’t change their spots. I’ll be better once she’s gone but karma  really owes me for this, the way I’ve carried myself and the way she’s treated me aren’t equal and sincerely hope she falls flat on her face.

She said on her facebook that she’d made a cock of herself last night and that she’d wish people didn’t gossip about her, fuck that, you lie with dogs, you get fleas and she’s laid deep in the dirt. I still have a hard time accepting all this, but I will and I live with the desire to see her fail, pride comes before a fall and she’s been cocky and arrogant throughout this.

Fuck it, Superbowl is on now and I want to see a good game of football.

Photo by Robert S. Donovan

A discussion in class yesterday prompted me to think about the subject of Push vs. Pull management. What does that mean? Ask yourself – when do you actively engage with your employees and when do you wait for them to come to you?

My guess is that for most managers, the instinct of when to push and when to pull is out of tune.

They tend to push criticism (not feedback), rules and answers.

They tend to pull feedback (that is, they give feedback only when asked to), recognition (yearly performance reviews, anyone?) and taking hurdles out of employees’ way (that is, wait until the employee comes to them with a problem).

One example. Do you have an open door policy or do you practice MBWA (management by walking around).

Another my favorite examples, resisting the temptation to give answers and to tell people what to do. Seth Godin wrote a few days ago:

People are just begging to be told what to do. There are a lot of reasons for this, but I think the biggest one is: “If you tell me what to do, the responsibility for the outcome is yours, not mine. I’m safe.”

When asked, resist.

Instead of pulling people to ask you what they should do, resist the temptation to give answers and push back with some questions. Susan Docherty, who leads the United States sales, service and marketing team at General Motors, said, in an interview on the New York Times:

It’s one thing to say that you’re inclusive, but it’s a whole other thing to be inclusive. And when people come into my office, they feel welcome. My door is open. They can bring ideas. They begin to understand that, as a leader, I want to be collaborative. I don’t have all the answers or all the best ideas, nor do I want to.

You don’t have all the answer either. So, why not start asking great questions instead?

The ability to pull and push in the right times is critical. When do you push and when do you pull?

Elad

A very special birthday needs a very special cake.

After exercise I met up with J, had lunch, met up his freind J, went to a lot of sport shops, didn’t find what we where looking for, bought jeans on sale instead and then went home.