La philisophie m'ennuye

It's officially April, which means there is officially almost no time left in this semester, and thus little time remaining until I gradjimate and arrividerci.

Because Colorado has so f-ing weird weather, it snowed again yesterday. I guess it really only qualifies as weird if it snows in June (which has happened before, I assure you), but days of 60-60-60-60-55-60-55-60-28-60 degrees seems strange to me, and I grew up here.

But, as Oscar Wilde (I think) said, "Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative,” we'll move on to more interesting topics.



1) Consider the statement "The moon must be made of cheese." This is composed of the predicates "the moon" and "made of cheese", with the relationship "must" connecting them. If and only if the extension (or intension?) of 'moon-ness' corresponds with the extension (or intension?) of 'cheese-ness'--insofar that 'moon-ness' doesn't a priori automatically imply 'cheese-ness'--can we imply a necessary relationship between 'moon' and 'made of cheese'. As we are lacking congruency between the universals of 'moon-ness' and 'cheese-ness,' the statement is valid but false. And not all ravens are black, so there.

2) Hume says inductive reasoning sucks. Popper says inductive reasoning isn't necessary for science, while Salmon says that Popper uses inductive reasoning on the sly, the slick bastard. Goodman says 'grue' is just fine and way cooler than green or blue, and Quine says, you sod, your predicates have to actually apply to something real. But he started it, and I'm telling mom.

3) Defending a thesis is fun. Apparently someone else managed to jam the professor's door shut with their honor's 'tome' this morning, but that wasn't me, though mine was also a tome. My thesis was about 'post-conflict economic reintegration of former combatants in Angola and Mozambique', that giving jobs to demobilizing soldiers is really important. So I talked about that, how applicable my research would be to cases of the US and Iraq, the limits of reintegration policy--it's no panacea--and whether or not it supersedes or diminishes national government authority. Yeah, stuff like that...

4) There are turks in Germany. There are German Turks. They write books. Something about this conjunction is supposed to turn into a paper in the next three weeks, oh yay.

5) Bikes. Are. Expensive. My choices:

http://www.fujibikes.com/2006/bikes.asp?id=134#

http://www.trekbikes.com/us/en/bikes/2007/archive/1600wsd

http://fullcyclebikes.com/itemdetails.cfm?catalogId=39&id=708

Yay for money. Over and out.