Free Book!

I have an extra hardcover copy of The Complete Greek Tragedies, Volume 1: Aeschylus, edited by Grene and Lattimore. This book is the standard edition of Aeschylus' plays. Caveat: The Suppliant Maidens is unreadable in this copy due to pagination/printing errors, but I've read all of the Greek tragedies and, frankly, Suppliants isn't all that great anyway. Otherwise, the book is in great condition. It's worth about $50, but I'll give it away if it'll find a good home. If you think you'd make use of it, leave a comment or email me.

UPDATE: It's gone now. Sorry, folks.

What Is Wrong With Women?

Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy, asks the question.

Flax Plus

How is it?
It doesn't taste good or bad. It doesn't taste at all, really.
Does the milk help?
No. In fact, the cereal seems to absorb the milk's taste. The whole thing doesn't taste like anything.
So it tastes like nothing?
Hey, maybe the cereal has, like, negative taste. Once it comes into contact with milk, it destroys the milk's taste.
Flax Plus is the antimatter of cereal!

By Means Of A Faculty

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant asks, "How is synthetic a priori knowledge possible?" Kant's answer? "By means of a faculty." But, unfortunately, not in five words.

Fans of Nietzsche might recognize this quotation. It's a caricature of Kant, but it's pithy and clever. Turns out Kant isn't the only one it applies to; we can say just about the same thing about scientists today:

We only showed that brains might possess a faculty which free will could potentially be based on.

Actually, unlike Kant, they didn't even show this. Popular science, particularily pop science writing in the mass media, is depressingly terrible, but as a special bonus this article comes chock full of terrible philosophy, too. Almost every paragraph is an irredeemable mess of unfounded assumptions and egregious argumentation. Too bad neither the scientist nor the reporter who wrote the story stuck to a five-word limit.

Lnaugage Werdinses

Isn't it raemrkable taht you can raed this whtiuot too much dfificltuy eevn toghuh the lteters are all mxied up? As lnog as all of the lteters are tehre and as long as the frist and lsat lettres are corecrt, most ppeole can read athinyng, reardgelss of how the ltteers are arngerad wthiin the wrdos thselemves.

Guantanamo Rant

I expect that this won't be up for long, but it's scathing and brilliant. James Spader is one of the finest actors on TV and this clip proves it.

Getting Some Seoul

The free trade agreement between the United States and South Korea hasn't received much attention. It's too bad. It's an important deal for both countries. One of these days I'll have to blog about my support for free trade policies (and outsourcing!). For now, though, suffice it to say that I'd like to see the Conservative government pursue a similar deal for Canada. Actually, you'd expect the Conservatives, particularly Stephen Harper, to be interested in this sort of thing. I see the NDP has already started its anti-trade scare campaign, so maybe there's reason to be hopeful.

Pardon The Interruption

Apologies for the light blogging lately. I've rediscovered sleep and exercise after both went on hiatus for several months. Unfortunately, my obscene workload for my TEFL class means that I have less time to spend online. On the bright side, however, it looks like my class will help to streamline my writing. Studying the English language and learning how to teach it are better ways to develop good writing habits than writing endless academic papers, even, sadly, English papers.

I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself

The White Stripes, Buddy Guy, and Herbie Hancock all make their way to Saskatoon this summer from June 23-July 1. It'll be one helluva week for live music--and an expensive one once I get my Visa statement!

My Name's Serendipity, What's Yours?

I can see that there'll be several benefits to my TEFL class. Certainly, I'm glad I decided to take it, despite the non-negligible cost of doing so. But one thing I didn't expect was to meet someone else intent on teaching English abroad at the same time as me. We're two of only three university (soon-to-be) grads in the class. The other one wants to teach English in China so that he can be with his girlfriend, who lives there.

Anyway, this woman I met is a psychology major, interested in grad school but also interested in some time away from academia. I can relate to that, definitely. We're both the same age. And we're both set on going, alone or not, but we'd both love to have company. It's a bit premature to make plans now, but we talked about it a bit today, and things might work out well. We'll see. Employers love to hire two people who know each other because it reduces the risk of homesickness, which leads to broken contracts, which cost them money. So we'd have that going for us.

Ethics Is Hard

I began a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) Intensive class on Monday. Today we had the opportunity to observe some TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) classes. (The difference, by the way, is where the class are taught. TEFL classes are taught in non-English countries and TESL classes are taught in English countries). Awesome experience. I loved it. We get to tutor some of these students later, and I absolutely cannot wait. Besides the practical experience, though, we have classroom time, which tends to include lots of exercises. These mainly act to reinforce the theory in our texts. This, too, I find valuable.

Today, we had to match teaching materials with the appropriate skill level. One of the reading materials centered around ethics and moral philosophy. There was a brief description of the subject and some etymology of its terms. Apparently this stuff is tougher than I thought because I underestimated the classification of its difficulty, which was at the highest level; the others were lower, and I guessed all of them correctly. Everyone else, of course, not steeped in moral theory, correctly assessed the difficulty of the ethics material. A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, right? Well, apparently, so is a lot of knowledge.