But can Possible Worlds Semantics slice fries?

There is a card (certain kinds of) philosophers sometimes play. They question the "practical" value of some line of argument, some research program, some discipline. "It may be theoretically helpful to talk about X, but what's the practical upshot?"

But, for practitioners of theory, theoretical value is practical value.

i think i've heard this, but tell it again.

This is the overture from Meredith Wilson's _The Music Man_.

Quotation of the day, today.

"A model can succeed without it being clear what has been achieved." - Sorensen

Thoughts on The Little Mermaid

think of ariel, the mermaid, after she has become human. think of her holding the prince, after the shipwreck, in the middle of the broken ship's debris. what did she learn about the ocean, when she realized it would drown her? none of its features will have changed, but its relation to her becomes something foreign and deadly, something unknown. really, she doesn't learn anything new about the ocean. she comes to know it as something new. even where no new information is gained, one can further grasp things.

If a person's heart is sick, the person is probably sick too.

grant that language is more than purely descriptive, and that to understand it is to understand more than the truth conditions for its sentences and the referents of its words; still, it possesses those features. though it is not exhausted by its descriptive parts, it inherits any problems those parts suffer.

Some commonly unconsidered strategies and moves in chess.

(1) Begin with the leftmost pawn and move only that piece until it "dies" and then change to the next-left-most pawn and repeat. Keep doing this piece-by-piece until you get to the rightmost rook. (Don't ask questions about the king now.)
(2) When you advance your pawn to the other dude's side, change it to a piece of the other dude's color. DOUBLE AGENT. Don't tell the other dude that the piece that looks like his is really yours. Sneak up on the king in the bathroom.
(3) "explain" the "way the pieces move" to your "unsuspecting opponent" in a way that "makes him lose for sure".
(4) Make outrageous bets with your opponent about whether certain pieces of his will survive the game. Lay enough various desirable conditions on your opponent so that in pursuing them she loses the game. Then pay her, like, dollars and stuff, because you lost all your bets.
(5) Mimic your opponent's moves. Keep the arrangement of pieces on the board as symmetrical as possible. Do it in a graceful way that makes your opponent want not to take any pieces in such a way that it will disrupt the symmetry. The opponent will not want to checkmate you, because then the symmetry would be left forever unaccomplished, because you won't be able to checkmate your opponent back.
(6) Man, fuck chess.
(7) Dance moves. Dance strategies.
(8) Play Max Clark and then play somebody else who is not Max Clark. Play one color against Max and the other color against Not-Max. Copy their moves in such a way that they are in effect playing against each other. When Max complains to you that you are just doing something he thought up in high school, go to the other guy and complain against him that he just doing something you thought of in high school. Whatever he replies with use as a reply to Max. Continue in this way until your identity is obliterated. I haven't worked out how this strategy plays out if you are playing Max in both games. I also haven't worked out how this strategy plays out if the Not-Max opponent is a girl Max would really like to kiss, etc.
(9) Announce your moves in the following way: "Now I am going to move [name of piece] over thisaway" or "Now I am going to move [name of piece] and take [name of taken piece]". The trick is though, you name each piece something other than the piece's name. So, if you take a rook with your bishop you say, "I'm going to move this knight and take your knight" or "Now I'm taking your queen with my king" etc. It will confuse the other person. Trust me. Then. Here's another twist. Once they have internalized your trick, so that they trust whatever you say to be stupidly false, start reporting accurately all your moves. Move quickly. Very quickly. They will be confused more.
(10) Get the transcript from a master chess player doing one of those "I will play 20 players at the same time" show cases. But here's the trick. Take the first move the master makes in his first game as your first move in this. Take the master's second move from the second game as your second move. Etc. Whenever this procedure yields an impossible move on your part, take charge.

Irene

As I sit here, lying down, in bed, in doors, eating a peanut butter and peanut butter sandwich, I think to myself "didn't some one promise a hurricane?" Well, hurricane I have got, if by hurricane, we mean "hurricane" which is just an eight-letter word (I have here set a trap for you!) which the OED tells me comes to us from a word having to do with hair. Twisty hair that masses up more and more hair in the Caribbean until it barrels into trees and swallows up the shingles from roofs. No, but seriously, I don't read the oed and have no idea. No, but seriously, this hurricane is not a hurricane, it is a tropical storm. And this tropical storm is not a tropical storm, but more like a just-slighlty blustery noise one might hear from an audiobook reading of 'winnie the pooh', indicating to one that one ought to turn the page now. I am not complaining. I wanted the hurricane not only to suck, but to suck and change directions for somewhere not me. I'm just glad my political/religious connections (re: Poseidon) have not gone to waste. I am fine for meteorological flavor from time to time, but am decidedly against soggy drama in the atmosphere.
I am currently focused on not focusing on my work. You might think it dangerous to mention as much, for doesn't mentioning my work risk turning my focus to my work, and maybe even threaten my getting some work done? For a lesser man perhaps. Or even a greater. But when one considers the exact degree of greatness I possess, one realizes that I am best at leaving work out of focus when mentioning just as much as I have. Mentioning it nonstop or all the time would be just to focus on it, and hence bad. Not mentioning it at all however... Nevermind. Mentioning my mentioning and/or not mentioning it as much as I just have risks risking the risk that I was just in the middle of explaining away as something not, for me, risky. So, I am going to stop. I know my limits.

Dream a little dream of me.

Last night I dreamt, among other things, that it was father's day and that my dad wanted for me to go with him out to some spectacular event in the desert. We began walking across the desert. We came to a big hill of sand that had half-turned to sloshy mud. I tried hiking up the mud path, but kept slipping. Eventually I was crawling instead of walking. Each time I felt I was progressing I would sink again. Soon, streams of water were intermittently pouring down the side of the hill; whenever the water would gush I would slip back farther. I began to feel it was hopeless. I asked my dad how much farther it was, "Is it just over the hill, or what?" Water was pouring down the hill more steadily. The sky grew dark. I wanted to turn back. "Lets go, dad". My dad seemed weak and hurt by my saying it. Just behind the hill now I could see and hear raging waves coming towards us, billowing over the hill, as if from the giving of a dam. My dad was crying, and said "don't you want to be with me?" I said "of course dad, but I can't make it..." then the waves crashed onto us, and we slid away in painful swirls of water and sand.
I woke up immediately and thought whether this was a dream "about" "religious anxiety".

The price of 2 shots.

Each day for three days in a row I bought two shots of espresso from the same coffee shop, and each day was charged something slightly different. The price changed from day to day within a ~50-cent range. $1.90, $2.20, $1.75; something like that. On the third day, while waiting for my drink, I speculate on why what has happened has happened….

The fluctuating price of coffee? Does this place buy their coffee from a merchant each day, like fancy-dancy restauranteurs buy fresh fish? The coffee merchants change their prices each day, given a host of agricultural and economic factors. My fluctuating espresso price is a result of the merchant's art, which rides the waves of vast untold social and environmental forces. I feel part to something bigger than myself, covarying along with multitudes of variable circumstances, yet confined within my ~50-cent range. Maybe the price of fresh fish even is an economic factor on the price of coffee in the day-to-day food merchant economic world? Does it all come down to the price of fresh fish?

Maybe some baristas here secretly gouge the prices? Do they add a couple cents to each transaction and just pocket it? Maybe there is a bet going between the baristas about who can gouge the price the highest without a customer noticing? They pool the change they get from charging extra, and the winner after a month wins the pool of change? Do they keep the change in a jar? Or maybe each person got the idea to gouge the price independently and so they each steal without knowing the other baristas do, so they aren't coordinating their thefts to make them unnoticeable? Can I discern any obvious signs of confidence and daring in the barista that charged me the most?

Is it all just a meaningless accident? Is it all just a meaningless accident?

What if there is some other really clever and interesting and unique set of circumstances that could account for the price change which I am overlooking? Some set of conditions that change each time I buy espresso, but which I am presently overlooking, which the price could be secretly indexed to for some complicated reason which I am not keen-sighted enough to think of? I must be humble: there are more cute, unnecessarily complicated reasons than I can cook up that explain the fluctuating price.

Should I return to the fresh fish hypothesis? Did it not get enough airtime? Fish. Airtime. In my brain. Brain air time. Air time brain. Brain time air. Air brain time. Time brain air. Time air brain.

The secret 100 blogs are put on hold because I'm broke!
Must. Not. Starve.
If anybody wants to hire me to write 100 secret blogs let me know. My fee is that amount of money that will get me through until September without my starving/being insolvent. $20/post should more than do it. I'll write them about whatever you want!
Think about it!

So Buddha is all "Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it."

And I'm like, "Says who?"
And then I add this nice little "stfu buddha you're not my dad".
And he doesn't say anything back because I don't want to go search wikiquote for possible Buddha replies.

Then Mencken goes "Men become civilized, not in proportion to their willingness to believe, but in proportion to their readiness to doubt."
I'm like "WHO INVITED YOU."

Some other stuff happens. Exciting stuff. People. Etc. Things embedded in quotation marks. I grit my teeth and squint my eyes.

The Swingrovers.

Louis: Oh man! X-Men First Class comes out today!
Lindsey: Can you get the lotion, an overnight diaper, and footy pajamas?
Louis: Is that all you can think of at a time like this!?

I have begun writing 100 blogs in secret, using TextEdit. After they are all finished, I will post them all at once, and you will not know what hit you! You probably won't be able to read them all! You will start to read them, maybe, but after the fifth or so, you will get tired of reading them and you will stop! I'm thinking they'll be finished in ten days, but I could be wrong. They will all be around 400 to 500 words. I have just checked, and that is, like, the length of a novella. If I shoot for 160 blogs or so, that's more like a novel novel. But that would take longer than 10 days!

Oh yeah, I forgot why I started this post. I am taking suggestions for what the folder on my computer with all the secret TextEdit blogs should be called.

In the meantime, listen to this:

JENNY AND I ARE GOING TO GO BUY BOOKS BY TAO LIN.

LISTEN TO THIS SONG IN THE MEANTIME:

Growing up, I took piano lessons. I had little to no natural talent, but I practiced lots and became, for a time, good. I loved Debussy. Playing Debussy refined my sensitivity and judgment to register an emotional grain more subtle than I would have otherwise appreciated. Once, I was in a library, reading a book about Debussy. When asked what his favorite virtue was, he said, "Pride". That had an effect on me.

A rushed poem in a rushed moment.

As I rush to complete a paper on time,
something outside catches my eye, distracting me.
Pink petals float on the wind, passing my window,
reminding me of snowflakes that used to do the same.
Spring and Winter drift by on streams of air,
as I rush to finish papers on time.

last night i dreamed that i slept through my flight back to australia. (?)

1. It is Spring. Which means high school seniors are coming to Tufts's campus with their moms and dads. Whenever I see such a prospective incoming student, holding a map, with mom, or dad, or both, lagging behind, I feel a pang of hope that they love each other. I want to urge the student that his or her parents are vastly more important than any of the college freshmen for whom he or she so desperately wants to look cool.
2. Sitting in class, I looked at the back of my hand and saw on it a smear of blood. It occurred to me that I must be bleeding on my face or neck, and that I had grazed the wound with my hand. Not having a mirror available in class, I began covertly stroking my beard and scratching my neck to scan for the bleeding. I would scan in this way for a few seconds, then check my hands, but there seemed to be no regularity to when and where either hand was bloodied. Sometimes I'd scan and there would be no blood at all. Sometimes my hand was marked by a dot of blood, sometimes a thick streak. The apparent location of the blood was haphazard and inconsistent. Was that from the back of my neck? The corner of my mouth? Chin? Forehead? Behind the ear? It was as if the bleeding were a fly in summertime, migrating around my head.