Thought for the day.
Being in a sock store is a good context in which to say "ahh, yes, socks, I think I'll need some socks."
Being in a sock store is a good context in which to say "ahh, yes, socks, I think I'll need some socks."
At the end of a year, and the end of a decade, it's obviously going to be a big time for Best Things Of The Time list. Of which the most common, or at least the most salient to me, seems to be Best Album lists. Like this one, this one, etc. Naturally I'm tempted to make one myself. But I start to wonder about the point of them. Like, what's the purpose? What are they trying to do? What would I be attempting to achieve by constructing and publishing such a list?
I have a certain problem.

So I went to the Isle of Skye with the St. Andrews Philosophy Reading Party last weekend, and it was excellent. Unfortunately, I don't feel I have much to say about it, basically because a certain James has already said it all, with greater vividity and thoroughness than I suspect I could muster (and that may be the first time in my life I have spelt "thoroughness" correctly without assistance).
So, I went to Glasgow to see Jonathan Richman. It was pretty good, the whole thing!

As may be clear to people who know me well, or long time readers of this blog, I'm rather fond of the philosopher Derek Parfit. His book, Reasons & Persons, is one of the greatest I have read. Despite this, I have for a long time put off reading the draft manuscript of his (maybe) soon-to-be-released book that has been floating around the internet for so long, originally titled Climbing The Mountain, now apparently called On What Matters. I usually figure I might wait until it comes out in book form, thinking that I'd prefer not to read something of such length online, and that it is, after all, still a draft. But after reading a paper in which this draft manuscript is actually cited, I thought I might check it out again. I downloaded the latest draft (approximately 600 pages long), and read the introduction.
While describing how he came to write his great, drab book The
Methods of Ethics, Sidgwick remarks that he had ‘two masters’: Kant and Mill. My two masters are Sidgwick and Kant.
I'm in St. Andrews! How about that. It's pretty good here. Good weather, a decent supermarket (Morrison's?) not tooo far away (though some kind of Harris Farms type place would be delightful (UPDATE!: I just had a salad made of stuff from Morrison's, and it was Delicious! So, good stuff. Their range isn't huge (fresh fruit/vegwise), but their produce is good!)). The uni is good, the classes are good, the people are good, the Good is good, the good good good good. Everyone I meet seems to think I'm English. Or occasionally American. Or, in one case, German. No one yet has managed to guess that I'm Australian. Until I tell them, I mean. Then they guess it, on the basis of fairly strong evidence.