And everything was orange.

Ever since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun.


Sorry, I couldn't resist.

You're just not invited to my action adventure dream.

I just got back from seeing Andrew Bird play live at the Basement, with much thanks to my brother for having a spare ticket, after my own failure to buy one in time. I was putting it off due to the possibility of going to the Opera In The Domain instead. Well frankly, there is absolutely no way the Opera could've been one eighth as fabulous as that was. It was simply amazing. I was amazed. I still am.

I couldn't even begin to describe the music, or rather I can't be bothered trying to. So instead... I will describe the person standing in front of me. She was rather beautiful, was wearing a dress with a floral print, and had rectangular glasses with thick black frames.

Well, now you have a complete, accurate, and presumably vivid mental recreation of what the night was like.

Except, also: As I left someone jabbed me in the arm and, when I turned myself to face them, said "Goodbye!" That confused me. I didn't recognise her. Maybe she mistook me for someone else. Or maybe she was being random. Or maybe I'm a git.

Anyway, I'm tired! Goodnight(s)!

It's a post!

Argh!

Time for another long (totally interesting) rant!

You know, I think Reasons And Persons, by Derek Parfit, might just be my favourite book ever. It's certainly my favourite work of non-fiction. I've borrowed it from the library at least once every year since my first at Uni, and always find it completely fascinating. I accidentally spent another 2 hours reading a good chunk of it today, after a 2 minute check revealed that it actually had nothing much to say on the topic I had come to the library to research.

Most of the book, in case you care to know, deals with moral issues, issues of personal identity (which first led me to discover it) and questions of what types of action count as rational. But, besides the fact that I find all of those subjects extremely interesting, I really love the book because it is both extremely readable (or I find it so anyway, I imagine some people could be put off by all the As and Bs and "Let's call this the I Like Cats theory, etc) and extremely rigourous.

Parfit never seems to make any grand, sweeping claims, backed up with flimsy arguments or dubious appeals to intuition, that can so often put me off works in philosophy. His reasoning always appears to be completely solid, and very explicitly spelt out, and the freedom from Search Your Feelings... You Know It To Be True type claims is pretty damn refreshing, especially in anything concerning moral philosophy.

Also, he gets extremely technical. I don't mean that he uses a lot of jargon (I think I found it pretty accessible, but I probably already knew most of the relevant terms by the time I found it in first year), but rather that he really gets into the minutiae of the subjects he's dealing with.

For example, the question of overdetermination. He asks how, under a consequentialist system, where the morality of an act is determined by the outcomes that it causes, either person could be said to do something wrong if two people shoot another in the head at exactly the same time. Because, for both people, had they not done that, the person would die anyway, so the consequences would be the same.

One might expect most moral philosophers to be content with some vague answer, like "of course its wrong, both people intentionally commited an act that they could foresee would have immoral consequences," but Parfit really gets into the question, and teases out exactly how a commited consequentialist could say that action is really, objectively wrong, not just obviously wrong for practical reasons.

Also, when dealing with any issue like this, he always gives the impression that he is looking at every possible theory regarding it, and runs those theories as far as he can possibly take them, presenting them extremely sympathetically, raising all that possible objections he can, and then patching the theories up to meet them. It's often a surprise when he eventually works a theory that he seemed to be supporting into some total absurdity, pointing out how this absurd conclusion was always going to arise, and so finally rejects it.

Plus, there's the obvious bonus that just about every paragraph lauches me deep into thought for some amount of time (often only to see my thoughts echoed, and answered, in the next few lines). I really regreted neglecting to bring a pen to the library today...

So anyway, yeah, I think this book really opened my eyes to how philosophy, even moral philosophy, can be completely rigourous, rational, precise, comprehensive, and compelling. So while Bryan Magee's The Story Of Philosophy and *ahem* Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri got me into the subject, I think this book is largely responsible for me continuing to study it to this level.

It was published in 1984, and he hasn't written another book since. But I gather one (Climbing The Mountain) is liable to come out within the next year or so... Woohoo!

Never Reaching The End

It seems I have come to like White Chocolate.

Or maybe this is just some damn fine white chocolate here.

(It's from Belgium. Mmm... Belgian Chocolate...)

I look down at my hands like they were mirrors

Blarglefargle!!
That was Incredibly Excellent!
Like... It blew my mind.
My mind is blown.
Woooo!

Like a business man waiting for the train,

I am so freakin' excited about seeing The Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice on Saturday! Weeeeeeegh!