Rethink.

The last few days in Texas we’ve had gentle weather. Air is a bit dry, but the sun is rarely overpowering and the breeze feels good. Campus is green for the most part despite the drought. Of course, we need rain. We need the prospect of growth. Ay, there’s the rub. Things feel good now. …

I’m not a celebrity – not even close – but I can’t believe the attention I’ve gotten so far simply being on campus. Gone are the days where getting people to say hi or smile back required the energy invested in the Space Race. It’s certainly weird seeing people who don’t know me seem to …

Lots to do. The paper that I pledged to work on is nearing completion and will be awesome. Details on that later, esp. when we hear the good news of “acceptance.” The paper that I have to work on – well, that’s a different story, and I wanted it done last month. I’m going to …

Outside: sweltering. Inside can be a respite, but it feels like everyone is on edge, waiting and wanting to snap. Everyone feels in charge and surrounded by incompetents. It is a peculiar but not unfamiliar form of aggravation. I am not immune from egoism. My best moments recently have been away. Once, in the city …

Commented to several friends recently that it feels like an awful lot of this time of life – I’m guessing 25-45 – is waiting. We’ve invested in skills, other people, competitions, advertising our abilities and accomplishments, etc. And yet for a lot of us success hasn’t come, at least not the way we hoped. Some …

Descartes and Spinoza are tough reads. I was hoping to have something online about both of them by now, but I spent a good chunk of tonight trying to get a provisional understanding of “formal essence” and “objective essence” in Spinoza’s early “Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect.” Usually the rule I have for …

I’m behind on some rather important work and have plenty of obligations that need to be tended to in a few hours. So of course I’m up late blogging. I think what I learned this semester is that we’ve created a whole generation that’s learned to take others for granted. I say this not to …

What I want those around me to do is more for others while aiming higher. That, to me, is nobility. But there are at least two traps to this goal, and I want to elaborate on them a bit. First, there are the students who don’t seem to realize there is a big difference between …