Changing of the Winds

I haven't posted since before the summer started. It's been a long time and there have been a number of changes in my life over the past few months. A massive one is that I've changed disciplines from classics to philosophy, taking and MA in classics and essentially starting over from square one on the way to getting a philosophy degree.

This was a particularly difficult decision. There were many different considerations on either side of the question. I will not go over them here. The main thing, is that I wanted to teach the actual philosophy in Plato, rather than only getting to teach the Apology or the Symposium as a second year Greek text. With the ever shrinking classics departments, very few positions exist for ancient philosophers and many of those have gone, in recent years, to people who work on ancient science.

I'll have some updates on my adventures in the new department and working as a research assistant for one of the big deal professors in my department. Stay tuned.

And the best part is, I just got an email that my MA diploma is ready for pickup!

And They Say Philosophy Isn't Relevant Anymore

Apparently, two Russian men got into an argument about a week ago. It became so heated that on man shot the other repeatedly. You can read the basic facts here, and there is a wider discussion here.

At graduate orientation, two of my friends and I were taken to the university pub by a philosophy PhD first year (in logic) who bought us all beer. Apparently, this guy recently won $1000 in Vegas betting on the particular part of Kant about which the argument took place. I didn't even know one could bet on things like that. Anyway, I guess philosophy can make money after all.