I’m right now get­ting break­fast at the Arti­san Cafe in Tru­mas­burg, the best french bakery I’ve dis­cov­ered out­side of Hyde Park Chicago, and trying to recover from the last twelve hours or so. Yes­ter­day I attended an excel­lent (and slightly mind­bend­ing) anthro col­lo­quium at Cor­nell. After it I was cohost of this year’s first grad stu­dent run potluck dinner (a Cor­nell Anthro tra­di­tion). After watch­ing the debates and clean­ing after the shin-​dig, I had a second wind and hopped into my car for a trip back to Rochester.

So far, so good…

Or so I thought. Then my clutch died in the middle of nowhere on Route 89. At mid­night. In a zone with no cell recep­tion. At all.

I did the smart thing, and stayed with the car. And a sher­iff finally came by. At 6am. Oy.

So I’m a bit bleary eye’d. Thank­fully, the coffee is help­ing tremendously.

Today was the type of day that makes the past few years of theory worthwhile.

Before I go any fur­ther, a brief digres­sion: I’m not good with phi­los­o­phy. Not in the “I don’t see the value of it” way. Nah, I’m at the more fundi­men­tal “I don’t under­stand it” way. I wasn’t trained to read it. And stuff like Marx’s “negation of the negation” stuff just causes my eyes to glaze over. It’s not for lack of trying mind you. But its been a stug­gle since I dove into the social sciences.

Digres­sion com­pleted, my excit­ing news is that I think I finally “get” Hagel’s dialec­tic — the key to unlock­ing a lot of stuff. After an excel­lent lec­ture in my Pro­fes­sional Sem­i­nar class, it’s making a lot more sense. My pro­fes­sor, Dominic Boyer, gave an amaz­ing lec­ture that really con­nected a number of dots for me (not the least of which was get­ting me beyond “thesis, antithe­sis, synthesis” to “becoming, nega­tion, sublimation”).

Have a lot more to write about this, but I need to cut it off here so I can hope­fully get in a pro­posal for Sig­graph 2009.

Since this is Friday, it means I’ve made it through the first week of PhD stud­ies and my shifted role at RIT. So far things are going well. I really appre­ci­ate the “breathing room” that the semes­ter system is giving me to study. At this point at RIT or Chicago I’d be think­ing “oh crap, we’re already 10% of the way through the class!” 1/15 doesn’t seem any­where as bad (also because I know there are days off in there).

I’m in the process of prepar­ing to meet with this week’s col­lo­quium presenter — Adam Reed of St. Andrews Uni­ver­sity. He’s pub­lished two good arti­cles on blog­ging and, read­ing them, I real­ized that I haven’t posted since school began.

Um… so… that’s about it. Things are going well. I’m start­ing to get the rhythm of this down. Which is good.