The New York Sophist

My life has radically changed since I was last blogging. I moved to the suburbs, got a dog, a partner, a car, and I’m up before the sun.

My partner gets up early for work so I get up pretty early too. I think it’s nice to have some time in the morning together.

As far as the dog goes, she just loves to play. Lots of trouble housebreaking her but she’s learning. She’s just a dog, albeit a smart one.

This video is from earlier in the summer when she was a few months younger but she still loves to do this.

This environment has been very productive for me and my writing, as well as getting a better camera, and a voice notes app on the phone. I also swapped out to an iPhone against my better judgement and it seems to be going fine.

Big changes are big no doubt, but it was just the right kind of reset for me.

I love technology and computers and all that, but I will never be able to give up having a paper diary to keep my day-to-day life organized. I took some time over Christmas and New Year’s to chill out, and after that took this planner I ordered off the shelf and started filling it in.

The first thing I put in there are the important university dates. After that, I will put in some personal goals in the form of dates with some reminders (2 weeks from finishing X on a date 2 weeks ahead of when I wanted something accomplished). This has been my strategy for so long I wonder if I will ever move to using Google calendar or anything like that.

I do use the digital calendars to help coordinate with other people, but I do not use it for “me to me” communication. I would miss every appointment. Likewise, Google calendar often gets things wrong, inappropriately correcting the date or time of a meeting based on where someone else is in the world.

As far as notes, I move back and forth between options. Sometimes I will write on paper or in a notebook, other times type directly into Google Documents, which is the best program for note taking as it’s searchable and easy to copy and paste into more formal writing.

I wonder what it is that keeps me using paper planners. One thing I think it might be is being able to open it up and seeing the whole week written out there. This helps me every morning as I’m waking up become the sort of me I need to be to do all that stuff. If I see every day that there’s a meeting on Thursday, I’m in a better spot in my head for participating in that meeting when it comes around. Not sure how true this is, just a feeling.

Also something more permanent is conveyed when I write something down in the planner, it helps me accept the reality of what needs to be done. I don’t get that feeling from the computer.

In terms of drafting and writing though, the computer is where it’s at. There’s nothing that works as well as opening up a blank document and going to town on it. This I can’t really do with a paper journal, although I can write fragmentary lines or notes in one.

I thought I would start making the Monday post something a bit more personal and reflective, a snapshot of where my mind is for the week, and make the other 2 to 3 posts more “publishable” posts than the Monday ones.

I’m thinking blogging is far superior to social media as it forces you to explain yourself a lot more. There’s no thrill or excitement in posting a take-down, two-line clap back here. It’s a lot more satisfying to write about a thousand words and send it out there into the universe for response and thought.

So here’s what’s on my mind on Sunday afternoon, the time when I traditionally get out my paper planner and start to think about goals for the week, what I want to accomplish, and all that.

What’s that Sound?

I have had a Synology NAS for quite some time and it’s never really worked correctly. Up until this past week it’s really just been a very expensive, very bulky flash drive, holding onto my documents and photos and such. It’s done well, but the power of an NAS is to have a central server for a great number of files, particularly things like music and video.

I spent several hours cleaning off the thing and now it works great. This means that now I have access to my vast collection of MP3 and FLAC music that I made and collected for years and years and years (remember when you could get free iTunes songs off the Pepsi caps?). But now they are all mistagged, mis-labeled, and they have to be deciphered. Spending a some time each day this week identifying various sounds from the past. Luckily, I have help.

Musicbrainz/Picard is a pretty amazing piece of software for having the computer listen to your songs and decide what they are. It’s not perfect, but it is bringing some order to this overgrown garden of sound.

Time to rediscover a lot of my old favorites that might not have made it onto Spotify (can it be?) and enjoy a different kind of sound quality. I think some of these FLAC recordings are much higher fidelity than the Spotify ones. It could just be nostalgia.

Style and Pedagogy

Question for the week: Why do old debate textbooks start with the importance of style and delivery, whereas modern debate textbooks start with a declamation-style defense of logic, reason, and argument for Democratic government?

One answer: Democracy was much more stable in the 1930s (hah!)

Another: We are starting to realize that Democracy is not that great if you don’t have a critical audience or a critical citizenry helping to shape it. Like a plant, it needs to be watered if you want it to keep looking nice (Jefferson had some interesting ideas about this). In the past, this was a given; today, not so much.

I think that a very productive investigation of why starting debate pedagogy with style is superior would be a great thing to take some notes on this week. I’m starting to work on some specific chapters for a book idea I have, and one of them is investigating Richard Rorty’s idea of the Liberal Ironist along side Ed Black’s idea of the Second Persona. These two concepts seem to me to be valuable pedagogical structures within debate education. Of course, my idea of debate education is not the popular conception of how to get my arguments right, but how to deal with only having access to arguments that are ambivalent. This latter conception is the Democratic norm whereas the prior conception is more for party vanguard, limited and expert audiences.

I might shoot a video or two about some of these older books as well.

Thanksgiving

It’s American Thanksgiving this week and although I’m not seeing anyone, going anywhere, or doing anything really special, I’m still excited. Looking for some Black Friday deals as well online and found a couple that might suit me. Thinking about the GoPro 9. My 7 is still great, but it might be nice to have one with a better built in microphone.

The holiday also marks the start of the end of the term for me, with only one assignment and some random redos left to grade. Last night I was in a Zoom call with some friends from graduate school, which I still think of as immediate, but it was quite a few years ago now.

That call brought up how weird it was not to have the tradition of attending the NCA conference. Although I’m not a big fan of this conference, I always wind up learning a lot, getting new insight from friends, and leaving with pages of notes for ideas in my notebook. This year what was highlighted was the importance of that ritual in my mental preparation for the winter holidays. Something to reflect on this week when the world has already changed so significantly, and there are no doubt more massive changes to come.