Midterms In class on Tuesday, Colm from Cork, one of my fellow students, and Sally Wheeler, the head of the law school who was taking my class that day, started quizzing me about the midterms. At first I thought they meant exams. Then I realised they were talking about the elections.
House work Five different men came through the house today. The exterminator, two electricians, the general contractor, and a kitchen designer. Needless to say, we have a lot of work to do. The good news is that under the rugs there are wood floors that we plan to refinish, which saves us
Essaying mightily Funny how essay is a verb and the most dreaded noun in a college student's vocabulary. Here is what I've spent the better part of the past four days working on: Please write a maximum of 1250 words on this title: “To what extent is the
Cave Hill I mentioned that a week ago yesterday David and Maysie hiked Cave Hill. I hereby upload photos from that hike: Belfast Castle View of west Belfast. 11-3
Homeless no more!! We closed on our house Friday, the seller moved out yesterday, and today we went for a walk around. I have photos from our visit but the camera is at home while I'm here at the library (still working on the same stupid essay for the second day)
Panic time I've had to switch from reading assignments to writing assignments (two essays due Nov. 10). I'm learning that, at the master's level, you don't just regurgitate what you've read. You share your ideas and sprinkle in a few footnotes from
Lost in translation Today's class was led by a woman whose first language was French and whose thought processes were a bit lost on the class. She seemed to have ADD issues. Sometimes she would say nothing and I pictured insurrection in the class. Since the rest of my professors have
Video games I'm in an all-day class tomorrow on Transformation and Conflict Resolution. The readings are really interesting. One was about a group of video game developers who worked on America's Army 3, an army recruitment and training tool. Long story short, they worked for a subcontractor to
Colt out of the blue In May 2013, we cycled the Inishowen peninsula at the top of Ireland. This photo is from that trip. I spent some of my library time today in the C.S. Lewis reading room. It's such an awesome space. It did not, alas (Aslan?) inspire any great writing.
Dr. Ciaran O'Kelly Himself is the head of my programme of study. I met with him today to tell him I'm struggling to keep up with the volume of readings. One reading this week was a 100-page decision from an English court in the 1980s (single spaced, small type). That was
Really? The pain of reading turgid, academic, bullet-proof prose continues: "Thus, the view taken by List and Pettit is non-mysterious – it does not postulate any sui generis collective ‘forces’ – while also being anti-eliminativist in holding that propositions referring to group agents need not be metaphorical and are not readily reducible
Harvest festival Today was harvest festival at church--the church was decorated with veggies and greenery and we sang songs to celebrate the harvest. Then I spent the day in the library, just like yesterday. David took Maysie on a hike yesterday up Cave Hill, one of the tall hills/short mountains surrounding
Belfast Festival I've commented before that Belfast is festival mad--not realizing that the big daddy of them all was yet to come. The Belfast Festival is on now and the 84-page guide of concerts, plays, exhibits is breath-taking in its scope. This weekend we didn't go to Sharon
Paramilitaries and paraplegics I went to the most amazing panel discussion today on Remembering, Forgetting, and Forgiving. The morning sessions were led by a woman from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a Danish man who is a student of the Holocaust, and man whose 12-year-old son was killed in a
9X10 For the second time, David and I attended 9X10 last night, an event which invites nine people to get up and tell a story lasting no longer than 10 minutes. Last night's theme was Sorry. The range of stories was expansive. One woman told of her husband'
A picture instead of a thousand words My classes are concentrated into Tuesday and Wednesday. I could write about what I've learned the past few days about company law, human rights treaties, enforcement mechanisms, and so on. I'd rather post a photo from our trip last year to the Inishowen Peninsula in County
House sitting Twice in the past week I have visited the house we are buying to meet with contractors. We are waiting for bids from each of them for the long list of projects that need doing. Each time, Hilary, the current owner, invited me to sit and have tea with her
Reading and writing My entire professional career has been about writing as clearly, economically, and compellingly at possible. That is why it is so hard to spend hours and days reading content that goes to great lengths to be as impenetrable as possible. It goes against everything I know about how to communicate
1971 Today consisted of: Reading Church Movie In the reading I learned that the U.S. is the only developed country that doesn't provide the basic human rights of health care and education for its citizens. USA! USA! USA! At church, we heard about Lazarus at the gate of
Pre-Halloween Party We live in a row of four townhouses. At one end are Amy, Kevin, Milo and Charlie. Amy and Kevin are each nurturing a small business (hers is nut butters, his is video games). Milo is a little boy bundle of soccer energy and Charlie is a girl with a
Duck duck goose One of the great things about walking along Belfast Lough is you'll never know what you'll see. Today there were eight Royal Navy ships heading into Belfast harbor. I heard that a cement truck was stopped on Crumlin Road in Belfast because it was feared it
Losing sleep over Downton Abbey A few weeks ago, David and I couldn't sleep, each for our own reasons. He was upset that he had sacrificed an hour of his life watching the first episode this season of Downton Abbey. He wanted that hour back. We had watched it for an hour then
Drone Lately, I've been getting up at 6 a.m., working on quarterly reports for a few hours, reading for an hour, going to class for a few hours, reading for a few hours, going to bed. Since I have nothing interesting to report, I'm going to
Marxism, Feminisim, Utilitarianism We were discussing three critiques of human rights in class today. What was cool was when the two women from Kazakhstan and Lithuania compared notes on the effect of Marxism, and the woman from Sweden discussed abortion rights in her country, and the woman from France discussed corporal punishment in
That's what I'm talking about "Whether progressive efforts to challenge economic arrangements are weakened by the overwhelming strength of the “right to property” in the human rights vocabulary, or by the channelling of emancipatory energy and imagination into the modes of institutional and rhetorical interaction which are described as “public”, the imbalance between civil/