misc updates

[mellowtigger]

A few smaller news sites are reporting that my favorite philosopher, Daniel Dennett, has died. He had plenty of books, but I think my first encounter with his name was from "Consciousness Explained" (1991). I don't know that he truly explained consciousness, but I always learned interesting ideas from his easy-to-follow writing. He was very much a materialist. I mentioned here my reading of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" (1995) and of "Breaking the Spell" (2006). His last post on Twitter is similar to my own. I think I would've enjoyed chatting with him in real life. He spent his decades engaging in many different activities, but there was always his philosophy and writing.

I can't even think of another philosopher offhand that I would place into that rank of favorite living philosopher. I'm just not a fan of Steven Pinker, sorry. Does anybody have recommendations for someone I should be reading?

My neighbor diagonally across the street, the one who returned from Hawaii and is selling his house, put a lot of his stuff onto the front lawn for anyone to pick up. For a few days, people have been sifting through it both day and night. Today, someone came along with a trailer to load lots of metal items into it. I'm trying not to feel sad at their leaving, since that family actually left 3 years ago already. But they really were a focus of life on the block while they were here. They, and the old lady who died about 5 years ago. I just don't have the attention to spare for that sort of thing, thanks to my new job and work hours.

I did manage to get my seed flats indoors yesterday. We had freezing temps last night, and we might again tonight. Hopefully this is the last of it for this season.