Nothing terribly exciting to report:

...reading for this Hobbes article continues to be the bane of my existence.

...my students have turned in sources, so I've spent the weekend checking to ensure everything is peer-reviewed by someone more authoritative than Wikipedia's anonymous authors.

...Valentine's Day was spent driving and reading in Texas.

...spent some time working on manuscripts for the research group.

...it is a lovely 63 degrees in Lake Charles at the moment, so I'll be outside doing, of all things, more reading.

The most *extreme* and radical thing at the moment is getting set up to grow my own basil and oregano. Because I'm wild like that.

Rebel without a cause. Or his own herb garden. Or the recurrent angst of attempting to reconcile Aristotelian teleology with modern existentialism in the question of existence versus nonexistence.

So, until things calm down on the academic front, my social life will probably be spent with books, which neither drink nor serve as good conversationalists.

In other news...

Oh yeah, Mardi Gras is coming, and we have that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off. I have beads in wait for women of loose morals. ;-)

Alles Gute.

What's New and Exciting in Louisiana

Well, for starters, there is now a grassroots campaign to elect a porn starlet to replace our currently embattled Senator Vitter. Yes, the Draft Stormy push (not sure if this is innuendo) is truly a high point in Lousiana, since we are no longer the most corrupt state (that honor went to Alaska with the whole Ted Stevens thing, accordingly to felony convictions for a single Senator). So, of course, we need something to put us back on top and, apparently, in reverse cowgirl.

This is what I think of when I think of participatory democracy. Heaving mounds of participatory democracy...

In other news, the major is going well - we had a very productive meeting with the Dean on Friday and made major headway. I've been immersed in political philosophy in preparation for this Dune and Philosophy article, and I have discovered entirely new veins of procrastination at my intellectual dig site. I brought three books on Hobbes home with me over the weekend, put them on my table outside with the idea of reading in the warmth (mid-70's all weekend), and proceeded to ignore them until Monday morning.

Another book arrived today (Essential Histories: The English Civil Wars 1642-1651), but it promises to be a faster read. Hobbes wrote the Leviathan within the context of the English civil war, a bloody nine-year affair (which extends further back before Charles I, which I learned in conversation with Hanno on the way to Mexican Mondays (lunch, not a cultural diversity thing)). Suffice it to say that England was sufficient nasty and violent to inspire Hobbes to write about the most base parts of the human psyche, in which our natural reason tells us that the most reasonable conduct involves killing others before they kill you. Or, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, beat them with a crowbar before you speak softly. Or something.

Anyway, I'm off to the gym before dinner and more reading. The joys of modern academia.

Alles Gute.