Today, I've passed the halfway point in my vacation, so it's all downhill from here. It's been fantastic to do nothing and get paid for it. Now it's Friday, so I think I'm gonna have to hit a movie, eat a burger, and belch loudly. HA! Fabulous: another 16 days of HA!
I have to admit I've probably been expending more energy writing long, involved comments over at Dr. Vallicella's blog than I have in writing my own blog posts. This weekend I plan to write a post about what I've learned from the mind-body debate thus far. It's a fascinating subject, and it has relevance for Buddhist studies. I've surprised myself by showing stronger-than-anticipated sympathies for the materialist/physicalist camp, but that's mainly because I view the anti-naturalists as standing on the edge of a creepy ghost realm. If you allow that mind is non-material but somehow able to cause things to happen, you're halfway to allowing a whole horde* of fantasy beasties whose existence I'd deny for good, solid, scientific empiricist reasons.
(For an interesting post on science and religion, check out Ryan's entry here.)
Alas, my choice of movies is limited this evening. Perhaps I'll break down and see "Revenge of the Sith" again, give it another chance. If nothing else, it's great eye candy. "Batman Begins" comes out in Korea on the 24th, and "Sin City" (the movie I'm most anticipating) comes out here on the 30th, so those will have to be my last hurrahs before we're back to the grind.
Classes begin on July 4th. Guess I should get some lesson planning done soon, eh?
Have a nice Friday.
*Mini-language rant: please don't confuse "hoard" and "horde." The first word can be a noun or a verb, and has to do with gathering and collecting. The second word, generally describing a large number of (large) creatures in motion, calls to mind a valley full of stampeding cattle, or any number of scenes from Gibson's "Braveheart" and Branagh's "Henry V." The Mongol Hordes, you know.
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