Prelims
I guess those of you who visit this blog from time to time, noticed that I didn't update it for a few weeks. Well, this is a sign that I started the semester and it is rather busy. These days, thanks to Columbus, we are having a Fall Break – 2 days to extend the weekend. But this is not a real break. In the best tradition of the Israeli academia the whole break is dedicated to preparations for exams which are called here "prelims". Some of them took place before the break and some are supposed to be after. The difference between prelims and midterms is that there is only one midterm exam in a class, but there can be several prelims. For example, on Wednesday I am going to receive an exam in communication theory class and there is going to be another one later in the semester.
But let leave the techniques aside and, risking loosing the few readers I have here, let me have a prelim for you. It's an easy one:
What would you do at 5:30 (am) on Saturday morning?
a. Sleep
b. Preparing to sleep
c. Go to take a spot in a line for a huge book sale that opens at 8:00
Exactly! Last Saturday, Erik, Josh and I woke up at 5:30 to go and sit in line for the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library book sale. Apparently this is one of the largest book sales in the country and it has about 250,000 items. Basically, as I understand it, what happens is that there is an NGO which collects used books throughout the year and then sells them in a huge sale, lasting 3 weekends. It is so huge that people actually stand in line to get to the sale first. We arrived there around 6:00 and I got number 150(!). We were told that there was one guy who actually slept two days in a tent in order to be the first. So, we were relatively sane and spent only two hours on approximately 10 degrees cold sipping coffee and chatting.
The sale itself was rather impressive. It is a huge hangar with stocks and stocks of books which are sort of organized according to topics.
I got some books. Keren would be proud of me for now I can read the actual Popper, Kuhn, Durkheim, etc. I also got Adam Smith's "Wealth of the nations"… now I have to read it all…
But let leave the techniques aside and, risking loosing the few readers I have here, let me have a prelim for you. It's an easy one:
What would you do at 5:30 (am) on Saturday morning?
a. Sleep
b. Preparing to sleep
c. Go to take a spot in a line for a huge book sale that opens at 8:00
Exactly! Last Saturday, Erik, Josh and I woke up at 5:30 to go and sit in line for the Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library book sale. Apparently this is one of the largest book sales in the country and it has about 250,000 items. Basically, as I understand it, what happens is that there is an NGO which collects used books throughout the year and then sells them in a huge sale, lasting 3 weekends. It is so huge that people actually stand in line to get to the sale first. We arrived there around 6:00 and I got number 150(!). We were told that there was one guy who actually slept two days in a tent in order to be the first. So, we were relatively sane and spent only two hours on approximately 10 degrees cold sipping coffee and chatting.
The sale itself was rather impressive. It is a huge hangar with stocks and stocks of books which are sort of organized according to topics.
I got some books. Keren would be proud of me for now I can read the actual Popper, Kuhn, Durkheim, etc. I also got Adam Smith's "Wealth of the nations"… now I have to read it all…
7 comments:
Why do you have exams -- are you doing your PhD by coursework not resaerch?
Btw look at your blog in Firefox -- something in this post must have broken it.
The program consists of 2 years of course work and then 2 years of indipendent research. The idea is that your coursework prepares you for your dessertation research. I try to write all my papers on the dessertation related topics. Hope to make it more efficient.
Having said that, the question why do i have exams, is still relevant. Have no idea :)
And now i see it is broken also in explorer... no side bar. Will take care of it after the exam.
The brocken bar is now fixed!
I actually think that Adam Smith is greatly misunderstood and misused by Freidman's successors … What else did you buy?
Here is a partial list:
Popper, "The logic of scientific discovery" and 2 volumes of "The open society and its enemies"
Durkheim, "The rules of sociological method"
Habermas, "Communication and the evolution of society"
Weber, "The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism"
Meyrowitz, "No sense of place"
Kuhn, "The structure of scientific revolutions"
Rogers, "Diffusion of innovations"
And more… and yes, also… Maines, "The technology of orgasm" :)
"So, we were relatively sane and spent only two hours on approximately 10 degrees cold sipping coffee and chatting."
w h a t the hell is wrong with you people!!!
just kidding - lol.
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