Back from Stirling

Couchsurfing. Exciting philosophy class. More music sharing. ISC. Train tickets. FolkSoc.

So, immediately upon getting off the bus, I met my couchsurfing friends at the reception centre. We went back to my room, dropped off our stuff, then they went to the Crags and I went to dinner. They’re from Lincoln, Nebraska. The girl, Ashley, is my age, but has changed majors and traveled so much that she’s a sophomore. She’s now studying textiles, design, and fashion. She spent last semester in Spain, or Italy, or something, and that’s why they’re over here. Her boyfriend Tyler is a few years older, and works in an advertising company. His company works with the likes of RedBull and SPAM. They were visiting Scotland for a few days before flying back to the States. After dinner I met them in the Crags, and Tyler bought me whatever drinks I wanted (2 VKs over the course of the night). Apparently the previous night they had stayed at a hostel in Edinburgh and had had a really creepy experience there. That proves that hostels can be sketchy just as much as staying at the place of someone from couchsurfing. As far as I know, their experience with me was great; mine with them was. In the Crags, there was a pub quiz, which we participated in. Those questions are hard! And British-oriented; we came in last. It was fun, though. They slept on my floor on my sleeping bag. Monday morning, they had a 9:30 bus, and I went with them to the bus station to find out about tickets to London. I saw them off, and the guy there said that you can only buy the cheap London tickets online or on the phone.

My Philosophy and the Environment class that day was great. We talked about intrinsic value, and how the author of this paper differentiates between different kinds of it. But he made a good suggestion, I think: something is good for an object if it contributes to that object’s flourishing. Groups as well as objects. This is good because, while we still have to define what flourishing means, I feel like it’s a step toward fact-based value, instead of purely subjective value. Once you have value based on fact, you can start talking about it in logic more meaningfully. Also, in the small group discussions, this old smoker guy in our class was very adeptly arguing for nihilism in relation to objectivity, and indeed a greater nihilism. It was very interesting, and I think that to a point he’s right, but I think there’s something in there I don’t agree with, although I’m not sure what it is.

That night I met up with a friend from FolkSoc, on the pretext of sharing music. We did so for a little while, I showed her some videos I have on my computer, and we talked for a long while. Her name’s Bria, and she’s from Wisconsin (I don’t know if I mentioned her before). She likes Stan Rogers and Loreena McKennitt, amongst others. She’s studying Celtic Studies and Linguistics. She’s a 3rd year. She likes Firefly. She seems to be very academically diligent. She was brought up catholic and then briefly went to an evangelical school. She transfered here from Beloit after freshman year, and had a class with Natalia Wobst there. She’s nice. And her room is pretty. I was there until about 2:30am, and, realizing I actually had some homework due the next day which I hadn’t done yet, I came back and went to sleep then.

I got up early, went and searched the library for this Wittgenstein book, and, not finding it, bought it at the bookstore. I then did my homework for two hours in the International Student Centre (ISC from now on, ‘kay? ‘kay.) There were a good number of people there, which was distracting, and there was one distracting conversation particularly that was going on most of the time. One tidbit: I heard that about a month ago, there was a Wellesian (Orson) occurrence in I believe Flanders? A major news network intentionally erroneously reported that Flanders had declared its independence, and it had wide ranging consequences. A number of planes were grounded, and borders shut, because people were unsure as to whether they were supposed to have customs or not. The stated purpose was to spark national discussion, which certainly it did, but it also led to the resignation of the guy who had planned it. Huh. Wonder why I didn’t hear about it.

Before dinner, I got fed up with online ticket-booking not working, and went up to Waverley Station and bought my tickets to and from London there. I’m leaving Thursday night on a sleeper, then coming back Saturday afternoon. A short visit, but a worthy one I’m sure.

FolkSoc was shortish, ended at 11:30. There were a lot of people there because it’s Student Festival or something, which I suppose is like Fresher’s Week in the fall, in that people sample lots of different societies. Huh. But there wasn’t a whole lot of rousing music this week; not enough fiddles and energy at the right times. Some nice music, no doubt, but not as exciting as possible. I did get some good tune playing on my whistle, though, and figured out that if I stuff my fleece inside my drum, it dulls the sound enough that it isn’t overpowering.

Oh, and I bought a nice big Scottish flag. Yay.

Today, I went to this Student Festival event, a trip to Lazer Quest. Yes. It was fun. Some of my friends went too, as well as a load of French people. The guy who was running it played too, and won by a lot both games we played. I ran into a wall at one point. I came in third out of 15 the first game. Didn’t do as well second game. But it’s interesting, people wearing lots of makeup look like zombies or some other appropriately grotesque creatures under a blacklight. Perfect mood for lazer-questing.

Pictures soon, then next, probably the lowdown on London.

#it’s a holiday, a getaway, runnin’ round in London, no work, just play#
-5 points if you can name the source of that line of song. Make that a billion; it’s obscure even if you would recognize its source. No points for parents, they heard it in the same context I did.

Oh, I’m thinking about how I can go about making a Speed Scrabble computer game to play with my friends back home.