Hiatus

Both of my readers--call them A & K, the "glimmer twins" [okay, and one other "wahine"]--will, perhaps, be annoyed, but I've decided I should be writing for publication, rather than the omphaloskeptical drooling of the blog. So I'm going on hiatus for awhile, possibly forever. Who knows?

Here's what I'm working on:

A commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, B422 n. (Yes, a whole commentary on one footnote. But it is one helluva footnote. I was going to do this as my dissertation; William "Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes" Bennett happened to be on campus when I was in grad school, and complained about "scholars" doing such exegesis as writing whole dissertations on single footnotes. This really made me want to do it, but I resisted.)

A paper on Kant and Nietzsche; I have an earlier paper suggesting Nietzsche was confused about Kant. His real complaint should have been about necessity, not about the Thing In Itself (blame Schopenhauer?) So I'm writing the second half, and then hope to put them both together in one longer paper. Three papers for the price of one.

A paper on naturalism and necessity, growing out of my recent seminar "Necessity and Contingency." I don't think one can follow the naturalist program "all the way down," due to a certain conception of logic. This is where--I think--Kant meets Davidson meets Habermas meets early Wittgenstein, and all reject (in some way or other) Quine. Good stuff, but it makes my head hurt.

I also want to do a "popular" piece (possibly for the Chronicle of Higher Education?) on a strategy I use in class, getting students to go find folks on the Internet to argue with. I've got two publications out of it so far (and eschewed a free trip to Australia); I'd like to thank AnnCoulter.com for helping make it all possible.

I also plan on writing a history--oral history, so somebody else actually does the work--of the Dayton area bluegrass scene. Eventually, I'd like to explore this in a more complete context of race, class and labor history, but I only have one lifetime.

Finally, I've been planning for years to write a three volume "academic" novel: vol.1: from graduating college to getting to grad school; vol. 2: grad school; vol. 3: the tortuous passage from PhD to gainful (and relatively permanent) employment. Along the way, there is a lot of sex, the occasional "hit piece" on former professors, and just more angst than you can shake a stick at.

In short, there is a lot of stuff to do. And blogging probably isn't the best way to do it. So I bid my 346, 923 readers adieu. Look Back in August (not Anger) to see if I changed my mind. It happens.