I saw this gentleman doing his thing at the Drummer’s Grove in Prospect Park last week. I think there must have been some sort of Caribbean dumming festival taking place. When I tried to get closer to take a better photo, he gave me an angry look and motioned his hands at me as if he was using magic powers to push me away.

Then this other fellow made his appearance…

With my amateur anthropologist’s hat securely in place, I observed that the drummers were directing their noise in the direction of the newcomer, and initially concluded that he was playing the role of some sort of demon who they were trying to exercise. But then the spectators started reaching up to him with wads of money in their hands. So I’m now prepared to admit that I have no idea what was going on here.

Unrelatedly, here is a photo of a cat I have seen several times around Manhattan, taking his bachelor for a walk.

As you may have noticed and probably didn’t care, I have had another end-of-semester blogging drought. Just to prove that I haven’t been wiling away the time doing nothing, here’s my first completed term paper of the semester. You’ll notice that my newest form of procrastination — fueled by my typographic preoccupations — doesn’t even require me open a new window on my laptop. Along with the usual coursework, I have also been occupied by a couple of other activities.

Last week was Margot’s M.Arch. final thesis presentation, and so the only way I was going to get to see her at all during the 72-hour work benders she was putting in leading up to the big day was if I snuck into her school and gave her a hand. I am proud to say that I played a small role in helping construct this model, for example.

Maybe soon she’ll have a website I can link to that explains her work and shows off more details.

A couple of weeks ago, I also took a trip to Southern Ontario to give a paper at the UWO Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Physics Graduate Conference. As predicted, I found myself as the lone semantics nerd at a conference full of physics and math wienies. The keynote talk, delivered by eminent philosopher of physics David Malament, was called ‘On the Status of the Geodesic Principle in General Relativity’. It followed a time-like curve right over my head, with most of the other students’ papers right on its tail. Nonetheless, their comments on my presentation were complementary and somewhat helpful.

And I got to visit Toronto…

…as well as my brother, who was just finishing up the last of his coursework for the M.A. in History he did this year at Western.