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during the brief up time...
Apr. 6th, 2011 09:04 pmSo! The last two weeks have been busy, but I've either had limited internet access or LJ has been flaky. It's up now...let's see what I can recap.
On the 22nd I flew to Lisbon as Jesse and I were going to Coimbra on the 23rd for a conference running Thursday - Saturday. It was (as usual) a beautiful sunny day on the 23rd and we spent it down by the marina, drifting from coffeeshop to coffeeshop sitting in the sun and talking. It was delightful. We caught the train around 5pm; it takes about two hours to get to Coimbra on the fast train. When we told our taxi-driver at the station where we wanted to go, he hopped out of the car, quickly conversed with one of his colleagues, and then got back in. He apologized and said he needed to confirm the destination, as he'd only been driving a taxi in Coimbra for about 5 days. Even though he'd lived just outside the city all his life, for the last 30 years he'd been driving tourist buses across Europe, and as a result, he knew Europe better than he knew his own city!
The colloquium was about the relationship between logic and argumentation theory, and we gave a talk on what we see is the lack of rigorous connection between actual argumentative practice and the various rules you find in dialogical semantics. Our talk was the second to last, and we had to leave immediately afterwards to get the train back to Lisbon, so there was no time for discussion, but it was interesting talking to the other participants during lunch breaks, etc.; there was actually quite a large contingent from Amsterdam, all of whom I'd never met before, because the argumentation theorists are in a different department from mine. We also briefly had time to visit the Baroque library on campus. So beautiful.
From Lisbon Saturday night we got a bus to Seville; it left around 9pm and thus, with daylight savings and the change in time zone, we arrived in Seville around 5:30am. Our friend David, with whom we were staying and with whom we'd be working with for the next few days, met us, took us back to his place, and we all slept for another 7-8 hours. I'd gotten a little bit of sleep on the bus, but definitely not enough, so that was much appreciated. I had the strangest moment of "wait, where am I?" while on the bus. Around midnight we stopped for half an hour at a rest stop, and I felt I'd fallen asleep and woken up in the U.S. I guess rest stops are the same all over the world.
I'll stop and post this now, and come to Seville in the next.
On the 22nd I flew to Lisbon as Jesse and I were going to Coimbra on the 23rd for a conference running Thursday - Saturday. It was (as usual) a beautiful sunny day on the 23rd and we spent it down by the marina, drifting from coffeeshop to coffeeshop sitting in the sun and talking. It was delightful. We caught the train around 5pm; it takes about two hours to get to Coimbra on the fast train. When we told our taxi-driver at the station where we wanted to go, he hopped out of the car, quickly conversed with one of his colleagues, and then got back in. He apologized and said he needed to confirm the destination, as he'd only been driving a taxi in Coimbra for about 5 days. Even though he'd lived just outside the city all his life, for the last 30 years he'd been driving tourist buses across Europe, and as a result, he knew Europe better than he knew his own city!
The colloquium was about the relationship between logic and argumentation theory, and we gave a talk on what we see is the lack of rigorous connection between actual argumentative practice and the various rules you find in dialogical semantics. Our talk was the second to last, and we had to leave immediately afterwards to get the train back to Lisbon, so there was no time for discussion, but it was interesting talking to the other participants during lunch breaks, etc.; there was actually quite a large contingent from Amsterdam, all of whom I'd never met before, because the argumentation theorists are in a different department from mine. We also briefly had time to visit the Baroque library on campus. So beautiful.
From Lisbon Saturday night we got a bus to Seville; it left around 9pm and thus, with daylight savings and the change in time zone, we arrived in Seville around 5:30am. Our friend David, with whom we were staying and with whom we'd be working with for the next few days, met us, took us back to his place, and we all slept for another 7-8 hours. I'd gotten a little bit of sleep on the bus, but definitely not enough, so that was much appreciated. I had the strangest moment of "wait, where am I?" while on the bus. Around midnight we stopped for half an hour at a rest stop, and I felt I'd fallen asleep and woken up in the U.S. I guess rest stops are the same all over the world.
I'll stop and post this now, and come to Seville in the next.
