11 July 2000

Reading:  The Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav

Listening to:  Mozart's Requiem.

I was pleased this afternoon to hear a radio advertisement by Tom Bodett for Motel 6.   Callie told me a while back that she thought Tom Bodett had died.  That would have been unfortunate!  While I realize Tom Bodett hasn't actually experienced the stories he tells on the Motel 6 commercials, I still enjoy the way he delivers the lines.  I sort of fancy myself as a cross between Tom Bodett, P.J. O'Rourke, Hunter S. Thompson, and Robert Kaplan.  So I'm pleased that Tom Bodett has not passed on, and that he and Motel 6 are still leaving the light on for me.

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Reflecting on what I've just written above, I think it's possible that I just get my weirdest after writing about 2.5 hours on one of the tougher parts of the dissertation.   But that part is done.  I haven't gone back and proofed it.  I really don't want to go back and reread it.  It's not the highest quality work I have ever done in political philosophy.  In fact, I think it's quite weak.  But to make it as strong as I would like would take much more time than I want to devote to it.  The guys at Claremont have a very healthy view of the dissertation -- it is the beginning, not the magnum opus.  While I have too much integrity to do shoddy work, I'm trying to tell myself that to focus on the big picture -- the importance of my thesis and garnering the evidence and rhetoric to support it -- is much more important than getting bogged down in writing 100 outstanding pages on matters of Progressive political theory that are interesting and broadly important, but only tangentially relevant to my own thesis. 

Tackling a broad dissertation topic is something I highly recommend to people with integrity.  It is far more satisfying than the typical dissertation -- which builds on some arcane bit of knowledge in an incremental manner -- and also far more nerve wracking.  Yet the little embryo is starting to take shape! 

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Now Erzse has gotten into the spirit of the little sick link fest!