Notes by David McElroy
Recap of Last Lab
Connor + Grace
- Put on the muffler, kickstand, need to keep working so it’s easier to assemble
Noelle + Alex
- Found parts to assemble shocks, cleaned and attached them
- Attached rod for brake pedal, spring for kickstand
Hannah + Eric
- Loosening and tightening spokes, tuning the front wheel
Emily + Jordan
- Asdf
Jake + Brandon
- Put together different components of the fork
- Work on stanchions
Charlie + Julianne
- Putting top end onto bottom end
- Now that covers for pushrods have arrived, can be completed
Alex K
- Put the transmission in the engine !!
- Gear shifting is working well
Ricky
- Cleaning wires up and putting coils in stator
Discussion of ZAMM
Chapter 25 (led by Jake)
- Not many motorcycle references
- Talked about technology
- Some people find it very ugly, but it doesn’t have to be
- If people put care into something, it has Quality, so it can be beautiful
- Technology is not (inherently) an exploitation of nature, but a blending of human efforts with nature
- Practical part of the book! Giving actual life advice
- Peace of mind: in your daily life, in your community
- Generally regarded as a good chapter by the class
Chapter 26 (led by Julianne)
- Motorcycle references
- Compared motorcycles to cars — motorcycles are longer-lived
- All the things that can go wrong when you buy a part — so make your own!
- Elasticity of bolts — washers to add resistance, to hold things in place
- Gumption
- Someone who connects with Quality is filled with gumption, and umption in turn promotes Quality
- Setbacks:
- Out of Sequence Assembly: need to be very careful, take notes
- Intermittency: importance of learning how to fix it yourself
- Hangups:
- Value traps: not being willing to reevaluate values; need to slow down and examine situation
- Truth traps: subjective vs objective argument, yes/no is a false dichotomy; ask a better question
- Muscle Traps: for example, inadequate tools, bad surroundings
- Form & Function
- Form ever follows function, don’t add decoration — there is elegance in a well-designed structure already
- Also a well-regarded chapter
Chapter 27 (led by Professor Littman)
- Back behind the glass door
- Phaedrus is starting to wake up, starting come back
Chapter 28 (led by Professor Littman)
- Shifting back and forth between perspective, between “Phaedrus” and “I”
- His troubles as a student — between many different majors
- His struggles with Quality
- Struggles with the department
- He wants to teach Quality
- They want him to focus on writing, not philosophy, or they’ll kick him out
- So he decides to make them kick him out
- Mythos vs. Logos
- Perhaps another form of the Romantic vs. Classical divide?
Model T!
- Everyone got a chance to drive Princeton’s Model T, which everyone thought was really cool!
12 April 2018
Notes by David McElroy
Gathering of the Nortons
- Gathering of interesting motorcycles
- BMW with horizontal cylinders — very smooth
- Older Tiger Cub — parts in different places, points in particular in very different place, shift the whole housing to adjust timing
Updates
- Ricky, Noelle, and Alex: figuring out batteries and battery box, figuring out cover and other pieces to add to the battery assembly
- David and Alex K: tried to put the cover on the case;
- Brendan and Jake: putting things through the frame, putting fork tubes in, et, finished fixing the other motorcycle
- Julianne and Charlie: assembling top end, practicing putting in the items — very finicky operation
- Eric: Made progress on wheels, but they’re very difficult to deal with
Reading
Major theme: being the master of one’s own stuff
Chapter 4 for Tuesday, chapter 5 for Thursday About 50 pages
Chapter 29
- The example of the welder — very skilled at doing something
- Chapter content mostly about Aristotle and Plato — and Phaedrus’ thoughts about them
- All philosophy is footnotes to Plato; Aristotle had a lot of interesting perspective but wasn’t a great leader
- Difference between truth and good
- Pursuit of truth and goodness are two different pursuits
- In some senses, the narrator is an Aristotelian (breaking down the motorcycle into its very small parts
- He starts to reject the Aristotelian, picks up more Quality stuff
- Also integrates the Dao
- In the classroom, he has his breakdown
- Phaedrus’ birth at the end, we follow the narrator, it is a birth, or rebirth
- His professional relationships
- Professor takes command of the classroom, saves Phaedrus (from public embarrassment)
- Relationship with Chris
- Chris is frustrated with his current dad, saying Phaedrus was “fun”
- He’s starting to come back into his own self, but how much of the younger him was in there?
- Strange narration — undeveloped
- He and his wife get divorced, but not until after the novel
- Nevertheless, strange dynamic, with Chris not having anywhere to go
- Chris learns of family history of mental illness
- There is a reckoning between the two characters
- They arrive in California
- The narrator is becoming Phaedrus
- We see Phaedrus’ special font used more and more
What did we think of this book?
- Did we like it? Yes, seems the class consensus
- Most useful parts were in the beginning, some say
- Philosophy background would be rewarding, others say
- Comparing and contrasting it with typical analytic philosophy
- But he covers a lot of breadth in terms of philosophy
- We liked going to the end! Get a nice sense of finishing it, getting closure.