Talks talks

So this morning for the religious studies seminar, we had Jay Michaelson come in to talk to us about Jewish nondualism, which was really cool and exciting! He's a great speaker and talked about the Zohar and reading in Hebrew and how it works with other mystic traditions and whatnot. He's also a Theravadan Buddhist so he talked a bit about how he skewed that way as well. It was fun.

And then in my ethnic studies class, we watched the first half of Battle of Algiers.

And then I graded, before going to Ted Chiang's talk! It was so nice to see him again. I introduced him to my mentor and she was very pleased. His talk was on "folk-biology" (intuitive and oversimplified ways of understanding biological stuff) and specifically SF's obsession with imagining that the brain is like a computer. He also read a bit from his newest story. It's fun. Afterwards we all went out for dinner at some place which I thought was quite underwhelming but it was nice to see him again and chat with him.