I’ve only just started my project in Helsinki, but I’m already preparing for my first visit abroad, which is budgeted in the project. I’m flying to New York on 1 March and spending three months there, coming back on 28 May. The purpose of the visit is to work with Kit Fine at NYU, I have been granted a ‘visiting scholar’ status for the duration of my visit. More specifically, I hope to work on the interface between essence and modality and write something about the reduction of modality to essence. This goes back to Fine’s work in the nineties, but the issue is still very topical — Fabrice Correia has a paper forthcoming in PPR exactly on this issue: On the Reduction of Necessity to Essence.

I’m very much looking forward to the visit and to the lively philosophy community at NYU. The department is commonly ranked the best in the world, and with good reason: in addition to Kit Fine, they’ve got e.g. Hartry Field, Ted Sider, Paul Boghossian, Ned Block, Paul Horwich, Thomas Nagel, Peter Unger… It’s an all-star lineup really!

I’ve actually never been in the US before, so hopefully I will have some time to look around as well. Being a big Woody Allen fan, I’ve got no doubt that New York will appeal to me, but I also hope to visit at least Chicago and perhaps Boston. There’s also a conference in Toronto that I may very well attend (never been in Canada either), and another in St. Louis which would also be interesting. I’ve been looking into some races as well. Central Park should be good for running, but I’d like to have a go at a half marathon again, and the 13.1 New York looks good.

If any readers happen to be in the area in March-May and fancy meeting up, do let me know. Also, I’m looking for a room/flat in NYC for the duration of my visit. The department is on Manhattan, so ideally I’m looking for something from e.g. Lower East Side or Upper West Side, but anywhere reasonably nice & safe with decent transportation would work. My budget is around $1000 per month, but I may be willing to pay a little more. If you know of anything appropriate, drop me a message! Relatedly, my flat in Kallio, Helsinki will be available to rent during the same period. It’s at a great location right next to Sörnäinen metro stop, a small and recently renovated, furnished studio. See some photos here. Offers welcome!

2010 was a rather stressful year for me with some insecurity about the future and most of all a feeling that I ought to move on after spending five years at Durham. This was especially prompted by a six week visit to Geneva in the end of 2009. Well, in the end I prevailed and secured a three year postdoc here in Helsinki — a project which was due to start in the beginning of 2011. I’ve now settled back in Helsinki and even bought a flat, so I hope that 2011 will be a bit more productive than 2010 was. 2011 will at least see the publication of my volume Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics, which is almost finished and I’ve got a visit to NYU planned this Spring.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about 2010, so I’ve pulled some statistics about the year.

• ttahko.net
  The traffic to my website has increased steadily through 2010, although there was a slight dip towards the end of the year as I’ve been posting less on the blog. In any case, the number of visits was just below 50k, at 48999, peaking at 2595 unique visitors in September. The website received just over a million hits at 1052206 and used 12.83 GB of bandwidth. Top countries on the visitor list were US, Great Britain, Finland, Germany, Russia, Japan, Canada, China, the Netherlands and Italy. On the blog, my announcement concerning the Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume was the most popular post by far, at 1889 views. The top paper was the draft of my paper, ‘In Defence of Aristotelian Metaphysics’ for the mentioned volume with 429 downloads. An old paper on the a priori received 383 downloads and many others were downloaded hundreds of times as well. I hope that the website and the blog continue to interest a wide audience in 2011 (and do leave some comments as well!).
• Running
  If anything, 2010 was a year of running for me. I started more serious training in February 2010 when I got my first GPS-enabled sports watch and since then I’ve advanced to 200 mile months. My total running mileage for 2010 (since I got the watch) was 2755 km (or 1712 miles) with an average distance of 13.44 km for each run. The number of separate sessions was 205, so I’ve been running just under four days per week on average. I hope to increase each of these numbers considerably in 2011, with a target mileage of at least 2000 miles for the year. All this running took me just under 235 hours, so just under 10 full days of running! That makes an average speed of 11.7 km/h. Oh, and apparently I burnt 142,964 calories while I was at it… In terms of races, I ran eight official races plus seven Parkruns (i.e. less official races), including two half marathons and a marathon.
• Travelling
  I did an average amount of travelling in 2010, although any amount of flying is too much flying… I attended four or five conferences, which isn’t a huge number. I visited six different countries, which were, in addition to the UK and Finland, Germany, Czech Republic, Italy and Hungary. In addition I did some travelling in the UK. My trip to the Dolomites in Italy for some hiking was among the best, and a road trip in the West Country with my mates Lloyd and Pekka was very nice as well, but my most recent trip to Budapest over the New Year with Pekka may take the title of the best trip in 2010: the number of random alternative clubs in old ruined houses was something of a unique experience!
• Literature
  I can’t believe how few books I read in 2010. My list claims that I read only ten books from cover to cover, that includes War and Peace, which I’m still reading. Hopefully I can fit considerably more reading in this year. My favourite book of the year must’ve been Lee Smolin’s The Trouble With Physics (see the link for my review).
• Photography
  I haven’t been shooting as much this year as I did the year before, mostly due to a lack of hill walks, which are my favourite photography opportunities. But I did go on a number of good hikes (with good weather) and I got some reasonable shots on my other travels as well. I’m just going to pick one shot as a favourite of 2010 (below), it’s from a hill walking week in Scotland, a panorama featuring the Five Sisters of Kintail.

The Five Sisters of Kintail

The Duomo in Milan

I was recently on a week’s trip in Italy with my Finnish mate Pekka. We both flew to Milan where we stayed the first night, rented a car and drove to the Dolomites, which was the main purpose of the trip. We stayed in Trento, Bolzano, Feltre and Rifugio Tissi in the Civetta range, managed four nice days of hiking and then spent the final night in Verona. We had a brief look around Milan on the first day as well — I’ve heard many people say that Milan isn’t very nice, but we actually quite enjoyed it at least on this brief visit. We didn’t have time to check out all the corners of Verona, but it seemed rather small and quiet, apart from the central square. Verona might be worth visiting again though, so that one could actually see some of the sights.

Panorama from Monte Pez summit (2563m)

Photos from the trip are in the Italy album, which now contains new albums for Milan, Trento (only two photos though!) and The Dolomites. I further divided The Dolomites album into different areas, namely Alpe di Siusi, Alpi Feltrini and Civetta.

In general I really liked the Dolomites, as there are some very dramatic, sharp ridges, but that also means that it’s not very easy to do any summits, and indeed almost none of the paths take in summits. You can do some summits with the help of via ferratas, cable-assisted climbs. We were originally planning to have a go at some via ferratas, but never got around to buying the necessary gear (harness, helemt etc.) due to time constraints. One problem in the Dolomites appears to be the amount of traffic, the roads were rather clogged especially with Austrian and German tourists. Same goes for the paths, there were quite a few people doing the easier routes. On the second day we went to the very Southernmost Dolomites though, Alpi Feltrini, where we did a slightly more challenging route, and saw next to no people. I do think that I want to go to the Dolomites again, but I perhaps enjoyed the Alps of the Italian Gran Paradiso national park more, where we went last year for a couple of days.

Alpi Feltrini

We did the following routes:

• DAY 1 (Alpe di Siusi): 19.23km, 1101m height gain, 1102m height loss. (Garmin data)

A rather easy hike up to Monte Pez (2563m) from Compaccio. It’s easy to get so high when you start high! We set off quite late in the afternoon as we drove up from Trento and had to finish well before 7pm, as that’s when the last cable car went back down to Siusi where we had parked our car (you can’t drive up to Compaccio). It’s a lovely route and the views from M. Pez are great, but the route is a bit touristy and there are as much as four rifugios on the way. Rifugio Bolzano just below M. Pez summit is nicely situated though. Had a beer at one of the Rifugios on the way down.



Panorama of the Civetta range

• DAY 2 (Alpi Feltrini Loop): 24.81km, 2466m height gain, 2468m height loss. (Garmin data)

This is an awesome route! The guide book that I have suggests that it’s a 2-day route, but you can easily do it in a day. We actually only started around 1:30pm and still managed it, although it was a bit rushed at times. The way back down from Rifugio Boz is rather boring: just a very long zigzag, but the path is easy and fairly fast. There were a couple of trickier and cable-assisted bits along the route, but nothing very demanding. The best thing about this route was that it is very isolated compared to the rest of the Dolomites — we only saw a couple of people during the day. Some stunning views as well. It’s all the more interesting due to some old tales about devils and witchcraft in the area, and route includes places such as Piazza del Diavolo. The official route takes in a sidetrip to Bivacco Feltre as well, Pekka went ahead while I climbed up there and caught up with him.



Tissi summit shot

• DAY 3 (Circumnavigating the Civetta): 10.55km, 1183m height gain, 450m height loss. (Garmin data)

From Palafavera to Rifugio Tissi, where we spent the night. A very short walk on the first day of the Civetta trip, but it was nice to rest after the rather long one on the previous day. Lovely views at Lago Coldai above 2000m before Rifugio Tissi emerges on its cliff. Stunning landscape! This part of the route is quite busy as it’s part of the Alta Via 1, it’s also the easiest part of the trip around Civetta. Rifugio Tissi is highly recommended, the sunset from there was amazing. It’s really quite something else to spend the night at 2250m!

• DAY 4 (Circumnavigating the Civetta): 22.36km, 1770m heigth gain, 2489m height loss. (Garmin data)

Started the next day bright and early, we were walking before 8am. It was great to start right in the middle of the mountains. We came down quite a bit first before climbing back up to the highest point of the route, Forcella delle Sasse (2476m). Great views of Torre Trieste and Torre Venezia along the way. Then it was a scree slope down again and some contouring around the peaks towards Rifugio Coldai — there is a cable-assisted bit along the way, but it wasn’t very difficult. This part of the route, and especially the bit after Rif. Vazzoler, was much more isolated. We didn’t get great views of the Civetta (3220m) itself, as it was a bit cloudy. There are some via ferratas leading up there and it would’ve been great to have a go at one, but we never got around to getting the via ferrata gear. Oh well, this was a great route in any case!

So, a pretty good trip all in all!

Civetta in the evening sun

So, I finally managed to go through my photos from last week’s hill walking trip to Skye & Kinlochleven with DUHWS. They are in four different albums in my gallery, one of which is new: Skye (from number 12), Glen Shiel (from number 29), Glen Coe (from number 13), and Glen Nevis (new).

Getting up to Bla Bheinn on Skye

I climbed 13 new munros, which makes my total munro count 56 out of 284. Not that I plan to do them all, it’s just nice to keep track of which ones I’ve done.

I did the following walks:

• DAY 1 (Skye): 23km, 969m height gain. (Garmin data)

Did Bla Bheinn (928m), which is a munro separated from the Cuillin ridge. Sadly no views towards the Cuillins, and the 7km valley walk to the root of the mountain and back was boring, but still a good walk.




Showing the awesome ridge that is Five Sisters in Glen Shiel

• DAY 2 (Glen Shiel): ~14km, ~1600m height gain. (Garmin data)

Did the Five Sisters of Kintail. I missed the Five Sisters on the trip to Glen Shiel two years ago, so wanted to do them now. Insanely hot & sunny day, and a great walk. The walk includes three munrons and two tops: Sgurr nan Spainteach – 990 m (top), Sgurr na ciste Duibhe – 1027 m (Munro), Sgurr na Carnach – 1002 m – (Munro), Sgurr Fhuaran – 1067 m – (Munro), Sgurr nan Saighead 929 m – (top)




Me on top of one of the Sisters of Kintail

• DAY 3 (Glen Coe): ~25km, 1392m height gain. (Garmin data)

Did Buachaille Etive Mòr. I missed this walk on last year’s trip to Glen Coe, but just as well: this time the weather was perfect and we got some views. It ended up being a rather long walk, as we took the 10km path from the car park back to Kinlochleven via the West Highland Way. The ridge contains four principal tops: from north-east to south-west these are Stob Dearg (1022 m), Stob na Doire (1011 m), Stob Coire Altruim (941 m) and Stob na Bròige (956 m). Stob Dearg and Stob na Bròige are both Munros.




Buachaille Etive Mòr

• DAY 4 (Glen Nevis): 16.64km, 1320m height gain. (Garmin data)

Did Aonach Mor & Aonach Beag. This was a very slow walk for my taste, but the weather was perfect and we had all the time in the world. Awesome views from Aonach Mor. These are among the highest munros in Scotland: Aonach Mor 1221m (Big ridge), Aonach Beag 1234m (Little ridge).




Awesome view while getting up the Aonachs

• DAY 5 (Glen Etive): ~28km, ~2800m height gain. (Garmin data)

This was a proper tester: I did it at a rather fast pace with James, another very fast guy from the Uni hill walking society. We managed the route in just over seven hours, nearly 4km/hour. The peaks in order (all munros): Ben Starav (1078m), Beinn nan Aighenan (960m), Glas Bheinn Mhor (997m), Stob Coir’ an Albannaich (1044m), Meall nan Eun (928m). Rather tired in the end, but it was worth it! Oh, no photos from this walk, as I wanted to minimise the weight. Just as well: it was a bit overcast most of the time, until we got back down and jumped into a nice cold stream, that is!

Ben Nevis & Carn Mor Dearg

Apart from the last walk, all of the walks were quite relaxed. The total distance for the week adds up to about 106.5km and the height gain to 8080m. I can hardly believe that the weather was so good, I must’ve burnt myself almost every day! Note for next time: factor 15 is not enough. Unfortunately there were also quite a few midges about, and I had no repellent. I’m still scratching some of the bites…

Well, that’s it for now, I’m off to Prague tomorrow for a conference. A report and hopefully some photos will follow when I get back!

My plans for this summer are just about sorted, so I thought I would post a rough schedule here as a reminder for myself and anyone who might be interested to know where I am.

• 16.6. – 22.6. — Week away in Scotland with DUHWS. This involves hill walking on Skye and around Kinlochleven.
• 29.6. – 3.7. — Metaphysics conference in Prague, Czech Republic.
• 15.7. – 21.7. — Flying to Milan and then heading to Trento, Bolzano and the Dolomites. Mostly hill walking in the Dolomites. With my Finnish mate Pekka.
• 23.7. – 25.7. — Structure and Identity conference in Bristol.
• 28.7. – 20.8. — Holiday in Finland.

Between the mentioned trips I will most likely be in Durham, although I have some plans during those times as well. My sister will be visiting me here in Durham from 23.6. – 27.6. I will also be running at least in the following races during the summer:

• 7.7. — Darlington Pit Stop 10k. Looking for a fast 10k time here. Target: as close to 40min as possible.
• 14.8. — Helsinki City Marathon. Target: 3:15h.
• 19.9. — BUPA Great North Run (half marathon), Newcastle. Target: sub 1:30h.