Previous installments: #1, #2, #3, and #4.

Manhattan from Staten Island ferry

This installment is long overdue, but last three weeks have been extremely busy. Now that I have only just over a week of my visit left things are calming down a bit, as I’ve met the deadlines that were pressing (index for my volume, my talks at NYU and Toronto, and so on), and the term has now ended so there are no further seminars. I haven’t really spent a single weekend in NYC for the past month, as I’ve been travelling to Chicago, Toronto, and upstate New York.

Chicago from John Hancock Center

Let’s start from Chicago. It was great to see my old friend Tuomo, who entered the philosophy program at Helsinki at the same time with me. He’s now doing a PhD in philosophy at the University of Chicago, so it was a good excuse to visit. I liked Chicago in general, although there was one irritating thing: it’s very scattered. The actual Chicago Uni campus is some 30min from downtown by bus, but although it’s quite nice, there are not that many services around. If you’re looking for a certain type of restaurant, you might end up having to go to the opposite side of the city, and the public transportation is not quite to NYC standards. In fact, we ended up taking a taxi from downtown to get some Indian food. It was an experience of its own to wonder in the Indian district, which is full of cheap and apparently quite decent restaurants. We also visited the John Hancock Center (344m) bar, where you get great views over the city, and overpriced drinks, of course. It was a pleasant visit, thanks for having me Tuomo! By the way, I’ve got a few more decent shots from Chicago (and if the weather had been a little bit sunnier, the Cloud Gate, commonly known as ‘the Bean’ would’ve been a cool subject!), I’ll eventually post these and all my NYC shots in my gallery, I’ll mention this on the blog it when it happens.

An amazing study room for Chicago students

In terms of work the biggest recent event was my Brown Bag talk at NYU on ‘The Epistemology of Essence’. Now, I’ve been promising some philosophy posts ever since I got here, but I’m now wanting to revise both the papers (on essence and modality) that I’ve been meaning to talk about, so I’m afraid that the philosophy posts will still have to wait. I promise to get back to this in a few weeks or so though. The talk itself went well and we had some good discussion, Kit Fine was there as well. It’s a difficult topic though, and I was only trying to give a survey of our options regarding epistemic access to essence. I will certainly do a more detailed post about this.

Underneath the Bean in Chicago

For details about my visit to Toronto, see my previous post.

My running has suffered somewhat from my recent travelling and work stress, and I’ve also succumbed to the flu twice(!), but I hope to get back to proper training soon, when I get back to Finland. My last race didn’t go quite according to plan either, the report (with a photo added) is here.

The fact that I’ve also been drinking a lot of beer hasn’t exactly improved my fitness. I’ve had excellent excuses though (and excellent beer!). I went upstate to Hunter Mountain for the TAP New York beer festival, which featured something like 150 beers from 41 local breweries. I was fortunate enough to have free access to the festival on both days (thanks Jess!), in addition to some lovely company, so I managed to sample 23 beers in total, mostly stouts and porters. Some of the most memorable were the Chatham Brewing Scotch Ale, which they claim will remind you of Scotland (and it did a bit!), the Sixpoint Craft Ales Diesel Stout (a nice thick stout, like they should be!), and Brown’s Brewing Oatmeal Stout (sometimes oatmeal stouts are too light, but this one was very flavoursome). The festival was great, and the weather was perfect, although all the different beers were a bit much to stomach! On the first day I had the good company of another long-haired beer (and metal) connoisseur, Tim, although you can’t see that much of him in the attached photo…

Tim & Me at TAP

On a separate occasion I visited some of the local breweries, namely Keegan Ales (they do some very decent ales), the Guilded Otter, (the beer is decent but can’t really compete), and Ommegang — a Belgian style brewery, which is actually owned by Duvel (in addition to the Three Philosophers which I’ve mentioned before, their seasonal Chocolate Stout is excellent, and their Abbey is also very good).

Hiking upstate

It wasn’t all just drinking upstate, I did also get to go on a couple of hikes in the Catskill mountains. They get up to 1000m or so, but since you end up starting quite high as well there isn’t that much height gain. Still, the area is nice, there are some cool woods and waterfalls, and you do get great views. I’d love to do a crosscountry race there.

Since I haven’t been spending that much time in NYC, except for work, I haven’t had the chance to explore many touristy things. However, I did take the ferry to Staten Island on a nice sunny day. It’s certainly worth it: takes only 20min or so and it’s completely free, with nice views of Manhattan (see the first photo of the post) and the Statue of Liberty. I do have some compulsory museums on my list that I hope to check out before I go, including the Met and probably MoMa.

Well, now I’m off to Long Beach Island for the weekend, the next post may be from Finland!

Previous installments: #1, #2, and #3.

Brooklyn Bridge towards Manhattan

Busy, busy, busy. I’ve got just over a month of my visit left, but I won’t be having much of a breather for the next couple of weeks at least. As you’ll know if you read my previous post, I was in Boise, Idaho last weekend for a conference. Tomorrow I’m heading to Chicago to visit an old friend who is doing a PhD there, and I’ve got pretty much all the rest of my weekenks booked after that as well.

The good news is that I have actually done some work. I gave a talk entitled ‘Essence and Modality Reconsidered’ at the NYU ‘Metaphysics Bootcamp’ the other day. Just a small audience, but we had a good discussion and the crazy view I’m developing on the reduction of modality to essence went down surprisingly well. I will do a post about this and upload the draft paper as well some time soon (although I realize I keep promising to do a dedicated philosophy post…), but I hope to make some revisions to the paper based on the feedback that I got before that. I’m also working — well, I should be working — on a paper on ‘The Epistemology of Essence’, since I’m supposed to give a talk with that title on May 6th at the department. In addition to these, I should do the index for my Contemporary Aristotelian Metaphysics volume, revise a paper that I wrote with a colleague of mine from Durham, referee a paper for Mind, start at least thinking about my talk at a conference in Tampere in June (on Hume and Humeanism) and preferably also revise a bunch of old drafts. One upside is that I did get an R&R (revise & resubmit) from a half decent journal recently and I’m waiting to hear about the fate of that paper.

Princeton campus

I’ve been attending seminars more or less regularly, including Hartry Field’s graduate seminar on Truth. It’s a little bit techincal for my taste (my interest in truth is more from the metaphysics point of view), but highly interesting nevertheless. Here at NYU it seems to be common to have people popping in to these seminars to sit in and contribute to the discussions — and I don’t mean just students. Yesterday we had Crispin Wright, John Haldane, and Stephen Schiffer! It’s of course great, but Stephen’s persistent comments meant that Hartry got through maybe only about one quarter of the material that he was intending to talk about, oh well! I also attended a big conference on truth at Princeton (partly just to check out the campus), which had some top speakers: Field, Paul Horwich, J. C. Beall, Tim Maudlin, Scott Soames, Michael Lynch, and others. I was only there for one day (it’s just a 1.5h train trip from NYC), but I’d say that it was worth going to — I was glad to meet Matti Eklund, as I’ve found his comments on the metametaphysics literature to be quite accurate (regarding the Carnap-Quine debate, or its (ir)relevance). Princeton campus is pretty nice, they’re clearly trying to go for the Oxbridge feel.

Angelica Kitchen -- This was a special chickpea-potato thingy of the day

It feels like ages ago already, but I had a visitor from the UK for a week and used the opportunity to do some touristy stuff, I also got do a bit of photography! I’ve been to the Guggenheim (great layout and nice gallery, but the exhibits start to get repetitive after a while — too much Kandinsky!), walked the Brooklyn Bridge (highly recommended, but try to do it when it’s not too busy) as well as the High Line in Chelsea, an old railroad turned into a sort of garden path above the streets (nice, but crowded and too short, although they are working on an extension), the Empire State Building (very expensive at $20, but you do get good views; go by night to avoid the crowds), the Financial District (nothing much there, but it’s an experience of sorts just to walk through it), and numerous vegan restaurants and bars with excellent beer selections. There remains a lot of museums to check out and I have a number of other touristy things on my list as well, so hopefully I will get a chance to do these things at some point. I’m also hoping to do some dedicated photo shoots to capture some of the architecture and Central Park etc.

Hippies use side door, and watch out for those loose women! Atlas Cafe

Maybe a word or two about the recent food & beer adventures is in order. I’ve tried out a bunch of new places, such as the tiny atmospheric raw vegan restaurant Quintessence in East Village, which was good if a bit expensive. I would especially recommend the chia seed pudding, which prompted myself and my date to buy some chia seeds from the shop next door; they’re quite nice if you soak them in soy/oat/hemp/almond milk overnight. Very nearby is Angelica Kitchen, which appears to be extremely popular (expect to wait). Excellent selection, excellent food, and a pretty nice interior — I’ll surely go again. I’ve also been to Franchia near the Empire State Building. It’s a Korean vegan restaurant. The price/quality was not quite as good as at some other places, but the service was good and it was a nice and quiet place to have dinner. Other places for mentioning are Atlas Cafe, which has an excellent selection of vegan bakery by Vegan Treats, and Sancturary T restaurant and tea house with perhaps the best teas in NYC (not cheap though!). But that’s not the end of it, I’ve still got at least ten or so vegan restaurants on my list that I’d like to check out!

Philosophy of drinking at d.b.a.!

As to the drinking side, two bars are highly recommended. Firstly d.b.a. with a decent selection of draught and bottled beers from all over, as well as good single malts and other liquors. It’s a great place, although the indoor space is tiny — this is really the place to go when the weather is good, as their beer garden and conservatory, hidden away in an inner courtyard, are lovely. Normally they have some real ales as well, but for some reason they haven’t been on when I’ve been there. The special mention has to go to The Ginger Man though, located in Midtown not far from the Empire State Building and the CUNY Grad Center. They have a stunning 70 draughts, two changing real ales, and a bunch of bottled beers on top of that, including some absolute rarities such as one of the beers by the tiny Norwegian brewery Haandbryggeriet — I’ve only seen their beers in one place before, namely Vanha Pankki (i.e. The Old Bank) in Turku, Finland. The Ginger Man also does their own beer called, unsurprisingly, The Ginger Man. It’s a nice mild bitter with hints of ginger, quite tasty! The place is pretty big, but very popular, it’s advised to go when it’s less busy, because you can really get some knowledgable service then. Also, you can get samplers (or ‘flights’, as they call them here)! For $12 you can choose four beers out of any of the 70 draughts (about a 1.5dl serving), which is a great deal really given that many of the beers are about $8-9 (and extremely strong!). I’ve had a few of those samplers there already. Two beers have been particularly memorable: Dogma by the the Scottish masters at BrewDog, and the Two Brothers Northwind Imperial Stout (from Chicago) — the Dogma is light in colour, but a complex, delicate mix of flavours, whereas the Northwind is an excellent strong stout, one of the driest I’ve ever had.

Three Philosophers, Ommegang brewery

One more beer deserves a mention simply because of its name: the Ommegang Three Philosophers (pictured). Ommegang is dedicated to Belgian style ales here in New York, but I believe it’s actually owned by Duvel. I bought a bottle of the Three Philosophers, and it does indeed taste like a typical Belgian ale. Nothing particularly surprising about it, but it is worth a try. Well, that’s enough about beer (although I suspect that I’ve lost most of the readers by now, sorry about that). I’m heading to the TAP New York beer festival at the end of the month, so I expect to sample some more great local beers soon!

(Yes, I’m still running too. And if you didn’t see my last race report, or didn’t check back later on, there’s a rather silly picture of me sprinting to the finish.)

Empire State Building towards Times Square

Race Date: 2.4.2011
Official Finishing Time: 1:25:15 chip time (PB)
Official Overall Position: 14/2484 (finishers), which puts me in the fastest 0.56%
Race number: 2488

I had been looking forward to the 13.1 New York for some time and was finally hoping to get below 90min after the crowded disappointment of the Great North Run 2010. I was confident that I could do it, since I did a 15k training run at 4:10min/km pace not too long ago. The idea was to set off at that pace and get somewhere close to 1:27. Well, I set off a bit faster and never slowed down! I thought that 1:26 would be a dream time, but it never occurred to me that I could already get so close to my season’s target, which is sub 85min. In fact, with 5k to go I realized that a sub 20min 5k should indeed get me there — and I ran a sub 20min 5k, but the extra 200m (which were not a surprise given that the course has a lot of twists and turns) on top of the half marathon meant that it wasn’t quite enough after all. In any case, this was a PB by just over 8min, fancy that!

This was only the second time that the race was organised, and there were some glitches with the gear check and signs, but I had no major difficulties and was happy enough with the race and the post-race offerings (which included a fancy medal and free beer, although not very good beer). The weather was almost perfect: around six degrees Celsius and sunny, with just a tiny bit of wind. The course is extremely flat and fast, although it does include a lot of tight turns and parts of it were a bit flooded. Couldn’t have hoped for much better conditions though.

Finishing Sprint

I ran much of the race with the second lady, I think we gave each other nice pacing as we were doing a very good steady pace. In the end I overtook her with some 4-5k to go and ended up finishing some 15 seconds in front of the first lady, whom I overtook with just 1k to go. In general I didn’t really struggle at any point of the race, although at first I was concerned that I was going too fast. I started to overtake people after 10k or so though and no one came past me, so nothing to worry! The battle only begun around the 17k mark as I really started to push, fortunately I managed to pull it off.

Here are the splits (from Garmin):
5k 20:20
10k 20:18 (40:38 total)
15k 20:01 (1:00:39 total)
20k 19:46 (1:20:25 total)
Total: 21.29k in 1:25:19

So I managed a negative split despite the faster-than-planned start; in fact the second 10k was sub 40min. I ran the last km at sub 3:40min/km pace, so clearly I had something left in the machine! My average heart rate was 166 bpm, which is also the lowest I have had in a half marathon (168 bpm at the Great North Run).

The overall winner crossed the line in 1:09:10, more than eight minutes ahead of everyone else. Must’ve been pretty lonely!

By the way, Ulrike, who was visiting me from the UK, also ran the race and got an excellent time: 1:32:34 — she was the fourth lady!

My next race will be the Scotland Run (10k) in Central Park already this Sunday. Due to it being so soon after the half I don’t expect anything amazing, but I’ll be looking for sub 39min. I did run a 39:01 10k in training recently, so it should be doable, although there is one big hill on the course… Report to follow!

Official results here.
Garmin data here.