A night in the Mission (district that is … of San Francisco)
May 27, 2008
This past Friday (May 23 2008) I flew up to the Bay Area for work. Now, what makes this fairly common occurrence particularly post worthy is that this time, a bunch of really fun and good things serendipitously occurred simultaneously! So what were these special things, you ask? Well let’s see….
1) First off, Berkeley (or as I like to call it “Buh-zerk-lee”) had just finished their finals. This was super awesome because it meant Savannah (my sissy) and Shannon and Esther (two of my very best friends) were all free to play!
2) Chad and (as I have now named him) “Thayer-Monster” were up in the Bay Area looking for an apartment. Both Chad and Thayer-Monster will be moving to the Bay Area this summer, too! They’re both total nerds software-ish engineers (Chad does crypto software stuff and Thayer-Monster does something like makes programming for hardware things [what can I say, he explained it to me after I had taken not one but two packets of nighttime Theraflu! I was just happy I could manage to keep taking in air at that point!])
3) I wanted to spend some time in SF looking for an apartment
4) I now had a camcorder!! And a groovy web-place to share cool videos.
So, now you get to see below what all those factors add up to - a night of fun festivities in the Mission (why the Mission? Because I’m hoping (though that hope is slowly fading) to live there… so I’ve been spending time trying to figure out if I dig the vibe on a day-to-day basis). Savannah, Esther and Shannon took the BART over while Chad and Thayer-Monster drove up from their apartment-hunting radius down near Mountain View and we all first met at a pub. So enjoy!
Oh and I warn you ahead of time: Chad curses evil vulgarities a LOT - and he does this because at some (foolish) point I asked him not to (because I wanted to post these on my blog!). So please, view at your own peril! But I do have to say, some of this is pretty funny.
Enjoy!
Europe Blitzkrieg Extravaganza: Entry Uno (or, if you prefer, jednom or jeden)!
May 25, 2008
Here I am, sitting on my cushy couch snuggled up in my big ole’ PJs after an awesome night filled with the entrancing tunes of Terry Riley (at none other than the Disney Concert Hall), bringing you my very first Europe Blitzkrieg Extravaganza post!! And, because this is such a special event, you get not just one video, but two!!
So first things first - you might be wondering what this Europe Blitzkrieg Adventure business is all about. Well, here’s the plan: Leslie and I (who Leslie is is explained in the Intro video below) will be leaving June 21st and returning July 5th. Now, in those two weeks we will be visiting six countries and at least eight cities. The countries are (in order): Ireland, Italy, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, Czech Republic, and then Ireland again. The cities are (again in order): Dublin, Rome, Florence, Venice, Zagreb, Budapest, Vienna, Prague, and then Dublin again.
The whole Ireland thing might seem random, but it’s where we have our layovers. And, because we’re wild and crazy like that, we purposely gave ourselves an overnight layover in Dublin on the way home. We’ll fly in to Dublin from Prague and have from around 10PM till 9:40AM the next morning to party like rockstars! We’re actually thinking about sending an email out to all our fellow Googlers in the Dublin office and seeing if any of them want to take us out and show us the best Dublin has to offer at night. I think that sounds like a blast!
As for the planning of the rest of the trip - Leslie really deeply and desperately wanted to go to Italy and I super duper badly wanted to explore Eastern Europe. So, we compromised (not like anybody was really sacrificing anything here). For one week we’ll be in Italy and for one week we’ll be traveling all over lots of gorgeous and culturally rich places in Eastern Europe.
I’m so very excited about this trip - it’ll be my first time in Europe and my first serious vacation in four years (interning every summer really cuts into one’s explore-the-world plans) 
So enjoy the Introductory video and then the first (of many) videos you’ll see of Leslie and me together.
Oh and please note: I am really sick in the Introductory video (as elsewhere explained, I seriously needed an IV of Theraflu at that point … but, like the trooper I am, I took one for the team (ppssss: the team is you!) and made the oh so needed intro video.
Ok now you can go ahead and enjoy!
And away we go. . .
May 19, 2008
Hello and welcome to my brand spankin new blog! I’m super excited to now have a place where I can write about and share absolutely anything and everything.
To give you a little direction — each post will be marked under certain categories that are then searchable. So for instance, this post will fall under the "Welcome" and "Video" categories. This means that later on when you’re all alone in the middle of the night and the urge for some Heather musings strikes you (and, oh, it so will), you’ll be able to come on my blog and search for specific topics/themes of interest. You want to read about the latest conference or forum I’ve attended on ethics and technology? You want to hear about the latest kick ass Speculative Fiction/ Science Fiction book I’ve read? Want to see pictures and read tales of my travels through Europe? Thoughts about articles I’ve read or movies I’ve seen? Reviews of the best places to eat and get a caffeine fix? You’ll be able to click on the tags and get posts specifically related to the topic of your choice! Pretty neat, hey?
As a side note, I know a lot of people in technology and philosophy have strictly professional blogs where they limit what they show the world to the purely intellectual. And I know that there’s a fear that showing and sharing the more personal aspects of oneself will inevitably undercut one’s academic and intellectual clout … that people (especially, perhaps, women) who are smart and worth taking seriously don’t have doodles of themselves all over their website, don’t see the light of day on a regular basis, and probably don’t have hippie hair either. But I’m hoping to help change that view … if just a little teeny bit.
This website is titled "In Pursuit of a Little Eudaimonia with Heather Whitney" - so what does that mean and what the heck does that have to do with my above comments?
Well, Eudaimonia is a Greek word that roughly translates to "flourishing" {("eu" = good) and ("daimon" = spirit)}. In Aristotle’s Virtue Ethics (of which I am quite a fan), Eudaimonia is the goal of living. We aim to flourish. And, for Aristotle, it turns out that the only way to truly flourish as a human is to live a virtuous ethically outstanding life.
But what does that mean?
Well again, ethics is a very broad thing. It extends beyond strictly moral considerations (where moral discussions tend to leave us with an understanding of what we are obligated to do (and what’s right and wrong) given some predetermined duties) and encompasses all of the things constitutive of the good life generally. So to be ethically virtuous I can’t just follow some code or rule book of morally good behavior. Instead, I’ve got to figure out what a good life has in it and work on all the aspects therein. That means (and now we’re getting back to why I’ve decided to have a website with so many different faucets) we have to be cognizant of and sensitive to our minds, bodies, and hearts. And we’ve got to think not just about ourselves but others, too. And why? Because all of those are components of a flourishing and beautiful life. And that’s what we want!
So here I’m trying to share and work on lots of the dimensions I think included in a eudaimon life … and that means I’ll have a lot of my philosophy-related research, thoughts on what’s happening in the world (thanks Google Reader!), and "intellectual" stuff generally, while also posting my artsy stuff, pictures and information about cycling and running, tales of adventures near and far, and fun stuff about all the people I care about!
And to start us off I’ve included a funny little video. The background is this: this was taken in North Las Vegas (where my dad, stepmom (Melissa), grandma (Nancy) and her husband (Dick) all live). This past weekend I visited to celebrate my birthday. At this point I have just opened my present from my dad and Melissa - and it was a Flip video camcorder!! So literally a few minutes after I opened it I took this, my very first Flip video. As you’ll be able to clearly see, my family is a lot of fun (and by "a lot of fun" I mean we are quite capable of giving each other a hard time!).
So enjoy and here’s to the start of something pretty cool!