Oliver has been auditing Philosophy 1010 (Introduction to Philosophy) at the University of Prince Edward Island this semester. When the university closed for COVID-19, classes paused for a week and then, in theory, resumed after academics came up a plan for “transitioning to alternative course delivery.”

In the case of Philosophy 1010, alternative course delivery consisted of “here are my notes for the lectures I would have otherwise have given you.” You know, like when Broadway closed, and they handed out the scripts to the patrons so they could perform the shows themselves.

This left Oliver, who appreciates the performative aspects of the university lecture more than anything else, feeling substantially under-served, and left me in the position of having to rush to fill the void.

Unfortunately I took the other philosophy course during my brief tenure as an undergraduate, the “logic course,” where we spent our days in Venn diagrams rather than reading Plato. Leaving me ill-prepared for the task ahead. But I rallied.

Last week’s topic: Personal Identity.

Using the text as our guide, I sketched the four notions of identity, and then we fleshed them out together, using real world examples from our friends and familiars. When someone loses their leg in a war, for example, do they become a different person? What about someone who transitions to a different gender? Does someone who wasn’t diagnosed autistic become a different person if they receive an autism diagnosis? Do Buddhists really have no personal identity? This is where we ended up:

Today’s topic: Does God Exist?

This is the concern of the first chapter of the text, but the last to be considered in the course. Oliver was particularly engaged in this topic, and I was woefully ill-equipped to provide anything but the barest details, having spent approximately 5 minutes over 53 years on my own considerations of whether or not God exists. But it was fun nonetheless.

Oliver emailed our sketch of Does God Exist? to his professor and got some helpful commentary, so all was not lost on the formal front.

For typical students, all that’s left now is the final exam, the alternative delivery of which will be by email as a take-home project, with a pleasant degree of humour:

What I will do, instead, is post the exam here on moodle on Tuesday,  April 14, thus giving you FOUR DAYS to complete it.

Please note: the test is not geared to take four days. The test is still geared to take 3 hours. The added time is merely to offset any viruses — computer or covid-19. 

There was, in theory, one more lecture left, for this Wednesday, although it appears as though the class proper will not consider it. Oliver and I, regardless, will meet on Wednesday to ponder Paley’s Design Argument and Pascal’s Wager.

Recorded eight days ago (8 months in quarantine years) on the Charlottetown waterfront at the end of a drive in the countryside on a sunny Sunday.

On Thursday morning I was immersed in a video conference, with the personable Josh MacFadyen, when I got a text message:

As Oliver was across the street, at home, and “five machine” sounds a lot like “fire machine,” which is something someone might say when the house is burning down and they are panicking, I immediately ran across the street to rescue Oliver.

Oliver was fine.

The buzzer on the clothes dryer had gone off, and Oliver was simply, helpfully, letting me know.

Here’s how the text message got to me:

Oliver was upstairs in bed.

The dryer’s buzzer went off.

Oliver has a Google Home in his bedroom, so he asked it to call me:

OK Google, call Peter.

The Google Home dutifully called my office number.

But my officer number automatically goes to voicemail, so Oliver left a voicemail (the one you can listen to above).

The voicemail went to my voicemail system, which is set to automatically speech-to-text transcribe voicemails and email them to me.

Which is how I got the text message “Five machine went off at home.”

Lower shields.

Our friend Frances volunteered to deliver a box of handpies from The Handpie Company to our vestibule, as she was driving out to Albany to pick up her own.

And so, on our return from our walk, we were greeted by this lovely box waiting for us.

Oliver and I went out to enjoy the afternoon sun; we walked by our friend Catherine Hennessey’s house and enjoyed a socially-distant pop-in. She benefits from having a veranda custom-tailored for this age.

The Bookmark, Prince Edward Island’s bookstore, remains at our service, despite capitalism seemingly otherwise being on hiatus:

If you need books or a puzzle to get you through this unprecedented time, you can order online here, or call us at 902-566-4888 or email at charlottetown@bookmarkreads.ca and we will deliver your order to you the same day for FREE in the Charlottetown area. If you live outside Charlottetown, give us a call and we will let you know how we can deliver to you.

Robin Sloan recommended a couple of books in his newsletter a few weeks ago, The Westing Game and Sea of Poppies; I had The Bookmark order them both. They arrived in my vestibule today. As if by magic.

The great thing is that, as a special bonus, I get to help ensure that I still have a local independent bookstore at the end of all this.

Please join me if you can; and remember that The Bookmark can also delivery you fountain pens, notebooks, pencils, erasers, and socks featuring Justin Trudeau’s face.

Yuval Noah Harari, writing for the Financial Times in The world after coronavirus:

It is crucial to remember that anger, joy, boredom and love are biological phenomena just like fever and a cough. The same technology that identifies coughs could also identify laughs. If corporations and governments start harvesting our biometric data en masse, they can get to know us far better than we know ourselves, and they can then not just predict our feelings but also manipulate our feelings and sell us anything they want — be it a product or a politician.

Linked from Frank.

Suzanne Vega at NPR’s Tiny Desk, in 2014, with Gerry Leonard on guitar.

Mary Chapin Carpenter has an adorable dog named Angus. She’s playing beautiful songs from her kitchen, every day.