About

I'm Greg Restall, and this is my website. I work in Philosophy at the University of Melbourne. [Email: greg at consequently.org; Skype: greg_restall; Post: Department of Philosophy, University of Melbourne, Parkville 3010, Australia.]

Writing

These are the three last modified entries on my writing page.

  • “Truthmakers, Entailment and Necessity 2008,” an addendum to “Truthmakers, Entailment and Necessity,” to appear in Truth and Truth-making, edited by E. J. Lowe and A. Rami, Acumen, 2008.
  • [with Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance] Appendix to Rebecca Kukla and Mark Lance ‘Yo!’ and ‘Lo!’: the pragmatic topography of the space of reasons, Harvard University Press, to appear.
  • “Curry’s Revenge: the costs of non-classical solutions to the paradoxes of self-reference,” in The Revenge of the Liar, ed. JC Beall, Oxford University Press, pages 262–271, 2008.
  • “Anti-Realist Classical Logic and Realist Mathematics,” under revision.
  • “Proof Theory and Meaning: on second order logic,” to appear in the Logica 2007 Yearbook, Filosofia.

The Flight of the Balloon

This Queen’s birthday holiday moning, cool and clear, was a perfect time for Zachary and me to fly our hot-air balloon. The flight was short but glorious.

Flying a balloon like this is not completely straightforward. You need to unfurl the balloon carefully, and make sure no bit touches the little burner on the ground (fuelled with cotton wool soaked in Methylated Spirits). Zachary held the balloon carefully like so:

Notice the building in the background. We’re in the middle of a park in Brunswick, and the air is still.

The balloon inflated quite rapidly. I held the base steady, and Zachary held the top, letting go when it was obvious that the air was warm enough to keep the balloon inflated. The air inside warmed very quickly: We let go, and it was away —

It gained altitude remarkably quickly. (It was tricky to get the shots I did with the camera while we figured out which way it was going.) The wind picked up and it drifted westwards as it gained height:

It got further west than we expected, given the still air at ground level. Notice the building it’s near. It made a gentle landing:

on the roof of the factory of “Valve Tech Engineering.”

And so we learned another lesson in the transitory nature of all things. All flesh is grass, and all beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades …

Posted 10:28 AM on June 13, 2005




Remember me?


© Greg Restall, 2002–2006 • Powered by teTeX, TeXShop, Safari, Movable Type, MT SomeDays, MultiBlog, MagpieRSS, del.icio.us, Arvo Pärt, Bruce Cockburn & you, the reader.