'The Update Letter' & Inaugural Post

Dear Friends, Family, Colleagues, Acquaintances, and those who've received this by mistake,

The Fifteen-second Version:
I'll be spending one year at the London School of Economics working on my MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy. If you're in London at some point during the next twelve months, I expect a call.


The Longer Version:
Those of you who've had the pleasure of seeing me during the past eight weeks have probably noticed my 'olive complexion.' This is deliberate and is the result of hours upon hours in the sun. I've been told that, during the winter, the sun in England has been known to set during high tea, so I'm trying my best to soak up as much of the Texas sun as possible while I still have access to it.

If you skipped the fifteen-second version of this update letter, which I imagine you didn't, I will be starting my MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy at the London School of Economics in October. This is a big change from my undergraduate training, but a much-welcomed one. Instead of a cursory dip into ten or twelve different classes, I'll only be taking four classes (one of which is my dissertation seminar) in which I will be completely submerged: Philosophy and Public Policy, Philosophy, Morals and Politics , and an elective.

So, it seems that gets us up to October of 2008, at which point you'll probably be getting another letter.

Many of you have asked for periodic updates during my year as a Londoner, and I probably could have sent out a weekly newsletter about my adventures, excursions, and exploits. But, like virtually any regular newsletter, that would quickly become boring. You would dread Monday mornings, because, inevitably, there would be an email waiting in your inbox outlining all of the details of my previous week. Because you are a nice person, or at least wish to appear that way, you wouldn't have the heart to reply to one of the newsletter's installments to ask to be removed from the mailing list, and so would continue this sad saga.

Instead, I'll be keeping a blog ( http://flat36.blogspot.com ), which I'll try to update as regularly as I updated my last one ( http://wanderingitaly.blogspot.com ).


All the best,
Jon

ps This was my first 'update letter,' so I apologize if I strayed from protocol or tradition in any way.