steve petersen's (personal) homepage

steve's (personal) news

updated sometimes

8/18/8

Many people have asked me, since my fabulous portrayal as "Slender" in The Merry Wives of Windsor, just how I manage to act so well. Of course the answer is terribly complicated, but in summary, my process is very similar to that of one Sir Ian McKellen, briefly outlined in this clip.

5/4/8

A few updates:

• I'll be doing Shakespeare in Delaware Park this summer. I'm playing Slender in Merry Wives of Windsor. (Imagine that - me, playing a goofy, tall, comic role!) The show opens July 24th, and it runs six nights a week until August 17th.
• Mid-May I head out for my second dose of the Formal Epistemology Workshop, in Madison this year. I'll be giving these comments on Carl Wagner's paper about the proper way to interpret Jeffrey conditioning in Bayesian updating.
• I saw Feist last Thursday, and she was fantastic. She now joins my elite pantheon of imaginary girlfriends. (I'm sorry Buffalo gave you such a tame reception, Feist; you deserved better. I hope, as you suspected, it was just the formality of the venue.)

9/8/7

I'm back from the Value of Knowledge conference, and from visiting old dear friends in both London and Amsterdam. Thanks again to all my fantastic hosts. Now, of course, it's back to the swing of the school year. Somehow it just doesn't seem as glamorous as a conference in Europe.

7/23/7

I'm performing four improv shows for the Buffalo Infringement Festival. Peter Cumbo (from local improv groups Eclectic Company and Show B) and I will be doing a show called Me and You from Kalamazoo, a 2-person longform. (And yes Peter picked the title - which is likely to have nothing to do with the show.) Click the link for details and come see it if you're in town! (Also, if you're out of town.)

5/1/7

Some good professional news lately: two more papers to be published, and I'll be presenting at two super-cool epistemology conferences: the 2007 Formal Epistemology Workshop at Carnegie Mellon at the end of May, and the Value of Knowledge conference in Amsterdam late August. Cool.

10/5/6

Both the vocation and avocation have some developments.

• Vocation: I just sent off my article on the ethics of robot servitude (pdf) to be published in a special upcoming issue of The Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence. It was a fun paper to write.
• Avocation: the movie my improv group and I made, Comic Evangelists, will have its world premiere at the surprisingly serious AFI Fest in LA. This festival will host some (other) amazing actors, as you can see in this recent press release. Check out the movie's website for more details.

8/24/6

I'm off to Toronto for the Toronto Improv Festival. Then school starts for me on Monday ...

8/8/6

I moved from Kalamazoo to Buffalo last weekend, and what with internet installed and all, some order is starting to emerge from the chaos of the last week. Meanwhile lyrics from an old Ben Folds song keep going through my head:

Kalamazoo
I can't believe I was there
I can't believe I was anywhere else ...

In other moods it's these lyrics instead:

Buffalo gals won't you come out tonight
... and dance by the light of the moon?

On Thursday August 10th I'm going to the Computing and Philosophy Conference. Saturday morning (the 12th) I'm giving a presentation defending the permissibility of making intelligent robot servants. It's a quirky, fun topic with unexpected depths.

4/26/6

I haven't updated in some time, obviously. Some of the biggest news since September:

• Career-wise, I got a job at Niagara University, and so will move to Buffalo in early August. My future colleagues are great, and Buffalo promises to be much like my hometown Milwaukee.
• Hobby-wise, my improv group's movie had its premiere. Check out the trailer here, or from the group's website. It's a satire about an evangelist improv group on a road trip. I play the bitter, divorced atheist roped into the journey.

9/22/5

I'll give a talk tomorrow at the philosophy department of Western Michigan on "Learning and computational epistemology".

8/7/5

My improv group and I are going to the Toronto International Improv Festival from 8/17 til 8/21, where we'll be demonstrating our new longform style, Claustrophilia.

8/7/5

In broad summary for those who don't know: I'm now living in Kalamazoo Michigan. I finished my PhD at the University of Michigan and I'm on a two-year postdoc. I'll be here until summer 2006, and then where I'll be depends heavily on where I get a job! If you know anyone who wants to hire a philosopher, let me know!