“. . . And it’s not like I’ll be a total stranger up there in Carson City. The warden will recognize me; and the Con Boss - I once interviewed them for The New York Times. Along with a lot of other cons, guards, cops and assorted hustlers who got ugly, by mail, when the article never appeared.

Why not? They asked. They wanted their stories told. And it was hard to explain; in those circles, that everything they told me went into the wastebasket or at least the dead - end file because the lead paragraphs I wrote for that article didn’t satisfy some editor 3,000 miles away - some nervous drone behind a grey formica desk in the bowels of a journalistic bureaucracy that no con in Nevada will ever understand - and that the article finally died on the vine, as it were, because I refused to rewrite the lead. For reasons of my own.

None of which would make much sense in The Yard. But what the hell? Why worry about details?”

Eastman music student (complaining about another Eastman music student):

“I just… I just hate talking to him. I get him on the phone and he’s like, ‘Music is just atoms.’ And I’m like… no… no… I just…I don’t even know how to explain to him… that it’s not just atoms.”

There are many many crazy things
That will keep me loving you
And with your permission
May I list a few

The way you hold your knife
The way we danced till three
The way you changed my life
No they can’t take that away from me

Meredith’s newly acquired copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary has been sitting on the coffee table for a couple weeks. I usually scoff at books by female authors that have the words “confession” or “diary” in the title, so, at first, I scoffed. But then I found out Cam’s mom gave the book to Meredith for Christmas and said she though every female should own a copy. I respect Cam’s mom (and she’s a librarian… she knows her books!), so I got curious.

I flipped through it, read the stats portions at the beginnings of each of the entries, and decided it was a sad book because she never loses weight… apparently I’m not that open-minded.

But, in honor of the book, still on the coffee table in the living room… or maybe, in honor of Cam’s mom, here’s a quick update on my life, in list format:

Reading: What Is the What (Eggers); The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand); South of the Border, West of the Sun (Murakami); An Anthropologist on Mars (Sacks); Blow-Up and Other Stories (Cortazar).

Just finished reading: Apex Hides the Hurt (Whitehead); And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks (Kerouac & Burroughs); Muses, Madmen, and Phrophets (Smith); New Kings of Non-Fiction (editor: Glass).

Listening: Ella Fitzgerland, Atom & His Package, Radiohead, and absolutely nothing new except the Redbeards album Eric gave me and some tracks Matthew made.

Eating: Tuna, tomatoes, spinach, and cucumbers (to fix increasingly urgent iron and protein deficiencies… dude, I bruised my thigh weeks ago, and it’s still blue).

Running: 5.2 mph for 30 minutes a day. (Totally respectable for someone with short legs.)

Debating: Keeping bangs or growing them out.

Snow: Has been above my knees twice so far this season. (But I layer and I keep warm, Mom, so worry less.)

Today: Read Murakami, worked on CogSci paper, called sister, organized shelves, cleaned bedroom so it smelled like lemons, worked on CogSci paper, made tomato sandwich, read CHILDES transcripts, rearranged art on bedroom walls, coded BabyCam, read Eggers, Dan came over, went out to buy a new door and doorknob, came home, Dan left, practiced tightrope while listening to news podcast, worked on CogSci paper, ate second half of sandwich, talked to Steve, worked on CogSci paper, played with guitar, guitar super out of tune, tuned guitar, wrote for fun, got headache, took Aleve, made PJ’s coffee, drank PJ’s coffee in the dark while listening to audiobook Ayn Rand, worked on CogSci paper, emailed Katherine, wrote this.

Now: Bed.

I like to work in lobbies of places I don’t belong. There are people bustling around, but I’m unlikely to know them. I blend in. There’s the right amount of noise. And sometimes older folks stop to talk to me, which creates nice, natural breaks in my work blocks.

My favorite lobby has a player piano in it. A man just stopped to ask me if I was familiar with this tune, and did I know it was from Madame Butterfly? “What a tear jerker! That poor girl! You know it? That Puccini!”

That Puccini! There’s a coffee stand nearby. It smells like coffee and chocolate and cinnamon… and that’s all. Now back to work.

So, BUZZWATER’s caffeine-laden product is still MIA from store shelves, but their website got an overhaul since last I checked up on them:

WWW.BUZZWATER.COM

The website actually doesn’t load for me, but there is some humorous scrolling text at the top of the screen:

The BUZZWATER Site Loading This Is An Audio And Spoken Narrative Site This Site Contains Music On All Pages From BUZZWATER “Times Eye To The Worlds Greatest Nervous Breakdown Of Our MInds” By CALAVATIVA GIGANTEiE “The BUZZWATER Co.” The Worlds Most Potent Beverages Ever Bottled On This Planet The Worlds Number 1 Healthier Choice

C (age 16): Read it now! It’s much better.
J (age 17): Are you still working on the same story?
C: Yeah. I made it better.
J: Just leave it alone and come hang out.
C: I can’t.
J: You can’t?
C: No. I can’t. I’m on a quest.
J: A quest!
C: A quest for est!
J: What kind of quest is that?
C: I want to do the b-est! And be the smart-est!
J: And the lame-est?
C: Dude.
J: You’ll be the smart-est! And the lame-est! And that’s how it goes!
C: It’s not lame.
J: I didn’t call it lame. I called you lame.
C: I’m not lame.
J: Then you better rename your quest.

My mom recently handed me all of my childhood memorabilia in a box. Inside the box, and undated letter on a sheet of lined yellow paper from a legal pad:

 Dear Ms. Santa,

As you know I am a wonderful child and have been considrably *good. For Christmas this year I have carefully selected the most usfull items if your name is Celeste and you live on Murano Road. 

I made a picture for you and left you some cookies. Merry Christmas!

 *Howevere, spelling is not my strog point.

I have decided I am going to start all of my talks from now on with the same line: “As you know, I am a wonderful cognitive scientist…”

I just ran out of coffee concentrate in my office. And there are 5+ hours left. Bah! Back to office coffee for the rest of the day…

The incident reminded me, however, that I’ve been meaning to post instructions for its creation:
NYT recipe for (and explanation of) cold-brew coffee

Super special thanks to Neil for sending me this article and making me my first batch. They sell the stuff in NOLA, and I missed it for years, but didn’t realize you could make it (duh!). It’s really improved the quality of my life lately. I mix it with Light Chocolate Silk soy milk. It’s amazing. Chocolate + coffee = happy me.

Michael Nagle for The New York Times reports on artist Steve Powers’s simulated display of waterboarding:

“Some people look at Coney Island and see a paradise of carefree entertainment. Others see a cesspool of gritty squalor. Few are those who gaze upon its shrieking kids, grizzled wanderers and fast-talking flimflam artists and see an opportunity for engaged political discourse.

In Steve Powers’s ‘Waterboard Thrill Ride’ in Coney Island animatronic figures simulate an interrogation method used in Guantánamo; visitors view the scene through a barred window.”

Link

Controversial political artwork featuring robots? Mandated roadtrip.

… so I’ve become very flakey at updating this blog. So I’m pausing for a second to explain. I moved to Rochester for graduate school one year ago, and I love it, but I’m sort of absorbed in starting all of my research… and maybe don’t have a lot to report aside from that! And my research, I talk about on my work site, and, even there, only in rough detail infrequently.

So I’m not sure what to do with the blog. I don’t have the energy or gaul to report on my shoes and haircuts anymore. Recounting book plots and quotes… slightly less myopic, but, no, not really. Not sure to what degree I can openly talk about my research… or to what degree it’s smart to. I could keep complaining about ads and politics, and keep posting overheard conversations…

I’m not sure what I want to do. I don’t have the time to revert back to blogging about robots, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, which is a lot of what I talked about in the beginning.

This blog is read primarily by strangers, but also friends and family… I’m not sure why anyone reads it, I guess, or if that should influence what I put here. If I were to blog for the sake of blogging, I’d post pictures and lists of things and, occasionally, rants. That might be the direction things are going.

Would that be terrible? I’m not even going to edit this post, because it’s that kind of day.

I’m feeling under the weather and still working while everyone else sleeps… but guess what? DJ Shadow’s right there with me. Rock.

Someone left a copy of Borges’ Labyrinths in my mailbox. I vaguely remember this book coming up in conversation recently with someone, but I can’t remember who. So if you left me this book, if you’d kindly remind me it was you, I’ll return it to the proper mailbox when I’m done with it.

Also, in case this book wasn’t supposed to be in my mailbox: if you hear of anyone who lost a copy, I totally have it. If it’s not for me, it’s an amazing coincidence, and the universe obviously wants me to read it anyway, so I’m bringing it with me to CogSci.

I just bought a $3 box of fresh figs from Trader Joe’s.

They’re 3 for $2 in Rochester.

They’re delicious.

I love California.

And Trader Joe’s.

And life.

Steve & I went to Barnes & Noble Saturday night to see the Rev. Michael Dowd speak on his book, Thank God for Evolution, and find out how the marriage of science and religion could transform our lives and world. We were expecting to hear some sentimental pseudoscience that focused on evidence that we were created by God in the image of God. But we were surprised.

There was the expected amount of watered-down science. Dowd talked about how human nature (virtue, temptation, and sin) can be explained in terms of the biological evolution of the brain. He presented a diagram of the evolved human brain designed by his wife, popular science writer Connie Barlow:

The lizard represents the “Lizard Legacy,” which he said just manages the three… F’s… feeding, fffff-something, and fucking, only he didn’t say fucking—he said “copulation.” (Get it? Copulation doesn’t start with an F! You thought he was going to say it, but no, he’s more wholesome than that.) Then there’s the “Fuzzy L’il Mammal,” which… I don’t remember what he attributed to that… general area… of the brain. Basic ability to reason? Caring for young? Pack mentality? Then there’s the “Monkey Mind,” which cares about things like status and basic communication. And, finally, the “Higher Porpoise,” which he said is exactly what it sounds like. That is, presumably, the part of the brain that is moral or ethical or religious or whatever word you want to use. He talked about how understanding our sins and our humanity required knowledge and understanding about the conflicts between these parts of our brain.

And, of course, this is a gross oversimplification. To attempt to explain, say, marital infidelity entirely in terms of biology is… I don’t even know what it is. Maybe just unromantic.

So his science was a bit fuzzy. But his main argument was actually reasonable… at least, we think so. He spoke about “day language” and “night language”. “Day language,” he said, are things that are plausible and true in the reality that exists when you are awake and alive in the world. “Night language,” he said, was things that are plausible and true when you sleep. The Bible stories may be interpreted as being written in “night language,” which we think was just a euphemism for “metaphoric language.” We think he was arguing for a literal interpretation of scientific fact and a metaphoric interpretation of the Bible. So, basically, he’s selling Unitarianism.

So you’d think I’d have gone for it, but actually, Steve & I were left with really different impressions of the talk… his more favorable than mine. Surprising, considering I’m the Unitarian. Steve thought it was reasonable to try and convince hardcore “flat earth” Christians to believe in science, even if doing so required watering down fact and speaking in flowery language. I think speaking about religion in euphemistic terms think is both condescending and ineffective. Things are true in the world, or they aren’t. Stories are metaphor, or they’re fact. There’s very little in between for me.

So? It was an experience. I’d like for us to go more place we don’t belong more often.

For some reason, I am getting a lot done, and I look up, and I did it… really quickly. It’s like my seconds are longer today. I might retract this later, but it might be because I slept a normal amount. That doesn’t mean I’ll make it a habit, but it’s worth noting. I enjoy not getting much sleep. Being a little sleepy is a pleasant feeling I think.
A listening comprehension study I had been fighting Psyscope to set-up is now running… in Java. Psyscope can’t reliably provide feedback using “beeps,” in case you need to do that. My friend Dan is amazing and wrote a Java program to do what I need in one night. I’ll post it on my academic site in a few weeks with a link to his start-up’s website. The Psyscope program was so close! But no go. I got a lot of help debugging from Susan, Luca, and Mo… I really love the people in my department.
Speaking of, I’m meeting with Nathan at McDonald’s later to talk about Murakami. How cool? Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, specifically. I think that one was up there as one of my favorites. When I’ve finished them all, I’ll make a list ranking them.

I am behind on blogging and picture posting. I’ll catch up on that… at some point maybe. Not in the next couple weeks… but SOON!

Collecting guesses. Murakami reveals the answer tomorrow. Extra points if you identify which Murakami novel this hypothetical is from.

I’ll be back tomorrow.