recent tracks:

Happy February

I forgot to mention Grave of the Fireflies which was not happy but rather an incredibly depressing account of Japanese orphans in WWII; excellent and supremely depressing.

Also saw The Good Shepherd which I enjoyed overall; did not seem as long as its runtime and is very engrossing but without any really likable characters, because Matt Damon destroys the lives of everyone close to him. I found the end highly unsatisfying.

Read Ada by Nabokov: too transcendent for commentary. If you're looking for a dense, difficult, incestuous romance, I can't conceive of a better one. Nabokov makes me sad to realize that regardless of future success, I find it difficult to believe I could ever reach his plane. Experience augmented by Ada Online (PSU), with full text and partial commentary.

Life: vacation! SEA and I to deserted Maine beach with snowy dunes and boarded buildings. Lobster for dinner from a local joint, Ada before bed. Went to bed listening to snow and surf; woke up to 6 inches of standing snow: lovely.

Super Bowl had plenty of excitement before Rex let fly a couple of Hindenburgs and brought his team down in flames. Although I'm not a Peyton hater, he did not by any means earn his MVP.

Housing meeting this morning; RI LS Wed; lots of cite-checking; lots of reading. No more Ada to distract me. Made delicious brownies from scratch last week; high butter & cocoa content, low sugar, lots of walnuts. Mmm.

My voice fractured for a moment.

We went to a cogsci speaker from Edinburgh (Andy Clark, Chair of Logic and Metaphysics) this evening, talking about the role of gesture and essentially iterative processes in higher order cognition. E.g. tapping one's fingers helps one think; one's brain unconsciously causes one's fingers to tap in order to aid thinking, just as a fish wriggles its tail to affect local currents and help it swim more agilely. Unconscious effect on environment as a part of the cognitive process? The talk contained just enough depth to get a feel and want to read some papers. Probably no overlap with the law.

Still fractured. Not sure why. Hope you enjoyed!