Liz commented on my Conversationalist post that it’s often difficult to talk about things that are important and meaningful to us. I think it especially applies to esoteric things like a graduate student’s research, where 99% of the world doesn’t even know what it’s about, and doesn’t care. I’ve definitely had the same feeling – […]
The Futurist, by James P. Othmer
I stopped by the library on Monday evening since I happened to be walking by, and walked out with four books. One of the books I picked up solely because of its title: The Futurist, by James P. Othmer. It’s smart and sassy with trenchant commentary on the modern world. Here’s the protagonist’s description of […]
HP still sucks
My laptop’s about to die. Well, the hard drive, at least. It’s making grinding noises, and it takes forever for files to load up, and the computer blue screens if I leave it on for more than a couple hours. So I might not be blogging much for the next few days, while I sort […]
Conversationalist
One of the skills I continue to work on is the art of conversation. This seems to be key to so many things I’m interested in, from management to communication to cognitive science. And it has the added benefit of being useful at parties! So what makes for a good conversationalist? One of the qualities […]
New Amsterdam Singers
A month ago or so, somebody wrote me. They had been looking for information on El Nino by John Adams, came across my account of it, noticed that I was now living in New York, and suggested that I check out the New Amsterdam Singers, where a friend of theirs sang. Intrigued, I checked out […]
Urbis
It’s interesting how wishing sometimes makes it so on the Internet. Or at least how enough people are thinking along the same lines that ideas pop up in multiple places last month. A few months ago, I went to a Social Media Club meeting, and came back musing about feedback karma, where it “would be […]
The Duke Ellington Nutcracker
Last night I opened up my copy of Time Out New York for the first time in a couple months. I have a subscription, but I’ve been so busy with classes, that I was basically tossing it in the recycling as soon as I got it. But I’m done with classes (yay!), so I flipped […]
Idea functionalism
This isn’t quite coming together yet, but I’m so happy to be done writing for class that I want to write a blog post this evening, so bear with me. One bit of preamble – for the sake of this discussion, when I talk about truth, I am not talking about logical consistency, e.g. proving […]
Patterns and truth
But in Ender’s mind, madness. Thousands of competing contradictory impossible visions that make no sense at all because they can’t all fit together but they do fit together, he makes them fit together, this way today, that way tomorrow, as they’re needed. As if he can make a new idea-machine inside his head for every […]
Socialed out
So that plan of mine to post every day during November? Somehow that stopped. Class is almost done. I had a big presentation due this week in one class, and next week I have to turn in a take-home final, and the final version of master’s project proposal, and then I’ll be done with my […]
