run #4

wednesday: my subject starts hyperventilating when we put her in the scanner, and for a moment it looks like i'm going to lose the whole run. luckily, she's persuadable, and calms down long enough for us to put her back in and discover that the scanner coil is not working (phase ghosting, or what a brain would look like if drawn by jackson pollock). then, my account gets frozen because of some administrative cockup entirely out of my control, and i decide that it's probably just about time to get back into bed.

thursday: bard's. adrian and i discuss jesus camp. he thinks that all religions should be classified as cults and banned. you know, i've been wondering lately exactly how liberal one can get. i mean, it must be theoretically possible to reach a state where pretty much everything is up for discussion -- not, i stress, that one would necessarily endorse everything (that's just ridiculous) -- but a state in which one could take fanaticism, radical skepticism and everything in between as reasonable -- and be able to announce to everyone honestly and with candor that i don't necessarily agree with you, but i can see where you're coming from. the questions being: (1) is that state in itself reasonable? (2) is that state achievable? and (3) is it desirable? incid.: note to self -- find time to read paul feyerabend's work, in which he criticizes the notion that the scientific method is the best (and only) one for discovering and accumulating knowledge. no one really buys into it, mainly because it leads down the path of babies and bathwater, but still, it's intuitively appealing because it contains, i think a grain of truth. as i was explaining to a. on the way to DC last year, scientists have to believe in a null hypothesis, and the null hypothesis of any physical causative chain is God. which is not quite like a god-of-the-gaps argument if you think about it, because it's an a priori statement, a non-moving goalpost. and for that reason i like it, and am surprised more scientists don't like it as well.

friday: end of run; n=7. i spend the morning googling the lyrics of we didn't start the fire. all those years wondering what the hell "children of the little mind" could possibly be. idiot. this is like kristen's "totally blitzed by a fart". also: they run in chronological order! we went to a very cheap (but pretentious) place for dinner, and i had "capon" with unidentifiable stuff, and felt a little sick eating it because it looked so much an animal.

saturday: 37 days to go. DISSERTATION TIP #5: IF YOU MUST PANIC, TIME IT WELL. but, oh! it's been weeks and weeks and i'm still writing the methods section, which is the easiest part, and exams are fast upon us again, and friday night lights episodes look at me accusingly every time i turn on my computer.