the dissertation is 120 pages long, and growing fast, and time is getting away from me like so many slippery eels. i am doing an experiment on productivity in which i spend each day of the week writing in a different location to see if there are significant differences in pages written associated with where i work. my only conclusion so far is that being in the lab is especially bad, because all i end up doing is eating chocolate and playing sporcle and endlessly checking e-mail. i'm somewhat glad that i hate facebook, or that would be the real end of everything.

i've been writing in the library since 1, and now it's 3:10 and i think i'm going out of my mind. a completely random person popped up on my msn, and out of sheer boredom i started chatting with him(?*) about his recent deployment in iraq. it's really uncomfortable talking to vets -- either they don't want to give details about their tour, in which case i'm convinced they have PTSD, or we end up talking about how they had to carry their buddy's arm/leg back to base to the tune of anguished screams**. anyway, point being, i've never been big on random internet connections a la omegle/chatroulette, but clearly writing a thesis eventually makes you engage in all kinds of behaviors and experience all kinds of things, including but not limited to: hallucinations/depression/mania/anxiety/delusions of grandeur.


* we need new pronouns for the internet age. putative him. phim?
** actually almost not kidding here -- i had a patient recently who, well, never mind.

after 3 years, i'm still not quite sure of what to make of students who come literally crying to me when they get a B+

the check for my NYT puzzle came in. i realize that this is the first thing i've sold in my life, as well as the first money i've actually made in years, which is sort of at once delightful and horrifying.

important discoveries of this week:

1) planets revolve because of the conservation of angular momentum from the point of their formation. i feel like this was a piece of vital scientific knowledge that was completely skipped over in primary school/secondary school/jc/college. or i was asleep on that day. the brother and i were actually trying to work out the answer to why the moon doesn't revolve when a random girl on the street came up to us and said: "are you talking about physics?" in a slightly excited tone of voice. true story. i wouldn't suggest you use it to pick up girls though.

2) the lowest freezing point of salt/water solution is -21.1 degrees celsius.

3) the reason that d minor is "the saddest key" of all is apparently because it's in the dorian mode, which yields a subjectively darker sound. i'm quite curious as to why that should be, and i think i know some people in the department who can answer that question. d really is a sad note though. it's sort of purplish-blue.

have been reading about how determinists have put us a lot of scientists under the spell where we believe that free will cannot possibly exist because all causation is bottom-up: billiard balls that bounce around at the atomic and subatomic level and determine chemistry, biology and ultimately behavior. i kind of held that erroneous view for the longest time, and then the compatibilists came along and kind of persuaded me otherwise, but this book has been the first to convincingly argue for the existence of top-down causation -- that system-level entities can have effects on their constituent parts. if you free your mind a bit, that thesis isn't really all that huge of a revelation, yet the watchmaker's world is such an alluring metaphor that i've managed to hold on to it through about 5 years of (independent, unguided) study on the topic. i suppose if dennett had been a little bit clearer in his books, i might have shed the idea sooner, but i sometimes find it hard to follow his logic.

in other news, it snowed another 2 feet, and everything was cancelled today.

Difficulty: * (out of 5)

it ended up snowing about double of the promised 9 inches, which is to say more than i've seen in my time in philadelphia, which is to say a whole damn lot. have been cooped up in the house all day except for the hour i spent making sure the driveway and sidewalk were passable, and i'm already starting to feel a little stir crazy.

in other news, my plos one paper just came out, and you can, if you're so inclined, read it here

we're due for another 9 inches of snow here this weekend. thanks, punxsutawney phil. i miss going outside and reading a book while the cute japanese-american kids run around like in empire of the sun. except for the getting shot to death part, of course.

the comic book shop that used to sit on 41st and locust moved recently. i never used to get particularly good service from them at the best of times, so it was some reluctance that i agreed to let them mail me my books from their new location. as it turns out, my fears were not unfounded, as they have now gone 3 for 4 weeks in screwing up my order, this last week sending it to the wrong address. as i was saying to the brother, it doesn't seem like mailing someone a set of comics every week should be a terribly daunting task for a business. all i want are 1) all of the books i've ordered; 2) none of the books i haven't ordered 3) sent to me, and not my neighbor across the street. apparently, this is Too Much To Ask. fortunately, what should be opening in the location vacated by this store, but...another comic store. what are the odds. i gleefully called today to cancel my old order.