This morning I thought I saw Donald Sutherland on Michigan Avenue. Though misplaced and in error, the resulting excitement has left a residual smile on my face. Turned out to be a homeless man, to whom I gave a quarter.


Unrelated: There has been some speculative debate that the Large Hadron Collider (I mistyped one of those words on the first try, btw) will be plugged in after completion and immediately create a black hole that swallows the earth. In the name of science, build the damn thing, already. Any negative result—such as a black hole—is probably the coolest way to die ever, and I’d drag all 6.8 billion of you with me. Paradoxically (fun! cosmo-speak!), the prestige of dying as a result of being squished to singularity is pretty much lost when 6.8 billion go the same way.

Clarification: Chances it creates a black hole are apparently minimal and even if so, it would probably evaporate immediately. Yeah scientists, I’m sure you’ll be screaming that when you hit the event horizon.

Homework: Use “In the name of science!” somewhere in conversation today. Let me know how it goes.

Bosses, Art, and Neuroscience

Today will be a good day. First, my task list has grown greatly at work. Typically this is viewed as a negative and only brings on stress. However, I'm actually looking forward to banging through a number of these projects. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that I receive regular positive reinforcement and appreciation for my good work from superiors. It's amazing how this can affect motivation levels, as I nearly had forgotten what it feels like after so many months of the exact opposite.

Another highlight of this young day is the arrival of a book I ordered: Johan Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Despite staying busy with Newsweek and Eggers' The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007, this book looks particularly interesting (I also follow his blogging here). It argues that, "artists...discovered an essential truth about the mind that science is only now rediscovering." Pretty exciting, huh?

My favorite quote thus far...and just from the preface...is, "Take the the human mind. Scientists describe our brain in terms of its physical details; they say we are nothing but a loom of electrical cells and synaptic spaces. What science forgets is that this isn't how we experience the world (We feel like the ghost, not like the machine.) It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know."

Clearly, I'm in for an awesome ride. Perhaps caused by long, isolated periods on a rural farm, I've always felt like the most amateur of artist and scientist. What I feel right now is a desire to have longer commutes to spend with Lehrer.

Once again, art and information collide.