Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I crashed from 18:30 to 19:30, woke up, watched CSI: USN -- I mean NCIS -- then crashed again around 21:30 and after a few almost-awake intervals at the ends of dreams, was woken by pain around 02:45. And I've got things I really need to do in both the morning and the evening today (ignoring the places I really, really should have gotten to yesterday and Monday if I'd felt alert enough (*sigh*)). Maybe I'll manage a nap in the afternoon in between, but how often does my body cooperate that well?

Due to paperwork glitches, my renewal application for the state's health-care-for-poor-people got delayed (this morning's outing has to do with straightening that out). I'd foreseen one of the delays but not another, so I've been taking my meds less often than I should for the past few weeks to try to stretch my supply until I'm covered again, but I was really counting on not having to make that work past this week. (Taking only half as much as I should of the migraine-preventative is probably related to the annoyingly high percentage of evenings I haven't felt well enough to get where I needed to go lately. I'm not looking forward to running out entirely.) So I'm really hoping this next step in sorting things out doesn't take very long.

The comments to yesterday's entries have been interesting; the discussion on one has also been uncomfortably challenging -- some concepts I though I 'got', it looks like I don't understand as thoroughly as I'd thought. (And there's also an aspect of trying to tease apart layers of underlying concept, word overloading and implications, and social theory built on the concept -- to the extent that these can be distinguished -- to try to sort out which layers my gaps and misunderstandings are in. It'll be a lot clearer where I should say, "I disagree and here's why," and where I should say, "Wow, I should work on that blind spot I had," or "Yes but here's a more tactically-useful way of saying that," when I've got more confidence that I'm not overlooking a third of a word's meaning or implications conventionally abbreviated or left not explicitly mentioned because they're considered obvious by folks who are ahead of me in the subject.) So I've got a chunk o' reading and thinking (and probably more challenging conversations) ahead of me there.

At the same time, the phrase "home-built magnetic resonance imaging system", from the discussion on the other entry, was a startling combination of words that has inspired tool-lust. (Not that I'd be able to do much more than play with such a tool with my current level of education in biology, physiology, and (most important for my current fascination) neurology, but the one cool thing about ignorance compared to so many other obstacles is that it's so straightforwardly curable. Well except for the bit about living in an age when there's so much known that even if I had all the spoons of a healthy person and no mundane distractions I couldn't learn all of the interesting stuff in the fields I'm interested in in a human lifespan. And the bit where some of the stuff I want to become less ignorant about is stuff that nobody else knows yet either, so curing that ignorance is more complicated than looking things up online or in libraries and working though the problem sets in each chapter, and applying the scientific method in person is required. (And at this point I'm reminded of the story of George Washington Carver's conversation with God about knowledge.[*]) But in general, curing ignorance (at least in oneself and to, say, an undergraduate level of de-ignorance) is a straightforward process. Not always quick or easy, but straightforward. And in the meantime, even just playing with an MRI could be fun.)

Finally, in response to having read the observation that "There's no way to tell the difference between an amusing joke and a severe level of derangement when you've delved into the world of typesetting people.", certain portions of my subconscious have taken up the task of figuring out all the ways of typesetting a person and occasionally poking the answers up to where they impinge on conscious thought.

[*] I'd guess that most of my readers are familiar with the story, but just in case: "'I said to God, Mr. Creator, I would like to know all about the creation of the world.' And God answered, 'Little man, your mind is too small to take it in. Ask something more your size. 'Then I said 'Mr. Creator, I would like to know all about the peanut.'"