So, apparently they put a rat brain in a robot body. This is certain to reignite the flames of the classical philosophical debate, "Would you put your brain in a robot body?"

So, still trudging along. Things are going better, but still not great. I'm learning a lot, to be sure.

My horoscope, from The Onion:

"The important thing is that you tried. Not that you failed. Which you did. Though that's not important. No, the fact that you failed is not important at all."

Obviously written by a seer with an unparalleled ability to part the veil between worlds and read the words written there on the fundamental Cloth of Creation. Or something, I don't know.

I've got big ideas. But Thom Yorke says not to get such things. He's they're not going to happen. He says I've gone off the rails.

I'm tired of this depressing talk. What is needed is resignation and the concomitant freedom from care. The Japanese kakugo, the Buddhist impartiality, the Sisyphus of Camus.

See? I feel better already.

Alternatively, maybe I should have held to the Taoist ideal, and not gotten involved, not tried to save the world by trying to bend Nature to my will.

the profit in not doing
not many people understand it

Including me, apparently.

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it." �H.L. Mencken

Anyway, it's too early to judge. For now, onward.

The Hagakure, a manual for retainers of samurai lords in feudal Japan, seems to have become my grad school manual.

"There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking. This understanding extends to everything."

"Among the maxims on Lord Naoshige's wall there was this one: 'Matters of great concern should be treated lightly.' Master Ittei commented, 'Matters of small concern should be treated seriously.'"

Murphy's Law applies to experimental science more than anything else I've ever been involved in.

Reality is complicated.

I feel like I had more to say.

"It is written that the priest Shungaku said, 'In just refusing to retreat from something one gains the strength of two men.' This is interesting. Something that is not done at that time and at that place will remain unfinished for a lifetime."

we separate like ripples on a blank shore,

greyarea

Diaryland