We have personae. Each persona has multiple narratives. I wonder how the brain copes with all that.

Isn’t it nice that rain falls in small drops relatve to our size? What if it fell in 100 gallon packets? You’d have to have a steel umbrella and shit like that. And can you imagine what small insects must feel like when our normal sized raindrops hit them squarely?

I’ll admit it. I’m so fucking lonely it is starting to make me miserable.

What would winter be without State Street’s favorite poem–an annual event.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow,

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers crusted with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January Sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which in the sound of the land
Full of the same wind,
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Wallace Stevens

That might be my all-time favorite sentence.

I’ve been reading some of Tarski’s logic papers again.  They are remarkable for their clarity.  It is as if the clarity of his writing alone makes his results significant even though I know that is not the case.

It seems there is an emotional side to understanding results.  When someone shortens the journey along the road to learning and understanding from an expected journey of days to one of a few hours, one sees and even feels a result differently.

On this solitary afternoon, in a fit of madness or stupidity, I thought about taking one more run at mathematical logic and mathematical philosophy just to meditate on it in general one more time before I die–just to get a little bit farther down the road.

While browsing the mathematics section at Border’s the other day, I noticed they had a copy of Russell’s Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy on the shelf.  The book apparently still has some legs.

Cormac McCarthy’s old Olivetti Lettera typewriter sold for $254,500 at auction.  It looks a lot like my Olivetti Lettera, but I can’t seem to make a single good sentence with mine.  I’m going to ask for a refund.

I’m biased because of my love for Iowa Hawkeye football, but I thought the BCS Bowl pairings came out about as good as you can get under current circumstances.  I know the whole thing is not a “real” championship, but given the way money sloshes around the current Bowl setup, a “real” national championship playoff will never happen because “real” fairness requires a sixteen team tournament, which would marginalize the current bowl system, a system dependent on holiday travel and spending.

However, there is still plenty of good football to be played over the holidays because of the BCS system.  It’s just a matter of who is going to play it.

I still wonder about those two points of view in Bleak House.  Is it merely a technical solution to problems such as plot and character (or so many characters), or an expedient arrived at under time pressure to keep the narrative flowing?

And why should I care?