In 1996 or thereabouts, for reasons I do not remember, I did some browsing in the Harvard library among books by & about Henri Poincaré, an important French mathematician of the late 19th & early 20th centuries.  He participated in the ferment that led to the theory of relativity, and there is a fringe literature that maintains that Einstein (or ( Read more... )

Of the two characters in literature I most identify with, one is a drunk and the other is a robot.  I am neither, but I often wonder why not.

1.  The drunk

The drunk is James Agee's uncle Frank in A Death in the Family.  (He is called "Ralph" in the abridged edition published in 1957 by David McDowell, but is revealed as Frank in the full edition ( Read more... )

My daily journal form contains such a heading.  Today it said "See Trips".

Trips (purchases):  On the Orange Line, a woman with a child got on, and set the child on the seat next to mine on the right.  The man to the right of the child stood up to let her sit down.  The seat to my left was vacant; I could easily have moved over, but it didn't occur ( Read more... )

I am tired of being reminded, again and again, of things I am ashamed of.  I never live anything down -- showing off, giving offense, being involved in conflict, whether justified or not  -- and the memories of such things have priority access to my association paths, no doubt rendering my more stupid than I would otherwise be.  On being reminded ( Read more... )

I was going to pick something I am ashamed of, among the hundreds of such things that come to mind.  But that's not the same as regret.  For one thing, shame is only an emotion; it doesn't prove you were wrong, any more than being proud proves you were right.  In order to regret something, I would have to imagine that it could have been otherwise, ( Read more... )