CAG@ICH#51
No wonder the district is so drowsy.
About once per day since we arrived, someone has asked me if i'd want to live in D.C. . . . and it's getting progressively harder to say "no". Busboys and Poets is now one of my favorite coffeehouses in the United States, and the place i'd recommend anyone spend Inauguration Day who'll be in town but disinclined to stand outside for hours on end in January. Can anyone say "vegan cheesecake"? So many places go by candlelight in this city that i can't help but wonder if there's legislation in place to cut down on nighttime emissions of visible light or consumption of electricity. Anyone in the know about this?
Tomorrow will be my big booming day at the Joint Meetings, the high point of an already spectacular week surrounded by the most massive gathering of mathematicians this season. This will become a habit.
The espresso could be fuller, though.
comfort with others =?= comfort with oneself
I know that a few people who read my posts have a working knowledge of social - if not public - nudity. It's easy to find articles and blog entries presenting the position that comfort with nudity in the home (be it with respect to children, partners, friends, or whatever) fosters or reinforces comfort in other aspects of life. I don't often see scientific, data-supported, or even thoughtful arguments to the contrary, and i can only guess that they're hard to find because the religious right hasn't felt sufficiently threatened by nudists yet, at least of the magnitude of the threats they feel from nonheterosexuals, atheists, marijuana users, and Barack Obama.
Now one of my favorite things to do, if i ever had the opportunity to do it, would be to lie on the grass outside my mom's house, or some place in Blacksburg, nude and flat, and soak up the sun for a half-hour or so between lunch and research. Try as i might, i cannot honestly understand any argument against such an activity on one's own property, be it however visible to others, that doesn't rely on sensibility and censorship issues that progressives have been challenging since there was a cohesive movement in existence to do so. So i ask: Can anyone explain this to me, or even explain it to themselves fully and honestly?