Arabella's Dilemma - Part II

The forest was also home to Jake, who was a couple of weeks older than Arabella and already had a reputation as a trickster. One day, Jake had simply disappeared from the forest. When he didn’t return that evening, or the next, or the next, the elders sent out a search party to look for the red-flecked ruffian. Finally, on the evening of the fourth day, Jake barged into the elders’ house with a laugh, telling the assembled greywhiskers how much fun it was to watch all the cats looking for him. It turned out that Jack had climbed a tree and thought it would be funny not to come down.

In addition to being a trickser, Jake had a reputation as a showman, which everycat knew came straight from his elder brother. Jake’s elder brother had a meow that carried from one end of the dell to the other, and Jake wanted his meow (which he called his “roar”) to be just as gigantic. To the annoyance of everycat who went to bed early, Jake practiced his roar late into the evening. So Jake’s roar came to be pretty fierce.

One day, Jake the trickster and the showman decided to have some fun at Arabella’s expense. He climbed a tree near the road in the middle of the forest, and waited for her to approach. Soon enough, little grey Arabella came to the side of the road and stopped to look both ways. When Jake saw her from his perch atop the tree, he gathered up all his might and roared. GROOM!!!! His roar resounded across the forest.

Arabella skittered. She heard a sudden GROOM!!! from her left , and remembered that her mom had told her not to cross the road if she heard such a thing. But all Arabella saw down the road was trees and bees and tracks in the mud. There was nothing suspicious. As she looked probingly into the distance, Arabella wondered what she should do.

Meanwhile, Jacob scampered down from his tree on Arabella’s left and scampered up a tree on Arabella’s right. This was quite fun, he thought. From a branch on Arabella’s right he puffed out his chest and let out another roar. GROOM!!! His roar resounded across the forest.

Arabella nearly jumped out of her whiskers. First left, now right – the GROOM!!! was everywhere, yet seemed to come from nowhere. Despite her mom had said, the road seemed safe. Arabella pondered her dilemma. Should she cross the road, or not?

Thoughts on Thoughts

I've been applying to law school, and thinking weird mangled thoughts lying somewhere in between law and cognitive science. Here are some oversimplified thoughts that I've found useful to think with.

Analysis is a way of thinking that takes an idea and breaks it into parts. For instance, "A car includes a chassis, an engine, a transmission, wheels, ..., (and optionally a driver, a paintjob, ...)"

Analysis:



Synthesis is a way of thinking that describes two or more ideas as members of a category. For example, "red and violent are both colors of the rainbow." In linguistics, the process of making a syntactic unit out of individual words is called Merge, and Merge is an example of synthesis. An example of a Merge is the process by which our brains create the noun phrase "red pepper" out of the adjective "red" and the noun "pepper."

Synthesis:



So far, so boring. The clincher is - my LSAT studying and my legal internship have made my thoughts more analytic. Most of the of legal thinking I've been doing has been breaking down a problem into parts. This is a fine way to solve a problem, but analysis and synthesis should be complementary. You can't have one without the other. And furthermore, though I like both ways of thinking, I prefer synthesis.

Why do I like synthesis? My most creative and insightful thoughts are synthetic. The more improbable the induction, the more diverse the components, the better the thought (the more it changes my theories about the world). Of course, my preference for synthesis extends only to useful categories. When the heading under which concepts are synthesized becomes too abstract (for example, categorizing "making nouns out of verbs" and "making verbs out of nouns" under the way-too-abstract heading of "ambiguitization"), this heading ceases to refer to definite things like "shoe" or "lizard" and instead becomes a mental chameleon that can be whatever you want it to be.

I am uncomfortable with legal thinking so far as it does not balance analysis and synthesis. That said, I have too little experience to trust my characterization of legal thinking. The analyst in me says legal thinking is not one, but many, processes.

So I will put my discomfort on hold for now. My ongoing project is figuring out how to maintain creativity and spark within legal thinking, within the legal profession, -- if that is what I want to do -- and within my life.

Thank You, Paul Bloom!

Yesterdream, I had this conversation:

Me: What should I do with my life? (approximately)

Paul Bloom: Do what you love. What do you love?

Me: Writing and music, of course!

Of course!

Arabella's Dilemma - Part I

Arabella was a tabby cat who lived in the big forest. She was little and she was grey, and she had a big streak of white on her tail. All the other kittens laughed at Arabella and said her white tail made her look silly, but Arabella didn't let the other kittens get to her. Arabella was proud of her tail and thought she would grow into it -- or so her mother told her. Arabella's mother told her many things. Her mother told her -- always clean your fur after sipping milk in the morning. And Arabella did. Her mother told her -- purr quietly when other kittens are nearby. And Arabella did. Her mother told - always look both ways before crossing the street, and never cross the street when you hear a loud GROOM!!!. And that is where Arabella got into a spot of trouble almost as big as the spot on her tail.

You see, Arabella wasn’t the only kitten in the forest...

On a bloggeroll

Explanation for craziness is, friend Josh-the-weird-one came to Moscow for LA for tourist week. With parents, on mission find Jews and interrogate them. So went to Hillel, talk to teenagers who rule world. Er, international Hillel organization. Talked smilingly in Englishy and I translate for them, get invited to next Sunday make-costume-creative-holiday. Learn new English word: flashMob. I did not think, would learn new English word in Moscow. Many interesting things happen in Moscow, like when I nearly fall in hole with barking dog. But nearly, say I. Ha ha! You laugh at my joke.

Think I, this Josh-the-weird-one now off to Turkmeniwhoknowswhereistan, return triumvirately Sat/Sun for more get-to-getherers. Nice to be Moscow go-to guy! Maybe see Romeo/Juliet, or narrate milleniums of russian history as stroll through krelilin. Evertheless, be it good, perkiness infects me.

Coolness =

Freedom of action.
Width of gesture, length of stride.
How strong is your step and the pump in your arms
You breeze through the world's at your side.

Russian sign language
10 perky Russian Hillellies, a contradiction in terms
No less that I, vegan aesthete, should fly to Motherus's uranium arms!
The confidence concoction, it's no secret, it's on auction,
Just think the cup's half full runneth over
Walk unstopped, cork unpopped, your pizzazz is the raspberry fiz on top.
Whirl out and whirl back in, metro doors swing on invisible hinges
Levers and fulcrums and invisible gears,
People change days, illuminate weeks, and haunt the years
Of my life. Yes that's right. This is life. And I'm here.

Ups and Downs

I got my LSAT score today, and it was not what I had hoped. Thankfully I was skyping my mom at the time, and we had a good laugh about our nerves, and some healthy perspective-taking afterwards.

Then Natasha came home, carrying a the cutest pair of 3-week-old furballs you've ever seen. They are two cats, a boy and a girl, uniformly grey and with pleading eyes. One is named "America," the other - anonymous, for now. (I suggested "Russia," but I don't think that will fly.)

Given the choice, I'm gonna focus on the cats. My first act of kindness - I sang for them.

So You're In a Movie Theater...

And your cell phone knows. It automatically switches to vibrate, based on google maps information for your cell phone's gps coordinates. Or you're at work - you initially tell your cell phone where "work" is -- and it does the same for a 50m radius. Just imagine what a useful feature this could be for students hurrying to and fro from classes -- they wouldn't need to keep changing the phone's volume. Of course, cell phones that broadcast their gps coordinates may put their users' privacy at risk.

Oatmeal Trials

I thought I was being crafty by simmering my oatmeal long enough for the flavors of pears, bananas, raisons, dates, and cardamon to really soak in. Actually this led to a 30-minute job of scraping the pot, in the process of which a chunk of oatmeal slid under my fingernail and refused to wash out. The chunk has now turned blackish; I hope the nail won't fall off.

All things considered, a nearly ruined pot and a painful nail are worth the knowledge not to overcook oatmeal. And maybe to add the fruit after it's done? (I think it's the sugary things like pear pieces that stuck).

Better to learn these things now, when it doesn't really matter. After all, it's only a pot.

Children and Adults

You're no longer a child when you start wondering if you are.

At first, I thought that the secret of adulthood was knowing how much violence, especially sexual violence, exists in the world. I thought that this truth was known to all adults but scrupulously hidden from children. I've changed my mind not only because children learn about violence early on -- from fairy tales, from history, and sometimes from their own experience -- but also because I think there is more to being an adult than knowing the world is a violent place. Because they have greater self-awareness, adults inherit a duty to pursue their better self. It's probably silly to suppose there is some essence of adulthood, but I think that having a clear picture of the world and pursuing one's self-development are part of being mature.

While I was in my last relationship, I thought that you could accurately think of peoples' lives as a series of relationships. I thought that knowing if someone was in a relationship, and knowing how it's going, could tell you a lot about that person. I still think this is true, and I still think that healthy relationships are important for everyone. However, I foresee a day - say, several years into a continuously happy marriage - when what matters is not so much one's relationship
(that is a bedrock, a foundation, by that time), but helping others: helping family, caring for parents, and standing by one's friends.

I'm sure these thoughts will evolve in the future.

Русские Игры (Russian Games)

1. Moscow Metro Racing

In the metro stations here, the escalators down to the platforms are notoriously long. Most Muscovites stand on the right side while descending, chatting or staring deeply into their beloveds' eye, but some frenzied folk take to the left and gallop. I am one of those. Feet flying, wind whishing, standees overtaken in a blur--there is no more invigorating way to start one's day. Let the games begin!

2. Blood Test or LSAT?

Sometimes when I am down, I consider if I would rather endure a blood test or the LSAT. Invariably the answer is "No." This cheers me up.

Roadwalks

People and cars have multiplied like viruses in Moscow, and there isn't enough room for either. So parking tends toward the inventive. Sometimes drivers stop their cars on triangular spaces of pavement that would otherwise be known as the shoulder of the road. More often, they gun their way onto the sidewalks, where hurried pedestrians strive to get out of their way on one side and gleaming glass storefronts reflect impassively on the other. Recently I was walking near President Hotel, when a previously immobile hulk of black steel about 3m in front of me snorted and roared into life, exposing itself as a big, platinum-fendered Lexus, and then blazed down the asphalt like a rocket out of a bazooka. PedExs like me scampered to the side and scraped our noses against some concrete. There went Moses, and he sure was parting the Red Sea.

Roadwalks are as inconvenient as they sound. Even so, they have not prevented me from exploring the neighborhood near near st. metro Belorusskaya, where I live.

I've found that the Soviets did childrens' playgrounds right. In the midst of rotting, peeling Soviet apartment buildings, you'll find plots of grass filled with colorful metal playstructures. There is a ship with a flag and an anchor on it; a sandbox and a swing; a set of monkeybars in the shape of a turtle. Now, if they would only apply these enlightened design principles to, say, the former KGB headquarters Lyubyanka.

P.S. If I am to write regularly, I must get into the blogging habit. And what do you call the blogging habit? BlabIt!

All Aboard

Tomorrow, I leave for Moscow, Russia, which is ten degrees colder and seven hours into the future. For updates on cognitive science and Russian law, check this spot.