Dairy of a Madman

Another World Is Here: “The Elegant Universe is the title of a book and six hours of NOVA, the PBS science showcase. PBS has now put the full six hours of The Elegant Universe up on its website in streaming video, in both Quicktime and RealVideo formats.”

Wired Magazine: “Matt is a musical savant. The term savant dates from the late 19th century, when a small number of people in European asylums classified as feebleminded ‘idiots’ were discovered to have extraordinary, even uncanny skills. One had memorized The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire after reading it a single time. Others were able to multiply long columns of numbers instantly and factor cube roots in seconds, though they could barely speak.

When Matt was 3, he was diagnosed with a form of autism called pervasive developmental disorder. Autism and savant syndrome overlap, but they are not the same thing. Nine out of ten autistic people have no savant abilities, and many savants suffer from some form of neurological impairment other than autism. Savant syndrome itself is rare. The rarest of the rare is the prodigious savant, like Rain Man’s Raymond Babbitt, who could memorize phone books, count 246 toothpicks at a glance, and trump the house in Vegas. Darold Treffert, the leading researcher in the study of savant syndrome, estimates that Matt is one of fewer than 50 prodigious savants alive today.

But Matt is even rarer than that. While the IQs of most savants are below 70, he is highly intelligent. And while the musical prowess of savants is often confined to playing thousands of songs from memory in a stiff and mechanical way, Matt is a prolific composer and skilled improviser. With the precocious abilities of a savant and the melodic imagination of a seasoned musician, he has dual citizenship in two countries of the mind.”

I’ve tried desperately to avoid sentimental posts, but there are a few moments that feel like they need to be remembered, no matter how cryptically. And why not through music?

Catherine Wheel: For Dreaming
Here come the good times
I have some good times you know
Bring on the good times
I have some good times you know
All we knew was happiness
All we knew and all we witnessed
It’s only there for dreaming
It’s only there for dreaming
I won’t sentimentalise
The bonus loss of appetite
And skinniness that followed
The new taste of open lips
The last hope in trembling hips
And we swallowed
For dreaming for dreaming
I still can touch the ceiling with the feeling
That we swallowed
For dreaming for dreaming
I still can touch the screaming heights
I’m pleading can I follow you home
Bring on the good times
Bring on the good times once more
Bring on the good times
On the other side of your green door
It’s only there for dreaming
I knew you’d find your way home
But you know I loved you
For dreaming for dreaming
I still can touch the ceiling with the feeling
That we swallowed
For dreaming for dreaming
I still can touch the screaming heights
I’m pleading can I follow you home

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Keeping Watch for Interstellar Computer Viruses: “Add one more worry to the computerized world of the 21st century. Could a signal from the stars broadcast by an alien intelligence also carry harmful information, in the spirit of a computer virus? Could�star folk launch a ‘disinformation’ campaign — one that covers up aspects of their culture? Perhaps they might even mask the ‘real’ intent of dispatching a message to other civilizations scattered throughout the Cosmos.”

Economist.com | Memory and emotion: “The existence of repressed memories is taken as a truism by psychiatry. Unfortunately, it has never been verified by rigorous scientific experiment. And that is not a matter of mere academic interest, since memories apparently recovered by psychiatric techniques such as hypnosis%u2014particularly memories of childhood abuse%u2014have sometimes been enough to put people in prison, even when there has not been any corroborating evidence. Moreover, even in cases where an individual has undoubtedly witnessed something traumatic, the reliability of his memories can be critical to convicting the true perpetrator. Witnesses frequently disagree, and this may reflect the way memory forms. Some actual data on the relationship between unpleasant experiences and memory would therefore be welcome.”

Telegraph | News | Sons I gave birth to are ‘unrelated’ to me: “A study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Dr Margot Kruskall, of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, Massachusetts, showed that Jane is a chimera, a mixture of two individuals - non-identical twin sisters - whose cells intermingled in the womb and grew into a single body.”

Salon.com Sex | Warning signs: “Your house has been burning for months now, but you keep running up to the flames and getting burned. You can’t seem to take your eyes off the spectacle of destruction. You’re drawn to it. You’ve got to turn around. Look away from the fire. Let your eyes adjust to the darkness. Go carefully in the other direction. Keep walking until there’s no more heat on your back and you can’t hear the roar. Find someplace cool and safe where there’s first aid. And don’t look back.

It wasn’t your house anyway, it was just a place you were staying because you hadn’t thought of anything better to do. So once you’re safe and your burns have healed, look for something better to do. That’s your job now. Casual hookups and one-night stands are fine if that’s what they are. But if you’re really looking for a more stable, committed relationship, then don’t expect casual things to turn into something else. You need to get clear about your intentions with women. If you’re the type of guy who’s likely to fall hard for a woman, then make sure the woman you fall hard for isn’t going to burn you.

In the meantime, to help you more fully understand your situation, maybe it would be helpful to make the distinction between a wound and a problem. The difference between a wound and a problem is that the problem can keep wounding you. A wound just heals. As long as you stay away from her, you don’t have a problem. You just have a wound that needs healing. Now if you go out and take one more look at that fire, and get burned again, then you have to start all over with the healing process. So stay away from the fire until you’re healed.

What would it mean to be healing? It would mean that even if you do on occasion think about her, even if you feel occasional pangs of regret and longing, you can honestly say to yourself and to anybody else that you’ve made a decision to let that episode go, that you fully understand you have no role in it anymore, that it’s none of your business — none.

Here’s a suggestion for the future. Next time, take it slow. Do not go to bed with a woman right away. Give it some time. Get to know her really well. Find out where she’s at emotionally. If she’s getting over a boyfriend, back off. What you need to look for is the ultimate clean, unencumbered, uncomplicated kind of romance, full of slow trust and careful commitment. It might not sound like so much fun, but, frankly, you’ve been a little reckless with your heart. So guard it more closely. It’s your heart. Be careful with it. “