(These are old posts. I write now at Substack)
My mortality hit me when I was on the train. I was calculating a 7 month old dogs age when I remembered the adage to multiply the dogs age by 7 to get their human age. Wondering about why the human age dog age calculus arose I thought to the conversion of how much of a dogs life is lived in 8 months. Similarly, I thought how much of my life I have lived and how much more I had to live. Was it 10, 20 or 30 years. I thought to what I would do with all that time and whether I would do everything I wanted in that time.
In reading Dr. Victor E. Frankl’s opus, I realized something he said struck me as an experience I have. It is that of a future unknown. Not knowing what the future holds, I am unable to take steps in the right direction and am often indecisive. Later, he speaks of how somebody known to him at the concentration camp he was held in, died of delirium when the date the gentleman thought he would be freed, passed by them without the aforepromised freedom. The gentleman showed symptums of typhus, which was reported as the cause of death. Dr. Frankl speaks of a link between one’s depression and their immune ability. This awoke me from my indecisiveness. I realized that this problem was a space for a biological explanation- was there a hidden confounder of heart function? That someone who is not depressed, displays healthier habits, leading to healthier heart function? I am often interested in spurious correlates, see my paper here and I think I would be interested in this problem. He says “It is not what we expect out of life, but what life expects out of us”
Github being savage: 1
Happy birthday, Ivona Chang: Everyone knew that Ivona Chang was a psychopath. She had the looks, the attitude and the means to be one. So when it finally happened, nobody knew whether we were apprehending the real Ivona Chang or the Ivona Chang of our worst nightmares. It was unfortunate that her victims were her (now ex) boyfriend and his group of friends. It was unfortunate that the girl they were talking about was no one in particular that Ivona should have been jealous of. It was unfortunate that she only threw her hand mirror at the jar above the boy’s head and the shattering glass caused more harm than it should. It was unfortunate she was placed in the asylum room right opposite mine. Her doctor [name redacted, let’s call him Steve] told me how scared he was to give her her morning dose of calm. I knew she’d done it, he said. I was her pediatrician, and her calm was infectious, he added. Almost want to make me work for her, he said, more as a complaint than anything else. It was then that when she discovered the asylum doors could easily be opened and walked out, and caught me staring at her leaving for a second longer than I should have, I knew she was coming back. And she did, with baloons, a helium cylinder and a cake. It was then that I made the mistake of leaving my own cell, and trying to prevent the incident from unfolding. I reached out to her face to apprehend her, and felt another arm reaching for her neck, and the last thing I remember was that I felt her teeth sinking into my palm, like the sharp mouth of an octopus.
“Napoleon is in equilibrium”- A quote from Rob Phillips’ website, to bring attention to the gap between theory and practice- the idea being (in my interpretation) that only something arcane is in the ideal state and all real things are in a deep flux. Being in quantitative biology, I feel this gap. While the mathematics is cool, I struggle to understand applications driven by optimal transport and probabilisitic inference, because much simpler tools can get lower hanging fruit. I understand the aversion to l.h.f. The parallel is somebody who does art for art’s sake. It there really art for art’s sake, or similar to science, is there math for math’s sake? I think all theory serves a purpose.
There lived a man in a village, supported by a housekeeper. He lived by the beach. He found it useful to his process to go and float in the calm water. He made his living as a writer. One day, he was sick of the whole thing, so he left. He took his car as far as it would take him, into a forest. He found a tiger there in the forest, and offered her a part of his soul. She joined him in his car, and they went. He soon ran out of fuel, and ran out of money buying food, fuel and paying for places to stay. At that point, he came upon a gas station and explained his predicament to the attendant. The attendant fetched his boss, they talked about it before agreeing to take the man back home for a fee, which he said he would acquire from his housekeeper. They said they won’t take the tiger, so he left her behind, and took the part of his soul he gave her earlier. Soon, he realized he was sick of writing and realized he couldn’t do much else. He only had his soul to give, and chose to sell that for a substantial sum of money. He lived a comfortable life, but found he was irritated by the smallest things, couldn’t appreciate his friends, and felt a hatred for all things suffering. He wanted his soul back, and was curious about how to grow one. He spent time caring for the little things, which made him feel better- appreciated bad looking flowers that smelt good, started to cook for himself and started to fish in the water. He sold his fish for soul and shared his food with his housekeeper. Soon, he felt his soul but did not feel like selling it. He miraculously found that he had money to survive, and stopped feeling the need to write.
There was a village where there lived two girls. Both young, around 12. One rich, the other poor. Both of them participated in the local equestrian competition held in their village. It was always one of these two girls that won. When the girl from the wealthy family did not win, she would scream and pull her hair out. Her father, would console her. He would ask her why she was upset, and why she wanted to win so badly. The little girl answered that she was sick of the narrative ascribed to little girls in their village and wanted to set her own. The girl from the poor family did not have a horse to train, and so trained on a donkey. The day after the race, the wealthy girls father went to the poor girls house, congratulated her and asked her what made her win. The poor girl answered, she was sick of the narrative ascribed to poor girls in the village and wanted to set her own. Torn between his admiration for the poor girl and his admiration for his daughter, he wondered whether he should gift a horse to the poor girl, to help her train. He reasoned that he should, because it would create a fair playing field and encourage his daughter to compete. At the same time, he reasoned that he shouldn’t because the poor girls allure remained in her training on a donkey and would be lost if he gave her a horse. He left, thinking that it was more important that she remained an inspiration to the other village folk, than she become a champion equestrian- believing that her aura was tied to her training on her donkey. He did not think it reasonable to give every aspiring equestrian a horse, and instead left with a heavy, stoic heart.
A man continues to hear a clicking noise even though he wears earplugs. He realizes the noise is actually a familiar one, driven by an association with a lightbulb. Whenever he thinks of a combination of thoughts, he hears the click, but he tries to find the exact combination of thoughts that leads to the association with the clicking sound. He finds it in the memory of him trying to creep up on an insect, and the clicking noise the insect made when it jumped onto his body in self-defence. The boy’s combination of fear and awe at the tiny insect embedded its click deep within him, and is revealed to him later in life. He tries next, to characterize other circumstances that evoke similar clicking noises… (to be contd.)
Short story: There was once a doctor who lived in a city. He was fairly well off, lived in a duplex with his wife and sixteen year old boy. The boy loved video games, his wife loved to host. His patients were often people without life threatening illnesses, often came to have something checked, fixed or cleaned. He was feeling a loss of meaning in his work. He realized it when his dog jumped out of his wifes purse when she was standing on the handrail of their staircase, and she grabbed the leash instead of letting the dog fall down. Watching the dog hang by the leash, sent a shiver in him that woke him out of his stupor. He decided he needed a break, and went to a deserted building to get a hold of himself. He saw a girl in pink playing in the park, skipping through a hopscotch. He found some respite in her joy, and left the building, vowing never to be that dramatic again. He went to his boss and told him how he felt. His boss forced him on paid leave. He didn’t want to tell his wife he’d been put on leave, lest she worry. He went on a long drive, but couldn’t find his old self. He told his wife that night, and they planned a vacation. The trip came and went, but he was still on edge, unable to come out of his panic. He later met his friends, a chef, a tennis player and an actor- all moderately successful people with a common interest in being affectionate. He enjoyed listening to the talkative chef, and the reticence of the tennis player. He told them of his worry, and they looked at one another for the right words. Last, the tennis player, broke the silence with how he has accomplished everything in his life and needs to find something to work towards. He realized that was his hurdle, that he had nothing to work towards. The next day, the protagonist walks into his workplace, with a new face.