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A winter morning
Dec. 4th, 2005 08:28 amI know it isn't officially winter yet, but you wouldn't know it from looking outside. It started snowing yesterday afternoon, ending with a few flurries this morning. Only a few inches--not enough to justify the thrower, just a shovel and a broom, but still. My Sunday morning is spoken for.
At least there's some blue sky visible. And the pines and spruce look nice with white stuff weighting the branches.
I've been playing with the iPod. We're up to 635 songs and one music video for 1.8 days of playing time. I am looking forward to eventually storing all my CDs in the basement, shifting around some audio gear between my office and my bedroom, and in general cleaning up. I miss some of the liner notes and lyrics I received with some CDs, but overall they're hard to store and they're dust magnets. Soon I'll have everything of interest on the iPod and iMac, then I'll move on from there.
On the J5 front, worked out a few more scenes. Spent part of yesterday reading The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, Ph.D., and knew the warm feeling that comes when something you worked out that made sense in the context of your books turns out to be a trained someone's hypothesis as well. I always considered that my idomeni lacked the capacity for emotional connection that humans possess, and that lack of interconnectedness would have played hell with their ability to form and maintain workable societies unless they found something to take its place. I posited that their rigid hierarchical society developed in order to provide the external pressures necessary to keep them in check. Well, Stout spends some time discussing the role that culture may play in the development of sociopaths, and noted that sociopathy appears to be rare in certain East Asian societies, namely Japan and China. She wondered whether those societies, which emphasize interpersonal obligation over individualism, might provide an external framework that allows a person who lacks the ability to make personal connections to function within the boundaries of that society.
I know one book does not a body of research make, and Psych is sich a hairy field overall. But still and all, I got a nice buzz from reading that section.
I also had some nice revelations about Jani and Lucien drop in my lap. Really good stuff that I needed to have worked out.
And on that note, time to finish my coffee and suit up for the Shovel Wars...
At least there's some blue sky visible. And the pines and spruce look nice with white stuff weighting the branches.
I've been playing with the iPod. We're up to 635 songs and one music video for 1.8 days of playing time. I am looking forward to eventually storing all my CDs in the basement, shifting around some audio gear between my office and my bedroom, and in general cleaning up. I miss some of the liner notes and lyrics I received with some CDs, but overall they're hard to store and they're dust magnets. Soon I'll have everything of interest on the iPod and iMac, then I'll move on from there.
On the J5 front, worked out a few more scenes. Spent part of yesterday reading The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, Ph.D., and knew the warm feeling that comes when something you worked out that made sense in the context of your books turns out to be a trained someone's hypothesis as well. I always considered that my idomeni lacked the capacity for emotional connection that humans possess, and that lack of interconnectedness would have played hell with their ability to form and maintain workable societies unless they found something to take its place. I posited that their rigid hierarchical society developed in order to provide the external pressures necessary to keep them in check. Well, Stout spends some time discussing the role that culture may play in the development of sociopaths, and noted that sociopathy appears to be rare in certain East Asian societies, namely Japan and China. She wondered whether those societies, which emphasize interpersonal obligation over individualism, might provide an external framework that allows a person who lacks the ability to make personal connections to function within the boundaries of that society.
I know one book does not a body of research make, and Psych is sich a hairy field overall. But still and all, I got a nice buzz from reading that section.
I also had some nice revelations about Jani and Lucien drop in my lap. Really good stuff that I needed to have worked out.
And on that note, time to finish my coffee and suit up for the Shovel Wars...
