I'VE BEEN HAVING GOOD DAYS

This morning was incredibly beautiful, making my walk more pleasant than usual. The barista (babe alert) who I've been chattin' up for a few days got my phone number because we're both going to be at the Dan Deacon + Deerhunter + No Age pool party this weekend. She named me Sam Darling in her phone...gah. Massive girlcrush.

At work I actually felt like working for once, which was wonderful until Katie and I decided to ditch for sushi. Afterward, we just sort of lounged around, watching last night's Daily Show (So You Think You Can Douche = hilarious), drinking some delicious anonymous root beer that some guy in the office was passing around, and eating cake courtesy of Kirk turning nineteen.

Then my parents showed up with a bottle of cognac they'd brought for me from France. And now we're going to eat, drink, and be merry.

MM..FOOD

“Here’s an analogy,” Balzer said. “A hundred years ago, chicken for dinner meant going out and catching, killing, plucking and gutting a chicken. Do you know anybody who still does that? It would be considered crazy! Well, that’s exactly how cooking will seem to your grandchildren: something people used to do when they had no other choice. Get over it.”

...

It’s no accident that Julia Child appeared on public television — or educational television, as it used to be called. On a commercial network, a program that actually inspired viewers to get off the couch and spend an hour cooking a meal would be a commercial disaster, for it would mean they were turning off the television to do something else. The ads on the Food Network, at least in prime time, strongly suggest its viewers do no such thing: the food-related ads hardly ever hawk kitchen appliances or ingredients (unless you count A.1. steak sauce) but rather push the usual supermarket cart of edible foodlike substances, including Manwich sloppy joe in a can, Special K protein shakes and Ore-Ida frozen French fries, along with fast-casual eateries like Olive Garden and Red Lobster.

...

The Food Network has helped to transform cooking from something you do into something you watch — into yet another confection of spectacle and celebrity that keeps us pinned to the couch. The formula is as circular and self-reinforcing as a TV dinner: a simulacrum of home cooking that is sold on TV and designed to be eaten in front of the TV. True, in the case of the Swanson rendition, at least you get something that will fill you up; by comparison, the Food Network leaves you hungry, a condition its advertisers must love. But in neither case is there much risk that you will get off the couch and actually cook a meal. Both kinds of TV dinner plant us exactly where television always wants us: in front of the set, watching.

--Michael Pollan, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch

OBAMA HAS NOMINATED DR. COLLINS TO BE THE DIRECTOR OF THE NIH

Most scientists who study the human mind are convinced that minds are the products of brains, and brains are the products of evolution. Dr. Collins takes a different approach: he insists that at some moment in the development of our species God inserted crucial components — including an immortal soul, free will, the moral law, spiritual hunger, genuine altruism, etc.

As someone who believes that our understanding of human nature can be derived from neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science and behavioral economics, among others, I am troubled by Dr. Collins’s line of thinking. I also believe it would seriously undercut fields like neuroscience and our growing understanding of the human mind....Dr. Collins has written that “science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence”...

--Sam Harris, Science is in the Details

We [atheists] should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.

--Sam Harris, The Problem With Atheism

EGO MANIAC KID

...I cannot think of a happier time in my life than when my family lived in apartment 1626, the one with the shaggy forest green carpet and the playground behind the building. Yes, we were poor, but so was the Latvian family next door, the Korean family downstairs, and the Iranian and Indonesian families in the next building whose daughters roller-skated with my sister. There was never a desire for things when I was that age. Who needed things when your dad would take breaks from writing his dissertation to play Digger tournaments on the ancient IBM, or your mom would let you insert the quarters at the laundromat down the street?

I am Sri Lankan, albeit a Sri Lankan born in East Lansing, Michigan. My island is something I crave daily, so when I have the chance to visit, I gorge myself on all that is uniquely Sri Lankan: three-wheelers maneuvering around buses and cows, card games until dawn with my cousins, the smell. Words do not do the aroma of Sri Lanka justice; it is a mixture of jasmine, overripe mangoes, curry powder, the ocean, diesel fumes, and a few unknown elements. Sometimes during the summer when the evenings are still humid, I can smell Sri Lanka, so I stay in one spot and inhale deeply and it smells like love.

And I love! I love the anticipation of snow days. I love the sky in Montana, the color orange, and the feeling of completion that comes with finding the precise word to describe an emotion. I love oddly shaped animals, like giraffes and jellyfish. I love when people tell me I look like my mom, the sound of a cello, and the sighs my cat emits when he is sleeping in the sunlight. I love magic tricks even more after the trick is revealed...

Searching for another file led me to the essay I wrote for my application to the University of Chicago four years ago. I chose to respond to the prompt inspired by Langston Hughes, probably because it was the most self-involved of them all. In retrospect, I have no clue how this got me in. The rest of the essay is similarly irritating and poorly-written.

The authors theorized that loneliness motivates individuals to seek out relationships, even if those relationships are not real. In a series of experiments, the authors demonstrated that participants were more likely to report watching a favorite TV show when they were feeling lonely and reported being less likely to feel lonely while watching. This preliminary evidence suggests that people spontaneously seek out social surrogates when real interactions are unavailable.

--Fionnuala Butler and Cynthia Pickett, Imaginary Friends, [via sexy sexy Jonah]

For the first month that I was here, the TV was on a lot. It was a little unusual for me, as I never really got used to watching television while growing up and have never lived in a house with cable. However, I'm happy to report that I'm back to my regular schedule of watching Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert online and haven't turned the TV on in quite some time.

We've entered into this very difficult space where we have learned enough to know that we know much less than we thought.

--Radiolab, After Life

IN MY SLEEP I'M NOT YOUR LOVER ANYMOOOOORE

Tiny Eric Earley and I will have a tiny wedding after which we'll move into a tiny farmhouse where I'll tend to our tiny garden and make tiny meals. Some nights we'll sit on our tiny porch with our tiny cats and he'll play tiny instruments until our tiny babies smile tiny smiles.

Yesterday Colin and I walked all over Philadelphia (eight miles in total!) and it was nice to show off what little I know about a pretty neat city. Mostly, though, it was wonderful to spend a couple days with Colin, talking and talking and talking.

Today we took the kids to NYC for the Museum of Natural History and it was sooooo coooooool. Everyone wished we'd had more time there but I think the kids still got a lot out of it (I overheard Sambriya whispering to her friends, "did you know we used to be monkeys?! Isn't that weird??" and when they were quizzed about climate change on the bus ride home it seemed they'd retained a surprising amount of information). Jared, one of the kids they've been having "attitude" problems with, is for some inexplicable reason a big fan of me so we spent most of the day walking through the exhibits together. Witnessing how the camp is run has been in turns frustrating and rewarding; there are some moments where it seems like the kids really get it, and others where it just seems like we're doing everything wrong.

Since we got back from NYC a little late, I decided to walk from the train station to my aunt and uncle's. Over five miles of walking today means I've had lots of time to think about where I am in my life and where I'd like to be in the near future. I am very aware of the things in my life that make me happy and the things that don't, and for once I seem to be able to prioritize those things accordingly.