Private obsessions

I haven't posted much lately. The reason why is that my recent obsessions haven't been fit for public posting. Some ideas are private. I'll try to explain why.

I have a very active inner process. At any given time, a large amount of my cognitive resources are devoted to figuring out what I'm feeling and what that feeling means. The subjective experience of what goes on inside is difficult to describe. I'm aware of internal impressions and artifacts which I label "energy", "chakras", "meridians", "acu-points" and other names which come from new-age and eastern mysticism.

However, I do not talk about these things. For one, I don't adequately have the words to describe them. All of these words that I apply are in some sense bullshit. Chakras are supposed to be "whirling vortices of energy", Kundalini is supposed to be "latent energy which sits at the bottom of the spine", and Meridians are supposed to be "channels through which energy flows". However, these things absolutely do not correspond to physical structures in the body, and no imaging techniques can capture them. Even when I use words like "meridian" with myself, I put them in scare quotes.

For two, due to the subjective nature of the experiences I have, they are uninteresting at best to other people, and at the worst they are crack-pottery. I've heard other people ramble on about how their energy feels and what color their heart chakra is and it disgusts me. Even if another person had similar somatic experiences as I have, I feel like the true domain of knowledge of the experience is personal and is not to be shared.

For three, I cannot give any evidence of my experience. I cannot show another person what it is like to be me, and thus even if I could describe what I feel, it would be meaningless. Of course, it might have meaning if they felt the same things I did, but in that case there would be no need to speak about it since the same process would exist within each of us.

So, how much can I share about the things I've been obsessing over lately? Even if I wanted to, the answer would be "not much". They are all internal and they are all meaningless without adequate words and access to the first-hand experiences. I wish there were some way to share these experiences with others; I feel that I might be truly understood that way. Maybe someday technology will exist to allow such a link. But for now, like all mortal beings, I remain stranded on the island that is my body.

This is how you know it's an obsession

You know it's an obsession when you're unable to take time away from it to write about your obsessions in your blog which is solely designed to write about your obsessions. Thus was my last, which is thankfully no more. It's a stupid iPhone game called Galaxy On Fire 2. In the last couple of weeks I've spent 61 hours playing it. I know this because the stupid game keeps track. Anyway, I'm done.

My new thing is learning Spanish. I recommend getting the BrainScape app for learning anything. It's a flashcard app with a small twist, but the system is remarkably better than normal flashcards. When you answer a question, you rate your knowledge of the answer subjectively from 1 to 5. The lower your rate it, the shorter the time period before it comes up again. It's super effective.

Update on the xwords - my first puzzle will be published in the NYT on Friday 3/23. There may be a shortage of papers in San Francisco that day because I will be buying all of them.

Trainyard is so good

I close my eyes and see trains.

iPhone puzzle games

There are a bunch of great puzzle games on the iPhone. However, none compare to Trainyard. This is by far the best puzzle game I've played since SpaceChem.

I think I have a problem

Whitney Houston died, and my first thought was this:



On the plus side, I think I'm reaching the Bruce Lee stage of crossword construction. On the minus side, I'm losing my humanity.

Errata

How is it that I can't play NAZI in Words With Friends? Damned socialists.

Also, hummus is excellent on fish tacos.

Crossword for class

I wrote a crossword puzzle for my class. Long story. Here's the result. Enjoy!

Here's a printable file

Here's one you can solve on a computer

If you want to solve it on a computer, you can download the free software here.