My knee is noticeably better today than yesterday. The swelling went down, and while I still can't walk comfortably on it, it's a good deal more comfortable than yesterday, and my range of motion is also improved. I am very relieved by this.

I've spent my convalescence thus far playing World of Warcraft, reading Count Zero by William Gibson, finding things to cook next week (Tunisian pepper stew!), and watching a few movies. American History X is the best movie I've seen in a long, long time, and I highly recommend it to you guys.

Now that I can't walk, I think about how good I had it just before I hurt my knee, when I was running and swimming pretty regularly. I'm not sure how quickly I'll be able to get back to that, honestly... I'll have to ask the physical therapist and see how I feel. It reminds me, though, of something I've been thinking about a lot, the tendency to not enjoy how great the here and now is, but rather idealize old times and look forward to things on the horizon. I've been thinking about it already because the first year of grad school isn't a lot of fun in some ways. When I went back to visit LBL and people asked how I was doing, when I said the work was hard they all did the same sort of knowing laugh. And although I always knew that this part of graduate school would be hard, and that wasn't why I came, it still depressed me some to be working my ass off on courses I had to do. But at the same time, this is it! This is what I really wanted for a long time! How can I not be enjoying every second of it? It's so important to enjoy the things we have, because if we don't, why bother having them? The aspect of my life which is by far the easiest to enjoy, though, is Ben. It's so fun to live with someone who's a good friend and fun to be around (as I already knew!) and it's been fantastic not having distance any more. Plus the whole 'will we ever be together' thing had put so much strain on our relationship... it feels very easy to just enjoy ourselves now. I need to figure out a way to put that nowness into the other parts of my life as well.

There's an article in the NYTimes right now about earth scientists (paleontologists, geologists, etc.) who have religious beliefs contrary to their scientific research. There's an example in Los Alamos which everyone knows, about this guy who is an expert on earth mantle dynamics and is a young earth believer, i.e. that the earth/universe was created no more than 10,000 years ago. It seems that scientists don't like creationists like this, who have religious views directly opposite the views espoused by their research, to come to their institutions, but when the creationists have adequate credentials, the institution feels it would be discrimination to refuse. This is especially troubling if the person may be getting credentials in order to later say that they believe creationism, and look, they have a Ph.D. in earth science. I have to say, I agree with the fact that if someone has adequate background, you can't refuse them study or a job based on religious beliefs. (A slightly different question arises if they have published views which aren't supportable from evidence, in scientific sources of any kind.) But you know, the fact that creationists do this just... it just disgusts me. It's so dishonest, and so antithetical to the foundation of science being the pursuit of truth. There may be nothing at all wrong with the science that a person like that does, but they are seriously fucked up in the head if they can follow scientific method and still believe based on faith that what they spend their time working on is wrong. Why would you even do it in the first place?

I don't have a problem with religious people, I have a little bit of a problem with religious people who insist on believing something that science has proven wrong, and I have a big problem with someone who would abuse the honesty and tolerance of the scientific community like that.

Anyways, if you want to read the whole article, I guess I will reproduce it ( here. )

On the flight back to Philadelphia, I read the Feynman compilation The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, which was quite enjoyable. There were two quotes I really liked and wanted to share; the bolded part is something I agree with deeply.

"The guys at the graduate college were used to me looking like an idiot. On another occasion, for example, a guy came into my room--I had forgotten to lock the door during the 'experiment'--and found me in a chair chairs my heavy sheepskin coat, leaning out of the wide-open window in the dead of winter, holding a pot in one hand and stirring with the other. 'Don't bother me! Don't bother me!' I said. I was stirring Jell-O and watching it closely: I had gotten curious as to whether Jell-O would coagulate in the cold if you kept it moving all the time."

"Omni: As we came back to the office, you stopped to discuss a lecture on color vision you'll be giving. That's pretty far from fundamental physics, isn't it? Wouldn't a physiologist say you were 'poaching'?

Feynman: Physiology? It has to be physiology? Look, give me a little time and I'll give a lecture on anything in physiology. I'd be delighted to study it and find out all about it, because I can guarantee you it would be very interesting. I don't know anything, but I do know that everything is interesting if you go into it deeply enough."

There's something to be said for all those saying about how you don't feel the highs as much without the lows, how joy is twice is sweets when you've known sorrow, etc. etc.

For one thing, it really applies to the student lifestyle. There's the rush you get when you get a good grade on a test you aced or an essay you slaved over or a lab you spent days puzzling out, the feeling of accomplishment when you get through a hard semester, and the sensation I love of continual learning, putting piece after piece together and learning, more quickly than you'd think possible. And that builds on the late-night sessions, the slaving over everything, the rushing, the pressure, the lack of sleep, that horrible sinking feeling when you've had a hard time in an exam, or you're turning in a project that you know isn't your best work. It makes the feats you manage seem more real, more wrung out of your flesh and bone and abused grey matter.

The same thing is true of long-distance relationships, I think. There's a lot more hardship, a lot more loneliness, and a lot more arguments than you'd get having the same relationship the normal way. But the time together feels so sweet, and you get this sense of pride if you can keep it together, and you can get such high thrills seeing someone you care so much about when you've been missing them so deeply.

It's always like that when I fly into LAX, which will always be the most beautiful airport in the world in my eyes. When I flew down last Thursday, I hadn't been since June (because of Ben living in the Bay Area for the summer, my conference, us meeting in Mammoth for Thanksgiving), so it was a little like seeing an old friend. I usually fly in at night, and it was familiar and wonderful to see the luminous city spread out before me, so large and beautiful, lines of the sea and mountains and highways visible. My excitement always rises as we go down to land, flying next to the glittering black high-rises near the airport, setting down and thinking how Ben's feet are on the same ground less than a mile from where I am. And coming out of the terminal and seeing him... it's so intense, the joy you feel.

And then flying out, midday Tuesday, in the flat noon light with a faint haze spreading over the city, feeling the familiar loneliness come seeping back in, coalescing in my limbs and sinking to the bottom of my stomach. This is half of why my hopes are so high for graduate school.

I went to the University Symphony concert with Daria Friday night, and that was really cool. They played "Isle of the Dead", by Rachmaninoff, which I really enjoyed; "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" by John Adams, the guy who composed Doctor Atomic, which was a really cool piece; Sibelius' last symphony, No. 7, which was very beautiful and interesting; and then a set of three orchestral pieces by Alban Berg. Now there's some "modern" classical music that I'm up for, things like Mahler or Prokofiev, or minimalists like Philip Glass. I really enjoy some modern music. But Berg was apparently a student of Schoenberg, and wrote this piece (Three Orchestra Pieces, op. 6) to convince his teacher that he had mastered "dense textures awash with thematic material".

And it wasn't completely Schoenberg-y; there were some parts that were very beautiful. I attribute this to the composer's supposed reverence for Mahler. But there's something about Schoenberg and other atonalists that I completely don't get. I've tried listening to them without preconceptions, without looking for specific melodic arcs or complexity in the manner I'm used to, but all I hear is noise which is occasionally broken by some chord that seems to have fallen by chance out of complete chaos. It actually reminds me of reading the output of those thousand monkeys trying to write literature ("It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times?!").

But I know there are people, sane people, who love atonal music. Do those of you that are familiar with modernist classical music like atonalism, and if so please tell me your secret, or do you feel some other way about it?