blood flow to the brain (was)

Laura Creighton lac at strakt.com
Sat Feb 1 01:06:15 EST 2003


> Laura Creighton wrote:
> >
> > Alas.  I hope the Buddhists and Hindus are correct.  One lifetime
> > isn't enough.
> 
> I think one of the main challenges of life - particularly poignant to a
> coder - is not to get bogged down in intractable complexity.  Really, you
> could clean your house every day.  You could plan where every atom of dust
> is supposed to go.

And my brain just went 'where every atom of dust goes'.  *ping* cool 
problem in fluid dynamics (one of my chief joys in life).  Next time
I clean house, which I don't find particularily pleasant, because it is
tedious, I am going to think about the airflow I am generating and its
effect on dust-mote propegation.  Thank you.  You have just made my life
more pleasant.

> But that merely creates a lot of labor for you.

We are so different as people.  I don't find 'avoiding labour' a
reasonable end in itself.  I cannot tell the difference between that
and sheer laziness.  'Labour saving' strikes me as all well and good
when it frees up your labour, and most especially your time to do
something that you would rather be doing, but not because labour
is something inherantly evil that needs avoiding.

> Similarly, it is not important to try to correlate bloodflow in the brain
> with programming style.  

You don't see the joy in this?  Or the utility?  You have some definition
of 'important' and these do not fit.  Where do those of us who walk around
with other definitions of 'important' fit?

> Nor to get bogged down in how every brick in the
> apartment building across the street is slightly different from every other
> brick.  

Actually, this is the subject of one chapter in David Pye's 'the
Nature and Art of Workmanship', one of my most favourite books.  David
Pye was a professor of Furniture Design and (also) Architecture.
Irregularity in construction components is part of what makes certain
buildings 'beautiful' while others, made of more regular components,
look 'ugly as sin'.  But just making things different will not do
either.  It is a very wonderful, beautiful, joyful problem in
architecture, and one that has terrific parellels in other acts of
creation.

> It's actually pretty amazing that living organisms negotiate all
> this complexity so deftly.  Why shouldn't a snail, for instance, become
> infinitely confused about available food sources?  Because then it would
> die.

It is dying anyway, Brandon.  That is the tragedy that started this 
note.  The question is 'did it live its life well, by its own lights'?
I am not certain that the question has meaning for a snail.  I know
it has meaning for a man.

Laura Creighton

> 
> --
> Cheers,                         www.3DProgrammer.com
> Brandon Van Every               Seattle, WA
> 
> 20% of the world is real.
> 80% is gobbledygook we make up inside our own heads.
> 
> -- 
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list





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