Today is my birthday. I am not sixteen. Dagnabbit!

I’m in the middle of some things. For the record, I’ve got Nostrum started up again following the vacation hiatus, and maybe that’s what’s inspired doing some of my own writing, which is one of the things I’m in the middle of. I mean, if Jules and the Nostrumite can write, why can’t I? Not that I’ve heard from either of them recently. Jules remains in Moldavia, the Mite remains in Cambridge teaching at Tennessee Williams High School and raising his spawn, who’s almost two now. Amazing. Another generation of mites.

Anyhow, I am writing, and somehow have exploded over 50 pages since I’ve started, and I’m not quite sure how it happened. Writing here regularly hasn’t hurt: the muscle is exercised, I guess. The book I’m working on is probably nothing you’d like, but I’m hoping it will be commercial. I will elaborate no further about it; for all I know, I’ll quit it tomorrow in disgust. But that is unlikely. Writing serves a need, and fills the empty hours. If you have something you’re obsessive about, you know how that is.

Last Sunday my Times book review arrived pretty mangled, for no apparent reason, but I was able at least to read the Pinker review (by him, not about him). The VCA is well aware of my high regard for Pinker, who has written at least 2 books that I swear by (The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, both of which are on the Sailors’ reading list). He made an observation in this review that is obvious, but had sort of eluded me. When it comes to science, as a society we somehow assign the subject to children, especially at the learning level. Enculturation requires a child’s understanding of science, and then at some point we switch over to the arts, especially when it comes to our physical institutions, i.e., museums. Science museums and zoos are primarily aimed at children, who we imagine will grow up into the art museums that are primarily aimed at adults. Admittedly it is easier to get kids interested in elementary science, where things happen, as compared to art, where they just look at stuff or, if they create stuff, they recognize pretty quickly isn’t the same as, say, even your lesser Rembrandts. You may indeed need to be a little older to develop an aesthetic sense, or to appreciate your aesthetic sensibility. But this does not mean that your interest in science stops the day you no longer have to study it in school (or worse, before you’re finished studying it in school). But if our museums are any indication, we do seem to believe this is true. How many adults do you know who go to spend a day at the zoo without bringing a kid? Of course, Pinker’s discussion went further, discussing how adults simply don’t keep up much with science, and stop learning about it, and that this is a problem. True. But I would add that most adults don’t keep up with much of anything and stop learning at the first opportunity, and that’s a problem that encompasses all areas of knowledge. So it goes. The day you stop being interested in new stuff is the day you start boring me to tears. The day I stop being interested in new stuff is the day I start boring myself to tears.

So by coincidence this morning I was listening to a Lopate interview with some Italian scientist who has been working in the area of mirror neurons, and the subject of philosophy versus neuroscience arose, as did the subject of language vis-à-vis the Chomsky/Pinker instinct theory, and of course my interest picked up. Again, as a loyal member of the VCA, you know that I consider the consilience of science and philosophy to be the most meaningful direction of the post-contemporary, and that philosophy is nothing other than the search for truth about the mind, as is much of science, and the two are moving closer together until, at some distant future point, epistemology will be entirely a scientific proposition. Be that as it may, you’ll be happy to hear that Pinker has a new book coming out this autumn. Needless to say, it will be high on my personal reading pile.

Oh, yeah. Speaking of books, I did read the Chabon. I give it a mixed review. Love the milieu, the world he has created, the concept. But the story sort of wears out after a while. Honestly, the same was true, I felt, of Kavalier. But mostly I enjoyed it, so I’m glad I made the choice.