on a postcard, by a glass of wine.

So, somebody has uncovered a terror plot again.

Is it too cynical of me to almost not believe it anymore when governments announce these kinds of things? I mean, on the one hand, I don't want people to die and I'm glad that nations are trying, and theoretically succeeding at keeping that from happening. On the other hand. . .it's a great way to renew the Fear of Terror keeping your citizens in line while simultaneously making them feel safe and restoring their faith in government. And if terrorists could be anywhere or look like anyone, wouldn't it be just as easy to arrest twenty innocent civilians, make sure one of them is separated from an Islamic cleric by two degrees or less, and call it a victory?

I want to have faith that the American and British governments are telling me the truth. What happened to that?

London Update Update: The version of OSX the tech guy installed on my new hard drive doesn't have iPhoto on it, so my camera has no software to work with. I'll try to get my hands on a copy sometime before the end of the month, but if not - the install discs are in my desk in Halifax. Yeah, I get that I'm an idiot sometimes.

down in the mouth and not half right

I ran over a squirrel yesterday on the way to my MCAT simulation. It was really, really upsetting. Of course, it has nothing to do with why I haven't posted in roughly a thousand years, but. It's still sad.

The major reason for not being able to do my long, verbose London post is that my hard drive needed replacing, which took about a week - but was free. Although my new one is only 40GB, so I I may need to buy an external at some point, but. That's still cheaper than having this one replaced again. So, I've only had my computer back since Tuesday, really. Which means I'm not actually that behind on posting, I've only been putting it off for six days. And the reason I've been putting it off for the past week? Mostly has to do with watching the entire series of the new Battlestar Galactica since I got back from London, to put off studying for the MCAT. Which is coming up in 11 days, and that's a terrifyingly small number. I'm scared.

These aren't really justifications for not posting about London, just. . .excuses. I'll probably have something up by tonight. Unless I go see Scoop, and then it'll be tomorrow.

mmm, britishy.

So. I'm in Canada. And I will, at some point, be posting about my fabulous and magical adventures in London, but that point will not be today for two reasons:
    1) I flew home just this afternoon, so it's been Friday for. . .almost twenty-nine hours. That's too many, I think.
    2) While I've been in London, Ernie's been at the Laptop Hospital (it's a technical term, you wouldn't understand) getting himself checked out. And I talked to the nice tech guy there today: basically, they have no idea what's wrong, yet. It doesn't look like a hardware issue, but when they ran the basic battery of diagnostics, odd things started to happen that indicated it was a hardware issue. But they need to do more diagnostics to figure out which hardware might be having the issue. He's talking about it either being part of the hard drive, or a RAM thing, and I'm hoping he figures it out fairly soonish because I'm only covered by warranty for another three weeks or so. And both of those problems sound expensive.
    All of this of course means that I have nowhere to load my pictures, and what is a trip to London without illustrations and diagrams to go with the description? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

If any of you have opinions on London being posted in one giant chunk, or several smaller posts, here would be the time to say something.

use the force, luke.

I know most of you guys aren't very well-versed in neuroscience at all, and that you basically don't care about most of the new-ish findings in neuro, which is totally cool. But you still might be interested in this paper published in the most recent issue of Nature. (Full text of the article is available for free, so you shouldn't have to go through the Dal library interface to read it)

The Cliff's Notes version of this article is basically that this group of scientists are developing technology that allows paralyzed people to move actual objects (computer cursors, limited movements of prosthetic hands, etc.) by imagining moving their hands to perform those tasks. Which is really cool. They've included some supplementary video of their single pilot subject, MN, performing a few of their tasks, and it's pretty cool. If you're not going to read the article, which is totally fair, you should at least check out video #5. Keeping in mind that he's controlling the blue dot with only the power of his brain.

As studies go, it's not great or extremely conclusive yet - they have a total of one participants so far, and they do admit to having problems with the stability of the connection to their implanted electrode after about 10 or 11 months. But it's a really neat research trajectory, and much more practical than that guy from England who does the same kind of research, but on his own arm, for fun. (I'll try to look him up if I get a chance. He's a bit nuts.)

don't know why i have to drive so fast (my car has nothing to prove)

Okay. Chris makes a good point. I should perhaps have mentioned this sooner.

So, yes. I get to go to London for a week, starting next Saturday. I've known about it for. . .a month and a half, probably, and there is a story to it, but I've been so busy telling literally everybody I know in Calgary that I kind of. . .forgot to tell all of my Halifax friends. Which is dumb of me. Anyway. I'm really excited, and I'm hoping to see Baker Street and the Globe Theatre and lots of other cool, dorky stuff, and maybe come back with funny English yarn to knit funny English socks. (I also anticipate coming back broke, because: hey, London!)

Expect an assload of pictures of tourist landmarks and inane shit that I think is hilarious because it's in England, as well as at least a few stories about English food and tourist landmarks. (If anybody's already been and wants to suggest stuff they think I'd enjoy: I'm all ears. I really just know there's a lot to do, and I'm sure I'll find something, and plan to play it by ear for most of the time.)