data update

The time travelers have been excised, and the data is good. Okay, the data is still weird, but more in ways that suggest the next experiment than ways that suggest I'm being experimented on. And I'm thinking about a chapter in a nanotechnology anthology (non-fiction, not fiction) that I may be a part of, and what I should do with it. I've got a bunch of ideas, but the one that really interests me is going into the whole phenomenon of trying to plan for as-yet-non-existent technologies, and what causes folks like the Foresight Institute to focus more on the Grey Goo problem and less on the What-If-All-the-Development-Funds-Go-Into-Weapons problem or the How-Does-This-Affect-Class-Differences problem or the What-If-We're-Kidding-Ourselves-Entirely problem. Of course, before I do that, I'll have to actually check the Foresight Institute in more detail and see if that's still the case. From a psychological perspective, it's interesting--the predictions that places like FI make are different in some ways from the predictions that science fiction authors make. Obviously they have different goals--the writers are trying to be entertaining and dramatic as well as accurate. So what goals drive people who believe they're actually planning for real life? Don't know, want to figure it out. I have some less-than-optimistic hypotheses, based on my own work (which serves my goal of connecting the chapter to my own expertise, so it counts as a psych publication--though it probably would anyway, since my department head is the one who brought me onto the project).

I like my job. I get to play, and get paid for it. (Of course, I also get to be on committees, and do the less glamourous research scutt, and teach the duller sessions of Intro as well as the fun ones. C'est la vie.)

The hope this weekend is that I can spend a little time on my other work--maybe get the story for Twenty Epics polished up, at the least. I think a couple of lines here and there will fix the more egregious ambiguities (i.e. the ones that all the betas noticed), and I want to leave a fair amount in since it's a relatively literary anthology. (Note to tavadriel--please let spouse know the deadline is March 21st, not the 15th as I suggested earlier. I'd been thinking of the date I wanted to mail it by.) And maybe, maybe, I can finish up the chapter of Book 2 I've been working on. Note to characters: Please think of interesting things to say. We will get to the sex scene(s?) faster that way.