Virtually Home

I'm in my ninth year of devout Decemberists fandom. There is something about the storytelling, the melodies, the little guitar hooks, the accordion and harmonica and melodica -- hell, just about everything about it appeals to me. I especially adore all of that prog-rock complexity reduced to Colin Meloy with a guitar. I've traveled to see Decemberists shows in Maryland, Texas, Washington state, and London, England -- accordingly, there was little that could have stopped me from seeing Colin Meloy play in my own backyard. This was my second visit to The Woman's Club of Minneapolis (the first was to see Ben Gibbard with Advance Base). Very little about the venue appeals to me. They have tragically little parking, and are located in a neighborhood plagued with "residents only, violators will be towed" signs, so you have to get there ridiculously early in order to be able to leave your car somewhere. This is tragic because it's a seated-only venue, so there'...

Animals have sensory systems that allow them to take in and make sense of information present in the environment. Some animals (like me) fly airplanes and go to grad school, and their nervous systems are used frequently for knowing which way is up and worrying that they might not be in the right place. When you're an instrument pilot in training, you spend a lot of time learning to trust your instruments during flight in the clouds because sometimes, when you fly in featureless grey, the part of your brain that integrates information from your visual and vestibular systems gets really confused. This confusion can cause your brain to have very definite opinions about which way is up -- and these opinions frequently do not coincide with any kind of reality. Spatial disorientation can be very dangerous when you consider that the airplane is traveling at some relatively rapid rate near an object (the Earth) of much, much, much greater mass. The solution to this disorientation problem...