Missing Selves

At first it was assumed that he had been raised like a half-wild human in forests, but during many conversations with Mayor Binder, Hauser told a different version of his past life, which he later also wrote down in more detail. According to this story, he had, for as long as he could think back, spent his life always totally alone in a darkened cell about two meters long, one meter wide, and one and a half high, with only a straw bed to sleep on and a horse carved out of wood for a toy.

He claimed that he had found bread and water next to his bed each morning. Periodically the water would taste bitter, and had been apparently drugged: drinking this would cause him to sleep more heavily than usual, and when he had awakened his straw had been changed, and his hair and nails had been cut. Hauser claimed that the first human being he ever had had contact with had been a mysterious man who had visited him not long before his release, always taking great care not to reveal his face to him. This man, Hauser said, had taught him to write his name by leading his hand. After having learned to stand and to walk he had been brought next to Nuremberg. Furthermore, the stranger allegedly had taught him to say the phrase “I want to be a cavalryman, as my father was” (in Bavarian dialect), but Hauser claimed that he had not understood what these words meant. – Kasper Hauser at wikipedia

What’s more interesting though, is that experts seem to agree that he must have made the whole story up. How long have we been taking in foundlings who’ve simply lost themselves?

I’m looking at you, “Piano Man”.

Lately

I’m really just listing these items in the hope that enumerating them will somehow help them pass out of my brain – here’s the stress list from the last two months:
  • My own swine flu infection, with a pregnant lady in the house
  • Fretting over the kids once they’ve contracted swine flu
  • The baby decides to come a month before he’s supposed to
  • A week back and forth to the hospital worrying over the baby
  • Jessica May’s Grandfather is diagnosed with bone cancer
  • Jessica May’s Dad passes after a long illness

Which feels a little like:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ]

imeem follow-up

Just a quick note I’ve been meaning to post regarding the imeem situation from a while ago.

Sean from imeem was intensely helpful in getting my account business sorted out; once I was back in, I recalled that I’d originally signed up while on a drive to find a service like Pandora (an internet radio/music discovery system) that would work without my having to fake an American citizenship. Imeem definitely meets that standard.

I haven’t spent hundreds of hours listening, yet, but I’m pretty pleased with the band/song selection and the recommendation mechanism.

I am, however, getting a little tired of re-selecting bands I enjoy (I’m looking at you yahoo! music/facebook/etc) – if I had the time I’d buy out personal.info and create a system that does nothing but cross-manage service profiles.

Some quick notes about numbers

Real Numbers: million, billion, quintillion, googolplex

Imaginary Numbers*: jillion, kajilion, zillion, gazillion, berylian, majilion

More interestingly:

In the PBS science program Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, Episode 9: “The Lives of the Stars”, astronomer and television personality Carl Sagan estimated that writing a googolplex in numerals (i.e., “10,000,000,000…”) would be physically impossible, since doing so would require more space than the known universe occupies. – wikipedia

* Not the kind Descartes would have made fun of.