My neighbor in the back half of the house has moved out, and no replacement has appeared, so I can be loud. I've got a slow aggregation of paper that's twice as long as it's supposed to be, and I think rather than chop it up, I'll just turn it in. I got a defective lamp to work. Macgyver would be proud, I used a laundry pole of a slightly larger diameter to go outside the stripped threaded made_in_wherever cheapness. I loaded it with energy-efficient tubey flourescent bulbs and now suddenly I can read in the front room. Someday, I aspire to have a comfortable chair, possibly a couch. A medially rotated lifestyle, apparently, is where you spend too much time hunched and slouched. I am the freakin poster child for this lifestyle. I wonder how much effort it takes to change deep rooted posture habits when you're already 37. Has to be tried.

School's almost over. I'm going to start talking to the void a lot now. You, the unnamed reader, are an unknown. Probably only AI's from the post-singular era will be bothering to read the whole web, trying to get your crazy posthuman mind about the twisted monkeys who turned themselves into you. But for anyone who cares, I’ll tell the story.

Next week I will accomplish multiple impossible things. This weekend, three papers to write:

Topic in Russian History: The Russian Army was woke up to the Rennaisance and found itself way behind Europe, to the point that even overwhelming numerical advantage just didn't cut it. Eventually they bought a passable military through foreign servicemen and began to adapt. The problem of playing catch-up militarily put additional stress on a country with the greatest geographical challenges in existence. In the rule of Peter the Great and later Catherine substantial modernization took place, but at the cost of exacerbating the gulf between serf and ruling class. How did the Russian military modernize over time and what were the side effects on Russian society and culture that resulted? (With one eye towards the Revolution)

Topic in Equine Business: The Standardbred horse industry is currently facing a demographic crisis along with the rest of horse racing. With an older crowd and competition from other forms of gambling, the industry faces the divide between the states which have slots at their tracks, and those who don’t. Ohio and Kentucky don’t, and face serious competition from states that do. With or without slots, what does the industry look like in five years? What can be done to promote the sport to the public at large, to catch the imagination of new enthusiasts?

Topic in Philosophy: If there is no substance dualism, and the mind and the brain are one in the same, how do we reconcile the experience of the human consciousness with what little we know of the mechanics of neurochemistry? Does the mechanical paradigm hold? What is the difference, if any, from a value held in the memory of a computer running a program and the presence of a thought in a human brain? Are computers eventually capable of thought? And if so, what is unique about the human brain that they would have to duplicate – Ie, the interaction of the senses and the body and language and all that. This one needs some work.

Clay Buffet was off the chain last night. It was full of people, Daveer’s fleur de lys stuff was awesome, and the band was so retro they brought their own bale of hay. Tight.

Lunchtime.