I have two final papers tomorrow - Hume and Kant and Simulation. Of Hume and Kant I have a confession to make - I have finished neither the Enquiry nor the Critique. At least, I can't remember whether I've finished the Enquiry - interest in it waned after lectures on it finished. The Critique I do not feel like touching with a ten foot pole until I am in a better mood. I have the feeling I should be reading the thing in German - the feeling that something is lost in translation is too strong - and also Kant is a hideous old fart whose arogance is superceded only by his long-windedness.

It doesn't help that the views held by either philosopher are so old - and that their knowledge of science is, by today's standards, rather pitiful. The whole study descends into something like literary criticism and the feeling that you're actually learning something is missing. Well, not exactly true. You do get academic knowledge - the kind you use to bash less educated neanderthals with and bolster your own self-confidence and intellectual status.

I am ready for Simulation. Should be an easy paper, that, which might not be a good thing. Everyone scoring full marks on a paper does not bode well to the person who barely scrapes through his tutorial and lab gradings. On the other hand, my confidence is bolstered by the fact that as of the final tutorial most of the other neanderthals in my class seemed not to have bothered to do the revision papers and can barely do Random Variate Generation. I can do Random Variate Generation. I can even prove that the geometric distribution is memoryless. Most proud of myself for being able to do that. Haha. you can't.

Forgive the sily prattle. I am bored. For once, the holidays approach and I have absolutely no idea what to do with my time. It used to be that every approaching break brought about dreams of learning another programming language, of finishing some classic text, of devouring some shiny new piece of knowledge. These days I just seem to have lost interest. If I were a bit less conventional and a little more confident in my looks I would make it my goal to have sex by this holiday. I think that might be the prime reason I've been feeling so under-the-weather these days. Sigh. Everywhere around me the media screams the propensity of my generation for copulation, and I remain desolutely, virginally pure. Deep exhale.

"witness the immense pomposity of sesquipedalian verbiage" - The Philosophy of Style, Herbert Spencer

"Unite and multiply; there is no other law, or aim, than love," would seem to be her constant cry on all sides, while she mutters to herself, perhaps: "and exist afterward if you can; that is no concern of mine."