And I know it's you knocking around in there

In no particular order—

1. I have been Spontaneously Spotted! I feel like some sort of rare species.

2. Today is my father's birthday non-observed. Last night I made a hazelnut cake; today it gets whipped cream, strawberries, and that very dark chocolate icing that is basically cacao with a little butter to make it pliable. I believe we are taking him to Za for dinner. Mostly I got him books.

3. This is the best poem about the Odyssey I've seen in a long time.

4. heliopsis has coined an excellent word.

5. The trees are budding. It's not snowing yet.

Rules are only important in cricket, poetry, and the editing of classical texts

I am glad that the Boston Globe liked Breaking the Code, but I do not understand their characterization of the play as "Turing's struggle to integrate thinking with feeling, and his ultimate failure to do so." Even speaking strictly of the theatrical character, not the historical person, Turing's problem isn't that he can't relate to people; it's that one of the primary ways he relates is—will be, until the Sexual Offences Act 1967—illegal. Look at the title. Compartmentalization isn't the issue, transgression is. It's the rest of the world that prefers neat little boxes in which mathematicians are not engineers and thinkers don't win marathons and there is no such thing as a queer war hero. Also, there is nothing static about the passionate exploration of ideas: number theory, cryptanalysis, artificial intelligence. Your heart doesn't skip a beat at Gödel's theorem, so be it, but that doesn't make the subject intrinsically unexciting. I wish the reviewer wouldn't reinforce the same binaries that hurt Turing so badly. It's not like he had any time for them when he was alive.

(My very short initial review of the play here. I liked it.)

The hazelnut cake went over very well; it is much diminished from its original dimensions. I am less pleased about this sudden sore throat. Understatement. I want a body that works. I know there are people who have them.