Sat at the coffeeshop this morning and read Mitchell Waldrop's "Complexity". It's an old favourite, good science writing, and a good introduction (along with Roger Lewin's "Complexity: Life On the Edge of Chaos") to complexity theory. There may be a bit much on the history of the Santa Fe Institute, but there's just so much implicit in the story Waldrop tells. And it's a book that sent me to read Horace Freeland Judson's "The Eighth Day of Creation", a really excellent account of the development of molecular biology in the last sixty years or so. Reading Waldrop once upon a tine sent me to Judson, and both books ended up on my science-favourites shelf along with Jacques Monod's "Chance and Necessity", Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker", Gleick's "Chaos: The Making of a New Science" and Jos. Tainter's "The Collapse of Complex Societies". I'll recommend all of those, and I'll note that I'm very fond of Roger Lewin's "Bones of Contention" on palaeontology and Melanie Mitchell's "Complexity: A Guided Tour" as well.

And, yes. I really do need a lovely clever girl to sit across a table from me and talk about Waldrop or Lewin or Dawkins. I'd read Monod's "Chance and Necessity" at New Haven--- a book Caterina and I talked about endlessly ---and, years later, when I read Gleick's "Chaos", I was utterly taken with the idea of complexity and emergent order. When I read Tainter's book--- applying complexity theory to archaeology ---I was fascinated enough to use some of his material as handouts in classes. I'd love to find a lovely girl with an interest in archaeology or history/social change who'd just sit over drinks and talk about such things.

I had a copy of Judson's "Eighth Day of Creation", but...where is it? In storage? Did I send it to someone like Lissy when I last moved? Donate it to the library? In my storage cube, probably. Well, I would like to read it again. I'll likely just get the library to get me an interlibrary loan copy. Okay--- time to scour their DVD catalog, too. I'd like to see "Race for the Double Helix" again, too.

The coffeeshop by the university gates is always a good place to sit. Take the Tare Panda Laptop, take my notebooks, take the Small Psyduck iPod and a book or two, spend the morning. And they do have lovely long-legged barista girls, all short shorts and ballet flats and hipster-girl glasses and dark tans...

I must tell Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo: Golden Pheasant beer from Slovakia. I had that with duck 'n' sausage gumbo at the Zeppelin Pilots' Club for lunch. Slovakia, now, not Slovenia. At pubs in Ljubljana, it's always Union. Look for the Gryphon logo. Beer rivalry--- Union or Lasko: you do have to pick. Union for me. But Slovak beer today--- Golden Pheasant. Something for Miss Ginny to look for in Montreal.

I'm going to have to consider a plan. I do want a McGill sweatshirt or t-shirt. Seems that Amazon.ca doesn't have the whole range of departments that US Amazon has: no clothing/accessories. So I'll have to work out some kind of exchange mechanism: find someone in Canuckia who can get me the shirt and ship it in return for...something: books or a t-shirt from here. I'll just see what I can do.

I have pinot gris for tonight. I'll watch "The Pianist" and "Broken English" and stay in. It'll rain tonight--- dark, heavy clouds are coming in out of the east. So I'll be here. Pinot gris with the films, maybe a few glasses of Guyana rum later. We'll have to see. I can hope--- I can always hope ---for Voices on the aether and a phone call out of the night.