Reasons it'd be worse to live in the past #57:

You are descended from all previous children of Homo Erectus who were not intolerable enough to destroy, but sometimes the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Do not under any circumstances ask Americans for directions. "The sign will say left, but you want to go right, then walk about three hundred yards up, you can't miss it." Americans you ask for directions will give you the wrong directions just for kicks. Counter-intuitively, if you're standing around looking at a map with a wistful, homesick expression they'll happily come up to you and point out landmarks to explain how much of an out-of-towner you are because you don't know where the intersection of 3rd and 49th street is. Like a maladjusted attempt to be helpful. For more than the amount of time it takes for a bumbling out-of-towner to walk to said intersection.

Is it possible that people live up to their names? Do they become a certain sort of person because of the meaning of the word everyone refers to them by? It certainly affects how people perceive you a little, for circumstantial evidence just look at Loser and Winner.

What if, in the future, future-you pinpoints the exact moment you are named or choose your name as the moment your life's fortunes take a turn for the worse? Today is the fulcrum of your life, and you're sitting there just reading about it. Future you would act! Send a message back in time to inform you to live every day like its the fulcrum of your life! Now drop that first-world trinket chaining you to virtual reality and LIVE!

Alternatively if you've already lost your iPhone on the train, don't worry too much about whatever it is that I'm saying (there's not really any deep thought here).

Avoiding living, like bearing witness to a bunch of postdoctoral artists watching Gangster Computer God then debating the merits of Timecube for several hours, can cause despair. A crushing sense of ennui! You feel helpless, like you're not good at anything. You have trouble finishing what you start, and even when you do, you can't stand criticism. Sickly, weakened and depressed, you hate your life, and feel your talents wasting away to nothingness. Perhaps if you had a better job then you would be happy? Or maybe if you did the same job, only in SPACE?

Ah, now we're onto something! watching the smoke curl out of your laptop's fan bay like curls of wispy vapor from the tube-dispenser on a zero-g coffee. Now thats the stuff right there!

Isn't it great to know that whatever you choose to do with your life there's someone more dedicated, committed, and better at it than you? For every hour you spend playing games, some Korean kid plays five. Even if you're an easygoing, well-rounded individual whose pursuits are more about enjoyment and happiness than competition, there's someone in Norway who's been doing that (better than you, english!), since before you were born. Wait, what am I saying, this isn't great, WTF am I talking about?

Design phase, go! Workshops; fun, communication; still nigh impossible

I know about designs now because of my learnings. So, I'd submit designs to threadless, but the whole website seems like a shallow, corporatised, web 2.0 over-blogged way of making a previously unknown company rich off the backs of a bunch of clueless wannabe-hipster design suckers. So much so I badly wish it had been my idea.

I've become so disillusioned with being in another country that I've started to act like a bit of an idiot because I know in a few short weeks I will be gone from these people's lives forever. Subsequently a lot of my exchanges go like this:
"I've been seeing this guy everywhere since Valentine's day. I saw him at the laundromat, and again at the gym, then _again_ at the cafe I have lunch at before Julia's workshop! Do you think its fate?"
"Well it could be, but he's probably stalking you."
"Are you serious?"
"Not really, but the odds are on. Unless he's cute, in which case you can hope for fate over stalking."
"Do you need more medication?"
"Most likely, but your health care system is stuffed. I couldn't even find a student nurse willing to wield a scalpel near my face for less than $300. You can see the scar that came from doing it myself."
"Uh..."

Or alternatively trying to strike up conversation and falling completely flat: "I spent so much time yesterday being creative I forgot to be productive. So today I'm going to try being inventive! Let me tell you about this crazy dream I had where I had a sudden flash of insight into creating a marketable kit product... why is everyone leaving?"

I did manage to further a discussion on language after the lecture today with someone who believed that the domestication of animals contributed extensively to the development of language in humans since we "gave over our need for highly a developed sense of smell once dogs were domesticated, and the information processing capacity for an unused olfactory bulb had to be used somewhere, why not in the structures which produce sound?" Compelling argument, articulately presented, and entirely unbelievable.

I believe more in the Noam Chomsky theory that the development of language is a near-optimal way of building a bridge between sensory-motor function and cognition. This relies only on the evolutionary development of neural structures which allow for recursion, allowing us to build arbitrarily complex sentences: "I'm going over to that tree, to eat those fruits, if I scream about leopards, please come save me."

Language, despite its complexity may have only required a single evolutionary advance over the ability to produce sound. Connecting sound and meaning only needs recursion. Recursion is a central and terrific property of all human languages, allowing us to create arbitrarily complex sentences with as much precision as necessary.