I worked on research today, exercised, got coffee with Shiva, and had a conference call. The pleasure of drinking coffee has been greater than normal lately, and my hypothesis is that I am enjoying it more because I am rested and mentally restored, so I already feel good, and I can feel the positive effects of coffee without the noise of fatigue, pain, or other distractions/distortions. Anyway, it has been a pleasure to have a cup over the last few days.
The work is going well, and I'm moving ahead at a nice pace. It's fulfilling to work on one project in a sustained way over a long period of time. I'm also learning a lot about coal, economics, chemistry, energy in general, ecology, and human health. It's a win-win all around.
Among my strategies to maintain a higher level of health for the semester is the strategy of reading and dealing with all new e-mails on a daily basis. At the end of the day my new mail tally should be zero. I seem to average 20-40 per day and the count quickly spirals out of control if I let it slip.
I worried that I might have a hard time working out with the snow on the ground, but it was actually easier than in Media, where the ground is frozen but there's no snow. The reason is that the snow provides some padding, like grass, which allows me to do Samson Stretches (an exercise that requires kneeling and placing weight on the knees).
I read an interesting article from the Boston Globe about psychological studies on cities vs nature. It claimed that urban stimuli are detrimental to the ability to focus and control oneself, while nature restores this capacity. Parks apparently mitigate this effect, and the best parks in this regard are the ones with the most biodiversity. It's interesting to me that urban diversity dulls the mind while biological diversity stimulates the mind. Maybe the researchers are on to something, but I find that the impact of urban phenomena on me depends on the nature of the phenomena and the design of the systems and context in which it happens.
For example, as an anecdote, once I was walking over the Market Street bridge toward Center City in Philadelphia, and to my left I saw a Regional Rail elevated beyond JFK boulevard, a USX freight train passing under the bridge next to the Schuylkill Banks Trail, a plane flying overhead, cars flowing all around me, pedestrians walking in both directions on both sides of the bridge, and a skateboarder skating on a metal curb lip. Above all this was the glimmering lights of the city sky scrapers, to my sides were the lit stone and metal bridges over the river, and below was the river itself, shimmering in the lights and quaking in the wind. This scene struck me as so marvelous with all of its motion, complexity, and to me, sublimity, that I was inspired, felt invigorated, and set my mind to work when I got home. To be fair, the study seems to admit that although they think urban environments dull certain aspects of the brain, they have a superior claim on spurring innovation and creativity through the same diversity and intermingling of people.