Short fiction, chapter 1.

She had arrived at the same place without knowing she’d done so; the loops her mind had taken had brought her back to the start. She stopped short. There was a feeling of bitterness for having to try again. How many times had she tried already? She had nothing, no lights or tools to help her. She stood shivering in a pocketless summer dress, gently pulling at its hems.

On the other side of the wall, the city was alive with noise and heat. A man walked along absentmindedly banging the concrete with a stick. A dog ran past, chasing another dog. No one knew about the lost girl; no one thought to wonder if there might be someone in trouble. She couldn’t hear them or see them. The distance was complete. She started walking again, listening to the sounds of her own feet in the narrow corridors. She counted to pass the time, then let her mind wander along with her steps. Steps sounded like water drops. Water became thirst. Thirst became summer. Summer became the outdoors, and the outdoors became a wave of fear that she might never escape. She tugged at the bottom of her dress as she walked, trying to make it cover more of her thin legs.

Outside, the dogs chased each other through the city streets. The lead dog, bony and long-snouted, became interested in a scent. He slowed to a trot and put his nose close to the sidewalk. A heavy steel grate had been pulled up and tossed to one side, exposing a large rectangular hole in the middle of the sidewalk. He paused at the opening and judged the distance to the bottom. He jumped in.

She tried to master the fear by continuing the free associations. Escape became freedom. Freedom became bird. Bird became fire. She paused to wonder about this last one, walking in silence and thinking. When the dog caught up to her—padding behind her in short, quick steps—she froze in terror, unable to see. The dog stopped, too, then walked forward and sniffed her knees and calves. She realized it was a dog and cautiously reached down to touch it.

She felt the wiry hair and the ears. She heard him panting. Sitting down suddenly, she grasped his head with both her hands, leaning forward so that their foreheads touched. She wept and asked, “Where have you come from?” At that moment she realized she had made the loop again; she was at the starting point where she had been so many times before. She could no longer remember when she had started, or how she had gotten lost or why. She closed her eyes but the darkness didn’t change. She felt like she was floating. Her hands grew limp and she pulled them to her side. For a moment the dog stood beside her in the dark while she slept. Then, catching a familiar scent, he walked toward the opening, and out again into the city streets.

Was Carly Rae Jepsen's breakout hit, "Call Me Maybe" inspired by the Arrested Development character?

Probably!

The trouble with psychotherapy research

This about sums it up, I think.

On being unintentionally frightening

This happens to me more often than I'd like. I'll be walking from one place to another, in places I normally walk and which I have every right to be in, when my sudden appearance frightens someone. Today, for example, I came in from our backyard and opened the door with a flourish. "OH MY GOD," said Julie, almost dropping a slice of buttered toast. "YOU SCARED THE **** OUT OF ME." What should one say in that situation? I always apologize profusely. But this amounts to apologizing for existing (in that particular place at that particular time), and that doesn't seem fair.

Dear frightened ones, I know you have no control over your sympathetic nervous system. But as your heart rate is returning to normal and you're picking toast up off the floor, it would be kind of you to take a little ownership in our awkward exchange. Maybe you could say it wasn't my fault. That it's actually kind of normal to want to come in from the backyard on a chilly spring day, through the only door that permits this, whether you knew I was out there or not.

Maybe?

Things I miss about books when I read e-books

1. The smell of print
2. Instant "page load"
3. Being able to read it on a train without feeling/looking like a douche
4. Being able to buy it again when I accidentally leave it on the train
5. Drawing pictures in the margins (okay, I don't do this very often)
6. The physical presence of something which, in the future, might remind me how much I liked it and inspire me to re-read it
7. The chance that I'll meet my future wife because she read the same book and loved it too

Does anyone actually love e-books? Or are they just kind of tolerated-- like a disappointing alternative to food pills and flying cars?

Nerd alert: The lifespan of a sneaker

I've been buying the same Saucony Jazz shoes for years now, and I wear them all the time. After ordering a new pair online today I started wondering about the average lifespan of these sneakers. Instead of thinking about it for five seconds and forgetting about it (this is what separates yours truly from his less creative/more productive colleagues), I did a little investigating. I searched my Gmail for order notices, then put the dates in a table and used an Excel formula to calculate the days between orders, like so:

Date	Days between orders
3/30/2007	--
12/12/2007	257
11/11/2008	335
7/21/2009	252
4/23/2010	276
1/11/2011	263

It looks like I typically get about 260 days wear out of these shoes. But I'm curious about that 12/12/2007 order. Why did that pair last so much longer? Was I experimenting with a different daily shoe? Was I not walking as much? Was my social calendar filled with non-sneaker-friendly black tie affairs? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. At any rate, I've now estimated the next time I'll need to buy shoes, and put it on my calendar. And don't worry, dear reader-- I'll let you know how this prediction turned out.

Fabulous prizes and other reasons to get up in the morning

I am thiiiiiiiiis close to purchasing this three-dollar iPhone app (http://www.rexbox.co.uk/epicwin/).

Yes, it's adorably nerdy and productivity-enhancing-- exactly my cup of tea. Since my daily grind DOES sometimes feel like doing battle with a horde of smelly orcs, why not let these cute animations make it more fun?

My hesitation is this: Once I go down this road, will I have crossed a rewards-based point of no return? If I start leveling up and finding loot every time I accomplish something on my to-do list, will I ever be able to feel the "afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task"? (thanks, Theodore Rubin)

Just because my intrinsic motivation is a little sluggish some days is no reason to throw it out altogether, right?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm (continues reading user reviews)

Can we wear our failed studies like badges of honor?

I've been thinking about the brilliant and at times insidious human quality described in these two articles ("The Truth Wears Off", Dec. 13 New Yorker, and "Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science", November Atlantic) -- our remarkable problem-solving capacity. Given enough angles to view something, and enough time and incentive, we are very likely to stumble upon a seemingly impossible solution. The problem in scientific research is that it might be literally impossible, i.e., false. But we desperately want it-- the finding that will get us a postdoc, or a grant, or (gasp) an NPR interview!! These are the flights of fancy that entertain us at hour 12, 13, 14... as we stare at the same dataset, chewing on fingernails and pencils, cocking our heads, having moments of "insight" that lead to less and less well-informed strategies for MAKING THE THING WORK. Oh, data analysis, we say. You are a cruel mistress.

But finding the thing is not the problem, clearly. It's whether it's actually there to be found in the first place.

In the New Yorker article above, it is reported that Jonathan Schooler wants researchers to publish their proposals before beginning data collection, then track what happens as the study unfolds. This would bring some accountability to the process and maybe solve what I'm now calling "the problem-solving problem." The only trouble with this is it sets the bar a bit high. I'm in favor of making it incredibly, stupidly easy for researchers to publicly note things that didn't work. And to solidify their more exciting (i.e., positive) findings in the process. My idea is simply an index of websites (blogs, faculty webpages, etc.) where researchers are not tracking the ins and outs of every project, but simply letting each other and the public know which ones didn't quite work. Studies that do work would then get written up for publication as usual, but this gives us a way to see what the chaff looked like before it got blown disdainfully away from the wheat. Can you imagine how educational, how downright helpful that would be?

A likeminded approach that's gotten a bit of traction, which I applaud, is The Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis. But to do justice to the vast number of failed studies there should be about ten such journals for every one that publishes positive results. Plus, journal articles take too long to write up, anyway, and who likes to linger on failure? Instead, let's get the word out quickly and succinctly, like so:

• What the idea was.
• How we operationalized and measured things.
• How big the sample size was.
• How near the miss was (p = .06?)
• Some very brief speculation about why it didn't work (totally optional, and not to be dwelled on).

When we start recording our failed studies, let's do so proudly. Why? Because every failed study gives credence to the ones that actually do work. The more failures we have, the less shady it will be when we find something real. Unfortunately our science news outlets (NPR!!) have been pretty dull to this up to now, and have not been nearly suspicious enough of the uncanny number of positive findings.

By publicly listing our failed studies, we build a strong case for our ongoing work. Who's with me on this? Can we wear our failed studies like badges of honor?

AT&T Anxiety Disorder (recommended for inclusion in DSM-V)

Diagnostic criteria for 300.xx AT&T Anxiety Disorder

A. Excessive anxiety and worry (apprehensive expectation), occurring more days than not for at least 1 month, about placing or receiving phone calls on an AT&T mobile device.

B. The person finds it difficult to control the worry.

C. The anxiety and worry are associated with four (or more) of the following eight symptoms:

(1) increased heart rate when mobile device rings
(2) constant, furtive glancing at device for evidence of signal
(3) excessive apologizing to person on other end of line
(4) frantic running in and out of doors in search of signal
(5) reducing complex ideas to short, clipped sentences, e.g., "I like Beth" as a substitute for "My feelings about Beth are that we could eventually be a good match but at the moment I am ambivalent, especially given her recent breakup with Tom"
(6) recursive phone conversations about unsuccessful phone conversations
(7) loss of train of thought between dropped calls
(8) resorting to email for all communications

D. The anxiety, worry, or physical symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.

E. The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse, a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., hyperthyroidism), or better accounted for by another disorder (e.g., Comcast Rage Disorder).

There, I fixed it