David Chart's Blog

Month: December 2007

  • New Diary Entry

    I’ve finally got around to updating my Japan diary, with a new entry.

  • Mayuki is Fine

    Certain People have complained about the lack of Mayuki content in recent blogs. My apologies for that; I’ve been very busy for the last couple of weeks, and I haven’t had time to write things up properly. Things we’ve been busy with include Mayuki’s Kuizome (ritual first meal) and first Christmas, so I have plenty…

  • The Third Chimpanzee

    The Third Chimpanzee was Jared Diamond’s first book. It’s all about the human animal, and the likely evolutionary background to some of our behaviour, and the likely consequences of some of the rest of it. It’s well written, entertaining, and as far as I can tell would have been accurate when it was written, so…

  • A Place for Consciousness

    This is the book about consciousness that I noted a little while ago, and I’ve just got around to reading it. It’s very good. In the first section, Rosenberg raises most of the problems about consciousness that had occurred to me. In short, no matter how good a physical description you have, there is nothing…

  • Peter Lipton, 1954-2007

    This morning I received an email from one of my friends from my Master’s course at Cambridge, informing me that Peter Lipton, my Ph.D. supervisor, had died. This was a great shock; he was only in his fifties. There are good general obituaries in the Guardian and on the Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy…

  • Evolutionary Psychology

    These last few days, Mayuki has started smiling and laughing as soon as I appear in front of her. She looks really pleased to see me. Hypotheses: 1) My face is weird, and makes her laugh. 2) While mothers can be sure that a baby is theirs, men have the option of doubt. However, the…

  • Looking at Flats

    Today, all three of us went to look at a flat. Yuriko and Mayuki went yesterday, but I was feeling very tired, so I stayed at home. I’m feeling much better today (probably because I took yesterday easy), so I went back with them; Yuriko wanted to look again. The flats are a new block…

  • A Naturalist’s Guide to the Arctic

    The title of this book is slightly less self-explanatory than you might think; its range is the North American Arctic, and thus primarily the Canadian Arctic. There’s nothing about Greenland or Scandinavia, nor about Arctic Russia. The primary target audience is people who are going to the Arctic and want to know what they are…

  • The Pure

    This is a book for White Wolf’s Werewolf: the Forsaken line, detailing the “bad werewolves” of the setting. Naturally, with it being a horror game, the “good werewolves” are not exactly models of virtue and restraint, but they are supposed to be much more sympathetic than the Pure. The Pure are driven by an unwavering…

  • First Words

    When seen through the eyes of a doting father, naturally. Today, during dinner, I was talking to Mayuki while I ate. Her eyes are clearly getting better, as she was watching me from some distance away as she sat in the bouncer, and reacted to my words. She reacted by saying “Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh,…