Things I Dislike and Probably Must Tolerate For Years to Come

I feel comfortable posting this list, since M. and I seem to have become smug haters:

1. People who spend all their time talking trash about the city they live in (instead of, you know, living in it).
1a. Especially if that city is Baltimore.
1b. Especially if they are from New York City or California.

2. Scientists who talk trash about philosophy and/or art.

3. Philosophers/artists who talk trash about science.

As for me, I have always tried to unify the three, science and philosophy and art. They are, to me, three aspects of the same system: the system by which we absorb information from the outside world, infer meaning, and manifest this meaning into our own constructions. I have never seen meaning in contemplation or observation independent of each other. If we only collect facts, that is one thing, but if we seek to make sense of observations, or even so much as categorize and correlate them, is that not already a dialogue between what reality is--disparate, arbitrary, absurd--and our introspective ideal of what reality should be--coherent, correlated and above all, making sense? Do our minds not intrinsically expect that if a dropped rock has fallen each time for five billion years then the next time it will fall as well, and that if we are shown the first corner of a square table we anticipate and will be able to identify the other three? From observations come ideas, and from ideas assumptions and biases; thus, behind every idea is an observation, and every observation an idea. Any participant in one of the three concepts who dismisses any one of the other two has made the mistake of taking something for granted. What is living if not simultaneously a science, a philosophy, and an art?

(Or maybe next time I should just say, "I'm dating a philosophy major" and hope that shuts them up.)