Thoughts
This is sort of inline with the previous idea. It is the idea of, why do I feel that some of my friends are growing, but others are staying the same. I've moved around quite a bit in my life and I still keep in touch with several of my old friends, some of them I don't worry about stagnating, but others I do. This is supposed reinforced by talking to the people that I feel are attempting to grow; people that are in touch with the people I'm worried about. I want to hope for the best, but my nature is to fear the worst, that way, when it doesn't happen, I'm pleasantly surprised. I guess you could say I'm an optimist through pessimism.

Tonight I went on a date with The Wife. Tuesdays are usually very busy for both of us. The Wife sings in a choir in Otsu and I have a private lesson. I canceled all my lessons for this week for my upcoming finals, so I had free time. We met in Kusatsu for dinner before she had to run to choir. She still isn't back yet, but it was nice to see her for a while on a day where we usually see each other when we get up and then only again when we go to bed. Looking at that last sentence makes it seem that we actually get up and go to bed together most of the time. Regardless, after she left for choir I headed over to get coffee and study. Two and a half hours later, I was four chapters through my seven chapters a night study session. It was then when I realized how much I enjoyed it. Not just the studying, but also the alone time. I have quite a bit of it, but usually it takes me getting up and out of the norm to really enjoy that time to think. This time it was focused primarily on probability theory, but I do enjoy my thinking.

I was talking with a Dr. Turner about a month ago. Dr. Turner is a London based physicist who was giving lectures at the University of Kyoto. Very interesting man, can't say he was pretty, but he was interesting. We talked a bit about higher education and the problems there of, and he mentioned something I was perhaps aware of, but not thinking, and that was the concept of ego. He stated that quite a few problems in getting people to even begin higher degrees is the thought that they cannot do it. Many people holding advanced degrees lord those degrees over "the lessers," and speak with authority about such things without taking into account that they had to go through a process to get to that point as well. I think this has to do with the fact that most people are frightened of being proven wrong, or worse, stupid, and so they hold onto those degrees for validation of the fact that they are not, in fact, stupid. This, however, hurts the general process of education. It is important, I believe, for students to believe that they are capable of the sort of intellectual discussion that is expected at a higher education level. It is equally important for the teachers to realize that they can facilitate learning by sharing the process in which they learned, as well as the necessary information. Process are those things are not a part of the subject, but part of learning, things like, this is how I did my research, these are the mistakes I made when doing this, etc. Equally important on both sides, not to believe that you have learned all there is to know on a subject. I think this is why there is a publish or perish principle in most schools of higher learning; it spurs teachers to continue to research their topics. I don't necessarily think that learning has to continue in a single field though. I guess if things turn out in certain ways and I end up a professor, I don't want to just focus on my "area." I want to explore other subjects as well. I figure, if we've got an average of 70 some odd years, might as well make use of it; instead of using education as a means to an end enjoying it for what it is.

I swam today. It was a good swim, about 2000 meters, in 50 meter chunks. I swim during the day, so typically there are quite a few older people in the pool. Usually they'll let me to a lane by myself and I'll swim distance, but it was exceptionally crowded today so I was sharing a lane. I usually don't like swimming in 50s, especially because it usually means I'm swimming slower than my normalized speed, but today I just enjoyed a nice "relaxing" swim.

Gaming Thoughts
As I mentioned earlier, I'm preparing to run some demo games when I return home. The games are going to be set in the Hero Wars setting. A friend of mine mentioned something about a story based, introduction to Glorantha, book, and said it was very poorly written and poorly edited as well. This is something I have noticed about the new books being put out by Issaries as well. It seems to mostly focus on their fiction and background books, though the primary rule book also had major misprints as to the effects of some of the abilities. I know that they are for the most part fan produced books. The point of the new game itself was that fans kept clamoring for more Glorantha, but I do think they should increase the quality of their editing as well as writing standards. I still really like the character creation and contest resolution systems, so I'll continue to play the game. The game world is also very interesting to me as well. It reminds me of a game world that I'm creating myself, slowly, which is based in dark bronze age mythology. I have a lot of people interested, but very few finished characters for the games, so I'm going to be doing some pregenerated characters for people that want to just jump in. I think they'll be fun.

Not much happening in the PBEM, we introduced two new PCs, roughly, but its done at least. I like having people that post, it makes my job easier. The characters are buying supplies before heading South for the Tribal Market in an attempt to find out why the Lunars keep sending troops to the South as well. Should be interesting.