Les Bonnes Choses

I'm going to group together two optimism-related posts here. The first one concerns a rather optimistic prediction of "reverse engineering the brain" in 20 years. That's one way to get your name into general consumption mainstream media: get yourself quoted making completely outlandish predictions. Willingly or not, I'm involved in this reverse-engineering program, and based on my behind-the-scenes experience, I'll happily promise to eat my hat if we come anywhere close to what this guy is predicting while I'm still working.

Ah, that's rich. Still working -- as if to imply I have a job. I guess I'm a bit of an optimist too. I'm working on training it into the next generation using a reward system. At the beginning of the summer, Jude was enrolled in a program called Book Buddies at his preschool, two weeks after the last day of the regular school year. I suspect there's a reason the year ended when it did, because it was like September all over again, and Jude was never happy to start his day there. For the first few days, he grumbled when we picked him up, but one day, I asked him whether he had a good enough day to merit a sticker. Since then, I've been rewarding him not for being good, but instead for having a good day (being generally pleasant and obedient is a necessary condition for having a good day). I've got a good feeling it's going to work.