1:25 AM is a fine time

In my experience, conversation is rarely equitable. There are people who like to talk (generally about themselves), and there are people who prefer to listen, and I've never met anyone who's 50-50. Most people are somewhere around 3:1 I think, although I know some people who absolutely are 10:1 or even just 1:0.

Anyway, uh, what were we talking about? Addiction? Oh yeah. Uh, right, you wanted a more scientific definition. Here's one that's not quite a yawner. Addiction is a pathological hijacking of the dopaminergic reward circuitry. Positive feedback and all that. Absorbing states. Twenty bucks for a row with your daughter. The thing your wife left you because of. You get the picture.

Used to hang out with these kids in Oakland who smoked crack, my first year here in CA. I wanted to say 'smoked crack recreationally', because that adverb is a nice cushion. If it's recreational, I guess it's not an addiction. Of course, the cracksmoking wasn't getting in the way of their life, because their LIFE got in the way of their life. I'm going to put this story on a pamphlet and pass it out after church.

I have a fiction addiction, as lame as that rhymes. Spend tons of money on books, read voraciously. Nabokov is the big thing in my life right now. And yeah, it's sort of getting in the way. It's an operational definition, the only kind that matters.

I use two spaces after a period, unless I'm writing a grant and pressed for space (every little counts). It doesn't matter as long as it's consistent, as far as I care.