I forgot to put flowers in my hair.

I fly to Boston early tomorrow morning, so I you probably won't get an update from me for a few days or perhaps a week.

Today cousins Stephen & Jared and I went to the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art (That was pretty much the only place we went to in San Fran because there was lots of walking to do and we were tired). A very good gallery. I was especially impressed with the technical abilities of one artist Jess, who creates drawing collages - a complex landscape composed of many separate drawings he has maticulously copied from magazines, photos and old style lithographs and etchings. In each peice of the collage he maintains the visual quality of the image he is copying - fuzzy or crosshatched. He doesn't draw what he thinks ought to be there, he draws what is there. The drawings form a believable composition, despite being drawn from different sources.

There was also an exhibition of three young male artists who examine the decline of masculinity in contemporary Western society. Their work was stylistically excellent, and the blurb the gallery had written regarding masculity was suprisingly insightful even if it is ultimately wrong. I might blog on this more later.

We went to Uber Borders and I bought Status Anxiety, which is very good so far. I also wanted to buy a book on Earth science, but I couldn't find anything that isn't a field guide, but also isn't written with a flourish like most popular science. It needs to be academic, but also accessable. I realised that I'd like to know more about geology when I observed some interesting patterns from a few kilometers above Tasmania's north coast. The coastline dips into a series of long beaches, each eroded at the same angle with large streaks of sand or rock running inland for many kilometers. Like a layer cake with bites across the diagonal.

What causes such a strange pattern at such a large scale? Yes, the sea, the air, the rain, the wind and the tectonic plates are all causes, but how? And why the regularity? In order for regularity to occur there must be deterministic laws and sub-laws at work, but what are they? And how do they interact? Are these patterns the result of elegancy on a molecular scale? These are questions I should very much like to have answered, preferably in a rich, well-argued, interesting academic style without too many peurile analogies and distracting stories about the author's recent trip to Alaska. Can anyone reccomend such a book?

I realise that the trolleys probably aren't too much bigger than ours in volume, it's just that they're wider and with a higher floor so that you don't have to stretch as far when putting food in your trolley. Stretching takes energy, and if you don't have to stretch as far then you have more energy left to put more food in your trolley.

Isn't that sad about Steve Irwin? His poor widow; I think they really loved each other in their own goofy way. Be careful with wild animals.

Anyway, I fly out tomorrow so your prayers will be much appreciated.