I've been getting my daily fix of frustration masquerading as fun from playing N, a little Flash game that, to paraphrase Jimb, provides an interesting simulation of both physics and ninjas. Check it out, even if you're a Mac or Linux person. [Side note: Hunting down Jimb's URL, I realized that my very old website is still present, alongside his. If interested, have a look before he takes it down, since I haven't paid him for the webspace in, like, eleven years.]

I read Deep Survival, at the recommendation of JP. The author [Laurence Gonzales] "combines hard science and powerful storytelling to illuminate the mysteries of survival, whether in the wilderness or in meeting any of life's great challenges" [back of book]. Before I knew it, reading the book, I was immersed in... neuroscience! And it was fascinating. Even ... [dare I say it?] mind-expanding. Gonzales provided a new [to me] way to understanding how our brains work, particularly during moments of stress. Most surprising to me was the idea of emotion as a survival mechanism. Quite apart from the quality of the book, I did notice that the author used a lot of metaphors involving horses. It should not be surprising, then, that I've selected an excerpt of that breed [hah!]:

The human organism, then, is like a jockey on a thoroughbred in the gate. He's a small man and it's a big horse, and if it decides to get excited in that small metal cage, the jockey is going to get mangled, possibly killed. So he takes great care to be gentle. The jockey is reason and the horse is emotion, a complex of systems bred over eons of evolution and shaped by experience, which exist for your survival. They are so powerful, they can make you do things you'd never think to do, and they can allow you to do things you'de never believe yourself capable of doing. The jockey can't win without the horse, and the horse can't race alone. In the gate, they are two, and it's dangerous. But when they run, they are one, and it's positively godly.

The Uptown Art Fair is underway, and once again, it's on my front "lawn." From where I sit, there's a mini-donut "factory" not forty feet to the north. I spent some time on the Fair's fringe this afternoon, [re]reading some Bryson and smoking my meerschaum. I bought some new tinned tobaccos, and today I tried Dunhill's Elizabethan Mixture, feeling that I haven't had enough experience with perique. Though yet to be released from their tins, I also bought Mac Baren's Navy Flake because it's tremendously well-known [I encountered it most recently in an article in P&T about Mark Tinsky], and McClelland's 211B Series Arcadia because, well, it's the Arcadia mixture.

The Arcadia mixture has got to be the most-revered literary tobacco, being featured in Sherlock Holmes, and essentially being the subject of J.M. Barrie's My Lady Nicotine, not to mention the main element in the lives of that book's characters. I don't believe that Barrie's Arcadia is the same as Doyle's; the 211B is obviously a reproduction of Dr. Watson's preferred blend. Some time after the release of his book, Barrie admitted that the fictitious Arcadia he featured was actually based on the Craven mixture, but I get the impression that the recipe for that particular blend has long been lost. Either way, I'm as certain that every budding pipe-dork goes through an Arcadia phase as I am that the mixture bears no resemblance to the original, if such a thing even exists... but still, it's the Arcadia. From My Lady Nicotine:

Even though I became attached to you, I might not like to take the responsibility of introducing you to the Arcadia. This mixture has an extraordinary effect upon character, and probably you want to remain as you are. Before I discovered the Arcadia, and communicated it to the other five - including Pettigrew - we had all distinct individualities, but now, except in appearance - and the Arcadia even tells on that - we are as like as holly leaves. We have the same habits, the same ways of looking at things, the same satisfaction in each other. No doubt we are not yet absolutely alike, indeed I intend to prove this, but in given circumstances we would probably do the same thing, and, futhermore, it would be what other people would not do. Thus when we are together we are only to be distinguished by our pipes; but any one of us in the company of persons who smoke other tobaccoes would be considered highly original. He would be a pigtail in Europe.

If you meet in company a man who has ideas and is not shy, yet refuses absolutely to be drawn into talk, you may set him down as one of us. Among the first effects of the Arcadia is to put an end to jabber. Gilray had at one time the reputation of being such a brilliant talk that Arcadians locked their doors on him, but now he is a man that can be invited anywhere. The Arcadia is entirely responsible for the change. Perhaps I myself am the most silent of our company, and hostesses usually think me shy. They ask ladies to draw me out, and when the ladies find me as hopeless as a sulky drawer, they call me stupid. The charge may be true, but I do not resent it, for I smoke the Arcadia Mixture, and am consequently indifferent to abuse.