I wanted to know what your text was a reference to, and now I just spent the past fifteen minutes watching Sesame Street clips on Youtube. I'd never seen the show and knew nothing about it other than the names Big Bird, Elmo, Cookie Monster, and a few others. I always assumed the Generation Y/early-Millennial Sesame Street reverence was just nostalgia (often of the obnoxious, meme-ish type), but the clips I watched were really awesome. Just thought I'd share.

I wish. What you see is what we ate, most likely. It was toward the end of a few weeks traveling, so cash shortages had us living cheaply. Although, considering there were times when it was just wine and bread, this probably felt somewhat like a feast in that moment. I don't clearly remember, but that would explain why I took a picture.

Anyway, I've thoroughly enjoyed perusing these photo challenge threads and contributing when possible. So I'd also like to thank you for the post(s), thenewgreen. Also, time permitting, I'll be trying out your meatball recipe this weekend. The picture, praise, and ingredients made a nice three-pronged sales pitch. But I suppose that's what almost every food website listing does to appeal to people, so I guess the novel context got me more than anything.

Dinner one night in Italy.

In discussions of abstract concepts like free will it helps to try to more concretely define the term. Although I do realize that that's no small task, and you did give some indication of what free will means to you.

Anyway, my thoughts: Everything in the universe is subject to physical laws. This includes human brains, in all their multi-layered, recursive, looping complexity. This doesn't seem to allow for "real" free will. The two ways around this are extra-universal influence/interaction and strong emergence. I'm not religious, and strong emergence reeks of bullshit to me. It's often used exclusively in relation to consciousness which seems awfully arrogant. Some people just really want to be in control...

But I don't think about free will much anymore. I just live, man.

I meant to include that, whoops. It is Volcán Tacaná. It was an awesome hike, but it was also not the easiest mountain to access.

Edit: I was on Tacaná when I took the picture. I don't know what the mountain shown in the picture is called, but the general area is the Guatemala-Mexico border close-ish to the Pacific.

I'm a garbage photographer with garbage equipment, but I couldn't let the "Up" theme pass without a mountain picture.