how do you like them

I have other things to do, but I find myself thinking about how I don't identify as a theorist...

Besides the fact that I don't drink coffee, I say I don't like coffee even though I never gave it a chance. Five years ago, my sister lent me her frappucino, and those few sips were the first and last time coffee beanedness touched my lips.

I suppose there are a few meta-lessons here. I often know pretty quickly whether or not I like something, even if I know that it's non-trivial to predict whether or not I will like something in the future. (This may apply to edibles, sippables, people, subject-ables, and other fields of study.)

It also suggests that I seem to be quite good at not doing things. For example, I don't do ethanol, caffeine, gum, or carbonates.

Now, I also realize that the capacity to /not/ do things does not imply a similar ability to /do/ things, but then again, maybe I just have to reformulate my life so that it does :)

On a broader, social level, although people drink coffee at home, there are also group dynamics involved in identifying as a coffee-drinker. You may forage for coffee beans with your lab parter or huddle near the espresso machine on the third floor. Don't ask me what you coffee people do, but, as they say on Project Runway, you're either in, or you're out. (And I am well-versed in being in and out.)

More specifically, although it may not be appropriate for me to identify as part of an oppressed, decaf minority group, I realize that I seem to be rather sensitive to bad apple stereotyping against the in-power majority group (deterministic bean-based theorem provers let's say), even if I've had a chance to meet some good apples along the way.

I won't name names or blogs, but... let's just say I am interested in the theory of theorists -- who they are, how they got there, and why they think that way. Simply put, some theorists just seem very interesting. Some of them seem true and nicely random, in the oppositely non-{Bill-Gates-loves-deterministic-pancake-flipping} way, and some of them are not droll but deterministically carbon-based clones.

I have to wonder, you see, what would happen if you went to an edibly named conference and subjected the theorists you found to some panoply of tests. How well do their mirror neurons work? What about their (left) handedness and its correlates? Who are the Einsteins and the Elvi, the Monkeys and the Magi? The savants who may or may not be multiplied by their own idiocracy?

I am a little afraid of conjecturing this publicly, but what would it mean if you found that most monkey savants (or not-to-be-named government leaders) had 'broken' mirror neurons and/or (non-)jacked up corpus collosums? What psychopharmalogically/talk therapeutic concoctions would we dole-mix out then?

Finally, as an aside, I sat down and formalized the [Them] Bad Apple (Sets) problem. I have a feeling that a sliceofpizza and his new employer might find it yummy :p