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-Wikipedia quote: "Plesiosaurs (pronounced /ˈpliːsɪəˌsɔr/) (Greek: plesios meaning 'near' or 'close to' and sauros meaning 'lizard') were carnivorous aquatic (mostly marine) reptiles. After their discovery, they were somewhat fancifully said to have resembled "a snake threaded through the shell of a turtle", although they had no shell."-

I had a dream I traveled to Italy and met a man who lived in water (I think? It was all very confusing after I awoke, and in fact I completely forgot the whole Italy bit until I was lying in bed for a while) and had me and my younger brother in this elastic-y net-bubble thing. Which I'm not sure if it was good or bad. I was also (earlier in the dream) trying to grow some ferns from spores, though these spores were acting sort of like pollen, and sort of like nothing that actually exists, as they were making the already adult plants bloom (?!?! Which ferns DON'T DO at any time, and which even pollen doesn't produce in flowering plants). Very weird. Like I said, I get lively dreams when I exercise before bed.

Hopefully the fact that I only had one glass of water at lunch today won't impair tonight's dreams. We'll see.

The most frustrating neuroscience in the world has to be language development. I mean, by definition, this is a process that occurs in all humans, so there's this irrational thought that we SHOULD KNOW ALL THIS BY EXPERIENCE, but at the same time, it by nature occurs before we have the proper verbal skills to describe the process. Either that, or those "innocent little babies" are really part of a secret, worldwide gang that intends to keep hidden its secrets of operation (those secrets which enable its members to puke with impunity, evoke pity when they cry -- even for the billionth time in the night, and learn language from nonprofessionals faster than the best software can manage) so well that those entering loose-lipped toddlerhood are selectively memory-wiped.

But I suppose the whole "lack of verbal skills" might explain it too. There's been studies into this, and scientists have actually found that if they test a kid's vocabulary, then expose him to a memorable experience (say, some sort of "magical" machine that in fact operates by some stealthy substitutions of toys within it), if they ask them about it later, when they have a larger vocabulary, they will still describe it at a vocabulary level consistent with the first exposure. Thus, for the period of time we have no vocabulary, by and large our memories do not exist in a retrievable format (though they could be there, there's just no way to grab them or interpret them), and we just have to figure it out by what we observe from outside other babies.

Reality check. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." - Noam Chomsky (theoretical linguist)