The Elephant Vanishes A Novel by Haruki Murakami On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April MorningThe Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's WomenThe Last Lawn of the AfternoonBarn BurningSleep+1 More
Barn Burning A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami The first in agesFive barns worth burningI keep getting older
On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami 100% perfect
The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Who I was supposed to beQuittingA regular wind-up toy world this is
The Last Lawn of the Afternoon A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami She was wanting to break it off
A Slow Boat to China A Short Story from The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami Can you even call it memory?Never any place I was meant to be
Note-Taking for Pencilophobes An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by Piotr Naskrecki MantisAn extension of my brainRecordingsThe era of paper
Mantis One of the first relational databases for biologists was Biota. Unfortunately, in its early stages of implementation, Biota did not yet have all the elements that my work on taxonomy, systematics, and behavior of katydids required. I decided to develop my own solution, and Mantis was born. There is a fairly long list of data points, but having a database designed specifically to record them simplifies the record-keeping process tremendously.
An extension of my brain Mantis has become an extension of my brain, and extra memory storage space that never forgets anything and thus, I am convinced, is a reason for major memory lapses on my part. Why should I make an effort to remember the author of that paper on the courtship behavior of Cyphoderris when I can quickly look it up?
Recordings Of course, I do not carry my laptop with me when out in the first at night, and if anything requires me to make a note I either record it as a voice message on the sound recorder (which I always carry with me), or make a note in a small, waterproof notebook.
The era of paper Instant availability and portability of data make research in the field infinitely easier for scientists, but what is lost is the feeling of slow accumulation of knowledge and the physical evidence of one’s scientific prestige—the extensive shelves of important-looking volumes and journals. There is no denying it, the era of paper is fading fast, and I can easily imagine a time when students will be perplexed by the strange, primitive implement known as the pencil. As far as I am concerned, this time cannot come soon enough.