News You Can Bruise for 2001 December 3

Starting at 3:30 I will be undergoing an unknown but non-zero amount of dental pain. It's the first of many such excursions to come. Wish me luck.

I'm back from my root canal. There was hardly any pain at all, though I did feel some trepidation watching clouds of tooth dust emerge from my mouth. I feel fine, and I have painkillers to take when the Novocaine wears off.

While undergoing the dentistry I thought of an anecdote told me by Prof. Hsu, with whom I had two philosophy classes at UCLA. The subject was sense-impressions and incorrigibility, and Hsu talked about how once, while under the drill, he had complained of pain. His dentist had denied that he [Hsu] could possibly be in any pain; his brain (said the dentist) was just translating the vibrations of the drill into pain.

Oh: my tooth had roots of 27 millimeters in length, which is apparently so long that the normal dentistry equipment can't handle it. I feel strangely proud about this; I've always known that my teeth were mutants (I had three upper right front teeth), and this is another example.

Publisher's Clearinghouse meets the post-9/11 cliche:

THE TERRORISTS MAY HAVE ALREADY WON!