The New Yorker Went Uptown

So: to conclude about the public conversation between Oliver Sacks and Larissa MacFarquhar, aired before at least 100 people at Columbia University's Miller Theatre.

I was most interested in what Dr. Sacks had to say about music. It's the opposite of chaos, he said. It's more precise than language, and it's necessary. (Does this include opera? Is opera necessary?)

Note how I'm not elaborating on what he said. Not fresh in my mind any more.

My sketchy notes state that with brain imaging, somebody (which somebody, I don't indicate) can detect a lie but not a false belief. That was interesting, too.

[Vague tangent: The Vocabula Review, a publication about the state of language, has a motto: Well spoken is half sung.®]

Dr. Sacks was charming, and adorable; he repeatedly stacked his sneakered feet in the manner of a small boy. Coupled with his English accent, his acutely bad hearing, and his general eccentricities, it was a wonder he wasn't mobbed by dinner invitations afterwards.