I think one of the things I love most about being in an academic environment is the exposure to all sorts of interesting things. Within the last week, I've been to:

• a screening of the 2003 documentary Invisible Children profiling children in Northern Uganda as they engage in night commutes to avoid being abducted into the Lord's Resistance Army;
• a lecture by Robert S. Lawrence, MD, (Professor of Environmental Health Sciences and of Health Policy and Management, and Director of the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins) on "The Public Health Effects of Industrialized Agriculture" in which the development of antimicrobial resistant strains of bacteria in animal farms and the environmental effects of monocropping were discussed;
• a concert of "Music and Poetry of the Jews of Renaissance Italy" featuring liturgical and secular works performed in Yiddish, Italian (and Baggito), Hebrew, and Aramaic.

I've discovered that I'm interested in things I'd never even thought about or considered before. This makes me glad to know that I haven't been consumed by my discipline and that I can still entertain curiosities that have nothing to do with what I'm supposed to need to know. I can't wait to find out what I run into next...