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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| Getting back to my list of solar system articles, this one's about a planet most of you know. When will the Earth try to kill us again?  Most mass extinctions began with vast convulsions of Earth’s interior—can we detect that? Why would you want to detect that? Are you going to try to warn the rest of us, who won't listen, and end up sending your kid away in a rocket to a distant planet where they'll have superpowers? But seriously, though, unless we can do something about an impending disaster (or would that be displanet), just don't tell us. We're still doomed, only without the riots and panic. Our planet Earth has extinguished large portions of its inhabitants several times since the dawn of animals. Think of it like shaking an Etch-a-Sketch. And if science tells us anything, it will surely try to kill us all again. Except now, it's got competition. Well, it always did; the asteroid impact wasn't the planet's fault, except maybe for having the audacity to orbit into the path of the asteroid. But now we're the competition, too. Though, philosophically, we're part of the planet, so maybe it spawned us for the purpose of wiping out the latest Etch-a-Sketch. But it seems like, in terms of mass extinction events, scary meteorites are in the minority. In the words of researchers David Bond and Stephen Grasby, who reviewed the evidence in 2016: “Despite much searching, there remains only one confirmed example of a bolide impact coinciding with an extinction event.” Real quick: Asteroid: rock in space (though as I've said before, this should be the name for hemorrhoids) Meteor: the same rock, in the atmosphere, leaving an ionization trail Meteorite: the same rock, having hit the ground. Bolide: the rock explodes before it hits the ground. There's more to it than all that, but I find it unlikely that the Chicxulub rock was technically a bolide. But whatever. Volcanism, on the other hand, has coincided with most, if not all, mass extinctions—it looks suspiciously like a serial killer, if you like. I don't like. No. It's not like we can arrest Hephaestus. This isn’t your regular Vesuvius/St. Helens/Hawaii style volcanism. It’s not even super-volcanoes like Yellowstone or Tambora. I’m talking about something far, far bigger: a rare, epic volcanic phenomenon called a Large Igneous Province or “LIP.” LIP? What the fuck, geologists? Anyway, the article goes on to describe these doomsday events, in excruciating detail, with color graphics even. So if our serial killer is the volcanism associated with an LIP eruption, when will it strike again? And can we beat it to the punch? Their images reveal fat mantle plumes, regions of hot rock as wide as France, rising like chimneys through the mantle. C'est très chaud. LIPs may be on a cycle. On average, there’s one every 15 million years, with the last occurring 16 million years ago (the Columbia River LIP in northwestern USA). By that rough reckoning, we are overdue for another. That's not how averages work, and a science author oughta know that. Still, it could happen at any time. Sooner or later, as Susan Ivanova said on Babylon 5, boom. It's inevitable. And if Olson is right, the field reversal will give us more than 30 million years’ advance warning of the next LIP (for perspective, human ancestors separated from chimp ancestors about 7 million years ago). So, no need to worry about the sun turning into a red giant in 5 billion years or so. We're doomed long before that. Get your kid into a rocket now! The climate effects of volcanic gases are deadlier still. Stratospheric sulfur from Laki cooled the planet by 1.3 degrees Celsius for three years, triggering one of the most severe winters on record in Europe, North America, Russia, and Japan. That seems perfect right about now. Unfortunately, as the article notes, it's short-lived and followed by a much longer warming period. At the end of the Permian, the Siberian Traps LIP erupted staggering quantities of lava for 300,000 years with relatively little environmental effect, just like the Paraná–Etendeka and Columbia River LIPs. Precise rock dating shows that Earth’s most severe mass extinction only began when sheets of magma, called “sills,” began to inject underground through sediments rich in fossil fuels, igniting them and baking off gases, as Seth Burgess describes: Whew, good thing we've gotten rid of most of those fossil fuels, then. Human mining and burning of fossil fuels mimics the most deadly LIPs. Even if LIP greenhouse gas emissions were larger and lasted far longer, our emission rates are far faster, so they are just as capable of overwhelming Earth’s neutralizing mechanisms. This is compounded by a cacophony of other man-made environmental disturbances (pollution, acid rain, deforestation, and so on). Or not. One of the talking points I hear from climate change deniers is that the climate has changed before. While technically true, in those cases, no one was around who could have caused it, or could have done anything about it. We did, and we can. But we won't. |
| Today's list, from Cracked, is way too short. It fails, for example, to tell the story of "Mad" Mike Hughes, the flat-earth rocket scientist who, in an effort to see for himself the flatness of the planet, built a steam-powered rocket in the wilderness of Southern California, and promptly died in a lithobraking maneuver. I wrote about him, last year, here: "Bad Advice" So here's more of that sort of thing, albeit not nearly as steam-powered: Stubbornness isn’t a particularly delightful trait to interact with. It is also not a virtue, no matter how stubbornly people insist it is. Dealing with a bullheaded friend or acquaintance is likely to end with a prominent forehead vein and a conversation that concludes in “okay, whatever, I don’t even care anymore.” When a Gen-X meets a Taurus... Combine that same stubbornness with an incorrect belief that’s considerably higher stakes, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Like crashing your homemade rocket in the California desert. With you inside. Or like these items: 4. Franz Reichelt For whatever reason, I've seen this guy from multiple sources recently. Franz Reichelt was highly interested in the human power of flight, a hobby that, throughout history, has a pretty abysmal survival rate. Reichelt, however, lived at a time where airplanes already did exist and functioned — mostly. His interest took a slightly different slant, which was the development of a parachute suit that would allow pilots, or thrill-seekers, to jump from a great height and float down safely to the ground. To give you some idea of how this went, I can assure you that Reichelt is absolutely not the inventor of the parachute. Or, for that matter, the wingsuit. After what had to be an incredibly irritating back and forth with French police, Reichelt got permission to toss one of his dummies off the top of the Eiffel Tower. When he arrived at the top, though, he committed one of history’s most ill-advised and disastrous switcheroos, deciding he would wear the suit and jump himself. And that, mes amis, is why today we call it the I-Fell Tower. 3. Herman Cain As far as jokes about stubbornness go, politics is rather low-hanging fruit. But this guy was an entire branch of low-hanging fruits. No person became more of a grim figurehead of the health risks of being a huge asshole than ex-presidential candidate Herman Cain. I guess he wasn't Abel to let go of his stubbornness. 2. William J. Bailey Throughout history, humans have come up with no shortage of wackadoo medical treatments and various snake oils. Snake oil, it turns out, has legitimate uses. Most of the things we label "snake oil" are just useless. Some might actually do something, but no one's done studies. They don't make up for the ones that, you know, kill people. In the 1920s, for example, radium was all the rage. Yes, the radioactive kind. Looking back, you can find it casually included in all sorts of consumer products like makeup or the glowing numerals on a watch face. Maybe the most straightforward, and incredibly stupid application was invented by a man named William J. Bailey, who created and sold Radithor, an “energy tonic” that was created from the simple recipe of water plus radium. I'm not an expert on radioactivity (there are different kinds of radioactivity, and some of them are relatively harmless if their sources stay outside your body), but my understanding is that ingesting radium is particularly harmful because the body's chemical processes think it's calcium. So you end up with radioactive bones. Suddenly, those glow-in-the-dark skeletons you see around Halloween aren't so cute, are they? 1. The Titanic This one's so famous that I don't know why they even bothered including it on this list. It might not be a single person, but I don’t think we could really end this article without acknowledging one of the greatest acts of human overconfidence in history. This is true, but few of the people involved were directly, corporeally affected. The submersible that went to look at the wreckage earlier this year, though... |
| The random number gods bring us back to the solar system today, but this time we're talking about a planet that only exists in educated speculation. Before Pluto achieved dwarf planet status, that would have been Planet Ten. I will admit, Planet X sounds better than Planet IX. But maybe I'll start calling it Planet Ix. At 9,200 feet, there is 20 percent less oxygen than at sea level, enough to take all the air from my lungs after just three steps. Is it bad that I understood immediately why one would open an astronomy article with this sentence? I had to walk very slowly when I was at the peak of Haleakala, where a bunch of telescopes lurk. This wasn't Maui, though, but that other island. And the actual telescope is a couple thousand feet higher. We were at base camp on the dormant volcano Mauna Kea, on the big Island of Hawaii. The pair were here to use one of the most powerful telescopes in the world, called Subaru. Which has nothing to do with the car company; both take their names from what we call the Pleiades. Tomorrow night, December 3, marked the start of their sixth observing run and their next attempt to find the biggest missing object in our solar system, called — for the moment — Planet Nine. Yeah, I'm gonna call it Ix. The article is from Longreads, so... well, it's right there in the name. I won't be quoting a lot more of it, but I wanted to highlight a few relevant sections. As a theorist Batygin feels that he’s already mathematically proven its existence. But it’s generally accepted that for a planet to be considered discovered in the field of astronomy, the theory must also be accompanied by a photograph. I know I've pointed this out somewhere before, but a while back, a planet inside Mercury's orbit was "mathematically proven." They figured one had to be there based on perturbations in Mercury's orbits. Some people even claimed to have images of it, taken during eclipses or whatever. So they called it Vulcan, after the forge god (not to be confused with, well, you know). You think it was bad when Pluto was designated a dwarf planet? Imagine renumbering all the planets. Earth becomes Planet 4, for example. Anyway, short version, there was no Vulcan; the images were false and Mercury's orbit was fully explained by Einstein. I'm not saying the data pointing to Planet Ix is nothing but gravitational anomalies, but there's still a lot we don't understand. Which is why we do science. Part of their job was first to try to find a solution less extreme— like a passing star or a galactic anomaly — than a giant undiscovered planet far off in the depths of the solar system, because, a hidden planet? That was absurd. See, now, to me, a passing star or a galactic anomaly would be more weird than a hitherto unobserved planet. But that's why they get paid the big bucks. (I'm joking; astronomers don't get paid the big bucks.) After the observing run was complete, I asked the pair if they ever felt that trying to find Planet Nine was ridiculous, that the whole notion of a giant missing planet and the efforts they have gone to to find it ever make them feel defeated. They both gave me roughly the same response: no. Their answer brought to mind the French philosopher and writer Albert Camus. He thought a lot about the myth of Sisyphus and plucked his unfortunate mythical backstory away from the root of his actions, the eternal task of pushing a boulder up a mountain only to watch it fall back down again. Right? Because the telescope is located at the summit of a mountain, and the astronomers are like Sisyphus, climbing and descending the mountain over and over again. Like I said, a long read, and a lot of it is, pun intended, atmosphere. But I found it fascinating. Life is barely possible at the summit of that volcano; it has, as the article notes, barely enough oxygen to survive, let alone move around and do stuff. When I went up Haleakala—from which you can see Mauna Kea off in the distance—I'd brought a bottle of Coke with me. When I finished it, up at the summit, I twisted the top back on and left it in the car, because I didn't want to add to any trash at the peak. After enjoying the cold, thin air for a couple of hours, we headed back down the mountain. Back near sea level, in Kehei, I went to toss the bottle into a bin, and saw that, despite the cap being tightly screwed on, it had crumpled, as if squeezed by a fist; this was physical proof of the vast difference in air pressure. And Haleakala is "only" at about 10,000 feet. My point here is that outside of a thin membrane of habitability, proportionally thinner than an eggshell, the Universe is actively trying to kill us. And yet we continue to push that boundary to learn everything we can about this vast, uncaring expanse. Whether we find proof of Planet Ix or not, there's something to be said for the lengths we'll go to in order to try. |
| Yes, it's time once again to have a look at word origins. I don't necessarily take all these as absolute truth. Etymology, as the article itself notes, is littered with guesswork and outright falsehoods. Consider it a starting point. Also, no, I'm not listing all 71 words here. That would be cumbersome Which, it should be noted, is a word based on the archaic word "cumber," which itself seems to be from "encumber," which, though older, is still in use today. English is weird. An even older origin places "encumber" as a derivative of yet another French loan word that changed its original meaning. So that's bonus etymology #72. 1. Vaccine Yeah, this one's seen a lot of use lately. The word vaccine derives indirectly from the Latin for cow, vacca. The story goes that, just before the turn of the 19th century, a British doctor named Edward Jenner observed that milkmaids who had contracted cowpox, or variolae vaccinae, were much less likely to contract smallpox, which could otherwise devastate entire communities. The article lists a bunch of Romance languages whose word for cow is obviously related to vacca. But it fails to mention the French version, which is vache. 4. Shampoo "Why do people need shampoo when there's so much of the real stuff around?" Okay, that's a pun, not an etymology. See also: sham-pain 6. Chortle Lewis Carroll’s poem “Jabberwocky” has a character chortle in joy. It seems Carroll combined the words chuckling and snorting to build a new, intuitively understood verb. Carroll was remarkably good at making up words that sounded right. 16., 17., and 18. Sinister, Dexterity, and Ambidextrous These are, I think, pretty obvious. Or at least, I've known about their origins for a long time, though perhaps only because at one point, I studied Latin. I'm only including them because there's a parallel in French. Even though it's a Latin-derived language, their words for left and right aren't related to sinister and dexter, respectively. But it's almost as bad: left is "gauche," which has a negative meaning in English; right is "droite," which is very similar to that other right, meaning correct, which is "droit." (We have words based on that, too: adroit and maladroit.) Southpaws just can't catch a break in any language, it seems. 24. Pundit In contrast, this is one I'd always wondered about, though never enough to be arsed to look it up. Pundit comes to us from a Sanskrit word that has been transliterated as pundit, pandit, or pandita (पण्डित). It originally referred to someone who had committed to memory a significant amount of the Hindu religious texts known as the Vedas. It came to refer more generally to something like “a learned man” or “philosopher” by the 19th century, and today that meaning has expanded to include people who like to yell at one another on cable news. They call it the Indo-European language group for good reason. 27. Tycoon And yes, English has more than its share of non-Indo-European origin words, like "taboo" or this one. Tycoon comes to the United States via the Japanese taikun, a word whose Chinese roots mean “great ruler.” And it's definitely got its origins in US English. I don't know if they use it in other Anglophone countries or not. 29. Nimrod This is an example of a word whose modern usage origin is subject to some misinformation. Whatever the origin, it’s often stated that Bugs Bunny helped popularize the derogatory meaning of the word when he lobbed it at everyone’s favorite hapless hunter, Elmer Fudd. But no one ever actually mentions which ‘toon that was in; we found that Daffy actually calls Elmer “nimrod” in 1948’s What Makes Daffy Duck. Bugs used it in reference to Yosemite Sam three years later in Rabbit Every Monday. Never underestimate the cultural power of old Warner Brothers cartoons. 33. Orange And orange comes from, well … oranges. Its predecessors include the Middle French orange and the Sanskrit naranga-s, but what’s really interesting to note is that English didn’t really have a word for this color for centuries. I've heard it said that "orange" came from "an orange," which in turn was slurred from "a naranj." I don't know how true any of this is, but it seems to me that the fruit named the color, rather than vice-versa. 38. Gerrymandering Come on; I learned the origin of this one in, like, eighth-grade social studies, complete with a memorable image of an early American political cartoon.  42. Silhouette I did, like, a whole entry on this one a while back. 58. Window Another one I've wondered about. "Windshield" is obviously a descriptive name for a window-like pane in the front of a car, one which bears similarity to a window, so did "window" have its origins in "wind?" Window comes from the Old Norse vindauga, or “wind eye.” It originally referred to a hole in the roof, but over the years made the jump down to glazed glass usually found on a wall. Probably, yes. 63. and 64. Flower and Flour Not just a rich source of puns, these words actually have the same origin, it seems: Flower comes from the French fleur, and so does flour. The part of a plant used to make flour—the kind that you mill—was considered the “flower of the grain,” the best part. Interestingly, the French word for "flower" is still "fleur," but their word for "flour" is "farina." 67. Walrus Despite its Latin second-declension noun ending, "walrus" probably didn't come from Latin. Goo goo g'joob. 69. Nice I've written about this one here before, too. I'm just including it because I'll bet $69 that they purposely made it #69 just so they could write "69. Nice." And finally, one of my favorite topics: 71. Science Last, but definitely not least. The Latin word nescius comes from the prefix ne-, for not, and a form of the Latin verb scire, “to know.” That verb also eventually gave us science, which even today isn’t far from its mid-14th century meaning, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary: “What is known, knowledge (of something) acquired by study; information.” While science is more of a process than a strict body of knowledge, the word origin here is less disputable than most. |
| Another link from Cracked, this time about drinking. Except that "modern drinkers" quaff kombucha, which is objectively disgusting. Also, veggie smoothies. Nowadays, even the humblest watering holes are going to have a wealth of beverages available for those looking to tip back a glass of their preferred shape and size. And yet, it's almost never enough variety for me. Here are four ancient drinks that show how good modern drinkers have it. To be sure, the original beer doesn't seem very appetizing to me. And you had to drink it through a straw, because Sumer, for all of its innovations, hadn't figured out filtering. 4. Airag/Kumis If you were part of the Mongol army and were seeking a pick-me-up after a long day of pillaging, the drink of choice would have been airag, now known by its Turkish name, kumis, which, given its appearance, doesn’t seem like much of an improvement. Now, for such a nomadic people, it wasn’t as if they were able to tote wheat fields or barrels of grapes along, so they had to make do with what they had. And what they had, in great numbers, were horses. Horses that could, to their delight and our disgust, be milked. That might disgust some people, but really, is it that different from cow's milk? Also, sheep's milk is still a thing. They're all herbivores. No, the origin isn't the disgusting part. The disgusting part is that, since almost any sugar can be fermented into alcohol, and milk contains a kind of sugar, well... The fermentation wasn’t purely for producing alcohol content, but because straight mare’s milk is apparently nature’s Ex-Lax, and fermenting it kept a little bit more of your insides, well, inside. Making the horse milk a little boozy was just a happy side effect, and the concoction wasn’t only tolerated, but celebrated as one of the sources of the Mongols’ strength. For some of us, any mammal milk is basically nature's Ex-Lax. 3. Kykeon Kykeon, a drink that pops up throughout Greek mythology and history, did indeed have the rep of fucking you up, but not by benefit of its ABV. It was instead supposed to have hallucinogenic properties. One thing that most hallucinogens seem to have in common, not that I have any experience with them, is that they can cause great gastric distress. That keeps me away from them more than the whole "illegal" thing does. Well, the O.G. recipe isn’t exactly mega appealing, being made from water (okay), barley (sure), herbs (fair enough) and ground goat cheese (hmm). Goat cheese? Oh no, that's disgusting! Wait, no it's not. Goats are another mammal it's okay to milk (see above). I'm going to provisionally put this one in the "not that objectively gross" category. 2 Posca Posca was the fuel of choice for the Roman troops — at least, the ones poor enough that they couldn’t afford to drink anything better. If they were rich, they wouldn't have been troops. The sales pitch was that it was great for revitalizing tired troops and fighting infection, which is what you might have to tell someone to get this shit down their gullet. Posca was made from red wine vinegar, water, herbs, spices and honey. Okay, not something I'd drink, but all of those things are stuff most of us have swallowed. 1. Three Penis Wine Yeah... no. Let me disappoint you immediately by clarifying that this is not a euphemism. This is, fairly straightforwardly, wine infused with the tangy taste and power of three different animal penises. Maybe that's why they invented the word "cocktail." Then there's that drink with the human toe in it. No, I'm not going to look it up to link it. You can Google same as I can. Not to fact-check a sitcom’s fake infomercial, but their precise penis combo is a little off, as true three penis wine contains seal, deer and dog penises. As this is supposedly a magical potion for improving one's sexual prowess, and potions are based on sympathetic magic, you'd think they'd have taken a cue from the Mongols and used horse dong. I guess maybe that was a steppe too far. |
| Today, we're going all the way back to 2008 for a prototype comment-on-an-external-link format blog entry: "Finally!" It's short, but as the story is fifteen years old, it's no surprise that the link there is dead. No big deal; I could tell what it was about by the lede I'd copied: SILVERTON, Ore. -- Management for a popular Silverton restaurant announced Thursday that young children would no longer be allowed into the establishment. The manager at the Red Thai restaurant on Oak Street said children younger than 6 aren't welcome in the eatery. Naturally, the questions, here in the future, are obvious: Is there still a Red Thai restaurant on Oak Street in Silverton, Oregon? And if so, is it under the same management? After all, even restaurants without controversial (but excellent) policies close down on a regular basis. Controversy might give them a temporary boost, but they'd have to keep generating more to get such free advertising. A quick search revealed that, indeed, the Red Thai Room on Oak Street was, sadly, no longer in business. I can't be absolutely certain that "Red Thai Room" and the "Red Thai Restaurant" as mentioned in the news link are the same, but I'd bet money on it. My source? Yelp, which for some reason keeps records like that. There were only two reviews, both from 2008, on the "recommended" page, both positive, but containing no mention of their wonderful policy.What I found completely amusing was the dueling reviews on the "not recommended" page: one one-star bitching about the no-brats rule, and another with five stars singing the praises of the no-brats rule.Well. The former restaurant, now singing with the choir eternal, was, according to that Yelp page, located at 211 Oak Street. If the review dates are anything to go by, the restaurant, to my great sadness, didn't last long with its glorious policy. But, if you're ever out that way, apparently there's another restaurant at that same address: Sandee Thai Restaurant. What an amazing coincidence that the cuisine hasn't changed, but the name has.Their food looks delicious, by the way, but I'm certainly biased as I love Thai food, or at least what passes for it in the US. The hotter the better. It generally requires some convincing them that, yes, even though I have pale skin, light hair and blue eyes, I love me some Thai spice; but usually, they acquiesce to my request. Though sometimes, they'll stand there with a carton of milk and watch me take the first few bites. Just in case. I'm not ragging on people who don't tolerate spice well, incidentally. People like what they like. Only on the inherent racism of assuming that I'd be one of them, based on my looks. And yes, I'm aware of the seeming contradiction between this and my desire not to eat around toddlers. Do not expect me to be consistent, but in this case, it's the difference between someone enjoying their meal in peace, or acting like zoo primates. Back to my original entry, my words: But it's nice to think about other restaurants, preferably ones in my area, following suit and denying entry to screaming kids. To me, there's little worse than being at a restaurant and having them seat a kid near me. Even when they're quiet, I end up losing my appetite when I see them eat. I'd rather be near smokers, or even loud drunks. Sadly, the policy never caught on. Fortunately, my tolerance for the antics of young children in restaurants has increased since then, though if they try to seat me near one, I usually try to obtain a different table. Also fortunately, I'm far more likely, when I'm at home, to order takeout or delivery, thus avoiding both screaming kids and disbelief that a white guy likes his food Thai hot. |
| You're going to die. That (along with taxes) is one of the great certainties of life. Cracked is here to make jokes about it. If you think too much about your own mortality, you will wind up on the floor, spinning on your back and screaming at the sky. Floor, yeah. Spinning? It's the room doing that. You should live forever; anything else is unfair. Until you realize that "forever" is a null concept, and you'll still expire from energy depletion at some point before the heat death of the universe but long after you began suffering billions of years of pure boredom. Side note: Nothing we’re going to talk about today is a true paradox. I'm really glad they pointed this out, so that I don't have to. In fact, there are no true paradoxes, anywhere. Paradoxes cannot exist. Anytime someone comes up with a paradox, it’s either a trick of language or they invented imaginary, contradictory premises and are now acting surprised that they contradict each other. Which is what I've been saying, but no one listens to me. 5. If You’re Drunk, You’re Safer Driving Home Than Walking Drunk driving laws aren't about keeping you safe. The article does a fine job explaining the basis of this conclusion, which, again, involves no paradox; it's merely counter to common sense. Because common sense is generally bullshit, which is why we have science. In any case, a few moments' thought should be enough to realize that, whether you're drunk or not, driving should be safer than walking (assuming walking along streets and roads); when driving, we're at least protected in a metal cage. Especially when the person in that cage is drunk. In reality, you don’t have to choose between driving drunk and walking drunk. The easiest and safest option is to just get a ride, with someone else driving. Even easier: drink at home. 4. Those Who Drive Slightly Above the Average Speed Get in Fewer Accidents This earned another "duh" from me, but just because I expected it doesn't mean there was data to support it. Here’s a helpful chart that notes you’ll be perfectly safe if everyone's stationary, but things get a little riskier from that point on. There is no such thing as "perfectly safe." (You'll have to go to the article to see the chart.) One landmark study from 1964 tried to find the relationship between a car’s speed relative to others and the chance of getting into a collision. This look at 10,000 crashes determined that, yes, if you drive faster than the median speed, that raises your chance of a collision. Oh. That explains minimum speed limits that exist on some roads. Two semesters of traffic engineering classes, and I never did get a good justification for that, or how many tickets cops gleefully write when there's a jam and everyone's below the minimum speed limit. For decades, attempts to replicate the study produced similar results. More recent studies haven’t, so the latest advice is to err on the side of going too slow if you can’t keep pace with everyone else. You know what really burns my butt from both a driving and traffic engineering perspective? It's when they give trucks a lower speed limit on the same stretch of road. That never made sense to me. In any case, automobile (and to a lesser extent, road) technology has advanced in the last 60 years since that study, so it's not too surprising that it hasn't been replicated recently. 3. People Who Take Multivitamins Die Sooner You know who else supposedly dies sooner? People who eat only raw fruits and vegetables. Well... allegedly. I was trying to find a link to the story about the influenza who promoted such a diet and croaked at the age of 30, but all I found were tabloids. Not linking those here. Oh, well; I knew it was too good to be true. Unless you’re vitamin-deficient, popping vitamin supplements will offer you no benefit whatsoever. No, but it does benefit the chemical engineers who make the vitamin supplements. Won't anyone think of their well-being? Nutrition scientists found themselves with a lot of vitamin data to examine thanks to the Iowa Women's Health Study, which surveyed some 40,000 women as they aged through 20 years. Comparing people who took vitamin and mineral supplements to those who didn’t, the researchers found that the supplemented humans were 6 percent more likely to die each year than their unenhanced counterparts. Ugh. "Nutrition scientists:" I don't trust that lot. "Women:" While it's good that there's more focus on women's health, it's not exactly an exhaustive cross-section of society. About the only positive thing about that study is the sample size. This is why it's important to not succumb to confirmation bias. Also, consider this possibility (in addition to the caveats in the linked article): When you do one thing that's "good," it's possible that you slack off on other things that are "good." Like maybe you think it's enough to eat a balanced, low-calorie diet, and don't bother with exercise, or vice-versa. Or, like me, you figure that since you didn't reproduce, you're free to emit as much carbon into the burning atmosphere as you like. So "I'm taking vitamins, so I can slack off on other health habits" might very well be a thing. I don't know. 2. A Century Ago, Rich Women Died Giving Birth More Often Than Poor Women This one's interesting enough, but I don't have much to say about it. This final one, though, that's what really lit up all the LEDs on my confirmation bias: 1. The Stockdale Paradox: Optimism Kills Vice Admiral James Stockdale spent over seven years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. You already know that situation is what's commonly known as "fucked." For his own amusement, he left fake notes for his captors to find, and to further pass the time, he did logarithmic math by writing in the dust. Conclusion: math can keep you alive and relatively sane. Years later, he was asked about the hundred or so American POWs in the Hỏa Lò Prison who died before the prisoners were released in 1973. Stockdale said the ones who didn’t make it were “the optimists.” As I've been saying: expect the worst, and you can only be pleasantly surprised. This is the least scientific of the phenomena we’ve talked about today. But we wanted to leave you with it because we began this post by saying that reflecting on your mortality will leave you delirious and feeble. That’s not really true. It's also, again, not a paradox. It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion. No, it's not scientific. Designing a study to back this up would itself be a war crime. Even interviewing other former POWs is ethically questionable, as it brings up trauma. Still, I'll continue my pessimist ways, to wit: we're all going to die. |
| I distinctly remember, when computers started taking over in the 1970s, predictions of how much less work we'd have to do, how much leisure time we would be granted because of these great labor-saving devices. How we'd be able to devote the extra time to creating poetry, art, philosophy... Around the world, the four-day week is inching towards grasping distance. For many, I am living the work-life balance dream. Living in some imminent utopian future in which, in return for decades of increasing productivity for relatively little increase in pay and in light of a global epidemic of stress, the four-day work week becomes the next great shift in the way we structure work and leisure. Except that, from what I've heard, it's a shift from five 8-hour days to four 10-hour days. This is OK, say economists and employers, because actually productivity does not decline when workplaces shift. Whew. I'm so glad Holy Productivity is safe. You know what would be utopian? John Maynard Keynes predicted a two-day work week. Work two days, fish five. For the same standard of living. Like most economists, he was wrong, but it sure did sound good—to everyone, apparently, except the ones getting rich off other peoples' labor, and they're the only ones whose opinion counts.Because as that fifth day opens up, one starts to feel the weight of its infinite potential and the questions start to pile up. What will you achieve on that fifth day? Can you justify non-work on a weekday? Can you stop work seeping to that day? Maybe the only thing you need to achieve is non-achievement. Maybe you don't have to justify anything. Not so long ago, being able to pursue or enjoy leisure for its own sake was a marker of your elevated place in the social hierarchy. Now our busyness, the demands on our time, writes sociologist Jonathan Gershuny, has become a key signifier of social status. Oh, good, more proof that I'm on the very bottom of the social hierarchy. Eighty years ago philosopher Bertrand Russell, in calling for a four-hour working day, suggested “a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work”. Work is its own punishment. I would steadfastly not work-work – take no calls, check no emails – but I could not escape the feeling that I must be accountable for that time. The idea of rest came with a spectre of guilt. I know this is just one person writing, but to me this sounds like a massive social problem. A 2019 study, The Rest Test, led by psychologist and BBC radio presenter Claudia Hammond, found that for many people the prospect of resting was associated with anxiety and guilt. Look, I come from a culture structured around guilt. My mom was a travel agent for guilt trips. No matter what I did as a kid, I was always "supposed" to be doing something else. I grew to hate the concept of guilt. And so, I planned my day with precision. In other words, you worked. For no purpose other than my enjoyment of it. I leave the house and, from exactly 12:15pm to 1:15pm, I go to an exercise class I love. Why would anyone need another purpose? Well, okay, I almost never do anything for just one reason. Exercise can be enjoyable and good for you. So can rest. Yet here we are, in the age of the most magnificent machines. Burnt out. It could have been different. But social attitudes tend to change slowly, if at all, and there's that continued emphasis on the need to justify your existence by producing something for others. I'm glad I got off that treadmill. To me, work was always about obtaining sufficient resources for myself that I would never have to work again. Which doesn't mean I never do things considered "work," but I do them on my own terms. And yes, I know some people find work satisfying and meaningful. I'm not ragging on that at all. People are different. But what this author talks about sounds more like neuroticism than meaning. |
| Y'all should know by now that I'm a Star Trek fan. Not enough to dress funny and go to conventions, but I appreciate the various shows and movies (mostly). But despite comments like the one I made the other day about Zefram Cochrane inventing the warp drive, I know it's fiction, mythology, and metaphor, not future reality. For one thing, I doubt very much that there are other tech-capable species in our vicinity (and there are almost certainly none that look like us but with forehead bumps), and for another... Is Star Trek’s Warp Drive Possible? The concept of the warp drive is currently at odds with everything we know to be true about physics. And yes, I know that our understanding of physics is evolving and that lots of things that used to be considered impossible, aren't. So while some things are definitely impossible (counting to infinity, e.g.), I hesitate to give technological advancements that label. Central to science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, is the ability to travel the galaxy at speeds far faster than light via a fictional technology called a “warp drive.” What is that, and will we ever have one? Trek didn't come up with the concept; it's been around in various forms in SF for probably half as long as there's been SF (which roughly corresponds to the time frame in which we've known that matter cannot be accelerated to or past the speed of light). A provisional answer is “no.” According to the accepted laws of science, nothing can travel faster than light. That is, based on my admittedly limited knowledge, an oversimplification at best. But close enough for our purposes. The distances are so vast that interstellar travel would take lifetimes. Not if we extend our lifetimes by uploading our consciousnesses into machines... another thing that may not turn out to be possible. That makes for a boring sci-fi plot, so the creators of Star Trek invented a convenient, but imaginary, technology. Again, they didn't invent it, even conceptually. Early shows weren't even consistent in how it was supposed to work. They did, arguably, popularize it, though. According to Star Trek canon, the warp drive works by creating a “warp bubble” around the spaceship, inside of which space is literally warped. In front of the spaceship, space is compressed, while behind the vessel, it is expanded. In this way, a spaceship never travels faster than light; it merely passes through a shorter distance. The difference between "traveling faster than light" and "passing through a shorter distance" really needs more explanation here, but the article couldn't be arsed, and neither can I. Plenty of information out there, though, if you look for it. Is this realistic? Maybe. "Maybe" does a lot of heavy lifting here. In 1994, theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre found a solution that distorted space in a way very similar to that originally envisioned by the creators of Star Trek. Under exactly the right conditions, it is possible to expand space behind an object and compress it in front. The Alcubierre Drive is something I've seen stuff about before. There's still a difference between something being theoretically possible, and actually attaining it. For example, from what we know about quantum mechanics, it's theoretically possible for an object of arbitrary size to suddenly appear seemingly out of nowhere. The chance of this happening, though, would be akin to that of an individual winning a fair lottery... every day for a billion years. If the universe really is infinite, though, this has happened. Hell, it might be the actual origin of the universe. Doesn't mean we can make it happen. There is a problem, though. To accomplish this distortion, researchers would have to use negative energy—that is, reduce the energy of empty space to below zero. According to Einstein, a warp drive requires an impossible premise. That, the negative energy bit, is definitely a serious problem. That doesn't excuse the article's appeal to authority. Einstein was right about a great many things, but we don't just take his word for it; we do experiments to back up the theory. He was human; he was wrong about a great many things. Just ask his wife. Therefore, while scientists try to find loopholes in the conditions required for Alcubierre’s solution, most think that a warp drive will not be created this way; negative energy is a mathematical artifact and not a physical phenomenon. On the flip side of that, for a long time, people considered negative numbers to be mathematical artifacts and not representative of physical phenomena. It took a paradigm shift to start thinking of them as "real" numbers. And don't even get me started on that extension of negative numbers, complex numbers. Altogether, our current understanding of the laws of nature neither allows for faster-than-light travel nor an Alcubierre-like solution to warping space. However, those who dream of traveling the stars should not give up. Scientists do not have a full understanding of the laws of nature. So yeah, I'd hesitate to call it impossible. Within the timeframe of the Star Trek series? Unlikely. Though probably not as unlikely as that other Trek mainstay, the transporter. But that's a story for another time. I have a new episode of Strange New Worlds to watch. |
| My father always told me puns are the lowest form of humor. Then he'd proceed to make jokes like "Why did Adam laugh? Because God gave him two test tickles." No, that kind of joke takes intelligence, cleverness and agility of thought, even if it is painful to hear (or read). The lowest form of humor is the fart joke. Dad jokes rule. In almost every other context, “dad” as a prefix pretty much means “shitty,” but dad jokes are a whole different thing. Whew. Another reason to be glad I'm not a dad. For those unfamiliar with the expression, “dad jokes” generally refer to what used to just be known as jokes, puns or wordplay — generally a gag based around two similar-sounding but different terms. And I'd prefer that these witticisms not be referred to as "dad jokes," but language, like a cat, tends to do what it wants to do regardless of my wishes. Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first English dictionary and one of Britain’s most celebrated intellectuals of all time, viewed puns as the lowest form of wit. And yet, they persevere. It wasn’t always like this. “Every culture, as far as we know, has some form of wordplay,” says Attardo, who has written extensively on the subject. “Every language has syllables, and as soon as you have syllables strung in a row, you can switch them around. That’s universal.” However, he explains, this doesn’t mean all languages use it for humor. In some cultures, for instance, wordplay is used for magical, symbolic or religious purposes. Humor is magical, symbolic, and religious. But yeah, this sort of thing is true. In Japan, they have national days of observance that are entirely based on wordplay. “In the gospel, when Jesus calls Peter his rock, there is a pun in there — not in the English translation, but originally, with the Latin word petrus, meaning rock. But when Jesus does that, he’s not doing it to be hilarious and deliver a dad joke, it’s more about it all having meaning attached to it, and Peter’s role being preordained.” That stuff isn't limited to the New Testament, where the pun was originally in Greek. There's numerous wordplay in the Hebrew original texts, too. Puns, of course, rarely translate outside of their original language, so this makes parts of the Bible real head-scratchers if you only read it in English. Like, I mentioned my dad's Adam joke above. In Hebrew, adam is a word for adult male human, while adamah can be translated as soil. So the writers put a pun right there in the beginning. That, along with many other Biblical names, get lost in translation. Look for the formula "I shall call him x because y," and you're looking at a badly translated play on words. There are puns in the Latin poetry of Horace and Cicero, and Shakespeare is littered with them. At least the Shakespeare ones are moderately intelligible. “By our modern perception, that’s completely inappropriate,” says Attardo. “My guess is that a pun like that would be seen as clever and layered by audiences at the time rather than something to be laughed at.” Puns are not there to be laughed at. Almost all modern humor involves anguish, pain, suffering, or sorrow, because it's a defense against these things. But a pun only causes laughter in the narrator thereof; the listener experiences the suffering. The only form of wit generally seen as an even lower art form than dad jokes is prop comedy, which is the same thing to an even more extreme degree — you haven’t just sat down and written that material, you’ve spent time rendering it into three dimensions, you worthless clown. I'm not generally a fan of prop comedy, but no, fart jokes are still the lowest because they're too easy. But... The net result is the same — making people laugh. If you’re laughing at how crappy a joke is, you’re laughing at the joke. It worked. You might not have wanted it to, and you might consider yourself above it all, but the joke made you laugh, goddamn it. You look that beholder right in the eye. The other reason there isn’t a lot of academic literature on dad jokes is, of course, obvious. Any time anyone tries to interview a dad-joke enthusiast about the subject and says, “Hi, I’m studying how people use jokes,” they’re met with, “Hi, Studying How People Use Jokes, I’m Dad.” It is, of course, impossible to have a serious conversation about humor. But this whole thing reminds me of a pun I'm building towards in my current fantasy RPG game. In it, I'm playing a bard, someone who uses comedy, storytelling, and music more than the traditional swords or sorcery. If you've played such a game, or seen the latest D&D movie or The Witcher, you know what kind of character I'm talking about. Well, I'm going to hook him up with a lyre, which, as you know, is an ancient stringed instrument and therefore perfectly acceptable in a medieval fantasy setting. And then, when we finally face the Big Bad Boss of the plotline, I plan to hold it up as if it were a shield and taunt her by singing, "Come on, baby, fight my lyre!" After all, eventually all villains have to face the music. |
| A couple of weeks ago, I posted a Cracked piece about ideas that started as jokes: "The Step-Parent of Invention" Today's is similar, only instead of jokes, they started as a giant middle finger. Unless you’re an actual deity (in which case, greetings, Ms. Knowles), you’ve almost certainly pulled some petty shit in your day. Actual deities invented petty. Or, well, as they don't exist, we made up stories about them that projected our own penchant for pettiness upon them. Slowed to a crawl in front of a tailgater, helpfully transferred your neighbor’s dog’s poop from your yard to theirs, squeezed all your roommate’s fruit after the third day of seeing their dishes in the sink — nothing life-ruining, just a risk-free outlet for your anger. I'd like to say I've never done anything like that. But I can't. But have you ever been so annoyed, you changed the world? One person cannot change the world. Not even Beyoncé. 4. The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator I've ragged on this before: astrology for psychology nerds. It was also a fairly useless exercise, as the MBTI has been largely dismissed as pseudoscience, probably because it was invented by a stay-at-home mom with zero psychological qualifications to throw shade on her son-in-law. Hence the "petty" part. She took over entire sections of the library as she embarked on a lifelong study of exactly what factors made her son-in-law suck so much, which her daughter finished after her death, which might have stung for poor Mr. Myers if he had any capacity for emotion. Both of my former mothers-in-law had their issues with me, but not enough to ruin the lives of everyone who ever applied for a job. 3. The Automated Telephone Exchange Let's be real: this was going to get invented eventually anyway. Back in the early days of the telephone, you had to call the operator, who would then put your call through to your mom or your side piece or whoever. And then, if they were bored, they'd listen in. You think internet surveillance is invasive? Ha. They knew who was calling who at all times, and they might even decide for you who you were calling, which must have been frustrating for people who asked for their side piece and got their mom. That was a problem Almon Brown Strowger kept running into in 1878. He was an undertaker living in Kansas City, and he just couldn’t figure out why his business was, uh, not as lively as it could be. You want to piss off the undertaker, it's your funeral. It turned out one of the local telephone operators was the wife of another undertaker, and every time someone called for Strowger, she patched them through to her husband instead. As evil plans go, that one's rather amusing. Of course, when the operators were replaced by machines, few of them likely found that amusing. There's also a nice plot twist, but I gotta save something for the article. 2. The Lamborghini This one, I knew about. What can I say? I don't talk about cars much, but I retain some of Teen Me's fascination with them. Not going to quote this one; the article is funnier than I can be. 1. The Dishwasher I've said before (including in that entry I linked above) that while necessity may be the mother of invention, laziness is the milkman. A lot of labor-saving devices came into being not out of pure necessity, but a burning desire to do less work, which of course is a worthy goal that unfortunately only means you end up filling all the time you saved with other busy work, instead of writing poetry or doing philosophy or whatever the labor-saving advocates imagined our current utopia to consist of. Today, it’s a mark of being Kardashian-level spoiled to not even know how to use a dishwasher, but it was invented by a socialite essentially as an insult to the help. But this one, if a joke site can be believed, wasn't even to save the inventor time, but to diss the servants. The socialite in question was Josephine Cochrane, the wife of a wealthy businessman living in Illinois in the mid-1800s. Must run in the family; their distant descendant, Zephram Cochrane, will invent the warp drive, the ultimate time-saving device. In summary, the dishwasher was invented because servants tended to chip the china. Which is ironic, because rare is the dishwasher machine today that doesn't chip whatever is banging around in there. I don't know about you, but if I were a servant, I'd chip the china sometimes just to be petty. |
| Today, another bit about our solar system, this one certain to be controversial. The article, from The Atlantic, is two years old, but Pluto's label hasn't changed since then. In 2006, astronomers gathered in Prague to consider a very basic question: How many planets are in our solar system? They needed to Czech in with each other. For many Americans, the names of planets were some of the earliest scientific facts we learned, and that there were nine of them seemed like a basic truth of existence. This is a failure of science education in America. There was no consensus among [astronomers] then, and there is none now. Ask one astronomer and they’ll sigh, before saying that it’s time to stop dredging up the past and move on. Ask another and they’ll say the matter desperately needs a do-over. They agree on so much about the cosmos, but on a matter that seems as though it should be straightforward, some of them might as well exist in two different solar systems. You know, I bet you can get them to agree, within a significant figure or so, about the mass of Pluto, the length of its year, the period of its mutual orbit with Charon, and so on. This is, as I've noted before, a classification problem, akin to deciding whether to call a stone a "rock" or a "pebble." In 1801, astronomers deemed Ceres, a rocky object they had spotted between Mars and Jupiter, a planet, but 50 years later, after further observations, they designated it as an asteroid. This is the bit no one remembers. Unsurprising, as I don't think anyone now was around then. Then, in the 1990s, astronomers started finding icy objects beyond Neptune. “People who were paying attention immediately said, Oh, we get it. This is what Pluto is,” Mike Brown, a Caltech astronomer who discovered one of these celestial bodies, told me. “Pluto is not this oddball at the edge of the solar system; Pluto is part of this larger population.” In 2000, when the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, opened a new space wing, curators tagged Pluto as part of the Kuiper belt, the disc of objects floating past Neptune, a decision that prompted a flurry of hate mail from Pluto fans. Make Pluto Planet Again! To Brown, the International Astronomical Union’s judgment was brave, considering how the public would perceive the loss of a beloved world. Pluto isn't lost. We've even sent a space robot flying by it. It hasn't gone anywhere. Well, I mean, sure, it's progressed a bit along its orbit, but it's still in the orbit. Some planetary scientists, whose work doesn’t center on such orbital details, say that there’s much more to a planet than that. They argue that Pluto has a host of characteristics that qualify it for planethood: an atmosphere, geological activity, even five of its own moons. "A hot dog is meat between hunks of bread. Therefore, it is a sandwich, has always been a sandwich, and will always be a sandwich!" "No, it's a taco." "Heretic!" "You call these things 'mountains'? Come out west, I'll show you mountains!" "That's a river." "No, it's a stream." "No, it's a creek." New Horizons flyby in 2015 make discounting Pluto difficult. The mission gave humankind its first close-up of Pluto, uncovering stunning topography, such as a massive heart-shaped glacier made of nitrogen. Fran Bagenal, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, emailed me a picture from the flyby and wrote, “Doesn’t this look like a planet to you?” This is Ceres.  It orbits the sun. It looks like a planet to me, too, being round and having surface features and shit, although admittedly not as visually striking as those of Pluto. As noted above, Ceres was a planet for half a century. As with Pluto, changing what it was called didn't change Ceres.For all their disagreements, everyone I spoke with was on the same page about one thing: that the question of planethood has no bearing on whether Pluto is a fascinating place to study. It could be argued that this "controversy" worked very well to get more people interested in space, which I absolutely approve of. For anyone still wondering why it matters what we call a planet, dwarf planet, asteroid, etc., well, it really doesn't. But it's nice to have a working definition as we discover more and more bodies orbiting other stars. While, to the best of my knowledge, we don't have the technology to detect extrasolar dwarf planets, these questions of classification will go with us to the stars... assuming we make it that far. |
| Close to the end of 2020 is where we find today's throwback, an entry in response to a 30DBC prompt: "Pigs on the Wing" It was, if you're too lazy to click, about bacon. The reason for the entry's title, apart from being a Pink Floyd song (actually two songs, or one song divided into two parts, a trick they'd sometimes pull; see, e.g. "Another Brick In The Wall"), is a reference to my preference: When it comes to breakfast meats, I prefer turkey "bacon." As I noted in that entry, I'm not a fan of meat fats in general. You'd think that would make me automatically healthier, but it does not. In an attempt to save face, I also discussed veggie strips, which I call fakon: They do not, in fact, pass for bacon, even though the makers take great pains to make them look marbled. But the important part of the entry is, of course, the joke about the rabbi and the priest. I suppose I should link this, too: We would zigzag our way through the boredom and pain Occasionally glancing up through the rain Wondering which of the buggers to blame And watching for pigs on the wing |
| Today's article, from Nautilus, is a few years old, but it's not like plate tectonics has stopped since then. What Happens to Google Maps When Tectonic Plates Move? Earth’s tremors can tweak your GPS coordinates. It's not just Google Maps, of course; this applies to any GPS receiver. This is a thing I've often idly wondered about, but never enough to go and seek out the answer. As a writer on physics, I’m always seeking new metaphors for understanding Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and while working on my last book, Spooky Action at a Distance, I thought I’d compare the warping of space and time to the motion of Earth’s tectonic plates. Oh look, a book plug. What a surprise. Regardless, this is the kind of thing I mean when I say there's no such thing as useless knowledge: you can more easily find similarities between disparate things. The irony (or whatever) here is that GPS wouldn't work worth a damn without relativistic corrections for the satellites' speed and distance. I discovered a sizable infrastructure of geographers, geologists, and geodesists dedicated to ensuring that maps are accurate. But they are always a step behind the restless landscape. Geologic activity can create significant errors in the maps on your screens. As if paper maps are more accurate. Several factors produce these errors. Consumer GPS units have a position uncertainty of several meters or more (represented by a circle in Google Maps). Less well known is that maps and satellite images are typically misaligned by a comparable amount. All things considered, an uncertainty of a few meters, compared to the size of the planet, may as well be sorcery. I'm pretty sure military hardware has less inherent uncertainty, but it would also be affected by tectonic shifts. For the most part, misalignments don’t represent real geologic changes, but occur because it’s tricky to plop an aerial or orbital image onto the latitude and longitude grid. And this makes sense when you think about it. Not only do you have the Earth's curvature (it is, in fact, roughly spherical) to consider, but also elevation—another parameter that can change, albeit usually slowly. NGS and other agencies recheck survey marks only very infrequently, so what a stroke of luck that a community of hobbyists—geocachers—does so for fun. I had no idea geocaching was going on. I was a guest at a large gathering of theirs many years ago, and they seemed... obsessed. But I suppose we all have our obsessions. Confusingly, the U.S. uses two separate datums. Most maps are based on NAD 83, developed by NGS. Google Maps and GPS rely instead on WGS 84, maintained by a parallel military agency, which has a considerably larger budget. It should be kept in mind that GPS, like the internet itself, started out as a military project, and only later became accessible to civilians. When NGS introduced NAD 83, replacing an older datum that dated to 1927, it was the geographic version of the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. If you’d been paying attention, you would have woken up on Dec. 6, 1988, to find that your house wasn’t at the same latitude and longitude anymore. The shift, as large as 100 meters, reflected a more accurate model of Earth’s shape. Vestiges of the old datum linger. You still see maps based on NAD 27. This change was relevant to my work, as well. As I recall, the datum (the zero reference) for the two systems was different by nearly a foot; I wasn't quite as concerned with the horizontal references, because the parcels we worked with were relatively small, a couple hundred acres at most, and the important thing was relative position, not absolute. Yes, we used inches and acres. “Most surveyors and mapmakers would be happy to live in a world where the plates don’t move,” Smith explained. Considering that plate tectonics is probably linked to the processes that generate Earth's magnetic field, which helps protect us from effects such as solar radiation and the atmosphere floating away into space, no, no, they wouldn't be happy to live in that world, not for very long. Anyway, the article does get a bit technical, but I find the discussion of how this works entirely fascinating... if irrelevant to my quest to find the nearest brewpub from wherever I happen to be at the moment. |
| I'm not sure how much of today's article / book ad from way back in 2017 I'm on board with, but it's interesting anyway. Wanting to understand how Einstein learned physics may, at first, seem as pointless as trying to fly by watching birds and flapping your arms really hard. How do you emulate someone who is synonymous with genius? That's a bit like asking why you should bother to learn how to play piano when Billy Joel already exists. Whatever Einstein did to learn, he clearly did something right, so there’s merit in trying to figure out what that was. I suspect that a big part of it is he never asked, "When will we ever need this in life?" or "Why should I bother learning that?" I mean, okay, I don't know, maybe he did (though he would have asked in German), but I doubt it, or he wouldn't have achieved what he did. One of the most common stories about Einstein is that he failed grade school math. The downside of being an iconic historical figure is that, inevitably, myths accrete around you. Newton's apple, Washington's father's cherry tree, that sort of thing. These myths (some of which might have a germ of truth inside) tell us more about what we want to believe than about what's factual. In Einstein's case, the "failed grade school math" myth is misleading, but tells me that, collectively, we need to remind ourselves that the guy whose picture is in the dictionary next to "genius" was actually human. As the article points out, he didn't fail math, and he was also human: At the end of college, Einstein had the dubious distinction of graduating as the second-to-worst student in the class. Before rejoicing at this accomplishment, keep in mind that this was Germany around the turn of the last century, with an educational system not exactly known for accommodating individual differences in aptitude. I'm not singling out Germany, though; the US and UK weren't substantially different. The difficulty Einstein had was undoubtedly due in part to his non-conformist streak and rebellious attitude, which didn’t sit well in an academic environment. It is better known today that some of the most talented students get bored easily when attending classes geared toward those more in the middle of the bell curve. Not that our current educational system is much better at accommodating that; it's just different than it was 125 or so years ago. Given Einstein’s enormous contributions to physics, I think it’s now worthwhile to ask how he learned it. I mean, sure? There's no such thing as useless knowledge, but if, say, we figured out how Neil Peart learned how to play the drums, we still wouldn't achieve his level of greatness. Einstein learned physics, not by dutifully attending classes, but by obsessively playing with the ideas and equations on his own. Doing, not listening, was the starting point for how he learned physics. There was some emphasis on "learning styles" a while back, which seems to have died down because the concept is... well, I want to say bullshit, but bullshit at least has a use as fertilizer. I still think some ways of learning are more effective than others for each individual; for example, if you want me to remember something, make it a joke or a song (Schoolhouse Rock was like candy for Kid Me). That said, it's not a revolutionary idea to assert that doing something is a very effective way to learn. So is teaching the subject. How do you know when you really understand something? Einstein’s method was to try prove the proposition himself! Also not revolutionary, but that can lead to problems, like the guy who tried to "prove" the Earth was flat by building his own rocket. There's a hell of a lot of knowledge out there, and if you have to prove everything yourself, you'll never get anything else done. There is still value in figuring some things out for yourself. Intuition matters more than equations I'm not sure that's the case, but go ahead and read that section of the article if you want. I have no doubt intuition is important, but as noted in the text: Einstein’s own thoughts were that “intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience.” This next section seems contradictory to me: Thinking requires a quiet space and deep focus and Einstein was a master of deep work. He had an incredible ability to focus, his son reporting: “Even the loudest baby-crying didn’t seem to disturb Father,” adding, “He could go on with his work completely impervious to noise.” Sounds more to me like the trick is to ignore the noise around you. Also, some people report thinking better when there's music playing. Einstein’s most famous method for learning and discovering physics has to be the thought experiment. Sure, but that technique has its limitations, and is mostly just a mental exercise unless you can also turn it into actual science. Overturn common sense… with more common sense Sigh. Common sense is neither, and it's the opposite of science. While solitude and focus were essential components of how Einstein learned and did physics, it was often conversations with other people that provided his breakthroughs. I don't find this particularly revolutionary, either. It's pretty common to bounce ideas off other people. Be rebellious Rebellion for the sake of rebellion is just angst. I think it's important to know when to rebel, a trick I have never mastered, myself. But, after all this, there's at least one section that I wholeheartedly agree with: All knowledge starts with curiosity And that's why I keep reading and posting this stuff. You don't have to be a genius to be curious. |
| I mentioned the Basque language a couple of weeks ago, here: "Can I Have Two Words?" . As sometimes (rarely, I hope) happens, I made a mistake there. I said, "Basque is, weirdly, unrelated to other Indo-European languages," which gives the impression that the language is itself of the Indo-European family... which it is (probably) not, and I knew that at the time; I just phrased it badly. I meant to point out that it's unrelated to other languages in Europe. Editing previous blog entries isn't something I do. The reason I'm issuing that correction at this time has to do with today's random article. The unsolved mystery of Europe’s oldest language For linguists, the uniqueness of the Basque language represents an unsolved mystery. For its native speakers, long oppressed, it is a source of pride. Unless you grew up in Spain, chances are you first learned about Basque Country through Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, which follows a group of Lost Generationers traveling across Western Europe after the First World War. Oddly enough, no. I didn't read that until college. It was through an in-depth study, in high school, of this Picasso painting, which merits a mention in the article's second paragraph.In Basque Country, politics is narrowly intertwined with language. This language, called Euskara, sounds nothing like Spanish (gracias = eskerrik asko), nor does it resemble French. What I did not know was the name Euskara. So, another mistake in that previous blog entry, by calling the language "Basque." In fact, Euskara is so fundamentally different from its neighbors that linguists doubt it even originated from Indo-European, the language family that gave rise to Icelandic, Russian, Hindi, and virtually everything in between. I have to take the linguists' word for it (pun absolutely intended). Many researchers have taken a crack at the Basque problem over the years, each coming up with a different solution. Given that region's history, with its historically oppressed minority, I don't think I'd have phrased it as "the Basque problem." Each researcher coming up with "a different solution" reminds me of the field of economy: ask four economists a question, get six answers. It has been suggested that Euskara is a predecessor to and a survivor of Iberian, a non-Indo-European tongue spoken on the Iberian Peninsula before the Romans arrived. Euskara has also been linked to a number of languages spoken in the Caucasus, as well to the Saharan Berbers, a pre-Arab ethnic group from northern Africa. Given my limited knowledge of the spread of humans across Europe, all of those origins seem reasonable to me. While the independent spirit of the Basques undoubtedly contributed to their isolation, the defining factor seems to have been the geography of Basque Country itself. Protected by the Bay of Biscay and Pyrenees mountains, the rugged terrain wards off outsiders as easily as it prevents insiders from leaving. Geographic isolation is one of the forces driving species evolution; there's no reason to believe it wouldn't also affect language evolution, which tends to be much faster. Centuries of persecution have taken their toll on Euskara and Basque culture at large. In many ways, this reminds me of the historical arc of the Welsh language. But this sort of linguistic persecution is hardly unique to Europe; we've done it here, too. It seems to be one way those in power try to erase the identities of those they deem inferior. Basque literature, previously endangered to the point that a single collector — one Edward Spencer Dodgson — is credited with preserving an entire society’s literary canon, is currently experiencing a renaissance. Curious, I looked him up. It's quite ironic to me that the only Wikipedia entry on him is written in French. I'm at the point where I can muddle through that, but not fluent enough to provide an English translation for Wikipedia."Né en 1857 en Angleterre, il s'intéresse à la langue basque à partir de 1886 et se consacre à cette étude jusqu'à sa mort." Born in 1857 in England, he became interested in the Basque language in 1886 and devoted himself to that study until his death. Or something like that. The double irony is that it was the English who tried to pull the same kind of shit with the Welsh. In retrospect, Franco’s attempt to destroy Euskara helped ensure its survival. And we've heard that one before, too. Perhaps the most famous iteration of those attempts, at least on this side of the pond, was when the US government tried to eradicate Native American languages, only to turn to the Diné (Navajo) for help when they needed to send coded messages. The surprising thing is that they provided it, thus claiming the moral high ground once and for all. |
| I wanted to share this article, not just because the story isn't that widely known, but because of a tenuous personal connection to it. This Odd Early Flying Machine Made History but Didn’t Have the Right Stuff Aerodrome No. 5 had to be launched by catapult on the Potomac River on May 6, 1896, but it flew unpiloted 3,300 feet The vessel floated in the shallows of the Potomac River on the leeward side of Chopawamsic Island, just off Quantico, Virginia. It's fairly common knowledge that Maryland claims the Potomac. In contrast with standard surveying practice, which usually puts boundaries in the river's thread or main channel, Maryland gets the whole expanse, up to some defined line (I think it's the mean low tide line where it is tidal, which is all the way up past DC) on the opposite side. This is in spite of the fact that the river is named for an Indian tribe that lived, to the best of my knowledge, exclusively in what is now Virginia. The reason for this isn't relevant to this story, though, except to note that because of this historical oddity, there just aren't that many islands in the Potomac that are part of Virginia. And this one is also claimed by the county where I (arguably) grew up, exactly (I checked) 10 miles from my childhood home. They had to do some creative surveying to include it within Stafford County, but it's there, in a kind of pseudopod-like extrusion. So, that's the personal connection. I told you it was tenuous. History would be made that day, May 6, 1896, as this apparatus—a flying machine, known as Aerodrome No. 5—was started and then launched from a spring-loaded catapult. An "aerodrome" is what we (well, mostly the British) call what's basically a small airport today. In 1896, no airports existed, so I guess the word meant something different. The Aerodrome would take off and travel for 90 seconds some 3,300 feet in an effortless spiral trajectory and then gently land in the river. Both time and distance exceed my best efforts at paper airplanes when I was a kid. To be fair, those experiments usually ended at a classroom wall. The third Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont Langley, an astronomer who also enjoyed tinkering with his own creations, was aboard the boat. His winged invention had just made the world’s first successful flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven, heavier-than-air craft of substantial size. Yeah... those are some specific definitions. Not quite the level of success the later Wright Brothers enjoyed, but why let North Carolina get all the credit? As for Langley himself, yes, it was that Langley, the one the famous Air Force base is named for. He was also a Secretary at the Smithsonian (a position similar to Royal Astronomer of Britain), so of course this article is from Smithsonian. With Langley that day, was his friend Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone... Another dubious claim, but that's what history insists upon, though that's really irrelevant right now. It should be emphasized again that this flight wasn't quite as significant as the Wright one, and the article does so: The world rightly remembers that in 1903 the Wright brothers achieved human flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina. “Langley’s Aerodrome No. 5 wasn’t practical and it wasn’t a working prototype for any real flying machine,” says Peter Jakab, senior curator at the museum. But the largely forgotten unpiloted flight that took place seven years before Kitty Hawk did move motorized flight from the drawing board into reality. Langley was also apparently one of the last great polymaths: “Langley’s real accomplishments in research were in astronomy,” says Jakab. “He had done a great deal of significant work in sun spots and solar research, some of that while at the Smithsonian.” He had a bit of mad scientist about him, apparently: “This was still a period when people didn’t think flight was possible,” Jakab says. “If you were a young person in the 1890s contemplating a career in engineering, flight was not exactly an area you would go into. It wasn’t taken seriously by a lot of people. The fact that someone like Langley was starting to study flight gave the field credibility.” The article goes on to describe his fundamental errors in design, and how he lost out to those brothers from Ohio a few years later. “Those two catastrophic failures in 1903 ended Langley’s aeronautical work,” Jakab says. “He was a broken man because he took a lot of ridicule. He spent a lot of money and did not achieve a great deal in this field.” Perhaps not, but we also learn from failures. And by all accounts, he accomplished great things... just not so much in aviation. Still, he did what few others even dared to try, and isn't that worth remembering? |
| It's unlikely that any individual is "an average human." To claim so would be mean. What does the average human do every day? The Human Chronome Project finds that the average human sleeps for 9 hours but only works for 2.6 hours. Pun intended, of course, if a bit forced. While each of us has a decent conception of how we spend our own time, the actions of our fellow humans — from our next-door neighbors to people living in faraway countries — can seem quite mysterious. Do they watch as much TV? Work as many hours? Fiddle with their smartphones as frequently? Cook as often? Spend as much time watching their kids? Even some of those questions reveal a developed-world bias. First and foremost, the average human spends about 9.1 hours sleeping or resting. As the article notes, "human" includes everyone, including children. I usually manage something like that, but certainly did not when I was working full-time. While awake, the average person spends close to one-third of their day on passive, interactive, and social activities. These roughly 4.6 hours include reading, watching TV, making art, playing games, going to gatherings with friends or family, or simply doing nothing at all. The idea of "simply doing nothing at all" seems incomprehensible to most Americans. Eating and food preparation accounts for another 2.5 hours. Yes, fast food isn't universally available. Hygiene, including grooming, washing, and dressing, takes about 1.1 hours. Oh, that's what I'm missing. Cleaning and maintaining the spaces we inhabit costs us 0.8 hours of the day. And that. Though employment can be hugely time-consuming for working individuals, when looked at through the lens of the global human day, it appears as a mere sliver of time, just 2.6 hours. Coincidentally, that's about how much actual productive time most office drones achieve. Education also isn’t very demanding, only 1.1 hours. That's because a whole lot of 0s skew the average. The researchers were also curious about how average human time use changes with wealth. One big advantage of being rich is grasping more leisure time by paying others to have more working time. For instance, I (not really rich for an American, but close enough) pay people to mow my lawn. To be clear, though, it used to take me about 4 hours to do it, while they knock it out in 15 minutes. Additionally, people in the richest countries spend an average of just five minutes a day growing and harvesting food, while people in the poorest countries spend well over an hour doing so. As this illustrates, you do, too, if you go shopping at a grocery store instead of growing your own food and butchering your own hogs. By assembling the human chronome, the researchers say that we can compare ourselves to civilizations from the past. Right, because we know exactly how they used all of their days. Also, civilization itself changes its individuals' time utilization. More importantly, we can see from a high-level, empirical perspective what our species is doing on our planet and make more informed decisions about reallocating our collective time to change the world and society for the better. Like that's going to happen. Also, the worst excesses are perpetrated by a very small, average-skewing group with greater resources (aka "the Rich"). So, while this research may be useful (no such thing as useless knowledge), I don't think it has the lofty practical potential that they claim. Not to mention that just looking at an "average" (however that's computed) tells you enough about the range. It's just another way of manipulating with statistics. For example, "the average human" possesses fewer than 2 legs. Think about it, and you'll realize I'm right. But saying that can be misleading, as the vast majority of people have exactly 2 legs. Like me! I always knew I was above average at something. |
| There are several articles in my queue, from various sources, about planets in our solar system. Fittingly, though randomly, the one about Mercury (from Vox) shows up here first. It's still a mystery to me. I've never knowingly seen it in the sky. All the other visible planets, sure, no problem. Venus, when it's visible at all, is very visible, usually the brightest thing in the night sky apart from the Moon. Mars is generally easy to spot for its color; Jupiter, like Venus, tends to be bright, but isn't limited to just after sunset or just before sunrise. Saturn, while you can't see its rings with unaided eyes, is generally recognizable. I've even seen the next planet out, through a telescope that someone else pointed. No, I won't name it until its article comes up, lest someone make a worn-out, juvenile joke about it. But Mercury? Its visibility is even more limited than that of Venus, always close to the twilight horizon if it's visible at all, not to mention much dimmer, and that makes it tough if you don't know exactly what to look for. And despite my interest in astronomy, I never could be arsed to get one of those cellphone apps that tells you what everything is. It's entirely possible that I've seen it and mistaken it for a star near the horizon, where some constellational context is missing. Anyway, that's not what the article is about. Thanks to space robots (we have SPACE ROBOTS), we've seen Mercury quite a bit. On Friday, the US Geological Survey released the most comprehensive topographical map of Mercury ever created, depicting its craters, ridges, volcanoes, and mountains — some rising more than 2 miles high — in fine detail: You'll have to go to the link to see the map. Also, "on Friday" refers to a long-ago Friday in early 2016, as the article is pretty old now. Because Mercury is so small and close to the sun, it's tricky to send spacecraft to visit it — before NASA's MESSENGER probe, the only craft that had come close was Mariner 10, which made a series of quick flybys in the 1970s. The difficulty of getting to Mercury may seem counterintuitive. Woudn't a probe just fall toward the Sun? Well, no, for the same reason Earth (much to our relief) doesn't; you have to cancel a lot of angular momentum, and that takes fuel, careful planning, and lots and lots of math. So, the rest of the article consists of some of the stuff we managed to figure out thanks to fuel, careful planning, and lots and lots of math. 1) Mercury is shrinking And no, not because of #2 here: 2) Mercury has water ice This has long been theorized, but lots of things were theorized that turned out not to be the case. The brief explanation for how ice can exist on the surface of a planet that's famously close to a giant perpetual fusion bomb is that Mercury has no real atmosphere to distribute heat, and the ice is in shadowed craters at the poles. 3) Mercury had a violent, volcanic past While, again, it's good to get evidence, this isn't exactly surprising given that other terrestrial planets (and the Moon) have or had volcanic activity. 4) We can't quite figure out how Mercury formed To be fair, we're a little fuzzy on the details of how any planets formed. What's cool is that we're able to figure out things like how big a planet's core is and what it's made of, and that we have the technology to send robots there in the first place. 5) Mercury has a weird, off-center magnetic field "Weird" meaning "No, we don't understand that yet, either, but it'll help us do more science." So, there it is: stuff we didn't know before, or suspected but didn't have proof of. Always more to find out. |
| As usual for Sundays, I used my handy Random Number Generator to excavate an ancient blog entry. This time, it pointed me to what might actually be my shortest entry ever, though I'm not going through all 2400+ entries to verify that. The entry in question is from all the way back in October of 2008: "Best Waste of Time EVER" It consists of a naked link (this was, if I recall correctly, before the xlink: feature was implemented), the words "Go ahead. Click." and a smirk emoticon. (This was also before the smirk2 emoticon). Hesitantly, I clicked on the link. It is, after all, at least 15 years old. If it's not dead, I thought, it's probably redirected. Or possibly encrusted with ads or other extraneous nonsense. Or, even worse, infested with malware. So I made sure my ad and script blockers were on and fully functioning. This is why I try to always expect the worst: Either I'm wrong, and something other than the worst happens, which is by definition good; or I'm right, which always feels good. And yet, the link is still active. I'm sure some things have changed there since 2008; for instance, now there's the option to get the corresponding app for your smartphone, and there are probably a few extra links near the bottom of the page... but no intrusive ads (I checked on a different browser, but not on my phone) or, as far as I and my extensive guardian plugins can tell, anything dangerous there. This is the link, if you don't care to look at that older blog entry.So what we get is a nice blast from the past, a reminder of what the internet used to be before most everything went to shit and became commodified, intrusive, and sanitized. And perhaps even a place to exercise artistic talent, if you have any, that is; I do not, but there are plenty of examples at the link of the works of people who do. Whether it's still the "best waste of time ever" is debatable. |
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