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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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| Here's a book ad disguised as a self-help article from GQ for me to snark on. How to Kick Your Bad Habits (And Why That's More Important Than You Think)  Plus: Why goals don’t work, and why your to-do list is wrecking your ability to do anything. Hey. HEY! You're doing it wrong. Send me money and I'll tell you how to do it right! Until the next guru comes along to tell you that you're still doing it wrong. A few years ago, we reached peak you're-doing-it-wrong with a video on how you're opening a banana from the wrong end. Since that, I've felt free to ignore any attempts to convince me I'm doing anything the wrong way. You might not spend much time thinking about your habits. They are, after all, mindless. No, they're really not. They may be comfortable, but they're not mindless. James Clear, on the other hand, has made something of a living on it. Lots of people make their living preaching that "you're wrong and the only way to be right is to follow me and give me money." Some of them are literally called preachers. It doesn't mean they're right. One of his big takeaways is a bit unsettling when you consider all the habits you’ve sworn to kick (but haven’t), and all the habits you’ve really been meaning to start (but haven’t): habits, multiplied by time, equal the person you eventually become. I get around that by not swearing to kick or start habits. Do this, combined with accepting yourself as you are, and your life becomes simpler and happier. You won't even be tempted to give what little money you have to people who are trying to convince you that there's something wrong with you and only they can fix it. That advice, by the way, is 100% free. In a year, the difference between a person who does 10 push ups a day and a person who eats one bag of Doritos a day is that one person has done 3650 push ups and one person is sad. No, the difference is that one person has sore arms and pecs, and the other person is following their bliss. Besides, this creates the illusion of a dichotomy: while it might be difficult to eat a bag of Doritos while doing push-ups, there's absolutely nothing that says you can't do both in one day. The rest of the articlead is in interview format, and I won't quote most of it. But at one point, the interviewer poses: But if you think about it, I feel like we're so often controlled by sort of nudges that we aren't even conscious of. Yes, and one of those nudges is ads. The way I see it, if you think you want to do something (or refrain from doing something), and you continue to do (or not do) it anyway, then you don't actually want to do it, and you should respect that. Now... this may seem hypocritical of me, since I've been on a 4+ year daily streak in both blogging and language learning. Those are habits I picked up, and sometimes I go out of my way to practice them. I'm not saying we shouldn't try new things, or improve ourselves. It's the pressure that we're somehow lacking, and we should feel bad about ourselves, that I object to. So I make it a habit to identify that pressure when it presents itself. |
| Speaking of science (yesterday's entry), today, the random numbers landed on this Big Think piece on the perception of science: 4 pervasive myths that cause us to abandon science It’s not a gambit. It’s not fraud. It’s not driven by opinion, prejudice, or bias. It’s not unchallengeable. And it’s more than facts alone. It's safe to say that I have a few issues with the wording in some places here. When you think about what science actually is, how do you conceive of it? I always picture Doc Brown's workshop in Back to the Future. Yes, of course I know it's wrong, but I'd rather be amused than right. Do you do what most people do, and default to what you learned in our classes in school, with a layer of cynicism and skepticism layered atop it? Hey! Cynicism and skepticism are my friends! That’s understandable, as many of us remember being taught “facts” in our science classes that later were shown to be not as they seemed at the time. This was, of course, not limited to science classes. It’s as though, somewhere along the lines, many of us were taught isolated facts about the world, and our ability to regurgitate those facts was used as a metric to measure how good we were at science. I've said this before, but memorizing trivia is an entirely different skill set from doing science. I'm not knocking trivia here; there's something to be said for remembering stuff without having to pull out your phone and google it. Plus, it's useful at bars sometimes. Many of those facts may have felt absurd; many of the experiments we performed didn’t give the results we were told they should give; many of our experiences didn’t line up with what was written in our textbooks. That's partly because some facts are, compared to our everyday experience, absurd. I mean, come on, the flow of time changes depending on how fast or slow you're going? That defies common sense! And yet it's demonstrably true; hence why I distrust "common sense." If that’s what our experience with science is, then why should we be expected to believe that whatever science “tells us” is actually true? Science isn't edicts handed down from on high. You're thinking of religion, or maybe law. The way out, perhaps, is to slay the four most common myths that agenda-driven advocates leverage to sow doubt about bona fide scientific knowledge. Science, in actuality, is both a process and the full body of knowledge that we have, and it adds up to the best, most truthful understanding we have of the world at any given time. I'd put more emphasis on the "process" part, myself. Here are four common lines of thought that we often make to argue against scientific findings, and why each of them is fundamentally flawed. The article proceeds to do just that. It's not exactly short, and I'm not going to quote a whole lot. (Myth) 1.) Science is biased by who funds it. Because there are numerous instances throughout history where various industries have published junk science that does indeed promote their agenda — for example, the tobacco industry has famously been caught manipulating research — many people believe that this translates into all science being untrustworthy, particularly wherever it’s funded by some entity they view as ethically questionable. One such instance that I remember referencing in here is how the "chocolate is good for you" result came from studies funded by Willy Wonka and performed by noted Oompa Loompa scientists who were paid in chocolate. It happens. (Okay, I'm being funny, but you get the point.) They usually get caught. The point here is that it's not right to generalize that to all science. But part of valid skepticism is to look at the motivations behind research. To be sure, there really is fraudulent research that gets conducted all the time; it’s one of the main reasons papers either get retracted or wind up being published in unscrupulous, sham journals. One of the worst things about that is that people will remember the fraudulent science, and ignore or be unaware of the retraction. (Myth) 2.) Science is driven by public opinion. It’s often been said that, “Science doesn’t care what you believe,” but the truth is that science doesn’t care what any humans believe, in general. The Universe, as best as we can measure it, obeys certain rules and yields certain outcomes when we test it under controlled experimental conditions. The reason scientists so often find themselves surprised is that you cannot know the outcome of a new experiment until you perform it. The results of these experiments and the knowledge that comes along with it is available to anyone who reproduces the experiment. The results are found in nature, and anyone’s opinion on a scientific matter that’s been decided by the evidence is moot. I'm just leaving this here because it's a pretty good summary of stuff I've been saying. I just have one major quibble. Well, one major and one minor. Major: saying that "anyone’s opinion on a scientific matter that’s been decided by the evidence is moot" is a bit misleading, in my opinion. For example, the chocolate nonsense I referenced above: you can have an opinion on it, but that opinion needs to be based on philosophy, not science. Like, I know the study was more than questionable, but I'll eat dark chocolate anyway, simply because it's delicious and I'm hedonistic. Minor: there are some interpretations of quantum physics that point to the idea that the observer, in this case us, does influence the outcome of an experiment. What's in question is the validity of those interpretations, and how much they affect macroscopic phenomena. I'm not quoting the other two points; they're also at the link. In conclusion, for me anyway, while results are often provisional, science is the best method we've come up with for approaching legitimate knowledge. It's kind of like... maps. I've linked Atlas Obscura many times in here; hopefully, through that or by other means, you've seen historical maps. What was unknown on a map produced in, say, the 16th century, is generally presented as a best guess, an incomplete shoreline, a blob, a dragon representing the unknown, or whatever. As exploration improved, maps started to be drawn with greater and greater accuracy. Now, thanks to science, we have satellites doing our cartography with high precision. No map, however, can have perfect accuracy. Zoom out too far, and small, but important, features disappear. In too close, and you lose the big picture. Rivers and oceans have variable water levels, so shorelines are, at best, averages. The Earth changes, and geological features (usually slowly) move: rivers change course, continental plates shift, erosion affects shorelines, etc. This is an analogy and, like most analogies, it's not a perfect one. But if I'm going to try to circumnavigate the planet (which, by the way, is definitely round), I'll trust Google Maps before Magellan's sketches. |
| My archaeological excavation today takes us all the way back to January of 2008, meaning the entry would be eligible to get a driver's license in most states: "Science" It's fairly short, and, as you can tell from the title, presages the themes of some of my numerous subsequent entries. Well, my creationism rant inspired some comments, but not nearly the shitstorm I feared. This refers to the previous day's entry, which included a bunch of links, which presaged the content of most of my numerous subsequent blog entries. The rant in question was quite short, and I railed on a then-recent poll that said 47% of Americans reject the science of evolution. The implication is that most, if not all, of them do so on religious grounds. I did want to make clear, though, that my rant about creation "science" is not about Christians in general - in other words, I'm not attacking faith, but opinion. I try (and sometimes fail) to keep religion out of my discussions here. I responded to someone in a private email a clarification that I'll paste here... That message takes up the bulk of the entry, and then... That's the last word on it from me - at least for now. I'm glad I hedged that with "at least for now." Because it absolutely wasn't the last word, and even the last word I wrote on the topic won't be. But let's see what Wired Magazine has to say: While the raw link in the original entry is broken, I found it using a web search. Apparently they just changed the URL and kept the content, though there's a broken YouTube embed there.While the article itself touches on a Presidential race that's ancient history at this point, the philosophical issues remain, and I continue to address them, even now, sixteen years later. |
| Now, here's a kid who's going to be subject to government scrutiny for the next few years. 13-year-old has eureka moment with science project that suggests Archimedes’ invention was plausible After which they'll probably recruit him. Often called the father of mathematics, Archimedes was one of the most famous inventors in ancient Greece, with some of his ideas and principles still in use today. While there is no doubt that Archimedes made important contributions to mathematics, calling him "the father of mathematics" is rather insulting to earlier mathematicians, not to mention horrifically Eurocentric. But one fabled device has left scientists speculating on its existence for hundreds of years — the death ray. Now, a middle schooler may have some answers. Hey, when I was that age, I was fascinated by death rays, too. But this was a simpler time, and as far as I know, I wasn't subject to government surveillance for my hobbies. Brenden Sener, 13, of London, Ontario, has won two gold medals and a London Public Library award for his minuscule version of the contraption — a supposed war weapon made up of a large array of mirrors designed to focus and aim sunlight on a target, such as a ship, and cause combustion — according to a paper published in the January issue of the Canadian Science Fair Journal. Also, calling it a "death ray" is probably sensationalism. Most sources I've seen use "heat ray," but I think even that is misleading. Regardless; the point is, people have argued over whether Archie could have actually constructed the weapon using Greek technology of the time, or if perhaps it was speculation (similar to da Vinci's later speculation about flying machines or whatever). Hell, René Descartes dismissed the idea. There is no archaeological evidence that the contraption existed, as Sener noted in his paper, but many have tried to recreate the mechanism to see if the ancient invention could be feasible. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, of course. Oh, and no one, as far as I know, is saying the idea is unworkable; only that it might not have been feasible using tech available in the 3rd century BCE. At the same time, evidence that it could have been built and used isn't the same thing as evidence that it was built and used. The article describes his setup, and then: Writing in the paper, Sener said he found these results to be “quite remarkable as it suggests that light is going in all directions and that the shape of the concave mirror focuses the light waves onto a single point.” Well... that's a bit disappointing. Was CNN clickbaiting us with that headline? While this is certainly what I'd call a good middle school science fair project, it's not like we didn't already know that focusing light rays intensifies the resulting temperature. Hell, all this is, is the reflection version of using a magnifying glass to burn ants. While the experiment doesn’t offer “anything significantly new to the scientific literature … his findings were a nice confirmation of the first law of thermodynamics,” which states energy or heat can be transferred, Ho said. Blink. Blink. Look, I'm not trying to diminish the kid's accomplishment. Hell, I couldn't ever come up with an idea for a science project at that age. It's not that I wasn't interested; it's that I wasn't creative enough. Still not. But it proves nothing about Archie's heat ray. |
| Looks like someone gave Cracked a makeover. The most obvious change is that their logo no longer resembles that of the second-rate Mad ripoff they started out as. Not changed: countdown lists. 5 Words We Only Use Because the Old Ones Were Too Dirty People only started talking about light meat and dark meat because they were too embarrassed to talk about breasts and legs Yeah, and now "light meat" and "dark meat" have sexual connotations, because humans can be assholes. (When I was a kid, they called it "white meat," which I suppose comes with its own dark connotations.) A friend is getting married, and you open up their gift registry. You see a “Dutch oven” listed there, and you suppress a giggle. No, I don't, because 1) All my friends are past the "gift registry" stage and 2) I don't find the dirty version amusing in the slightest. Later, at the ceremony, you deliver the toast, and you mention your Dutch oven observation. This angers and confuses people, who have no idea what you’re talking about. You are expelled from the venue. As some people here can attest, my wedding toasts are simultaneously funnier and more cringeworthy than that. 5 Light Meat and Dark Meat Light meat and dark meat are two different kinds of flesh on a bird. Confusingly, these names have nothing at all to do with white meat and red meat — all poultry is white meat, but some is light while some is dark. And yet, we manage to infer the intended meaning from context. Dark meat is fattier than light meat and arguably tastier. Not to me. You could say I'm a breast guy. But today, “light meat” and “dark meat” also sound sexual, so let’s just say whatever’s easiest. Like I said. 4 Rooster If we’re talking chicken double entendres, we of course need to talk about cocks. The cock is the male chicken, otherwise known as a rooster. Honestly, this one's so obvious, I feel like the author got lazy. 3 Missus The title in front of your name may reveal your gender, marital status, profession or level of nobility. The most common one for men is Mr., while women have Mrs., Miss and Ms. “Mr.” is short for mister. “Miss” isn’t short for anything. “Ms.” is pronounced miz but doesn’t represent any word other than “Ms.” itself. As for “Mrs.,” that’s pronounced missus of course. And don't get me started on how some women take serious offense at being called "ma'am." In the US, this seems to be a North vs. South thing, though it's unlikely to start another Civil War. No, we have other things that will cause that. 2 Canola Oil A lot of our vegetable oil comes from a plant named Brassica napus. The common name for this plant is rapeseed, with the “rape” part deriving from Latin word for turnip. I'm almost sure I've written about this before, but I'm not about to put "rape" into the search box to verify. 1 Rabbit Rabbits used to be called “coneys.” You’ll know that if you’re a fan of Lord of the Rings, in which Sam assures us that cooking a rabbit in a stew is the “one way to eat a brace of coneys.” He pronounces the word “cone-y,” the same way we pronounce Coney Island today, but originally, this word was pronounced “cunny.” In the 16th century, “coney” became a pet name for women. Meanwhile, people already had the Latin word cunnus for “vulva,” which also gave rise to such words as cunnilingus and... ...couldn't they find a way to do this without typing the next word? (Look, there's no reason why I can't say "cunt" once in an entry, but the opportunity to make the "couldn't" pun was overwhelming to me.) Anyway, this is similar to why we don't call cats "pussy" anymore, except to set up or follow through with jokes. For example, long ago, Zsa Zsa Gabors was on The Tonight Show, way back in its heyday when Johnny Carson hosted. She came in with a cat, which perched on her lap. Gabor: "Would you like to pet my pussy?" Carson: "I'd love to, but you'll have to remove that damn cat." ...well, actually, that never happened. But it's still funny. |
| Jumping back into food today, courtesy of the BBC... Didn't they try to make "healthier white bread" some decades ago? By removing pretty much everything healthy about bread and fortifying the bland, spongy result with "vitamins and minerals?" I'll grant we know more now. Just saying, sometimes technology gets ahead of itself. Scientists are trying to create a new type of bread that is just as healthy as wholemeal but looks and tastes like its white counterpart. Like I said, the article's from the UK, so there may be some phrases lost in translation. Though it's easy enough to figure out what they mean by "wholemeal." Aimed at lovers of white bread, the project has been funded by the government to improve the health benefits of UK food. Resisting the temptation to make a lame joke about British food. Instead, I'll just say, "Yeah, good luck on that with Scotland." The researchers plan to add small amounts of peas, beans and cereals to the bread mix, as well as bran and wheat germ that are normally removed from white flour. So, take out the bran and wheat germ, and then put them back in? Another potential for lost in translation: "cereal" can refer to any grain, such as maize (UK for corn), barley (US for corn), rye, spelt... and wheat, which is what gives me pause because isn't the wheat already there? Dr Catherine Howarth of Aberystwyth University, who is one of its leaders, said scientists had begun to analyse the detailed chemical composition of existing white flour. It only occurred to me yesterday that some people act like gluten is some sort of food additive, like the TBHQ from the Pop-Tarts entry a few days ago. Which it isn't. It's a naturally-occurring protein in many grains, including wheat. Of course "natural" doesn't necessarily mean "good," but in this case, my point is that there are no evil corporations going, "I know! Let's save money by throwing in gluten." It involved adding back smaller quantities of the wheat germ and part of the bran that is taken out in the milling process, she said, as well as adding other grains that are richer in vitamins, minerals and fibre such as quinoa, teff, sorghum and millet. Today's new word: teff. I'd never heard of it. Turns out it's from East Africa , and it's a grass seed. Before that freaks anyone out, remember that maize is also technically a grass."Using other cereals we can enhance the iron, zinc and vitamin levels and most importantly the fibre content, because white bread has very little fibre, which is so important for good health." So, Wonder Bread with fiber (look, I'm using US spelling in my commentary, because it's what I'm used to) re-inserted. I concluded long ago that this quintessential American mass-produced white bread is called that because you have to Wonder what's actually in it. “Most people know that wholemeal bread is better for you, but a lot of them are put off by the flavour, or because it’s not what they are used to and they are simply not interested,” he said of the challenge. I've pointed out before that, to me, bread is food; everything else is a condiment. But just like I'm a snob about wine, beer, cheese, and other products of fermentation and/or distillation, I'm also a snob about bread. I like whole wheat bread just fine; I think the flavor usually has more depth. But one thing I can't deal with: whole wheat baguettes. No one's been able to match the deliciousness and texture of a real baguette by using whole grains. Mr Holister used me as a guinea pig for an early prototype made from a mixture of normal white flour and some added grains and peas. It was crustier than the white loaves you get from the supermarket - but otherwise looked and tasted like white bread. But there is a lot more work to be done. To me, "crustier" is a good thing. The brown strip on the edge of your ordinary white bread hardly qualifies as "crust." White bread has to have minerals and vitamins added to it by law to make up for the goodness that's lost in the refining process. Pretty sure that's the case in the US, too. "Critics would say that it is tricking people into improving their diet, but nutritionists would say it doesn’t matter how it’s done - it’s important to get it down people’s throats to improve their health! "But the jury's out as to whether this new approach will work,” he added. This critic doesn't say it's tricking people into improving their diet. The only "trick" would be if it wasn't labeled appropriately. No, my concern is that food is meant to be enjoyed, not to be used as medicine. Still, even the attempt could yield good science, and I can't rail against that. |
| "Only a Sith deals in absolutes." —Obi-Wan Kenobi The problem with that quote from one of the Star Wars prequels is that it is, itself, an example of absolute thinking. This has been pointed out by better minds than mine, but it seems relevant to today's article (from Aeon). Of course, the Jedi weren't as pure and noble as their PR tried to paint them to be; controlling others' minds is generally considered "evil," regardless of purpose. But if there's anything Star Wars is known for, it's lightsabers. If there's anything else it's known for, it's bad dialogue. Anyway, to the point: Think of the most happy and well-adjusted person you know – what can you say about their thinking style? Well, that would be me. (If that thought doesn't scare you, nothing will.) Are they dogmatic, with an all-or-nothing outlook on the world? Do they place totally rigid demands on themselves and those around them? When confronted with stresses and misfortunes, are they apt to magnify and fixate on them? In short, do they have an absolutist thinking style? I absolutely do not. Well, with some exceptions. Absolutist thoughts are unqualified by nuance and overlook the complexity of a given subject. I've railed on this before. One solution would be to drink more Absolut. There are generally two forms of absolutism; ‘dichotomous thinking’ and ‘categorical imperatives’. These $2 words are explained in the article, and I'll quote them, too: Dichotomous thinking – also referred to as ‘black-and-white’ or ‘all-or-nothing’ thinking – describes a binary outlook, where things in life are either ‘this’ or ‘that’, and nothing in between. Some rare things are binary, or effectively so. Flip a fair coin, for example, and the chance of it landing on edge is minuscule; the practical effective outcome is either heads or tails. But, agreed, most things aren't. Like "alive" and "dead." At first that seems binary, but there are nuances to life; if someone's in a coma, e.g. Categorical imperatives are completely rigid demands that people place on themselves and others. The term is borrowed from Immanuel Kant’s deontological moral philosophy, which is grounded in an obligation- and rules-based ethical code. Hey, great job explaining "dichotomous" and "categorical;" but you had to go and throw in "deontological," didn't you?Yet we all, to varying extents, are disposed to it – why is this? "We all?" Wow, that's some absolutist shit right there. Primarily, because it’s much easier than dealing with the true complexities of life. I'm all for "easy," but not if it's going to make things more complicated in the long run. The article (which is from 2018, so things might have changed in the field since then) goes on to describe the author's work on the subject which, like all psychological science, should be read skeptically. I'm not saying it's wrong, but I'm not saying it's right, either. See? I'm not an absolutist. These findings support the recent ‘third wave’ therapies that have entered clinical psychology. The most well-known of these is ‘mindfulness’, but they all advocate a flexible outlook, acceptance, and freedom from attachments. Ugh. "Mindfulness" again. I'm in favor of flexible outlooks and whatnot, but I have yet to accept the usefulness of "mindfulness," and I might never do so. Then again, I might. Thus once again showing that I have some flexibility. Many argue that the world is a harsh place, and that it is the stresses and misfortunes in life that make people depressed, not their thinking style. Wrong! Once again, the irony of proclaiming "WRONG!" in an article like this doesn't escape me. Countless people suffer misfortunes and do not get depressed or anxious, while others seemingly suffer no misfortune at all, and are blighted with depression and anxiety. Or it could be, though I don't have studies and shit to pull out, that depression and anxiety are health issues, caused not by absolutist thinking but by chemical processes in the brain. This is like saying that lots of people slip and fall on ice, but not all of them break their legs doing so. So, yeah, I'm not taking the words here to be absolute truth, but I found it to be an interesting enough take on things to share it. |
| While we spent yesterday discussing the origin of Pop-Tarts, today's article, from Scientific American, touches on something almost as profound. Is There a Thing, or a Relationship between Things, at the Bottom of Things? Quantum mechanics inspires us to speculate that interactions between entities, not entities in themselves, are fundamental to reality Let me start with this: I was, at first, a bit thrown off by the headline. Maybe it's just me, being used to seeing headlines phrased as yes/no questions, which I thought this was at first. Then I realized that they're asking which is more fundamental: things, or relations? Just in case some reader experiences the same confusion, I thought I'd attempt to interpret. Which makes it still a binary question, but I'll run with it for now. What’s at the bottom of things? It's turtles all the way down. If we keep asking “Why?” where do we end up? If my childhood was representative, the answer to that is "In our rooms, alone." The monotheistic faiths assert that our questions must culminate in God, a solitary, supernatural creator. No, I'm not going to get into that argument today. Dissatisfied with that hypothesis, physicists postulate that everything stems from a single primordial force or particle, perhaps a supersymmetric string, from which flow the myriad forces and particles of our fallen world. One could still, presumably, reconcile those two worldviews by assuming, for example, that God created the "primordial force or particle." I don't buy that either, by the way. But like I said, I'm not here to argue about it. (From what I understand, supersymmetric string theory is all but ruled out, though I still maintain that a perfectly logical "string theory" is: "The Universe is a big ball of string, and God is a cat.") Notice that, for all their differences, religion and physics share the ultrareductionist conviction that reality comes down to one thing. Yeah, okay, but as one of those "things" is supposedly infinitely complex, and the other is infinitesimally simple, that's a pretty damn big difference. Call this the oneness doctrine. This may be confusing, too, as, at least to me, "oneness" conjures up images of hippies sitting around going, "Whoa, it's, like, all ONE, man." So, I’m intrigued by the conjecture that at the heart of reality there are at least two things doing something to each other. This may also be a bias due to our species having evolved via two things doing something to each other. In other words, there is an interaction, a relationship. Call this the relationship doctrine. Another point of clarification: These days, you see the word "relationship," and the implication is sexual and/or romantic. But the word "relationship" is much broader than that, meant to describe how any thing relates to any other thing. Like how the Earth and the Moon relate via gravity. This word definition creep is the same sort of thing that leads us to make jokes about names like the town of Intercourse. When the town, or village, or whatever, was first named, intercourse described interaction between people. Later, people started talking about "sexual intercourse," and because all we do is think about sex, when this was later shortened to "intercourse," the original meaning was all but forgotten, except among pedants like me. Point being, erase that connotation of "relationship" from your mind when you think about how the author uses the word. Yes, despite my joke above about "two things doing something to each other." Anyway, the article cites a bunch of thinkers who saw the "relationship" bit as being fundamental. Then: Part of me finds the relationship doctrine, and especially Gefter’s you-centered metaphysics, beautiful and consoling, a welcome alternative to mindless materialism. The relationship doctrine also seems intuitively sensible. Just as words must be defined by other words, so we humans are defined, and to a certain extent brought into existence, by other human beings. If there's only one thing to know about science, it's this: it doesn't care whether you find it beautiful and consoling or not. No matter how appealing an idea is, it needs to be falsifiable, and it needs to be tested. Moreover, as I mentioned above, I have a long-standing aversion to the oneness doctrine. This antipathy dates back to a drug trip in 1981, during which I felt myself becoming a solitary consciousness, the only one in the universe. I knew that was coming. I bet you saw it coming a light-year away, too. I thought: What is the difference between one thing and nothing? One thing only exists in relation to something else. I mean, I don't disagree with the philosophy, but my main takeaway here is, "Wow, someone actually remembered details of their acid trip." And yet I have doubts about the relationship doctrine, as I do about all metaphysical systems that privilege mind, consciousness, observation, information. They smack of narcissism, anthropomorphism and wishful thinking. This is good. Having doubts and expressing them is what saves this article. In conclusion, for me anyway, the headline question is less meaningful than it seems. Leaving aside the imprecision of the word "thing" (which I've harped on in a recent entry), it's meaningless to consider objects without some sort of relationship between them; and you can't speak of the relationships between objects without acknowledging the objects. Also, as the drug-tripping author notes, if there's only one object, it's not much of a universe at all. So my philosophy is "both." We have to consider both things, and the interactions between things, to get anywhere. |
| "Mommy, where do Pop-Tarts come from?" "The supermarket, kid." The Contentious History of the Pop-Tart In the 1960s, two cereal giants raced to develop a toaster pastry In September 1964, Kellogg’s changed breakfast forever by introducing Pop-Tarts to the world. Yeah, it sure did change forever. Now instead of an unhealthy breakfast, we can eat a prepackaged unhealthy breakfast. What made Pop-Tarts so innovative wasn’t just the sweet filling in various flavors squished between two thin pastry crusts. Or that they could be eaten toasted or cold. I mean, sure, technically, they can be eaten cold, just like leftover pizza technically can be eaten cold. If you're a savage. It was the convenience with which adults and children alike could open and instantly devour them. It's not like they didn't have packaged prepared convenience foods in the 1960s. It's just that maybe PTs were the first ones to be marketed as breakfast. Pop-Tarts’ ingredients mean that they don’t need to be refrigerated, and their foil packaging ensures they can be stored for months. That's a funny way to phrase "Pop-Tarts contain preservatives." Obviously, most packaged food products contain preservatives. I'm not one of those ooh-booga-booga "all preservatives are bad" people, but it's entirely possible that some are worse than others. The ingredients are right there on the package, and most of them are pretty straightforward: sugar, corn syrup, mirror-universe sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc. But one of them is just called TBHQ.Now, I'm also not one of those "only eat things you can pronounce" people. As I've noted before, first, it encourages ignorance; second, I did recreational chemistry as a kid; my father had a degree in the field, and I learned how to pronounce lots of things. But I feel like calling it TBHQ deliberately hides a fell secret; it's short for tertiary butylhydroquinone, which I'm sure if spelled out would freak out your average shopper way more than MSG (monsodium glutamate).All of which is to say that even I, a big fan of both convenience and better living through chemistry, have my limits. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, hyper-sweetened food products that could be eaten on the go exploded in popularity, especially among children. This just in: children love sweet things. Who knew? This is all the more ironic because Will Keith Kellogg and John Harvey Kellogg, two brothers from Battle Creek, Michigan, were initially invested in providing healthy foods and cereals to improve digestion when launching their company in 1906. I suppose you can call that irony. I call it a natural progression. Anything that starts out healthy eventually gets mass-marketed as candy. Cereal products are just one example. Also see: coffee, yogurt. Just to be clear: I'm not anti-Pop-Tarts. I just like to know what stuff's made of and make my own decisions. Upon his death on February 10, 2024, William Post was widely identified as leading the team that created the Pop-Tart. Post told southwest Michigan’s Herald-Palladium back in 2003 that Kellogg’s approached him when he was the manager of a Keebler Foods plant in Grand Rapids, where they asked him to develop the revolutionary breakfast food. On the official Pop-Tarts website there’s no mention of Post. Of course there isn't. That would be like if Coca-Cola hired some guy named John Pepsi to develop a new soft drink, or if Wal-Mart tasked Betty Amazon to design their new stores. In order to spread the word of its creation, Kellogg’s used many television shows to introduce Pop-Tarts throughout the last months of 1964. Advertising appeared on “Beverly Hillbillies,” “My Favorite Martian,” “What’s My Line,” “Huckleberry Hound,” “Yogi Bear,” “Woody Woodpecker,” “Quick Draw McGraw,” “Mighty Mouse” and across daytime television. Product placement is a legitimate marketing strategy. What makes it sneaky is that even if people go, "Hey, that's product placement," it still works. The entire article I'm linking today, for example, is basically an ad for Seinfeld's movie which, since I'm not getting paid either way, I won't name. Nor do I have any desire to watch it, even though it wouldn't cost me a dime to do so as it's on a streaming service I'm already subscribed to. Ad or not, though, the historical information is interesting to me. I suspect the product was a part of the childhood experience of most people born around the time I was and, as the article notes, it's not like they're going out of style anytime soon. |
| In nearly 1700 entries over almost two decades, the only shocking thing is that I haven't repeated titles more than I actually have. Going back in time today, I'm going to resurrect the entry with this title from June of 2020: "Under Pressure" The linked article itself, from six months earlier, is still around. Not too surprising, since it's from Atlas Obscura. In the entry, I started with: Turns out that, like gravity, crumpets, Doctor Who, and Russian Imperial Stout (no, really), champagne was a British innovation -- and the reason why will shock you! (Hey, look, I can write clickbait! Pay me!) Do they still use that kind of clickbait title? I don't think I've seen it in a while. I'm guessing people get wise to the tactics so they no longer work, so they move on to different, more subtle tactics. Anyway, none of this is clickbait. Also, it is now canon that the Doctor went back in time, met Newton, and changed history by leading him to create the Theory of Mavity, not gravity. Well, it was actually his companion's fault, but that's not the point. I also wrote: They only lost 10% of their forests and timber supply? That doesn't sound so bad. Oh. No, the author is just misusing "decimate." While I will never not be pedantic about the definition of "decimate," I get that it's a futile battle. Since there's really not much else I found to criticize about that four-year-old post, I'll just point out that I did, eventually, tell the story of Russian Imperial Stout... two years later, in this entry: "The Yeast You Can Do" So, bonus link there. Fear not, though; it's short. Like today's. |
| Damn, people in the past sure had barbaric ideas about things like medicine... and punishment. I'm hereby calling dibs on Victorian Crank Machine for my steampunk band. In the grim confines of 19th century British prisons, wardens sought ever more sadistic ways to punish inmates through forced labor. Gosh, this never happens today. One diabolical device they landed on was the crank machine. Another was the treadmill, which you've probably used voluntarily at least once in your life.The crank was a hand-powered rotary mechanism that served no purpose other than to torment prisoners. Locked in isolated cells, inmates had to turn a crank handle connected to paddles that churned sand inside a box. The only output was soul-crushing tedium. If this happened in the US, I'd blame someone taking seriously the specious claim that "idle hands do the Devil's work." I don't know; maybe enough religious nutbars stayed in the UK for it to be true there, too. Also... let's pretend for a moment that it did serve some purpose, like, I don't know, turning wheat into flour or running a coal conveyor or the urchin grinder, or whatever else the Victorians needed done. Would that have made it somehow better? To earn basic sustenance like food and water, prisoners were expected to complete a 10,000-14,000 revolutions per day on the crank, often working late into the night by candlelight if they fell behind quota. I guess this was before the lightbulb was invented, or they could have used the power to keep the bulb lit. Maybe; I didn't do the math. But regardless, why would someone need light to do this task? Mercifully, the crank machine faded from use by the early 20th century as more humane concepts of rehabilitation took hold. I suspect the phrase "more humane" is relative. One wonders what punishments of today will be looked back on in a century with great disgust. |
| Woke up with a case of gamer finger this morning. You know, when you sprain your finger from intermittently pushing the key that makes you go in the game? No? Damn, just me then. So I'd like to keep this short, but considering what I landed on today, I don't know if I'll be able to. Are we morally obligated to meditate? A growing body of neuroscience research shows that meditation can make us better to each other. Just remember, my default response to headline questions is "no." Starting in 2005, Harvard neuroscientist Sara Lazar began to publish some mind-blowing findings: Meditation can literally change the structure of your brain, thickening key areas of the cortex that help you control your attention and emotions. Setting aside for the moment the ridiculous idea that "you" are some entity separate from your brain that can control it like a puppet, that finding, if true, is remarkable in itself. It'd be the brain equivalent of weight-lifting. The article does go on to mention follow-up studies, so there may be something to it. Your brain — and possibly, by extension, your behavior — can reap the benefits if you practice meditation for half an hour a day over eight weeks. Which might not be possible for everyone. As with exercise or recipe timing, the duration is misleadingly short. It takes time to prepare for these things, and more time to come down after. So you're looking at a 45-minute chunk of the day, maybe. Now, what are you willing to give up to get those 45 minutes? Sleep? If you do, you'll fall asleep trying to meditate (or, I don't know, maybe that's just me, too). Time with family? Dog-walking? Commute? Work? Lunch? A host of other studies showed that meditation can also change your neural circuitry in ways that make you more compassionate, as well as more inclined to have positive feelings toward a victim of suffering and to see things from their perspective. But what if you don't want to do all that? Still skeptical, I fell down an internet rabbit hole and soon found many more neuroscientific studies. Looking closely at them, I did find that a fair number are methodologically flawed (more on that below). But there were many others that seemed sound. See, this is what I look for in articles like this: some indication that the author didn't just accept whatever bullshit gets strewn about. If it takes such a small amount of time and effort to get better at regulating my emotions, paying attention to other people, seeing things from their point of view, and acting altruistically, then … well … am I not morally obligated to do it? That's not a science question. That's a philosophy question. But the whole next section of the article goes back to the science bit, which is worth reading, but I'm not quoting it here. So, provisionally accepting the science findings, I'm skipping to the philosophy section. After I started wondering if we’re morally obligated to meditate, I soon realized that’s a very Western and Judeo-Christian way of thinking about it. I would very much like for that hyphenated adjective to stop being used. But Eastern traditions like Buddhism or Confucianism aren’t grounded in commandments that come from a divine being. Neither are Western traditions. We've been conditioned to believe that the commandments came from a divine being. Which, from a practical perspective, I suppose produces the same results. Plus, whereas the language of oughts and obligations suggests a prescriptive or proselytizing attitude, Buddhist tradition has generally been more interested in inviting people to try meditation and discover its benefits for themselves, rather than in mandating adherence. Therein lurks an important difference between East and West. I'd say this bit's important to note, too: But there’s a caveat: For a small minority of people, meditation can actually provoke adverse effects, like intense mental distress or impaired physical functioning. Brown University psychologist Willoughby Britton is studying these cases in a project called “Varieties of Contemplative Experience.” More research is still needed, but given that meditation practices might precipitate or exacerbate challenging conditions in some people, it would be wrong to say that absolutely everyone would do well to meditate. This is analogous to people urging us to get out and socialize more. That may be good advice for the extroverted majority, but we introverts would quickly spiral into doom. Or, to be even more simplistic in my analogies, saying that it's a good idea to always use your right hand to write, because studies show that it helps 90% of us to do so. Scientists are publishing more and more studies on meditation each year. But many of these studies are beset by methodological flaws, leading to overhyped results. Davidson calls this “neuromythology.” Yeah, we need to be really careful about that crap. It's like all those "quantum consciousness" bullshit books. So, is the answer to the headline question still "no?" Well, you'll have to figure that out for yourself. Philosophy can guide science, and science can inform philosophy, but they're not the same sport. For me, I've spent too many years trying to figure out how to become more compassionate, but meditation just isn't my thing. I find it more practical to accept myself the way I am right now, flaws and all. |
| I've done entries about categorization problems before. Is it a sea or a lake? A dwarf planet or a planet? A hill or a mountain? Is a hot dog a sandwich or a taco, or is it just a hot dog? Well, here's one that I've wondered about for a long time, yanked from the website at Country Living. Served in a pot? Maybe in your country. In my country, they're cooked in a pot and served in bowls. The article is from January of 2020, but surely nothing's changed since then. When it's cold outside or you're not feeling well—no matter the time of year—there's nothing more comforting than a hearty soup recipe or a slow cooker stew recipe. Sure there is: the actual soup or stew, preferably made by someone else because it's cold outside and I'm not feeling well. On that we can agree—but when you break it down, do you really know the difference between stew and soup? No, but I guess you're about to tell me. Incidentally, I don't really care; I only care that it tastes good. The main difference is the amount of liquid that's used for each. In a soup, the ingredients will generally be completely submerged in liquid, while in stews, they're just barely covered. Okay, but what about when you have ingredients that float? Carrots, e.g., or pasta. You look at it, it's only partly submerged. Like the iceberg, not like the Titanic. The main component of a soup is the liquid. Soups can be brothy (think: a timeless chicken noodle soup), puréed (classic tomato purée soup), or creamy (potato cheddar soup, anyone?). I'm not reproducing the links here, but I'm starting to think this "article" is just meant to promote their recipes. Oh, and to further complicate matters, there are other names for soups. Bisque, a subcategory of creamy soup. Chowder, same. Pho, which I maintain stretches the definition of soup, because it cannot be eaten with a spoon alone unless you have superpowers. Soups are generally easy and fast to make—some can be made in as little as 20 minutes! 20 minutes? To source all the ingredients, prep them, fumble around with cookware, etc.? Hell, if your batch of soup is voluminous enough, it'll take 20 minutes just to bring it to a boil before you turn it down to a simmer. On the other hand, I've made soup in 3 minutes: 1) Open a can of Campbell's 2) Mix it with a can full of water 3) Nuke for 2 minutes. The general rule is that no ingredient should be larger than a soup spoon. See, that's a tough rule for pedants like me. First, define "soup spoon." After that, consider ramen. Each ramen noodle is, well, a noodle. Even if it were possible to fish out the noodles one by one, bits of them would hang over the sides of the spoon, making it larger than a soup spoon. Sure, if you got it all coiled up, an individual noodle could maybe fit in one spoon, but who does that? Also see: French onion soup. Stew tends to be more complex and takes longer to cook than soup. Betting we could find counterexamples if we tried. Unlike soups, which rely mostly on water or stock as the main liquid, stews can contain beer, cider, or wine for additional flavor. I put brandy in my French onion soup. But. The end of the article addresses a long-standing question, one of great import and whose definitive answer could change the world. Is chili considered a soup or a stew? Still, I don't care; I consider it delicious. |
| One reason conspiracy "theories" flourish is that, sometimes, an actual conspiracy is brought to light. While today's article, from MPR, doesn't quite rise to the level of major international conspiracy, it's enough to make you wonder what other similar things are going on. This is like finding out that PETA, the pseudo-animal-rights organization whose idiotic performance art ensured that I will never become a vegetarian, is actually funded by KFC. And yet, this is both hilarious and entirely predictable. Cupcakes. Frozen Pizza. Ice Cream. Cereal. These are some of the sugary foods that a slew of social media influencers are encouraging folks to enjoy guilt free. Honestly, I'm not opposed to that message. One reason we're so damn neurotic as a society is that lots of us have been convinced to feel guilty about everything pleasurable, instead of simply enjoying it. It's Puritanism all over again, and I won't put up with it. But I say these things without any benefit other than my own enjoyment at turning out to be right. Certainly, no one's paying me. Not even attention. However, a joint Washington Post and The Examination investigation found that major food companies, including Minnesota-based food giant General Mills, are reportedly capitalizing on the campaign by paying online dietitians to get people to consume more of their highly processed foods. Calling the people involved "online dieticians" is questionable, at best. Having watched a couple of videos about diet advice doesn't make you a dietician, but that, combined with a helping of chutzpah and earnest confidence and maybe a nice paycheck from Little Debbie, can convince people that you are. It's like how people spread the misinformation about ivermectin and Covid. Recently, General Mills, one of the biggest food companies in America, has started adopting the anti-diet philosophy as a way to promote their products. So, they’re doing this through a multi-pronged campaign that involves funding influencers online to promote this message, funding research and also hiring lobbyists to fight back against federal regulation. Just to be clear: I think that all of these things are acceptable in a society that values freedom of speech and association. What's not acceptable is lying about it, or failing to disclose it. We reached out to General Mills, and they say that they comply with federal regulations, and are working closely with scientific health nutrition experts to make sure that the information that they’re putting out there is accurate and based in evidence. I can hear its nose growing from all the way over here. I think it’s best to, when we’re approaching social media, to have a skeptical mindset. And, probably I would recommend people turn to their doctors for advice, as opposed to influencers online. And sure, doctors are human too, and susceptible to outside influence. The shady practices of pharmaceutical companies are one way they can be led astray. So they're not always right. But they're far more likely to have the knowledge and experience to consult on things like this than some rando on the internet (myself included). Skepticism (that's scepticism if you're British) is a good thing. Better that than naîve acceptance of everything you see online (or in ads or wherever). But that includes skepticism of conspiracy theories. Or conspiracy-adjacent theories. |
| Just an interesting Atlas Obscura article today... Star Forts Are Military History, and the Base of Some Strange Conspiracy Theories Examining why these ubiquitous, obsolete fortifications carry an air of mystery. Anything with even the slightest hint of mystery becomes, in the minds of humans, a conspiracy theory. Or at least something supernatural. It's like: "I wonder why the sun moves across the sky." "Oh, the gods must be pulling it on a chariot." "Oh! Yeah, that makes sense!" Or: "Who left these big footprints in the mud by the edge of the forest?" "Not sure. Must be aliens." "What? Come on. It's gotta be something perfectly natural, like Bigfoot." Star forts, like all forts, having been (most likely) built by actual humans from actual Earth, have nevertheless been subject to these same impeccable lines of reasoning. As usual, I recommend going to the link for the pretty pictures. I've only got a few comments here. I first began thinking seriously about bastion forts after reading W.G. Sebald’s final novel, Austerlitz. The book centers around the eponymous architecture critic, Jacques Austerlitz, who explains to the protagonist early on that “it is often our mightiest projects that most obviously betray the degree of our insecurity.” For once, I don't think this is a book ad in disguise. Though the author's own books are linked at the bottom of the article. “No one today,” he continues, “has the faintest idea of the boundless amount of theoretical writings on the building of fortifications, of the fantastical nature of the geometric, trigonometric, and logistical calculations they record, of the inflated excesses of the professional vocabulary of fortification and siegecraft, no one now understands its simplest terms, escarpe and courtine, faussebraie, réduit, and glacis, yet even from our present standpoint we can see that towards the end of the seventeenth century the star-shaped dodecagon behind trenches had finally crystallized, out of the various available systems, as the preferred ground plan.” For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, no "mystery" question is ever answered by conspiracy theorists with "Because humans can be really clever." They were first developed after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and became widespread throughout the 16th century, until their gradual obsolescence became apparent in the 1800s. Technology advances, in part, because of an arms race. You design a better weapon, I design a better defense. I design a better defense, you design a better weapon. And so on, until you design a weapon good enough to wipe out the planet, and do so, ending the arms race... probably. Meanwhile, a lot of those older weapons and defenses look cool, but aren't useful for their original purpose. I returned to Sebald’s novel again as I learned that there is an entire conspiracy theory built around these fortifications. According to the stranger corners of the Internet, these forts are not elaborate remnants of long-obsolete defense strategies, but rather structures built by some lost, hyper-advanced civilization. "Because I'm not clever enough to have designed them, I guarantee you no human was clever enough to design them." Littered all through Youtube, TikTok, and Reddit are videos and threads with names like “Star Forts: Tesla Technology, Vibration Healing, Ancient Electricity, Sound Frequency Technology,” in which bastion forts are recast as key players in the New Age gobbledygook that makes up so much of social media these days. (Among the regular posters in the starforts.org thread is a man named John A. Warner IV, the son of former U.S. Senator and U.S. Secretary of the Navy John Warner III, who’s self-published a novel that involves star forts, among its many other plots, and argued, for example, that they were not built but rather “grown” through some combination of frequency resonance and “water cymatics,” whatever that is.) John Warner was a senator from my state. He's dead now. I didn't usually agree with him, but I respected him (which I hardly ever say about a politician of any sort). He apparently neglected his kid, though. The star pattern, these conspiracists allege, mimics certain frequency waves as they appear on oscilloscopes, suggesting that these structures’ design reflects not military technology but an organic shape that somehow harmonizes with the natural world. I'm sorry... I can't... excuse me a moment, would you? BWAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAcoughcoughHAHAHAHAHAcough Ahem. Okay, I'm back. I won't quote further. But I will say that the article left me with a sense of the inevitability of rampant speculation and conspiracy "theories" in the wake of our construction of a post-truth society. No evidence in the world—and there is plenty of said evidence—will turn these speculations around, because, in the end, truth is what they believe it is. And that's an arms race we've already lost. |
| I think my random number generator is determined to clear out all the Cracked links from my queue. That's a comedy site, and death is very much not funny... except when it is, like when someone falls off a cliff trying to take the perfect selfie. When someone brings about their own downfall, people sometimes say they were hoisted by their own petard. We avoid using that expression ourselves because what exactly is a “petard” anyway? Now, that's French I knew before I started learning French. The first translation I heard was "little fart." The linked article goes into more detail. Not about farts, but the word "petard." 5. The YouTube Demonstration of How Bullets Can’t Go Through Books We like to make fun of those damn kids and their tikkytokky, but people posted Stupid Human Tricks on YouTube since approximately the day it was released. This particular one, though, is from 2017, well over 10 years after the site launched. As for Ruiz, he will sadly never get to fulfill the promise he made with some of his last words: “Every week, I’m gonna be bringing you guys new videos!” This is why I never make promises. As soon as I start to do so, my mind goes to all the dumb ways I could die and thus break the promise. I'd rather die than break a promise, so I avoid having to make that choice. 4. The Thieves Who Stole Cobalt-60 You know, this wouldn't be the karmic justice that it obviously is if it had happened back when Marie Curie was doing her Nobel Prize-winning shit. But this was in 1999, long after Chernobyl, and in another part of the former USSR. One of the thieves dropped dead within 30 minutes. This was the member of the gang who actually held the material. Sources differ on exactly what happened to the rest, with some saying that two others died next. At least one thief did survive, which meant he went to the hospital and then got arrested. And sadly, not sentenced to help clean up Chernobyl. 3. Ripping Down a Crash Mat, and Crashing In case it wasn’t obvious, all the men had been drinking. Don't freakin' blame booze for this. Booze enhances what's already there, be it stupidity, like these guys, or, in my case, genius. 2. The Trophy Hunter, Crushed by His Trophy Every so often, you’ll hear about some rich American going to Africa to kill a big-game animal and pose with the kill. Theunis Botha was not one of these casual trophy hunters. Botha was an expert trophy hunter, who led hunts in Zimbabwe and South Africa for decades. This one is satisfying on at least two levels. Not only do we get treated to jungle justice, but also we can make "Many Bothans died" Star Wars reference jokes. 1. Joseph Stalin, for Being Stalin One of the few good things you can say about Adolf Hitler is that at least he killed Hitler. Apparently, one can say something similar about Stalin, only his victim was Stalin. It was just a little more indirect, in his case. Kind of a Rube Goldberg self-destruction machine. His staff did not summon his personal physician. They couldn’t, as the man was currently being tortured in the basement of border security headquarters. There's a lot more fatal idiocy you can read about at the link that contributed to his death, but ultimately... he was hoist by his own petard. |
| We're going back in time, as usual for Sunday mornings. This time, it's just to October of 2020 (specifically, 10/10/20, one of the few dates that work in both American and European style conventions and which can also be turned into a mathematical equation): "Fail" I did the entry for that month's round of "Journalistic Intentions" [18+], which is still an active blogging challenge, though not every month. Also, all the links in the entry are still solid, which isn't too surprising for something less than 4 years old.Anyway, I got curious and looked up the origin of the name Fail. I didn't go into this at the time, but today, I noticed that the ultimate origin of the Scottish surname Fail (which has many alternative spellings) is the name Paul. Don't ask me what kind of linguistic vowel shifts it takes to get from Paul to Fail; I don't know. But the name Paul, from Paulus, is Latin in origin, though it is probably most associated with the Paul of the New Testament. So Paul becomes Phaill (or some similar spelling), and, by the convention of some Scottish clan names, generates MacPhaill, later Anglicized as MacFail or just Fail. At least, that's one possible explanation. I never did trust some of these genealogy websites. But you know the Meat Loaf character in Fight Club? "His name was Robert Paulson." Well, "Paulson" is the English equivalent of MacPaul, which we've already speculated became the name Fail, so I have to wonder if Palahniuk did that shit on purpose. Probably not; his symbolism tends to be more of a, well, a punch in the face. Anyway, back to my original entry: I know, I know, it's rude to make fun of peoples' last names. You should be proud of your last name, even if it's Fail. Or Hogg, as in yesterday's entry (coincidentally, also Scottish). Still, being proud of being a Hogg (or a Fail, for that matter) is no damn excuse to name your kid Ima. There's the story of a Dr. A. Hedgeh, for example, who apparently had a problem with people adding "og" to his nameplate. In case you don't want to bother rereading my 2020 entry, I'm including that link  here again, because I still laugh every time I see it. Fake or not.So, yes, it's rude to make fun of peoples' names. But sometimes, it's so funny you can't help it. |
| I have way, way more links from other sources in my queue, but hit another Cracked article today anyway. Either it's just one of those things with random numbers, or the Universe is trying to tell me something this week. I'm going with the former. At least this one's not a countdown. While there were obviously worse monsters in history—certain dictators come to mind, as does whoever used the next-to-last bit of toilet paper and didn't replace the roll—this guy's nearly up there with them. Of course, they tease us by not revealing the name until we scroll far enough down, and whoever invented that bit of web optimization also needs to be called out and shamed. Spoiler: it's a guy named, appropriately, Hogg. The overdraft fee. A trap disguised as convenience, so nefarious that it feels like it was invented by Mephistopheles himself. Maphi... Meppi... Mephi... the devil had better things to invent, like blister packs and those hard plastic shells that take power tools to open. Not especially surprising, given that currency, something originally invented to make commerce easier, is now basically a way to use math to break a human’s spirit over the course of their lifetime. To hear some people talk about it, the only math that doesn't cause them great anxiety is when the store offers a 30% discount on some gadget in a hard plastic shell. Why hasn't anyone made bulletproof armor out of that stuff yet? Any discussion or criticism of overdraft fees always results in the same defenders bubbling up from the cracks like ichor: People who are frustrated that bank accounts are private information, because they want everyone to know how financially responsible and smart they are. “Maybe you should keep track of how much money is in your bank account, and you wouldn’t overdraft,” they offer smugly, like a straight-A student tsk-tsking at the kid who forgot his homework. Bank accounts, like health problems, are only private information if you want yours to be. For instance, I have a checking account with exactly $500.00 in it. I've never overdrafted it in the 20 years or so that it's been in existence. There, I've shared private information. That said, that "advice" is simplistic and annoying, and ignores Rule #1 of finance: Banks will find a way to screw you. Let’s also make it clear here, in case you were kicked by a horse and are still defending them as a valuable convenience: Banks offer overdraft fees because they make a shit ton of money off of them. The overdraft fee can also be considered interest on a loan. Sometimes, that interest is so high the mob looks at it and goes, "Geez, why can't we charge that much?" 2019, for instance, they made $11.68 billion from overdraft fees alone. Which is the kind of cash that inspired some banks to reorder transactions, deducting big purchases first, so that they might have a chance to hit multiple overdraft fees from some sap by rattling off five unaffordable coffees once they were at zero. They also like to process debits (checks, card purchases, transfers out) before deposits. See Rule #1 of finance, above. While overdraft fees seem like a modern cash grab... Their origin goes all the way back to 1728, and a Scottish merchant named William Hogg. He, together with the Royal Bank of Scotland, worked out the first ever overdraft fee, so that he could conduct business more effectively if he was waiting on a tardy payment. While the link on his name in the article is broken, I'm here for you: {xlink:https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~hogg/genealogy/famoushoggs.html}this page} lists several famous Hoggs, including Ima, whose parents would be roasting on spits in Hell, if Hell actually existed, for naming her that; William Hogg is on there, with a link that confirms that, indeed, he's the guy who helped invent overdraft fees. But Hogg's influence is minor, analogous to whoever invented fire when compared to whoever invented napalm. The problem being, of course, that reliable customers don’t bounce enough checks to make it a revenue stream. Here is when the crown of hell is lowered onto a man’s head: William H. Strunk, who in 1994 came up with the modern overdraft system, “available” to every customer, and consisting of a per-transaction charge. What is it with guys named William, anyway? Are they just mad because no one likes to receive Bills? The final piece of this devil’s triad was the widespread use of debit cards. With people using debit cards for every manner of purchase, instead of larger bank debits and ATM withdrawals, suddenly banks were presented with a smorgasbord of tiny purchases to swat back with a new, double-digit fee attached. Even there, one might think, well, if there's only $17 in your account, and you try to make a $20 purchase with your debit card, shouldn't that just be declined? Well, maybe. But that assumes the bank doesn't want to collect an OD fee, which it definitely does, in accordance with Rule #1. Also, maybe you've just checked your balance using your handy mobile device, and it says you have $117, but what it doesn't say is that the $100 check you wrote to the babysitter hasn't cleared yet. There's certainly an aspect of personal responsibility involved, but no one's perfect, and imperfection shouldn't come with a 2000%+ interest rate. Luckily for us, their day in the sun seems to be ending, as the government is taking on overdraft fees directly. The government? The government that's run by bankers? That government? Obviously, all this applies in the US. In other countries, your kilometerage may vary. |
| I'll do another one from "JAFBG" [XGC] today: What issue do you think has been misrepresented? Since I pick these at random, I didn't have an axe to grind in mind when I landed on this prompt. It took me a while to sift through all the issues I could remember from relatively recent news stories, eliminate from consideration those that are too divisive to deal with in the short time I take to write these things, and decide on one I gave enough of a shit about to comment on. An AI could probably have done that faster, and indeed, I considered doing this entry on AI, perhaps even using AI (which is not actually AI, but that's a semantic bugaboo for me and a whole different level of misrepresentation). Since I was in NYC last week, though, I decided on crime. No, I don't mean I decided to pursue a life of crime. English is sometimes ambiguous like that, which can be annoying but can also lead to great amusement, so let's not change that anytime soon. What I mean is, I think crime is an issue that's been misrepresented in media, both social and commercial. The reason I mention NYC above is that there's this pervasive attitude that "big city" crime is a huge problem, and in the US, there's no bigger city than New York. And yet, the reality is, though I can't be arsed to look up statistics, that most of NYC is pretty damn safe. Sure, crime happens... but it can happen anywhere, and if you're a victim of assault or mugging or whatever, the prior chance of you being a victim of assault or mugging or whatever is largely irrelevant. Discussing this issue is made difficult by how one defines "crime" as well as other factors. Different localities have different priorities. In my experience, law enforcement makes a big show of drug busts, while mostly ignoring crimes with actual victims, such as burglary (yes, drug use is often a bellwether for other crimes, but that doesn't mean it is, by itself, worse than, say, sawing off someone's catalytic converter). Mainly, though, the issue comes down to one of familiarity. As an analogy, most people in the US drive nearly every day, while they only fly occasionally. The dangers of flying are thus magnified in a person's mind, sometimes to the point of actual fear of getting on an airplane. Statistically, though, it's clear that you're much safer on a jet (even if it was recently made by Boeing) than you are driving to and from the airport. Likewise, someone from a medium-sized town like mine might be wary of the Big City with all its reported crime, while being used to the risks in one's hometown. Similarly, when it comes to threats to your family, other family members (or former family members) are much more likely to be the problem than some stranger. And then you get the politically-charged rhetoric about letting in immigrants and the like, who, according to the opponents thereof, are either lazy and want handouts, or are so willing to work hard that they're taking all our jobs; either way, though, they're perceived as potential criminals, which ignores all the US-born criminals who are much more likely to be the ones who do you some harm. It's understandable to be concerned for one's safety. And it pays to take reasonable precautions. But listening to the media might give a person a warped view of where the actual threats to it are coming from. |
| As luck would have it, we get another Cracked link today. I don't really know why I saved this to my queue other than thinking, "You know what my blog needs more of? Juvenile cringe humor." These are, of course, horrible, and not humorous at all. Stories tell of a boy in China who was impaled by an office chair. This chair was powered by a gas cylinder, and the cylinder exploded in 2009, blasting metal up his butt and killing him. Could have been worse. Could have been a couple inches forward and not killed him. We don’t want to spend too much time on that story, on the technicality that it’s likely completely made-up. Almost certainly an urban legend, but you just checked your office chair, didn't you? 5. Bullion, Milk and Whiskey Up the Butt I will admit to being somewhere in adulthood before I realized that bullion and bouillon were two different things. So I understand getting it wrong Both words come from the same root, a French word that translates to "boil," meaning like heating something to the point that liquid starts to turn into gas, not the painful pimply thing you get on your butt. Had to relate it to butts somehow, in honor of the article. Point being, they stuffed bouillon up the butt in question, not bullion, which would have made it harder to insert the milk and whiskey. Editing is dead. (The text in this section gets the spelling right.) President James Garfield died in 1881, after an escaped lunatic shot him in the arm and back... He died, historians now say, not just from the bullets but from how the doctors treated him. I'd heard this before, but purposely avoided all the details... until now. They shoved liquified food up his butt — beef bouillon, eggs and milk, along with whiskey and opium. They couldn’t let him eat, they said, because the bullet might have perforated his intestines (it really hadn't). See? They got "bouillon" right there, but made up for it by misspelling "liquefied." (In fairness, that might be an alternate spelling and not an incorrect one.) As a final note on this, let's not take this to mean "don't trust medical science." I mean, sure, don't trust 19th-century medicine; we might have advanced somewhat in that area since 1881. 4. Bitten by Your Own Attack Dog I can't do this one justice (pun intended, but you'll only get it if you read the actual link); you'll have to see the article. 3. Filled With Compressed Air No, not the way you're thinking. McCormack didn’t wind up with a hose nozzle up his anus through debatable means. McCormack fell on a hose, and the fitting ripped through the muscle of one buttock, which is an experience no one would desire. I don't know about that; it's probably a whole subgenre of paraphilia. This was a compressed air hose, connected to the brakes in his truck, and the air now flowed through the hose, entering the man. Ow. Ow. Ow. He felt like he were blowing up like a balloon. But he survived, and he’s now available for interviews about how the working class is dealing with inflation. Oh, that's right: that one line is the actual reason I saved this article in my queue. I'm mad that I didn't think of it first. 2. Water Ski Douche No. But it only gets worse: 1. Cooked as Steaks and Fed to Children Someone's been reading too much Brothers Grimm. Knight went on to be the first woman in Australia to be sentenced to life without parole. Authorities have no firm advice on how to stop something like this from happening again. I have some, hard-won from personal experience: 1) Don't go to continent/island/countries where it's well-known that everything, including scorned lovers, is out to kill you; 2) Don't stick it in crazy. |
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