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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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Eons ago, in the Before Time, I wrote a blog entry that mentioned the Decoy Effect. Here it is if you're interested: "Gindex"  . I don't expect anyone to remember this. Hell, I barely remembered it; I had some vague feeling that I'd talked about it before so I did a search and that was the only entry that came up.I just wanted to verify that I hadn't linked this particular article, which even predates that entry. Apparently, I hadn't. So here it is. Price is the most delicate element of the marketing mix, and much thought goes into setting prices to nudge us towards spending more. Everyone knows, or at least should know, about the bullshit that is the "sale." Nevertheless, it works. Say you want a widget. It's $100, which is outrageous. So you wait. A couple weeks later, you see: Widget Sale! 50% off! And you buy a widget for $50 plus tax. Thing is, the widget cost the store $20. So you're still getting boned. Yeah, I know, they gotta make a profit, but really? There’s one particularly cunning type of pricing strategy that marketers use to get you to switch your choice from one option to a more expensive or profitable one. It’s called the decoy effect. Gosh wow, I've never heard of that! Except it's in the headline. The article goes on to provide a retail example, but it also applies to menu options at a restaurant, as I noted in that long-ago entry. The decoy effect is defined as the phenomenon whereby consumers change their preference between two options when presented with a third option – the “decoy” – that is “asymmetrically dominated”. It is also referred to as the “attraction effect” or “asymmetric dominance effect”. You can tell that those phrases weren't marketed to consumers because they're from Latin roots. What asymmetric domination means is the decoy is priced to make one of the other options much more attractive. It is “dominated” in terms of perceived value (quantity, quality, extra features and so on). The decoy is not intended to sell, just to nudge consumers away from the “competitor” and towards the “target” – usually the more expensive or profitable option. Not sure why they'd necessarily push people to the more expensive option, unless it's something that confers bragging rights, like a car or a fine scotch. Usually the company only cares that they make more profit. If you can make $20 profit on a $100 woogie, or a $10 profit on a $200 woogie, you want to sell more of the $100 woogies. The article then describes an actual psych experiment where this was demonstrated. However, the experiment, in my view, suffers from the same bias as almost every psych experiment: their guinea pigs weren't chosen at random from the general population, but from college students. Still, the results were interesting and changed the way businesses priced things. The decoy effect is thus a form of “nudging” – defined by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein (the pioneers of nudge theory) as “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options”. Not all nudging is manipulative, and some argue that even manipulative nudging can be justified if the ends are noble. It has proven useful in social marketing to encourage people to make good decisions such as using less energy, eating healthier or becoming organ donors. I can't say I know a lot about economics (anyone who can say that is probably lying, to themselves or to others), but I've been told that one of the foundational principles of economics is: people respond to incentives. Those incentives can be financial, or, in the case of my town switching to single-stream recycling some years back, time savings. Another example provided in the article talks about pricing a magazine subscription. I don't know; when I went through the example, I didn't choose the "forced" option (actually I didn't choose any of the options because I'm a cheap bastard, but I mean hypothetically). This is because, in that hypothetical situation where you can get online only, print only, or online and print, I have no interest whatsoever in print options because I get enough mail as it is, and most of it ends up in the aforementioned recycle bin without having been read. The next example is more representative, I think, of peoples' daily choices. Consider the price of drinks at a well-known juice bar: a small (350 ml) size costs $6.10; the medium (450 ml) $7.10; and the large (610 ml) $7.50. Which would you buy? If you’re good at doing maths in your head, or committed enough to use a calculator, you might work out that the medium is slightly better value than the small, and the large better value again. But the pricing of the medium option – $1 more than the small but just 40 cents cheaper than the large – is designed to be asymmetrically dominated, steering you to see the biggest drink as the best value for money. Putting aside for a moment the fact that any of those prices is way too much to pay for a drink that isn't beer, I have to admit I don't see the point here. Even people who suck at math can figure out that the large is nearly twice the size as the small for a modest increase in price (why everyone does that probably has to do with cup and labor costs), and will tend to get the large. Unless - like with me at a coffee shop perusing the tea prices (because I don't like coffee) - you decide that's just way too much drink, and pay the higher unit cost for a small because that's really all you want. Still, the decoy effect is real; it's marketing and applied psychology. I'd be willing to bet, though, that there are plenty of people it's lost on. All I'm saying is: be aware of it, and buy what you want anyway; just know that what you "want" is, as always, being influenced by external forces. |
| This... this is satire, right? This has to be some sort of philosophical parody. Spare a Thought for the Billions of People Who Will Never Exist As world population growth slows, the never-conceived are the ultimate forgotten ones. Now, this source - Bloomberg - is obviously pro-capitalist, and capitalism absolutely relies on population growth. You need wage slaves and consumers, or your company doesn't make as much money, and that would be terrible. And the value of your company depends not on absolute profits, but on profit growth year over year. So it's not surprising that a bastion of capitalism would sound the bells of terror over the very idea that maybe future population will, not necessarily be lower, but not grow as quickly as they'd like. But I don't know. That's speculation. The article is, at least on the surface, more philosophical. A couple decides to have one child instead of two, or none instead of one. This happens all over the world. Billions of children are never conceived. And? What matters are actual lives, not imaginary ones. How real is the loss of a life that never began? None. None real. Is there a right to exist? For a person who exists, usually yes. For a person who doesn't exist, well, that's like saying "There has not been a Martian born on the Moon, but there should be and therefore they have a right to exist!" Is there an ideal size of the world population? I'm sure there is, but ideal for what, and for whom? I wouldn't even attempt to guess at what the ideal size of the world population of humans is; we'd have to take into account arable land, pollution, resource availability, and myriad other factors, not the least of which would be weighing any benefit of a larger human population against the existence of other species. These related questions become more pressing as population growth slows. There is population. There is population growth. And then there is change in rate of population growth. These things can be seen as analogous to position, velocity, and acceleration. "As population growth slows" refers to a decrease in acceleration. And I absolutely reject the hypothesis that these questions are "pressing;" they're mere philosophical abstractions. The late University of Oxford philosopher Derek Parfit wrestled with the question of the world’s ideal population in an influential 1984 book, Reasons and Persons. He didn’t delve into the carrying capacity of the planet, and he stayed away from the issue of abortion, which occurs after conception and thus raises a different set of concerns. Well, that year doesn't have any dire connotations. Anyway, any meaningful discussion of ideal population size has to take into account "the carrying capacity of the planet," which to be fair is a shifting, chaotic target because so many things - like climate and technology - affect it. Also, just to be crystal clear, I too am staying away from the issue of abortion. That has nothing whatsoever to do with any discussion here, and I only mention it to dismiss the topic out of hand. In an abstract, theoretical way, the British thinker presented what he called the “Repugnant Conclusion.” Here’s how he stated it: “For any possible population of at least 10 billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better, even though its members have lives that are barely worth living.” As a "conclusion," that is, on the surface, utter nonsense. But one must delve into how he reached that conclusion in order to consider specific arguments. I haven't read the book, so I have to rely on this author's summary. Parfit’s utilitarian logic was that if each person on the planet is happier alive than dead—even if just barely—then the total amount of happiness in an extremely large population, let’s say hundreds of billions, would be greater than the total happiness of a smaller population whose average happiness is greater. That's... that's not logic. First it relies on extremely questionable premises; second, why would the "total" matter? I guess they're considering "not born" to be the same as "dead?" That's crap. Also, it is impossible to be happy, or feel any other emotion, if you don't exist; most living people would rather stay alive, sure, but dead (or never-existant) people don't have the ability to "rather." And finally, what the declarative fuck does happiness have to do with anything, and how do you define it? It sounds like the author assumes an absolute scale, like the kelvin temperature scale, where "dead" is like "absolute zero" where happiness is concerned, and it can only go up from there. But... depending on how you define happiness... it's more like the Celsius scale, where 0 happiness is some arbitrary point, and it's absolutely possible to be alive and to feel negative happiness. If you don't believe me, congratulations; obviously, you've never been unhappy. Good for you. It’s simple arithmetic. No. No, it is not. How in the hell do you put a numeric value on an abstract concept? Any attempt to do so is necessarily subjective. And before anyone goes "but money is an abstract concept and we put a value on that," yes, but money still has a tangible reality aspect, whereas happiness, like love or pain confidence, can only be self-reported, and only against one's prior experience. One way to escape the Repugnant Conclusion is to maximize average happiness instead of total happiness. Another way is to stop worrying about happiness. Surely there are other means of self-evaluation? Another possible escape from the dilemma is to assert that some irreplaceable things are lost in the transition from a smallish, well-off population to a huge population of people just getting by. As Parfit put it, first Mozart goes away, then Haydn, etc., until all that’s left is “muzak and potatoes,” no amount of which can compensate for the loss of Mozart. Counterpoint: we also end up with an absolute fewer number of murderers, rapists, cannibals, etc. For every Mozart there's a Dahmer. Oxford philosopher Hilary Greaves wrote in 2017 in an article titled “Population Axiology” in the online journal Philosophy Compass that there’s no way out of Parfit’s conundrum without surrendering one or another moral intuition, so one’s solution to it “appears to be a choice of which intuition one is least unwilling to give up.” All due respect to any philosophers involved, but there is definitely a way out: don't use "happiness" as any kind of marker. As I said, it's squishy and undefinable, and there has got to be a more objective measure, like life expectancy or crime rate or how well any individual's objective needs, such as clean air, water, food, and companionship, are being met. Sure, one could say that fulfilling those needs provides "happiness," but I still say that a lot of people living unhappy lives would rather never have been born in the first place. The question of the ideal world population size may never be resolved by philosophers. Clearly not. That's going to take actual science. In conclusion: bullshit. |
| Here's something I've been ranting about for a long time, but this time with arguments from... well, someone other than me. In this case, an actual sociology professor; that is, someone who actually studies this crap. Comment: Bye, boomers; and millennials and Gen X and Z Naming generations works against understanding societal similarities and differences. Stop it. I used to wonder what they'd call the generation after Z, which is, of course, the final letter of the alphabet. Then I thought "what does it matter? We're not going to last that long." Boringly, the people whose job it seems to be to slap labels on everything decided to call them Alpha or some shit like that, which will definitely end well, considering what little conversation I've been privy to from the manosphere. Consider these facts: The tennis champion Williams sisters are a generation apart, according to the Pew Research Center. Venus, born 1980, is part of “Gen X”; Serena, born 1981, is a “millennial.” Meanwhile, Donald Trump and Michelle Obama are both in the same generation. The former was born in 1946 while the latter was born in 1964, making them both “baby boomers.” I've been saying shit like this for a while now, without those particular examples. Consider, for example, a hypothetical pair of twins born 10 minutes apart -- one at 11:55 pm on December 31, 1964, and the other being born at 12:05 am on January 1, 1965. The former is officially a Baby Boomer. The latter is officially Gen-X. Whatever. Meh. I'm an early Gen-Xer by any definition in use. The whole "generations" astrology thing proposes that I have more in common with someone born in -- depending on who you ask -- 1984 (my first year of college) than with someone born in 1964 (with whom I could have gone to middle school). This is grade-A cow manure. People are, for better or worse, born every year. It's a continuum, not a series of quantum jumps. Well, okay, but only very tiny quantum jumps, definitely much finer-grained than this "generations" crap. Anyway, back to the not-me argument. Generation labels, although widely adopted by the public, have no basis in social reality. In fact, in one of Pew’s own surveys, most people did not identify the correct generation for themselves; even when they were shown a list of options. I called it "astrology" above for a reason. Instead of asking people which group they feel an affinity for and why, purveyors of social “generations” just declare the categories and start making pronouncements about them. That’s not how social identity works. Quelle surprise. The practice of naming “generations” based on birth year goes back at least to the supposed “lost-generation” of the late 19th century. But as the tradition devolved into a never-ending competition to be the first to propose the next name that sticks, it has produced steadily diminishing returns to social science and the public understanding. It's still a thing that exists, so it's helpful to know its origins. There is no research identifying the appropriate boundaries between generations, and there is no empirical basis for imposing the sweeping character traits that are believed to define them. Generation descriptors are either embarrassing stereotypes or caricatures with astrology-level vagueness. In one article you might read that millennials are “liberal lions,” “downwardly mobile,” “upbeat,” “pre-Copernican,” “unaffiliated, anti-hierarchical, [and] distrustful”; even though they also “get along well with their parents, respect their elders and work well with colleagues.” They can go sod right off with that "pre-Copernican" bullshit. I don't know exactly what they mean by that, but to me it signifies an abandonment of scientific principles and the belief that the Earth is the physical as well as metaphorical center of the Universe. But what’s the harm? Aren’t these tags just a bit of fun for writers? A convenient hook for readers and a way of communicating generational change, which no one would deny is a real phenomenon? We in academic social science study and teach social change, but we don’t study and teach these categories because they simply aren’t real. And in social science, reality still matters. I could dispute that last claim, but I'm wallowing in confirmation bias here and don't feel like it. Besides, I'm cynical and disaffected. I know this because I'm Gen-X. Worse than irrelevant, such baseless categories drive people toward stereotyping and rash character judgment. So we're trying to stop judging people by racial stereotypes and now we're judging them by some purely arbitrary chronology. There are lots of good alternatives to today’s generations. We can simply describe people by the decade they were born. We can define cohorts specifically related to a particular issue; such as 2020 school kids. With the arrival of “Generation Z,” which Pew announced with fanfare, there has never been a better time to get off this train. If only. No, this crap will continue because people love shortcuts. When I was a kid, younger folks were blaming older folks for all of society's ills. Now I'm older, and younger folks are blaming older folks for all of society's ills. Specifically, the same older folks who once set out to change the world, and either failed miserably, or succeeded miserably. An argument could be made by any younger cohort that everything's the older cohort's fault, because, after all, the older cohort has had the opportunity to do stuff or not, while the younger cohort has, for the most part, not. Meanwhile, the older cohort can always blame the younger cohort for not having the life experience necessary to understand why the older cohort chose the things they did. As far as I can tell, this has been going on since at least the time of Socrates: “The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” But more likely, since way before then. I can acknowledge that there might be some value in identifying and naming generational cohorts. But the way it's done seems to me to be counterproductive to anything except finding new ways to divide us at a time when we need to be united. As for me, I've always had trouble identifying with a group. And when they try to shove me in one, I rebel. Again, it's like with astrology: Us Aquarians don't believe in that stuff. |
| Thanks for the MB, Andy~hating university ! Today we're going back to that trusted source for all things financial, Cracked. Lots of people get money things wrong. Like when they insist they'll take home less money if they move to a higher tax bracket. Well, that might happen if tax laws change year to year, but no, otherwise that can't happen. Or when people conflate "income" with "wealth." Someone could make a million dollars a year and still have nothing left over; contrariwise, you could make 100K a year and save half of it. But I think this article is more general than that. Our lives are one long timeline of discovering everything thought we knew about money is wrong. Early on, we're shocked to learn fairies don't really hand out money for teeth but people do voluntarily exchange money for vegetables. Actually, I knew that last bit from an early age, as we sold our surplus vegetables. 5. Everything People Think About What Companies/Billionaires Are Worth In general, any given thing is "worth" exactly what people are willing to trade for it, usually denominated in some currency. And what about those richest people in the world, going from net worths of $100 billion to more like $200 billion in no time at all. Where's all that money coming from? Built on the backs of labor. Rise up and- oh, wait, no. They're about stocks, and stocks are a special kind of made-up value. Like, you might say that all kinds of value are made-up, but stocks are super made-up, and a lot of people don't get this. The article goes on to explain the stock market in what I consider simple terms. But fair warning; there is math involved. But in conclusion (for this first one, anyway): But you don't have to get extra worked up over the terrifying spectre of unrealized capital gains. You're worrying about money that doesn't actually exist. And that's the -- pun intended -- money quote. Capital gains aren't taxed until they're realized. We can argue about how much they should be taxed, but keeping one's money in the stock market isn't "evading taxes;" it's kicking the tax can down the road. 4. "You Can't Pay Employees $15 An Hour And Profit!" "We won't make money if we pay employees more!" say companies. And the general populist response to this is "lol, fine." Higher wages are about letting employees live better, not about keeping profits high, right? Again, the article goes into the math involved. But my own take on that nonsense: If you pay people more, they will have more income (duh) and they will be able to spend it on products and services, thus keeping the economy rolling. 3. "All Of Our Tax Money Goes Into Defense" "We'd have enough money to pay for health care for everyone and wiping out debt and universal basic income and more if we only trim that ridiculous defense budget," people say. And the US does spend a lot on defense, more than the next several countries combined. But did you realize that the government spends more on Medicare than on the entire Department of Defense? Going by 2020 numbers, it's $917 billion on Medicare and $714 billion on defense. And to be clear, we should spend money on defense. And we also should spend money on health and infrastructure. The issue is more complicated than I (or Cracked) can really grok. For example: So if you're wondering why Bruce Wayne wastes money on batarangs rather than solving crime by lifting all of Gotham out of poverty, maybe it's because his fortune can only go so far in a city of 10 million. Or, if you're wondering why Bill Gates doesn't just end world hunger tomorrow, well, we'd love to hear what your plan is for permanently feeding billions of people using only tens of billions of dollars. The government would probably like to hear that as well. They have tens of billions too. 2. "College Students Are So Narcissistic Today You Can't Hire Them" The generation coming out of college right now harbors deep self-loathing. A constant need for approval doesn't signal a high opinion of oneself but rather the complete opposite. Many youngsters today don't even want to be alive. They're bitterly desperate to be hired and will even utterly debase themselves in the process. Which is, like, the polar opposite of narcissism. Every generation ends up complaining about "kids these days." We have short (and selective) memories. 1. The Myth Of "Self-Made" Fortunes Few things get our eyes rolling harder than hearing a newly rich entrepreneur described as a "self-made millionaire" or "self-made billionaire." Because outside of the very rare exception (say, Oprah), these people didn't start from humble beginnings at all, did they? That is, of course, a rhetorical question. A self-made billionaire is someone who started their own business and grew their money to a billion, even if they had some money to begin with. If you start out with $1 million and grow it to a billion thanks to the company you start, you are a self-made billionaire. It's a matter of definition. I figure if you generally grow your net worth, or at least have a plan when you don't, you're in good financial shape. I don't worry much about "self-made." The only time it matters to me is when someone claims to be "self-made" when they, as the saying goes, scored a home run while starting on third base. It sends the wrong message, among other problems. On the other hand, if you put a bunch of cash into Bitcoin or other Dunning-Kruggerrands a while back, you may have a few million bucks on paper, but the above comments about unrealized capital gains apply. And then there's the author: For what it's worth, if I inherited $500 million, I would never manage to grow it to $1 billion or more. I would immediately spend the bulk of it creating Robot Island, and I'd deliberately run the place using a nutty business plan that loses money, as I build ever more elaborate singing animatronics. What do I care about becoming a self-made billionaire? I'm rich. And you certainly wouldn't be writing for Cracked. Anyway, the article's a good read, with the usual humorous take on things, but still largely factual. |
| Yesterday was Lower Decks day, so I drank the last of my Romulan Ale (for now) and two Lower Drunks. I'm still feeling it. But I'm still going to blog. Oh, thank the gods. Wait... Marie Kondo's decluttering dominance is over. Make way for maximalism, where the more stuff, the merrier So, from one extreme to another? How... American. Article is from last October, but whatever. Last January, shortly before the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Sotheby’s in New York put together what was supposed to be a modest auction of a dead interior decorator’s things... when he died, in 2018, he left no will, only five storage units and two homes stacked to the ceilings with the types of finds one might imagine belonged to a man who slept on a Chinese four-poster bed crowned by an Ottoman-style dome near columns carved to look like windswept palm trees. I don't know about you, but I'm going to have that visual stuck in my head all night. Still... so what? Still, everyone at the auction seemed to feel the same thing: like a lid had been lifted, revealing years of pent-up desire for the full, the festive, the flagrantly jouissant. “Clearly, there’s a lot of people fed up with monochromatic interiors,” Sotheby’s Dennis Harrington told the Times, “and newly excited by Mario’s maximalist style.” It's like I've said: just wait. The pendulum will swing back. I just wish it would spend more time in the middle. Style is a pendulum, and it likes drama in its swing. Fuck, I should probably read these things before commenting on them. ...nah. Over the past year, a new home-related polarization has also erupted online, with several publications pitting the decor styles against each other: “Minimalism Is Dead. Meet Maximalism,” crowed one Vox headline while Harper’s Bazaar asked, “Minimalism vs Maximalism: Which Is More Stylish?” Look. It seems obvious to me. And probably to anyone with an ounce of awareness. Minimalism simply didn't sell anything; it was about getting rid of stuff, cleansing, buying very little. Its polar opposite? Why, maximalism is like candy for companies. Consumerism run rampant. BUY MORE STUFF. No wonder they're all trying to shove this "new trend" down our collective throats. For a few years now, the rooms featured on popular decor sites and the homes of style influencers like Aurora James or Cara Delevingne have been wilfully diverse, drunk on self-expression, and packed with stuff—places where messy bedrooms are displayed as a sign of life rather than a problem to be fixed. I consider it a point of pride that I have no idea who the hell those people are. In a consumer culture, minimalism was always a somewhat fancyland ruse. It was domestic anorexia sold as health; materialism repackaged as its opposite; perfectionism hawked as peace. It was the perversion of labelling a home curated down to zero the ultimate luxury or, worse, virtue. Of course, minimalism has its own problems: if you don't have stuff, what the hell are you going to do? So I see where this is coming from now. First, sell the public on minimalism: get rid of, as the article notes, "perfectly good stuff." Pare your home down to the bones. Throw everything away; it's all millstones around your neck. Next? Well, we were just kidding. You actually need stuff. Buy it on our website! This is the usual fashion cycle, writ large. Convince people that the old way was Wrong, and if you buy our stuff, you'll be Right! I have an idea. I call it an "idea" but it's how I've lived most of my life. Buy what you need. Sometimes, buy what you want. Keep it until entropy takes it. Only throw shit away if it's truly useless. You never know when you'll need something. My ex liked to purge all my stuff. When she left, I had to buy more stuff. I still harbor resentment over that. I miss my old dining table. It was a perfectly good table. This isn't minimalism. It isn't maximalism. It's... I'd call it utilitarianism, but unfortunately, Ayn Rand destroyed that word for all time. |
| This isn't a source I'd normally link to, but Someone is Wrong on the Internet and I cannot let it stand. Now, I'm all for "the easiest." As you know if you've been following along. Anything that saves me extra work is a good thing -- except when it comes to the taste of food or drink. For example, you'd think I'd be putting oatmeal into the microwave: it saves time and dishes. But microwave oatmeal tastes to me like paper pulp, whereas stove-cooked oatmeal tastes like marginally less disgusting paper pulp. Therefore, I put up with taking a little extra time and having to wash a pot and stirring spoon afterwards. So it was with some interest that I came across this "you're doing it wrong" article, only to find my hopes dashed like the eggs I use for scrambling. I’ve eaten at least two eggs almost every day of my adult life. Eggs are good for you. They’re high in protein, low in calories, and contain a host of essential vitamins and minerals. This guy must not have been an adult very long. In my lifetime, eggs have gone from "good for you" to "bad for you" to "good for you" to "bad for you" to "just the whites" to "bad for you" and finally back to "good for you," where they seem to be stuck like they do when you run out of treats for the neighborhood vandals on Halloween. I’ve eaten eggs many different ways, but I usually eat them scrambled. Okay, I'm with you so far. Poached eggs are wonderful, but making them undercaffeinated is a terrible way to wake up. Fair. Over-easy eggs are also good, but sometimes you will break a yolk and then ultimately you will make scrambled eggs, which is also why I usually eat scrambled eggs. Sometimes I think I'm the only non-vegan in the universe who actively hates runny yolks. I do not like them on my bread; I do not like them in my head. Fuck runny yolks. What I’ve come to understand is the there’s only one right way to cook scrambled eggs. Thus begins the mansplaining. To be fair, though, the target audience is other men, so... whatever. Step 1: Use good eggs. This is important. You know, ideally, sure. In reality? I wake up with a hankering for scrambled eggs, and I use whatever's in the fridge, which has usually been sitting there in the carton for a couple of weeks. So, no: I'm not buying a new dozen eggs every time I get groceries delivered, and throwing out the still-viable old ones, just because it's better to work with, and eat, fresher eggs. Farm-fresh (or at least farmers’-market-fresh) eggs taste, well, like eggs. They are bright, clean, and substantive. And I am absolutely not going to go out of my way to buy artisanal, free-range, hipster, locally sourced cackleberries. I don't have a car, and besides, then I'd have to deal with *shudder* people. Step 2: Use great butter. This is very important. What's not important, then? See above; same as regards to butter. Whatever. Is. Available. From. Delivery. Higher-end butter (and I’m only talking a buck or so more here, cost-wise) tastes rich and creamy. It possesses a certain heartiness. I should write for Men's Health. Apparently if I did, I'd earn tons of disposable income. Step 3: Turn the heat down. Most diners don’t cook eggs well. That’s because the short-order cooks are blasting all the food over a high-heat griddle. That means you get your eggs fast, but they’re often as dry as the paper placemat. Okay, I'm with him on this one. Lower heat cooks the eggs just fine; it just takes a little longer and you don't have as much risk of overcooking. Step 4: Don’t beat it. HERE WE GO INTERNET. DAMN RIGHT. I don’t beat my eggs separately in a bowl. It’s a waste of time. It’s a waste of a bowl and a whisk and minute of your morning. While I appreciate the laziness -- I really do -- I prefer beaten eggs. Period. I add a thumb-sized amount of butter to a small non-stick pan, allow it to melt, swirling to coat, and then just crack the eggs into the pan. Then I don’t do anything until I begin to see the egg whites begin to cook. At this point, I take my spatula (I prefer rubber, but whatever) and stir the eggs. Something I hate almost as much as runny yolks is flecks of white in my scrambled eggs. Okay, this guy's fine with it. To each their own. But it's not objectively "better." It's a matter of taste, and visuals. I want my scrambled eggs to be a uniform, pale yellow color, not marbled like the lobby of the goddamn Ritz-Carlton. Besides, beating the eggs first introduces some air, which again, I prefer. Step 5: Don’t add anything. People do weird things to scrambled eggs as they cook. They add cream. They add salt. For some reason they add pepper or chives. Stop all that. It's not scrambled eggs unless you add some black pepper during (or before) cooking. Well... for me, anyway. Chives are a garnish added after the fact, and besides, who the hell can keep fresh chives around? For me, they go bad the next day, just like any fresh green thing I buy, and dried chives are tasteless. After you’re done scrambling the eggs, you can candy them in ketchup or smother them in hot sauce for all I care, but during the cooking process don’t fuss with them. Damn right hot sauce. I prefer Marie Sharp's, imported from Belize. Because I, too, can be a pretentious asshole. Step 6: Power down and plate. The last minute of egg scrambling, I’d argue, is the most important. Oh, look, another important thing. How you will know you’ve entered the last minute: Your eggs will begin to resemble the consistency of folded satin. There will be the appearance of solids forming, yet the eggs will still look smooth. What the hell even does this mean? This isn't "the only way to cook scrambled eggs." This is "One guy's preferred method of cooking scrambled eggs." He's not doing it wrong. I'm not doing it wrong. You might be doing it wrong, but the only way to do it right is to a) know the way you like them and b) figure out how to get to (a). These days, I don't even bother with scrambling them. I wilt some (prepackaged because I'm lazy) baby spinach in butter or olive oil along with a bit of salt and some black pepper, pour two beaten eggs on, pop a top on the pan, and leave them alone until the top's no longer liquid so it doesn't all run off when I flip. I flip once, and done, and I don't even try to do the fancy pan-flip, because who am I trying to impress? I suppose that's technically a frittata. I just like saying frittata. Frit. Tata. Say it. Revel in it. Or I could, I suppose, get a supply of frozen breakfast wraps. Yeah, that's the ticket. Of course I'd have to take the time to cook them in the toaster oven, though, because the frozen wrap does not exist that, when microwaved, doesn't have pockets of ice in it. So frittatas it is. |
| The other day, I promised to create Klingon Bloodwine based on me and my friend's formulation. (Mostly hers.) A bit of background first. Obviously we didn't invent the concept of Klingon Bloodwine, all glory to the screenwriters of Star Trek. If you look online, you'll find other recipes. We didn't look for them first, wanting to create something from scratch. The thought process was a little like this: It should be based on actual wine, specifically red wine. But being Klingon, there needs to be an element of suffering involved, so you have to use hot peppers, the hottest you can stand. More on this later. It also needs to be stronger than Terran wine, something that a Klingon could chug and a human could choke down while pretending to be Klingon. Hence, fortification with a distilled spirit. At the same time, it can't taste entirely like ass, because that would defeat the purpose; if it tastes like a Denebian mudworm's droppings, you're not going to want to drink it again. Also, we're going by a line from Worf in a later episode of DS9: "I like my bloodwine young and sweet." Double entendres aside, that's the basis for the sweet aspect of this recipe. Because it's a mixed drink, do not use fancy wine, but do use a standard red, like a merlot or a cab sauv. Maybe even a shiraz. Some sort of rich but dry red. For this, I bought a box of Merlot cardbordeaux, the only time I have ever purchased one for use. Um, yeah, cardbordeaux is my word for boxed wine. I'm not saying it's terrible; I'm saying it's cheap and it's not exactly Château Picard. If you use terrible wine, again, you won't want to drink more. So. On to the ingredients. 3 slices serrano pepper* 8-10 blueberries (yes, blueberries; trust us on this one) 1 1/2 oz vodka 3/4 oz simple syrup 3/4 oz lemon juice 4 oz red wine Muddle pepper slices with blueberries. Add vodka, syrup, and lemon juice. Top with wine. Shake with ice and strain into a rocks glass. Qa'pla! *tastes vary when it comes to hot pepper, obviously. If you don't have much tolerance for it, use less, or use jalapenos. If you love hot peppers, try it with habaneros. If you have Klingon blood, use ghost pepper. It might take some experimentation (even Klingons have scientists) to get the right balance; the idea is to give it a kick but not to cause a warp plasma leak in your mouth. Modification: I still have lemon simple syrup; I just used a shot of that instead of the syrup/lemon mixture. I think I'll have another one after I post this. Appropriately for a Klingon-themed drink, today's semirandom article is about curses. Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses Medieval scribes protected their work by threatening death, or worse. Given the extreme effort that went into creating books, scribes and book owners had a real incentive to protect their work. They used the only power they had: words. And words are powerful indeed. Almost as powerful as Klingon bloodwine. At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures. Now I wish there were similar curses for bicycle thieves. Scum. They did not hesitate to use the worst punishments they knew—excommunication from the church and horrible, painful death. I mean, I know that was kind of a big deal in Europe at the time, but it would be hard to excommunicate me from atheism. Still, while I've accepted the concept of death, I'd rather not have it be horrible and/or painful. “These curses were the only things that protected the books,” says Marc Drogin, author of Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses. “Luckily, it was in a time where people believed in them. If you ripped out a page, you were going to die in agony. You didn’t want to take the chance.” One of the movie/TV tropes that used to annoy the fuck out of me was when a character needed a phone number, so they'd go to a place called a "phone booth" and look in a thing called a "phone book." Once they found the number, did they write it on their hand or something? No, they ripped out the entire damn page, thus rendering the phone book less useful if someone needed one of the other hundred or so numbers on that page. Obviously, that's not a thing anymore, but it bugged me almost as much as when someone would hang up the phone and you heard a dial tone. That never happened in my experience; you just get silence. But still, phone books were printed and easily replaceable. Not so with medieval manuscripts. Anyway, the article goes on to describe examples of such curses, and while they're not quite as creative as modern ones like "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits," they were obviously devastating at the time. Curses, of course, are only curiosities unless you believe in them in the first place. But the interesting thing is that they existed for this particular purpose, and lots of people back then did believe in them. Of course, lots of people couldn't read back then, so it was probably lost on a good portion of the population. Why steal a book if you can't read? Well, because you can then turn around and sell it, of course. Hope it's worth burning in brimstone. |
| There's a scattering of actual writing-related articles in my queue, and as luck would have it, we get another one today. As usual, I'm not going to reiterate all 25 of them here, but I have a few highlights to comment on. When the English clergyman Thomas Fuller used the word unfriended in a letter dating from 1659, we can be pretty sure he wasn’t talking about his Facebook page. Instead, Fuller used the word to mean something like “estranged” or “fallen out,” a straightforward literal meaning that has long since “fallen out” of the language. Yeah, I don't know, I think Shakespeare was more of a Twitter guy. How many times have I noted in here that language changes over time? I can't recall. It's been a lot. Some of those changes are happening before our eyes right now, like the word "woke" and the use of "literally" for emphasis (WHICH IS STILL WRONG). 1. ALIENATE Alienate, like alien, is derived from the Latin word alienus, which was used to describe anything that was unfamiliar, unconnected, or foreign. And when alienate first appeared in English as a legal term in the mid-1400s, it meant to transfer ownership of some property over to someone else, so that it is now “foreign” or “unconnected” to you. It’s from here that the modern meaning of “estrangement” or “distance” eventually developed. Pretty sure the use of a version of that word in the Declaration of Independence was an example of the former usage. 3. BUNNY Bunny derives from bun—which was an old English word for a squirrel, not a rabbit. Fun fact: "bunny" isn't the term for a baby rabbit (at least not anymore), but rather an alternate word for rabbit. But "rabbit" used to mean young examples of the species; adults were called "coneys" (as in Coney Island, which I was very disappointed as a child to find wasn't an island filled with interesting three-dimensional geometric shapes, or even rabbits). Baby bunnies are now called - no shit - kittens. 7. FANTASTIC The link between fantastic things and absolute fantasy was once much closer than it is today. Fantastic originally meant “existing only in the imagination,” or in other words “unreal” or “based on fantasy.” You still see the adjective used in the old way occasionally; its meaning can usually be deduced from context. Or be a deliberate pun, as in "Fantastic Four" (the movies featuring that team have been less than fantastic). 17. NAUGHTY Naughty is etymologically related to nought, and meant “to have nothing” when it first appeared in the language around 600 years ago. Soon afterward, it came to mean “to have no morals,” and, by extension, “wicked,” “depraved,” or “vicious,” before its meaning softened in the late Middle Ages. Well, I've often suspected that, but never could be arsed to look into it. My word for the first decade of this century - the "noughties" - plays on the similarity of those words. 19. NICE Nice derives from a Latin word, nescius, meaning “ignorant” or “not knowing”—and that was its original meaning when it was first adopted into English from French around the turn of the 14th century. Over the years that followed, nice was knocked around the language picking up an impressively wide range of meanings along the way—including “wanton,” “ostentatious,” “punctilious,” “prim,” “hard to please,” “cultured,” “cowardly,” “lazy,” “pampered,” “shy,” “insubstantial,” and “dainty”—before it finally settled on its current meaning in the early 1700s. This one, I basically already knew -- but I am moved to add that "nice" is often used sarcastically to mean "shitty." 21. QUEEN The word queen apparently started life as a general name for a woman or a wife, before its meaning specialized to “the wife of a king” in the middle of the Old English period. It has remained unchanged ever since. Another fun fact: "queen" is also the term for a female housecat. Female cat: queen. Female dog: bitch. And they ask me why I'm a cat person. I would also be remiss if I didn't note that "queen" can also refer to the sovereign of a country, independent of whether she's married or not. And y'all know the other use of the word. 24. THRILL To thrill originally meant “to piece a hole in something”—your nostrils, etymologically, are your “nose-thrills.” Now this was new to me, and I had to get off my arse (figuratively; I've literally been sitting on it the whole time) to check. Are "thrill" and "drill" related? Sources point to "no." But there may be an older linguistic connection that the etymology doesn't go into. The words are just too similar; it may be a coincidence, but it's not impossible for a Þ sound to morph into a d sound. Or vice-versa. Anyway, obviously there are more at the source. It's fun to learn new words, but it's also fun (well, for nerds like me anyway) to learn how some words changed over time. |
| You probably know that the Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest is held every year, "celebrating" the worst of the worst opening lines. Well, here's this year's. So fix yourself a Dark & Stormy (it's that kind of night) and behold the radiance of the tortured prose.I'll skip the Grand Prize winner; you'll need to go to the link to see that. But here are a few samples. Despite an exhaustive search, rescuers were unable to locate young Christopher Robin in the Hundred Acre Wood before hypothermia took him, and the animals he once called friends descended upon his corpse like a silly old bear upon a pot of hunny. -Paul Kollas, Orlando, FL I mean, come on, that one's so bad it's good. Dark and stormy, the night screamed like a ravished virgin .... the dark, stormy night ranted madly in a barometric tantrum .... it was an ebonic nocturnal tempest .... the stygian typhoon of eventide .... prosopopeic fuliginous Nyx, enceinte as it were with lachrymal lamia farouche as Hecate, disbosomed upon her terrene demiorb an empyreal borasque. -Jack Holiday, Burbank, CA The pitfalls of the thesaurus. Our story begins in the cozy cottage of Bynnoldh-Dyr, son of Asgwitch-Torgwyr, in the idyllic elven village of Myrthffolwrd, but our book actually begins some two hundred pages earlier, in which you are pummeled by irrelevant history and unpronounceable names, because my publisher is paying me by the word. -Neil B Harrison, Springville, UT And this is what happens when you write The Silmarillion before The Hobbit. Actually, it's fine to do that. Just publish them in the other order. As the two beheld each other, Lady Asthenia's bosom swelled with love like two perfectly popped pans of Jiffy Pop while Lord Mycort's heart melted like butter, making their union complete. -Roni Markowitz, Brooklyn, NY That one made me LOL. I'm not even pasting the best ones here. Seriously, go look at What Not To Do as a writer (that is, unless you aspire to win this contest). I am, in fact, only going to give you one more, from the "Vile Puns" section: One time at the hoagie shop the actress Ms. O'Hara asked what the tiny pimiento-stuffed thing in my cheddar-bread sandwich was and I had to respond: "Wee olive in a yellow sub, Maureen." -Fr. Jerry Kopacek, Elma, IA Hey! Don't blame me; I'm just the messenger here. Yeah, after yesterday's slog, this collection is about right. Enjoy!  I went to see Reminiscence on Saturday, but yesterday's blog entry was already too long for me to squeeze in a review. One-Sentence Movie Review: Reminiscence Strip the movie of its science fiction, detective, crime, mystery and action elements, and you're left with a story about a guy who really, really should just get over a girl and move on with his life, which he won't because otherwise there's no plot; nevertheless, those genres are blended smoothly together with the romance aspect, and despite its utter lack of anything approaching comedy, it's absolutely worth watching if you're into any of those things. Rating: 4/5 |
| ...that is, this article is about time. The Tyranny Of Time The clock is a useful social tool, but it is also deeply political. It benefits some, marginalizes others and blinds us from a true understanding of our own bodies and the world around us. I should note that I know nothing about this source, "Noema," apart from this one article. They seem to adhere to the New Yorker School of Not Getting to the Fucking Point. After opening with a story about a guy who apparently wanted to make Greenwich Observatory explode (but, unlike the guy who wanted to blow up Parliament, doesn't have a British holiday celebrating him), they start to spiral into what might be the first glimmerings of a point. We discipline our lives by the time on the clock. So? You want us to just ignore time? Our working lives and wages are determined by it, and often our “free time” is rigidly managed by it too. All time is "free time." You just have different obligations at different times. Broadly speaking, even our bodily functions are regulated by the clock: We usually eat our meals at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are hungry, go to sleep at appropriate clock times as opposed to whenever we are tired and attribute more significance to the arresting tones of a clock alarm than the apparent rising of the sun at the center of our solar system. Speak for yourself. I eat and sleep when I feel like it. Of course, not everyone has that luxury. Also, I'd rather go to sleep when the sun rises; it's too bright during the day and I can't see my computer screen as well. The fact that there is a strange shame in eating lunch before noon is a testament to the ways in which we have internalized the logic of the clock. I was never aware of that. I am, of course, aware that it's frowned upon to drink booze in the morning (and sometimes even in the afternoon), but I don't pay any attention to that. There is no such thing as "day drinking." There is only drinking. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people reported that their experience of time had become warped and weird. Yes. That happens when things proceed differently from the usual routines. That's well-documented. After all, time is change, as Aristotle thought — what is changeless is timeless. All due respect to Aristotle, but he also thought that there were only five elements (earth, air, water, fire, aether), and that "Sleep takes place as a result of overuse of the senses or of digestion." Wikipedia link . Sure, he pretty much kick-started science, but the whole thing about science is that findings get refined and/or corrected over... well, over time.But what makes us wrong and the clock right? Neither is wrong or right. A person's perception is their perception. A clock measures we have decided to call a "day" and its subdivisions. Use each for different purposes. Birth is one of a growing chorus of philosophers, social scientists, authors and artists who, for various reasons, are arguing that we need to urgently reassess our relationship with the clock. The clock, they say, does not measure time; it produces it. Get the hell out of here with that navel-gazing bullshit. True, we don't know what "produces time" (except maybe entropy, unless there's some breakthrough in physics I'm unaware of), but if every clock in the world were to suddenly disappear, the planet would still make one rotation in one day. That's... like... the definition of a day. (Okay, so there are solar days and sidereal days and the other use of "day" as "the time the sun is visible in the sky" but that's not important right now.) The clock is extremely useful as a social tool that helps us coordinate ourselves around the things we care about, but it is also deeply politically charged. Assertion without evidence; flag on the play. The more we synchronize ourselves with the time in clocks, the more we fall out of sync with our own bodies and the world around us. Yeah... I don't know about that, either. Most life on Earth adapted to, at the very least, day-night cycles and, perhaps, seasons. We're absolutely synced with these natural clocks. Whether we choose to ignore our bodies' signals telling us it's time to sleep or eat or screw or whatever, well, that's a different issue. At least to me. In the natural world, the movement of “hours” or “weeks” do not matter. Thus the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the sudden extinction of species that have lived on Earth for millions of years, the rapid spread of viruses, the pollution of our soil and water — the true impact of all of this is beyond our realm of understanding because of our devotion to a scale of time and activity relevant to nothing except humans. Am I missing something, or is that a complete non-sequitur? Yes, hours are arbitrary; we could have made a solar day equal ten (longer) hours or made a 10-day week, but we collectively decided to stick with the Sumerian model (with modifications). Want to talk about what's truly arbitrary? What we call a calendar month. It's related to nothing -- just set up so there are 12 of them in a revolution. A true "month" is between the same phase of the moon, something like 29.5 days, which is close but no cigar. Oh, and I really wish article writers would stop explaining that "month" means "moon-th." It's trite as hell in a world where we already have Mondays. But I digress. Clock time is not what most people think it is. It is not a transparent reflection of some sort of true and absolute time that scientists are monitoring. It was created, and it is frequently altered and adjusted to fit social and political purposes. Daylight savings, for instance, is an arbitrary thing we made up. And? “People tend to think that somewhere there is some master clock, like the rod of platinum in the Bureau of Weights and Measures, that is the ‘uber clock,’” Birth told me. “There isn’t. It’s calculated. There is no clock on Earth that gives the correct time.” Again: And? All scientists care about is how long a second is, which can then be used to define other measures of time, and that is a well-defined unit. What’s usually taught in Western schools is that the time in our clocks (and by extension, our calendars) is determined by the rotation of the Earth, and thus the movement of the sun across our sky. The Earth, we learn, completes an orbit of the sun in 365 days, which determines the length of our year, and it rotates on its axis once every 24 hours, which determines our day. Thus an hour is 1/24 of this rotation, a minute is 1/60 of an hour and a second is 1/60 of a minute. None of this is true. The Earth is not a perfect sphere with perfect movement; it’s a lumpy round mass that is squashed at both poles and wobbles. It does not rotate in exactly 24 hours each day or orbit the sun in exactly 365 days each year. It just kinda does. Perfection is a manmade concept; nature is irregular. It's close enough for most practical purposes. But since the 14th century, we’ve gradually been turning our backs on nature and increasingly calculating our sense of time via manmade devices. There are very, very good reasons for that (although to be honest, I think that there's room for a more natural, local version of timekeeping alongside the global one; this local timekeeping would be based on the sun's rising, setting, zenith and nadir, and would be completely different depending on your location on the globe). One very good reason is that if I need to talk to someone in London or Mumbai, we can agree on a time; we can't just say "sunset." I won't rag on much more of this. I will, however, point out that it was the invention of an accurate timekeeping device that originally allowed sailors to make ocean crossings; you can only determine your longitude if you know where a celestial object should be at a particular time, and when that particular time occurs. Okay, it's more complicated than that, but the point is that I think this article conflates our measurement of time with time itself, which you can't do because Einstein and relativity and whatnot. This does not mean that time is an illusion. Just to be clear. I'm not saying the article doesn't make some good points, but I think the line between "standards" and "natural time" gets blurred in there. Still, there's plenty to think about, and maybe if you read it you'll come away with a different perspective. After all, we have different perspectives of time itself. |
| Before I post a link today, I wanted to follow up on yesterday's drink menu. My friend said I should go ahead and post the Lower Drunks recipe, so here it is, along with the modification I made because I couldn't be arsed to make a simple syrup. The original Lower Drunks: 3/4 oz lemon juice 3/4 oz simple syrup 1 1/2 oz absinthe Shake with ice. Strain into large martini glass (or rocks glass if necessary). Top with tonic water. The tonic water is a bit surprising here, but it actually works to cut the overwhelming anise flavor of the absinthe. If you're trying to impress someone, garnish with a curl of lemon peel. Otherwise, who needs a garnish? Incidentally, a simple syrup is just that: simple. You take equal measures of water and sugar (say, 1 cup each, depending on how much you want to make) and heat it up, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Let it cool. You can store excess (in a closed container) for the next bar session. That's still too much work for me if I'm just trying to drink. Fortunately, I had some pre-packaged lemon simple syrup, so I just used that instead of syrup + lemon, though I did splash in a bit of lemon juice. That's the modification. It was completely delicious. Next: we have come up with a recipe (well, mostly she did) for Klingon bloodwine. I will need to replicate her scientific results prior to publishing, though. I must acquire a few ingredients first, and also get off my ass to heat up some sugar water. Stay tuned. You might have noticed I'm using a different font than usual. There's a reason for that. (Cracked link) You've heard of using Comic Sans on a resume at your own risk, as it has been deemed inappropriate on so many levels of the "professional" world. Meanwhile, Helvetica is hanging out in the back, laughing in its most pretentious manner. The very thought of selecting this font is often demonized? Even its inventor has admitted that he has only ever used it once -- in a friendly email asking for a refund (and it managed to get his money back). So before you hate, please appreciate that Comic Sans has done some good for someone in this world already. There used to be a saying circulating around the internet: "There is great need for a sarcasm font." I have pointed out that Comic Sans would fit the bill. No one wants to hear it. It never caught on. To make the message more fun, he suggested the creation of a new font, one that would mimic the lettering found in comic books rather than a British newspaper. For the record, British comics use similar lettering to those created in the US. They just spell some shit wrong. After hitting the general public, bizarrely passionate Comic Sans haters started to make themselves known. It always struck me as silly that a bunch of people who, mere years before, had no idea what a "font" was, suddenly had Opinions. He states that he is proud of his work and although the rules of typography have been broken by Connare, one being that the letters don't mirror each other, such as "p" and "q," the manner in which the letters appear have been proven to make it easier for people with reading difficulties. The spacing of the letters allows for a smoother viewing experience, particularly for those with dyslexia. There you go. A good reason to use comic sans. Or are you going to keep being ableist? There is a time and a place for Comic Sans, and it usually lies somewhere in between a promotional spring clothing sale banner and a child's bouncy house birthday party. And, I maintain, for the purposes of conveying sarcasm in a medium that doesn't lend itself to the peculiar vocal tones of sarcasm. (Note: I don't think WDC uses true Comic Sans, probably because Microsoft has armies of lawyers to rival Disney's. But this is close enough.) |
| I'm going to take a break from my usual format today to talk about drinks. Specifically, Star Trek-themed drinks. Now, drinking has been a part of Star Trek since the beginning. While the abominations based on synthehol are featured in most episodes of TNG, the show has otherwise been alcohol-positive. Consider, for example, this TOS episode where an invading alien is defeated when Scotty tricks him into a drinking contest. "What is it?" "Well, it's, um..." *sniff* "It's green." They even, quite famously, made up their own multicultural drinks, the most famous probably being Saurian brandy (featured in that clip), Klingon bloodwine, and Romulan ale. With the recent spate of new Trek shows -- Discovery, Picard, and the animated Lower Decks -- it has been my tradition to whip up a batch of Romulan ale to accompany my Trek viewing. Yes, I'm still slowly getting through my rewatch of all the earlier episodes, but that doesn't stop me from partaking in the new stuff. I know opinions are mixed about them, as per usual, but I like all of them. But I digress. Romulan Ale, of course, doesn't exist, because the Romulan Empire doesn't exist. That doesn't mean we can't make our own version. The defining characteristic of Romulan ale is that it's bright blue, so obviously you need something like Blue Curaçao. So I found this recipe in a web search.In short (keeping in mind that this is not meant to be consumed in one sitting): 2 Cups Blue Curacao 1 Cup Clear Rum, no flavor or spice 1/2 Cup Grain Alcohol – (NOTE – You may substitute Vodka if you can’t get or do not want the Grain Alcohol – We use it in Geek Manor because we’re nuts). 1/2 Viso Will – (NOTE – If you can’t get Viso Will, you can use any Cranberry Lemonade, just know the color will be off, since Viso does not color their drinks). Now, there are several problems with that recipe: 1. Way, way, way too much Blue Curaçao. It doesn't take much to make the drink blue, and I find its sweet orangey taste to be cloying. 2. Grain alcohol is, sadly, not available in Virginia. This might be my fault; it used to be available, but I used too much of it back in college and the authorities found out and banned it. (It is, oddly enough, readily available in Utah.) 3. What in the name of Kahless is Viso Will? 4. As it is "ale," there should be some carbonation involved. Doesn't have to be a lot, but it should be there. So I made some modifications. "But Waltz, didn't you just do a Comedy newsletter editorial saying you never make substitutions in a recipe?" Yes, I did. But that's just for food. This is the important stuff: drinks. So here it is, my recipe for the perfect Romulan Ale. Tastes vary, of course, and you should make it to your taste if you're so inclined. 1 Cup Blue Curaçao 1 Cup clear rum (this part I kept) 1 Cup vodka (and just to be utterly clear, this is unflavored vodka, not the teenager stuff) 1 1/2 Cups Sprite (or Sprite Zero if you're concerned about calories) (that's a joke) 1 1/2 Cups Club Soda (or plain seltzer) Pour everything into one of the beer growlers you have sitting around. Close the growler and turn it gently a couple of times to mix (DO NOT SHAKE). Refrigerate overnight. Pour into beer glass. The result:  Now, at that link they also refer to a Cloaking Device, which they describe as half Romulan Ale, half absinthe. The problem is that absinthe is a) warp-capable and b) overpowering of any other flavors. So I make mine more like 2 parts RA and 1 part absinthe, and I pour it over ice instead of shooting it because it's better at making me undetectable. It also looks pretty:  And fair warning, you will achieve warp speed while cloaked. My friend also invented a drink we're calling Lower Drunks (in homage to the show Lower Decks), but that's not my recipe to share. Perhaps another time. |
| Scientists have studied cats. This is not news. (Mews?) But these scientists studied why cats like to settle into boxes. What cats’ love of boxes and squares can tell us about their visual perception "Vision has evolved to answer questions having to do with boundaries and contours." Some things about cat behavior might make sense if you think about it. Like how their vision is adapted for lower light levels, and they're often active at night. But the box thing? It's not like cats and boxes evolved in parallel. There were cats. And then there were humans. And then the humans made boxes, and cats lived happily ever after. It is a truth universally acknowledged—at least by those of the feline persuasion—that an empty box on the floor must be in want of a cat. Gotta love articles that start out parodying Jane Austen. This behavior is generally attributed to the fact that cats feel safer when squeezed into small spaces, but it might also be able to tell us something about feline visual perception. Okay, that's not so obvious. That's the rationale behind a new study in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science with a colorful title: "If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvers catus)." That title. THAT TITLE. I am compelled, however to point out that the species nomenclature there is both wrong and outdated. From Wikipedia: In 2003, the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature ruled that the domestic cat is a distinct species, namely Felis catus. In 2007, it was considered a subspecies, F. silvestris catus, of the European wildcat (F. silvestris) following results of phylogenetic research. In 2017, the IUCN Cat Classification Taskforce followed the recommendation of the ICZN in regarding the domestic cat as a distinct species, Felis catus. If you click on the link in the article to the actual paper, you'll see they spelled "silvestris" correctly (it's from "woodland" not "silver"), but the date is this year so they should have left that part out entirely. This is apropos of nothing, really, but when I see a mistake like that I immediately wonder what other errors they're propagating. But I can't be arsed to confirm and cross-reference everything. I mean, look, it's a study on why cats like boxes; it's not, like, the latest epidemiological research or some shit. Just bask in the knowledge that someone managed to get a scientific paper published about the symbiosis between boxes and cats. Now, I'm finding it difficult to find other sentences in the article that make sense out of context, and there really aren't any; the text builds upon itself. So I'll just leave it at this, but I definitely encourage you to click on the link. The text is pretty short, but it explains everything well; still, if you can't be arsed to read it, it's worth going there just for all the pictures of good kitties. Why do we study such things when there might not be any direct rewards to reap from them? Well, first of all, you never know what line of research might yield something useful; for instance, I can see how this might have AI applications. And second, not everything has to be useful; sometimes we're just satisfying our own curiosity. And in this case, fortunately, curiosity didn't kill the cat. |
| There are many things in this universe that I don't understand -- there are, in fact, a lot more of them than there are things that I do understand -- but way up near the top of the list of things I don't understand is "fashion." But one thing I do know: Nothing says "I don't understand fashion" more than a Hawaiian shirt. Which is why they're a central feature of my wardrobe. This article has been waiting in my queue since April, so some things in it may seem outdated -- unlike Hawaiian shirts, which never go out of style. To make matters worse, this is kind of a rabbit hole of links. I'm linking to a blog I follow. He links to the original Guardian article and a couple of other sources. If you've been here long enough, you'll know that I'm certainly not above linking directly to the Guardian. But in this case, I find Coyne's commentary more interesting. Oy! I wake up this morning to find, thanks to the Guardian, that my beloved Hawaiian shirts—technically, “aloha shirts“—have gotten the stink-eye from the Perpetually Offended. According to the paper—or rather, according to a Princeton academic, clearly empowered to be an arbiter of culture, these colorful shirts, worn by locals (Asians, Native Hawaiians) and immigrant mainlanders alike, are now “problematic.” Translation: someone didn't like seeing them, so they dug around for reasons to try to cancel them. Dig deep enough, and you can find a reason to be offended by any given article of clothing. Hawaiian shirts just make great targets -- mostly because you can't miss them. To get the full argument, you'll have to go to the link. He quotes from a few different sources, and I don't want to confuse anyone by pulling excerpts from excerpts. It's more Coyne's own conclusions that are important here. But it gets worse, for the white-supremacist “Boogaloo Boys“, who advocate revolution, have adopted the aloha shirt as an unofficial uniform. To me, that's just another reason to wear one: to reclaim the shirts from those assholes. Frankly I don’t give a rat’s patootie about what Anishanslin or any other Pecksniff thinks. I don’t wear my aloha shirts with camo pants, body armor, or weapons, so I’m not worried about accusations of being a proud boy. I mean, as they are the height of fashion, it's no surprise that different groups will gravitate toward them. Should we also cancel ties because hedge fund managers wear them? No, we should avoid them because they've outlived their usefulness. Unlike Hawaiian shirts. This fracas about aloha shirts is a prime example of performative wokeness: pretending you’re engaging in helping the downtrodden while actually doing noting to help them—what you’re doing is singling yourself out as particularly moral and perspicacious. Coyne's love of big words exceeds only my own. You know, it used to be that people would rag on cheap shirts from Squall-Mart or similar places. "Those are made by near-slaves making a dollar a day! We should boycott them!" Well, it's good to be concerned about the plight of the workers of the world. It's even better to actually do something about it. Boycotting the shirts isn't doing something about it. In fact, I'd argue that if everyone stopped buying those shirts, those workers would cease being workers, and instead of making a dollar a day they'd make no dollars a day. That's unrelated, though; my Hawaiian shirts, the ones I bought for myself anyway, are actual USA-made shirts stitched up in actual Hawaii. The point being that you can have opinions all day, which is fine, but are you actually helping? I was once at a local bagel place, and I happened to overhear a conversation about food as cultural appropriation. I'm fine with hearing arguments about it, though I'd argue that it's really not except in very narrow circumstances -- but in this case, the person doing the arguing was eating a bacon, egg and cheese bagel. Why that's hypocritical, I hope I don't have to explain. In conclusion, you can pry my Hawaiian shirts from my cold, dead hands. And then hopefully give them to someone else who appreciates these pinnacles of sartorial elegance. Alamo had a special screening of this fantasy adventure quest movie from 1982; I hadn't seen it in a long time, so I went. One-Sentence Movie Review: The Dark Crystal No CGI, no frenetic pacing, no jump cuts, no catering to people with short attention spans; this slow-paced movie focused on plot and character design, so it's probably not going to appeal to modern audiences, but taken in the context of the time it was produced, it's a showcase of creativity. Rating: 3.5/5 |
| Okay, so today's article is about one particular life decision, but it seems to me -- someone who is not well-versed in psychology -- to have other applications. So here it is. I help people decide if they want to have kids. Here’s my advice. A parenthood clarity therapist explains how she helps fence sitters make one of the most important decisions of their lives. I made that particular decision long ago, though I understand that the pressures and consequences tend to be different for women. But once I realized I did have the power to make the decision, it was an easy one. The trick was avoiding the societal pressure to conform to a particular life script. I’m a therapist who has dedicated my life to helping people figure out if they want to have children. I’ve been doing this for 30 years and have seen more clients than I can count of all stripes — men, women, single, married, and partnered people. People just out of a relationship and people just starting a relationship. People from ages 28 to 59. Our goal is to help people make possibly the biggest decision of their lives: whether or not they want to become a parent. Apparently, questioning that life script is more common than I thought. Many assume that a time will come for each of us, at which point we’ll “just know.” Even though that is the case for some, it’s a myth to think it’s that way for everyone. Yeah, I think I can pinpoint the moment when most people "just know." By then, it's too late, and you're committed. From desperation, they have to make a decision. Fear instead of desire runs the show. Operating on fear is a lonely, excruciating process that leaves many immobilized. But when a decision is made from a place of desire, joy, or clarity, the experience is quite different. That's the key bit that I think might be more generalized. The article goes into some shrink-rap type exercises, which, to be honest, I skimmed. Now, I don't want people to get the idea that I'm proselytizing my own point of view here. Personally, I think the world would be best off if everyone who wanted children could have them, and everyone who didn't want them, didn't. From my perspective, if you're going to worry about regrets one way or the other, it's better to regret not having kids than to regret having them. I mean, consider what that attitude could do to a child, even if you never say it out loud. (Of course, it's best to have no regrets, either way.) But often, parents press their decision on others: "It's so rewarding! You'd be missing out on such joy! You'll never know what real love is!" All I'd say to anyone on the fence is: don't listen to those words; look at what their lives are like and decide if that's really what you want. And pay particular attention to any sentence that begins "I love my children, but..." But anyway, like I said, that's not the only major decision people will make in life. For example, should I have beer tonight, or scotch? Or maybe both? Likely I'll decide it at random, because then I can blame the random number generator if things don't go as well as I hoped. |
| Today's thing is mostly a collection of images, and since I can't be arsed to retype things, I won't have much commentary. I know I'm not immune to making errors, and I suspect that no one else is, either. If you think you are, then that in itself is an error, which leads to paradox. No one was born perfect when it comes to language. We say one thing when we mean entirely another. We mix up words, add endings, and pretend it’s all fine. Well, not quite. However, sometimes the line between "wrong" and "neologism" can be blurry. Especially with things like slang. Like, a while back, people started using the word "sick" to describe something that's awesome. As in, "Sick tats, bro." Presumably the tattoos in question aren't ill; the word was adopted for its sound, and even us old folks could figure out what it meant. But some things are wrong and will always be wrong, like using it's for its, or saying "literally" when all you want to do is add emphasis. So this time, we’re gonna look at the most common mistakes we make when using these phrases, and hopefully, learn something that would have made our English teachers proud. Snort. Some English teachers make these mistakes, too. Anyway, there's 30 of them, and they're in short-attention-span meme format, so it wouldn't take long to go through them all. Which is why I'm not going to laboriously type any of them into here. That would literally be a waste of my time. Instead, I'll let you go look at that if you like, but first, something I've been putting off because I was doing the MB contest and I didn't want to throw too much extra into blog entries. One-Sentence Movie Review: Free Guy Free Guy is a nonstop action comedy movie full of enough reference jokes to appeal to hardcore and casual gamers as well as other entertainment fans; the CGI is as lush and striking as you could possibly expect, and the writing and acting are right on target, and it even manages to dance around some interesting philosophical concepts -- it's no spoiler to reveal that this movie features a video game NPC gaining sentience and trying to save his world (it was in all the previews), but in the end, the most unrealistic bit in the movie is the romantic subplot. Rating: 4/5 |
| Hey, it's an article about writing style. Like many writing "rules," there's no black-and-white answer. The ability to use passive constructions exists for a reason. Some people are still confused about what it actually means, though; it's more than just using linking verbs (such as forms of "be"). Even when you think you’ve got a handle on grammar, you might not realize how easy it is easy to unwittingly venture into lexical territory that would rile your freshman year English teacher. Certainly back in my college days, I had a few teacher’s assistants who would get on my case for using the passive voice. I think that in many cases, the problem isn't using passive voice; it's overusing it, or using it unthinkingly. Teachers tend to drill rules and standards into our heads (rules and standards are drilled into our heads by teachers), but true wisdom lies in knowing when and how to break the rules (the rules can be broken by careful writers). Alas, I had to learn that the passive voice is abhorred by a select few grammar snobs. What they did there is seen by me. In order to understand the passive voice we first need to dive into the more commonly used active voice. Basically, the active voice is being used when the subject of a sentence performs the actions denoted by a verb. This is simple, straightforward English. I'd only add that while technically, verbs are all "action" words, some verbs are more active than others. The article uses the example, "The boy really loved soccer." Without context, that's a perfectly acceptable sentence. The boy - subject. Really - adverb. Loved - verb, past tense. Soccer - direct object, tells you what it was that the boy really loved. If I came across that particular sentence in a story outside of dialogue, though, I'd cringe. It's a prime example of telling, not showing. And I still adhere to King's advice to slash every damn -ly adverb out of one's fiction, even though I still find myself using them, and also even though Rowling apparently never heard that advice and yet she became a world-famous author. Better would be to describe the exuberance of "the boy" in a paragraph or two where he's playing association football. That's longer, yes, but it tends to stick in peoples' minds better. Still, for the purposes of the arguments presented in this article, like I said, it's an example of active voice. But so is "The boy is a soccer player." The point being that active voice doesn't require an active verb, while style prefers the active verb, for example, "The boy plays soccer." In either case, the subject comes before the verb. I should also mention that the verb "to be" isn't equivalent to the equals sign in math. You can say A is B and B is A, but "A soccer player is the boy" has a different meaning than "The boy is a soccer player." Neither, however, is passive voice. Purdue’s definition gets at what most writing instructors are trying to convey when they’re teaching you to write. Using the active voice is straightforward and simple, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the passive voice is to be avoided at all costs. Yes, there exist situations where the passive voice should be used. A passive construction occurs when you make the object of an action into the subject of a sentence. That is, whoever or whatever is performing the action is not the grammatical subject of the sentence. Yes, this can get tricky. The subject of a verb is the actor doing the action; the object is, well, the object receiving the action. The article provides the passive-voice example: “The ball was kicked by the boy.” If you were going to write this in the active voice, you’d just go with “The boy kicked the ball,” a sentence that clearly delineates that the subject of the sentence—the boy—did the kicking. Now, despite the above, I'm not a grammar expert. So I get confused defining the subject and object of a passive-voice sentence. In the end, though, strict definitions don't matter; the question I ask myself as a writer is: "Why am I using passive voice in this particular instance?" Without wading into the quagmire of grammar labels. In any case, it's abundantly clear to me with "The ball was kicked by the boy" that "the boy" was the one doing the kicking. It's just -- usually -- too convoluted a construction to go with under normal circumstances. It isn’t always crucial (or pleasurable for the reader) to emphasize the main actor of a sentence. As Wolfson explains, “there are many examples where we either cannot or do not want to emphasize the actor, particularly if there is an element of mystery involved.” The article provides but one example of an appropriate passive-voice sentence: "My car was stolen on Sunday night." I find this interesting because, while that's acceptable English, in French, one might say, for that sentence, "On a volé ma voiture dimanche soir," which, if you translated that literally, word for word, would be more like "We(informal) stole my car (on) Sunday night/evening." But I suppose a less literal, though more descriptive, translation would be "Someone stole my car on Sunday night." Either way, though, it's what we Anglophones would consider active voice. French tenses can get weird. There's no difference in French, for example, between "The boy kicks the ball" and "The boy is kicking the ball," both of which would require the French translation of "kicks the ball" which is -- and I'm not kidding here -- donne un coup de pied au ballon. Okay, there's a shorter way of saying that, but that's the first construction I learned and it's glorious. But I digress. The point is, if French has a passive voice, I haven't learned it yet. Which means, probably, the grammar snob's aversion to the passive voice is similar to their finger-wagging at split infinitives: as with Latin, it's impossible to split an infinitive in French, because while the English infinitive is always "to [verb]," in French and Latin it's just [verb](with particular suffix). Snobs have always considered other languages superior to English, and so forced their "rules" on the much more pliable and forgiving English grammar structures. Don't give them control. Allow yourself to boldly split infinitives when appropriate. Or, hell, allow infinitives to be boldly split by you. Just know it's going to throw some people into a snob rage. Sometimes, that's the whole point.  Mini-Contest Results! Lots of horribly annoying sounds in yesterday's comments. I definitely sympathize with all, or at least most, of them. But the one I most agree with was from Writer_Mike  -- for the mosquito buzz. I think I've lost that range of hearing with age (because I know mosquitos still exist), but I have vivid memories of trying to swat those little bastards when they were whirring around my head while I was trying to sleep. |
| When I was a kid, I was one of those hated assholes who scritched his fingernails down the classroom chalkboard. I think all the schools have gone to dry-erase whiteboards now, which is a shame, because the occasional squeak of a marker on those surfaces just doesn't have the same effect, and entire generations no longer know the joy of the ear-piercing screech of keratin on slate. Earlier this month, a kind of chirping, rainforest-y sound sprung up in my apartment. It came from my roommate’s room. Lame. I once bought one of those Annoy-A-Trons from the late, great ThinkGeek website, and hid it in my office. It drove my business partner up the wall. Well, for a few minutes, anyway; that's how long it took for me to break down in uncontrollable laughter. For anyone who doesn't know, the Annoy-A-Tron, formerly the Mind Molester, was a little battery-powered device that, every three minutes or so, emits a beep in the exact wavelength that renders the sound's origin impossible to locate by human ears. Someone somewhere might still have something like that for sale; I don't know, because I'm not about to prank my housemate with it. That could lead to retaliation, and pranks are, by definition, only funny when they're not played on me. This is all to say that, when we are speaking about sounds, “annoying” is a subjective criteria. But there must be, one figures, some consensus on the subject. For this week’s Giz Asks we reached out to a number of sound-experts to find out what that might be. "Criteria" is plural. The singular is "criterion." Since we're talking about shit that annoys me. But before I go on, let me take a stab at the sounds most annoying to humans, apart from the aforementioned fingernails on the blackboard or Annoy-A-Tron.  Amplifier feedback. "I want to speak to your manager." A pothole on the interstate near my house, which, when it's run over, produces a thump-the-bump noise. The drip of water from a leak in your roof. The neighbor's goddamn night-owl of a mutt. A phone's Amber Alert notification (which is one reason I have Amber Alerts turned off). That muscle car from the 70s with a 2-stroke engine and defective muffler that cruises the nearby streets. Any alarm that wakes me up. For some reason, every house in my neighborhood has to get its lawn mowed successively. So by the time one annoying lawnmower is done, another has started up.Okay, let's see what the article has to say. The sound of vomiting: elicits a visceral response. Huh. I never noticed. Usually it's me doing the vomiting, though. The article goes on to explain, from an evolutionary perspective, why that sound is annoying. It's fairly interesting, but I suspect there's a lot of speculation. Pretty much all the other sounds are sounds that are relevant to higher cognition. So the scraping of fingernails on the chalkboard probably also has a visceral component, but it’s much further away from our basic responses than vomiting. At least they don't make up an evolutionary psychology reason for that one. A baby crying does not make sense for all mammals; it only makes sense for mammals that have babies that actually cry. Ah, yes, the "baby crying" entry, which I forgot above. Because I avoid that as much as possible. One time I was in an airport, and a baby was crying, and there was also a cat yowling in a carrier. A baby's cry supposedly makes an adult human want to comfort it. Not me. I want to get as far away from it as possible. The cat, though, I felt sorry for and I wanted to take it out and pet it. In general, though, the most annoying sounds are those that get in the way of whatever you’re trying to do. That's very general. But fair. The most annoying sound for a human, as we all know, is the sound of chalkboard scraping. It’s terrible! Precisely why that is so remains a bit of a mystery and—I kid you not—the subject of ongoing psychoacoustic research. If you look at the article, these are from several different experts, hence the repeats. But yeah, there's another vote for the anachronistic chalkboard thing. This particular answer goes on to describe music -- how what's pleasing to one person can be rage-inducing in another. And to summarize the final entry: early heart-valve replacements. Yeah, that would mess me right up. You're trying to sleep and your ticker just keeps ticking... and ticking... and ticking... It's been a while since I've done a Merit Badge Mini-Contest. I was going to do my one-sentence review of Free Guy tonight, but that can wait; let's give out a Merit Badge. Merit Badge Mini-Contest!!! You knew this was coming: what sound do YOU find most annoying? Apart from fingernails on a chalkboard; that's been done to death already. I'll pick an answer (preferably one that also annoys me) and send that person a Merit Badge tomorrow (Sunday). Deadline, as usual, is midnight WDC time at the end of today, Saturday, August 14. |
| Time for another Cracked link. I've lived through a bunch of moral panics. I participate in them whenever possible -- D&D for example, which, I don't know, maybe they had a point there because D&D was my gateway to learning about other cultures' gods, but I was never part of the dominant religion here anyway so who knows? Combine a society where information is disseminated by word of mouth, add in gargantuan generation gaps, account for inevitable fear of the unknown, and you've got a potent formula for pearl-clutching ... It's worse than word of mouth now, of course. Back when people were freaking out over D&D, there wasn't an internet, and they had to spread their bullshit by literal word of mouth. Now? It's like there's a new panic every day. 5 Communities Banned Jazz for Causing Mental Breakdowns and Spontaneous Miscarriages Here is where I point out that the headline said "6" but the traditional Cracked countdown starts at 5. The real moral panic should be over innumeracy. A century before jazz was dying a slow natural death, the '20s and '30s were a crazy time to be a jazz snob. Yet, something was closing up jazz joints. Was some veiled fear of racial integration shutting them down? Well, yeah ... probably. But, in addition to the racial aspect, towns viewed the musical form as an existential threat to their actual health, as if the vibes of people dancing and having fun caused psychic pollution. I'm not a fan of jazz, but that has nothing to do with racism or believing it poses an existential threat to anything except traditional tonal scales. Also this paragraph reminds me of a joke: Why are Baptist kids forbidden from having sex? Because it might lead to dancing. 5 Planking, the Effigy for All of the World's Angst Oh, look, two 5s. I guess there was a tie. That explains the numeric discrepancy, anyway. Remember planking, that dumb trend where teens laid rigid in stupid places? That one that we absolutely did not participate in. (Any social media evidence to the contrary is clearly Photoshop.) Yes, it was dumb, but when people complained about it, we got even worse trends like the Tide Pod challenge (beyond stupid, venturing into "fatal") and the ice bucket challenge. Maybe we need to promote the Vaccine Challenge. 4 Steel Drums were Invented In Reaction to a Scheme to Annihilate Pagan Dancing Associated today with cruises and relaxing by the beach with one too many Pina Coladas as your skin peels off listening to street performers, the steel drum has kind of a depressing history that's ignored. Is it bad that I think steel drums are kinda cool? 3 Guitar Distortion Was Banned as an Imaginary Catalyst of Gang Violence Wray's reverb, and suggestive title "Rumble," slang for a fight, apparently convinced those in charge of the radio airwaves across the US that the song would spark an orgy of violence. To be fair, a decade later the US government got us embroiled into a proxy war in Vietnam, which could well be described as "an orgy of violence." Coincidence? ... yeah, probably. 2 China Banned Puns as a National Security Threat TOO FAR. Life in China got even more oppressive in 2014, with the government wiping puns from public display. Wordplay in media like TV and advertisements, as per the government order, is verboten. Their logic? "Uphold[ing] the Chinese spirit" and curbing "linguistic chaos." Punbelievable. That was So Low of the Han. 1 A Stoner's Prank Caused a National Health Scare in 1970 Amid a time of social panic concerning heroin in 1969 ("Not nice!"), reporters across America issued a stern warning about a brand-new substitute for opiates. The culprit was found in your own house, soon to replace smack. According to a "federal drug expert" named Ernest A. Carabillo Jr., the illicit recipes found in underground cookbooks were children's "culinary escape from reality." Several deaths were reported. (Cue dramatic music.) When I was a kid, some of the rumors floating around were: You can get high from smoking dried, ground banana peel; a certain popular brand of bubble gum contained spider eggs; and McDonald's hamburgers were made from worms. I didn't believe any of these things -- I suspect people started them just to see who bites, much like trolls do today on the internet -- but hell, worms would probably be healthier than the actual McDonald's hamburgers. Delicious, tasty, perfectly cooked hamburgers... Chattanoogan kids found a new use for their lunch. Instead of satiating their hunger, the rumor was that they spent their lunch break shooting up Kool-Aid, peanut butter, and mayonnaise. Mayonnaise to cut the pure Afghani Jif spread, obviously. Why did any sane adult ever believe this? Well, to a generation with no deep familiarity with drugs or counter-culture habits, it sounded legit. Hippies looked weird and did weird stuff with needles; kids were stupid. Sure, whatever, that's all they needed to go on. Not to sound all racist and shit, but that nonsense is whiter than Mike Pence. And if you walk away from this article chuckling to yourself about how stupid people were in the past about believing half-baked rumors that were floating around, I want you to remember that a large group of people right now have the sincerely held belief that COVID vaccines alter your body's DNA. I kind of wish that were true, if it could target the part of our genome that makes us believe bullshit. But, alas, this sort of thing will last as long as humanity. You know, at least another six months. Probably. |
| Low energy tonight. Worn out from playing D&D earlier. Am I getting too old for this shit? ....Nah. So it's good that the random number generator gave me an easy, uncontroversial, and informational article today. Because measurement units are completely arbitrary? Yes, even SI ones. I'd be more interested in why the meter is defined as the distance light travels in 1/299,792,458 seconds instead of a nice round 1/300,000,000. Okay, yes, I know the history of the meter; I'm just saying it makes just as much sense as defining a foot as 1/5280 of a mile. Why are there 5,280 feet in a mile, and why are nautical miles different from the statute miles we use on land? Why do we buy milk and gasoline by the gallon? Where does the abbreviation "lb" come from? Let's take a look at the origins of a few units of measure we use every day. Smugly, I knew most of these, but it never hurts to have a refresher. If the mile originated with 5,000 Roman feet, how did we end up with a mile that is 5,280 feet? Blame the furlong. I just like the word "furlong." Say it. Say it out loud. Right now. Absorb the laughter from those around you. Embrace it. So if the statute mile is the result of Roman influences and plowing oxen, where did the nautical mile get its start? Strap on your high school geometry helmet for this one. Each nautical mile originally referred to one minute of arc along a meridian around the Earth. Think of a meridian around the Earth as being made up of 360 degrees, and each of those degrees consists of 60 minutes of arc. Each of these minutes of arc is then 1/21,600th of the distance around the earth. Thus, a nautical mile is 6,076 feet. And I just lost half my audience. Seriously, though, that sounds a little bit like how the meter was originally defined. Like the mile, the acre owes its existence to the concept of the furlong... That's how we ended up with an acre that's equivalent to 43,560 square feet. I spent my college years learning how to do engineering in both SI and Imperial units. I figured by the time I got out of college, we'd be using SI exclusively. Silly me. By the time I was a month (another arbitrary unit of measurement as we define it today) into my first job at a civil engineering firm, I had the area of an acre in square feet etched into my brain. As the name implies, scholars think that the foot was actually based on the length of the human foot. More like the sasquatch foot. The wine gallon corresponded to a vessel that was designed to hold exactly eight troy pounds of wine. Oh, that's helpful. When I was in England, I noticed that they quote distances in miles, petrol in liters, and the price of petrol in pounds (the money, not the weight) per liter. Trying to convert all of that to all-Imperial or all-SI and dollars broke my brain (the best I could figure out is that they pay A LOT more for petrol there than we do for gas in the US). Fortunately, they still sell ale in pints so I could easily forget trying to figure it out. Like several other units, the pound has Roman roots. It's descended from a roman unit called the libra. That explains the "lb" abbreviation for the pound, and the word "pound" itself comes from the Latin pondo, for "weight." The avoirdupois pounds we use today have been around since the early 14th century, when English merchants invented the measurement in order to sell goods by weight rather than volume. As an aside, I wish more recipes would specify quantities by weight rather than by volume. The amount of flour in a cup, for example, depends on the amount of air in the sifted flour (even if you level it off like you're supposed to but I'm the only one who ever actually does that). But, for all practical purposes, on the surface of the Earth, weight is weight. You might have to adjust some shit if you're on top of a mountain, but that's more because of water's lower boiling point there and not gravity differential. Yes, gravity is slightly different at the Equator than at the South Pole, but if you're cooking at the South Pole, you have bigger problems than determining food quantity, like how to avoid freezing solid. Also, how much broccoli is in a cup? Do you fill the cup to the rim, then stop? That doesn't seem like a lot of broccoli. Stuff all the broccoli you can into the cup, heaping it up? You get more like two cups that way. And it's heavily dependent on how finely chopped the nasty buggers are. If two people can't come up with the same amount of broccoli when cooking, then the cooking method is suspect. Specify it by weight, and there's no question. Don't tell me "but it doesn't matter; just eat the damn broccoli already." I'm a goddamn engineer; quantities matter. Early 18th-century steam engine entrepreneurs needed a way to express how powerful their machines were, and the industrious James Watt hit on a funny idea for comparing engines to horses. Ironically, Watt's name ended up becoming a unit of measure (for power, which is energy per unit time; it's an SI standard). Anyway, like I said, informational article. There's even stuff in there I didn't know, but now I do. Win. |
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