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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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| Carpenters use saws, cooks use knives, surgeons use scalpels. Writers use words, which you would think wouldn't be in the same class of weapon, but at least according to Cracked, you'd be wrong. People like to pretend that the pen is mightier than the sword, but that’s mostly something nerds say right before they get packed into a school trashcan like a musket ball. And we remember that shit when we grow up to make hiring decisions. That doesn’t mean that words don’t have real power though — whether it’s just emotional damage or something that snowballs into a genuinely dangerous situation. We know words have power, though not usually in the same way as, say, a machine gun. 5. A Deadly Joke Wasn't that an Alan Moore Batman/Joker story? Oh, that was The Killing Joke. One of the most famous documented deaths from laughing goes all the way back to Athens, with a philosopher known as Chrysippus of Soli. "Known" may be overstating the case, as this is the first I remember hearing about him. More interestingly, apparently the joke that ended Chrysippus’ life was his own, saving the Greeks from what would have been a highly confusing murder trial. Apparently, Chrysippus, during the Olympiad, saw a donkey eating figs and hit the ass with the stellar retort, “Now give him some pure wine to wash down those figs!” Look, ancient comedy just doesn't hit the same way with modern audiences, unless they're stoned out of their gourds. Regardless, he sent himself into such a disastrous laughing fit that he collapsed and started foaming at the mouth, later dying. I can just imagine a comedy club audience looking on with a mixture of awe and disgust. 4. Thinking An Injured Man Was Gay This one's not so funny. Language is complicated, despite what that bastard Duolingo owl would like you to think. Ah, yes, my personal nemesis. Even a difference of a couple measly letters, run through one language to another, can completely muddle a very important sentence’s meaning. Oh, it's worse than that. I did a whole blog entry a while back on why one probably shouldn't say "Je suis excité" to a French person, unless you're trying to bone each other. He headed to the hospital and attempted to communicate in Norwegian that he was a hemofil, or hemophiliac. Unfortunately, the Danish doctor, with their ever-so-slightly different language, thought the man was simply coming out of the closet as a homofil, or homosexual. The doctor gave him what he must have thought was a very encouraging talk about how there was nothing wrong with that, and he needed no treatment. At least the doctor wasn't bigoted? 3. A Suspected Wizard’s Final Words When we do consider the potentially lethal power of words, we're usually thinking, like, curses or spells, things mostly relegated to folklore, fantasy, and role-playing games (I'm currently in an RPG playing a bard who can injure enemies by punning). The “witch trials” of the old world have a pretty generous name, considering that they relied less on the rule of law and more on people’s flotation and fire resistance. "Trial" had a somewhat different connotation then, closer to what we mean by "trial by fire." But of course, reading the sentence I just quoted, I instantly flashed back to Holy Grail: "And what do we burn, apart from witches?" "So, if she weighs the same as a duck..." Corey, knowing he was fucked either way, but wanting his children to keep their inheritance, stayed quiet until the end, except for his extremely hardcore final words: “More weight.” This doesn't quite fit the theme of the article, but it's still a badass story, true or not. 2. The Word That Launched Two Nukes Technically, anytime someone on a battlefield shouts "Fire!" (and there are no flames in evidence), it generally results in death. But again, it's not the word that kills, but the bullets. Japanese is an incredibly complicated language, with many words having highly nuanced or multiple meanings. Which makes it even more suited to puns than English, from what little I understand of it. I really should learn more Japanese than "hentai" and "sushi." If you were, for example, trying to negotiate a surrender during World War II, you’d think they’d want to make sure all the kanji was correctly crossed and dotted. Or at least do your own English translation? The language wasn't exactly unknown in Japan. The ultimatum demanded an immediate surrender or threatened “prompt and utter destruction.” Suzuki responded with the word mokusatsu. Correctly translated given the situation, he was basically using the old political chestnut of “no comment.” Instead, his response was translated as “silent contempt” or “not worthy of response.” Again, though, it wasn't the word that killed a bunch of people. It was fission. And I can't imagine "no comment" would have been received with any greater diplomacy. 1. The Word That Almost Launched Even More Nuclear Weapons Hey, now, I've been assured that "almost" only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and atomic b- oh. The butchered blurb came from Nikita Khrushchev in 1956, from the end of a speech, which was translated as “we will bury you.” Now forever immortalized in Sting lyrics. In reality, though, he’d been saying something a little less directly murderous, and that was a more common Russian saying: Something effectively translated as “we will be there when you are buried,” or to translate into American euphemisms — “You’re digging your own grave.” Or: “It’s your funeral.” I'm pretty sure that if you dig around (I can't be arsed), you can find many other examples of poor translations, especially of idiomatic language, that started or exacerbated wars. Just as many jokes get lost in translation, and most puns are utterly useless in other languages, threats, too, can be misinterpreted. Or, you know, you can call yourself a jelly doughnut and have the entire world laugh at you. Unless, of course, "Ich bin ein Berliner" led directly to JFK's assassination. I guess we'll never know  for sure. |
| Another one for this month's "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]... Plie I don't know everything. This certainly comes as a shock to some of you, but it's true. Usually, when there's a term I've never heard before (like plie) I take advantage of living in a pre-apocalyptic technological society and Google it. But sometimes it's more fun not to. The only clue I have is that the word is in the "dance" section of the JI prompt list. This may also come as a shock, given my name, but I know almost nothing about dance. It exists, and some people (who are not me) take great pleasure in performing or observing it. My ex was (maybe still is; I don't know) a belly dancer, so I'm not completely ignorant of the art form. I know that they have names, usually derived from non-English words, for certain moves. I don't remember any of them, though. I do have some small knowledge of French, which lends names to some aspects of dance (ballet, e.g.) but I don't recognize "plie" from my limited Francophone vocabulary. So, to me, even though my eyesight is pretty good again a year and a half after cataract surgery, it just looks like someone misspelled "pile." Hell, my browser's spellcheck doesn't even recognize the word. It suggests, in this order: Pile, pie, lie, plies, and plied. The latter two are pretty obviously present and past tense, respectively, of the word "ply," which has several meanings. For one, as a noun, it refers to laminated or layered material. Like plywood. Or 2-ply toilet paper. Neither of which is directly related to dance, unless you're doing it on a plywood stage and/or acting like a mummy. Which is something different from a mummer, who can be, in fact, a dancer. I suppose you can get "plies" and "plied" from it, but that would be an odd construction in English. As a verb, one can ply a a trade or profession, or ply someone with questions to try to pry information out of them. There are some less common usages, but they're all shortened from "apply." One other option that doesn't come up in spellcheck suggestions is "plier," which can mean one who plies (as in the above verb) or the never-used singular version of "pliers," a grabbing tool that has two parts, so that when I was a kid, I imagined that "plier" was one branch of a broken pair of pliers (see also "scissors"). English is weird. Despite its use as a prying tool (maybe it should have been called "priers" instead, resemblance to "priors" be damned because there's plenty of those homophones around), the noun form of "ply" comes from the French "plier" (which I'm guessing is pronounced plee-ay), which means something like to fold. And with that, I think I'm close to the meaning of "plie": something to do with folding oneself. Let's check our work: plié: a movement in which a dancer bends the knees and straightens them again, usually with the feet turned out and heels firmly on the ground. Okay, I was thinking bending at the waist, but fine. Now I know. It's not like I haven't seen ballet before (I just don't know the words), and that seems to be a pretty common move. Doesn't look a lot like folding, though. "Bent" (past tense of "bend") is probably a better translation. Now, see, I could have gotten there more quickly if the accent aigu (é) had been, in the first place... applied. |
| This one may not be too relevant unless you live in NYC. Or visit there a lot. Or are interested in transportation engineering and its associated politics. I meet two of these criteria, so here's an opinion piece from the New York Daily News. For the uninitiated, NYC has five boroughs: Manhattan, an island (with a very small exclave on the mainland—interesting story there); Queens and Brooklyn (part of an island); the Bronx (mainland); and Staten Island (take a wild guess). SI is kind of an outlier there; it's more residential and easier to access from New Jersey than from the rest of NYC. It might help to take a look at a subway map,  (found on Wikipedia), though remember, this is not to scale or up to date. That blue route on the shamefully miniaturized Staten Island is not directly connected to the rest of the system.The very elegant invitation before me, with the seal of New York City, is for 4/14/23 and reads “Breaking of ground for the Brooklyn Shaft” [of the Staten Island to Brooklyn subway]. But it’s not today; it was 100 years ago, April 14, 1923! For reference, the famed subway system in NYC opened in 1904, so they were considering connections to Staten Island within 20 years of its initiation. It's also not entirely a "subway," as much of it runs at or above grade. That 1904 date refers to actual underground subway. Obviously, this 1.5 mile subway extension of the now R train never got built — although about 150 feet of the aborted tunnel lies under Brooklyn’s Owl’s Head Park. It was hailed as a brilliant idea then and frankly it remains a brilliant idea today. Reminder: opinion piece. Not only does Staten Island, a borough of a half-million people, not have a subway, to no surprise it has the highest share of vehicle trips of any borough, matching that of many suburbs. Half a million sounds like a lot of people (and it is by some standards), but the total population of NYC is about 8.5 million. As for vehicle trips, because of its lower density, parking is sometimes actually possible in SI, unlike the rest of the city. There is an extensive bus network in the borough, though. Also, some people consider it a suburb, while Jersey City is jokingly referred to as an honorary borough. If we turn back the clock to the dawn of the last century, civic leaders envisioned a unified metropolis of the five boroughs that merged into one city in 1898. In 1900, the president of the Citizens Association of Richmond, David Tysen, lamented that transit from the island hadn’t improved in a half century — a familiar plaint to Staten Islanders of today. Explanation: Richmond is the county; Staten Island is the borough and the island's name. Don't ask me what's up with all the naming confusion; I don't live there. Since 1900, there have been some improvements, like the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connecting SI with Brooklyn... for vehicular traffic. In 1923, groundbreakings were held in Brooklyn and Staten Island. But, bickering by civic leaders as to whether the tunnel would be for freight and/or people delayed the project through the Depression and then World War II. By 1945 the plan was dead. Instead, four bridges were built linking the island with New Jersey and Brooklyn, but for motor vehicles only. With all the traffic delays that entails. If you think this is a “tunnel too far,” remember every other borough has multiple subway lines, some going 10 or more miles deep into the outer parts of the boroughs. By "deep," the author means "away from Manhattan," which is, of course, the center of the universe. Not that the tunnels are 10 miles deep. Just to clarify. Considering how much the Second Ave. subway cost for a mile and a half tunnel, nearly $5 billion, I’d say roughly $3 to $5 billion would be enough. I'd take that with a NYC-sized grain of salt. The 2Av doesn't run under a major shipping channel. Underwater tunnel construction is its own ball game. Discussion of interborough transit would be incomplete without a mention of that mainstay of NYC culture, the Staten Island Ferry. Build a subway, reduce the need for the Ferry. In 1993, nearly two-thirds of island residents voted to secede from New York. If city and state leaders continue to ignore “the forgotten borough,” we better get used to saying the four boroughs of New York. Don't threaten me with a good time. And you're still going to have transportation problems because you're an island. Hey, maybe New Jersey would take you into its loving arms. |
| "None of your business" is always an acceptable response to a nosy question. A growing share of childless adults in the U.S. don't expect to ever have children, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey. Some people gave specific reasons, like medical conditions or finances, but a lot of people said they just don't want to. And yet, almost no one ever asks "Why do/did you want children?" No one needs to give a reason for their life choices. If pressed, "I just (don't) want to" should more than suffice. If that's you, you might find yourself facing unwanted commentary or questions. Angela L. Harris can relate. She's child-free by choice, and she says people often question her choice or want to know all the details. What details? Kids are messy and chaotic and smelly, and a net drain on resources? Those are the details that matter. She says, first of all, to remember that you don't owe anyone an explanation: "If you don't feel like explaining, don't explain. Your life is your life." See? Even the psychologist agrees with me. Sometimes Harris' responses might be more sincere; other times, she opts for levity. "I think there's a playful and joking way in which you can respond," she says. Thing is, having kids, or not, is the actual definition of a major life choice. And yet, you don't get a lot of "Why did you buy that house?" or "Why didn't you choose a hybrid car?" with some slightly less major life choices. Any of those choices usually involve not just one, but a myriad of reasons, and sometimes entire pros and cons lists. There's rarely, if ever, just one reason why someone does something. I know I don't even get out of bed unless I can think of at least two reasons why I should. The article then presents a few of the questions, and her answers, in graphic meme form because that's the only way to get attention these days, except for short-attention-span vertical videos. Format notwithstanding, they're all good answers, even if they do present the questioners in a rather unflattering manner. Even nosy people are often well-meaning, and I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. Harris acknowledges that having this conversation with your parents or your partner can be difficult. She stresses waiting until you feel ready to have the discussion. Okay, sure, parents, I understand. But it seems to me that having this discussion with a potential partner as early as possible would be a good way to avoid wasting the time and energy of everyone involved. Back when I was still dating, I tried to determine pretty quickly if she had baby-rabies, and broke it off before either of us got involved in something we didn't want. If one partner wants seven kids and the other wants two, perhaps a compromise can be reached. But if one absolutely wants kids and the other definitely does not, well, there's no compromise there (unless you're one of those assholes who abandon your family). Your Turn: If you're child-free by choice, we'd love to hear how you respond to unsolicited questions and comments. Well, I won't be commenting to NPR, but that's one of the many reasons I have a blog. "Don't you want a little Waltz running around?" Oh, hell, no; I remember what I was like as a kid. "If you wait until you can afford them, you never will." And? "Who will take care of you when you're old?" Bringing another life into a dying world just so you can have free nursing later in life is the absolute pinnacle of selfishness. "What do you have against children?" Nothing (usually). As with dogs, I think they're just fine; I just don't want to own one. "Why don't you want kids?" Why do you? "When are you going to have kids?" When there's a shortage. |
| Another one for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] Cardio A friend of mine had this hypothesis: that our hearts can only beat a certain number of times, programmed by genetics or God or the universe or whatever, after which they just give out. The actual number is, of course, different for everyone, but usually on the order of 109 beats. Certain things speed up heart rate: too much caffeine (if there is such a thing), stress, panic, and exercise, to name a few. This, according to his hypothesis, has the effect of shortening one's lifespan, as it's compressing more heartbeats into a given unit of time. So he tried to control these heart-rate-increasing situations as much as possible, mostly by not exercising. Most of the medical community disagrees with him, but I trot that out whenever a doctor tells me I should get more exercise, which is every time I talk to a doctor. I don't actually believe his hypothesis, myself, but why take the chance? Haven't seen him in a while; we started moving (very slowly) in different circles. He's several years older than I am, and approaching that 109 heartbeats number now, so I hope he was right. |
| I've written on the virtues of the semicolon before. Notably in this entry, in which Kurt Vonnegut railed against them and then used one: "The Sage of Indianapolis" This one, though, is far more positive than good ol' Kurt on the use of this important punctuation mark, one which I suspect I overuse, but can't help myself. In 1906, Dutch writer Maarten Maartens—acclaimed in his lifetime but now mostly forgotten—published a surreal, satirical novel called The Healers. He should not have been forgotten. He had the most Dutch name since... well, no, he had the most Dutch name that ever Dutched. The Dutch equivalent of Vladimir Vladimirovich, or Jon Jonson. The book centers on one Professor Lisse, who has conjured up a potential bioweapon: the Semicolon Bacillus, an “especial variety of the Comma.” The doctor has killed hundreds of rabbits demonstrating the Semicolon’s toxicity, but, at the beginning of the novel, he hasn’t yet succeeded in getting his punctuation past the human immune system, which destroys Semicolons instantly as soon as they enter the mouth. Maartens wrote before antibiotics. Maartens wrote at a time when the semicolon was still an exceptionally popular punctuation mark—so popular that grammarians forecast the extinction of the colon, which 19th-century writers had abandoned in favor of semicolons. Apparently, the thought that both had their use never crossed their minds. Nowadays, however, it’s the semicolon that is no longer a la mode; and judging by the number of writers who have something like an allergic reaction to it, plenty of people might find a glimmer of truth in Maartens’s vision of the semicolon as disease vector. “Let me be plain,” wrote the novelist Donald Barthelme: “the semi-colon is ugly, ugly as a tick on a dog’s belly, I pinch them out of my prose.” Well, that's one author whose novels I won't read. Semicolons are “idiocy,” Cormac McCarthy scoffed in a Vanity Fair interview. And that's up there among the most Irish names to ever Irish (but McCarthy is American). The semicolon’s fall from favor was determined in part by the contradictions, complications, overcompleteness, and incompleteness of rule books. But if we look past those books to the work of some of our best writers, we can see semicolons used to create music and meaning in language that no other punctuation mark could accomplish. Damn straight. Raymond Chandler is famous for his noir detective novels featuring Philip Marlowe, but he was a brilliant essayist as well, and the semicolon seems to have been one of his favorite punctuation marks. He used it to create expressive rhythm in his writing, in ways that leapfrog rules. I should note that using a semicolon in fiction is a completely different thing from using it in essays (or blog posts). I'm not even sure how to articulate the difference; there's a formality to semicolon usage that only flies in a certain style of storytelling. These moments of rule-chucking in his writing are not accidents: “When I split an infinitive,” he railed to the editor of his film essay, “God damn it, I split it so it will stay split.” While I support semicolon usage, the "rule" about not splitting infinitives is one of the stupidest restrictions to ever be imposed upon the English language. (See what I did there? I crack myself up.) What Chandler and other excellent writers knew is that a book of grammar rules is incapable of answering the question of how, and how often, to use a semicolon, because the answer is a matter of what you, the writer, are trying to accomplish. In other words, it's more a question of style than of prescriptive rules. No matter what you’ve read in a book or been told by an English teacher, for instance, a sentence can’t be too short or too long in an absolute sense. A sentence can be too short or too long to suit its purpose. Yeah, no, that one in Ulysses is entirely too long. Hell, Ulysses is entirely too long. Perhaps the best use of the semicolon I’ve ever read is in a sentence that’s 318 words long—just under a third of the length of this entire essay. That sentence is in Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” and if you look up the letter, you’ll know exactly which sentence I mean when you get to it. King is describing why he is unwilling to continue to wait for change without taking action, and to make his point strongly felt, he makes you wait in pauseless discomfort while he recounts injustice after injustice, all semicoloned together one after another, never letting you rest on a full stop. Read it out loud and you’ll be exhausted and breathless: justly so. King's genius wasn't just in his ideas; it was also in his rhetorical prowess. Chandler and King were so deft with their punctuation because they invested time and attention in reading other good writers, and they poured just as much time and attention into crafting their own sentences. Meanwhile, I write these posts in less than an hour and then promptly forget about them. Alas, to punctuate well requires deliberation. “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.” —Oscar Wilde But perhaps that’s a good thing. According to the CDC, mindfulness-based practices like yoga and meditation rose significantly between 2012 and 2017. Venture capital firms have poured millions into apps like Calm and Headspace. If we all scanned our emails, texts, Tweets, reviews, and essays, looking for opportunities to use something a little more interesting than the now ubiquitous, catchall em-dash, we might find that thoughtful punctuating is an occasion to stop, reflect, and immerse ourselves in the contemplative art of the well-judged pause, with no monthly subscription required. And, unlike yoga, meditation, and mindfulness apps, proper punctuation isn't a derivative of copium. In Maartens’s The Healers, Professor Lisse eventually discovers that the semicolon isn’t a toxin as he initially believed; instead, when formulated properly, it’s a source of vitality. And apparently for this excerpt's author, a source of income. |
| As per usual for Sundays, I picked an old blog entry at random to comment on. This one's from 2009, and it's just a short personal update: "I'm in Hell." Last night, my wife went willingly to a Katy Perry concert. Apparently, I was still married in April of 2009. I never can remember when we separated. I think it was a couple of months later, but I don't care enough to chase that down. You know, the "I kissed a girl" chick? I didn't actually hate Katy Perry. Nowadays, I actually kinda respect her. Not the music, just her. What I despised, and still do, is fads. Wait, it gets worse: Apparently, the concert is part of the... Hello Katy tour. The context here is that I used to have this shtick about hating Hello Kitty, and juxtaposing a vapid-sounding pop singer with the nefarious neko would have been enough to clue readers at the time that I was, indeed, in hell. If you need me, I'll be over there in that room with all the cushions on the wall. Yeah, I shouldn't have made light of mental illness, but I did, and still do, a lot of things I shouldn't. |
| For "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]... Pole Vault It's important to store your poles securely and safely. Be sure to build extra-thick steel and concrete walls, and a biometric lock on the door that only works for your thumbprint. Of course, that's just begging someone to amputate your thumb to get at the valuable poles inside. Oh, wait. Sorry. Pole vault. You know, just in case Russia invades Poland next, you have to be sure to build vast, arched, underground chambers to protect the population. Best to secure them against nukes. Not that, either? Damn. Well, I suppose it would be easier to build a vault in Antarctica, where the pole is at least on dry (if ice-covered) land, than it would be to build one under the Arctic Sea. But the Arctic Sea one would be more accessible to survivors after the zombie apocalypse, assuming it affects everyone in the world roughly equally. Or, you know, after the inevitable workers' re-vault. |
| Throwing shade on solar power... Hm, I wonder who would be motivated enough to fund such a group... let me think... nope, coming up empty. Citizens for Responsible Solar is part of a growing backlash against renewable energy in rural communities across the United States. It's important, when fighting against things that are net social goods, to use certain keywords to make people believe that you're not evil. It worked for various "democratic people's republic" dictatorships. "Family" is a perennial favorite. Or "children." But "responsible" and "citizens" are up there. Citizens for Responsible Solar was founded in an exurb of Washington, D.C., by a longtime political operative named Susan Ralston who worked in the White House under President George W. Bush and still has deep ties to power players in conservative politics. See? Evil. And when Ralston was launching the group, a consulting firm she owns got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the foundation of a leading GOP donor who is also a major investor in fossil fuel companies. Oh, wow. Wow. I never would have guessed, not in a million years. Analysts who follow the industry say Citizens for Responsible Solar stokes opposition to solar projects by spreading misinformation online about health and environmental risks. The group's website says solar requires too much land for "unreliable energy," ignoring data showing power grids can run dependably on lots of renewables. And it claims large solar projects in rural areas wreck the land and contribute to climate change, despite evidence to the contrary. Evidence? Who needs evidence when you have money? And you know what form of energy has well-documented, proven health and environmental risks? I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with ossil uels. People often have valid concerns about solar development. Like any infrastructure project, solar plants that are poorly planned and constructed can potentially harm communities. But misinformation spread by groups like Citizens for Responsible Solar is turning rural landowners unfairly against renewables, says Skyler Zunk, an Interior Department official under President Donald Trump and chief executive of Energy Right, a conservative-leaning nonprofit that supports solar projects that preserve ecosystems. Any change in land use comes with potential hazards to the environment. Change the way runoff works, and you change erosion patterns and a watershed's hydrological characteristics. But there are ways to mitigate that. Solar restrictions are gaining traction as the stakes for addressing climate change keep rising. Construction of more renewable energy is key to the country's plans to cut greenhouse gas pollution and avoid the worst damage from extreme weather in the years ahead. Such is the nature of humanity that avoiding "the worst damage from extreme weather in the years ahead" will mean absolutely nothing, because the damage has been avoided. Kind of like people scoff at the giant nothing that was the Y2K problem, because they didn't notice efforts to keep it from happening. Ralston reportedly said to E&E News in 2019 that no money from fossil fuel interests went to Citizens for Responsible Solar. Since then, she has declined NPR and Floodlight's requests to identify the organization's sources of funding. I thought "why not tell the whole truth if you have nothing to hide" was a core conservative "value." Many grassroots activists today credit their success in stopping solar projects to Ralston. One of them is Kathy Webb. Webb says she learned that a company wanted to clear a forest for a solar plant near her home in Rowan County, N.C., days before local officials planned to vote. I gotta admit, I'm not sure that clear-cutting forests for solar energy is a net positive. Trees are kinda important for carbon capture. But I don't have any real data one way or the other. Misinformation spreads easily online. It bounces around in echo chambers where dubious articles, videos and memes are posted and shared repeatedly. Longtime critics of the wind industry like John Droz cultivated opposition strategies that are now being used in the fight against solar, says Anderson, the renewable energy lawyer in Kansas. And really, my point here isn't to rag on one group or another. I want to see decisions based on facts, not misinformation (or deliberate disinformation). Lots of people on both sides of the US political spectrum bang on about questionable or outright disproven studies or statements. Every form of energy creation has its downsides. The question is whether the benefits outweigh them or not. But, you know. Keep promoting coal and oil if you need to. By the time it all runs out and we can no longer sustain an industrial, technological society, I, too, will be long gone. Sucks for your descendants, though. |
First, a plug for the June round of
Just do eight entries (chosen from 16 prompts) in a month. I'll be participating, myself... but not today. Today, we try to talk sense about senses. I've noted in the past that we really have more than the classical five senses, but I don't think I'd seen this article, which is from 2017. It's talking about different "extra" senses, anyway. The world we experience is not the real world. I think several philosophers would agree. Several other philosophers would vehemently disagree. As for me, first you'd have to define "real," and good luck with that. It’s a mental construction, filtered through our physical senses. Yesterday, I banged my shin on a mental construction. How would our world change if we had new and different senses? Could they expand our universe? We already have new and different senses, courtesy of technology. They translate input into output discernible by one of the Five. A Geiger counter, for example, detects ionizing radiation (which we have no sense for) and converts it to auditory (the clicking sound) and visual (a gauge), which our brains can interpret. The article also treats writing as sense-substitution, trading the auditory (language) for the visual (writing on a page). More recently, researchers in the emerging field of “sensory enhancement” have begun developing tools to give people additional senses—ones that imitate those of other animals, or that add capabilities nature never imagined. Here’s how such devices could work, and how they might change what it means to be human. Some animals can detect electrical fields. I can't imagine what that would feel (or look, smell, sound, or taste) like. Which gives me an opportunity to once again trot out my great epiphany about the Classic Five: They are all, at base, touch. Even vision, which relies on the impact of photons on our retinas. Researchers are working on other technologies that could restore sight or touch to those who lack it. For the blind, cameras could trigger electrodes on the retina, on the optic nerve, or in the brain. For the paralyzed or people with prosthetic limbs, pressure pads on real or robotic hands could send touch feedback to the brain or to nerves in the arm. All of which sounds pretty cool, and used to be relegated to science fiction. Well, yesterday's science fiction often becomes science. Autistic people might even gain a stronger social sense. Careful, there. I know several autistic people with strong social sense. They tend to have different perspectives, and those perspectives are often more useful. Don't fix stuff that ain't broke. Last year, MIT researchers revealed the EQ-Radio, a device that bounces signals off people to detect their heart rate and breathing patterns. Finally, a device that can tell you if someone's into you. We can also substitute one sense for another. The brain is surprisingly adept at taking advantage of any pertinent information it receives, and can be trained to, for instance, “hear” images or “feel” sound. Sounds like induced synesthesia to me. Scientists are also exploring ways to add senses found elsewhere in the animal kingdom. The article talks about things like direction sense and echolocation, but echolocation is basically hearing. I've read that some humans, especially blind ones, have learned this trick without technological aid. In the future, cochlear implants could be tuned to pick up really low frequencies, such as those used by elephants, or really high ones, such as those used by dolphins. Bionic eyes could be built to allow humans to see ultraviolet rays (as butterflies, reindeer, dogs, and other animals can) and infrared light (as certain snakes, fish, and mosquitoes can). As cool as all that would be, all it would do is extend our existing classical senses. Some researchers think we may eventually install a port in our brains that would allow us to swap in different sensors when we need them. Because that always ends well in SF stories. We might also gain senses that no other animal has. The vibrating vest Eagleman created can be programmed to receive any input, not just sound. He says it could be used to monitor the stock market, or sentiment on Twitter, or the pitch and yaw of a drone, or one’s own vital signs. Ah, yes, 2017, when Twatter was still marginally relevant. “You can do whatever you want,” says Neil Harbisson, a “cyborg artist” who’s originally from Spain. “You can design a unique sense that is related to your interests or to your curiosity.” Well, I know some people who could benefit from a sense of humor implant. Also... "cyborg artist?" Come on. Perhaps we’ll even achieve that so-called sixth sense: ESP. That's not as farfetched as the article implies. It's not much of a stretch to imagine electrodes that pick up signals from one brain and transfer them to the electrodes of another, either through implants or induction. Doubtful that we'd be able to "read" the minds of unwilling subjects anytime soon, though. But last I heard, we still haven't figured out how to keep the brain from outright rejecting any implanted electrodes. Yeah, yeah, Neuralink (also mentioned in the article; it was new at the time). As with most Muskmelon projects, that's more hype than anything else. Exactly how all this tinkering will change us remains to be seen. And this is what science fiction is for. |
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