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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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Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
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| Oh man. I'm bracing myself for a whole lot of anti-human sentiment today. I really hope I'm wrong, but that's how it works when you're a pessimist: either you're right, or you're pleasantly surprised, and I'll take either one. PROMPT July 11th Imagine what the world would be like today if humans had never discovered/invented _________ (fill in the blank). alarm clocks Wow, what a wonderful world that would be, eh? No worries about not getting enough sleep, everyone chill about people getting places whenever they feel like it. I think if more people got the proper amount of sleep -- as defined by one's own particular circadian rhythms -- there'd be a lot less anger and conflict, and a lower level of general grumpiness. The coffee industry would be practically nonexistent, but I don't care. I know there are good reasons to keep things on a schedule to maximize cooperation among humans, but really, what's the cost? Also, it's more tempting to go to bed later and not get enough sleep if you know for sure that some shrill ringing or beeping is going to disturb you out of a perfectly nice dream so that you can go do something you don't really want to do in the first place. No, if we didn't have alarm clocks, I think more people would pay attention to going to bed at whatever time they need to in order to get enough sleep, rather than letting the alarm (and then caffeine) take care of things. Of course, I say this as someone who was ruled by alarms for many years, and now only rarely has use for one. But that just means I can speak to the difference. In reality, of course, if the alarm clock didn't exist, someone would have to invent one. And all of our inventions are interconnected; you can't just take one out of the picture and work around the hole that would create. Except maybe those ugly-ass big-head figures. Funko Pops or whatever they're called. I'll make an exception for them; the world would unarguably be better off without them, and we'd never even notice the difference. Of course, I had to think for a while before coming up with "alarm clocks." So many inventions, so many discoveries, and so few of them either clear benefits or obvious Bad Ideas. Most things are a mix of the two, just like most humans. So I hope we'll be around for a while to discover and invent more things, and none of them will be perfectly good or perfectly evil, but most of them will be perfectly interesting. I'm just sad I won't be around to see it. |
| You want me... ME... to venture... shudder... outside? PROMPT July 10th Go somewhere outside or where you can observe the happenings of the world beyond the walls of your home (looking out a window is fine). Spend at least five minutes watching and listening. What do you see, hear, and smell? Where does your mind wander when you sit quietly? My housemate's cat was resting peacefully on the edge of the deck around sunset. Contented in the fading last light of afternoon, she rolled over in her sleep, and... Well. You can imagine. The cat's fine, of course. While it's not true that cats always land on their feet, she's just a little thing and she landed in a soft spot. Consequently, it made me laugh my ass off. Yeah, I was outside. I joke about staying indoors all the time, but in the heat of summer, I like to sit on my deck with my laptop. Thus, I'm outdoors even now that it's midnight and the mild breeze from the inky blackness has cooled things off to just above indoor temperature. I'd expected the sharp trill of cicadas this summer, but no, all I hear are the trucks rolling by on the interstate, and the occasional friendly bump in the night. But I like the heat of day. I like it better when the sun isn't in my face and I can see the screen better, but I'd be perfectly content with a lifetime of days between 75 and 95 F like these past few days have been. I'd even allow it to rain on occasion, but preferably while I'm asleep. Guess I should move to Hawaii, huh? Admittedly, it's preferable for me to have an air-conditioned indoors to retreat to on occasion, which is what I have now. But I certainly refuse to complain about the heat after suffering through sub-freezing temperatures in the winter. But the cat's fall felt to me like a metaphor. There you are, happy and relaxed, and then you perform some seemingly innocent action like rolling over in your catnap and, next thing you know, your claws are scrabbling for purchase on the rough wood, purchase that they are doomed never to find, and then you're falling, falling. Hopefully you land on your feet, but there's no guarantee. There never is. |
| Fun fact: the word "nice" used to mean "stupid." It comes to us from Middle English, by way of a Latin word meaning "ignorant." Just something to keep in mind the next time someone calls you a nice person. PROMPT July 9th Write about the last time you did something nice for yourself. I suppose many people live for others, always trying to be thoughtful and doing stuff to please other people. Some take it to an extreme, thinking that they don't have to do anything to please themselves. I'm not one of those people. Don't get me wrong; I try to be considerate of others' feelings. I'm not always successful, but I'm working on it. Slowly. I certainly don't go out of my way to make other people miserable or be rude. Point is, a much harder prompt would be "Write about the last time you did something nice for someone else." Well, I shared my beer with my housemate yesterday; I suppose that counts. If that's tomorrow's prompt, though, it's probably still going to be the same thing. Contrariwise, I can always find something I do for myself. For instance, in the Before Time, I used to get a massage every month. Some might call it decadence; I call it physical therapy. On Tuesday, I walked up to the local taphouse and got lunch (and beer) there, on their patio. And just yesterday (Wednesday), I had More Beer, here at home. This is the beer I shared, but mostly it was for me. So that's the direct answer to the prompt: indulging in malt beverage this past afternoon. But I can't do the one thing I really want to do, which is travel. I had all kinds of plans to go on a road trip in August. Well, that's not happening. Part of the point of traveling, for me, is visiting restaurants and purveyors of fine fermented beverages, and while some of those may be open, I have no desire to potentially spread a dread disease. I'm nice like that. And I'll leave you with this Buddhist monk covering Judas Priest. Just because. And now I've done something nice for all of you. |
| Pretty sure the last saber-toothed tiger died the day I was born. PROMPT July 8th What historical events, besides your own birth, occurred on your birthday in the year you were born? Okay, no, not really. Still, a whole lot of people are going to have to do some gymnastics - or outright lying - if they're trying to obscure their actual date of birth. Me, I haven't made a big secret of it, so I went looking for events that happened on February 18, 1966. What I found disgusted me. Not only did nothing of any global import apparently occur that day, but yeeesh, some of these "what happened the day you were born" websites are crapola. "You're an Aquarius!" Yep, knew that, didn't care. The defining characteristic of Aquarians is that we don't believe in astrology. One day later and I'd have been a Pisces. Hell, they don't even report my moon sign (also Aquarius; I was, auspiciously, born during a New Moon). Speaking of astrology, according to these sites, it was Year of the Horse, and I'm Gen-X. Still don't care. Apparently apathy is the defining characteristic of Gen-X. Probably of horses too. I mean, how many times have you seen a horse rescue someone trapped in a well? Let's see... celebrity births? No one I've ever heard of. Famous people deaths? Ditto. Although one of the early cosmonauts "committed suicide" by train on that day. Since he was Russian, I put the quotes around "committed suicide." I did find one interesting little bit of trivia: On November 21 of this year, if I've survived all the shit 2020 is determined to throw at all of us, I will have been alive for exactly 20,000 days. Considering I only remember, like, three of them, that's quite a lot of days. Doesn't mean much, of course, but I put it on my calendar so I'll have an excuse to drink, which will reduce my number of remembered days to two. One other random bit of useless trivia I remember from when I was young (and is hence very suspect as to its veracity): As we all know, Star Trek debuted on TV in September of 1966, after having gone through a difficult birthing process. A network ordered a pilot, it was rejected, and it ordered another pilot. The original pilot eventually ended up getting recut for a two-part episode. Point is, it was a long, involved process (that never would have happened if it weren't for Lucille Ball, but that's another story). The thing I remember reading was that the network finally made a series order for the show in February of 1966. I choose to believe that this momentous event happened on my birthday. I can't find what day it actually was, and I have about a 1 in 20 chance of being right (assuming Hollywood took weekends off), so I'm going with it. I did find one interesting thing, though, something that I'd never heard of. https://www.onthisday.com/articles/buried-at-sea:-the-casket-that-carried-jfk Buried at Sea: The Casket That Carried JFK February 18, 1966 — The casket used to carry the body of assassinated President John F. Kennedy from Dallas to Washington was, on this day, parachuted into oblivion. Not JFK himself, of course. He's supposedly at Arlington Cemetery; I've seen the gravesite. My father's buried close by. The story of the coffin is remarkable. It was ordered from Dallas undertaker Vernon O’Neal by Secret Service agent Clint Hill when futile attempts at Parkland Hospital to save the slain President were finally abandoned. Hill is the man who leapt onto the back of Kennedy’s limousine after the fatal shots were fired. The story is short, and worth the read; I won't risk violating whatever copyright laws by reproducing the whole thing here. Basically, the Kennedy family didn't want the casket to become some sort of spectacle, so they sent it to Davy Jones' Locker. Like I said, no real historical import, but an interesting footnote to one of the defining events of the 20th century. And this is the first I've heard of it. Could be bullshit, of course; I can't be arsed to fact-check something that obscure. |
| Hey, it's this "inspiration" thing again. Also, yesterday's Mini-Contest winner announced below. PROMPT July 7th What do you do when you are out of inspiration or ideas? I look at prompts, of course. Well, that's for blog entries and most of my fiction and poems. When I'm not in a blog challenge month, I have web links I can post here and comment on. Keeps me busy. I have written a few stories and poems that weren't prompted, but the bulk of my work comes from "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week"  [13+] or other contests with their prompts.Occasionally, very rarely, someone else will write something that makes me want to create a thing. I mention this because it just happened recently: "Procrastination" [E]That particular one was ironic because I jumped right into writing it, instead of my usual thing which is to wait until later, after which I forget about it. In other words, I didn't procrastinate writing a limerick titled "Procrastination." You know what the toughest thing for me is? Newsletter editorials. There are no prompts, only the topic of the newsletter - for me, Fantasy or Comedy. Don't get me wrong -- once I settle on a subject, the words usually flow well enough. But I've been editing both newsletters 13 times a year for about 13 years, now, and sometimes I agonize over what to write about right up until the deadline. Okay, sometimes past the deadline; see the above poem. And yet, having done it for 13 years, I'm sure I've duplicated earlier ideas more than a few times. That's usually okay; with more experience comes different perspectives on the subject. What's also hard for me is coming up with prompts in the first place. I mean, if it weren't, I'd write more, right? Instead, about once a week, I have to come up with something for other people to write about. Generally it's about whatever's on my mind right at the moment; the problem with that, these days, is that my mind generally cycles between "pandemic" and "beer." The former is overdone, and the latter excludes people who prefer to keep their writing below 13+. I'd rather be inclusive with the Cramp. So yeah, inspiration comes to me rarely and fleetingly, so I try to catch it when it zips by. But, as any professional writer (e.g. Not Me) might tell you, it's not about inspiration or ideas; it's about doing the work. And that's where I fail.  Mini-Contest results! Some great answers yesterday, where I asked for examples of when presenting both sides to a controversy can be a Bad Thing. Since I mentioned my newsletter editorials above, I had some vague memory of writing about this sort of thing in a Comedy editorial -- and behold, I managed to find it: "Both Sides" I felt that the closest thing to what I was talking about was the comment provided by Charlie ~: I mean, a good example of "false both-sidedness" is vaccines. We have scientific evidence that vaccines work with little to no harmful effects, especially when taking into consideration all the good they do. When you present one side as someone saying, "Vaccines are pointless! When is the last time you met someone with [insert disease that has been mostly eradicated due to vaccines]" it's like, yeah, that's the ENTIRE point of vaccines and it's proof that they work. Those situations annoy the hell out of me because the one side isn't actually presenting anything reasonable or sensible. Their side is, "I feel like I'm special and shouldn't have to protect my children or the rest of society from illness." Admittedly, it didn't hurt that this was one of the specific topics I had in mind when concocting my "flat-earth" hypothetical example. But as usual -- I appreciated all of the comments, and you'll all get another chance in a few days. But this week's Merit Badge goes to Charlie ~ |
| Oh boy, here we go. First, the good news: Time for another Win A Merit Badge Mini-Contest! Details below. And now, the news! PROMPT July 6th Is there such a thing as “unbiased reporting?” (Consider not just journalism, but storytelling - is it possible to tell a story without bias?) The one thing that bothers me the most about "unbiased reporting" is when, in an effort to show "both sides" of an issue, a reporter has to call in people who believe the opposite of what the story's about. In an effort to avoid too much controversy here, I'm going to use an extreme -- and pulled straight out of my ass -- example. First, the part that hasn't been in my colon: GPS uses satellites to fix the three-dimensional position of a receiver. That is to say, with enough satellites (four, if I recall correctly), you can pinpoint a receiver's location on or above the surface of the planet. This generally translates to latitude, longitude and elevation, relative to the equator, the Prime Meridian, and the official Mean Sea Level datum, respectively. The actual inner workings are irrelevant (and beyond me), but basically, this requires the following at a minimum:  the existence of satellites in orbit; the existence of a receiver; a (nearly) spherical Earth, with reference points for the coordinates I mentioned above; extraordinarily accurate timing, provided by atomic clocks in the satellites; the latter of which is adjusted for relativistic time-dilation effects.Yes, the satellites are moving fast enough relative to the surface of the planet that relativistic corrections have to be made. Otherwise, instead of accuracy in the general vicinity of a meter or so, your reported position could be off by on the order of a kilometer - not nearly enough for the things we use GPS for, like finding the nearest Starbuck's or searching for buried treasure. And now the rectally retrieved part: Imagine a news story about, I dunno, hypothetically, replacing the GPS satellites with updated ones. A reporter relating this story might have to present "both sides." So she writes about the creation of the new satellites, the software updates necessary in the receiver units, and so forth. And then, for "balance," she has to find a flat-earther so they can explain how the entire GPS thing is a massive hoax; there can't be satellites because the Earth is flat; and it's all a conspiracy by Big Positioning or something. As a bonus, the moron might even throw in something about relativity being "obviously" wrong, and that time is invariant with speed and position. Writing your news article like that has the advantage of appearing unbiased and presenting different sides to the issue. More importantly to the publisher, it generates controversy, causing fact-free idiots to share it with each other and crow about how they've exposed something They don't want the rest of us to know; and causing non-stupid people to share it with each other to point and laugh at the idiots. This drives page clicks and increases advertising dollars. Mission accomplished. There's only one glaring problem: flat-earthers are completely and utterly wrong, and giving them a platform in the same piece that attempts to explain how physics actually works does science a Dark Ages level disservice. End of anus extraction. But I'm sure you can think of other issues, real ones, where the facts are presented alongside amateur and ignorant speculation The only appropriate thing to do with fact-deniers is to completely ignore them, and yet... we don't. We give them false equivalency. When a scientist is interviewed and says one thing, and another scientist is interviewed and says another thing, well, then, yes, by all means, present both sides -- but even there we should be aware that people without an appropriate education are in no position to draw their own conclusion as to which, if either, is right. But when a scientist takes one position, and John Bumpkin with no background in the subject matter at all takes the other, just fucking leave Bumpkin right out of your story. He's irrelevant. Now, look, it's true that flat-earthers exist. Whether any individual one is trolling or really believes their ignorant bullshit is above my pay grade, but even if you present their "side" of things with all kind of disclaimers about "actually, science has established to near-100% certainty that we live on a globe," you're wasting your and your readers' time. But most of the time they don't even do that, leaving it to the reader to do the fact-checking. Which they don't, which, again, leads to the ignorant belief gaining the appearance of being on the same level as the science. So by attempting to show that they don't have bias, they create a new bias: one that is taking us down a path to a fact-free world. Has taken us. Hell, the city lights are looming on the horizon, and we just passed a sign that reads "Welcome To Postfactopolis, population 7 billion." I'll just say one more thing about bias in reporting, though, and this is relevant to fiction-writing as well. Okay, two more things. Well, a few more things, but they're all related. It is impossible to present all the facts. Some things are known to a greater degree of certainty than others. Even if you report nothing but facts, you're going to demonstrate bias by choosing which facts to report. Presenting too many facts leads to boredom and tl;dr.Conclusion: No, there is no such thing as unbiased reporting... and logically, there cannot be. So, today's mini-contest is this: Give me an example of false-both-sidedness. This can be real, or, in the spirit of the "fiction writing" part of the prompt and my fictional GPS explanation above, you can make it up. The response I like best will earn its author a Merit Badge that I feel is appropriate, tomorrow. Deadline, as always, is midnight WDC time. |
| inspirational (adj.): providing or showing creative or spiritual inspiration PROMPT July 5th Tell us about someone you find inspirational. https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/inspirational Well, I've already mentioned Leonard Cohen too many times this month. I think he, more than anyone else, made me want to attempt this whole "writing" thing. Springsteen, maybe? Nah, doesn't quite fit the definition. I can like someone's art without having it nudge me into making my own. Neil Gaiman? Hm. I've deliberately cribbed his writing style on occasion, but I'm not sure that counts, either. Or I suppose I could pick the person who penned this prompt, because they inadvertently inspired me to write this entry, or Emily  for posting it. But I don't think that really fits the spirit of the prompt.The problem might lie in the definition, or in myself. See, I'm neither "creative" nor "spiritual." And I've grown to resent the entire concept of inspiration, thanks to pervasive positivity memes on the internet. Unless you count these . But no, those images don't actually make me want to create my own; they just make me laugh.I know lots of people have inspired me to do this or that thing, but just as I almost never do anything for just one reason, I also almost never do anything just because of one person. Like, long ago, when I decided to become an engineer, I couldn't point to any one engineer and say, "that person is the reason I became an engineer." No, it was a combination of things, like seeing locks on a canal and the Hoover Dam and the Brooklyn Bridge and any number of public works projects. Which is not to say that everything was my idea. Far from it. Like I said, I'm not very creative. No one can do something without all the work that came before. Specifically, I'm thinking of Nikola Tesla, for example, or Isaac Newton, who supposedly said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." And then he went on to revolutionize everything. When I was a kid, I think in elementary school, I have vague memories of an awards ceremony at the end of some school year. Like, they'd pick categories and hand out certificates. These days, from what I understand, such things aren't done as much because they leave out too many people, and I guess everyone gets participation trophies. This was also before the concept of "graduating" from elementary school. So anyway, a couple of things from that ceremony stuck in my mind, though I can't swear my memory of that time is all that accurate. The first one was an award for "perfect attendance." When I was a kid, I'd catch a cold, or worse, at least once a year, necessitating that I stay home and be bored rather than go to school and be bored, and I remember thinking how unfair that particular award was. "Congratulations. You either never got sick, or you came to school anyway and infected the rest of us." At least I'm pretty sure I had the basic concept of germ theory figured out by then. Either way, I thought that was bogus. But even more bogus, I thought, was someone who got the award for "most improved." I can see your eyebrows furrowing from all the way over here. "How is that a bad thing?" you're asking. Well, at least in my little-kid mind, I was going, "Huh. So if I'd started out getting bad grades, then gotten good grades at the end of the year, I could have gotten that award instead of "Biggest Pain in the Teacher's Ass" or whatever. See, I was savvy enough even then to never actually do my best work, and thus stand out as The Nerd. (It would be years before I learned to embrace my inner nerd, but by that time it was too late; I was already a committed slacker.) So I couldn't have gotten the "Best grades" award, but I could definitely have faked improvement over the course of a school year. The actual award I got was so embarrassing that I don't even remember what it was; I only remember being terminally embarrassed by it. The point to this rather lengthy digression from the subject is that the person who won that "most improved" award inspired me to always start out shitty so that people could praise me for having improved so much. I don't even remember his or her name. And if you don't think that's an important habit to get into, consider the well-known story of Einstein having failed mathematics as a kid. You might say that would make him the "most improved" thinker of all time. Except that it turns out that the story, like Washington and the cherry tree, is completely fabricated. But it keeps getting repeated anyway, which just goes to show how that it's less important to simply be great, and more important to achieve greatness after having started well below average, so that people will think it could happen to them, too. That's inspiring, isn't it? |
| Happy boom-boom day, Americans! New rule: if I smell your barbecue, I'm coming over. PROMPT July 4th What could you give a 40-minute presentation on with absolutely no preparation? One of my favorite scenes from TV is from a show I've never watched (apart from this scene). The only background you really need is that it aired shortly after Disney acquired Lucasfilm, and with it, the rights to Star Wars. So it's a bit dated now that the Skywalker Saga has officially ended, but taken in historical context, it's hilarious. Here it is: Patton Oswalt is one of my favorite comedians, and he supposedly ad-libbed the whole monologue. And yet... even though this guy is a professional actor and comic, and despite his impeccable geek cred, this cut clocks in at under nine minutes, part of which is intro. More, there are points at which he stumbles, backtracks, and even stutters. Now, I'm willing to admit that this might well have been all in character, but it doesn't come across that way. And still at the end of his roughly eight-minute filibuster, he practically collapses from dehydration and exhaustion (though I'm pretty sure that was a slice of ham). As a bonus, you'll note Chris Pratt is in there, which adds to the awesomeness of this because he went on to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as I'm sure everyone knows, as Star-Lord ("Who?") in Guardians of the Galaxy. I like to think Oswalt inspired at least some of Pratt's epic performance in those movies. I, on the other hand, am not a professional actor, nor do I get paid for comedy (that's my free gift to the world; you're welcome). Okay, yes, I'm fairly well-versed in both Star Wars and the Marvel universe, but could I have done that? No. Not without some preparation. Now, I have done a bit of stand-up, but not for 40 minutes, and definitely not without rehearsal. I used to know enough jokes to maybe fill 40 minutes, if I spoke slowly, but it wouldn't be original material. Besides, the internet has atrophied my formerly near-eidetic memory for jokes; why keep them banging around in my skull when I can google the punchlines and have the jokes right there in front of me? Not to mention I'd have to make sure there were no kids in the room. Hell, I once saw Lewis Black (another stand-up comedian and actor) when he performed in my town, and I had the honor of watching him utterly flub a joke on stage. Of course, if you want the audience to fall asleep, I could probably have, at one point, given an ad-lib presentation on drainage design and erosion control practices in the Commonwealth of Virginia. But not these days. On the other hand, I don't usually get stage fright, so that's something, I suppose. That trick you've heard about, the one where you imagine the audience naked? Doesn't work for me. It's supposed to make the speaker think that the audience is in an even more embarrassing situation than he or she is, I suppose. But all the blood flow to my brain ends up getting redirected. I just realized that at least one of my teachers in high school must have used that trick. Sicko. It's far more likely that knowing that I have to give a presentation will lead to those ubiquitous dreams where you're the one who has to perform naked. As for Oswalt, after that show, he suffered some personal tragedy, but bounced back to work. And he eventually got to work for Disney/Marvel, as a side character -- well, several side characters -- in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. We even got to see one of his characters sleeping in Star Wars bedsheets. Good for him. |
| Some prompts, I suppose, are easier than others. PROMPT July 3rd Describe a missed opportunity you encountered, and how things might have been different if you hadn't missed it. See, I had the opportunity to NOT get drunk tonight. And I missed that opportunity. My favorite local brewery has a Wee Heavy Scotch Ale, and it is delicious. Too delicious. Okay, so, yesterday, I mentioned two of my favorite artists: Brandi  Carlile and Leonard Cohen.What a lot of people don't know is that the former covered the latter. Seriously, I was going to wait and do this later, because I have a thing in my Blog Fodder folder about this particular song. But I'm drunk. So. Here it is. A video you would not have seen had I not decided to drink myself into oblivion tonight. Two highlights of my life: seeing Brandi Carlile live, and seeing Leonard Cohen live (twice). So when Brandi did Hallelujah, it just made my life.To address the prompt: if I hadn't gotten completely drunk tonight, I would not be this happy. And that's all, folks. |
| The 30DBC prompt hasn't been posted yet [Edit: it's at the bottom now], but I'm on a blogging roll, so... https://aeon.co/essays/the-logic-of-buddhist-philosophy-goes-beyond-simple-truth... Beyond true and false Buddhist philosophy is full of contradictions. Now modern logic is learning why that might be a good thing The sentence you're reading right now is false. When Western philosophers look East, they find things they do not understand – not least the fact that the Asian traditions seem to accept, and even endorse, contradictions. Common mistake. No one understands philosophy, east or west. Anyone who says they do is just trying to sound impressive. An abhorrence of contradiction has been high orthodoxy in the West for more than 2,000 years. Hence the prevalence of statements of paradox, most of which are a result of semantics. Let’s start by turning back the clock. It is India in the fifth century BCE, the age of the historical Buddha, and a rather peculiar principle of reasoning appears to be in general use. If the Buddha provided the foundations for Eastern philosophy, Pythagoras can be said to do the same for Western. I found out once that they were roughly contemporaries. I've already used this as a basis for a novel. At around the same time, 5,000km to the west in Ancient Athens, Aristotle was laying the foundations of Western logic along very different lines. Aristotle actually came along a bit later, and his "contributions" to Western thought can best be described as holding it back for nearly 2000 years. Unfortunately, Aristotle’s own arguments are somewhat tortured – to put it mildly – and modern scholars find it difficult even to say what they are supposed to be. Which is one reason science didn't progress as it could have. The article goes on to express, in formal terms, how to describe something as "both true and false" and "neither true nor false," but I'll skip that part. Even so, you might be wondering how on earth something could be both true and false, or neither true nor false. In fact, the idea that some claims are neither true nor false is a very old one in Western philosophy. None other than Aristotle himself argued for one kind of example. And so, after arguing against the possibility of contradiction, Aristotle contradicts himself. The notion that some things might be both true and false is much more unorthodox. But here, too, we can find some plausible examples. Take the notorious ‘paradoxes of self-reference’, the oldest of which, reputedly discovered by Eubulides in the fourth century BCE, is called the Liar Paradox. Here’s its commonest expression: This statement is false. Where’s the paradox? If the statement is true, then it is indeed false. But if it is false, well, then it is true. So it seems to be both true and false. This is the one I cribbed to start this commentary. As I mentioned above, most paradoxes are actually just semantic problems. That's one of them. It's only a paradox if you believe that everything is either true, or it's false. But the very fact that we can construct such sentences is evidence that some things are both, or neither. Nagarjuna’s writings defined the new version of Buddhism that was emerging at the time: Mahayana. Central to his teachings is the view that things are ‘empty’ (sunya). This does not mean that they are non-existent; only that they are what they are because of how they relate to other things. I was thinking along those lines myself, a few months ago, before I found this article. To take a very mundane example: what is a hole? A hole isn't a "thing," as we expect most nouns to be. It is, by definition, a not-thing. A hole in the ground is not-ground. The hole in a donut is not-donut. (Mmmmm... donut.) I can't just point at a spot in space and say "this is a hole in a bagel." If something is ineffable, i, it is certainly neither true nor false. To which I reply: Eff the ineffable. Now, you can’t explain why something is ineffable without talking about it. That’s a plain contradiction: talking of the ineffable. Again: semantics. The similarities between this and our Buddhist paradox of ineffability are, you must admit, pretty unnerving. But those who developed plurivalent logic were entirely unaware of any Buddhist connections. (I say this with authority, since I was one of them.) Once again, the strange claims of our Buddhist philosophers fall into precise mathematical place. Can't be arsed to look up who said it: "East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." Demonstrably false. I'll add to this entry later, after the prompt shows up. Probably after I sleep, too. Yeah, I slept earlier, for five hours, but that was more of a passing-out than actual sleeping. Gin has that effect. Worth it. PROMPT July 2nd We all know the mood-ring fad of the 70’s only predicted body temperature and not necessarily mood, but what if people could actually see your emotions, like an aura of color surrounding you. Would you try to mask it, display it proudly, or something in between? I tried to find a way to relate this response to the prompt to the title of the entry, but I'm not at my best at 10:30 in the morning. Which is why I post much, much earlier. So this will be kind of a nonsequitur. I'd find or invent some technology to fake it. You know, kind of like people do when they post on Instagram. "Look at my shiny happy life! I'm so lucky! Here's a pic of me in Belize! Here's another one kitesurfing the Mediterranean!" Reality: "I'm broke after renting these photoshoot backgrounds, I'm about to get a divorce, and my kids hate me." Also imagine playing poker. It'd be like dogs playing poker. Not the classic epic velvet painting, but, you know, actual dogs playing poker. "Thump thump thump." "I fold. Larry's tail says he's got a full house." I mean, in reality, people are pretty good at seeing my emotions anyway, which is why I prefer blackjack over poker. And it gets really annoying really fast. "You don't look happy! Are you okay?" "Really, I'm fine." "Let me cheer you up!" "No, really, I'm fine." "Are you sure you're okay? Really sure? Like, sure-sure?" "WELL NOW I'M ANNOYED AND DEPRESSED, THANKS!" And then I slink off alone to listen to Brandi Carlile and/or Leonard Cohen until I feel better, which I suppose is a bit like cutting yourself deeper when you have an injury, but for whatever reason that works for me. And the only thing worse than that are the people who, when I am happy, decide that it's the perfect time to deliver bad news. "You look happy, Waltz." "I am happy!" "Great. By the way, I'm going to date other men now. Bye!" You know what else was a big fad in the 70s? Pet rocks. Some guy in the 70s had the brilliant idea to find rocks (cost: free), nest them in shredded paper (cost: $0.01, or close to it), put each in a cardboard box (cost: I dunno? Five cents?), and sell them for four bucks. He became a millionaire doing this, which was a much bigger deal in the 70s than it is now, and ended up opening a bar called Carry Nation, for which I do have to admire him, as it's a punch in the face to the most evil woman in history (and considering that history includes Margaret Thatcher and Elizabeth Bathory, that's saying a lot). How did he pull that off? Marketing. You can sell anything with the proper marketing. Well, not you, and not me, but someone can. Smart cars. Hello Kitty. Bottled water. Chicken wings. "Hey, let's take the part of the chicken that we've been using for dog food, dip it in spices, and sell it for a 1000% markup!" Mood rings at least had the distinction of having fashionable settings, at least by the questionable standards of the 1970s. But hey, fifty years from now, the survivors in the wasteland will find our Instagram posts and laugh at our hairstyles and what we were wearing. |
| So it's July. For those of you who might be joining us for "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS" [13+]: Hi! I'm Waltz, and welcome to my award-winning blog. Don't be too put off by the math in the header; it's actually just a metaphor.So it's fortunate that our first prompt for the month lets me write something that's part real, part imaginary. PROMPT July 1st Write a letter to your parents from before your birth. Give them advice about how to raise you and give them a heads up about anything they might struggle with when you come into their lives. Dear Mom and Dad, I really want you to adopt me so I don't have to grow up in Indiana, raised by someone I presume is an undergrad who got knocked up by some professor. If it helps, they're both obviously supergeniuses. Wait... IQ is a hereditary trait, right? So I'll say that raising me is going to be (to use a metaphor you might appreciate, Dad) smooth sailing all the way. Yep, no problems at all. Model child. ...You're not buying it, are you? Well, get used to it. I lie all the time. Usually I call it "fiction writing," except when I try to tell you that it's not my fault (it probably is actually my fault). Still, truth is, I at least won't be too terribly disappointing. No time in juvie, and the worst trouble I'll get in at school is saying the F word where a teacher could hear me. Well. That's the worst they'll know about. Thanks for teaching me chemistry, by the way. On a related note, I won't do drugs (that you know of), drive drunk, or emulate my biological father by getting some chick pregnant. I will, however, eternally be the Class Clown. Look, at least I won't be a mime, okay? Sorry in advance for nearly burning the house down. I know you're going to worry about me growing up as an only child in a rural area with few friends nearby. Don't. That worked out for the best. I see people terrified of being alone, and you'll teach me that sometimes, it's better. What friends I have will be good ones -- even if you don't always approve of them. They'll teach me things that you can't. Not about sports, though. I will always suck at sports. Except maybe tennis. But that's okay; the aforementioned "growing up alone" thing will prompt me, above all else, to like what I like, everyone else be damned. Word of warning: I will, as a kid, get salty about the whole adoption thing. Don't take it personally. It won't be until I'm older that I'll realize it meant that my parents (that's you) really wanted a child, which is more than a most people can ever know for sure. And I never will try to track down my biological parents. There's no need. One family will be enough for me. Mom, thanks in advance for teaching me how to love the arts and humanities. Dad, same for teaching me about science and technology. Both will serve me well, and not just for the incident with the school's ventilation system that officially never happened and if it did, it's not my fault. Okay, no, I'm not going to be the perfect child and you're not going to be perfect parents, but we'll get through it. I'm just glad neither of you is going to be around for the utter shitshow that is 2020. Spoiler: still no interstellar travel, and boy, could we use some of that right about now. Love, Your son, Robert |
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Talk about retaining water... 
