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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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| This one's about a movie, but not one I've seen recently. No, earlier this year I was treated to the Guardian's brutal takedown of a 20-year-old movie. And it's just now come up for me to review the review. Shrek at 20: an unfunny and overrated low for blockbuster animation  The fairytale comedy was a hit with critics and audiences but its toilet humour, glibness and shoddy animation mark it out as a misfire So... audiences liked it, critics liked it... but some elitist asshole is here to tell us all that we're wrong and we should be ashamed of ourselves by calling it a "misfire." Hopefully y'all know by now that I like different kinds of movies. Highbrow, lowbrow, unibrow, whatever... I won't be browbeaten into joining the consensus or rebelling against it. And I'm certainly not above laughing at juvenile humor, though I can also appreciate fancy French art flicks. Hating on Shrek is just plain snobbery. I'm not saying it's a great movie, mind you. But it certainly doesn't suck. Shrek has an outhouse with a working toilet. Oh yeah, let's open up by pointing out the bathroom humor. It's a kids' movie for shit's sake; there's going to be bathroom humor. Twenty years later, that flushing sound seems to signify the moment when blockbuster animation circled the drain. Right, because no animated movie has succeeded since then. Shrek is a terrible movie. No it's not. It’s not funny. Yes it is. It looks awful. No it doesn't. Okay, yeah, animation has come a long way in 20 years, along with the computers that generate it, but it's perfectly fine for the time. And yet Shrek was a sensation with critics and audiences in 2001. So, this guy is positioning himself as the ultimate arbiter of how good a movie is, and not other critics or, you know, the people who actually pay money to see them. Look, I get it; I have opinions, too, and not all of them align with the consensus. I disliked The Matrix. I liked Cats. I never saw Titanic and don't plan to. Whatever. We all like what we like and hate what we hate. I'm waiting for an objective argument to support the author's hate. Even the stuffed shirts at the Cannes film festival, who usually separated Hollywood summer fare from its official selections, brought it into the competition slate, where it premiered alongside new work from world masters like David Lynch, Jean-Luc Godard, Hou Hsiao-hsien and Jacques Rivette. You do not get to look down your nose at a lowbrow children's comedy (that also has adult appeal) and then call the Cannes judges "stuffed shirts." Pot, meet kettle. Worse yet, it encouraged a destructive, know-it-all attitude toward the classics that made any earnest engagement with them seem like a waste of time. Those once-upon-a-times were now rendered stodgy and lame, literally toilet paper. Yes. That's how storytelling evolves. Shakespeare was sop for the working classes of London; his works only gathered a patina of respectability with time, and people continue to riff off of the plays. As I noted in an entry a while back, it's likely that the works we know as "fairy tales" changed multiple times, with new audiences and new context, before they were written down in their "final" form. Playing with those ideas, updating them for the times, is what storytellers do. But the balance in Shrek is off on both ends: there’s an excess of anachronisms and buddy-movie riffs from Myers and Murphy that have little relation to the backdrop and a woe-is-me soppiness to the love story between two lonely, misunderstood freaks. (Nothing screams “unearned gravitas” like slipping in a cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah.) YOU SHUT YOUR PUDDINGHOLE RIGHT NOW. But once Shrek and Donkey cross the kingdom on a quest to bring Fiona to Farquaad, the storybook references are all but abandoned. Even when Robin Hood and his Merry Men appear in the woods, the film blows past that boring old mythos in order to pay homage to The Matrix and Riverdance. Yes. That's a feature, not a bug. Last year, the National Film Registry added Shrek to the Library of Congress, which seals its canonization, but it’s remarkable how much of an early aughts relic it’s become, an amber-preserved monument to phenomena (Mike Myers, Smash Mouth, Michael Flatley) that hasn’t stood the test of time. "Noughties," not "aughts." Come on, even the BBC has adopted my word for that decade. Probably not on purpose, though. Even the film’s referential style looks resolutely slow and unhip next to the whirring pop Cuisinarts of Lord and Miller productions like The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or even IP-heavy Disney fare like Wreck-it Ralph and its sequel. Yes, because those movies came out later and had the benefit of better technology. This is like comparing the original Godzilla to this year's Godzilla vs. Kong. Don't get me wrong; I like the Guardian in general (their harsh review of Hudson Yards sticks out in my mind as the greatest piece of architectural criticism in the history of ever, though to be fair, it's an opinion I already shared), but this would be something like the British equivalent of a small-town newspaper from Alabama reviewing Broadway plays. They're entitled to their opinion, but they're not the target audience. And the UK is hardly innocent in producing lowbrow humor. (I should note that for all I know, the reviewer is from the US, but he's still writing for a British journal.) So, okay, I get it; he didn't like the movie. Fine. A lot of the reasons he hated it are the same reasons I liked it. I hope I never see his opinion of Despicable Me. Or, actually, I hope I do so I can rag on that review, too. |
| This one's been hanging out in my queue for a while, so I don't really remember the point I was going to illustrate with it; a lot has changed since it was written. But some things haven't, so here it is. How COVID exposed New Age Narcissism During this global pandemic that has disrupted life as we know it, many people have attempted to find the silver lining in the chaos For some, the chaos is the silver lining. Whatever my original point was, I usually appreciate the perspective of the ex-. That is, someone who used to be an insider and then found a different path. This is one of those stories. I don't have a lot to quote from it, but it's worth a look. An example of this paradigm shift is the mass exodus we are seeing away from the “New age/Conscious” community as it currently stands. This article is difficult for me to write, as I have been deeply integrated into this world for over 15 years. Still, like many of you, I have always felt that something was off, although I couldn’t pinpoint it underneath all of the blisstractions. Ah, that's right... I was going to rag on "blisstractions." There were a lot of goddesses, warriors, priestesses, and shamans, yet not enough humanity. Claiming to be one of these things isn't a way to transcend humanity; it's a way to ignore it. Disinformation and emotional manipulation have always been a part of human history. In the past, it has convinced white people that Black people are not fully human. It has convinced parents to burn their own children for being witches. And it has sparked up thousands of religions and beliefs that people have been willing to kill and die for. However, due to the Internet, the speed of misinformation and manipulation spreading is at a record high, and humanity needs an Intellectual Renaissance to evolve and survive. This is something I agree with. Intellectualism has its problems, too, but it's still better than superstition and fear. You can believe whatever you want to believe, but ultimately, science and truth will prevail. Unfortunately, by the time they do, it will be too late for us as a society. But hey, it's been a hell of a ride. Someday, there will be a disease with a much higher mortality rate, which we will not be able to defeat based on how we handled coronavirus. It is easy to forget about the past that we never experienced ourselves. We never saw life before vaccines and medical advancements. But there was a time that a single plague wiped out a whopping 50% to 60% of Europe’s entire population. I'd just like to point out here that there's an estimate floating around that the diseases the Europeans brought with them to the Americas might have wiped out as much as 90% of the indigenous population, in the 100 years or so between Columbus and Jamestown. Without this unintended biological warfare, the American continent would have a very, very different population right now. Anyway, like I said: the article's worth a read, even if it says some hard things. |
| The personal lives of celebrities are generally not ones I care much about, but sometimes I run across an article like this. ‘Take it easy, nothing matters in the end’: William Shatner at 90, on love, loss and Leonard Nimoy His career has taken him from Shakespeare to Star Trek – and soon he will be swimming with sharks on TV. He discusses longevity, tragedy, friendship and success The interview is from May, so I suppose the sharks thing has already happened -- I vaguely remember hearing something about that, but Shark Week interests me even less than the Olympics or the personal lives of celebrities. I could have done without the breathless immediacy of the present tense in the article, but the content is interesting enough. It helps to read his words with the distinctive Shatner voice in your head. You know you have one. Everyone does. His tone is often heavily ironical, as if he is daring you to accuse him of playing a joke on you. This has led to much discussion from fans about “the Shatner persona”, although Shatner scoffs at the phrase. “I don’t know what that even is,” he says. I think they think you play up to their expectations, I say. “What are their expectations? That I’m Captain Kirk? Well, I am Captain Kirk! I don’t know what people mean when they talk about my persona. I’m just myself. If you’re not yourself, who are you?” Indeed. Even actors. There is a website dedicated to Shatner’s toupee, but his youthful appearance goes much further than impressive hair. Has he had some serious work done? “No. Have you?” he shoots back. No, because I’m just a journalist and can’t afford it, I say. “Ha! Well, I don’t have any secret potions. It must be genetic. I ride a lot of horses and I’m into the bewilderment of the world, so I open my heart and head into the curiosity of how things work,” he says. I’m not sure if “the bewilderment of the world” is an ingredient Olay can bottle, but it certainly works for Shatner. That, and horses. I am not going to the Shatner Hell Toupee website. If you must, the link is in the article. The important thing is the way he put "I'm into the bewilderment of the world." I can relate, even if I know I'm not going to make it to 90. As for the horses thing, I think I remember reading somewhere that the horseback scenes from Star Trek: Generations were filmed on Shatner's farm with Shatner's horses. Dude can ride, that's for sure. “Yes. Are you married?” he asks, not very subtly changing the subject. Well, I say, I’ve lived with someone for a decade. “And how’s it going?” he asks. Well, we have three kids so there’s not much time to think about that, I say. “And you bore them all?” I what? “You. Bore. Them. All?” I’m not sure if he means did I give birth to them or do they all find me incredibly tedious, but either way the answer is yes. I have to think he was deliberately playing with words. Gotta admire a good punster. Shatner has been thinking about other dawnings because over lockdown he has been working on another spoken-word album. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Maybe I could watch Shark Week instead. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I just drifted with the currents of happenstance,” he says. I'm just leaving this here for anyone who still thinks that dedication, goal-setting, and hard work are the keys to success. They are not. He is a good sport about it, but when I ask one too many Trek questions (ie two) he changes the subject and tells me he has recently done a project with a company called StoryFile, which will recreate him as a 3D talking hologram. Life imitates science fiction. It feels rude to ask a 90-year-old if he worries about death, so I ask instead what he wishes he had known at 20 that he knows at 90. “Here’s an interesting answer!” he says perkily. “I’m glad I didn’t know because what you know at 90 is: take it easy, nothing matters in the end, what goes up must come down. If I’d known that at 20, I wouldn’t have done anything!” And there it is, folks: the most important life philosophy one can adopt. I only quoted a few things from the rather lengthy interview, but it's worth reading for the other bits, especially about him and Nimoy. |
| I'm not a person who seeks out instances of racism under every rug, but sometimes they smack you in the face. Yes, it's another Cracked link. Such are the vagaries of the random number generator. That site's thing is countdown lists; one gets used to it. 4. Tattoos - People With Darker Skin Have To Deal With Shitty Artists Everyone should have the right to make a terrible and permanent decision when they're newly 18 and deeply immersed in some fringe fandom or just after some really great sex. But for people whose skin tone resides in "can't find foundation at the drugstore" territory, it can be an annoyingly sensible process. If they just barrel into the tattoo shop, musculoskeletal guns blazing, it's entirely possible the artist on duty will explain to them that their options are severely limited, as colors lighter than their skin won't show up. Many refuse to work on them at all, including Ink Master season two winner Steve Tefft, who declared on camera, "I don't want the dark canvases. They take away half your skill set." Or you could -- just spitballing here -- take the opportunity to improve your skill set. I don't have any tattoos for personal reasons (having none makes me unique), but an artist turning away people who want them because they can't be arsed to get creative with, you know, their artist job, just seems wrong. 3. Legalized Marijuana - Lots Of Green … For White Sellers Entire articles could be (and have been) written on the intersection of racism and the prohibition of certain drugs, but now that weed is on the fast track to becoming the next booze (i.e., a perfectly legal pastime that just makes people really annoying), the shoe is on the other foot. And that foot is pretty well-heeled. Most of the brewers I know are white, too. I'd be happy to see more diversity in either field, but you start to run into the usual racist problems: lack of general wealth, cops hassling darker-skinned people more (alluded to in the article) and so on. The lack of diversity in growers and brewers may be a symptom of this larger problem, not a stand-alone issue. 2. French Kissing - Was Just Regular Kissing Until American Prudes Okay, so the French aren't exactly the most oppressed people in the West, but they're still the subject of scorn that honestly reflects a lot more on us than them. Take this whole "French kissing" thing. People have been licking each other in the mouth for thousands of years, but when European colonists showed up in North America, they weren't exactly sending their horniest. As a result, by the beginning of the 20th century, kissing with tongue had become so taboo that many people didn't even know it was a thing you could do. Shh, don't tell them about "reverse cowboy." American culture is, as you might tell by our dominant language, more derived from England than France, even though if it weren't for France we'd still be worshiping the Queen or whatever it is they do over there. And I don't know if this is true, but I heard that back in the early days of the Enlightenment, the French called syphilis the "English Pox," and the English called it the "French Pox." It sounds like something that should be true, anyway. We seem to have inherited the traditional English disdain for the French despite it being France that cozied up to us back when we were trying to stick it to the monarchy, after which they showed us what "sticking it to the monarchy" really meant. 1. Cryptocurrency - Another Reason It Sucks When you picture a Bitcoin enthusiast, you're definitely thinking of a weirdly aggressive white guy, and there's a reason for that beyond their Elon Musk fan Twitters. Cryptocurrency has been dubbed "the currency of the alt-right" for reasons that no one understands but have something to do with it being decoupled from any government, and it's completely changed the economy of white supremacy, which is, ugh, yes, a thing. I already hated Bitcoin and now I have even more reason to hate it.  Yes, two theater trips in one week. What can I say? I didn't have much to do yesterday, so I went to the drafthouse cinema. One-Sentence Movie Review: Stillwater This Matt Damon-led movie that you probably never heard of is surprisingly good -- what it lacks in plot advancement, it makes up for in acting, character development and scenery and I got through the slow parts by seeing if I could understand the spoken French without looking at the subtitles (it's set mostly in Marseille; the dialogue is mostly in English but I think the director wanted to demonstrate that the main character started out knowing maybe two words of French, so there are some French conversations and I understood about half of them). Rating: 4/5 |
| Sometimes I just gotta go with a Cracked article. Since it's Cracked, I wouldn't put too much stock in the absolute veracity of all of these "facts." I mean, they don't lie on purpose like some websites, but they can't be arsed to do thorough fact-checking any more than I can. Still, it's worth reading the whole list. I'm only going to comment on some highlights. 1. The French Revolution Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette fled the palace and tried to go incognito when revolution broke out. But a postman thought he recognized them, and he confirmed his suspicions by comparing the king's face to the one on banknotes. Nowadays, we have facial recognition software, and you don't have to be a monarch to get recognized by The System. Yet another reason to wear a mask. 7. The Challenger Explosion Following the explosion, teams spent nine weeks searching a wide area for bits of wreckage. In the process, they stumbled on a duffle bag with 25 kilos of cocaine. I should point out, because the article doesn't clarify this, that the nose candy probably didn't come from the shuttle, but just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. 15. The Entente Cordiale In 1904, England and France signed an agreement that ended almost a thousand years of conflict. They did so because King Edward VII wanted to visit French brothels. I can think of worse reasons to sign a peace treaty. 19. The Hatfields-McCoy Feud Records are vague about how this famous family feud started, but it now looks like the McCoys suffered from von Hippel-Lindau disease. This genetic condition creates tumors that cause "hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts." If only they'd had a doctor in the family. 36. North African Campaign Both sides during World War II left landmines in the African desert -- tens of millions of landmines. The climate preserved them so well that in the 21st century, ISIS dug up minefields as sources for explosives. I want to know how they decided who was on mine-digging detail. 45. The Age Of The Samurai High-ranking samurai strapped giant balloons to their backs. They inflated this bag, called a horo, to protect them from arrows. I have Questions. 54. The Gold Rush Gold wasn't the only way to make money when settlers headed to California. In 1851 and 1852, the state paid over a million dollars in bounties for killing or maiming Native Americans. One ad offered "$25 for a male body part, whether it was a scalp, a hand, or the whole body; and then $5 for a child or a woman." I can see how that could easily be abused. I mean, of course it's abuse to start with, but I can see the bounty hunter now: "Here's a scalp, two hands and a body." "But the body is missing both hands and a scalp." "Huh. Go figure. I'll take my $100 in small bills, thanks." Like I said, just highlights (or as in the case of that last one, lowlights) -- and we could use a little more historical perspective right about now. |
| Y'all want controversy? I got controversy that shouldn't be controversial. There's a bit going on here, and I'll try to be as clear as I can be as tired as I am right now. Almost 70 years ago, Plywaski fought for the right of atheists to become U.S. citizens – and won. Why is this even a thing? As a scholar of religious and political rhetoric, I believe that Plywaski’s fight is worth remembering. Stories like Plywaski’s give an insight into the discrimination atheists in the U.S. face even today and the role that those professing no faith have had in holding society accountable to the goals of religious tolerance and freedom. I may not have the bona fides to write about this, but I'm thinking the author of the article does. Polish native Walter Plywaski, born Wladyslaw Plywacki, spent five years in Nazi concentration camps during the Second World War. After being liberated from Dachau, the Bavarian camp in which 41,500 prisoners died, he worked as an interpreter before immigrating to the U.S and serving four years in the U.S. Air Force. Just leaving this here to point out that the dude served in the USAF. In August 1952, Plywaski petitioned for U.S. citizenship while in Hawaii. All he had left to do was say his oath of allegiance. Plywaski, however, was an atheist. He informed the judge that he could not sincerely end the oath with the words “so help me God” and requested an alternative. Simple enough, right? Judge J. Frank McLaughlin reportedly asked Plywaski to consider what it says on the back of U.S. coins: “In God We Trust.” This is where I get a little hazy on things. IGWT was introduced to US coins in 1956, a reaction to McCarthy-era demagoguery. Now, I can believe that it took more than four years for his citizenship application to get through the system even then, but if that's the case, the article could be more clear on that. McLaughlin then denied Plywaski citizenship, justifying his decision by proclaiming, “Our government is founded on a belief in God,” and accused Plywaski of “seeking admission on your own terms.” Arrant nonsense. Our government is an outgrowth of the very secular Enlightenment, and it's right there in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." It's right up front; you couldn't miss it if you tried. Now, I'm not a constitutional scholar, obviously, but I think a plain reading of the text is pretty clear. And you can't have freedom of religion if you don't also have freedom from religion. I've heard before the phrase: "The US is a Christian country." It most certainly is not. It's a secular country with a Christian majority. Moreover, it's a republic, which means that there's an obligation to protect the rights of the minority. If Christianity were a minority (and we seem to be heading in that direction), then the rights of its adherents must be protected as thoroughly. McLaughlin, however, stood his ground. He argued that the case was not about religious freedom but about whether Plywaski “believes in all the principles which support free government,” which according to McLaughlin included a belief in God. Free government is incompatible with theocracy. In January 1955, Plywaski won his case and became a citizen. See, that was still before IGWT became mandated on currency. Granted the motto preceded the (unconstitutional) law about it, but still, something's off and I can't be arsed to figure out what right now. The article goes on to describe other cases of clear religious (or anti-religious, as the case may be) discrimination, even after that precedent was set. My research shows how the discrimination against atheists fits with what I describe as a deeply ingrained and coercive theistnormative mindset that frames democratic societies and good citizenship as being tied to belief in a higher power. Utter tosh. A person's beliefs (or lack thereof) are their own: this is, as I noted above, enshrined in our founding documents. What matters is a person's character -- what they do, how they treat other people, animals, etc. -- not what they profess to believe (or not believe). I'd argue that a lot of atheists can be more compassionate, because they're not being told to be by some ancient text or modern epiphany, and because they direct it where it belongs, at other beings, not for the glory of an invisible sky-wizard. Of course, some atheists are assholes, just like some religious people are assholes, because we're all still just people. And despite the glib platitude "there are no atheists in foxholes," plenty of atheists and agnostics have served in the military, putting their lives at risk, and continue to do so -- with absolutely no hope of an afterlife, whether Heaven, glorious Valhalla, or anything else, but just to protect the freedom of their fellow citizens to believe, or not, as their conscience sees fit. Believe what you will. But belief in a deity is useless if it's coerced. One-Sentence Movie Review: The Suicide Squad If, like me, you're a fan of comic books, movies derived from comics, action, and dark humor, this movie is for you; I loved every damn minute of it. Rating: 5/5 |
| Today we're thinking about thinking. Or we could think about thinking about thinking, in indefinite regression, which I do when I'm feeling particularly lazy. That Is Not How Your Brain Works Forget these scientific myths to better understand your brain and yourself. Another scientific overview, this one purporting to dispel certain outdated information. It's dated March 3 of this year, so maybe some of its information is itself out of date. The 21st century is a time of great scientific discovery. And not all the discoveries are fun ones. Cars are driving themselves. That's technology, not science. Vaccines against deadly new viruses are created in less than a year. And half the people refuse to take them, some because they were created in less than a year. (They weren't, actually; mRNA vaccines in particular built on prior years of research.) The latest Mars Rover is hunting for signs of alien life. Even the words "the latest Mars Rover" are pretty cool when put like that. But we’re also surrounded with scientific myths: outdated beliefs that make their way regularly into news stories. And sometimes, outright misinformation. As a neuroscientist, I see scientific myths about the brain repeated regularly in the media and corners of academic research. Three of them, in particular, stand out for correction. I guarantee you there are more than three of them, but I suppose every article has its word limit. After all, each of us has a brain... With the possible exception of anti-vax cretins. ...so it’s critical to understand how that three-pound blob between your ears works. Or, in the case of anti-vaxxers, doesn't. Myth number one is that specific parts of the human brain have specific psychological jobs. I'm just going to highlight from here on out; the article obviously goes into more depth. This view of the brain became popular in the 19th century, when it was called phrenology. Its practitioners believed they could discern your personality by measuring bumps on your skull. "Hm. This person is a klutz, and this other person likes to be in bar fights." Most neurons have multiple jobs, not a single psychological purpose. Main job, secondary job, side hustle. The economy sucks. Perhaps the most famous example of puzzle-piece thinking is the “triune brain”: the idea that the human brain evolved in three layers. The deepest layer, known as the lizard brain and allegedly inherited from reptile ancestors, is said to house our instincts. The middle layer, called the limbic system, allegedly contains emotions inherited from ancient mammals. And the topmost layer, called the neocortex, is said to be uniquely human—like icing on an already baked cake—and supposedly lets us regulate our brutish emotions and instincts. "Supposedly." And if a uniquely human and rational neocortex controls those beasts, then we have the most highly evolved brain in the animal kingdom. Yay for humans, right? But it’s all a myth. In reality, each species has brains that are uniquely and effectively adapted to their environments, and no animal brain is “more evolved” than any other. Which is what I've been saying with my highly-evolved brain. Myth number two is that your brain reacts to events in the world. Well, first we have to know about said events, and sometimes those are filtered through questionable sources, so... oh, wait, she's talking about something else. All your neurons are firing at various rates all the time. What are they doing? Busily making predictions. No matter how hard we wish it were true, we are not living in the present. The third myth is that there’s a clear dividing line between diseases of the body, such as cardiovascular disease, and diseases of the mind, such as depression. Yeah, I've known this for a while. One semester of biological psychology doesn't make me an expert on neurology, but it is enough to understand that mental illness is often a form of physical illness. The idea that body and mind are separate was popularized by the philosopher René Descartes in the 17th century (known as Cartesian dualism) and it’s still around today, including in the practice of medicine. (Hence today's title.) Every mental experience has physical causes, and physical changes in your body often have mental consequences, thanks to your predicting brain. One interesting recent line of research, which I don't think the article mentions, is how intestinal microorganisms can affect one's mental health. And it's trivially true that injuries to the brain can cause mental illness. The brain is, after all, a physical organ, and it can get off-track just like any other organ. Under the hood, however, your brain creates your mind while it regulates the systems of your body. That means the regulation of your body is itself part of your mind. Mind (and liver and spleen and gonads) blown. We adapt to what we learn. But sometimes hypotheses are so strong that they resist change. They are maintained not by evidence but by ideology. They become scientific myths. That's the real takeaway here, at least in my opinion: our body of knowledge changes, and we need to adapt to it. It can be wrong, but it's still the best means we have of understanding the world outside... and the one within. When you hear some scientist say "A is true," and then a couple of months later say, "A is not true; B is true," they're not being wishy-washy or flippy-floppy; they're adapting to new data. It would be good if more people could do that. |
| More science today. Not too much to say about it, because my energy's low, but I wanted to put this out there. Yeast could soon make psilocybin cheaper than their magic mushroom cousins can New work could even lead to psychedelic intermediates not previously available in large quantities I'm neutral on recreational magic mushrooms. Never tried them myself, but they don't seem to deserve the bad reputation that, say, opiods get, and of course they have different effects. But the research on the use of their components in mental health treatment seems compelling. In recent years, many studies have highlighted the potential benefits of the drug for the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder and migraine, in particular the active component of magic mushrooms, psilocybin. Migraines aren't technically a mental health issue, I suppose, but from what I've seen from people who deal with them, making them go away might keep people from going nuts. The article goes into why it's hard to synthesize psilocybin -- it's primarily a cost thing -- and it's worth the read, but obviously I'm not going to copy everything here. Now, researchers at the Technical University of Denmark have found a new, better vehicle to make psilocybin: baker’s yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. If you've been paying attention, you know what that is. It's the same little magic beasties that make beer. (Technically, ales but not lagers.) Hence the "cerevisiae" part of the binomial. Whenever I read something like this, the first thing that comes to my mind is "Why not just use the appropriate mushrooms?" Well, the article explains that it's hard to control the dosage that way, and when you're doing clinical trials (or actual treatments), it's very important to have a handle on exactly how much of whatever substance you're metabolizing. But I can't help but think that the issue here isn't so much dosage control as Puritanism; our culture has a deep-rooted bias against anything psychoactive. It might give people Ideas, including the idea that maybe it's okay to alter one's perceptions for a limited time. Hence opiods having been (partially) legalized, despite their negative effects, while it took a very long time to legalize cannabis, which has few negative effects (and don't give me "but driving..." because the labels on opiods warn against driving, too). Anyway, I just find the whole thing interesting, especially the part about finding yet another use for brewer's yeast. Beer: is there anything it can't do? |
| Confession: I kinda like cryptids. It's not that I "believe in" Bigfoot (or Nessie, or the Jersey Devil, or chupacabra, or whatever). It's that I'm fascinated by what the stories say about us and about the way we approach knowledge. This article is almost exactly seven years old now, but it's probably not like the science has advanced... The international collaboration of scientists, led by University of Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, found no evidence that the DNA from the hairs belonged to a mysterious primate. Instead, for the most part, it belonged to decidedly unmysterious mammals such as porcupines, raccoons, and cows. All animals (well, all things, really) are mysterious until they're not, and then a lot of them keep on being mysterious even as we study them. For instance, the opossum. If I didn't have a few climbing up on my deck to say hi every once in a while, I might not believe they existed. Hell, the first report of the Virginia opossum comes from John Smith (yes, that John Smith, not one of his many namesakes). From that link: Strachey's notes describe the opossum as a "beast in bigness of a pig and in taste alike," while Smith recorded it "hath an head like a swine ... tail like a rat ... of the bigness of a cat." Okay, well, I think Strachey was hitting the hooch there; Smith's notes are a bit closer to the opossums I've seen.Anyway, Bigfoot. People often think that the job of scientists is to prove a hypothesis is true—the existence of electrons, for example, or the ability of a drug to cure cancer. But very often, scientists do the reverse: They set out to disprove a hypothesis. Which is what I've been saying. Bigfoot advocates have repeatedly claimed that professional scientists are willfully ignoring compelling evidence. The problem, in fact, is that the advocates haven’t been approaching the question of Bigfoot in a scientific fashion. So two years ago Sykes and his colleagues decided to run a scientific study of those hairs from an “anomalous primate.” And that involved creating a null hypothesis to try to reject. Unlike some people, I don't have a problem with science being science even when the hypothesis is, at first glance, absurd, as in the case of most cryptids. At the very least, negative results provide skeptics with more argumentative ammunition. I'm not what you'd call a hard skeptic: show me compelling evidence and I'll change my tune. This applies to cryptids as well as psychic abilities, faeries, space aliens or whatever. Thing is, everyone's level of "compelling" may be different. The results were clear: The scientists found precise matches for all 30 samples in previously known mammals. Does this mean Sykes and his colleagues have proved that Bigfoot does not exist? No... The question remains open, and—if Bigfoot doesn’t exist—always will. Which is a long way to go about showing once again that it's very, very difficult, if not impossible, to prove a negative. Russel's Teapot comes to mind.That’s not to say Sykes’ study didn’t offer its own surprises. Two hair samples from the Himalayas matched a DNA sequence that was extracted from a 40,000-year-old fossil of a polar bear. Stranger still, their DNA was not a match to living polar bears. And this is why I like to keep an open mind about these things. Even if we never find Bigfoot (and given that the classic Bigfoot sightings were revealed to be guys in ape suits) (well, hairy ape suits; we already wear ape suits), who knows what strange and cool things we might discover along the way? Besides, it makes excellent story fodder. Just to be complete, I'll save you a search: here's the Wiki article on Bigfoot. |
| Sometimes I even make blog entries about (gasp!) writing. (No, despite the title of this entry, it's not about listing your pronouns in your bio.) Everyone has their little annoyances. And in this case, the annoyance is, indeed, little. “It’s” is a linguistic plague that is affecting all publications. “It’s” is lackadaisical writing. You know, when I first found this post, I felt myself filled with trepidation: Will this be one of those linguistic anarchists who insists that life would be better if we eliminated the apostrophe so that certain ignorant writers could stop getting dinged for mixing up the possessive and the contraction? Fortunately, or unfortunately (because I had a whole rant prepared in my head), no. It's about using "It's" grammatically, but overusing it. Funny thing about pointing out annoyances in writing: once you see them, you can't unsee them. Like when people use too many "-ly" adverbs in a story. So by harping on the overuse of "it's," the author overuses "it's," in a transparent attempt to get us all to hate it, too. It’s time that I show you some examples of ledes (journospeak for the first paragraph of an article) that begin with “It’s,” which I have quickly cherry-picked from various publications excluding the New Yorker because I am out of free articles. Whew. I've railed on the unnecessarily pretentious, precious, preternatural, purple prose of The New Yorker before (most notably here: "Antiphony" ) and I really wasn't in the mood for an example from them tonight.Anyway, I won't recopy the examples here. The link is up there for a reason. Many different words describe these ledes: Passive. Lethargic. Stultifying. Boring-ass. I mean, passive, yeah, but not in the sense of "passive voice." I'd argue that the problem with most of them isn't the word "it's" by itself, but that they're dense with linking "to be" verbs in general, of which "it's" isn't even the most egregious example. Take the first one (like I said, you'll have to go to the link): It's, we're, were (though to be fair, that last one indicates past continuous tense). Replace at least one of those with an active verb and you get a whole lot less stifling scene-setting. But now that she's inundated us with "it's" examples, we can't help but feel some of her pain. This brings me to another pervasive trend: The sad abuse of present tense. Present tense is standard for headlines, which is why every headline now is “X is x.” It’s all very meta which, fine. Life is recursive. But more enervating is how this convention is used in ledes. I'm on the fence about the "it's" thing, but I'm firmly in the author's camp on this bit. Headlines have been present-tense for a long, long time. I can't be arsed to delve into the entire history of newspapers, but here's one I found with a quick search,  from 1953: "Everest is Conquered." Which perfectly fits the format today's author noted (which, incidentally, should have been "X is y" unless she's actually talking about something like "A dog is a dog," or some other tautology, which I see only rarely, let alone "every headline").I generally despise present tense writing, other than in headlines. Or jokes. Or certain other exceptions, but the point is, it's overused for everything from feature-length articles to entire fucking novels, and it's wearying. I get that using present tense conveys a sense of breathless immediacy, but for me it paradoxically brings me out of the moment. It's a gimmick to try to keep the attention of people with tiny attention spans. But I have a tiny attention span, and I still get more immersed in a past-tense novel. Other people seem to like it, of course, but some people also think eggplant is food, so there's no accounting for taste. |
| Great... it's Hangover Night and the random numbers give me this one. Oh well, I have no choice but to post it. Just don't expect much in the way of commentary. The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion? A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right? Oh hey look, a rare example of the answer to a headline question not being "No." But because it's philosophy, it's not necessarily a "yes" either. It isn’t unheard of for philosophers to receive death threats. Just in case you were thinking, "Oh, I think I'll become a philosopher. Sounds like a nice safe profession." They argue that our choices are determined by forces beyond our ultimate control – perhaps even predetermined all the way back to the big bang – and that therefore nobody is ever wholly responsible for their actions. That last bit doesn't necessarily follow from the first bit. Coyne (he gets quoted later in the article) distinguishes between moral responsibility and practical responsibility. But he's a biologist, not a philosopher. “This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics,” says one of the most strident of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. Leading psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom agree, as apparently did the late Stephen Hawking, along with numerous prominent neuroscientists, including VS Ramachandran, who called free will “an inherently flawed and incoherent concept” in his endorsement of Sam Harris’s bestselling 2012 book Free Will, which also makes that argument. This is a rare case of someone whose writings I follow showing up in a major news publication (yes, I consider The Guardian a major news publication). I've linked to Coyne's blog here before, probably mostly for his (to me) decisive takedowns of panpsychism. He's had quite a bit to say on the subject of free will in there, too. Arguments against free will go back millennia, but the latest resurgence of scepticism has been driven by advances in neuroscience during the past few decades. Now that it’s possible to observe – thanks to neuroimaging – the physical brain activity associated with our decisions, it’s easier to think of those decisions as just another part of the mechanics of the material universe, in which “free will” plays no role. And this is why it's more than a philosophical question: there's science backing it up. It's also why scientists get to have an informed opinion on the topic. I should note, however, that it's not necessarily settled science. Arguably, we would be forced to conclude that it was unreasonable ever to praise or blame anyone for their actions, since they weren’t truly responsible for deciding to do them; or to feel guilt for one’s misdeeds, pride in one’s accomplishments, or gratitude for others’ kindness. "Arguably" is right, because if there is no free will, we also can't help feeling gratitude, guilt, or pride. The conviction that nobody ever truly chooses freely to do anything – that we’re the puppets of forces beyond our control – often seems to strike its adherents early in their intellectual careers, in a sudden flash of insight. “I was sitting in a carrel in Wolfson College [in Oxford] in 1975, and I had no idea what I was going to write my DPhil thesis about,” Strawson recalled. “I was reading something about Kant’s views on free will, and I was just electrified. That was it.” The logic, once glimpsed, seems coldly inexorable. Start with what seems like an obvious truth: anything that happens in the world, ever, must have been completely caused by things that happened before it. And those things must have been caused by things that happened before them – and so on, backwards to the dawn of time: cause after cause after cause, all of them following the predictable laws of nature, even if we haven’t figured all of those laws out yet. It’s easy enough to grasp this in the context of the straightforwardly physical world of rocks and rivers and internal combustion engines. But surely “one thing leads to another” in the world of decisions and intentions, too. Our decisions and intentions involve neural activity – and why would a neuron be exempt from the laws of physics any more than a rock? That's about all I'm going to quote from the article because, like I said, hangover. But that last paragraph pretty much sums up the argument; the rest is commentary. And if you're sitting there going "Well, that's utter bullshit," well, I suggest you go to the link and read the whole thing. I mean, I don't blame you -- you can't help it -- but part of who we are is our experiences and memories thereof, all of which contribute to our decisions, including on what to believe and not. And articles are part of those experiences and memories. I will say this, though: the opposite of "free will" isn't necessarily "determinism;" the article goes into a brief discussion of quantum effects, which are by nature unpredictable. And then there's chaos theory, which has a specific meaning in physics, having to do with the unpredictability of certain systems, such as the weather, past a certain point. And I'm betting the brain is at least as complex as a weather system. But the most important corollary, in my estimation, has to do with moral responsibility, and the article delves into that at length. So there it is. Hell of a way to start a new month, but what can I say? I'm a slave to the random number generator. Because I choose to be. |
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