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Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #1196512
Not for the faint of art.
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.




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September 24, 2023 at 10:20am
September 24, 2023 at 10:20am
#1056151
Today, we're going only about 4 years into the past for this entry from August of 2019: "What's Good for the Propaganda

The entry was, as mine have mostly come to be, prompted by an article. And the article, from Fast Company, is still up for now. It's a quick read if you're interested; it's about design as propaganda.  

I don't have much to say about my own comments, so I'll get them out of the way:

That last tide seems to be turning, now, thanks to Elon Musk making electric cars that people might actually not be embarrassed to be seen in, as opposed to the pug-ugly "Smart Car."

Boy, this bit didn't age well, did it? Though I stand by my assertion that Tesla's cars are aesthetically pleasing (and, reportedly, usually functional), Musk went ahead and crashed and burned like one of his other companies' rockets. As a result, today, I'd be embarrassed to be seen in a Tesla, regardless of how cool it might look. It's a disgrace to its namesake now.

I don't usually think about it, which makes me a sucker. But I'm going to work on it.

And I think I have, though I'd forgotten this particular article and entry over time.

What I didn't do in that entry is take a look at the article itself, so I'll do a bit of that now. So the following quotes are from the article, not my entry:

By elevating everyday, inexpensive objects that fit the museum’s criteria of “good design,” MoMA paved the way for modernism to hit the mainstream, launching the careers of seminal designers like Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames and displaying designs that visitors could actually buy.

There's a problem with the word "modern," and I think I've touched upon it before. It can be used as a noun or adjective to describe something that's roughly contemporary, as opposed to obsolete or outdated. That definition is a bit slippery, as some cultural or technological things change faster than others.

The other meaning of "modern" describes a particular artistic or aesthetic movement, one which probably peaked around 1950 or so (but I'm not an expert on these things). Whatever the actual end date was, what's called "modern" in art is now obsolete, thus rendering it not "modern" by the other definition.

Oh, and in case you're not aware and don't want to read the article, "MoMA" refers to New York's Museum of Modern Art, which, despite me being a critic of just about everything inside it, is a great place to visit in the city. Or at least it used to be; I haven't been there for several years.

There was a secondary motivation for the Good Design institution as well: economic expansion, both at home and abroad. According to Kinchin, the Good Design exhibitions, which were established in conjunction with the Chicago Merchandise Mart, played a key role in educating the American consumer about why they should be buying these kinds of American household products.

So, the whole thing was basically an ad.

In other words, the Good Design exhibitions were marketing. Stores that wanted to sell objects that had been featured could emblazon them with the program’s logo, a red dot with the words “Good Design” written inside. Catalogues for the exhibitions also included exactly where people could buy each product, like a glorified showroom with an institutional stamp of approval from the MoMA curators.

Yep. Ad.

The competitions, which were accessible to all, also opened the door for European designers to find a foothold in the U.S. market. For instance, MoMA’s 1950 International Competition for Low-Cost Furniture Design was meant to generate new furniture that could be mass-produced.

Clearly, this resulted in the hegemony of Ikea, which I also mentioned in that earlier entry, accompanied by the words "stay the hell away from."

That's about it for me. There's obviously more in the article.
September 23, 2023 at 10:13am
September 23, 2023 at 10:13am
#1056105
Rather appropriate for the first day of fall...

    Why Are There Three Twilights?  
And we’re not talking about vampire books.


Yes, I said fall. I get really, really tired of saying "or autumn if you're in an Anglophone country that's not the US, or spring if you're in the southern hemisphere, but some cultures considered this to be the midpoint of the season, so it gets complicated." As mine is the only perspective that matters, it's fall, and today sucks because we're getting spitting rain thrown off from a minor hurricane.

Anyway. Why is it appropriate? Because while "equinox" literally means "equal night," implying that day and night are of equal length, that's not technically the case on the equinox, and part of the reason is twilight.

For example, this is the (badly formatted) almanac for my area today (courtesy of Weather Underground):

Sunrise 7:03 AM Sunset 7:11 PM
Civil Twilight 6:37 AM 7:38 PM
Nautical Twilight 6:06 AM 8:08 PM
Astronomical Twilight 5:35 AM 8:40 PM
Length of Visible Light 13 h 0 m
Length of Day 12 h 8 m

"Length of visible light" takes twilight into account. "Length of day" is, you'll note, 8 minutes longer than it would be if day were actually equal to night. That's because the atmosphere refracts sunlight, so the sun appears to rise earlier and set later than it would if we didn't have an atmosphere, which, if that were the case, there would be no one around to be picky about these things.

The three twilights there... well, that gets us back to the Atlas Obscura article.

When the sun slides out of sight—or, more accurately, when Earth rotates so that your particular place on the planet is no longer exposed to our day star—but before darkness consumes the landscape, there is the magical, muted time of twilight.

One of my all-time favorite words is "crepuscular." Animal activity can be crepuscular, or there might be crepuscular rays visible in the sky due to distant clouds. It's an adjective meaning "of or pertaining to twilight." I'm unaware if it has a noun form; "crepuscule" just sounds wrong.

Most of us think of twilight as a single period of transition from bright day to deep night, but there are actually three twilights: civil, nautical, and astronomical. Each is defined by how far below the horizon the sun is, and hint at our lives before artificial light and GPS.

Or, for those of us who care, our lives now.

Civil twilight has nothing to do with being polite; it’s simply the evening’s first twilight, which starts at sunset: the moment when the sun’s center is exactly at the horizon or, to get technical, 0 degrees below it.

Again, this is not precisely true because of that refraction thing. It also happens, in reverse, near sunrise.

Once the sun is 6 degrees below the horizon, nautical twilight arrives. If you’re not a degrees kind of person, hold your arm out to the horizon, with your hand turned so your palm is facing the horizon and your fingers, parallel to the horizon, are together but extended. Close one eye. The width of your first three fingers is roughly 5 to 6 degrees, depending on the size of your hand.

That's nice to know and all, but at that time, you can't bloody see the bloody sun, so how do you know how far below the horizon it would be without math and a clock?

Nautical twilight is the period after sunset when, though no longer able to read a chart without a lantern or torch, sailors could still take accurate readings.

Reverse that for morning. Also, this doesn't take into account cloud cover or moon phase, which can shorten or lengthen the time when one could see the horizon. Also also, things are a bit different on land because you sometimes have hills and mountains and stuff. Your own height of observation plays into it as well.

Regardless of all these variables, it's still cool stuff to know.
September 22, 2023 at 8:40am
September 22, 2023 at 8:40am
#1056063
Well, here's a source I don't think I've quoted before: Architectural Digest.

    9 Creepiest Places You Should Probably Never Visit  
From an abandoned asylum to a church adorned with human skulls, these sites are not for the faint of heart


Dude. I've spent the night at the Clown Motel   in Tonopah, Nevada. You think these, or any, locations can faze me after that? Except for, you know, actual dangerous places like active volcanoes or Baltimore.

Article is from October (hence the theme) of 2019, but I doubt if much has changed.

Though popular attractions, these creepy places have the benefit of being rooted in history with layers of culture, which means they’ve been well preserved over time.

That also means maybe don't use other cultures for cheap thrills without their permission.

Instead, these are places packed with bones, scrawny cats, and the paranormal.

Bones are just part of the life cycle. I hope the kitties are okay. And the paranormal is all in your head.

Now, remember, for full effect, you'll need to click on the link for helpful pictures.

Island of the Dolls, Mexico

Somehow, I doubt that's its official Mexican name.

Isla de las Muñecas, as it's called in Spanish, is south of Mexico City...

Or that city name, for that matter.

...the island is largely deserted, save for hundreds of dolls hanging in the trees...

Gosh, I wonder why. Now, would someone please bet me lots of money that I can't spend the night there?

Mansfield Reformatory, Ohio

Oh gods, no! Not Ohio!

It's no longer in operation—it closed in 1990—but you can go on a guided or self-guided tour...

Alone.

Nagoro, Japan

Small-town Japan is quaint, but this eerie village in the Iya Valley has just 30 residents—and over 400 large dolls.

Again with the dolls. Though I'm pretty sure these are technically mannequins.

La Recoleta Cemetery, Buenos Aires, Argentina

At least they tried to get the language right, this time.

...this Buenos Aires resting place is seriously haunted—even the city's tourism website endorses the Neo-Gothic cemetery’s status.

How much you wanna bet the city had some giggling workers put in speakers and animatronics on the sly?

Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, West Virginia

The hospital earned National Historic Landmark status in 1990 but closed down in 1994—and rumored ghosts have haunted the premises ever since.

Oh, fun! Not just ghosts, but batshit hillbilly ghosts!

Sedlec Ossuary, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic

The design dates back to 1870, when a local man was hired to take bones stored in a crypt and turn them into art.

I might have to go Czech this out.

Veijo Rönkkönen, Finland

Named for the artist who created the 550 concrete sculptures within—all human figures in a forested setting—it can appear overwhelming, as if you are being watched or maybe even judged.

Basically, more dolls.

The Hill of Crosses, Lithuania

Based on the picture in the article, this is actually pretty cool.

Akodessewa Fetish Market, Togo

...just keep in mind that "fetish" has at least three meanings, and this is one of the less salacious ones. Still, the appropriate definition here includes the phrase "believed to be inhabited by a spirit," so, you know... good luck.

So, by my quick scan, there's at least one of these on every continent, save for Antarctica and Australia. Way to be inclusive, guys. Antarctica's probably left out because there's just not much there, and Australia because, well, that whole continent/island is creepy.

I'd visit all of them. Wouldn't you?
September 21, 2023 at 10:18am
September 21, 2023 at 10:18am
#1056034
Might as well call this "How To Stop Being Awkward."

    How To Read The Room Like A Pro  
Reading the room is about seeing and hearing what’s both spoken and unspoken. And it’s a skill well worth mastering.


Lots of skills are well worth mastering. That doesn't mean we have the time, patience, or opportunity for all of them. For instance, to practice reading a room, one would have to repeatedly go out among people.

You walk into a conference room, dinner party, or group of playground parents and make a comment that immediately shifts the ballast of the conversation. Eyes dart at you. Their message is clear: Dude, read the room. But you’ve already said or done something out of sync with what’s appropriate in the moment.

Despite what I said above, I do go out among people from time to time, or at least I used to. While I can't say I've never embarrassed myself, I do think I have some skill at reading body language and facial expressions. Conversely, though, I've sometimes been one of the people saying, "Dude, read the room."

Learning how to read the room is an important skill, one that can be honed by pausing to observe a few key details.

No time for that. I have jokes to tell!

Think about if you’re home alone. You know that you can act a certain way, i.e., wear no pants.

I think I'm one of those weirdos who just feels better, even at home alone, wearing pants (well, sweatpants, but whatever). And a shirt. And a hat.

If company is there, you know enough to put on clothes.

Not if I want them to go away.

You want to practice, and like with a recipe or golf swing, you can get better if you invest the time. Find a partner who’s willing and will provide honest feedback.

"Find a partner." Right. Like that's easy.

Look at how people’s shoulders are angled. Then notice where their chests are pointing.

For fuck's sake. I've spent all of my adult life, and teenage years, forcing myself to NOT stare at half the peoples' chests.

You also want to notice people’s expressions as you listen to what they’re talking about, keying in on the paraverbals — the cadence, tone, volume, pace.

Hey, I learned a new word! If "paraverbals" is really a legitimate word. My browser underlines it with that squiggly red line.

It’ll take time, and you’ll make mistakes but because you’re trying, they’re usually non-fatal.

That's too bad, because if it's non-fatal, you spend the rest of your life waking up in a cold sweat at 4 am going, "Goddamn, I wish I hadn't said that."

Anyway, there's a lot more at the link. To me, it highlights the dangers of dealing with people. Fortunately, I've made enough mistakes of that sort that I never get invited anywhere anymore. Things are much easier online, and I'm all about easy.
September 20, 2023 at 8:36am
September 20, 2023 at 8:36am
#1055978
I fail to see how this is better.

Save money by making your own dishwasher tablets  
Keep ’em clean, keep ’em shiny.


We may earn revenue from the products available on this page...

Popular Science used to be a credible publication.

Washing dishes is awful.

Well, sure; any chore is. But I can name a whole lot worse.

Thankfully, a woman named Josephine Cochrane, who was really concerned about her fancy china getting chipped while being hand-washed, stepped up and invented the first dishwasher.

Yes, I've referenced her before, here: "Pretty Petty. I would like to reiterate that she invented it so she wouldn't have to do the dishes herself because her servants were incompetent. Presumably, she'd chip the china too, and then who was she going to blame? Eh, probably the servants, anyway.

Now, other than the brainpower and Tetris skill you need to load the machine, you’ve only got to put some detergent in the soap compartment and press “start.”

Brainpower? Tetris skill? I like a good hyperbole, but it's really not that difficult.

Sure, Cochrane’s invention saves you time, but you still have to buy detergent.

The horror.

Make your own dishwasher tablets, though, and you’ll save some money.

The draw of a dishwasher is that it saves you time. It lets you be lazy, or at least concentrate on working on something else, if you're one of those weirdos who has to be productive all the time. Making your own dishwasher tablets defeats the purpose, much as making pancake batter from scratch defeats the purpose of buying frozen microwavable pancakes.

It’s easy...

Having read the instructions, no, it's not.

...makes cleaning up a bit more exciting...

A number can be less negative, but still negative.

and will leave your most likely not-so-fancy china shiny and smelling of fresh lemon…

Yep, that's the goal: have your plates and silverware, with which you're going to eat, smelling like fruit or flowers. Not.

Time: 20 minutes (with a minimum 24-hour drying period)

In my experience, you have to triple the time (at least) of any recipe, food or not.

Material cost: $27 ($5.40 per batch—or $0.14 per pod)

Similarly, the given cost is always underestimated.

Difficulty: easy

Lie.

So, the rest of the article is the actual recipe, presented in the same style as food recipes. I'll give them this, though: the intro wasn't 20 pages long, though some of the steps have meta-information to make up for the brevity of the intro.

Considering that it's finicky, and involves a lot of cleanup in itself (all the equipment needed, plus the inevitable powder spills on your counter), I'm not convinced you're saving anything. You get bragging rights, maybe, but doing all that work defeats the purpose of having a dishwasher in the first place.

At least they seem to have gotten the science right, which, considering the source, is a bare minimum.
September 19, 2023 at 8:26am
September 19, 2023 at 8:26am
#1055945
I wasn't aware there was still any doubt, here.

    Animal magic: why intelligence isn’t just for humans  
Meet the footballing bees, optimistic pigs and alien-like octopuses that are shaking up how we think about minds


Just a few gripes in the above before we get into the meaty bits: 1) Why muddy the waters by calling it "magic?" 2) As I'm sure we can all attest, intelligence isn't for all humans; 3) How do we know octopuses are alien-like, when we haven't met any aliens yet?

Hopefully the rest of the article, and the book it's pushing, isn't that sloppy.

Guardian link, so beware of British spellings. It's fairly long, so just a few highlights:

But what makes a pig optimistic? In 2010, researchers at Newcastle University showed that pigs reared in a pleasant, stimulating environment, with room to roam, plenty of straw, and “pig toys” to explore, show the optimistic response to the squeak significantly more often than pigs raised in a small, bleak, boring enclosure. In other words, if you want an optimistic pig, you must treat it not as pork but as a being with a mind, deserving the resources for a cognitively rich life.

I don't want an optimistic pig. I want tasty bacon. If treating it like Pig Royalty makes the bacon taste better, great.

We don’t, and probably never can, know what it feels like to be an optimistic pig. Objectively, there’s no reason to suppose that it feels like anything: that there is “something it is like” to be a pig, whether apparently happy or gloomy. Until rather recently, philosophers and scientists have been reluctant to grant a mind to any nonhuman entity.

Philosophically, we can't know what it feels like to be a different human, either. Oh, sure, we can take some guesses, and maybe even listen to them blather on (or read the blather) about this or that which makes them happy or angry or whatever—they seem to like that—but there's no way to really know what it's like to be them. Except that it probably sucks.

To René Descartes in the 17th century, and to behavioural psychologist BF Skinner in the 1950s, other animals were stimulus-response mechanisms that could be trained but lacked an inner life.

Perhaps we, too, are stimulus-response mechanisms, and our "inner life" is entirely illusory.

After all, as Charles Darwin pointed out, we all share an evolutionary heritage – and there is nothing in the evolutionary record to suggest that minds were a sudden innovation, let alone that such a thing occurred with the advent of humans.

This is true, but we didn't come by the "humans are special" philosophy by means of science, but through religion.

Consider the often maligned bird brain. Compared with bird neurodiversity, humans are a monoculture. Birds’ minds are scattered widely in mind-space, their differences and specialities tremendously varied. Some birds excel at navigation, others at learning complex songs or making elaborate nests.

Well, okay, but you can't compare {the set of all humans} with {the set of all birds}. Well, obviously, you can, but it would be like comparing the works of Beethoven with the entirety of EDM. Compare mammals with birds, or humans with ravens, or you have a categorization problem that confuses SAT-takers.

We award pride of place in the hierarchy of bird minds to tool-using species, especially corvids (crows, ravens, rooks). The most masterful of them is the New Caledonian crow of the south Pacific, which will design and store custom-made hooks for foraging, and even make tools with multiple parts. Among animals, great apes, dolphins, sea otters, elephants and octopuses are the only others known to use tools.

I have yet to hear of any nonhuman animal using a tool to make another tool. That, in my view, signals an ability to plan beyond the present and near future, and seems to be a key trait of humanity. Maybe it's happened and I just haven't heard of it.

Although animal communication can be subtle and complex, it’s generally thought that no animal besides a human uses symbolic communication, where one concept is represented by another, as it is in writing. None, that is, except perhaps the honeybee, which conveys information about a distant food source to its hive members by dancing.

Pretty sure symbolic communication is more widespread than that, but I'm no expert. Still, I doubt they grasp the concept of metaphor. Hell, half of humanity doesn't grasp the concept of metaphor.

The article goes on to describe octopus cognition, and it's fascinating too. But, lest all of this talk makes you want to become vegan (as for me, it just makes me want bacon):

Even this, however, might sound tame compared to the idea that plants have minds. Yet that proposition is no longer confined to the fringes of new-age belief; you can find it discussed (relatively) soberly in august scientific journals. There, it often goes by the name of “plant neurobiology” or, in a more extreme form, “biopsychism” – which supposes that every living being from bacteria up has sentience of a sort.

"Biopsychism" is at least more palatable to me than panpsychism, which I've ragged on in here before, at length. That's the unprovable and unfalsifiable philosophy that all matter has rudimentary consciousness.

We might not (and may never) agree about whether plants, fungi or bacteria have any kind of sentience, but they show enough attributes of cognition to warrant a place somewhere in this space. This perspective also promotes a calmer appraisal of artificial intelligence than the popular fevered fantasies about impending apocalypse at the hands of malevolent, soulless machines.

But those fantasies are fun.

Likewise, most of our fantasies about advanced alien intelligence suppose it to be like us but with better tech. That’s not just a sci-fi trope; the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence typically assumes that ET carves nature at the same joints as we do, recognising the same abstract laws of maths and physics. But the more we know about minds, the more we recognise that they conceptualise the world according to the possibilities they possess for sensing and intervening in it; nothing is inevitable.

There's good reason for this assumption: with it, we know what to look for. Again, though, I doubt the existence of technological aliens close enough for us to detect. We also have some idea how we might detect signs of any sort of life, including microbial, in the atmospheres of exoplanets... because we've studied our own biosphere. If we knew to look for different signals indicating a different biology (or technology), you bet we'd be looking for them, too.

Also, I didn't miss the inherent carnivorous metaphor in the above quoted bit: "carves nature at the same joints as we do." I find it amusing in a text that, while not explicitly pro-vegan, could certainly nudge a few people in that direction.
September 18, 2023 at 10:32am
September 18, 2023 at 10:32am
#1055909
Wood isn't known for its long-term durability. Smithsonian notes an exception.

    This Wooden Sculpture Is Twice as Old as Stonehenge and the Pyramids  
New findings about the 12,500-year-old Shigir Idol have major implications for the study of prehistory


Some environments preserve wood better than others, though:

Gold prospectors first discovered the so-called Shigir Idol at the bottom of a peat bog in Russia’s Ural mountain range in 1890.

For our purposes, I'm going to call this carved hunk of tree St. Peat.

The unique object—a nine-foot-tall totem pole composed of ten wooden fragments carved with expressive faces, eyes and limbs and decorated with geometric patterns—represents the oldest known surviving work of wooden ritual art in the world.

I'm wondering how they determined it was ritualistic and not just, you know, ars gratia artis. Was it like "Oh, our ancestors were all cowardly and superstitious, and whatever they did, they did to appease the gods and/or spirits?" Because they definitely weren't cowardly (couldn't be), and what religion they did have probably wasn't regarded as superstition any more than you regard your religion as superstition.

Based on extensive analysis, Terberger’s team now estimates that the object was likely crafted about 12,500 years ago, at the end of the Last Ice Age.

Technically, by some accounts, we're still in an Ice Age, just one that's in retreat.

“The landscape changed, and the art—figurative designs and naturalistic animals painted in caves and carved in rock—did, too, perhaps as a way to help people come to grips with the challenging environments they encountered.”

Or perhaps because art changes over time. Maybe not as quickly as today's deliberate art "movements," but then, as now, people get bored and/or inspired and make art. I've heard that hunter/gatherer societies had lots of free time, more than us civilized folks.

The debate has major implications for the study of prehistory, which tends to emphasize a Western-centric view of human development.

I imagine it's hard to make definitive conclusions about a society from one lone artifact, but that's no excuse to let one's preconceptions fill in the gaps.

Prevailing views over the past century, adds Terberger, regarded hunter-gatherers as “inferior to early agrarian communities emerging at that time in the Levant. At the same time, the archaeological evidence from the Urals and Siberia was underestimated and neglected.”

H-Gs aren't "inferior." Just different. Don't get me wrong; I like civilization. But it does have its downsides.

João Zilhão, a scholar at the University of Barcelona who was not involved in the study, tells the Times that the artifact’s remarkable survival reminds scientists of an important truth: that a lack of evidence of ancient art doesn’t mean it never existed. Rather, many ancient people created art objects out of perishable materials that could not withstand the test of time and were therefore left out of the archaeological record.

Much is made of cave art, and for good reason: it's a window into the thoughts of humans (and related species) of the past. But I find it difficult to believe that they confined their paintings to cave walls; that's just where the art would be best preserved. Artists today (using the term very broadly) would leave their mark everywhere, if they could; and some do. For all we know, every stone was covered in graffiti, every tree carved, every cliffside covered in murals.

We're not so different from the people who carved St. Peat, in other words: creative, curious, aware of our mortality, at least moderately intelligent, social, communicative. Sure, we likely have different priorities in life ("make money" instead of "look out for tigers," e.g.), and we, or at least most of us, have more knowledge about the world around us. But as I keep saying, don't conflate knowledge with intelligence.

And don't be so sure that a 12,500-year-old work of art was what you interpret it to be.
September 17, 2023 at 8:28am
September 17, 2023 at 8:28am
#1055859
Archaeologically excavating the bones of the midden heap that is my blog, we come to this early attempt at an entry from near the end of November, 2007: "Another Saturday Night

The title comes from an old Cat Stevens song, but it was one of his more popular ones, so I guess I figured people knew the reference. That's the problem with reference jokes: not everyone is in on it. Though one could make the same observation about any joke that doesn't involve things we all share. Like farts. But fart jokes aren't funny.

I say all this because the whole entry was about me racking my brains for a Comedy newsletter editorial. I've done thirteen of those a year ever since the year I wrote that linked entry, and while it's sometimes easy to find a topic, I'm often stumped until the looming deadline forces me to just pick something, dammit. And not jokes about impending deadlines, either; that only worked once. Or maybe twice. I don't know; I'm certain I repeated many topics over the years.

Which reminds me, I need a Fantasy newsletter topic today. What will it be? I don't know yet; it's not close enough to the deadline for me to feel enough of a sense of dread, which is when my brain finally wakes up.

Anyway, from that entry:

Thing is, I didn't start out to be funny - I started out to write science fiction.

The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive, but one risks being accused of ripping off Hitchhiker's. Unless you're a Star Trek writer; they do a great job at jabs with Lower Decks.

A common trick in science fiction, one which goes all the way back to its roots in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is to write in the Alien Observer.

Ugh. The naïveté of youth. Half of this entry is embarrassing to me now, being so obvious. I guess it was new to me at the time.

So I won't paste more of that. I'll just note that, when I was done, I realized I had written myself into an editorial, assuming a few changes. It's been so long, though, that I don't remember if I actually used it or not, and can't be arsed to go back that far in the newsletter archives. It may have been the first time I turned a blog entry into a newsletter editorial, but it certainly wasn't the last.
September 16, 2023 at 8:01am
September 16, 2023 at 8:01am
#1055814
Ever been told to stay in your lane?

    The Windy History of Penny Lane: The Beatles, the Slave Trade and a Now-Resolved Controversy  
Was Penny Lane named after a notorious slave trader? Recent protests reignited the debate


If you've been following along, you know I rarely stay in my lane. One excursion I often make is into the subject of etymology, and, in the past, I've been especially fascinated by the etymology of currency. For instance, did you know what dollars and Neanderthals have in common? Both were named after valleys in what were then German-speaking regions: Joachimsthal and Neanderthal (those are old spellings; modern orthography omits the h from the th). Joachimsthal was a silver-mining location, and the silver coins made from its product were Joachimsthalers, and it's easy to see how you get from Joachimsthalers to thalers to dollars. (Neandertal has a linguistic connection to "new man," as it's partly a Romanized version of the surname Neumann, or "new man," but that seems to be one of those apt but unrelated coincidences that happen occasionally.)

The origin of the pound (as a unit of currency) is similarly well-documented. But for something so common and widespread as the penny, well, they're not entirely sure. It's somehow related to the Roman denarius, which is why, for example, 12d nails are pronounced "twelve-penny nails." What I'm fairly certain of is that it's completely unrelated to the similarly-spelled penis, which in Latin was a word for penis. Penis.

Anyway, it gets even murkier when you have people with the surname Penny or Penney.

Apparently, one of them was a slave trader, and of course that's one of the occupations we don't name things after anymore.

An old theory linking the street to a notorious slave trader had resurfaced due to the protests surrounding the police killing of George Floyd — and a cadre of local historians discovered that their research was now thrust into the public eye.

That idea doesn't deserve the label "theory." At best, it's a guess.

“It’s been an academic debate, really. So it’s a bit of a surprise to us all, to be honest; we’re sort of taken aback. We’re not used to this larger media interest in the names of streets going back to this, you know, 17- and 1800s — it’s not the usual thing that makes the news.”

My hot take on this is: even if it was named after James Penny (for which, as the article indicates, there is no evidence whatsoever), that was so long ago, and the word is so common in other contexts, that it just doesn't matter anymore.

Besides, any metadata on that particular street changed drastically nearly 60 years ago, when it became forever and indelibly associated with the Beatles.

Following the graffiting of the signs, though, Liverpool’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram made international news after proclaiming the famed street name may be changed if there was evidence it was named after 1700s slave trader James Penny.

On the one hand, it's their city and they can do what they want with it. We fought and won a war so that England couldn't tell us what to do anymore; it's only fair that we don't interfere with them, either.

But, as you also know if you've been following along, I really hate to see falsehoods become accepted as truth.

Enter MacDonald and other historians, who have been researching the area for more than 10 years and claim there is no connection between Penny Lane and the slave trade.

It's remarkably hard to prove a negative. The only thing a historian can do in such a case as this, if they can't definitively show that Penny Lane was named for someone (or something) else, is to indicate that there's no known connection. So, if not some arsehole trader of human beings, what was it named after?

They, um, don't know.

According to the historian, the earliest mention of the lane was from the 1840s, when it was listed as Pennies Lane. In maps going back to the 1700s, it was merely an unnamed country road. Meanwhile, James Penny died in 1799 — plus, he already had a street named after him: Arrad Street, named for his birthplace in Ulverston, Cumbria.

Okay, but that last bit is hardly definitive. Plenty of slaveholders had multiple streets named after them here in the US.

I think the important bit is "Pennies Lane," though. Even with the very fluid spellings of the 18th and early 19th century, you'd think that it would have shown up as Penny's Lane or at least Pennys Lane, if it was connected to anyone with that surname.

“Penny Lane about that time would have been a fairly rural country lane,” MacDonald says. “So that struck me. It would be very off that a lane in the middle of the country would be named after somebody in the same way that prestigious streets in the town center would.”

You know what would make sense for a rural country lane in 19th century England? If you had to pay a toll to traverse it. Tuppence, perhaps, or thruppence with inflation. Hence, "pennies lane." But did these boffins investigate that blindingly obvious (to me) possibility?

Well, maybe. Maybe not. The article doesn't say. So don't go quoting me on the last paragraph; it's just as much a guess, albeit a harmless one, as the spurious James Penny connection.

In any event, as the article eventually winds around to telling us, it seems that "no evidence of a connection" is sufficient to keep the iconic street name around... for now. These controversies, however, have a way of coming out of remission later. If that's because some evidence is actually discovered, well, fine. But if it's just another urban legend, well, I trust the Liverpudlians will treat that with all the attention it deserves: about two pennies' worth.
September 15, 2023 at 10:11am
September 15, 2023 at 10:11am
#1055769
It's a promo on LitHub for a book, but whatever. We're all readers here. And it tracks with what I already knew.

    How the Banana Came To Be—And How It Could Disappear  
Emily Monosson on the History, Evolution, and Biological Enemies of a Staple Fruit


Yesterday, I bought some bananas, and noticed that since the summer, they had doubled in price!

...from 12 cents each to 24.

(This is one reason you have to beware of that sort of emotional language when you encounter it.)

I still find it difficult to believe that a banana's actual worth, a couple thousand miles from where they're grown, is less than a quarter. I'm sure there are all sorts of subsidy shenanigans going on, and low-paid workers involved, but I can't be arsed to research it.

Bananas are a fruit that unites the world.

Not so sure about that, but as fruits go, they're definitely one of the easiest. Peel and eat, no messy juice, no seeds. I saw a video once where a creationist took that and ran with it as "proof" of intelligent design. Well, they were intelligently designed, all right: by intelligent humans, who genetically engineered a seed-infested fruit with very little meat and turned it into a snack as easy to eat as a Milky Way bar.

Though there are thousands of varieties, most of us in the western world eat only one: the Cavendish.

Or, as we tend to call them here in the US, "bananas."

Of the twenty-​two million tons of bananas exported to the United States, Europe, and Asia, most are grown in Latin America and the Caribbean.

I still remember a brief tour of a banana plantation in Belize. But this article goes into a lot more detail around the growing and shipping process, which I'm not going to repeat here.

The banana plant is easy to mistake for a tree, but it is the largest known herbaceous flowering plant.

This is a distinction much like tomato being, botanically, a fruit.

The plants grow, produce flower and fruit, and die.

Ready-made metaphor there.

The article also goes into the rise and fall of the previous kind of shipped banana, the Gros Michel (commonly translated to English as "Big Mike," but I prefer "Fat Mikey.") That's fairly widespread knowledge now, as is the whispers, going on for some years now, of the soon to be certain demise of the Cavendish.

Hasn't happened yet, but with banana prices doubling here, maybe it's happening?

What the article doesn't get into is whether there's a suitable, fungus-resistant successor to the Cavendish. We can be pretty clever with our bioengineering and selective breeding, so I expect they'll find a way. Otherwise, based on the numbers in this article, a whole lot of people are going to find themselves unemployed.

And, worse, I'll have to find another easy fruit to like. And that, for me, holds no ap-peel.
September 14, 2023 at 9:14am
September 14, 2023 at 9:14am
#1055730
Having lived through the Great Coke Crisis of 1985, I'm still fascinated by how companies can sometimes shoot themselves in the foot.



Coca-Cola, of course, survived their mistake (or perhaps it was a calculated conspiracy  ). But can we really blame marketing for taking the L out of Schlitz?

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Milwaukee-based Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company held the gold crown as America’s largest brewer.

Which glosses right over the dark, dreary days of Prohibition, a significant chunk of "the first half of the 20th century." Like other brewers, Schlitz endured through diversification. But that's irrelevant right now.

Then a series of business decisions, including a disastrous ad campaign, dubbed the “Drink Schlitz or I’ll kill you” campaign, precipitated the downfall of America’s biggest beer brand.

That campaign lasted less than three months, coinciding with a tumultuous year for consumerism in general (1977). It's said that "no publicity is bad publicity," but I'm not so sure about that; still, I'm pretty sure other "business decisions" were more proximate. Like how they stopped making beer and started making formulaic adjunct lager like their competition.

By the late 1950s, Schlitz lost its top title to another quintessential American beer brand: Anheuser-Busch.

Calling that "beer" is an insult to beer, much like calling Kraft Singles "cheese" is an insult to cheese.

During the 1970s, in an attempt to cut production costs and keep up with growing demands, Schlitz’s owners decided to shorten the beer’s brewing time by implementing a process called “accelerated batch fermentation.”

This, by itself, should have been enough to kill the brand. But, as with New Coke, Americans will put up with a lot of enshittification.

They also opted to replace its malted barley with a cheaper ingredient, corn syrup, and began experimenting with the use of a silica gel to prevent haze once the beer was chilled.

That first bit, there, was enough to make it not-beer. Not necessarily bad; lots of great beverages start with corn syrup. But not beer.

And nowadays, of course, lots of people love hazy beers.

Sales dropped as Schlitz’s customers grew frustrated with the brand and started returning cases of beer.

As tasteless as many Americans are, you mess with their favorites at your own peril. (The silica gel thing resulted in a recall, incidentally, never a great thing for any business).

In an effort to stem its declining sales and improve its spiraling reputation, the company hired an ad agency, Leo Burnett & Co., to launch four television spots.

Now, here's the thing: that could have worked. Marketing, done right, can sell anything, including pet rocks and bottled water. You can have the shittiest product in existence, and if you have the right marketing, it'll sell anyway. And truly great products, without marketing, can fade into oblivion.

But by the time Schlitz did those ads, it had already become a terrible product.

Schlitz closed its Milwaukee brewery in 1981.

For context, home brewing became legalized in October of 1978, yet more proof that Jimmy Carter was a severely underrated President. That paved the way for smaller breweries to get some market niches. And Sierra Nevada opened in 1981, still producing craft beer today (I'm not a fan, but I can't argue that it's not real beer).

Today, of course, is a wonderful time to be a beer snob. I'd call it a "Golden Age," but Golden is associated with Coors, and they suck too.

But there are still beer marketing controversies, as I'm sure you remember from earlier this year.

I mention these things sometimes, because even if you're not trying to market anything (a book, perhaps), we're all affected by marketing every day, and a little cynicism can't hurt. And maybe this will help keep you from getting stranded up Schlitz creek without a paddle.
September 13, 2023 at 8:29am
September 13, 2023 at 8:29am
#1055696
One of my favorite tropes is the mad scientist who, when no one believes them, tests the creation on themselves. In stories, that rarely ends well. In real life... well, it usually doesn't end well there, either. But here's an exception... sort of.

    The Inventor of Ibuprofen Tested the Drug on His Own Hangover  
Stewart Adams’ headache subsided—and his over-the-counter pain reliever became one of the world’s most popular medications


A hangover cure—that is, a real one, not the folk remedies like "mix a raw egg with last week's coffee grinds" nonsense—is one of the most important inventions one can make. This is not only because it pisses off the puritans who get apoplectic when someone's not punished for having a good time, but that's a huge bonus.

In retrospect, perhaps toasting the success of a new medication he helped invent with several shots of vodka in Moscow was not a good idea.

Are you kidding me? That would be epically awesome! Well, not while there's a war going on over there, but any other time.

English research scientist Stewart Adams was faced with the consequences of his actions: a serious hangover.

But what if there doesn't have to be consequences?

He reached for that new drug and swallowed a 600-milligram dose.

For reference, most OTC ibuprofen comes in 200mg tablets, and the usual dose is 2 pills for 400mg. I've been prescribed as much as 800mg by dentists and the like. So this is not outside of the realm of sanity, mad scientist trope aside.

Stewart Adams and his associate John Nicholson invented a pharmaceutical drug known as 2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid. It was later renamed ibuprofen and is now one of the world’s most popular nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)...

Sadly, my doctor insists I shouldn't be taking NSAIDs unless they're prescribed. She had no comment on my drinking, though.

Stewart Adams began his career in pharmaceuticals at the young age of 16, when he started an apprenticeship at a drug store owned by Boots UK Limited, then known as Boots the Chemist. He went on to earn a degree in pharmacy at the University of Nottingham and then received his PhD in pharmacology at the University of Leeds.

Looks like he was one of the most British people to ever Brit.

Now if someone could explain to me why they call that other pain relief medicine acetaminophen here, but paracetamol over there, that'd be great. I can't be arsed to look it up.
September 12, 2023 at 9:35am
September 12, 2023 at 9:35am
#1055633
We're back to the solar system articles today. This is a hot one.

    The Romantic Venus We Never Knew  
Venus used to be as fit for life as Earth.


The article's from 2016, but that's a bit over 10 days on Venus (...yes, I did the math; the article came out 10.1893 Venusian days ago).

On the day that I was born—winter solstice, 1959—a headline in Life magazine proclaimed “Target Venus: There May be Life There!”

In that era, we were trying to find the slightest hint of how life may exist on any other planet.

It told of how scientists rode a balloon to an altitude of 80,000 feet to make telescope observations of Venus’s atmosphere, and how their discovery of water raised hopes that there could be living things there.

For context, this was after Sputnik 1 but before humans put other humans into orbit.

The very first thing that scientists discovered with a mission to another planet was that Venus was not at all the Earthly paradise that fiction and speculative science had portrayed.

From what I can gather, the surface of Venus will kill you even quicker than vacuum will.

As a possible home for alien life, it has been voted the planet least likely to succeed.

You probably heard the breathless hype over the detection of phosphene in that planet's atmosphere a few years back, touted as a possible sign of some sort of life there. What you probably didn't hear was that the data didn't withstand scrutiny, and we're back to square one.

Russian and American spacecraft also found hints that the primordial climate might have been wetter, cooler, and possibly even friendly to life.

Which is a far cry from claiming that life still exists there today.

For most of Earth’s history, Venus may have been the nearest habitable planet and possibly even home to a thriving biosphere. For billions of years, our solar system may have had two neighboring wet, geologically active, habitable rocky worlds. They may even have very occasionally exchanged life when meteors struck and catapulted shrapnel from one planet to the other.

I just want to emphasize, again, that this doesn't imply sentient Venusians, now or in the past.

In any case, the article is necessarily full of speculation such as this, because we just don't have enough data. Which is a shame, because it's often the closest planet to us. The Moon isn't technically a planet, Mars is sometimes closer to Earth than Venus, and, on average, according to some calculations, the nearest planet on average is Mercury,   which makes sense when you think about relative orbital speeds. What's not in dispute is that it's the planet with the closest orbit to ours.

While the author bangs on about climate change and the greenhouse effect, I can excuse that in this case because he's actually a planetary scientist. Well, an astrobiologist, anyway.

Close or not, Venus presents challenges Mars simply doesn't. The latter doesn't have much atmosphere, for instance, while the former has, arguably, too much of one. We can handle near-vacuum, but not corrosive acid at immense pressure. Not well, anyway.

But we're trying, and we're clever and curious. We'll probably have more data in a few days. A few Venus days, anyway./size}
September 11, 2023 at 11:13am
September 11, 2023 at 11:13am
#1055576
No external link today, just some personal reflections on 19 years of Writing.Com.

The problem with having an account creation anniversary today is twofold:

One, it falls close on the heels of WDC's Birthday Week celebration. On this site, that's rather like being born just after Christmas in the US: everyone's burned out on celebratory cheer, and ready to go back to being their usual grumpy selves. Or, possibly, gearing up for NaNoWriMo (shameless plug for "October Novel Prep Challenge [13+], which is taking signups and looking for more Contest Round judges).

And two, it coincides with another anniversary.

That other anniversary was very fresh in everyone's minds back in 2004, when I signed up here. This year, I haven't seen any mention of it at all, and I follow the news cycle pretty damn well for someone who shuns popular social media (RSS is still around, and it's easy to set up your feed the way you want it; it's just not as easy as getting it spoon-fed by the algorithms on Xitter and the like).

But it wasn't supposed to be September 11; it was supposed to be the 10th. As I recall, I had some problems getting registered way back then, and it was only about 2am on a Saturday that it finally worked. That's also the reason for the annoying 02 at the end of my username; earlier attempts to register as just cathartes failed, but locked out that option. I keep meaning to change my username, but after 19 years, it seems like that would cause more problems than it would fix.

I've told that story before, but who could read all the entries here? I sure haven't.

For the curious, I'm pretty sure this was the first thing I posted in my port: "Ghost Poem #1 [ASR] Considering my evolution since then, it's strange that my first bit was a poem, and a serious one at that. I still do them occasionally, but I'm more tuned to comedy, these days. At least I'm not embarrassed by that poem, which is older even than my account. Not embarrassed much, anyway.

I barely remember last week, let alone 19 years ago, and I don't know a way to view one's portfolio in chronological order. So I could be wrong about that being my first item. Doesn't matter; close enough, as it was the same day I joined. That, of course, made me a Registered Author. I don't remember when I became Preferred. I also don't remember the exact date I got the blue case, but it was sometime in August of 2006... probably. Like I said, my memory sucks. I still think of myself as one of the newer moderators, when that's objectively not the case (pun intended).

And I started this blog the following New Year's Day. I took a years-long hiatus from it, but decided to keep going with the same item rather than start a new one, mostly because come on, the name is awesome.

Unfortunately, it's now almost full. Around 95% by byte size, and 82% by number of entries, not counting this one. I doubt it'll last another year at the rate I post (daily, relatively long entries), so this might be my last anniversary retrospective here. I won't delete entries, and it's unclear to me whether I'd get more space in the blog if I switched to a Premium Plus membership.

I'll design that bridge when I get to the chasm. Right now, just let me end by thanking everyone who left me anniversary notes and done Anniversary Reviews, including one of that ancient poem of mine I linked above. This is not me begging for more, only acknowledging those that have done these things. It's been a great community, and I've made a lot of friends I never would have otherwise met, both online and in person. You know who you are. While I doubt I'll be around for another 19 years, as I'm pretty sure I'm not an immortal, I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. So you're stuck with me... unless, of course, you put me on ignore.
September 10, 2023 at 9:13am
September 10, 2023 at 9:13am
#1055524
We're not reaching very far into the bowels of the past in today's Revisited. Barely even penetrating the rectum, really.

Anything within the last 12 months is ineligible for revisiting, but this one's from May of last year: "Annoying Things

Sometimes, to mix things up a little, I like to participate in blogging activities or contests. That entry was prompted by "Invalid Item . Another perennial favorite of mine is "Journalistic Intentions [18+], which I mention because there's a new round of that next month.

Plugs aside, the entry was, as per the title, about things that annoy me. Specifically, they're annoyances about living in Charlottesville, apart from the blindingly obvious annoyance of my town being internationally famous for a deadly protest/riot that mostly involved out-of-towners.

As I've noted before, when it's not freezing (defined by me as 55F or below) outside, I like to sit on my deck. I paid a lot of money for that thing and by Marduk's manhood, I'm going to use it.

I'd forgotten that particular oath. Along with "Thor's balls" and "Ishtar's tits," I'm going to need to remember it and use it more.

This is normally quite pleasant. Songbirds are tweeting (and not complaining about Elon Musk)...

You know what else is annoying? Every gods-damned news outlet still insists on reporting Xits, and always with a line like "...posted on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter." We get it. It's X now. Anyone who doesn't know this didn't know what Twatter was to begin with. So just call it X. Or Xitter (where the X is pronounced like sh). And call the blathering a Xit, like I just did. Also pronounced like sh, or maybe like z; either way works for me.

...bees are buzzing, owls are hooting (yes, yes, I did my Duolingo lessons; shut up)...

Over four years of daily Duolingo now. They keep changing the lesson plan. It's annoying. Mais je crois que j'apprends quelque chose.

Yes, very pleasant, except during the day and at night.

Sometimes, I forget what I wrote, and when I find it again, I crack me up. This was one of those times. That's another reason I like to do these retrospectives.

During the day, everyone gets their yard work done. This wouldn't be so bad if everyone did it at the same time. But no; that would be too kind. The neighbor mows his lawn. Then, when that's finally done, the other neighbors mow their lawn. After that one's finished, one of the people behind me mows their lawn. And then another. And then another.

For whatever reason, this hasn't been nearly as bad, this summer. It's been pointed out to me that this particular noise problem may have been the result of everyone using one lawn care company. But it's not. There are like four dozen different lawn care companies around here, and besides, most of the mowing in my neighborhood is done by the resident. Not mine, though. Too lazy.

And also the nightly muscle car race. For some reason, that's still a thing.

That hasn't stopped or slowed down. But the other night, I heard one of those 8-cylinder engines rev up and gear on down the residential streets. Then, I heard CRUNCH... followed by blessed silence.

For about 2 minutes, at which point the sirens started.

I'd like to say I hoped no one was injured, but I'd be lying. Let's leave it at "I hope no one died."

Oh, and as that entry was posted in late spring, I'd forgotten one of the massive annoyances of fall: every other damn Saturday, on average, UVA has a sportsball game. I live a bit over a mile from the stadium, just close enough to hear the announcer, the bands, and the roar of the crowd, but just far enough away so I can rarely understand what they're actually saying. They also use the stadium for other events, so this isn't limited to football.

I can usually ignore that, though. But last year, some rocket surgeon decided it would be a good idea to have some Air Force jets fly low overhead at great speed as part of the halftime show. That sucked, especially since they flew directly over my neighborhood, and you don't hear them until they're right on top of you (speed of sound and all that).

Anyway, it helps me sometimes to count my annoyances. Once I'm done with that, I can go back to being content with life.
September 9, 2023 at 10:01am
September 9, 2023 at 10:01am
#1055469
Double whammy today: a math article from LitHub, and one that's actually relevant to the blog title.

     How Complex Math and Human Innovation Created the Calculator  
Keith Houston on the People, Technology, and Equations Behind a Modern Mathematical Convenience


1. Of course it was human innovation. We don't have AIs innovating yet, and the limit of feline innovation is to see how much stuff you can knock off the counter before the human yells at you.

2. "Convenience?" More like "crutch." I learned math with a slide rule, dammit!

Late in 1957, as Tadao and Toshio Kashio waited to load their desk-​sized calculator onto a plane at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, they were told they would have to dismantle it first. If you can just remove this top part here, an attendant told them, gesturing to the keyboard and display, it will fit on the airplane.

If only they had a means of calculating the space needed.

The Kashio brothers—Tadao, Toshio, Kazuo, and Yukio—​were quite different from the inventors and engineers who had gone before them. They did not have Blaise Pascal’s mathematical prowess, or Samuel Morland’s royal connections. They did not have Charles Xavier Thomas’s considerable income, or Curt Herz­stark’s family tradition of engineering. What they did have was a finger-​mounted cigarette holder that let Japan’s workers get their nicotine fix both on and off the job.

Now that's brilliant.

Back in 1946, [Toshio] had read a newspaper article that chronicled the battle of wits between Kiyoshi Matsuzaki on his abacus and Tom Wood of the U.S. Army on his electric calculator.

Regular John Henry story there.

Toshio decided then that Kashio Manufacturing would build an electric calculator, economy be damned, and that it would do so in a completely new way.

People in Japan did a similar thing with scotch. Oh, yeah, and cars. But the scotch thing is important. Of course, they can't call it scotch.

Figuratively speaking, it was revolutionary; in literal terms, it was the opposite, since this was the first automatic calculator anywhere in the world that was not driven by rotating gears or motors but rather a kind of electromagnet called a solenoid.

I would suspect that if your audience is people interested in the subject matter in the headline, you wouldn't have to explain what a solenoid is. But the article goes on to describe exactly that, which is actually kind of refreshing.

The Kashios’ calculator was a symphony of solenoids and switches, wired together in series and in parallel to create circuits of ever-​increasing complexity. There was not a gear or a motor to be seen.

I'm not a mechanical engineer, but something I learned early on: the more moving parts something has, the more likely it is for something to break. In these days of almost no moving parts, they have to engineer in other ways for it to break, or they wouldn't make money.

...Toshio declared that he wanted to throw it out and start over. Solenoids and switches, he declared, were too fiddly for mass production. Relays were the future.

Then there's mission creep.

In tearing down his solenoid calculator, Toshio Kashio was unwittingly joining a much larger movement in the design and development of computers. The roots of that movement, in turn, lay all the way back in the age of the telegraph—​the first communication system that relied not on line of sight or a horse and rider to convey information but rather on the new wonder of electricity.

So, this is where the article really gets interesting, though the article needs to go into the history of the telegraph first. I won't copy that part here, so this next quote may seem to come out of nowhere:.

Soon after, Stibitz’s boss, Thornton Fry, asked him if the Model K could be made to work with complex numbers. Fry did not mean numbers bigger than two, the limit of the Model K’s circuitry, but rather a very specific and lushly exotic species of number made up of separate “real” and “imaginary” components.

I told you we'd get to the blog title.

And as Stibitz and Fry demonstrated in September 1940 at the American Mathematical Society in New York, the “Complex Number Calculator” could also be hooked up to a telephone line and driven using a kind of electric typewriter called a teletype. It was the first ever public demonstration of remote computing.

In my mind, you then cut to an image of a modern server farm, kind of like with the opening scene of 2001.

Shannon’s insight was that relays were the perfect building blocks to bring Boolean logic into the real world. His thesis, which has been called “possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master’s thesis of the century,” was nothing less than a road map for building computers. Or, indeed, for building calculators.

I'm obviously leaving out a lot here, but the article reminds me that no one invents anything alone, despite what you might see in popular fiction. Everything builds on others' innovations. I can't do it justice here, but the link is up there if you're interested. As with yesterday's entry, I just like how it links everything together. Into a vast network, if you will.
September 8, 2023 at 9:26am
September 8, 2023 at 9:26am
#1055360
I've written about this sort of thing before, but it's been a while, and this is a different article. For reference, my last bit on the topic of the superficial similarity of galactic and neural networks was here: "Networking

As for today's article, which I have different things to say about:

    The case for why our Universe may be a giant neural network  
Neuroscientist and author Bobby Azarian explores the idea that the Universe is a self-organizing system that evolves and learns.


It is natural, I think, for humans to notice similarities among disparate things, and, once noting similarity of form, speculate about a corresponding similarity of function. It's part of the basis for some spiritual systems, as well as poetry and metaphor. The trap we don't want to fall into, though, would be (in this case) assuming that such speculation reflects reality, without much evidence beyond, "Well, they look the same."

A new scientific paradigm is emerging that presents us with a radically different cosmic narrative. The big idea is that the Universe is not just an arbitrary physical system, but something more like an evolving computational or biological system — with properties strikingly similar to a complex adaptive system, like an organism or a brain.

Calling it a "paradigm" is overstating the case, I think. I should note, as the article does, that the idea that the cosmos is a kind of entity in itself is nothing new; that, too, is part of ancient spiritual systems. What's different is that, more recently, within the last 100 years or so, our knowledge of the size and scale of the universe has expanded (pun intended).

If true, it raises new existential questions that will force us to completely rethink the nature of reality and ideas about whether the Universe has a function or “purpose.”

"If" does a whole lot of lifting, there.

In recent years, a number of highly respected theoretical physicists and scientists from various fields have published papers, articles, and books that have provided compelling technical and mathematical arguments that suggest the Universe is not just a computational or information-processing system, but a self-organizing system that evolves and learns in ways that are strikingly similar to biological systems.

I'd just like to point out two things here. First, this borders on "argument from authority;" even "highly respected" scientists can be, and often are, wrong. And second, there doesn't have to be anything mystical or supernatural about this. Lots of things, as I noted above, are similar to each other, as they follow the same universal laws.

For example, scientists have recently emphasized that the physical organization of the Universe mirrors the structure of a brain.

As the universe is several orders of magnitude older than a human brain (or any sort of brain that we know of), I'd say that should be the other way around.

Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder — renowned for her skepticism — wrote a bold article for Time Magazine in August of 2022 titled “Maybe the Universe Thinks. Hear Me Out,” which describes the similarities.

Okay, I admit I have a thing for Dr. Hossenfelder. No, not like that; I just think she's remarkably good at science communication. I've seen a bunch of her videos and I've read a couple of her books. As with anyone else, though, she can still be wrong. And her "skepticism" takes a different form than most public scientists'—she likes to make distinctions between "consistent with science" and "borne out by evidence," which I appreciate.

For instance, and I'm not saying she tackled this subject, Bigfoot is consistent with science: a living entity without supernatural powers who, if real (it isn't), is just remarkably good at hiding in the woods. There is still no evidence for Bigfoot's existence, and some evidence that it's completely fabricated.The Jersey Devil, however, is not consistent with science.

That said, I haven't read the article mentioned here.

When one zooms out to envision the cosmos as a whole, the “cosmic web” formed by these clusters and filaments looks strikingly similar to the “connectome,” a term that refers to the complete wiring diagram of the brain, which is formed by neurons and their synaptic connections. Neurons in the brain also form clusters, which are grouped into larger clusters, and are connected by filaments called axons, which transmit electrical signals across the cognitive system.

I noticed this similarity of appearance many years ago (and wrote about it in here before), but again: that doesn't imply similarity of function.

Hossenfelder explains that this resemblance between the cosmic web and the connectome is not superficial, citing a rigorous study by a physicist and a neuroscientist that analyzed the features common to both, and based on the shared mathematical properties, concluded that the two structures are “remarkably similar.”

Fortunately, this article does go into some of the arguments against the idea.

Of course, it takes more than a certain type of structure to think thoughts. A dead brain is just as thoughtless as a rock.

and

Yet the Universe’s vastness imposes limitations. Hossenfelder explains that sending signals across the cosmos, even at light speed, would take 80 billion years, and 11 million years just for a signal to travel to our nearest galaxy. Combine the vast size of the Universe with the fact that it is expanding, and it would seem like some kind of cosmic-scale information processing similar to the global processing going on inside brains is out of the question.

However,

But Hossenfelder speculates over whether “hidden connections” could allow for faster signaling. In a section called “Everything is Connected,” she explains how mechanisms like quantum entanglement or other forms of “non-local connections” could enable longer-range computations.

This demonstrates either a remarkable lapse in communication skills (for her or for the author of the article here), or a misunderstanding of how quantum entanglement really works. I tend to believe the former, as I've seen her expand upon the latter.

And let's just emphasize this throwaway line:

Although highly speculative...

So the rest of the article is worth reading, but I won't bore you with more of my specific thoughts about it; they're all along the same lines. I'll just add one more thing for today:

The thing is, I would like to believe that everything is interconnected. It suits my philosophy of life. On a purely local level, meaning at about the scale of the solar system or below, this is so obvious as to be almost trivial; it's only the philosophical implications that reach into the depths of the profound. We have a pretty good understanding of the forces that make it so: gravity, electromagnetism, etc. Pull one thread, and others shiver. No man is an island, etc. (And even if one was, the whole concept of "island" is defined by the surrounding water.)

The only remarkable thing is that I didn't use drugs to come to this conclusion.

It's just that, when I encounter speculation that I would like to believe, my personal threshold for evidence gets higher, not lower.

The article says some people think this is testable.

So test it.

I'd love to be right. But I'm not counting on it.
September 7, 2023 at 8:33am
September 7, 2023 at 8:33am
#1055294
Today's link, from Atlas Obscura, is now outdated, having languished in my queue for several weeks. It's just as well, because if it'd come up anytime before August 30, it would have led to a rant, and I ranted about that particular subject enough for this year.

    Just How Super Is The Coming Supermoon?  
July’s full moon will be thousands of miles closer to us than usual. Learn how to measure it with your hand.


I'm linking it despite its lack of timeliness, because it's got general information of value to skywatchers. And some dubious information that I, of course, am going to question.

The Moon is growing now, more and more of it visible every evening. Though it is technically full for just one night, it will look mostly full for a night or so before and after that.

Again, not current information. And yet, I'm going to pick on it. It's technically "full" for just one moment, and half the time, that moment occurs during daylight hours wherever you happen to be. Traditionally, in most cultures that observe this sort of thing, a full moon spans three nights.

The term “supermoon” is a relatively recent introduction to the astrological lexicon, but these events are nothing new; they occur several times a year.

Okay, fine, I'm going to rant anyway. "Astrological?"

I'm not even going to legitimize the sentence that follows that quoted one by pasting it here. Suffice it to say it made veins pop out in my forehead with its utter wrongness.

A supermoon takes place when the Moon is nearest to Earth in its elliptical orbit around our planet.

And that happens once per orbit: at perigee. It doesn't always coincide with a full moon. When it does, that's what they've taken to calling a supermoon. I don't object to the terminology here; what I object to is when people draw the wrong conclusions from imprecise language.

The Moon can look about 14 percent bigger during perigee, its closest approach to Earth, than during its apogee, its furthest point. It can appear 30 percent brighter, too. If you pay attention throughout the year, you might notice how much smaller or bigger the Moon can seem from month to month.

Fair enough, though the article starts out by comparing perigee to average, then compares perigee to apogee. Also not mentioned: the horizon moon illusion, where the rising or setting moon might appear larger to the eye. There's a very reasonable explanation for this illusion, and it has nothing to do with earth-moon distance.

Incidentally, the article doesn't do a very good follow-up on its promise in the subheadline, the "measure it with your hand" thing. There might be a way to do this, very roughly, but I suspect that individual differences in things like arm length and hand size overshadow the supermoon/micromoon difference.

Which, admittedly, is one I've never seen. I wouldn't know a particular full moon was a supermoon but for the websites I frequent, which all gush about it every time it happens. I know some people claim to be able to tell the difference, and I don't doubt them, but my perception just isn't that fine-tuned.

I make up for it by insisting upon pedantry.
September 6, 2023 at 8:29am
September 6, 2023 at 8:29am
#1055247
The RNG gives us another planetary article today. This one's about the big guy.

    Jupiter revealed  
The Juno spacecraft has been circling Jupiter since 2016. Here are four things we’ve learned so far about the biggest planet in the solar system.


In the four years since NASA’s Juno spacecraft went into orbit around Jupiter, it has slowly been coaxing the king of all the planets to reveal its deepest secrets — an astonishing catalog that includes daisy chains of continent-sized cyclones circling both of Jupiter’s poles; vast hailstorms of ammonia-laden “mushballs”; a bloated, fuzzy core at the planet’s center; and a convoluted magnetic field like nothing else in the solar system.

The article is from 2020, so add another three years to that, as well as possibly other new discoveries that I can't be arsed to search for right now. I did manage to check whether the ceiling fan (I mean, look at the probe  ) is still active, which, apparently, it is.

Named after the goddess Juno, who was Jupiter’s wife in Roman mythology, the spacecraft was launched in August 2011 with the goal of understanding the giant planet’s origin and evolution.

"Jupiter's wife" glosses over a whole slew of godly shenanigans, including a bunch of extramarital affairs (not all of them consensual), and that Juno was also his sister.

Meanwhile, here are four of Juno’s greatest hits to date.

None of which are the hits she took out on Jupiter's illegitimate children. Or, well, they would be illegitimate, except that gods play by different rules.

Around the planet’s south pole, Juno spied five cyclones, each wider than the United States, parked around a central cyclone of the same size. Not to be outdone, the north pole revealed eight similar cyclones encircling their own polar vortex.

For context, those are pretty small for Jupiter. Compare the best-known storm on Jupiter's cloudy surface, the Great Red Spot (not to be confused with a teenager's acne), which at its peak was something like 3 times the diameter of our entire planet. (Later in the article, the GRS is described as being "a bit wider than Earth;" as with many of us, it's been subject to shrinkage over the last century or so.)

Because Jupiter is what astronomers call a gas giant planet, there is no point asking what conditions are like on its surface: It doesn’t have one. Instead, the hydrogen and helium gas that make up the bulk of Jupiter’s atmosphere simply get denser and denser the farther down you go, until the hydrogen becomes a liquid metal.

As with my last planetary entry, the whole "unclear boundary between phases" thing is mind-boggling. This adds another level of boggle with the metallic hydrogen thing, which has got to make astronomers irate, because to them, hydrogen and helium are nonmetals, while everything else is a metal. This is distinct from the chemistry definition of a metal, which has something to do with free, shared electrons. Hippie socialist electrons.

Metallic hydrogen, as I understand it, only occurs at unimaginable pressures, such as those found near the center of enormous planets.

As a digression, there's a weird thing about planets that I don't fully understand. Well, there are lots of those, but in particular, the center of any planet is subject to high pressures. That part makes sense, like how water pressure increases with depth. But because the core is surrounded by planet, the net force of gravity there is near zero (the mass pulls equally from all directions). I haven't reconciled this in my mind yet.

Although Jupiter doesn’t have a surface, researchers had a running argument before Juno’s arrival as to whether the planet had a core — a solid ball of heavier elements gathered at the planet’s center.

Need to settle a bar bet? Build a billion-dollar ceiling fan and send it to Jupiter.

I joke, but the probe really did shed some light on that subject, though there are, of course, still mysteries.

As for the planet's Olympic-class magnetic field:

It’s as if someone took a bar magnet, bent it almost in half, frayed one end, split the other end, and then stuck the whole thing in the planet at a cockeyed angle. In the north is the frayed end: Rather than emerging around one central spot, the magnetic field sprouts like weeds along a long high-latitude band. In the south is the split end: Some of the field plunges back into the planet around the south pole while some is concentrated in a spot just south of the equator.

Jupiter is, believe it or not, quite different from Earth, so it shouldn't be that surprising that its magnetic field is weird. Still, the article goes a bit into just how weird, and, well, its weird.

Anyway, apparently, some science got done and we need to do more science.

As always.

Just don't tell Juno we're sending another probe; she might get jealous.
September 5, 2023 at 10:21am
September 5, 2023 at 10:21am
#1055201
Some things we think are real turn out to be myths. But sometimes it's the other way around. Cracked provides a few examples.



Hell, of course, is not real (except for the town in Michigan), but I suspect they mean that as an intensifer.

Of course, embellishments are natural, but the basis for what you might think are tall tales are often a flesh-and-blood fellow.

Those "embellishments" might be how myths and legends get started in the first place. Kind of like how that fish you caught that one time keeps getting larger and heavier every time you tell the tale, until everyone's convinced that you hooked Leviathan. Or, well, you're convinced they're convinced, anyway.

5. Johnny Appleseed

I knew this was a real guy; I only ever objected to his glorification. Though I suppose his legacy of spreading non-native species around is better than that of Charlie Kudzuseed or Frankie Freshwatercarpegg.

Johnny Appleseed is a tale that sounds patently insane. A man wandering the Wild West, tossing out apple seeds and leaving a trail of trees in his wake, sounds like a folk tale at best and a severely deranged man at worst.

Well, he was at base a missionary, so "deranged" isn't too far out there as a description.

4. John Henry

As far as American myths-based-in-fact go, this one's my all-time favorite.

Heck, John Henry versus the machine is practically writers’ struggle against advancing A.I. Well, if John Henry was a feeble, depressed man, and the steam machine made weird-looking, factually inaccurate railroads.

The thing people get most wrong about this one, though, isn't the human vs. machine thing, but the nature of his work: he didn't hammer spikes into ties (well, he may have done that, too, but that's irrelevant to the main story), but, as I understand it, he drove metal drill thingies into raw rock for placement of demolition charges. You know, to make cuts or tunnels in the Appalachians.

3. Paul Bunyan

Rarely has there been a better modern example of reality getting exaggerated into mythology.

Bunyan’s physical legend, it’s believed, comes from a French-Canadian man named Fabian Fournier. Remember, first, that in 1875, when Fournier lived, the average male height was right around five and a half feet tall. Given that knowledge, the six-foot-tall Fournier was practically Shaq with an axe. It’s thought that Fournier’s famous bulk combined with the name of another famous lumberjack, Bon Jean, which over time and error, morphed into Bunyan.

So, roughly contemporaneous with John Henry. I'm seeing a lot of Johns and (French) Jeans on this list. Where "Paul" came from is unclear, but I guess it played better with test audiences than "Fabian."

2. Davy Crockett

I didn't think there was doubt that Crockett was an actual person. Still, sometimes it's hard to separate the truth from the exaggeration.

1. Dracula

Hey, someone not from North America.

He is, however, based on a real, notably horrible man. Vlad the Impaler, born Vlad III Tepes, was a ruler of Wallachia, which is now Romania.

Pretty sure the the Dracula thing is widely known to be based on a real, if morally repugnant, individual. But how did he get all the attention, while Elizabeth Bathory,   arguably a far scarier individual, languishes in relative obscurity?

Probably a sexist thing. After all, you don't see any chicks on this list, do you? If I had time, I'd come up with some.

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