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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| Today's random draw from the archives is from not so very long ago: October of 2021. It concerned, as one might glean from the title, English spelling. "Speling Iz Dificult"  As it's less than two years old, the link is still there and, if you missed it the first time or want a reminder, here it is again. In that entry, I noted: I will say this, though: At some point, the spelling/pronunciation link becomes a shibboleth. I think people use it to identify in-groups. For example, in my area, there's a road with the name Rio Road. We use it to spot tourists. "Yeah, I hear (business) is on Ree-oh Road." Oh, they must be from out of town; the proper pronunciation is Rye-oh. Or there's a nearby town named Staunton. You hear someone pronounce it "stawn-ton" and you know they ain't from around here and need to be watched carefully and maybe lynched. Weird story about that. Last week, I had to visit a dentist whose office is on a court just off Rio Road. It's on the other side of the city, but it's a small city. Nevertheless, I had Google Maps connected to my car's system (sorcery) so I could hopefully be aware of traffic and/or speed traps on the way there and back. Anyway, the point is, as I was leaving, the Google voice went: "In five hundred feet, turn right onto Ree-oh Road." Annoyed because I'd just been to a dentist, I snarled, "Rye-oh!" A few seconds later, it reminded me: "Turn right onto Ree-oh Road." Not wanting to take anymore bullshit from a fake voice, I grunted, "Rye-oh!" Then, after I made the suggested turn (really, the only other option was turning left), it said, "Stay on Rye-oh Road for a quarter of a mile." I nearly crashed. Had it actually listened to me? Had it actually learned? Another bit, not nearly as portentous: Probably the worst offender in the orthography world, though, is the geoduck. You see a word like that, and you think: oh, it must be gee-oh-duck. And it's probably a bird, right? An... earth bird? Well, obviously you're an ignorant rube and unworthy of respect because you didn't know it's pronounced "gooeyduck" and it's actually an enormous mollusk. How in the inconsistent hell do you get "gooey" from "geo?" I mean, seriously, goddamn, STOP IT. I was remiss, then, in not noting that "geoduck" came to English from a PNW Native language. It's possible that the "geo" part was a word for genitals, which, if you look at the mollusk, you might understand why. Nevertheless, there is no excuse whatsoever for spelling it like that. It's not like the Lushootseed language used Roman letters like English. Just do what you did with every other Native word, like Manhattan or Potomac, and fucking give it an English spelling closer to how it's pronounced. |
| "Sure, astronomy's interesting, but what use is it?" And they said science and the arts were incompatible. It’s a well known fact that an 18-year-old Mary Shelley (then still Mary Wollstonecraft, after her mother) wrote Frankenstein at Lord Byron’s house (actually a rented mansion on Lake Geneva) after the poet, during a streak of bad weather, challenged his house guests to write their own ghost stories. So well-known, in fact, that they have to lead with it. The article goes on to describe, in Shelley's early-19th-century words, how she struggled to come up with said "ghost story." The problem, in hindsight, was that she needed to invent an entire genre of literature to get her story across. But then one night, when she had gone to bed late—after “the witching hour had gone by”—it came to her. “When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think,” she wrote. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw—with shut eyes, but acute mental vision,—I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. The state between waking and sleep is called "hypnagogic." That's from some Greek words for "leading to sleep" (or so I'm told). When I read those words for the first time, reading the novel when I was much younger, that's the first thing I thought of—that she'd experienced a hypnagogic hallucination, something kin to a dream. Explaining it might ward off any supernatural explanation, but it doesn't take away from her creativity and originality one bit. In fact, it enhances it: that vision wasn't sent by a muse or a god, but sprung like Athena from her own mind. Well. Back to the astronomy part: Reports have differed as to how long it actually took Shelley to come up with her story—one night? three?—and some scholars have questioned Shelley’s timeline. But ten years ago, astronomers at Texas State University used astronomical tables and topographic measurements to pinpoint the exact hour that fateful vision came to her. Like any good legend, it all hung on the position of the moon. And, honestly, that's a thin hook indeed. “There is no explicit mention of a date for the ghost story suggestion in any of the primary sources—the letters, the documents, the diaries, things like that,” Olson said. “Nobody knows that date, despite the assumption that it happened on the 16th.” And indeed, they determined that it would have been between 2am and 3am on the morning of June 16, by the light of a gibbous moon, which would, by then, have cleared the hill outside her window. The moon returns to the same general position in the sky roughly an hour later each day/night. Seems to me that there's quite a margin of error possible, here: was it 1 am on the 15th? 2 am on the 16th? 3 am on the 17th? Sure, I'm not an astronomer, but without more information, it sounds more to me more like "rough guess" than "pinpoint." Which is fine. Whatever. The time is less important than the story. “Mary Shelley wrote about moonlight shining through her window, and for 15 years I wondered if we could recreate that night,” Olson said. “We did recreate it. We see no reason to doubt her account, based on what we see in the primary sources and using the astronomical clue.” There was always the possibility that she made up the introduction, same as she made up the story. The literary conceit at the time was to always write as if you were telling a true tale. But from what I understand, the dudes in the house had similar narratives. In any case, sometimes the search itself is enough. And maybe we all learn a little something new. |
| Heading back to "JAFBG" [XGC] for a random prompt... Tell us about a time when you were proven wrong. Me? Wrong? Unpossible. Okay, no, that's a joke. I'm wrong a lot. Sometimes even right here in this blog. I'm an adult, though; if you can show me I'm wrong, I'll swallow some corvid and admit it. There's lots of things I could be wrong on, but until shown otherwise, I'll stick to my opinions. Things like the absence of free will, the arbitrariness of the Gregorian calendar, the reality of time and space, the mistaken definition of a Blue Moon (which is related to that Gregorian calendar thing), the absence of space aliens on or around Earth, the dangers of evolutionary psychology, and much more—all of those things are topics that I've discussed in here, that I have a high level of confidence in. But, say, if a flying saucer landed in my street and disgorged a three-tentacled, seven-eyed mauve creature with a tricorder and universal translator, well, I'd change my mind about aliens real quick. Assuming that I haven't decided to experiment with magic mushrooms, that is. Worse, though, are the things I'm absolutely certain of. Those are dangerous, because, like anyone else, I get stubborn, and invested in my ignorance. Let me just come up with an example off the skin of my ass: Long ago, when I was married, my wife bought a shower curtain. This is not such an unusual thing, I think; I'd been using the same shower curtain for way too long, and I can own that. Fine. This particular one didn't even have any designs; it was just the clear plastic kind that hangs down inside the tub to keep most of the shower water inside. She also bought a bottle of, I don't recall the brand name, Tilex or something. Used for spraying down the shower tiles after use, supposed to keep mold and mineral scale from showing up. Again, something I'd been neglecting. What can I say? I lived (basically) alone before she moved in. Had housemates, but also had another bathroom for them. So I proceeded to, every time I took a shower (which, contrary to what you might have inferred from all of the above, was every day), spray down not only the tiles but also the shower curtain, on the (what I thought at the time was a) perfectly sound principle that it would keep us from spending money on another shower curtain for a while. She found out that I was doing this and we got into an argument. "We can just buy a new shower curtain" was basically her position on it. I disagreed; a shower curtain, like any piece of furniture, should last a lifetime. That was my position. It was years—years—later that I had an epiphany: A bottle of Tilex (or whatever) was like five bucks. A clear plastic shower curtain was like ten bucks, and takes about five minutes to install. The epiphany was that all the Tilex I had been blasting on the curtain would end up costing more than it would to, as she suggested, simply replace the shower curtain every year or so. So, from a purely financial perspective, I was completely, utterly, incontrovertibly, wrong. Now, I could still argue that, environmentally, I was in the right, what with all the plastic waste and all, but to be perfectly honest, that didn't enter into my calculations. Thing is, by then, we'd already separated, and I didn't feel the need to confess my wrongness to her at that point. These days, I use two shower curtains: the inside clear plastic one which gets replaced every year or so (environment notwithstanding), and an opaque cloth outer one. I'm not even sure why; I don't share the bathroom with anyone, so it's unlikely that somebody would come in while I'm showering. I just like the design, which has cats. That epiphany, though, made me wonder: what else am I sure of that just isn't the case? As I'm no longer married or otherwise partnered up, there's no one to set me straight on these things. Not even my cats. The only time they complain is when I'm five minutes late with their dinner. So, yes, I was wrong. And probably still am, but if so, I wouldn't know it. |
| Today's "You're Doing It Wrong" article is from, not Lifehacker for once, but Quartz. Hahaha. Yeah. Right. Eight hours a night isn't enough, whatever income you're making isn't enough, sex twice a day isn't enough, and one slice of pizza definitely isn't enough. I suspect this article was written by a cat. For something that we spend a third of our lives doing (if we’re lucky), sleep is something that we know relatively little about. “Sleep is actually a relatively recent discovery,” says Daniel Gartenberg, a sleep scientist who is currently an assistant adjunct professor in biobehavioral health at Penn State. "Discovery?" As anyone who has lay awake at night contemplating the complexities of the universe can attest, sleep is a slippery beast. Reminds me of the old joke about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac, who stayed up all night wondering if there is a dog. There are also many, many misconceptions about sleep: that you can “catch up” on the weekend for lost hours of shuteye. Oh? See "Sleeper Agent" That you can get by on four hours’ sleep a night. You can, for a little while. Source: experience. That a nip of whiskey before bed helps you sleep better. Even I, with my alcohol-positive lifestyle, knew that. I just don't use it as an excuse NOT to drink. Even that eating cheese before snoozing causes nightmares. I rather enjoy eating just before bedtime. It usually results in the most vivid and memorable dreams. That could be a kind of placebo effect, but who cares, if it works? To set the record straight about being horizontal, Quartz spoke to one of the world’s most-talked-about sleep scientists. Yawn. He’s also an entrepreneur who has launched several cognitive-behavioral-therapy apps, including the Sonic Sleep Coach alarm clock. So this whole thing is an ad. A crummy commercial. Oh well, at least it's free, unlike most interesting stuff on the internet these days. Some topics we cover: why 8.5 hours of sleep is the new eight hours Spoiler: It's not, really. They're including time trying to get to sleep and wake up and coming up with "total bedtime." the genes that dictate if you’re a morning person or a night owl Like that's going to change anything, except that now you get to blame genetics for something. why you should take a nap instead of meditating Finally, an idea I can wholeheartedly support. how sleep deprivation can be a tool to fight depression Another spoiler: this is, to say the least, disputable. why sleep should be the new worker’s rights Right, like anyone has time to fight for worker's rights while holding down three jobs and a side hustle. and tips on how to get a better night’s rest (hint: it’s not your Fitbit) I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the answer is the Sonic Sleep Coach Alarm Clock. The rest of the articleadvertisement is in interview form, and I won't reproduce much else from it. It's actually pretty interesting, and covers more than just the topics I just listed and snarked on. So reading it shouldn't put you to sleep. |
| Now, one from "JAFBG" [XGC]: What's the stupidest question you've ever been asked? As tempted as I am to glibly answer, "This one," that would be both unfair and untrue. The problem is, out of all the stupid questions I've been asked, it would be very difficult to pick just one. Plus, my mind blanks on most of them. I selectively edit them out just like I edit out the stupid questions I've asked, except at 3 am when I lie awake going "Why did I ask that lady with the chihuahua if her dog was a Dachshund?" (Or whatever.) Everyone's mind blanks at some point, even mine. I've never worked retail, though, so I suspect I've been spared the worst of the depths of derp. Things like pulling an item off of a display with a great big ALL ITEMS $4.99 sign above it, with $4.99 stamped on each instance of the item, and then turning to the nearest employee and going "Excuse me, how much is this?" It's a good thing I don't work retail, because in such an instance, I'd be sorely tempted to go, "That? Oh, that's fifteen bucks, cash only, and I can help you with that." Anyone smart enough to ask a question has enough intelligence to realize that they don't know everything, so I tend to be somewhat forgiving (believe it or not) of ordinary stupid questions. There are exceptions, though, like when someone asked me "Why isn't there a White History Month?" (If you need to know why that question is stupid, go Google it before asking me.) Some questions seem stupid, but they're really attempts to strike up conversation. At the moment, though, I don't always recognize that, but then, like four weeks later, I'd be like, "Oh, they were just trying to find something to talk about." Which leads me to what might well be the stupidest question I've ever been asked, which, in the grand scheme of things, really isn't all that stupid, but, like I said, I tend to blank these things out. Scene: I'm in a senior facility visiting a friend's elderly grandmother who, while physically less than able, still had her mind, hearing, and vision. We'd stopped at a convenience store to get some things for her and also for us. One of the things I got for me was a bottle of Coke. Like, the trademark wasp-waisted bottle with the red label and distinctive cursive Coca-Cola logo in white. Absolutely unmistakable for anything else. I pull this thing out and take a slug. And Friend's Grandma asks me, "Do you drink Coke?" Before you pass it off as a "senior moment," like I said, this lady was sharp as nails, usually. If I'd been less stupid myself, I'd have answered something like "No, I just use it to clean battery terminals." But no, I was taken off guard by being asked if I drink Coke as I was sucking on a bottle of actual Coke. So I think I just nodded. Again, though, it occurred to me like a week later that she was just trying to find an entry point to a conversation. Such a thing, however, is the nature of some stupid questions, and if you can't tell the difference, there in the moment, between actual stupid questions and awkward overtures, well, then, who's really the stupid one? |
| Behold, an article related to writing. From Cracked: Writing is inventing, and many everyday words and phrases have come from the magnificent and maddening minds of screenwriters. And from me, though I haven't managed to convince anyone else of that. Someone yells “Derp!” and we immediately think BASEketball. ...No. Never saw it. A person says “red pill” and up pops The Matrix in our noggins as we try not to spontaneously combust. And there I immediately dismiss anything the person has to say. Not because of The Matrix, but because it's been appropriated by asshats. Come to think of it, I wonder who came up with "asshat?" Turns out it's not all that clear , but the Coen brothers seem to have had a hand in it, or at least a finger, so that's okay.Now, as usual, this is a countdown list, with 12 items. I'm not going to comment on all of them. 11. ”Catfish” The 2010 documentary, Catfish, was the first to coin the term describing a person who scams someone by using a fake identity. Huh. Seems to me it was older than that. Maybe that was just the practice, which is indeed much older than that. 10. ”Gunslinger” It turns out that no one called those supposed gun-loving sharpshooters of the Wild West “gunslingers.” The term was coined in the 1920 Western movie Drag Harlan, and has become a staple term ever since. Quick, someone alert Stephen King. Also, don't bother with the movie. 7. ”Google” Thank Buffy the Vampire Slayer for being so tech savvy and turning “google” into a verb. The moment happened in the 2002 episode, “Selfless,” in which Willow asks Buffy: “Have you googled her yet?” Almost every company wants their brand name to become generic. Like Kleenex or Band-Aid, or Coke. Unless, of course, it's pernicious, in which case, lawyers get involved. 5. ”Nimrod” Another word that was already in existence — its original definition means “skilled hunter” — but was changed in meaning thanks to Daffy Duck from Looney Tunes fame who used it to insult hunter Elmer Fudd, implying that Fudd's “a buffoon.” This one, I knew. Nimrod is from the Bible. I like Looney Tunes' take on it better. 3. ”Friend Zone” Written as part of Joey Tribbiani’s dialogue in “The Blackout” episode of Friends, the phrase took a while to catch on and, perhaps, would've been lost in the ether … if it weren’t for every second online publication writing a puff piece about the dreaded and, let’s face it, entitled concept of being “friend zoned.” Pretty sure I remember that from before, too. But I could be wrong. Also, I never saw a single episode of Friends; it was on during the time I swore off (and at) television. There's lots more at the link. Words have power, and if you can come up with one that sticks, well, that's really fetch. |
| Let's tackle another prompt from "JAFBG" [XGC]... What's your opinion on people who are uninsured seeking donations after disasterous events? Honestly don't give a shit. Everyone knows, or should know, that insurance companies are wankers. Just the other day, I saw an article about how some of them lowballed payouts for their customers facing hurricane losses in the Wang of America. I apologize for the New York Post link, but I saw the same story in WaPo (which is more respectable but paywalled).It’s been more than four months since Hurricane Ian ransacked Florida’s Fort Myers Beach — but many residents are battling with insurance companies, and one family says they’ve been offered just $500 compensation for their house, which was left unlivable. To be fair, lots of homes in the Wang are unlivable, hurricane or not. But generally not the ones in Fort Myers Beach. In any case, the point is, insurance of any kind is kind of a gamble. Not like mad-money casino gambling, but even absent corporate shenanigans, you're paying for peace of mind. If nothing ever happens to your (whatever), then all that money was, in hindsight, wasted. But only in hindsight. Meanwhile, insurance companies have actuaries who, like the oddsmakers in a casino, determine, in aggregate, how much they have to charge in relation to expected payouts from claims in order for the CEO to buy a second (insured) yacht. I'm not saying it's a scam, though it sometimes is. But the odds are not in your favor. It's largely about risk management, and while the odds are low that something bad will happen to your house (unless you live in Florida or near freight train lines), in the event that it does, the consequences, if you're not insured, can be doubly catastrophic. Now, if you take the risk and don't get insurance, that's on you. Asking for donations? Well, it's not like you're, say, a bank demanding taxpayer bailout money; those donations are entirely voluntary. If someone feels sorry enough for you and has extra cash, so what? None of my damn business. One would need to be mindful of the tax consequences, which I'm unclear on. Gifts are generally not taxable by the IRS in the US up to a certain amount; and, over that amount, oddly, as I understand it, the taxes are the responsibility of the donor, not the recipient. No, I don't understand it. No, it doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't have to make sense. But then (again based on my limited understanding), insurance payouts are also nontaxable. And I have less than no idea how other countries handle it. I mean, I wouldn't give 'em a dime. But that's just me being an asshole. |
| So Daylight Slaving Time has started now. Here, anyway. Not everywhere, thus leading to mass unnecessary confusion. Speaking of time and confusion, my random generator gave me yet another entry from 2009, part of a series of blog entries expanding upon a list of things to know about Me. Clear? Good. The entry is "WTC" .The bit of Me-trivia at the beginning: 14. I stood atop the World Trade Center when there was a World Trade Center. I don't remember if it had a 13th floor. Which really doesn't make complete sense unless you know that the previous entry started out with "13. I chuckle whenever I see a building that doesn't have a 13th floor." I've rambled about 13 fairly recently; no need to bring any of that up again. Back to today's highlighted entry: Actually, I was there two or maybe three times. Fantastic view when the weather was clear. At least once as a tourist, and once on business. The tourist thing took me to the observation deck, which was cool. The business thing (I was running errands for my aunt) was actually kind of more interesting, because I got to see parts tourists usually didn't. Now... there's a link at that site. It's dead. (Actually, both links are dead.) The purpose of the link was to show that I'd discovered that the WTC towers did, indeed, have 13th floors. Before you go saying "See? Obviously it was unlucky," consider this sole surviving quote from the now-dead link: Both towers of the World Trade Center had occupied 13th floors and, ironically, after hijacked planes slammed into the twin towers on that fateful day, media accounts of harrowing escapes told of many rescues from the 13th floor of both the North (1 World Trade Center) and South (2 World Trade Center) towers. For those survivors, luck began on the 13th floor. Well, first of all, actual luck would have involved not having the towers collapse. Second of all, that's flagrant misuse of "ironically." But still, an interesting take on things. In reality, the number 13 had fuck-all to do with the events. The important thing is that I Was There. Just not on that day. Lucky me. |
| Today's financial advice is brought to you by Lifehacker. Lifehacker: You're Doing It Wrong. Here’s How Much Emergency Cash You Should Keep at Home Having some cash salted away in your home is a really useful thing. Wait, wait... we're supposed to have cash that we haven't spent yet? In many places, cash is no longer king. While you still can manage to live a cash-only lifestyle if you want to, few of us do. Yeah... not really. Depending on what you mean by "lifestyle." Some of us don’t even carry cash at all, relying on our phones and credit cards, tapping and swiping at stores and using apps like Venmo or Cash App for personal transactions that would once have involved passing a wad of crumpled bills to someone. Beggar in the median the other day: "Can you help out?" Me: "No cash." Beggar: "I have Venmo." Look, I'm not trying to rag on the legitimately homeless here, but these median beggars generally aren't. Even when we talk about the necessity of an emergency fund, we’re talking about money in a bank account, not cash stuffed under a mattress. If I were robbing a house, under the mattress is the first place I'd look. Followed by sock drawer. You should express some creativity in cash caching, like, say, the toilet tank. (Note: I do not keep cash in my toilet tank; this was just an example.) Money in a bank will earn interest, be insured against robbery, and will be accessible in some way no matter where you are. This comes up in my queue the day after a bank fails. In fairness, the depositors' money was insured and the FDIC did its job. Shareholders are boned, but that's the risk they take. But cash can still be useful. And in an emergency, cash can even be necessary. That’s why you should definitely keep a modest amount of cash at home. But how much? I've said this before and I'll say it again: Come the collapse of civilization, bitcoin will be worthless (well, more worthless). Gold will be worthless, because other than being shiny, it's useless in an apocalypse. Cash, though, will still have value, because they won't be making any more of it. But your best bet is to stash away coffee, chocolate, and cigarettes. As for how much cash, well, to some, a modest amount is a million dollars. If you have that stashed away, please let me know. I'll check your toilet tank. It’s true that in most day-to-day operations no longer require cash, so keeping a stack of bills in a home safe or hidden away somewhere might seem like a waste. Just be aware that there's an opportunity cost involved. When it comes to cash, it’s best to have enough to get you through a week or so of paying for fundamentals like gas for your car and generators, groceries, necessary prescriptions, and maybe a night or two of emergency housing like a hotel or motel room. I wasn't aware that you could even use cash at a hotel. Anyway, the article goes into specifics. I'm not actually snarking on the idea; it's a good idea. It's just that, these days, for many people, the concept of "extra cash" might as well be "rainbow unicorn" or "pixie dust." |
| Another one from "JAFBG" [XGC] today. Choose one famous person and rant or rave - your choice. Funny thing about "rave." It's not precisely a contronym, like "cleave" or "sanction." But it can mean "talk crazy talk" and "heap praise upon." Unlike with "cleave," it's possible to do both. In fact, any raving I do about someone famous would probably be both. And praising someone presents risks. I seem to remember, several years ago, praising Joss Whedon as a director. Well. That didn't age well, did it? Once it was revealed he was behaving like a douchecanoe, no amount of good that he did could ever make up for that. No matter how great someone is, at some point, they'll turn out to be human after all, and you'll look like an idiot for ever supporting them, because people are unforgiving. So praising someone has its dangers. On the contrary, once someone reveals themself to be a cockmuffin, no amount of good stuff that they do can ever make up for that. They are always, forever, known as a cockmuffin, because, as I noted, people are unforgiving. That's why it's easier to rant about someone than to praise them: by ranting, you will always be right; if you rave, you'll eventually be laughed at for being so hopelessly naïve. The risk, there, even with public figures, is that there are laws about talking too much shit about someone. In the US, from what I understand, it has to be both shitty and untrue. But I don't understand much, so I try not to shit-talk a lot. But Muskmelon is too rich a target not to. Oh, I admit, I was, like many people, taken in at first by his apparent business sense. I loved the stuff SpaceX was doing, and cheered the first time I saw a rocket booster land itself. I thought Tesla was doing great work: introducing electric cars that didn't look or handle like you were doing penance. Good stuff, all of it. Top of the world. And then the raving began. I don't remember all the details. Something about a bunch of people trapped in a cave, and false accusations of pedophilia? Making promises he couldn't keep, like with tunneling machines or high-speed rail? Some half-baked (actually, fully baked and burnt) scheme for founding a colony on Mars? Managing to turn public opinion against autonomous vehicles by leaping them into production before they were ready? I don't know. The details don't matter. Taking over Birder and sinking it into the lava pits of Hell was just the cherry on top of the parfait of doom. I never liked that site anyway, so it barely affected me, but I still felt like it made Rachel Carson's prophecy of "Silent Spring" come true. I get the feeling that if he hadn't had those initial successes, Muskmelon would be just another cracked pot. But he did, which makes the crash-landing even worse. Maybe he should have paid more attention to his engineers. Not just the ones at the bird site, but the ones at SpaceX, who became really good at soft, controlled landings. Instead, he'll now be forever known as a lithobraking expert. |
| It's time, once again, to talk about one of my favorite subjects. The Brewer Updating an Ancient French Beer for Modern Drinkers Thomas Deck’s cervoise-inspired brew is herbal and delicious. Consider this: Belgian beer is, generally, delicious. British beer is, generally, delicious, though very different to Belgian beer. French beer is, generally, ass. I'm certainly not ragging on France, here. When it comes to wine, they're exceeded only by California (oh yeah I went there). But apart from the products of a few breweries near the borders of Belgium and Germany (which also makes fine brew), every French beer I've had has been disgusting. But. My experience is limited, and things change... But ancient Celtic inhabitants of modern France likely did indeed drink cervoise, an unhopped beer sometimes referred to as a gruit in English and whose consumption dates back to antiquity through the Middle Ages. The prevalence of hops as an additive to beer, and then, later, an absolutely essential part of the holy nectar, is relatively recent, compared to the long history of beer itself. So it's no surprise that some of these early, Roman-era malt beverages did not use hops. (Hops, by the way, are a preservative, extending the life of a beer—essential in pre-refrigeration times. They also add a bitterness that nicely offsets the sweetness of the malt and alcohol.) Traditional cervoise recipes, according to Malcolm F. Purinton, a professor who teaches the history of beer and alcohol at Northeastern University... Nice job if you can get it. ...were likely sweetly herbaceous, infused chiefly with a trio of yarrow, wild rosemary, and sweet gale or bog myrtle—though they could also include other herbs and spices, depending on what was available. Yeah, should have stuck to wine. This year, Thomas Deck, a brewer based in the Paris area, set out to recreate a cervoise for the contemporary Parisian. Though he made a few modern updates for stability and flavor, “it’s a little bit inspired by, like, druids cooking something in a cauldron, and throwing herbs into it,” he says. And we know druids did this because...? Well, never mind. Whatever the origin, it's beer, and I want to try it. Deck could well have been destined for a brewing career from early childhood. He grew up in eastern French Alsace, which brews around 60 percent of all French beer, according to Visit Alsace. But it took a chance encounter with American home brewer Mike Donohue while studying abroad in Washington, D.C., for Deck’s eyes to be opened to the world of craft beer, then nearly absent from the French scene. Ten years later, in 2014, he and Donohue founded their own craft brewery—Deck & Donohue—in the Parisian suburbs. It was one of the first in a land that, to hear Deck tell it, had barely heard of IPA. Yes. Alsace. Right up next to Germany. Like I said. Incidentally, the French having barely heard of IPA was a point in their favor. Of all the styles of beer available, that's among my least favorite. In the years since, Paris’s beer scene has witnessed a veritable explosion of craft brewers, many of whom lean hard into local sourcing, branding themselves with that oh-so-French word more frequently attributed to wine: terroir. Eh? Really? Shit. Now I have to visit Paris. Oh no. “Herbal is tricky because if you overdo it, it’s really disgusting,” he says. “You want it to be noticeable, but you don’t want it to be like … feeling like it’s an air freshener product.” This guy gets it. For his cervois experiment, he made the choice to deviate from historical accuracy and use a touch of Alsatian Nugget hops for stability and their bittering properties, boiling them to ensure that their aroma didn’t interfere with the flavor of the herbs. The result is more of a modern saison than an authentic cervoise, but Deck considers this an essential compromise. There's a reason some things fall out of favor; it's generally because something new and better comes along. In this case, it was hops. So I see nothing wrong with adding a little to make it palatable and stable, if less "authentic." Especially since they're not sure what "authentic" really means. This year, he has brewed just 2,000 liters of his cervoise-inspired beer. It’s fresh, herbal, and delicious, a simple, low-ABV, easy-drinking beer. If you didn’t know its backstory, you’d have no idea so much philosophy and research had gone into it. This rustic simplicity is reflected in its very name: Saison de Cueillette, or forager’s saison. Yep... if this war ever ends, I'm going to France in addition to Belgium. Tant de bières, si peu de temps. (So many beers, so little time.) I should make that my motto. |
| Time now for another prompt from "JAFBG" [XGC] There are many influences on a person's behaviour and personality - their upbringing, stress, mental health issues, pain, etc. At what point do you feel a person has to take responsibility for their own behaviour? One might be tempted to conclude that someone, like myself, who doesn't accept the idea of free will, would think that the logical conclusion is that none of us are responsible for what we do. This is arrant nonsense. Not that we don't have free will—that debate won't be settled anytime soon—but that we're not responsible. The way I look at it, what we do have is knowledge of potential consequences. As a simplistic example, I like to drink, and I like to drive, but I never combine the two because I know that a) it's hazardous to other, uninvolved (some might say "innocent," but that's misleading) people, and b) there are severe penalties for it. Lack of free will is no excuse for behaving badly. It's not a ticket to licentiousness or a justification for choosing that pizza over a big steaming plate of broccoli. (It also doesn't mean that our actions are predictable, any more than you can predict where an individual raindrop will fall during a storm. But that's irrelevant to the prompt.) It doesn't mean we can be irresponsible or avoid facing consequences. The awareness of potential consequences is baked into the background of every choice we seem to make. In other words, just because we could not, in hindsight, have taken a different course, doesn't mean that we can't strive to do better in the future, with updated experience and knowledge. That said, there are people who are genuinely unaware of consequences: the very young, for example, or the mentally ill. Where those lines are drawn can be (and often is) debated. So you ask me: at what point does a person have to take responsibility for their own behavior? Well, at all points... with exceptions. Even the US legal system recognizes that; you're not fully responsible until you're 18, and you can be declared incompetent even as an adult. The default, though, is that every person is responsible once they pass that magical milestone. Except, of course, when it comes to drinking; then, it's 21. We've also decided, as a society, that self-inflicted disinhibition doesn't absolve one of responsibility; see, for example, my drinking and driving note above. That extends, in my view, to acting like an asshole because "that's just who I am." So, to sum up, I don't fucking care what your excuse is; if you know it's wrong, don't do it. And if you do, accept the consequences. |
| Thanks, everyone, for supporting my humble [Narrator: it's not humble, and neither is Waltz] blog for not just one, but two Quill awards for 2022! I'll try to keep up the... whatever it is I'm doing right. Today's article is from 2019, and it's about food science, so in the last four years, things might very well have shifted to the other side, back, and then back again. Still, it's worth reading. The Rise and Fall and Rise Again of MSG You probably know monosodium glutamate from its link to so-called ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’ — and that’s precisely the problem I'm sure I mentioned MSG in here recently, in a comment about things named something that resembles "glute." I’m a casualty of the MSG subterfuge. I was fooled more than a decade ago — when I was still an impressionable high school student in the suburbs of L.A. In “the valley,” the main street — Ventura Boulevard — was beset by sushi spots, weed dispensaries, and of course, a bevy of Chinese restaurants. Subterfuge? Never attribute to malice what can better be explained by ignorance or incompetence. For the uninitiated, monosodium glutamate, more commonly (and ominously) known as MSG, is a chemical compound often used to enhance the flavor of food. It’s kind of like salt, only supercharged. There have been shifts in the demonization of sodium salts in general, too, but that's not what this one's about. So despite its unsettlingly scientific moniker, MSG is nothing more than sodium mixed with one of the 20 amino acids crucial to the human body. This is why I promote science. "Unsettlingly?" Come on. The substance was originally discovered by Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda in 1907, after he noticed a common flavor between foods like asparagus, tomatoes and the broth his wife made with seaweed. “Ikeda was as enterprising as he was curious, so soon after his discovery, he refined and patented a way to produce pure glutamic acid, stabilizing it with a salt ion to create what we now know as monosodium glutamate,” reports Mahoney. “He called the company he founded to produce MSG Ajinomoto (‘the essence of taste’), thus forever linking umami, the taste, with glutamic acid, the chemical. It remains one of the largest producers of MSG in the world today.” As the article notes, it would be nearly a century before umami was recognized as a separate taste along with sweet, sour, etc. If the name sounds Japanese, that's because it makes sense for it to be Japanese. “So at the beginning of the 1960s, a writer named Rachel Carson published a book called Silent Spring, which is about the dangers of pesticides and chemical companies.” Carson’s book, says Germain, spurred an idea “that became really popular in the U.S.” — namely, that chemicals and additives that are made artificially are inherently dangerous and able to harm you in mysterious ways. The only thing worse than ignorance is ignorance that's spurred on by fear-mongers. Lots of "artificial" stuff is, at worst, neutral; lots of "natural" stuff can kill you (see my many rants about mushrooms found in the wild, for example). And that's not even getting into the arbitrary line between the two. Germain continues to say that just a few years later, in 1968, Dr. Robert Ho Man Kwok — a then-recent Chinese immigrant — wrote a letter to the editors of the New England Journal of Medicine, stating that he got headaches when he ate in Chinese restaurants, but didn’t get them with his own home cooking, reasoning that the culprit might be MSG. “Almost immediately, this idea caught on and it just exploded,” says Germain. You know what this reminds me of? The bullshit "vaccines cause autism" paper, which was later revealed to be bad science—but only after permanent damage was done to society. Beyond the dubious nature of these studies, there’s also the simple fact that MSG isn’t unique to Chinese food — it’s in everything from Campbell’s soup to Doritos to Ranch dressing, not to mention that it’s naturally found in, for example, kelp. So why, then, did Chinese restaurants shoulder the brunt of the MSG hysteria? I'm going to guess... racism? “At the base of it, it’s really xenophobia that’s been passed down,” says food and travel journalist Kristie Hang. The best thing about being a pessimist is that you're either proven wrong, which is good, or proven right, which is also good. According to Wallace, in spite of the fact that you’ve probably heard someone tell you that they have an “MSG intolerance,” or that they’re “allergic to Chinese food” because of the MSG, the truth is, that’s physiologically impossible, considering “seven pounds of your body weight is actually made up of glutamic acid.” Eight, after ordering takeout. For those reasons, Wallace says that even though there’s been plenty of pressure advocating for an MSG ban, it’s always remained on the FDA’s “generally recognized as safe” food list. Probably known in California to cause cancer, but that's because, in California, everything causes cancer. Interestingly, Hang tells me that it’s not just non-Chinese people who share the anti-MSG opinion. “Chinese and Chinese-Americans have thought very lowly of their own food as well,” she says. “It’s a cultural perception, unfortunately.” Well, considering that what we consider "Chinese" food here isn't really Chinese, that's kind of understandable. That's enough for today. As usual, there's a great deal more at the article, if you're still unconvinced. |
| Let's do another one from "JAFBG" [XGC]. Tell us about something that should have gone viral because it's awesome as fuck but so far remains relatively unknown. Anything I come up with. Some examples:  The first decade of this century should be called the noughties. I came up with that. Sure, other people (notably the BBC) came up with it independently. And to be fair, it's a bit British; they use the word "nought" for zero more than we do. It's better than what I've seen here in the US: the "aughts." No. We shouldn't "aught" to do that. Given the mistakes that happened to bookend that decade - the security failures leading up to the 9/11 attacks, and the banking crisis toward the end of the decade - we were all very "noughty." A while back, right here in this blog, I invented a new word for becoming completely blitzed-out drunk. I knew we already had words for that, but I wanted one of my own. The word I proposed was "danchu." It just sounded right. Then, out of curiosity, I asked the Great Oracle if "danchu" already had a meaning. Apparently, it does. In Mandarin Chinese, it means to fade to black, like a movie scene. Highly appropriate, wouldn't you say? Calling social media influencers "influenzas."Some of my other neologisms have indeed gone viral, but not because I started them; someone else with more social clout came up with them independently. One example is the use of "copium" to describe certain internet articles that urge you to destress or whatever, to deal with the slings and arrows of outrageous endgame capitalism. One use of this word is "copium den." There are more, in both categories, but I can't be arsed to think of them right now. |
| Today's Revisited comes from 2009 (again), and concerns music and art. Unfortunately, some of the links are no longer valid. "Sniff" There's a band from England called Sniff 'n' The Tears. You may not have heard of them. In fact, I'd be really surprised if you know who the hell I'm talking about. And unless you've been following my blog for that long, you still probably haven't heard of them. Until now. Still one of my favorite bands. Point is, as it turns out, the band did other music. Quite a few albums, actually. Here's one you don't hear: And this is the first problem. There's a video embedded there, still, but it's not Sniff 'n' The Tears. It's some band I never heard of, in a clear case of cosmic cockery. I have no memory whatsoever of which song I posted back then, so I found one on YouTube that I like, for an example: Then I talked about the frontman's other accomplishment (which should make me hate him): Bonus: The lead singer, Paul Roberts, is also an accomplished painter. Most of their album covers, he painted. Here's a link to his art (WARNING! Artistic nudity): http://www.paulrobertspaintings.co.uk/ I also linked a particular image from that collection, which, sadly, no longer seems to be available. Still, lots of other great paintings there. Including at least some of the album covers. I knew I should have bought that print of Red Riding Hood and the Wolf when I had the chance. Dammit. |
| A timely article. Well, not really, but it's about time. That is to say, the subject of the article is time. Why the Flow of Time Is an Illusion Getting human feeling to match the math is an ultimate goal in physics. In his book Our Mathematical Universe: My Quest for the Ultimate Nature of Reality, Max Tegmark writes that “time is not an illusion, but the flow of time is.” Finally! Someone agrees with me. The article is from back in 2019, but it's not like time's gone anywhere since then. And it's largely a transcript of an interview from 2014; thus, there's more to it than I can cherry-pick. But this question, I felt was important: Is it part of the scientist’s job to explain why things feel the way they do? Part of his reply: As physicists, that’s ultimately what we need to explain: Why does everything feel the way it does? We shouldn’t be so naive as to think that things will always feel the way they actually are, because the history of physics is a long sequence of examples of where we realize that the ultimate nature of things is very different from how they feel. I have some issue with the phrase "ultimate nature," but this is an ad-hoc interview response, so I'm not going to quibble. Take temperature, for example. Temperature is a bulk effect of particle motion/vibration within an object or volume of fluid (air in this sense is a fluid). At the smallest scales we can contemplate, there's only vibration—not temperature. People don't say that temperature is an illusion, but I keep hearing "time is an illusion" even though it, too, is a bulk property of matter. Anyway. The interview goes on to talk about some other interesting aspects of time, space, the universe, etc., with a bonus Monty Python quote, which I'm always a sucker for. But I won't bore you any further, not today. |
| I'mma do some prompts from "JAFBG" [XGC] in addition to my usual fare. Selected at random, as usual, here's the first one: When is tough love appropriate (if ever)? Oh, joy, something that has nothing to do with me. Back before I developed my allergy to physical labor, I worked for a residential construction company in Northern Virginia, one specializing in renovations and additions. We were redoing some rich family's kitchen and were told "If the owners' son Dave [not his actual name, not because I'm trying to protect anyone after nearly 40 years, but because I forgot it] shows up, don't let him in, don't engage, call the cops. He's an addict and they're practicing tough love." Wouldn't you know it, about a week into the project, Dave shows up at the door. Fortunately, I was only like 20 at the time, and my supervisor handled things. It was my first exposure to the concept of "tough love," and it was also my only exposure to it. Not to be confused with "rough love," which I might or might not know something about, but I'm keeping this blog 18+. So I don't really have an opinion on it, other than this: If your kid is an addict, or otherwise self-destructive, okay, fine. I don't know enough about it to know if it's actually effective or not, and I can't be arsed to research it right now. Maybe reducing their dependence on you can reduce their dependence on other things, or nudge them into being responsible. Maybe not; maybe it just steers them toward other enablers. I'll never be in a situation to worry about it, so my interest in the topic is slight, about on the level of sportsball or the finer points of winning a tractor pull. The problem is, the concept got jumped on by the authoritarian segment of the population, and they subvert it into abuse. My son is gay? Send him to a re-education camp, and don't let him back into the family without a girlfriend. My daughter is practicing Wicca? Not in my house! She can only return if she agrees to be rebaptized and go to church every week. Someone who doesn't see the difference is part of the problem, not the solution. |
| Today, I'm going to talk about nothing. And no, despite the borderline clickbait title, this article isn't about philosophical nihilism, but the physical emptiness of space. Just had to clarify that because, well, in this blog, it could go either way. In 1654 a German scientist and politician named Otto von Guericke was supposed to be busy being the mayor of Magdeburg. But instead he was putting on a demonstration for lords of the Holy Roman Empire. With his newfangled invention, a vacuum pump, he sucked the air out of a copper sphere constructed of two hemispheres. He then had two teams of horses, 15 in each, attempt to pull the hemispheres apart. To the astonishment of the royal onlookers, the horses couldn’t separate the hemispheres because of the overwhelming pressure of the atmosphere around them. I vaguely remember seeing an illustration of this when I was quite young. Too young to fully comprehend the implications, but old enough to go "why didn't they use tractors?" Scientists, philosophers, and theologians across the globe had debated the existence of the vacuum for millennia, and here was von Guericke and a bunch of horses showing that it was real. To be clear: it's not that a vacuum has the power to glue hemispheres together. It's that the air pressure that surrounds and permeates us is actually quite strong. We just don't notice it because we (usually) have equilibrium to it. But the idea of the vacuum remained uncomfortable, and only begrudgingly acknowledged. We might be able to artificially create a vacuum with enough cleverness here on Earth, but nature abhorred the idea. My dad, whom I primarily credit with my interest in science (I think he's the one who showed me that vacuum drawing and tried to explain it to me as a kid), always told me "nature abhors a vacuum." I'm still skeptical of that old folk wisdom. If nature abhors it so much, then why is the vast majority of the universe vacuum? Scientists produced a compromise: The space of space was filled with a fifth element, an aether, a substance that did not have much in the way of manifest properties, but it most definitely wasn’t nothing. Lots to unpack here. I think that by "fifth element" they're not talking about awesome Bruce Willis movies, but to the old paradigm of earth, air, fire, and water, which, I feel obliged to point out, is Eurocentric in origin. And I've been saying for years that our current conception of "dark matter" reminds me very strongly of "aether," in that scientists have hypothesized a substance that has properties to fit observation, something without "much in the way of manifest properties." Aether turned out to be something else entirely (the aether bunny doesn't exist); will the same become true of dark matter? Not that there's anything wrong with that. You gotta start somewhere, and that's hypothesis based on observation. If it's disproved later, well, that's science. In the 1920s astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the Andromeda nebula was actually the Andromeda galaxy, an island home of billions of stars sitting a staggering 2.5 million light-years away. As far as we could tell, all those lonely light-years were filled with not much at all, just the occasional lost hydrogen atom or wandering photon. Poetic, but photons aren't particles of mass, so their presence or absence doesn't change what we usually mean by "vacuum." At subatomic scales, scientists were also discovering atoms to be surprisingly empty places. If you were to rescale a hydrogen atom so that its nucleus was the size of a basketball, the nearest electron would sit around two miles away. I didn't bother fact-checking this scale analogy, but it tracks, though it may be misleading to talk about the size of an electron. Within the emptiness that dominates the volume of an atom and the volume of the universe, physicists found something. Far from the sedate aether of yore, this something is strong enough to be tearing our universe apart. The void, it turns out, is alive. Oh for fuck's sake... okay, okay, calm down, poetic license. In the late 1990s, two independent teams of astronomers discovered that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, meaning that our universe grows larger and larger faster and faster every day. The exact present-day expansion rate is still a matter of some debate among cosmologists, but the reality is clear: Something is making the universe blow up. It appears as a repulsive gravitational force, and we’ve named it dark energy. This, not the creative prose, is why I saved this article. Because the irony doesn't escape me: the presence of vacuum (so to speak) was proven because teams of horses couldn't pull apart an empty copper sphere containing vacuum (again, so to speak). And now, vacuum-associated dark energy seems to be causing galaxies to fly apart. The trick here is that the vacuum, first demonstrated by von Guericke all those centuries ago, is not as empty as it seems. If you were to take a box (or, following von Guericke’s example, two hemispheres), and remove everything from it, including all the particles, all the light, all the everything, you would not be left with, strictly speaking, nothing. What you’d be left with is the vacuum of spacetime itself, which we’ve learned is an entity in its own right. That's right: there are degrees of nothing. When we talk about "vacuum" (and we're not referring to our Hoover), we usually mean relative lack of matter particles. In any case, there's more to the article, and it's an interesting summary on where cosmology is now as regards emptiness and universal expansion. But I've gone on long enough, and made the point I wanted to make. So I have "nothing" more to say today. |
| And suddenly, March. I made it through February. Yay. This one wasn't as bad as most, but still not as great as the February I spent on Maui. To celebrate, my final entry into this round of "Journalistic Intentions" [18+], which features a cat prompt: Lounge .Ever notice that most black cats aren't black? Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just the way genetics interacts with kitty development. You almost always see a bit of white on a black cat: maybe the whiskers, maybe just a patch of tuxedo white on the chest. Even absent that, fur color depends in part on lighting. My cat Robin, for example, is so black that she blends into both my blanket and my mood. Cat camouflage. Sometimes you don't even see her unless she blinks, revealing the yellowish-brown eyes most black cats have (those come from the same source: melanin). Her nose is black. Her toe beans are black. Hell, even her whiskers are black. Until you get her out into the glare of the accursed daystar, which is when you discover that okay, maybe she's not black; she's a very deep shade of brown. Robin is also usually silent. Making no noise at all when she walks, she passes her stealth check every time. I think I've heard her meow twice, both times very quietly, in the seven or so years I've lived with her. Unless the lights are on, the only way I know she's there is I hear the double thump as she leaps off of some place she shouldn't be. But sometimes, yes, like most cats, she purrs. Even Robin, though, has three fibers of white hair on her chest, as if to say "I'm not a black cat, really; I'm not." But being a cat person, I possess several statuettes of Bast, the Egyptian cat goddess, in her regal pose, like this one.  (I hope that link works). And Robin looks exactly like that when she's seated.Thing is, though, cat fur color is only loosely correlated with cat behavior. While I've never had a calico that wasn't neurotic, I've heard that many of them are not. Contrary to popular belief, some orange tabbies are highly intelligent. Not all white cats are deaf, though the lack of melanin is sometimes associated with deafness. And black cats certainly aren't bad luck; they're just hard to see at night. They're all just cats, and they're all different. I can't remember ever choosing a cat, so it's not like I seek out certain breeds or coat patterns. Mostly, they were chosen for me, by parents or roommates or wives. Or the cat itself. But one day I'd like to adopt a mysterious raven-black tomcat, and name him Edgar Allan Purr. |
| After yesterday's foray into the deep, murky, turbulent waters at the confluence of science and philosophy, how about a little comic relief, from Cracked? Well, let me guess: with apologies to Mark Twain, there are lies, damn lies, statistics, and marketing. Trendy food-makers, as you've undoubtedly noticed popping up in unprecedented numbers and diversity recently, have two goals: 1) relieve you of your hard-earned funds, and 2) make decent-tasting, more healthful foods. And, sadly, often in that order. Hence why they nearly always fail at #2. I find that people don't actually want good-tasting healthy food. If it tastes good, it must be bad for you, so you have to do penance. Thus: kale. Like non-GMO? Literally, most modern fruits and vegetables were the product of GMOs, and have been since before any of those words existed. Thanks, Cracked. I've been saying this for years. And gluten-free? Gluten is a protein that forms when flour is mixed with water, then kneaded. I think gluten itself has a marketing problem. The problem started with chemists, who called it that to begin with (and make no mistake, all foods are made up exclusively of chemicals; you're not going to find chemical-free food anywhere in this universe). The word "gluten" and its derivatives are all over chemistry; for example, monosodium glutamate. The marketing problem is this: the word resembles "gluteus maximus," which is Latin for ass. So your mind goes "it must taste like ass." Which it doesn't. Now, I know that there's a relatively small number of people who legitimately have a gluten allergy, and it's helpful for them to have those labels. But the marketing comes in when food companies make no effort in saying "this product contains gluten, which is actually quite tasty and not a problem for over 99% of you," instead labeling something "gluten-free" as if that's some sort of health benefit. But trendy food-makers also like to make you think their snack foods, especially chips and crackers, are less fattening than their run-of-the-mill, blue-collar competitors. Sure, and once you label something as "healthier and less fattening," people will eat more of it. Which of course is the whole point of marketing, but it's no better for the consumer to eat two bags of 500-calorie crisps than to eat one bag of 1000-calorie crisps. And yet: But once you check the nutritional info, you'll see that the calories are nearly identical to regular potato chips. Additionally, the vitamin and mineral profile isn’t much better. It's almost as if one would be better off eating an actual vegetable rather than a starch (which is a carbohydrate and gets converted into sugar). Not to mention the glut of gussied-up tortilla chips, with flashy labels and prominent boasts of "red quinoa" and "multigrain" and other buzzwords to conceal that you're eating a corn chip with a sprinkling of birdseed tossed into the industrial mixer. I'm just leaving this here because it made me actually LOL. I have a thing for Frito's. Ever see the ingredients list on Frito's? "Corn, corn oil, salt." That's it. No preservatives (apart from the salt), no monosodium glutamate (not that there's anything wrong with that), and not a single polysyllabic chemical word. I'm not saying they're good for me. I'm just saying they're pretty simple. Other trendy treats will assure you that they're "naturally sweetened" and that their cookies, bars, or balls eschew evil sugar for the inherent, wholesome sweetness provided by dates or coconut. Sounds great, except there's not much difference, especially since dates and coconuts are among the most calorific things you can stuff in your mouth. While this article focuses on calories, I'm aware that there are other measures of the "healthiness" of a food. What they are, though, is still being debated, and I don't trust nutritional science as far as I can throw it (mainly because much of it is funded by these same food companies, so there's an incentive to get the results they want). Plus, though many will hate reading this: sugar isn't evil. So the best way to chisel at those love handles is to track our total caloric intake and not worry so much about the source. Or to make a soul-pact with Lucifer; your choice. Jury's still out on that, too. My understanding is that white sugar is simple carbs (bad) while brown sugar is more complex carbs (not as bad). But who knows what they'll figure out next? Meanwhile, I'm not going to worry too much about it, but, as always, I'll be aware of marketing gimmicks. |
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