%%USERNAME%%    %%ACCWORDS%% %%ONOFF%% |
 |    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. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning Best Blog in the 2021 edition of [Link To Item #quills] !](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quill Award 2
[Click For More Info]
2022 Quill Award - Best Blog - [Link To Item #1196512] . Congratulations!!!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quill_Award_2-1375927_6.gif) ![Merit Badge in 30DBC Winner
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning the Jan. 2019 [Link To Item #30dbc] !!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-30DBC_Winner-2064535_14.gif) ![Merit Badge in Blogging
[Click For More Info]
Congratulations on winning an honorable mention for Best Blog at the 2018 Quill Awards for [Link To Item #1196512] . *^*Smile*^* This award was sponsored by the blogging consortium including [Link To Item #30dbc] , [Link To Item #blogcity] , [Link To Item #bcof] and [Link To Item #1953629] . For more details, see [Link To Item #quills] .](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/type-Blogging-2180.gif) ![Merit Badge in Highly Recommended
[Click For More Info]
I highly recommend your blog.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-Highly_Recommended.gif) ![Merit Badge in Opinion
[Click For More Info]
For diving into the prompts for Journalistic Intentions- thanks for joining the fun!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Opinion-1150.gif) ![Merit Badge in High Five
[Click For More Info]
For your inventive entries in [Link To Item #2213121] ! Thanks for the great read!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/Kudos-High_Five.gif) ![Merit Badge in Enlightening
[Click For More Info]
For winning 3rd Place in [Link To Item #2213121] . Congratulations!](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/general-Enlightening.gif) ![Merit Badge in Quarks Bar
[Click For More Info]
For your awesome Klingon Bloodwine recipe from [Link to Book Entry #1016079] that deserves to be on the topmost shelf at Quark's.](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Quarks_Bar-2046190_12.gif)       |
| From that ivory tower of knowledge known as Cracked, an article about words: As December draws to a close, it’s time for the world’s dictionaries to name their Words of the Year. Yes, this article was from last month. Most words feel like they must have been around forever. But all words are made-up, and some of them were made-up pretty recently. My goal in life is to make up a word and have it be widely used. I mean, sure, that's already happened: I came up with "rad" (the slang word, not the radiation level, which admittedly inspired me) back in the 70s. But no one knows it was me, and so no one believes me. In fairness, someone else might have invented it independently. But I'm going with "they stole it from me." Anyway. The article: 5. Boy And yet, the word we have now for a male child, “boy,” isn’t that old. It only came about in the 16th century. I've looked into this before. Maybe even here; I don't remember. Seems to me there's some debate about the actual origin. In this case, though, I didn't make it up. Before that, for a few centuries, you know what we called male children? We called them girls. We also called female children girls. “Girl” was a unisex word. I'm also unclear on the meaning of "we" here. 16th century would have been just after the end of Middle English. Not to mention there were hundreds or thousands of words added to English since "boy." 4. Guy For starters, the word was a name for around a thousand years longer than it was a common noun. Then came the big guy, Guy Fawkes. Ah, yes, one of the prototypical religious terrorists. To complicate things, I've heard this word pronounced both like it rhymes with "die" or rhymes with "key." It now refers to people of all genders, though that final shift wasn’t so much a gradual expansion of its meaning as an assumption that any word for men can also represent all humankind. No, that's not the assumption at all. We're moving away from that as a culture. The problem is that English now lacks a second person plural, and y'all won't adopt y'all, instead opting for "you guys." 3. Smoking We say a fire is smoking up the place when it creates smoke, so it’s pretty weird that we say the same thing when we (or ham) take in smoke. Not that weird at all. The smoke is happening whether you're inhaling or not, so sure, smoking is still being used in its older meaning, and this section is interesting but nonsensical. 2. Genocide Gotta admit, the origin of this word surprised me. Specifically, that it's less than a hundred years old. The word “genocide” was invented by one man: Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin... The book was published in 1944. By 1948, the U.N. wrote up a treaty criminalizing genocide by name. 1. Forecast Well, it's not like we needed a word like "aftcast." That would, however, be a fun synonym for "recent history." By coining the term “forecast,” FitzRoy made the idea sound magical, which wasn’t particularly conducive to convincing skeptical scientists. Sure, but I bet it got eaten up by the superstitious public. So, yeah, just some fun with words. Nothing too rad, but I didn't want to just yeet the article into the dustbin. |
| I just thought this one would be appropriate for this blog. How to beat maths anxiety  Getting stressed about maths is so common, yet there’s no need. With the right approach, you can even start enjoying it According to the author's bio, she lives in New York (or at least did in October of last year), but the article uses Brit spellings such as "maths." Just roll with it. It's a fairly long article, but there's very little actual math in it. The first section's purpose is to explain what this anxiety is: Do this maths problem: 34 minus 19. Do it in your head without paper, and then imagine another person watching you. How does that make you feel? Mark Ashcraft, a US psychologist who studied maths anxiety, described how people in his studies responded to solving similar problems. Many showed ‘unease or apprehension’. They had ‘trembling hands, nervous laughter, and so forth,’ he wrote. I am in no way frightened of math. More advanced topics are beyond me, sure, but if I encounter "what's 34 minus 19" or "what's 20% of 130," or whatever, I just do it. Unless, of course, someone is watching me, waiting to see if I'm slow or will get it wrong, so they can feel superior. So yeah, I kinda get that. You may not have realised that maths anxiety had a name at all, but if you’ve tended to go out of your way to avoid maths, it’s likely affected your life. As it's a part of nearly everything, it surely has. A while back, so the story goes, to compete with the quarter-pounder burger at you know where, a smaller fast food chain started selling a 1/3-pound burger (both measures were weight before cooking, but that's not relevant to the story; presumably, each would lose the same percentage of mass on the grill). They set it for the same price, figuring people would switch over to pay the same amount for more meat. But the promotion flopped, and it flopped because a lot of people saw 1/4, and they saw 1/3, and they concluded that since 4 is greater than 3, why should they pay the same thing for less burger? For a long time, I didn't believe this story. Obviously, some people are that ignorant, but surely not a majority. Most people know that 1/3 is greater than 1/4, right? It's right there on your measuring cups, for one thing. The failure must have had another reason: maybe the 1/3 pound burger tasted like shit. Maybe it didn't, but people wanted to stick with the familiar. Maybe they were fine with a 1/4-pound patty, but didn't want the extra calories. Maybe they didn't trust the rival (it was A&W, incidentally) to have the staying power of McDonald's. But no. People really are that ignorant. Maybe that's because of math anxiety; I don't know. I do know that when I had this confirmed, I still didn't want to believe it. It's not that I think people are unbearably stupid, or that I'm somehow superior because I can subtract 19 from 34 really quickly. Ignorance isn't the same thing as stupidity. But stubborn refusal to fix ignorance? There, I start having issues.Today, about 93 per cent of US adults say they have some amount of maths anxiety, and 17 per cent report high levels. That seemed high even to me, so I checked the source. Indeed, the study it came from said 93%. What's worse, though, is that the same report goes on to say, "In a sample of adolescent apprentices in the United Kingdom, approximately 30% of the study participants reported high math anxiety, and a further 18% were at least somewhat affected by it." While the sample is probably different, if you do the math (yes, really), that implies 48% in the UK. Way lower. So, anyway, after the explanation, almost as long as the thesis you have to write on a recipe page, there's the "what to do" section. I won't quote extensively from that, either, but I do have some comments: Learning a foreign language or reading Beowulf can be just as cognitively demanding or complex as manipulating numbers, yet people tend not to be as intimidated by these sorts of linguistic activities. I was way more intimidated at the thought of learning a foreign language, in school, than I was about math. Mostly, this was because of the group nature of the activity, I think. Long enmeshed in the myth is the notion that it’s not just that some people are better at maths, but that those people fall into certain groups. Most common is the cultural belief that men thrive more in maths (along with other STEM fields) than women. The math champion of my high school was a girl. She was cute, too. Sometimes I wonder what became of her. I know this is anecdata, but sometimes all you need is one example to break a stereotype. In this case, the stereotype is "girls are worse at math." Point is, I knew from personal experience that this wasn't true. Expressive writing is when you write for a specific period of time about your emotions and thoughts that come up in response to a stressful maths situation, such as sadness that you’re not good or smart enough, stress that you’re going to fail, or anxiety or anger that it’s too hard. See, even in an article about math, we can slip a little writing in. Teach maths to someone else I find this to be good general advice: if you want what you're learning to really sink in, explain it to someone else. So, like I said, lots more at the link. Even if you have math anxiety and aren't ready or willing to tackle it, there's good information. No pressure. There won't be a test later. Not here, anyway. Just be wary of fast food joints trying to trick you. |
| Today's spin of the roulette wheel (which is actually redundant, as roulette is probably translated as little wheel, so that would make it a little wheel wheel) brought me all the way back to January of 2007, not long after I started this blog. And it demonstrates why I've never really gotten anywhere with my writing: "Procrastination" I've been kicking myself for procrastination for far longer than that, though, but have never managed to stop actually procrastinating. As I've finally recognized it as a core feature of my personality, I've now given up trying to change. Or, I don't know. I keep meaning to. Maybe next week. As for the entry itself, it begins with what's now an Invalid Item link. What used to be there was a Daily Writing Challenge, which was an activity I found useful in prodding me to complete daily writing exercises. As I recall, it started out with just a few words, and gradually worked up to 2000. Kind of like that guy who lifted a calf every day. The calf kept growing, but he didn't notice because he got stronger. Until, one day, he's walking around with a full-grown ox on his shoulders. Left out of that story was how the ox might have felt about being used that way, but I imagine it's better than being yoked to a plow. Oh, yeah, Milo of Croton was the dude's name. I think he was a real person, but the ox thing was almost certainly mythological.From the entry: I'm sitting here procrastinating. I know once I get into the writing, it'll go fairly smoothly. Still, I'm putting it off like I always do with stuff. I had hoped I would learn better by now. Nope, Younger Me: you never do learn better. You just learn to live with it. Oh, and then there's the Fiction Writing class I signed up for. It begins Monday, and runs for like 9 weeks, once a week. I vaguely remember that class. It was a continuing education thing at the university. I remember they sneered at me for writing science fiction. Snooty lit-snob poseurs. Okay. Enough with the procrastination. Time to write. Well, maybe some dinner first... Anyone else writes that, I assume they're joking. I was not. That is truly how my mind works. Or, well... doesn't. |
| Last year, I featured several articles about planets. Over time, I hit every one... except this one, which has been languishing in obscurity due to the inherent randomness of life. Well, not life, but my system. Anyway, here it is, published way back in September of 2019: Oh, it deserves more attention, does it? Well, I can't disagree, but it's not like we can just stroll over there. You see, I fell in love with Neptune as a kid, back when I was in the second grade. Dude, I like astronomy too, but he's too old for you. We all had to read about a planet and tell a few sentences about why we liked it. I got assigned Neptune. What if you turned out not to like it? Huh? Did the teacher ever think of that? "Jupiter's pretty, but its radiation would kill anyone within a million miles." "Everyone's fascinated by Mars, but there's nothing there." Or, you know, phrased the way a second-grader would. And what if the teacher made them draw the planet? I mean, most planets are pretty easy. Circle. Appropriate color. Lots of black background. But whoever got Saturn would be in trouble. Anyway. In August of 1989, when Voyager 2 started sending back the first clear pictures of Neptune and its moons, the mysteries began giving way to marvels. Neptune is a world of giant methane storms and strange rings. Coincidentally, I read an article recently which noted that the Voyager 2 pictures were false-color, giving Neptune a much deeper blue than it would actually appear to have in the unlikely event that there was a human hanging out nearby. Ah, here it is. Looks way more like that other planet, the one I won't name.So, then the article goes into some of the things we know about Neptune, and they are indeed Amazing Science Facts (well, to the extent that anything we know can be). Something else even more wondrous happens in those deep layers of superionic ice. Carbon atoms get squeezed out of the methane molecules mixed in with the water, creating clumps of crystallized carbon. You probably know crystallized carbon by its more common name, diamond. According to laboratory simulations, the diamonds inside Neptune could have grown to be a meter wide. They are denser than the surrounding ices, so they sink downward toward the planet’s core. That’s right: Inside Neptune, it is raining meter-wide diamonds. Somewhere out there, according to some astronomers, is at least one entire planet made of diamond. I don't know, maybe it was like Neptune, but got too close to a star and its lighter materials blew away. Point being, diamonds aren't as rare on Earth as they try to convince us they are; and Out There, they're probably even less rare. A diamond deserves a ring, and Neptune has several of them — five of them, in fact. Unlike Saturn’s rings, these are thin, dark structures around the planet, too dim to be observed clearly from Earth. I also recently saw a JWST image of... you know, that other ice giant, which also has rings. Spectacular image. That telescope was meant to peer into the farthest reaches of the universe, and yet they pointed it at what's, comparatively speaking, right next door.Look, I'm purposely avoiding the puns, here. Just pretend I've already made the one you're thinking of. So yeah, my adult self agrees with my 8-year-old self that Neptune is a fascinating place. Voyager 2 gave us only a taste of what it’s really all about. And Neptune is just the prototype of a whole class of Neptune-size planets that appear to be common around other stars. When Voyager 2 did its thing, we had no evidence for planets around other stars. I mean, sure, we figured they had to be there, but no direct evidence. Now, we've found thousands. In general, the more we know, the more we understand. Sure, there are probably higher priorities than a mission to Neptune. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. |
| I do like a good literary takedown... though only when I agree with the person doing the takedowning. This one's from LitHub. The article is from last October 10, which is important to note because it starts out: Today is the sixty-sixth publication anniversary of Ayn Rand’s 1100-page magnum opus of unreadable doggerel libertarian science fiction, Atlas Shrugged. Using strikethrough style is, of course, a cheap trick, one where the writer is coyly covering their mouths, giggling, and going "Oops, did I say that out loud?" And it makes me laugh almost every time. Yes, even when I do it. Especially when I do it. In this case, though, the article author did it; I just reproduced it here. Still, calling AS "unreadable," even in strikethrough, is a bit unfair. It is, by some definition of the phrase, readable, in that it contains words, and those words are (as I recall) spelled correctly and ordered according to English grammatical practice into sentences and paragraphs. Set in a dystopian United States in which private businesses suffer under increasingly burdensome laws and regulations (isn’t it always the way), it’s the story of railroad executive Dagny Taggart and her lover, steel magnate Hank Rearden, and their struggle against the “looters” who want to exploit their productivity. Hence the "fiction" part. Here in reality, it is the "captains of industry" who loot the labor of the workers and exploit their productivity. Despite receiving largely negative reviews upon its release, the novel sold briskly and became a formative text for numerous conservative/libertarian ghouls politicians and thinkers... That's the trouble with science fiction, good or bad: there's always someone out there trying to make it happen. Sometimes, that's a good thing. Sometimes, it's not. One prominent conservative critic of Rand and her philosophy was William F. Buckley Jr., whose National Review published this scathing review of the novel by (Communist spy turned HUAC whistleblower turned book critic) Whittaker Chambers in December of ’57. So, the rest of the article is Chambers' original review, from which I'll quote only sparingly. It is the more persuasive, in some quarters, because the author deals wholly in the blackest blacks and the whitest whites. People being unable to handle nuance is hardly a new thing. So the Children of Light win handily by declaring a general strike of brains, of which they have a monopoly, letting the world go, literally, to smash. In the end, they troop out of their Rocky Mountain hideaway to repossess the ruins. Here in reality, those who we today lump into "billionaires" wouldn't last a week in the Gulch, not without the near-slave labor that cooks for and cleans up after them. It is then, in the book’s last line, that a character... Look, I don't care how terrible the book is, or how spot-on the review otherwise is; spoiling the last line is cheating. But the words keep shouting us down. In the end that tone dominates. But it should be its own antidote, warning us that anything it shouts is best taken with the usual reservations with which we might sip a patent medicine. Some may like the flavor. In any case, the brew is probably without lasting ill effects. And here the review falls apart, for here we are, two-thirds of a century later, and some people still treat that book like it was handed down from Mt. Sinai. |
| This one's gonna get controversial. Maybe even offensive. You can’t even pay people to have more kids These countries tried everything from cash to patriotic calls to duty to reverse drastically declining birth rates. It didn’t work. Continuous human population growth is unsustainable. At what point the crisis will occur is debatable, but if the increase in global population doesn't turn into a decrease, or at least a flat line, we'll find out. And if you go by country, rather than globally, well, now we're getting into xenophobia territory. If history is any guide, none of this will work: No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids. Good. In the US, the birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. We have to be very, very careful parsing the math in an article like this. There's the population, then the birth rate, then changes in the birth rate. If more people took calculus, the differences would be easy to explain. Instead, we get "When are we ever going to use this?" Well, now. Now is when we use this. Not necessarily the nitty-gritty math parts, but the knowing whether you're talking about position, velocity, or acceleration. That said, I didn't spend a lot of time working through the math. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950... Before birth control and while women were still treated as accessories. ...and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. The difference could be made up for with immigration from countries not listed, ones with greater-than-replacement-rate. Oh, but, xenophobia. Right. In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. Interesting phrasing. Every other listed country's birth rate is given as a decimal number. This one seems tailor-made for emotional reactions, containing as it does the word "die" right up front. The drop has frightened lawmakers and commentators alike, with headlines warning of a coming “demographic crisis” or “Great People Shortage” as economies find themselves without enough young workers to fill jobs and pay taxes. Fewer people means fewer consumers, which in turn means fewer necessary jobs but also lower corporate profits. I don't have a lot of evidence for this, but it's my impression that this is what drives a lot of the low-birth-rate panic: stock prices might fall. As for taxes, countries somehow find ways to cope. To stem the tide, the world’s leaders have tried everything from generous social welfare programs to pink-and-blue awareness campaigns to five-figure checks to veiled threats, all to relatively little avail. It takes way more than five figures (I'm assuming this is being translated to USD) to raise a kid from childhood to college-age, and way more than that if they actually do go to college. This is a false benefit, like when a new car purchase comes with a small rebate instead of, you know, just lowering the price of the car. I also wonder if there's a difference between "awareness campaigns" and "propaganda," and whether people are "aware" they're the same thing. In many ways, the falling birth rate is a success story — the result of young people, especially women, having more options and freedoms than ever before. And, as a result of that, there could be fewer people burdening the environment. If global birth rates were really dropping. Which they are not. It's kind of like... you're working for a company, mainly doing your job at home. Then, one day, you get notice: "At ZZZ Corp, we care deeply about the environment, so, henceforth, we are no longer providing plastic coffee swizzle sticks or cups in the break room. In other news, all work-from-home is cancelled and now you have to commute in to the office." Fewer births do have real consequences for how families and societies operate. In 2010, for example, there were more than seven family members available to care for each person over the age of 80; by 2030, there will be only four. Providing free labor. An aging society also means fewer workers in key industries and fewer people paying into programs like social security. The "fewer workers" thing is bogus, because it also means, as noted above, fewer consumers. Also, the more companies have to compete for labor, the better wages are likely to be. That's just the free market at work. We're starting to see some of that already. As for "programs like social security," here in the US at least, it was set up assuming an ever-growing population. Bullshit assumption. But again, we could be making up the difference via immigration. A kid is a non-contributing person for at least 15 years, probably more (except in some states that have embraced the idea of putting the little bastards to work in the factories). An immigrant, assuming they're an adult, could start contributing right away. These prospects tend to elicit panic among conservatives, who take a moralistic — and sometimes xenophobic — tone in addressing the issue. Like I said. Bonus points to the author for using "elicit" properly, instead of "illicit," which means something else entirely and isn't even the same part of speech. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has warned of the dangers of the “childless left” and its “rejection of the American family.” Look, I'm not calling out the conservatives, here; the article is. But if he's correct, then wouldn't that mean fewer libby-libs and more conservatives? Assuming the kids pick up on their parents' politics, which isn't always the case. In China, male Community Party officials at a recent meeting on women’s issues bypassed any talk of gender equality and instead urged women to “establish a correct outlook on marriage and love, childbirth, and family.” Well, look at that. The CCP aligned with US conservatives. Who could have predicted that? Except everybody. But concerns about birth rates go beyond the rhetoric of right-wing politicians. Just leaving this here to show that it's not necessarily a left vs. right issue. So far, most countries have tried either asking people nicely to reproduce or sweetening the deal with money. If that doesn’t work, however, restricting people’s reproductive choices may be on the table, especially in more autocratic regimes. Already happened in the theoretically-not-autocratic US. Fears for the future may also play a role in declining birth rates around the world. “Young adults are living in a world which is characterized by many crises,” from war to climate change to the erosion of democratic norms in the US and elsewhere, said Jessica Nisén, a family demographer at the University of Turku in Finland. In other words, as I've said before, choosing whether or not to have kids can be an ethical decision. That leaves policymakers with the question of what they can do. For a lot of experts, the answer is nothing. “I’m basically against having birth rates be a policy target,” Cohen said. “Anything you do to influence this is going to have very probable bad side effects, and any benefits you get are likely to be very small and very long term.” I believe that was meant to be "very short term." They might also recognize that shrinking family size isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Lower birth rates around the world could lessen environmental degradation, competition for resources, and even global conflict, Wang Feng, a sociology professor at UC Irvine, writes in the New York Times. I'm going to give the author credit for including this, even though it's way down in the article. Lawmakers might just have to accept that they can’t control how many children people have. Which won't happen so long as their corporate overlords are screaming for cheaper labor. |
| I saved the link to today's article because it's about a place I've been to fairly recently; and, of course, because it's about astronomy. Gotta say, actually seeing that telescope was inspiring, even if I did have to climb up flights of stairs in the rarefied mountain air to do it. Los Angeles was once the best place in the world to see the universe. Now, a lesser person might retort that Los Angeles is still the best place in the world to see stars, but I'd never stoop so low. Never, ever. The most important things we know about the cosmos were discovered in the early 20th century at Mt. Wilson Observatory. Mostly, that not only is space mind-bogglingly big, but it's getting bigger. It was here, 100 years ago, that Edwin Hubble noted a light in the distance that would lead to one of science’s greatest discoveries. Other sources say 1924 was the year, but this led me to check the publication date: "Oct. 3, 2023 3 AM PT." Someone was keeping astronomer's hours. And Mt. Wilson Observatory discovered what so many aging luminaries in L.A. have: Once your starlight fades, no one is quite sure what to do with you. See, it's not just me who won't admit to thinking of these things. With an annual budget smaller than that of some fancy L.A. parties, a nonprofit organization and volunteers have done a heroic job of keeping the grounds and telescopes open for visitors and the few scientists still working there. And I'm glad they do. Even if you're not a huge astronomy nerd like I am, the place is worth a visit for the scenery and views. The observatory sits at the summit of 5,715-foot Mt. Wilson, accessible only by a serpentine stretch of Angeles Crest Highway. It's not that serpentine, compared to some other roads I've been on in California. In 1908 the animals delivered a 60-inch wide, 1,900-pound mirror to collect light from the stars — the keystone of the largest and most powerful instrument of its kind in the world. And that wasn't even the final telescope mirror. The one Hubble used was 100 inches across. Based on the photo in the article, that one was delivered not by mule, but by some newfangled internal-combustion vehicle. So, just for comparison: 100 inches is a bit over 2.5m. The famous space telescope which is the only reason non-nerds have even heard of Edwin Hubble "only" has a 2.4 meter mirror, but it definitely wasn't delivered by mules... being, you know, in space and all. (The "being in space" thing was the real advancement; even discounting L.A.'s various forms of pollution, it helps to not have atmosphere in the way.) The human eye only collects up to 0.2 seconds of visual data before uploading it to the brain. A camera can collect light over a much longer period, which is why long-exposure photographs of the night sky contain far more stars than are visible with the naked eye. An astronomer once pointed out to me that the popular conception of telescopes as magnifying devices isn't really correct. They're actually light-gathering devices. Quite a bit of the article goes into the bio of Hubble and the history of his universe-altering (well, actually, his "our conception of the universe"-altering) discovery. Despite its august place in scientific history, Mt. Wilson was no longer the best place on Earth to do astronomy. Carnegie pulled its funding from the observatory and closed the big telescope in June 1985. Honestly, I'm surprised it lasted that long. There are actually several observatories (or former observatories) in the L.A. area. The most famous, and picturesque, isn't Mt. Wilson, but Griffith. It's located close enough to Hollywood that it features in many establishing shots of that area. It's a museum (and park) now, but it's an awesome museum. The article mentions it, along with efforts to keep Mt. Wilson open. As noted, science is mostly done elsewhere, now. Maintaining Mt. Wilson isn't about that; it's about recognizing its place in history. Everything's subject to entropy. The famed Hubble Space Telescope will eventually (like within a decade) de-orbit, and all we'll have left of it is a few stunning photographs, maybe some debris, and, of course, its additions to the ever-changing course of science. But this one, we could keep... if we have the will. |
| Especially for everyone who has "eat less food" on their resolutions scroll, here's a food article. Oddly, the URL for the site shows "Foods we don't use as intended," while the headline is basically the reverse. I wonder why that is. On the surface, the two phrases are semantically equivalent, but I wonder if there's some dark psychology at work there, because I'm paranoid. Like, maybe one of those phrases produces an emotional reaction more desirable to the website's advertisers (who I can't see because I'm running an ad-blocker—unless the listed products are actually paid ads, which I wouldn't put past them). Perhaps the URL version seems too judgemental compared to the headline. Or maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think it's important to notice word and phrasing choices. Anyway, thus ends the "writing" and "media analysis" portion of today's blog entry; let's move on to the article. As soon as a thing is born into the world, it begins to mutate, changing at a sometimes exponential pace, to the point where it might turn into something else entirely. This is especially apparent with human larvae. Take the supposedly innocent graham cracker, for instance. I think it's pretty widely known, now, that the graham cracker vomited forth from stultifying American Puritanism, intended to help people minimize pleasure and stimulation. Fortunately, now, it's just another cookie. They reiterate this in the list itself; I'm only highlighting select items here. 1. Corn Flakes Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who invented Corn Flakes with his brother William, did not care for sin, excess, or meat. So, the same perverted mindset that produced the graham cracker. 2. Dr Pepper Interestingly, Dr Pepper was not initially envisioned as a carbonated beverage but rather as a syrup to be mixed with carbonated water at the soda fountain. That's not really an "unintended use." The company itself switched to bottling. 6. Saccharin Saccharin, an artificial sweetener discovered in 1879 by Constantine Fahlberg, a chemist working at Johns Hopkins University, evolved from a laboratory discovery to a widely used sugar substitute. Okay, fine, sure, discovered by accident, like many things. But once discovered, it became a sweetening agent, and a sweetening agent it doth remain. Again, not an unintended use. I'm starting to think I'm not seeing any ads because this whole page is an ad. 8. Popsicles As the story goes, on a very cold day in 1905, little Frank Epperson was mixing soda powder with water out on his porch when he was suddenly called to dinner by his mother. Or perhaps it was bed. The point is, he forgot his concoction outside overnight only to find it frozen solid the next morning. Luckily, the stick he'd been using to stir it was still stuck in the ice, and when he pulled it out, the popsicle came with it, revealing a glorious new invention. That origin story is faker and less believable than Spider-Man's. 9. Worcestershire sauce This tasty condiment with a complex flavor profile owes its origin to a fortuitous experiment carried out in the early 19th century by chemists John Lea and William Perrins of Worcester, England. Leading to generations of Americans being utterly unable to pronounce the stuff. 12. Baking soda Before there was baking soda, or baking powder for that matter, bread and cake makers had to resort to the use of yeast to make their creations rise. Ooookaaaay, now I'm sure this is one big ad. Church and Dwight (the makers of Arm&Hammer) have been pushing alternative uses for baking soda on us for decades. Some of them even work. But baking soda soon went above and beyond its application as a leavening agent. It found use as a household cleaner owing to its abrasive nature and deodorizing properties. The fridge-deodorant thing, however, probably does not. 15. Aspartame This artificial sweetener emerged from the laboratory of one James M. Schlatter in 1965. Schlatter accidentally discovered its sweet taste while working on an anti-ulcer drug. A compound he was synthesizing got on his fingers and he tasted it, as you do in a lab full of potentially toxic and definitely mysterious substances. So... same origin story as saccharin. Aspartame has now found its way into a myriad of products, including diet sodas, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gum, offering consumers a guilt-free way to enjoy sweetness — aside from that possible cancer risk. At this point, if they can't replicate studies showing it can cause cancer, despite really desperately trying (studies often conducted and/or paid for by those with a vested interest in the matter, like, say, sugar companies), the only reasonable conclusion is that its cancer risk is no higher than baseline. And even if there were a small risk, you'd have to weigh that (pun intended) against the health problems associated with too much sugar/HFCS/whatever. Or you could just eat nothing but unsweetened graham crackers, I suppose. Can't call that living, though. |
| Same shit, different year. Let's see what the random numbers have in store for this first day of '24 (hey, that rhymed)... Uh oh, I gotta handle a New Yorker article while hungover? Curse you, random numbers! Has Gratuity Culture Reached a Tipping Point? Paying extra for service has inspired rebellions, swivelling iPads, and irritation from Trotsky. Post-pandemic, the practice has entered a new stage. I've chiseled tipping articles in here before... including one almost a year ago which used the pun in their headline before TNY even thought of it: "Tipping Point" Consequently, I'll try to limit my ranting to stuff I haven't covered before. I doubt I'll be entirely successful. Before screens, tipping, like a marriage proposal, was a private affair. No. People proposed in public prior to posting on Pinterest (or whatever). Tips can reveal hidden values or the rumblings of the subconscious. Mostly, though, they reveal who's an asshole and who's not, and a range in between. A waitress’s breast size, for instance, correlates positively with tip size. Correlation isn't causation. Maybe waitresses with ample bazooms provide better service. I should do a scientific study. Etiquette experts studied the so-called guilt-tip boom. And reached, mostly, the wrong conclusions. Apparently, we now tip assistant sports coaches (up three hundred and sixty-seven per cent) and theatre-box-office staff (up a hundred and sixty-one per cent). Okay, look. Those numbers are absolutely meaningless out of context. Used to tip a dime, now tip a quarter? That's a hundred and fifty percent increase. Also, the sentence itself reveals that "we" (not me) have always tipped assistant sports coaches (WHY) and theater staff, because if those started from a baseline of 0, there's no way to express an increase from that baseline as a percentage. I've long ragged about lots of things TNY does. Publishing long-winded, pretentious articles. Promoting a dense, meandering writing style (I've called it The New Yorker School of Not Gettiing to the Fucking Point). Even adhering to anachronistic style standards, such as hyphenating teen-age or using diareses. But one thing I've always appreciated (besides the comics, which I've always found rather amusing) is their facts. Until this article. It's not just the math thing, either. The gratuity, classically, functions as a “thank-you,” but it can also serve as a “sorry.” People most often tip in settings where the workers are less happy than the customers. The Freudian Ernest Dichter once described the compulsion as “the need to pay, psychologically, for the guilt involved in the unequal relationship.” Pretty much everything Freud proposed has been shown to be wrong. Consequently, I'm not going to take his followers' statements at face value, either, not without evidence. Also, I've never felt guilt (except on those rare occasions when I realize later that I should have tipped, but didn't). No, when I leave a tip, it's out of perceived obligation and/or generosity. Michael Lynn, a marketing professor at Cornell, has studied tips for forty years, beginning when he was a bartender in graduate school. “When you think about it, you go, ‘Why would people give up money they don’t have to?’ ” In restaurants, he has found, the answer has to do with social approval. Why would you give a gift to another person or to a charity? You don't have to. You'd have more money if you didn't. English coffeehouses were said to set out urns inscribed with “To Insure Promptitude.” Customers tossed in coins. Eventually, the inscription was shortened to “TIP.” This is the bit that pissed me off the most, though. And yes, I've ranted about this before, but no one listened. The word "tip" did not start out as an acronym. It's much older than the wordification of acronyms. The idea that it did is a false etymology, what I call a fauxtymology because while I hate other peoples' portmanteaux, I'm overly fond of my own. It's been thoroughly, completely, and definitively debunked, and anyone who still believes it has absolutely no business claiming to be an expert on tipping, or writing a book about it.And The New Yorker should be ashamed of itself for letting that get published. Shame. Shame. If I had a rolled-up newspaper, I'd bop them on the nose for it. Incidentally, "for unlawful carnal knowledge" and "ship high in transit" are also fauxtymologies. After that wholehearted nonsense, I couldn't trust any other assertions in the article. Might still be worth reading, but I doubt it's going to change any minds. Personally, I'd like to see tipping go away entirely, replaced by decent wages and bonuses like other workers get. But unless that happens (which it won't in my lifetime), we're stuck with it. Which doesn't mean we have to give in to tip-beggars in traditionally non-tipped positions. |
| Sundays are for reflection in here, and this year, New Year's Eve, which seems to be a popular day for reflection, happens to fall on a Sunday. The random numbers pointed me to an entry almost precisely two and a half years ago, during a somewhat memorable trip: "Elsewhere in Minnesota" As it was a travel update, no external links to deal with. I've decided to stay in the Minneapolis area until July 5. That decision (or rather, the illusion of decision) would end up altering the course of my life. Though, to be fair, any other decision, if one were possible, could have ended up way worse. In the entry, I proceeded to briefly describe a brewery visit. And this place brewed the most delicious mead I've ever enjoyed. This is still the case, though I don't know if their quality has changed by now, or if they're even still doing mead. I don't think I meant to be cagey about the name of the brewery; it's this one. I'd call it a happy mead-ium, but I'd never stoop so low. I can't recall a single other brewery that I've been to brewing mead... And I still can't, though I know they exist. This statement may have been misleading, because what I meant to convey that it's rare for a beer brewery to also make mead. Obviously, places dedicated to mead but not beer exist, and obviously, I've visited them. Four days after this entry, my car would get totaled and that would be it for traveling for well over a year, except for some excursions in others' vehicles. So I haven't been back to Minneapolis since. |
| One reason for learning a different language is to learn wonderful new curse words. Or, as this bit from Cracked points out, just words we don't have in English. ...except it's the end of December, so all I'm feeling right now is cold, and there are perfectly good English words for that. Are you going through something right now that you’re having trouble putting into words? Feeling a little je ne sais quoi, a little pomme de terre? Okay, that made me chuckle. If you’re unable to articulate what you’re experiencing, that doesn’t make your emotions invalid. It does make you want to reevaluate your writing career. As words are kinda important to writing, here they are now: 6. Saudade: Empty Sadness for What Is Lost I never encountered this word (from Portuguese) until just over a year ago. How do I know this? Because I blogged about it: "No Geese Involved" Unlike nostalgia, saudade speaks to a longing for something you’re sure to never experience again, which is a component of your sadness you need to acknowledge. That's not exactly what that previous article stated, once again demonstrating that one should never get one's wisdom from one source. 5. Ilunga: Eventually Unforgiving In 2004, linguists convened to vote on which word, in any language, is the hardest to translate. This was before "covfefe." The hardest word comes from the Tshiluba language from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The word is ilunga. An ilunga is a person who “is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.” That's... really quite specific. 4. Perendination: One Step Beyond Procrastination Oooh, I knew there'd be something in here that could describe me. In Latin, we have a word for putting something off for the day after tomorrow. When you do that, you perendinate, which is one step beyond procrastination. Procrastination is for amateurs. I must insist that this word be added to English immediately. Well, tomorrow. Well... one of these days. 3. Kummerspeck: Emotional Overeating When you’re sad — not just from saudade, but for various other reasons, perhaps resulting from your perendination or being an ilunga — the clichéd move is to grab a pint of ice cream and eat it, right out of the container. Can't. I don't buy ice cream anymore, precisely because it's not a pint anymore. There's a word for that process, too, but I hate it. In German, they have a word for this type of binge: kummerspeck. The -speck refers to pork fat, so the cleanest translation into English is “grief bacon.” Praise the lard! 2. Mudita: Pleasure in Others’ Joy If you take pleasure in someone else’s suffering, we have an English word for that: schadenfreude. Well, it’s not an English word exactly. It is now. If English speakers use a word enough, it becomes English. How much is enough? Depends on who you ask. But saying schadenfreude isn't English is like saying kindergarten isn't English. In Vietnamese, they call it hỷ. In Chinese, they call it xǐ. In Japanese, they call it ki. Several other languages call it mudita, which was originally a Sanskrit word and is a whole concept in Buddhism. Ironically, Buddhism (at least from this outsider's perspective) is more focused on suffering. 1. Swaffelen: Penis Smacking And this one, you're just going to have to go to the link to see for yourselves. Bonus: it's Dutch. Sort of. |
| Ever read something just to remind yourself how good you've got it? For me, that's pretty much everything from Outside, especially this article: The Joys of Cabin Living in Alaska Want to know what domestic bliss looks like? A rundown cabin with no electricity on the edge of rain-soaked Alaskan wilderness. Huh... I didn't know that "domestic bliss" was a synonym for "literal Hell," but in retrospect, it makes sense. Article is from 2013... not enough time for climate change to significantly affect the subject matter or my feelings about it. Yet. My two brothers and I, along with a buddy of ours... own a shack at a place called Saltery Cove on Southeast Alaska’s Prince of Wales Island. Morbidly curious, I looked it up. It's almost as south as you can get and still be in Alaska. The northern boundary of British Columbia is quite a ways north. The place is still way too north. The shack is about 36 feet long and 12 feet wide, with the warped shape and discoloration of a cardboard shoe box that’s been soaked in the rain. Luxury! The appeal of our shack isn’t so much the structure itself, but rather the bare-bones nature of its locality. Surrounded largely by the Tongass National Forest, it’s a place where black bears gnaw mussels from the rocks in what might be described as our yard and killer whales pass by so close that you can hear them even with the door closed. Okay, fine, that would be kinda cool to experience. For, like, a day or two. But in truth that’s only half the answer. The other half is more difficult to explain and also a bit masochistic: Saltery Cove is a place where everything—the weather, the ocean, the mountains, the people, the trees, the animals, even the buildings—seems capable of kicking your ass in a very physical way. And in today’s increasingly tame and virtual world, where our primary sensations tend to be delivered by our Wi-Fi connections, a good old-fashioned ass kicking is something worth paying for. Bullshit. I mean, okay, you feel that way, fine. We gotta have differences of opinion, or else one spot would get too crowded. But to me, this is like saying, "I built myself a beautiful mansion, but I prefer the feeling of living in a drainage ditch." I prefer the simple life. By which I mean, if I'm cold, I press a couple of buttons, and then I'm not cold. If I'm too hot, I press the same buttons in a different order. Hungry? Buttons. Thirsty? Okay, no button for that, but there's a lever. Dirty? Knobs for that. Entertainment? Back to the buttons. Couldn't possibly be simpler, at least not until we further refine AI. No, I don't yearn for the complicated lives of my ancestors; they worked their asses off so I could sit on mine all day, and I'm ever so grateful and appreciative of them for that. Another way in which the cabin kicks my ass is through my wife, Katie. She often regards my purchase of the shack with that eye-rolling sense of dismissal that people will use when confronted with the subject of their spouse’s past girlfriends or boyfriends. And yet she puts up with you. I've never really understood people, and articles like this only add to my confusion. I went there with my brother Danny to fish salmon and halibut with one of Saltery Cove’s eight full-time residents, Ron Leighton, a man of mixed Native Alaskan and Irish descent who’ll tear your head off for tangling an anchor line and then send your kid a birthday present even though the nearest mailbox is an hour’s boat ride from his house. Ron’s résumé includes a tour of duty as a door gunner in Vietnam, a career as a detective with the police force in Ketchikan, Alaska, and a parallel career as a halibut long-liner. Gotta admit, though, that's the kind of person whose life seems tailor-made for writers. The article goes on to describe why it's such a wonderful idea to buy a cabin on the coast of nowhere, sight-unseen: in summary, the place was utterly trashed and they spent months cleaning up. Oh, well. It works for them. More space in semi-civilized areas for me, then. |
| Another reason to use good grammar and spelling: you'd be contributing to public health. Unless, of course, you're an evil villain whose sole purpose is to create as much chaos, illness, and discord as you can without getting caught. Summary: A novel study uncovers our physiological response to misused grammar. Researchers identified a direct link between grammatical errors and a change in Heart Rate Variability (HRV). This appears to be legitimate science, by the way. I don't know if it's been replicated or even peer-reviewed. It gives the answer I want, though, so I'm highlighting it. When confronted with bad grammar, subjects’ HRVs indicated increased stress levels. Hm. Someone should do a similar study for puns. A new study by professors at the University of Birmingham has revealed for the first time how our bodies go into stress-mode when hearing misused grammar. So, see? It's not just me or your English teacher. HRV captures the time between successive heart beats. The length of the intervals between a person’s successive heart beats tends to be variable when they are relaxed but becomes more regular when they are stressed. Now, that seems counterintuitive, but that's why we do science. I don't really need to comment further; the article is there at the link. If I weren't lazy, I'd turn this into a villain's superpower and write stories about it. But I am lazy. |
| Think you're not special? For that matter, how do you know there's a universe and that you're not making the whole thing up? It is a central dilemma of human life—more urgent, arguably, than the inevitability of suffering and death. Which wine goes best with salmon mousse? I have been brooding and ranting to my students about it for years. You sound fun at parties. It surely troubles us more than ever during this plague-ridden era. Article is from September of 2020, but, let's be fair, there's always a plague. Philosophers call it the problem of other minds. I prefer to call it the solipsism problem. I call it Rikki. Solipsism, technically, is an extreme form of skepticism, at once utterly illogical and irrefutable. It holds that you are the only conscious being in existence. Irrefutable, sure, meaning unfalsifiable (unless we learn something new from this article). Illogical? Nonsense. It's more logical than "we live in a simulation" or "God created the universe in six days, then goofed off." You experience your own mind every waking second, but you can only infer the existence of other minds through indirect means. Other people seem to possess conscious perceptions, emotions, memories, intentions, just as you do, but you cannot be sure they do. In numerous cases, I am, in fact, pretty sure they don't. Natural selection instilled in us the capacity for a so-called theory of mind—a talent for intuiting others’ emotions and intentions. But we have a countertendency to deceive one another and to fear we are being deceived. The ultimate deception would be pretending you are conscious when you are not. Now, hang on. If others don't exist, they can't be deceiving you. Sure, you can deceive yourself, but that's trivial. And if others do exist, in order to pretend that they're conscious, they have to make the conscious effort to deceive, which means they're conscious, which doesn't necessarily mean they exist... This is why I went into engineering, not philosophy. Well, that, and the money. The solipsism problem thwarts efforts to explain consciousness. Scientists and philosophers have proposed countless contradictory hypotheses about what consciousness is and how it arises. Yes. That's what you do. You propose a hypothesis, then look for evidence against it. Lots of them will turn out to be wrong. Many will turn out to be hard, or impossible, to verify. Panpsychists contend that all creatures and even inanimate matter—even a single proton!—possess consciousness. Hard to argue against, but needlessly multiplies entities, so it's probably wrong. Hard-core materialists insist, conversely (and perversely), that not even humans are all that conscious. What's perverse about that? It's demonstrably true. But the solipsism problem is far more than a technical philosophical matter. It is a paranoid but understandable response to the feelings of solitude that lurk within us all. Even if you reject solipsism as an intellectual position, you sense it, emotionally, whenever you feel estranged from others, whenever you confront the awful truth that you can never know—really know—another person, and no one can really know you. Or you could, I dunno, get over it? Religion is one response to the solipsism problem. Our ancestors dreamed up a supernatural entity who bears witness to our innermost fears and desires. No matter how lonesome we feel, how alienated from our fellow humans, God is always there watching over us. He sees our souls, our most secret selves, and He loves us anyway. Wouldn’t it be nice to think so? No. The arts, too, can be seen as attempts to overcome the solipsism problem. The artist, musician, poet, novelist says, “This is how my life feels” or “This is how life might feel for another person.” They help us imagine what it is like to be a Black woman trying to save her children from slavery or a Jewish ad salesman wandering through Dublin, wondering whether his wife is cheating on him. But to imagine is not to know. Um, any attempt at communication, however clumsy or brilliant, can be seen that way. Art is, in part, a form of communication. Love, ideally, gives us the illusion of transcending the solipsism problem. You feel you really know someone, from the inside out, and they know you. Except that love, in all its forms, is an electrochemical process in the brain. The brain which, perhaps, being all alone in the not-universe, desperately seeks out some evidence that it's not. For the mentally ill, solipsism can become terrifyingly vivid. Victims of Capgras syndrome think that identical imposters have replaced their loved ones. If you have Cotard’s delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, you become convinced that you are dead. A much more common disorder is derealization, which makes everything—you, others, reality as a whole—feel strange, phony, simulated. Like I said, "this is a simulation" is a mental disorder. What if those afflicted with these alleged delusions actually see reality clearly? And what if the bearded guy on the street corner is right? Conceivably, technology could deliver us from the solipsism problem. Koch proposes that we all get brain implants with Wi-Fi so we can meld minds through a kind of high-tech telepathy. If you really think about it, though, as a solipsist, that would prove exactly nothing. Philosopher Colin McGinn suggests a technique that involves “brain splicing,” transferring bits of your brain into mine, and vice versa. This. This is why philosophers should never be allowed to do science. But do we really want to escape the prison of our subjective selves? The archnemesis of Star Trek: The Next Generation is the Borg... Here's the thing, though: Once you're a Borg, once you're assimilated, you're perfectly content. Some might even say ecstatic. Those are brain states, and, like love, are electrochemical processes which can be externally manipulated. It's only from the outside that it looks like something to fight against. Hell, that's what makes them so damn effective as scary bad guys: you know you don't want it, but presumably almost every Borg didn't want it, either, but they've achieved peace in their collective unity. You know what that sounds like to me? Death. And indeed, it parallels religious concepts of death. Perhaps that's why the Borg were so effective as villains. In any case, these things can be fun to think about, but, as the author notes, solipsism ends up leading to dark places. And since there are alternatives, why not at least assume not-solipsism? This is you, urging you to do exactly that. |
| Another Cracked article, once again illustrating the randomness of my random number generator; I have far more links from other sources. I am resisting the obvious joke. Resisting with all my might. Resisting hard, you might say. Can this article also resist? You turn around and see something behind you. Later, you turn around again, and it’s bigger now. This means either it’s following you, or it has physically grown in size. Or both. Why not both? 5. Spiders You'll want to click on the link for the illustration of what a spider might look like. Bigger spiders help cities, since bigger spiders can gobble more bugs. They also serve as more food for birds. Of course, any change in the food web can spark unpredictable consequences, and spiders eating too many bugs or feeding too many birds could be disastrous, but a thorough analysis of the side effects leads the scientists to conclude that, yes, giant spiders are good news, everyone. Spider-like typing detected. 4. Eyes Including spider eyes? One part of your body grows for your entire life. We’re not talking about fat — many parts of your body grow when you eat more, but one part grows regardless. Almost did the obvious. Almost. We have one single confirmed example of an organ that grows, forever. It’s the lens of your eye. Each lens grows by 1.38 milligrams a year, and while that sounds like nothing, we have to take into account just how small lenses are to begin with. Between early adulthood and when you die, you can expect each lens to double in size. Unless, of course, you get off the growth treadmill by having cataract surgery. Which reminds me, it's been two years now. 3. Finland As sea levels rise, countries all over the world have to reckon with losing some land. This loss will range from an inconvenience to apocalyptic. Nah, they'll just redefine the border as being 100 yards out from shore. Finland is an exception. Finland gains 7 square kilometers (3 square miles) a year. No, it’s not because they’re so militant about combatting climate change that they’ve somehow convinced the sea to recede. They’re instead experiencing a phenomenon called post-glacial rebound. The opposite of shrinkage? 2. Breasts ... ... ... I'm sorry, did you say something? 1. Zoo Animals Maybe the animals are under the influence of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, or maybe they’ve been infected with some obesity-causing virus. Maybe that’s also why we’re getting fatter, rather than the traditional explanation of overeating. But that explanation offends puritans, who are certain that everything from obesity to climate change is our fault because we've sinned. And there it is... the whole article and my commentary, without the obvious joke. I feel shafted. |
| Here's the thing: the Doctor Who special is supposed to magically appear on Disney+ at 12:55 pm EST today. Working backwards, then, I'll have to start drinking before that time in order to be pleasantly buzzed when it starts. Sure, it's on streaming, and I can watch it anytime, but it's Doctor Who, so that's not going to happen. Now, then. In order to start drinking before noon, it's necessary for me to get all my daily activities done early. This includes blogging. Not trusting myself to wake up early (i.e., before 10 am), I figured I'd better get this done now. Apropos of nothing, then, because that's what happens when you pick at random from a list, we have this highly informative article from, of course, Cracked. I'd call any health fad an error, research or otherwise. But okay, let's see which ones they're talking about. We’re probably about six months from the billionaires finding out about Elizabeth Bathory and bathing in the blood of slain maidens, but the rest of us have to rely on science for our health needs. I was hoping we'd be about six months from billionaires finding out about the French Revolution, but I've been hoping that for way longer than six months. It's kind of like fusion power, which is 20 years away and has been since at least the 1970s. Unfortunately, the science is not as, well, scientific as we’d like it to be. Food science? Rife with errors? Quick, fetch my fainting couch. 4. The ‘French Paradox’ Is Mostly Explained by Death Certification and Time If you’re thinking what we were thinking, we regret to inform you that the so-called “French paradox” is not a thought experiment involving an evil twin who wears a pencil mustache and striped shirt. You forgot the beret. It refers to the idea that French people are all walking around eating bread and cheese, smoking cigarettes and generally being French without the ill health effects that doing any of those things has in other Western countries. This has historically been attributed to their high consumption of red wine, which has been theorized to have mysterious cholesterol-removing properties, which should have been sus from the start because if wine was magical vitality juice, every fiftysomething mom would be Bruce Willis in Unbreakable. I knew someone who bought into the "red wine" thing, hook, line, and sinker, to mix metaphors beyond recognition. He chugged a gallon of the stuff a day and, as you might imagine, it wasn't the good stuff. No idea if he was buried or cremated. It turns out, however, that there’s plenty of deaths from cardiac and other cheese-caused events in France — they’re just not reported. So, I guess no one cœur. ... sigh. One of my other daily routines is learning French. I should stop making puns in that language until I learn more. Seriously, though, as someone who lives an alcohol-positive lifestyle: drink if you like it, not because you think it's some sort of medicine. 3. The ‘Small Plates’ Guy Was Fired for Fraud If you’ve ever furtively glanced at the weight-loss tips on the back of a container of low-fat ice cream as you slowly eat the whole thing, you’ve heard of the “smaller plates” theory. It comes from a study that claimed people eat more when using larger dishware, therefore using smaller plates will trick your brain into being satisfied with less food because we’re all apparently some kind of caveman baby person. I quit eating ice cream (except very rarely in a restaurant) long ago. This wasn't for health reasons, or because I don't like it, but on general principles; they started sneakily reducing the quantity in a container to trick people into thinking the price hadn't gone up. Not to mention using the absolute bare minimum of actual "cream" to be legally called "ice cream." You think (I hate portmanteaux in general and this one in particular, but) shrinkflation is a new thing? Ha. Eighteen of his papers were retracted, one of them twice, including the one that claimed people ate more pasta from larger bowls. Subsequent research has confirmed that our tummies can indeed tell the difference between 17 and 70 french fries, no matter how big the carton. Still, I'd guess that eating off of smaller plates is better than the fancy restaurants who put tiny portions on enormous platters. What's up with that shit, anyway? 2. We Think Spinach Is a Good Source of Iron Due to a Scientific Misinterpretation No, we’re not about to tell you that a misplaced decimal was responsible for the myth that spinach contains tons of iron. (Although we totally have in the past — sorry!) As I've urged repeatedly, don't get your science from Cracked. Or do, but just don't expect it to all be true. It turns out there was some confusion in the research of the 19th-century German chemist typically blamed, Erich von Wolff, but it had nothing to do with a decimal point. His data concerned dried spinach, but that wasn’t clear to future nutritionists. Gotta say, this is news to me. Not that I expect it to be true or anything. Since we haven’t yet discovered the kind of monster who eats dried spinach, they assumed he measured fresh spinach, whose iron content is pretty well diluted by all that water and flavor and stuff. What "flavor?" Incidentally, a competing hypothesis that I've heard is that iron levels in agricultural soil have decreased over time. Iron doesn't just magically appear in spinach (or any plant); it's taken up from the soil like every other element in a plant. Less iron in the soil = less iron in the leaf. I have no idea if this holds any water, either. (Pun intended, because spinach is still mostly water, which can be observed when you dump six cups of the stuff into a frying pan and it gets cooked down to about a thimbleful.) 1. ‘Blue Zones’ Are Probably Just Areas With Lots of Pension Fraud For those who aren’t familiar, “blue zones” are both a great nickname for your testicles and pockets of communities around the world that boast an unusually high number of people who live to be 100 or even beyond 110. Ah, the inevitable dick joke. If you really want to live to be 100, though, the true secret is to be born somewhere that doesn’t keep good records of such things and/or study up on identity theft. Presto, you’re 100! I also assume this sort of thing whenever an article pops up about a 35-year-old dog or cat. Whenever officials start digging deeper into blue zones, a whopping percentage of its oldsters suddenly disappears. And we do mean whopping: Japan lost 82 percent of its centenarians overnight. Okinawa isn’t even the healthiest city in Japan. If you want to adopt some part of the Japanese lifestyle, try their beer. You won’t live longer, but you’ll die happier. Which is what I've been saying. |
| Today, we're going back not very far at all, to an entry I did in May of last year: "One Great Thing" The prompt, from "Invalid Item" , was a simple one-liner: "The biggest plus for living in your town/area"I'm more used to pointing out downsides than upsides, but honestly, there aren't too many downsides here. Minor inconveniences at worst, like the lack of a Denny's, but having been all over, I know there are downsides everywhere. Denny's also isn't that great, objectively. At least we also don't have an Olive Garden. So, advantages, in this case, are easy; all I had to do was point out all the alcohol manufacturers. Still, I couldn't resist the joke in the first line: "It's not Cleveland." I don't know why I like to rag on Cleveland. I've never even been there. Maybe it's because the name is inherently funny. From all accounts, it's a pleasant enough city. Fortunately, I'm not well-known enough so that, once I do manage to visit Cleveland (which I hope to do, because it has breweries), I won't have to spend my time apologizing to the citizens there. None of the stuff I said in the entry needs updating, really. While a few breweries have disappeared, and others have popped up, the other producers that I mentioned still, as far as I know, exist. In any event, yes, I still consider this proliferation of vendors to be a big plus of living here. There are other good things here, but I won't dwell on them, lest people get the idea it's okay to move in. |
| Come on, now, the answer to this headline question should be glaringly, brightly obvious. It's right here, of course. The guy typing these words. That is to say, Me. ...oh, fine. Let's see what the article says. The farther away we look, the farther back in time we’re viewing the Universe, and the greater the amount the light from those distant objects is shifted toward longer wavelengths. A lot of people, upon hearing this, get a particular picture in their heads: the greater the amount the light is shifted, the faster these objects are moving away from us. Therefore, if you look in all directions and reconstruct, “At what point, in space, would we see all directions receding equally?” you could locate the center of the Universe. Okay, but a hypothetical observer in a distant galaxy would see the same phenomena, do its own calculations, and find a different location for the "center." Most of us understand, intuitively, that when objects move toward you, the waves they emit appear compressed, with their crests and troughs closer together. Similarly, when they move away from you, the waves appear the opposite of compressed — rarified — with their crests and troughs farther apart than if they were stationary. Although we typically experience this with sounds, as you can tell whether a fire truck, a police car, or the ice cream cart is moving toward you or away from you dependent on its pitch, it’s true for any wave, including light. We refer to this motion-based shift of the waves as the Doppler effect, named after its discoverer. Back in college, I had a T-shirt with "The Doppler Effect" in a blue font on the front, and a red font on the back. That was NOT the nerdiest T-shirt I owned. The observations are very clear: the farther an object is from us, on average, the greater the observed redshift is. But is that because the object is actually moving through space, relative to us, when it emits the light versus when we absorb and measure the light? Or is it because there’s an overall expansion happening on cosmic scales, causing the light to continue to shift during its long journey across the space that separates us from what we’re trying to observe? Just to further blow your mind, from the point of view of the photon, it's not a "long journey" at all. It takes 0 time from its own perspective. If this is what’s going on, however, then the expanding Universe isn’t like an explosion at all, which had a point-of-origin that everything — like shrapnel — flies outward at varying speeds. Instead, the expanding Universe is more like a leavening loaf of dough with raisins throughout it. If you’re a gravitationally bound object, like a galaxy, you’re one of the raisins, while space itself is the dough. As the dough leavens, the individual raisins appear to be moving apart relative to one another, but the raisins themselves aren’t moving “through” the dough. Each raisin sees itself as relatively stationary, but each other raisin that it sees will appear to move away from it, with the more distant raisins appearing to move away more quickly. Even the raisin-bread (thanks; now I'm really hungry) analogy isn't that great, unless you can somehow imagine that the loaf wraps around and joins itself on all six sides. Or something. I don't know. Perhaps a better analogy for visualization would be a polka-dotted balloon. As you blow it up, the polka dots start spreading further apart (but they also get bigger, ruining the analogy). In this analogy, though, the (3D) universe corresponds just to the (2D) surface of the balloon, and there is no center on that surface. Fact is, it's outside anything in our experience, but it's still easier to analogize than quantum physics is. Anyway. Fascinating read, if you're into this sort of thing and, as a bonus for some people, no math or equations at all. Now, I'm not actually a physicist, so I can't verify that everything in the article is accurate, but it definitely tracks with my prior knowledge. I still say they're wrong about Me not being the center of the universe, though. |
| Well, it's the start of a new year (by my preferred reckoning); the accursed daystar is happily glaring at me once again, and most of my cold symptoms have lessened. So let's get back to some semi-random articles. This one's from The Conversation, dated last St. Patrick's Day: By now, you should know that I give the side-eye to anything to do with "happiness." But let's take a look at what the author has to say. Be warned: British spelling. Work, it’s something most of us do though it isn’t always enjoyable. Not a great start, Professor. Not merely blindingly obvious, but with questionable punctuation choices. I'll let that go, though, because editing is clearly dead. Whether it’s long hours, gruelling tasks or just the repetitive nature of a day-to-day routine, work can sometimes be something we have to do rather than something we want to do. Well, there's at least part of the problem right there. As soon as you take the attitude that you have to do something, it becomes a chore, and most of us don't find happiness (or fulfillment or contentment or whatever you're going for) from chores. Say you're invited to a wild party, for instance. There will be lots of your favorite substances there, loads of people of your preferred psychosexual orientation, delicious food, loose morals, great music, etc. Would you be as happy attending if you felt obligated, that you had to go to it? I probably wouldn't. No, better to say "I really want to go to this party" rather than "I have to go to this party." That is, of course, an extreme. Most work-related things are the polar opposite of that in terms of fun. "I have to finish these TPS reports by 3:00," for instance. Still, turning that around to "I want to finish these TPS reports by 3:00" tricks yourself into greater agency, which, if not exactly increasing happiness, at least decreases misery. I rarely wanted to work. What I wanted was to get paid. To do that required work. So I'd be like "I want to do these calculations because I'll keep getting paid." Anyway. That's me. Back to the article. I was the lead scientist in a government project that looked at how our wellbeing and emotional resilience can change over a lifetime. It probably doesn't matter much, but "government" here refers to the UK government. As part of this project, the team, with help from think-tank the New Economics Foundation, identified several things that can reduce stress and enhance wellbeing and happiness – all of which can be applied to the workplace. Also a UK think-tank. Unlike most think-tanks in the US, this one seems to be a lefty pinko liberal one. Which means I'm more inclined to believe its findings... as long as they don't start in with the whole "mindfulness" crap, or whatever. 1. Be active Exercise and other physical activities won’t make your problems or stress disappear, but they will reduce their emotional intensity and give you mental space to sort out problems – as well as keep you physically fit. To my vast shock and surprise, and no doubt everyone else's too (I allow myself one day a year for optimism, and that day was yesterday), I find myself agreeing with this bit. Not that I'm a model at following it, being a sofa spud most of the time. But having gone through periods of activity and relative inactivity in my life, I can say, unscientifically and anecdotally, that the active periods have been better for my mental state. Walking to and from work is a great way to create separation from the working day. If that’s not possible you could get off the bus a stop early, make your lunchtimes active or maybe find an exercise class to do before you start work for the day. Except they lose me at squeezing in yet another activity before work. Sure, I don't have to deal with that anymore, but as a night owl, it was all I could do to wake up on time. Making that earlier to do a new thing wasn't going to happen. 2. Connect with people If you examine most of the happiness scales, relationships with others come near the top of these lists. Ugh. People. Okay, I'm not going to simply dismiss this one, but I will point out that connection feels different for different people. Introverts can't always use advice meant for the extroverted majority; nor, often, can the neurodiverse. It’s also worth getting to know your colleagues. Not... not always. 3. Learn new skills Keeping “cognitively active” is critical to your psychological and mental wellbeing and can provide you with new opportunities in terms of your career development. Can't argue with this one, either. I do have some objection to "new opportunities in terms of your career development," because I think learning shoudn't have to be merely about how you can be more productive for your employer... but that's me, again. You do you. 4. Stay present This is all about “being in the moment” rather than in the past or looking too far forward.  here we go.A more mindful approach to life is something you can practice at any time of the day, it’s just about being aware, noticing your surroundings – the sights, sounds, smells. You can do this while you’re walking, in a meeting or making a cup of tea. I mean, okay, sure, put that way, I can appreciate what they're talking about. 5. Recognise the positives Staying present also helps you to recognise the positives in your life – allowing you to be a glass half full rather than a glass half empty person. How about being a "glass that's twice as big as it needs to be" person? No, seriously, though, while it's probably bad to dwell on the downsides of things all the time, I object to the idea of mentally banishing the negative all the time, as well. Accept there are things at work or in life you can’t change and concentrate on the things you have control over. But no argument about that part from me. 6. Avoid unhealthy habits Given what we know about their long-term consequences, using excessive alcohol or coffee consumption or smoking as a coping strategy for work stress is ultimately likely to have a negative impact on your happiness, even if they seem to provide a quick pick-me-up. Aw. Too bad. Note that there's no warning about excessive tea consumption. 7. Work smarter, not longer Prioritise your workload during working hours and you will have more disposable time to do the things you enjoy. Okay, whatever. My only objection here is the idea of "disposable time." To me, there's no such thing as that, or "free time." There's only time. If you take the attitude, as I did above, that you're only doing what you want to do, anyway, then all the time is yours. If there's something you think you want to do, but never seem to have the time to do it, then maybe you don't really want to do it. The more you take control of your work life and get the balance you need, the more likely you will be happier at work. And let's keep in mind that I never got the balance I needed until I retired. |
| Winter solstice today. Well... it's the winter solstice for the only hemisphere that matters (the northern one); summer in that... lesser hemisphere. And also well... it's today for me, but tomorrow for, say, Europeans. This is because, while the solstice occurs at the same moment worldwide, the time depends on what time zone you're in. It's 10:27pm on the 21st, here in Eastern time (WDC time), but 3:27am on the 22nd based on Universal Time (e.g., England). I've seen some sources claim 3:28am UT / 10:28pm EST. I don't know why there's a one-minute discrepancy there. I'm not sure it matters. Probably some differences in how to round numbers up or down, I'd guess. We're still calculating it with greater accuracy than, say, Stonehenge ever did. This sort of thing can be confusing, I know. Time zone differences trip me up pretty easily. Want to be confused more? Great! That's my specialty! We usually think of the winter solstice as the first day of winter. Okay, that's fair; by the astronomical definition, winter stretches from the winter solstice to the spring equinox (this is true regardless of hemisphere, but for... the unfortunate upside-down people... the winter solstice is in June). But there are other definitions of winter. Meteorological winter, in contrast, is tied to the Gregorian calendar: December 1 through February 28 (or 29 if it exists) in the northern hemisphere. This roughly centers meteorological winter on what is, on average, usually the coldest period of the year: mid-January. Yes, the average low lags the astronomical season, usually by about a month. Similarly, July here is generally hotter than June. And then there's solar winter, which is related to but not the same thing as astronomical winter. (I told you this would be confusing.) This definition of winter is largely based on length of daylight, and stretches from around Halloween to Groundhog Day. Those holidays are not coincidences, either; they derived from much earlier celebrations of the beginning and end of solar winter. This is why you sometimes hear the winter solstice referred to as "midwinter." And the summer solstice has been called "midsummer," as in Shakespeare's play. There are similar days around May 1 and August 1 that mark the solar season transitions or, by the astronomical definition, the middle of each season. (Look. I already said it's confusing. Just roll with it.) The upshot of all of this is that, while the worst of winter is surely still ahead of us—personally, I dread February the most, but January objectively sucks worse—at least we'll be getting more daylight. The downside of that: more of the accursed daystar every day. Yes, I have a complicated relationship with the sun. I appreciate the warmth, but I do wish it'd stop burning me and glaring at me like I did something wrong. This, for me, ends the winter holiday season. (As I've noted before, axial tilt is the true reason for the season.) At least until New Year's, which I only acknowledge because it's International Drinking Night. |
 Log in to Leave Feedback |
View Portfolio
Visit Notebook
Send Gift Points
Awards
Badges
Send Email
Community Newsfeed
General Discussion
Sponsored Items
Book of Trinkets
Static Items
Books
Groups
Interactive Stories
Audio
Campfire Creatives
Community Notes
Crossword Puzzles
Documents
Folders
Images
In & Outs
Madlibs
Photo Albums
Polls
Product Reviews
Quizzes
Survey Forms
Web Pages
Word Searches
Finally. Fascinating stuff. All of them. There is something rather philosophical about comedy. You are certainly right there. 
