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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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Archaeologically excavating the bones of the midden heap that is my blog, we come to this early attempt at an entry from near the end of November, 2007: "Another Saturday Night"  The title comes from an old Cat Stevens song, but it was one of his more popular ones, so I guess I figured people knew the reference. That's the problem with reference jokes: not everyone is in on it. Though one could make the same observation about any joke that doesn't involve things we all share. Like farts. But fart jokes aren't funny. I say all this because the whole entry was about me racking my brains for a Comedy newsletter editorial. I've done thirteen of those a year ever since the year I wrote that linked entry, and while it's sometimes easy to find a topic, I'm often stumped until the looming deadline forces me to just pick something, dammit. And not jokes about impending deadlines, either; that only worked once. Or maybe twice. I don't know; I'm certain I repeated many topics over the years. Which reminds me, I need a Fantasy newsletter topic today. What will it be? I don't know yet; it's not close enough to the deadline for me to feel enough of a sense of dread, which is when my brain finally wakes up. Anyway, from that entry: Thing is, I didn't start out to be funny - I started out to write science fiction. The two are, of course, not mutually exclusive, but one risks being accused of ripping off Hitchhiker's. Unless you're a Star Trek writer; they do a great job at jabs with Lower Decks. A common trick in science fiction, one which goes all the way back to its roots in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, is to write in the Alien Observer. Ugh. The naïveté of youth. Half of this entry is embarrassing to me now, being so obvious. I guess it was new to me at the time. So I won't paste more of that. I'll just note that, when I was done, I realized I had written myself into an editorial, assuming a few changes. It's been so long, though, that I don't remember if I actually used it or not, and can't be arsed to go back that far in the newsletter archives. It may have been the first time I turned a blog entry into a newsletter editorial, but it certainly wasn't the last. |
| Ever been told to stay in your lane? The Windy History of Penny Lane: The Beatles, the Slave Trade and a Now-Resolved Controversy Was Penny Lane named after a notorious slave trader? Recent protests reignited the debate If you've been following along, you know I rarely stay in my lane. One excursion I often make is into the subject of etymology, and, in the past, I've been especially fascinated by the etymology of currency. For instance, did you know what dollars and Neanderthals have in common? Both were named after valleys in what were then German-speaking regions: Joachimsthal and Neanderthal (those are old spellings; modern orthography omits the h from the th). Joachimsthal was a silver-mining location, and the silver coins made from its product were Joachimsthalers, and it's easy to see how you get from Joachimsthalers to thalers to dollars. (Neandertal has a linguistic connection to "new man," as it's partly a Romanized version of the surname Neumann, or "new man," but that seems to be one of those apt but unrelated coincidences that happen occasionally.) The origin of the pound (as a unit of currency) is similarly well-documented. But for something so common and widespread as the penny, well, they're not entirely sure. It's somehow related to the Roman denarius, which is why, for example, 12d nails are pronounced "twelve-penny nails." What I'm fairly certain of is that it's completely unrelated to the similarly-spelled penis, which in Latin was a word for penis. Penis. Anyway, it gets even murkier when you have people with the surname Penny or Penney. Apparently, one of them was a slave trader, and of course that's one of the occupations we don't name things after anymore. An old theory linking the street to a notorious slave trader had resurfaced due to the protests surrounding the police killing of George Floyd — and a cadre of local historians discovered that their research was now thrust into the public eye. That idea doesn't deserve the label "theory." At best, it's a guess. “It’s been an academic debate, really. So it’s a bit of a surprise to us all, to be honest; we’re sort of taken aback. We’re not used to this larger media interest in the names of streets going back to this, you know, 17- and 1800s — it’s not the usual thing that makes the news.” My hot take on this is: even if it was named after James Penny (for which, as the article indicates, there is no evidence whatsoever), that was so long ago, and the word is so common in other contexts, that it just doesn't matter anymore. Besides, any metadata on that particular street changed drastically nearly 60 years ago, when it became forever and indelibly associated with the Beatles. Following the graffiting of the signs, though, Liverpool’s Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram made international news after proclaiming the famed street name may be changed if there was evidence it was named after 1700s slave trader James Penny. On the one hand, it's their city and they can do what they want with it. We fought and won a war so that England couldn't tell us what to do anymore; it's only fair that we don't interfere with them, either. But, as you also know if you've been following along, I really hate to see falsehoods become accepted as truth. Enter MacDonald and other historians, who have been researching the area for more than 10 years and claim there is no connection between Penny Lane and the slave trade. It's remarkably hard to prove a negative. The only thing a historian can do in such a case as this, if they can't definitively show that Penny Lane was named for someone (or something) else, is to indicate that there's no known connection. So, if not some arsehole trader of human beings, what was it named after? They, um, don't know. According to the historian, the earliest mention of the lane was from the 1840s, when it was listed as Pennies Lane. In maps going back to the 1700s, it was merely an unnamed country road. Meanwhile, James Penny died in 1799 — plus, he already had a street named after him: Arrad Street, named for his birthplace in Ulverston, Cumbria. Okay, but that last bit is hardly definitive. Plenty of slaveholders had multiple streets named after them here in the US. I think the important bit is "Pennies Lane," though. Even with the very fluid spellings of the 18th and early 19th century, you'd think that it would have shown up as Penny's Lane or at least Pennys Lane, if it was connected to anyone with that surname. “Penny Lane about that time would have been a fairly rural country lane,” MacDonald says. “So that struck me. It would be very off that a lane in the middle of the country would be named after somebody in the same way that prestigious streets in the town center would.” You know what would make sense for a rural country lane in 19th century England? If you had to pay a toll to traverse it. Tuppence, perhaps, or thruppence with inflation. Hence, "pennies lane." But did these boffins investigate that blindingly obvious (to me) possibility? Well, maybe. Maybe not. The article doesn't say. So don't go quoting me on the last paragraph; it's just as much a guess, albeit a harmless one, as the spurious James Penny connection. In any event, as the article eventually winds around to telling us, it seems that "no evidence of a connection" is sufficient to keep the iconic street name around... for now. These controversies, however, have a way of coming out of remission later. If that's because some evidence is actually discovered, well, fine. But if it's just another urban legend, well, I trust the Liverpudlians will treat that with all the attention it deserves: about two pennies' worth. |
| It's a promo on LitHub for a book, but whatever. We're all readers here. And it tracks with what I already knew. How the Banana Came To Be—And How It Could Disappear Emily Monosson on the History, Evolution, and Biological Enemies of a Staple Fruit Yesterday, I bought some bananas, and noticed that since the summer, they had doubled in price! ...from 12 cents each to 24. (This is one reason you have to beware of that sort of emotional language when you encounter it.) I still find it difficult to believe that a banana's actual worth, a couple thousand miles from where they're grown, is less than a quarter. I'm sure there are all sorts of subsidy shenanigans going on, and low-paid workers involved, but I can't be arsed to research it. Bananas are a fruit that unites the world. Not so sure about that, but as fruits go, they're definitely one of the easiest. Peel and eat, no messy juice, no seeds. I saw a video once where a creationist took that and ran with it as "proof" of intelligent design. Well, they were intelligently designed, all right: by intelligent humans, who genetically engineered a seed-infested fruit with very little meat and turned it into a snack as easy to eat as a Milky Way bar. Though there are thousands of varieties, most of us in the western world eat only one: the Cavendish. Or, as we tend to call them here in the US, "bananas." Of the twenty-two million tons of bananas exported to the United States, Europe, and Asia, most are grown in Latin America and the Caribbean. I still remember a brief tour of a banana plantation in Belize. But this article goes into a lot more detail around the growing and shipping process, which I'm not going to repeat here. The banana plant is easy to mistake for a tree, but it is the largest known herbaceous flowering plant. This is a distinction much like tomato being, botanically, a fruit. The plants grow, produce flower and fruit, and die. Ready-made metaphor there. The article also goes into the rise and fall of the previous kind of shipped banana, the Gros Michel (commonly translated to English as "Big Mike," but I prefer "Fat Mikey.") That's fairly widespread knowledge now, as is the whispers, going on for some years now, of the soon to be certain demise of the Cavendish. Hasn't happened yet, but with banana prices doubling here, maybe it's happening? What the article doesn't get into is whether there's a suitable, fungus-resistant successor to the Cavendish. We can be pretty clever with our bioengineering and selective breeding, so I expect they'll find a way. Otherwise, based on the numbers in this article, a whole lot of people are going to find themselves unemployed. And, worse, I'll have to find another easy fruit to like. And that, for me, holds no ap-peel. |
| Having lived through the Great Coke Crisis of 1985, I'm still fascinated by how companies can sometimes shoot themselves in the foot. Coca-Cola, of course, survived their mistake (or perhaps it was a calculated conspiracy ). But can we really blame marketing for taking the L out of Schlitz?Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the Milwaukee-based Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company held the gold crown as America’s largest brewer. Which glosses right over the dark, dreary days of Prohibition, a significant chunk of "the first half of the 20th century." Like other brewers, Schlitz endured through diversification. But that's irrelevant right now. Then a series of business decisions, including a disastrous ad campaign, dubbed the “Drink Schlitz or I’ll kill you” campaign, precipitated the downfall of America’s biggest beer brand. That campaign lasted less than three months, coinciding with a tumultuous year for consumerism in general (1977). It's said that "no publicity is bad publicity," but I'm not so sure about that; still, I'm pretty sure other "business decisions" were more proximate. Like how they stopped making beer and started making formulaic adjunct lager like their competition. By the late 1950s, Schlitz lost its top title to another quintessential American beer brand: Anheuser-Busch. Calling that "beer" is an insult to beer, much like calling Kraft Singles "cheese" is an insult to cheese. During the 1970s, in an attempt to cut production costs and keep up with growing demands, Schlitz’s owners decided to shorten the beer’s brewing time by implementing a process called “accelerated batch fermentation.” This, by itself, should have been enough to kill the brand. But, as with New Coke, Americans will put up with a lot of enshittification. They also opted to replace its malted barley with a cheaper ingredient, corn syrup, and began experimenting with the use of a silica gel to prevent haze once the beer was chilled. That first bit, there, was enough to make it not-beer. Not necessarily bad; lots of great beverages start with corn syrup. But not beer. And nowadays, of course, lots of people love hazy beers. Sales dropped as Schlitz’s customers grew frustrated with the brand and started returning cases of beer. As tasteless as many Americans are, you mess with their favorites at your own peril. (The silica gel thing resulted in a recall, incidentally, never a great thing for any business). In an effort to stem its declining sales and improve its spiraling reputation, the company hired an ad agency, Leo Burnett & Co., to launch four television spots. Now, here's the thing: that could have worked. Marketing, done right, can sell anything, including pet rocks and bottled water. You can have the shittiest product in existence, and if you have the right marketing, it'll sell anyway. And truly great products, without marketing, can fade into oblivion. But by the time Schlitz did those ads, it had already become a terrible product. Schlitz closed its Milwaukee brewery in 1981. For context, home brewing became legalized in October of 1978, yet more proof that Jimmy Carter was a severely underrated President. That paved the way for smaller breweries to get some market niches. And Sierra Nevada opened in 1981, still producing craft beer today (I'm not a fan, but I can't argue that it's not real beer). Today, of course, is a wonderful time to be a beer snob. I'd call it a "Golden Age," but Golden is associated with Coors, and they suck too. But there are still beer marketing controversies, as I'm sure you remember from earlier this year. I mention these things sometimes, because even if you're not trying to market anything (a book, perhaps), we're all affected by marketing every day, and a little cynicism can't hurt. And maybe this will help keep you from getting stranded up Schlitz creek without a paddle. |
| One of my favorite tropes is the mad scientist who, when no one believes them, tests the creation on themselves. In stories, that rarely ends well. In real life... well, it usually doesn't end well there, either. But here's an exception... sort of. The Inventor of Ibuprofen Tested the Drug on His Own Hangover Stewart Adams’ headache subsided—and his over-the-counter pain reliever became one of the world’s most popular medications A hangover cure—that is, a real one, not the folk remedies like "mix a raw egg with last week's coffee grinds" nonsense—is one of the most important inventions one can make. This is not only because it pisses off the puritans who get apoplectic when someone's not punished for having a good time, but that's a huge bonus. In retrospect, perhaps toasting the success of a new medication he helped invent with several shots of vodka in Moscow was not a good idea. Are you kidding me? That would be epically awesome! Well, not while there's a war going on over there, but any other time. English research scientist Stewart Adams was faced with the consequences of his actions: a serious hangover. But what if there doesn't have to be consequences? He reached for that new drug and swallowed a 600-milligram dose. For reference, most OTC ibuprofen comes in 200mg tablets, and the usual dose is 2 pills for 400mg. I've been prescribed as much as 800mg by dentists and the like. So this is not outside of the realm of sanity, mad scientist trope aside. Stewart Adams and his associate John Nicholson invented a pharmaceutical drug known as 2-(4-isobutylphenyl) propionic acid. It was later renamed ibuprofen and is now one of the world’s most popular nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs)... Sadly, my doctor insists I shouldn't be taking NSAIDs unless they're prescribed. She had no comment on my drinking, though. Stewart Adams began his career in pharmaceuticals at the young age of 16, when he started an apprenticeship at a drug store owned by Boots UK Limited, then known as Boots the Chemist. He went on to earn a degree in pharmacy at the University of Nottingham and then received his PhD in pharmacology at the University of Leeds. Looks like he was one of the most British people to ever Brit. Now if someone could explain to me why they call that other pain relief medicine acetaminophen here, but paracetamol over there, that'd be great. I can't be arsed to look it up. |
| We're back to the solar system articles today. This is a hot one. The article's from 2016, but that's a bit over 10 days on Venus (...yes, I did the math; the article came out 10.1893 Venusian days ago). On the day that I was born—winter solstice, 1959—a headline in Life magazine proclaimed “Target Venus: There May be Life There!” In that era, we were trying to find the slightest hint of how life may exist on any other planet. It told of how scientists rode a balloon to an altitude of 80,000 feet to make telescope observations of Venus’s atmosphere, and how their discovery of water raised hopes that there could be living things there. For context, this was after Sputnik 1 but before humans put other humans into orbit. The very first thing that scientists discovered with a mission to another planet was that Venus was not at all the Earthly paradise that fiction and speculative science had portrayed. From what I can gather, the surface of Venus will kill you even quicker than vacuum will. As a possible home for alien life, it has been voted the planet least likely to succeed. You probably heard the breathless hype over the detection of phosphene in that planet's atmosphere a few years back, touted as a possible sign of some sort of life there. What you probably didn't hear was that the data didn't withstand scrutiny, and we're back to square one. Russian and American spacecraft also found hints that the primordial climate might have been wetter, cooler, and possibly even friendly to life. Which is a far cry from claiming that life still exists there today. For most of Earth’s history, Venus may have been the nearest habitable planet and possibly even home to a thriving biosphere. For billions of years, our solar system may have had two neighboring wet, geologically active, habitable rocky worlds. They may even have very occasionally exchanged life when meteors struck and catapulted shrapnel from one planet to the other. I just want to emphasize, again, that this doesn't imply sentient Venusians, now or in the past. In any case, the article is necessarily full of speculation such as this, because we just don't have enough data. Which is a shame, because it's often the closest planet to us. The Moon isn't technically a planet, Mars is sometimes closer to Earth than Venus, and, on average, according to some calculations, the nearest planet on average is Mercury, which makes sense when you think about relative orbital speeds. What's not in dispute is that it's the planet with the closest orbit to ours.While the author bangs on about climate change and the greenhouse effect, I can excuse that in this case because he's actually a planetary scientist. Well, an astrobiologist, anyway. Close or not, Venus presents challenges Mars simply doesn't. The latter doesn't have much atmosphere, for instance, while the former has, arguably, too much of one. We can handle near-vacuum, but not corrosive acid at immense pressure. Not well, anyway. But we're trying, and we're clever and curious. We'll probably have more data in a few days. A few Venus days, anyway./size} |
| No external link today, just some personal reflections on 19 years of Writing.Com. The problem with having an account creation anniversary today is twofold: One, it falls close on the heels of WDC's Birthday Week celebration. On this site, that's rather like being born just after Christmas in the US: everyone's burned out on celebratory cheer, and ready to go back to being their usual grumpy selves. Or, possibly, gearing up for NaNoWriMo (shameless plug for "October Novel Prep Challenge" [13+], which is taking signups and looking for more Contest Round judges).And two, it coincides with another anniversary. That other anniversary was very fresh in everyone's minds back in 2004, when I signed up here. This year, I haven't seen any mention of it at all, and I follow the news cycle pretty damn well for someone who shuns popular social media (RSS is still around, and it's easy to set up your feed the way you want it; it's just not as easy as getting it spoon-fed by the algorithms on Xitter and the like). But it wasn't supposed to be September 11; it was supposed to be the 10th. As I recall, I had some problems getting registered way back then, and it was only about 2am on a Saturday that it finally worked. That's also the reason for the annoying 02 at the end of my username; earlier attempts to register as just cathartes failed, but locked out that option. I keep meaning to change my username, but after 19 years, it seems like that would cause more problems than it would fix. I've told that story before, but who could read all the entries here? I sure haven't. For the curious, I'm pretty sure this was the first thing I posted in my port: "Ghost Poem #1" [ASR] Considering my evolution since then, it's strange that my first bit was a poem, and a serious one at that. I still do them occasionally, but I'm more tuned to comedy, these days. At least I'm not embarrassed by that poem, which is older even than my account. Not embarrassed much, anyway.I barely remember last week, let alone 19 years ago, and I don't know a way to view one's portfolio in chronological order. So I could be wrong about that being my first item. Doesn't matter; close enough, as it was the same day I joined. That, of course, made me a Registered Author. I don't remember when I became Preferred. I also don't remember the exact date I got the blue case, but it was sometime in August of 2006... probably. Like I said, my memory sucks. I still think of myself as one of the newer moderators, when that's objectively not the case (pun intended). And I started this blog the following New Year's Day. I took a years-long hiatus from it, but decided to keep going with the same item rather than start a new one, mostly because come on, the name is awesome. Unfortunately, it's now almost full. Around 95% by byte size, and 82% by number of entries, not counting this one. I doubt it'll last another year at the rate I post (daily, relatively long entries), so this might be my last anniversary retrospective here. I won't delete entries, and it's unclear to me whether I'd get more space in the blog if I switched to a Premium Plus membership. I'll design that bridge when I get to the chasm. Right now, just let me end by thanking everyone who left me anniversary notes and done Anniversary Reviews, including one of that ancient poem of mine I linked above. This is not me begging for more, only acknowledging those that have done these things. It's been a great community, and I've made a lot of friends I never would have otherwise met, both online and in person. You know who you are. While I doubt I'll be around for another 19 years, as I'm pretty sure I'm not an immortal, I'm not planning on going anywhere anytime soon. So you're stuck with me... unless, of course, you put me on ignore. |
| We're not reaching very far into the bowels of the past in today's Revisited. Barely even penetrating the rectum, really. Anything within the last 12 months is ineligible for revisiting, but this one's from May of last year: "Annoying Things" Sometimes, to mix things up a little, I like to participate in blogging activities or contests. That entry was prompted by "Invalid Item" . Another perennial favorite of mine is "Journalistic Intentions" [18+], which I mention because there's a new round of that next month.Plugs aside, the entry was, as per the title, about things that annoy me. Specifically, they're annoyances about living in Charlottesville, apart from the blindingly obvious annoyance of my town being internationally famous for a deadly protest/riot that mostly involved out-of-towners. As I've noted before, when it's not freezing (defined by me as 55F or below) outside, I like to sit on my deck. I paid a lot of money for that thing and by Marduk's manhood, I'm going to use it. I'd forgotten that particular oath. Along with "Thor's balls" and "Ishtar's tits," I'm going to need to remember it and use it more. This is normally quite pleasant. Songbirds are tweeting (and not complaining about Elon Musk)... You know what else is annoying? Every gods-damned news outlet still insists on reporting Xits, and always with a line like "...posted on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter." We get it. It's X now. Anyone who doesn't know this didn't know what Twatter was to begin with. So just call it X. Or Xitter (where the X is pronounced like sh). And call the blathering a Xit, like I just did. Also pronounced like sh, or maybe like z; either way works for me. ...bees are buzzing, owls are hooting (yes, yes, I did my Duolingo lessons; shut up)... Over four years of daily Duolingo now. They keep changing the lesson plan. It's annoying. Mais je crois que j'apprends quelque chose. Yes, very pleasant, except during the day and at night. Sometimes, I forget what I wrote, and when I find it again, I crack me up. This was one of those times. That's another reason I like to do these retrospectives. During the day, everyone gets their yard work done. This wouldn't be so bad if everyone did it at the same time. But no; that would be too kind. The neighbor mows his lawn. Then, when that's finally done, the other neighbors mow their lawn. After that one's finished, one of the people behind me mows their lawn. And then another. And then another. For whatever reason, this hasn't been nearly as bad, this summer. It's been pointed out to me that this particular noise problem may have been the result of everyone using one lawn care company. But it's not. There are like four dozen different lawn care companies around here, and besides, most of the mowing in my neighborhood is done by the resident. Not mine, though. Too lazy. And also the nightly muscle car race. For some reason, that's still a thing. That hasn't stopped or slowed down. But the other night, I heard one of those 8-cylinder engines rev up and gear on down the residential streets. Then, I heard CRUNCH... followed by blessed silence. For about 2 minutes, at which point the sirens started. I'd like to say I hoped no one was injured, but I'd be lying. Let's leave it at "I hope no one died." Oh, and as that entry was posted in late spring, I'd forgotten one of the massive annoyances of fall: every other damn Saturday, on average, UVA has a sportsball game. I live a bit over a mile from the stadium, just close enough to hear the announcer, the bands, and the roar of the crowd, but just far enough away so I can rarely understand what they're actually saying. They also use the stadium for other events, so this isn't limited to football. I can usually ignore that, though. But last year, some rocket surgeon decided it would be a good idea to have some Air Force jets fly low overhead at great speed as part of the halftime show. That sucked, especially since they flew directly over my neighborhood, and you don't hear them until they're right on top of you (speed of sound and all that). Anyway, it helps me sometimes to count my annoyances. Once I'm done with that, I can go back to being content with life. |
| Double whammy today: a math article from LitHub, and one that's actually relevant to the blog title. How Complex Math and Human Innovation Created the Calculator Keith Houston on the People, Technology, and Equations Behind a Modern Mathematical Convenience 1. Of course it was human innovation. We don't have AIs innovating yet, and the limit of feline innovation is to see how much stuff you can knock off the counter before the human yells at you. 2. "Convenience?" More like "crutch." I learned math with a slide rule, dammit! Late in 1957, as Tadao and Toshio Kashio waited to load their desk-sized calculator onto a plane at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, they were told they would have to dismantle it first. If you can just remove this top part here, an attendant told them, gesturing to the keyboard and display, it will fit on the airplane. If only they had a means of calculating the space needed. The Kashio brothers—Tadao, Toshio, Kazuo, and Yukio—were quite different from the inventors and engineers who had gone before them. They did not have Blaise Pascal’s mathematical prowess, or Samuel Morland’s royal connections. They did not have Charles Xavier Thomas’s considerable income, or Curt Herzstark’s family tradition of engineering. What they did have was a finger-mounted cigarette holder that let Japan’s workers get their nicotine fix both on and off the job. Now that's brilliant. Back in 1946, [Toshio] had read a newspaper article that chronicled the battle of wits between Kiyoshi Matsuzaki on his abacus and Tom Wood of the U.S. Army on his electric calculator. Regular John Henry story there. Toshio decided then that Kashio Manufacturing would build an electric calculator, economy be damned, and that it would do so in a completely new way. People in Japan did a similar thing with scotch. Oh, yeah, and cars. But the scotch thing is important. Of course, they can't call it scotch. Figuratively speaking, it was revolutionary; in literal terms, it was the opposite, since this was the first automatic calculator anywhere in the world that was not driven by rotating gears or motors but rather a kind of electromagnet called a solenoid. I would suspect that if your audience is people interested in the subject matter in the headline, you wouldn't have to explain what a solenoid is. But the article goes on to describe exactly that, which is actually kind of refreshing. The Kashios’ calculator was a symphony of solenoids and switches, wired together in series and in parallel to create circuits of ever-increasing complexity. There was not a gear or a motor to be seen. I'm not a mechanical engineer, but something I learned early on: the more moving parts something has, the more likely it is for something to break. In these days of almost no moving parts, they have to engineer in other ways for it to break, or they wouldn't make money. ...Toshio declared that he wanted to throw it out and start over. Solenoids and switches, he declared, were too fiddly for mass production. Relays were the future. Then there's mission creep. In tearing down his solenoid calculator, Toshio Kashio was unwittingly joining a much larger movement in the design and development of computers. The roots of that movement, in turn, lay all the way back in the age of the telegraph—the first communication system that relied not on line of sight or a horse and rider to convey information but rather on the new wonder of electricity. So, this is where the article really gets interesting, though the article needs to go into the history of the telegraph first. I won't copy that part here, so this next quote may seem to come out of nowhere:. Soon after, Stibitz’s boss, Thornton Fry, asked him if the Model K could be made to work with complex numbers. Fry did not mean numbers bigger than two, the limit of the Model K’s circuitry, but rather a very specific and lushly exotic species of number made up of separate “real” and “imaginary” components. I told you we'd get to the blog title. And as Stibitz and Fry demonstrated in September 1940 at the American Mathematical Society in New York, the “Complex Number Calculator” could also be hooked up to a telephone line and driven using a kind of electric typewriter called a teletype. It was the first ever public demonstration of remote computing. In my mind, you then cut to an image of a modern server farm, kind of like with the opening scene of 2001. Shannon’s insight was that relays were the perfect building blocks to bring Boolean logic into the real world. His thesis, which has been called “possibly the most important, and also the most famous, master’s thesis of the century,” was nothing less than a road map for building computers. Or, indeed, for building calculators. I'm obviously leaving out a lot here, but the article reminds me that no one invents anything alone, despite what you might see in popular fiction. Everything builds on others' innovations. I can't do it justice here, but the link is up there if you're interested. As with yesterday's entry, I just like how it links everything together. Into a vast network, if you will. |
| I've written about this sort of thing before, but it's been a while, and this is a different article. For reference, my last bit on the topic of the superficial similarity of galactic and neural networks was here: "Networking" As for today's article, which I have different things to say about: The case for why our Universe may be a giant neural network Neuroscientist and author Bobby Azarian explores the idea that the Universe is a self-organizing system that evolves and learns. It is natural, I think, for humans to notice similarities among disparate things, and, once noting similarity of form, speculate about a corresponding similarity of function. It's part of the basis for some spiritual systems, as well as poetry and metaphor. The trap we don't want to fall into, though, would be (in this case) assuming that such speculation reflects reality, without much evidence beyond, "Well, they look the same." A new scientific paradigm is emerging that presents us with a radically different cosmic narrative. The big idea is that the Universe is not just an arbitrary physical system, but something more like an evolving computational or biological system — with properties strikingly similar to a complex adaptive system, like an organism or a brain. Calling it a "paradigm" is overstating the case, I think. I should note, as the article does, that the idea that the cosmos is a kind of entity in itself is nothing new; that, too, is part of ancient spiritual systems. What's different is that, more recently, within the last 100 years or so, our knowledge of the size and scale of the universe has expanded (pun intended). If true, it raises new existential questions that will force us to completely rethink the nature of reality and ideas about whether the Universe has a function or “purpose.” "If" does a whole lot of lifting, there. In recent years, a number of highly respected theoretical physicists and scientists from various fields have published papers, articles, and books that have provided compelling technical and mathematical arguments that suggest the Universe is not just a computational or information-processing system, but a self-organizing system that evolves and learns in ways that are strikingly similar to biological systems. I'd just like to point out two things here. First, this borders on "argument from authority;" even "highly respected" scientists can be, and often are, wrong. And second, there doesn't have to be anything mystical or supernatural about this. Lots of things, as I noted above, are similar to each other, as they follow the same universal laws. For example, scientists have recently emphasized that the physical organization of the Universe mirrors the structure of a brain. As the universe is several orders of magnitude older than a human brain (or any sort of brain that we know of), I'd say that should be the other way around. Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder — renowned for her skepticism — wrote a bold article for Time Magazine in August of 2022 titled “Maybe the Universe Thinks. Hear Me Out,” which describes the similarities. Okay, I admit I have a thing for Dr. Hossenfelder. No, not like that; I just think she's remarkably good at science communication. I've seen a bunch of her videos and I've read a couple of her books. As with anyone else, though, she can still be wrong. And her "skepticism" takes a different form than most public scientists'—she likes to make distinctions between "consistent with science" and "borne out by evidence," which I appreciate. For instance, and I'm not saying she tackled this subject, Bigfoot is consistent with science: a living entity without supernatural powers who, if real (it isn't), is just remarkably good at hiding in the woods. There is still no evidence for Bigfoot's existence, and some evidence that it's completely fabricated.The Jersey Devil, however, is not consistent with science. That said, I haven't read the article mentioned here. When one zooms out to envision the cosmos as a whole, the “cosmic web” formed by these clusters and filaments looks strikingly similar to the “connectome,” a term that refers to the complete wiring diagram of the brain, which is formed by neurons and their synaptic connections. Neurons in the brain also form clusters, which are grouped into larger clusters, and are connected by filaments called axons, which transmit electrical signals across the cognitive system. I noticed this similarity of appearance many years ago (and wrote about it in here before), but again: that doesn't imply similarity of function. Hossenfelder explains that this resemblance between the cosmic web and the connectome is not superficial, citing a rigorous study by a physicist and a neuroscientist that analyzed the features common to both, and based on the shared mathematical properties, concluded that the two structures are “remarkably similar.” Fortunately, this article does go into some of the arguments against the idea. Of course, it takes more than a certain type of structure to think thoughts. A dead brain is just as thoughtless as a rock. and Yet the Universe’s vastness imposes limitations. Hossenfelder explains that sending signals across the cosmos, even at light speed, would take 80 billion years, and 11 million years just for a signal to travel to our nearest galaxy. Combine the vast size of the Universe with the fact that it is expanding, and it would seem like some kind of cosmic-scale information processing similar to the global processing going on inside brains is out of the question. However, But Hossenfelder speculates over whether “hidden connections” could allow for faster signaling. In a section called “Everything is Connected,” she explains how mechanisms like quantum entanglement or other forms of “non-local connections” could enable longer-range computations. This demonstrates either a remarkable lapse in communication skills (for her or for the author of the article here), or a misunderstanding of how quantum entanglement really works. I tend to believe the former, as I've seen her expand upon the latter. And let's just emphasize this throwaway line: Although highly speculative... So the rest of the article is worth reading, but I won't bore you with more of my specific thoughts about it; they're all along the same lines. I'll just add one more thing for today: The thing is, I would like to believe that everything is interconnected. It suits my philosophy of life. On a purely local level, meaning at about the scale of the solar system or below, this is so obvious as to be almost trivial; it's only the philosophical implications that reach into the depths of the profound. We have a pretty good understanding of the forces that make it so: gravity, electromagnetism, etc. Pull one thread, and others shiver. No man is an island, etc. (And even if one was, the whole concept of "island" is defined by the surrounding water.) The only remarkable thing is that I didn't use drugs to come to this conclusion. It's just that, when I encounter speculation that I would like to believe, my personal threshold for evidence gets higher, not lower. The article says some people think this is testable. So test it. I'd love to be right. But I'm not counting on it. |
| Today's link, from Atlas Obscura, is now outdated, having languished in my queue for several weeks. It's just as well, because if it'd come up anytime before August 30, it would have led to a rant, and I ranted about that particular subject enough for this year. Just How Super Is The Coming Supermoon? July’s full moon will be thousands of miles closer to us than usual. Learn how to measure it with your hand. I'm linking it despite its lack of timeliness, because it's got general information of value to skywatchers. And some dubious information that I, of course, am going to question. The Moon is growing now, more and more of it visible every evening. Though it is technically full for just one night, it will look mostly full for a night or so before and after that. Again, not current information. And yet, I'm going to pick on it. It's technically "full" for just one moment, and half the time, that moment occurs during daylight hours wherever you happen to be. Traditionally, in most cultures that observe this sort of thing, a full moon spans three nights. The term “supermoon” is a relatively recent introduction to the astrological lexicon, but these events are nothing new; they occur several times a year. Okay, fine, I'm going to rant anyway. "Astrological?" I'm not even going to legitimize the sentence that follows that quoted one by pasting it here. Suffice it to say it made veins pop out in my forehead with its utter wrongness. A supermoon takes place when the Moon is nearest to Earth in its elliptical orbit around our planet. And that happens once per orbit: at perigee. It doesn't always coincide with a full moon. When it does, that's what they've taken to calling a supermoon. I don't object to the terminology here; what I object to is when people draw the wrong conclusions from imprecise language. The Moon can look about 14 percent bigger during perigee, its closest approach to Earth, than during its apogee, its furthest point. It can appear 30 percent brighter, too. If you pay attention throughout the year, you might notice how much smaller or bigger the Moon can seem from month to month. Fair enough, though the article starts out by comparing perigee to average, then compares perigee to apogee. Also not mentioned: the horizon moon illusion, where the rising or setting moon might appear larger to the eye. There's a very reasonable explanation for this illusion, and it has nothing to do with earth-moon distance. Incidentally, the article doesn't do a very good follow-up on its promise in the subheadline, the "measure it with your hand" thing. There might be a way to do this, very roughly, but I suspect that individual differences in things like arm length and hand size overshadow the supermoon/micromoon difference. Which, admittedly, is one I've never seen. I wouldn't know a particular full moon was a supermoon but for the websites I frequent, which all gush about it every time it happens. I know some people claim to be able to tell the difference, and I don't doubt them, but my perception just isn't that fine-tuned. I make up for it by insisting upon pedantry. |
| The RNG gives us another planetary article today. This one's about the big guy. Jupiter revealed The Juno spacecraft has been circling Jupiter since 2016. Here are four things we’ve learned so far about the biggest planet in the solar system. In the four years since NASA’s Juno spacecraft went into orbit around Jupiter, it has slowly been coaxing the king of all the planets to reveal its deepest secrets — an astonishing catalog that includes daisy chains of continent-sized cyclones circling both of Jupiter’s poles; vast hailstorms of ammonia-laden “mushballs”; a bloated, fuzzy core at the planet’s center; and a convoluted magnetic field like nothing else in the solar system. The article is from 2020, so add another three years to that, as well as possibly other new discoveries that I can't be arsed to search for right now. I did manage to check whether the ceiling fan (I mean, look at the probe  ) is still active, which, apparently, it is.Named after the goddess Juno, who was Jupiter’s wife in Roman mythology, the spacecraft was launched in August 2011 with the goal of understanding the giant planet’s origin and evolution. "Jupiter's wife" glosses over a whole slew of godly shenanigans, including a bunch of extramarital affairs (not all of them consensual), and that Juno was also his sister. Meanwhile, here are four of Juno’s greatest hits to date. None of which are the hits she took out on Jupiter's illegitimate children. Or, well, they would be illegitimate, except that gods play by different rules. Around the planet’s south pole, Juno spied five cyclones, each wider than the United States, parked around a central cyclone of the same size. Not to be outdone, the north pole revealed eight similar cyclones encircling their own polar vortex. For context, those are pretty small for Jupiter. Compare the best-known storm on Jupiter's cloudy surface, the Great Red Spot (not to be confused with a teenager's acne), which at its peak was something like 3 times the diameter of our entire planet. (Later in the article, the GRS is described as being "a bit wider than Earth;" as with many of us, it's been subject to shrinkage over the last century or so.) Because Jupiter is what astronomers call a gas giant planet, there is no point asking what conditions are like on its surface: It doesn’t have one. Instead, the hydrogen and helium gas that make up the bulk of Jupiter’s atmosphere simply get denser and denser the farther down you go, until the hydrogen becomes a liquid metal. As with my last planetary entry, the whole "unclear boundary between phases" thing is mind-boggling. This adds another level of boggle with the metallic hydrogen thing, which has got to make astronomers irate, because to them, hydrogen and helium are nonmetals, while everything else is a metal. This is distinct from the chemistry definition of a metal, which has something to do with free, shared electrons. Hippie socialist electrons. Metallic hydrogen, as I understand it, only occurs at unimaginable pressures, such as those found near the center of enormous planets. As a digression, there's a weird thing about planets that I don't fully understand. Well, there are lots of those, but in particular, the center of any planet is subject to high pressures. That part makes sense, like how water pressure increases with depth. But because the core is surrounded by planet, the net force of gravity there is near zero (the mass pulls equally from all directions). I haven't reconciled this in my mind yet. Although Jupiter doesn’t have a surface, researchers had a running argument before Juno’s arrival as to whether the planet had a core — a solid ball of heavier elements gathered at the planet’s center. Need to settle a bar bet? Build a billion-dollar ceiling fan and send it to Jupiter. I joke, but the probe really did shed some light on that subject, though there are, of course, still mysteries. As for the planet's Olympic-class magnetic field: It’s as if someone took a bar magnet, bent it almost in half, frayed one end, split the other end, and then stuck the whole thing in the planet at a cockeyed angle. In the north is the frayed end: Rather than emerging around one central spot, the magnetic field sprouts like weeds along a long high-latitude band. In the south is the split end: Some of the field plunges back into the planet around the south pole while some is concentrated in a spot just south of the equator. Jupiter is, believe it or not, quite different from Earth, so it shouldn't be that surprising that its magnetic field is weird. Still, the article goes a bit into just how weird, and, well, its weird. Anyway, apparently, some science got done and we need to do more science. As always. Just don't tell Juno we're sending another probe; she might get jealous. |
| Some things we think are real turn out to be myths. But sometimes it's the other way around. Cracked provides a few examples. Hell, of course, is not real (except for the town in Michigan), but I suspect they mean that as an intensifer. Of course, embellishments are natural, but the basis for what you might think are tall tales are often a flesh-and-blood fellow. Those "embellishments" might be how myths and legends get started in the first place. Kind of like how that fish you caught that one time keeps getting larger and heavier every time you tell the tale, until everyone's convinced that you hooked Leviathan. Or, well, you're convinced they're convinced, anyway. 5. Johnny Appleseed I knew this was a real guy; I only ever objected to his glorification. Though I suppose his legacy of spreading non-native species around is better than that of Charlie Kudzuseed or Frankie Freshwatercarpegg. Johnny Appleseed is a tale that sounds patently insane. A man wandering the Wild West, tossing out apple seeds and leaving a trail of trees in his wake, sounds like a folk tale at best and a severely deranged man at worst. Well, he was at base a missionary, so "deranged" isn't too far out there as a description. 4. John Henry As far as American myths-based-in-fact go, this one's my all-time favorite. Heck, John Henry versus the machine is practically writers’ struggle against advancing A.I. Well, if John Henry was a feeble, depressed man, and the steam machine made weird-looking, factually inaccurate railroads. The thing people get most wrong about this one, though, isn't the human vs. machine thing, but the nature of his work: he didn't hammer spikes into ties (well, he may have done that, too, but that's irrelevant to the main story), but, as I understand it, he drove metal drill thingies into raw rock for placement of demolition charges. You know, to make cuts or tunnels in the Appalachians. 3. Paul Bunyan Rarely has there been a better modern example of reality getting exaggerated into mythology. Bunyan’s physical legend, it’s believed, comes from a French-Canadian man named Fabian Fournier. Remember, first, that in 1875, when Fournier lived, the average male height was right around five and a half feet tall. Given that knowledge, the six-foot-tall Fournier was practically Shaq with an axe. It’s thought that Fournier’s famous bulk combined with the name of another famous lumberjack, Bon Jean, which over time and error, morphed into Bunyan. So, roughly contemporaneous with John Henry. I'm seeing a lot of Johns and (French) Jeans on this list. Where "Paul" came from is unclear, but I guess it played better with test audiences than "Fabian." 2. Davy Crockett I didn't think there was doubt that Crockett was an actual person. Still, sometimes it's hard to separate the truth from the exaggeration. 1. Dracula Hey, someone not from North America. He is, however, based on a real, notably horrible man. Vlad the Impaler, born Vlad III Tepes, was a ruler of Wallachia, which is now Romania. Pretty sure the the Dracula thing is widely known to be based on a real, if morally repugnant, individual. But how did he get all the attention, while Elizabeth Bathory, arguably a far scarier individual, languishes in relative obscurity?Probably a sexist thing. After all, you don't see any chicks on this list, do you? If I had time, I'd come up with some. |
| It's Labor Day here in the US, and I have an aversion to labor, so today's comments will be brief. The 8 Best Astronomy Books For Beginners From Mary Roach’s hilarious look at space travel to astronaut Scott Kelly’s photos documenting a year off planet. Usually, Atlas Obscura highlights interesting locations here on Earth. This represents a bit of an expansion of their purview. It’s easy to forget amid summer road trips and back-to-school to-do lists that our Earthly home is just a floating speck of blue in the vastness of the universe, that our human lives are just a blink in our galaxy’s long history. It should be easy to forget. No matter how insignificant we may seem, we're the ones figuring this shit out, and that's pretty awesome. Even if you’re completely new to the topic, these books are accessible, moving invitations into the furthest reaches of our cosmos. I'm anything but new to the topic, but one cool thing about astronomy is that there's always more to learn. I haven't read any of these books. They seem interesting enough, though they're not all technically about astronomy. Since there's not a lot of point to copying the book titles and summaries—they're right there in the link, and the summaries are elevator-pitch length—this is as good a time as any to do one of my language investigations. Before astronomy, there was astrology. Astrology is, rightly, considered pseudoscience at best, complete horseshit at worst. I fall somewhere in between; I look at it the same as I view folklore. It's an interesting window into psychology and human history. Which leads me to the language bit. Other legitimate branches of science use the -ology suffix: psychology, biology, geology, zoology, etc. It can also be used to describe questionable fields of study, like theology, demonology, or UFOlogy, perhaps lending these subjects a false aura of science. The suffix itself, obviously, comes from the Greek "logos," which as I understand it just means "word" (which doesn't explain why a "logo" is often just a pictogram). Astronomy is different, then, in the use of the "-nomy" suffix, which, according to the usual sources, means something like arranging or categorizing. But it's not alone. You also have taxonomy, which has nothing to do with paying the government money and everything to do with categorization; economy, which is notoriously slippery to define; gastronomy, which is kind of related to today's link because Atlas Obscura also hosts Gastro Obscura, a series of articles about the wonders of food (I've linked those a few times); and not many others. Anomy, however, refers to a lack of moral or ethical standards, which, what? It's also spelled anomie because English is had to pin down, sometimes. Had the history been different, perhaps "astrology" would be the science while "astronomy" would be the folklore. We'll never know. But one reason I can't fully dismiss astrology as a subject is its place in history. Even Newton, known for his discoveries in science and mathematics, started from a foundation of astrology and alchemy. Just to be clear, though, I don't "believe in" it; I just find it interesting, same as with the folklore surrounding cryptids. Astronomy can be defined as the study of celestial objects, and this is why it's kind of fuzzy to define in practice: Earth is, itself, a celestial object. One of my favorite websites, which I've visited nearly every day since it began in 1995 and which hasn't changed format much in those nearly three decades, is the Astronomy Picture of the Day —and it often features images of Earth alongside investigation of faraway planets, stars, nebulae, and galaxies.Which leads me back to the original link, because some of the books there are really about Earth. And that's okay; our -ologies and -onomies are all interconnected, anyway. |
| Dialing back to the ass end of January, 2019, which where I live represents the coldest days of the entire year (on average), the Random Number Gods served up this then-seasonally-appropriate entry: "Cold Hands, Cold Heart" It was apparently part of an early attempt for me at the 30DBC, falling just a few months after I ended my blogging hiatus. The prompt is in the entry, but I'll repeat it here: Allow me to share this quote regarding my local weather this week: ”Dangerous wind chills of -45 degrees F (-43 C) to -65 degrees F (-54 C) are expected for most of the period from Tuesday night through Thursday morning. This is a life-threatening situation...” etcetera, etcetera... stay inside... frostbite... etcetera. One fun math exercise is to work out where the F and C scales cross. It's very simple algebra to do so, but to calm the heart palpitations you just started experiencing upon reading that, the answer is -40. That is, -40F is the same level of nope as -40C. That weather report (I have no record of which user wrote that prompt) is colder than that. So, I say again, nope. As I put it in that 2019 entry: You know there are places on Mars warmer than that, right? You know that, right??? While the average global temperature on Mars is probably around -63C, at the equator, at high Martian noon, it can get up to about 20C (roughly 70F)—very Earthlike temperatures, really, if you discount how short-lived it would be. Almost as short-lived as an unprotected person there. But at least you'd die from decompression and insufficient oxygen, not frostbite. My attitudes about temperature haven't changed in the last five years: Look, I spent my childhood next to an estuary of the Chesapeake, just about at sea level. Pretty close to DC, and you might be aware how crappy the weather can be there. Before I even ventured out of Virginia, I experienced extreme weather: bitter cold, muggy humid heat. And I'm here to tell you that - bugs notwithstanding - give me the heat any day of the week. I dread the coming cooler temperatures. On the other hand, no amount of clothing - no number of layers, no well-made coats or woolen gloves or thermal socks, nothing - will stop my hands and feet from freezing the moment the effective temperature drops below about 52F. And once those freeze, I'm shit-swimming miserable. So you can keep your freakish Michigan lake effect hellish winters (yes, there is a Hell, and it is in Michigan). You can keep your brisk Alaska arctic circle bullshit. You can keep Chicago. When I was in college, I got through some of the toughest winter cold by using the proto-internet to look up the current temperature in Nome, Alaska, just south of the Arctic Circle. It always made me feel better to see -20C there when it was 0C here, or whatever. This worked until, one day, some freakish twist of weather made it warmer there than here. If it weren't for the awesome breweries, wineries, cideries, distilleries, and bars around here, I'd move out in a heartbeat just so as not to deal with another Virginia winter. I've been freezing my ass off most every day since December, and we've only had a few nights of subfreezing lows, this year (last year was relentlessly cold). And I still have February to endure. I don't know how I'll be able to do that. Obviously, I managed. This past winter was far warmer than usual around here (no, this is not an excuse to start an argument or bitch about the environment; it's just an observation). Hell, it didn't even snow, but for a few flurries, which still managed to wipe the store shelves clean of bread and milk and cause drivers to slow down to 15MPH. Parts of last winter were almost pleasant; I recall a few 60F+ days. "Pleasant" for me starts at around 72F, and doesn't end until maybe 100F, depending on the humidity. Hell, I keep my summer A/C at 78, and that's more than sufficient for me. Now, look, I'm not ragging on people who like colder temperatures. Everyone has their comfortable zone; otherwise, we humans wouldn't be living at all sorts of latitudes and elevations. But I like it hot. I keep thinking how nice it would be to live on a tropical island, until I remember that hurricanes are a thing. I might just throw my hands up into the frigid air and hop a flight to Maui again. Because that's where my ideal weather lives. Boy, the end of that entry didn't age very well. |
| Here's another volley in the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture. Ancestry tests are “genetic astrology.” We must re-learn everything we know about DNA and cells From the laying out of the body plan to the organization and functioning of our nervous system, cells rule gene expression and make us who and what we are. People want things simple. Even scientists generally want to go with the most parsimonious theory possible. Biology, however, ain't simple. We're products of genetics and environment, both; the only question is in what proportions? Yes, this article (from Big Think) is a book promotion; I've already stated multiple times how I feel about those. We humans feel a great need to belong, to know our origins, and because we’ve been fixated on genes over the past hundred years, we’ve been using the language of genetics to write our stories. I guess I'm not human then. I have almost no idea who my biological parents were, or what my genetic ancestry is. One family was drama enough; I don't need genetic testing (which I don't trust, anyway) or some epic quest to find my birth parents. There’s immense allure to imagining connections to such remote peoples, places, and times. But as the organization Sense About Science says of such claims, “They are little more than genetic astrology.” And that's even assuming that the DNA tests always produce accurate results, which I'm not convinced of. I'm also just paranoid enough to think the testing labs might have been started by law enforcement; the ancestry results don't have to be accurate if all you're really doing is building a database. Geneticist Adam Rutherford has also rightly pointed out that if you go back far enough — and “far enough” isn’t all that long ago in human history — we’re all related to each other. Go back even farther, and you're related to your dog. Farther even than that, and you're related to that kale you ate last night. The article is amazingly light on detail and heavy on biology jargon, but it's short. Our genes aren’t our identity, no matter what the DNA testing companies say in their advertising campaigns. No, I agree; they're not. They are, however, part of it. Indeed, these companies use the DNA from people’s tests to research how diseases caused by a single genetic mutation might be treated. So much for my pessimistic paranoid fantasy. Or maybe They just want us to believe They're researching genetic diseases. In the end, though, on a personal level, I have to look askance at anything that emphasizes our differences rather than our similarities. |
| Whenever two people need to decide who's doing what undesirable task, they can always figure it out with fists. The Psychological Depths of Rock-Paper-Scissors An excerpt from veteran game designer Greg Costikyan's book "Uncertainty in Games." As the subhead suggests, this is a book promotion. Whatever; I still enjoyed the article. Unless you have lived in a Skinner box from an early age, you know that the outcome of tic-tac-toe is utterly certain. At first glance, rock-paper-scissors appears almost as bad. A four-year-old might think there’s some strategy to it, but isn’t it basically random? I'll note here that the website this comes from is The MIT Press Reader, and the book it promotes is in the field of psychology, so they can be excused for expecting their audience to know what a Skinner box is.Players quickly learn that this is a guessing game and that your goal is to build a mental model of your opponent, to try to predict his actions. So, it's good practice for poker. Note the use of the masculine pronoun. While it's a game anyone with at least one mostly-intact hand can play, I've never heard of women settling their differences in this manner. I'm sure it happens; it just seems to be primarily a dude thing. The reason rock-paper-scissors is not a purely arbitrary game, and the reason that an excellent player will win more often than chance would predict, is that human psychology is not random, and some behaviors are — not necessarily predictable, but likely to occur more often than chance would dictate. This is also what some people miss about classic cheating methods such as loaded dice or marked cards: they give the cheater an edge; they're not going to work 100% of the time. That would be too obvious, anyway. But even if you can shift your odds from 17% to, say, 24% (not unreasonable for loaded dice), you still do better in the long run. The article, obviously, goes into some of the psychology involved. It seems to be related to the Gambler's Fallacy, only kind of in reverse? Even if you have no intention of ever making decisions via RPS, the analysis has other implications. In other words, at first glance rock-paper-scissors appears to be a guessing game, with victory going to the player who can outguess his opponent; at second glance, it appears to be purely arbitrary; and at third glance, the original supposition is justified. It is, in fact, a guessing game with victory going to the player who can outguess his opponent, but there are strategies to “outguessing.” If that makes your head hurt, consider the RPS extensions that have been developed by dedicated RPS researchers all over the world. Perhaps the most famous one is Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock, popularized by the show The Big Bang Theory.I've only seen a few clips from that show, enough to know that it's the nerd equivalent of blackface. RPSLS is still not complex enough for true nerds. For that, we need other extensions. Like this one.  Or this one, with a brain-melting 101 possible throws.  You're welcome. |
| How about we take a lunch break? How Spaghetti Squash Squiggled Its Way Onto American Tables It took a shift in food culture for consumers to embrace the “noodle plant.” Yes, one reason I'm featuring this article is the glorious alliteration in the headline. The other reason is that I actually like spaghetti squash, and I even liked it when my mother prepared it way back when. Most of the vegetables she cooked ended up like soggy rubber. The year was 1974, and Takeo Sakata was holding a dinner party. “Conversation centered around the spaghetti squash,” a guest later recalled, “and the struggle Mr. Sakata had had in introducing it to the West.” We would have planted it, I guess, sometime in the late 1970s, so that effort was at least partially successful. I guess. Since the 1930s, Sakata had been the exclusive marketer of spaghetti squash in the United States. According to Dr. Harry Paris of Israel’s Volcani Institute Agricultural Research Organization, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on spaghetti squash, “[the Japanese] were the only ones interested in it for some time.” The irony here is that squash is an American vegetable (as with tomatoes, it's botanically a fruit, but we're talking about culinary use here). By which I mean, its origin as a cultivated plant was in Central and South America. Cultural appropriation! (The article eventually goes into its cultivation history.) Americans took a long time to warm to this mild-tasting, oblong yellow squash, set apart by its densely coiled inner fibers, which separate when the squash is cooked into strands that distinctly resemble noodles. “You’d be surprised how many examples there are of things that have been around a while until they are rediscovered by people who appreciate them,” says Dr. Paris. He compares the spaghetti squash with the zucchini, a crop that was local to Milan, Italy for decades before it became the world’s most popular summer squash. To me, the greatest thing about spaghetti squash isn't the spaghetti-like feature (though that's pretty cool). It's that the stuff doesn't taste even a little bit like zucchini or yellow squash. Not that I hate those squashes, but I never choose them on purpose, either. It would take a massive shift in Western food culture before consumers finally took notice of spaghetti squash: this time, as a health food. Well, shit. If I'd known it was a health food, I'd have hated it. Like with kale. In the late 20th century, the marketing of Sakata’s spaghetti squash began to center around its appeal to an increasingly calorie-conscious public. The flesh of the squash had long been compared with noodles, but now, for the first time, it was marketed as a healthier alternative to them, with one-fifth the calories, one-quarter the carbs, and a negligible amount of fat. Let's be real: it's not exactly like spaghetti, or any other noodle. But it's similar enough that one can do the same things to it as with spaghetti, like loading it up with butter, bolognese sauce and Parmesan cheese, thus negating most of its health benefits. Although recipes of the 1980s and 1990s still suggested boiling or steaming the squash, one of the first recipes to present it explicitly as a healthier pasta alternative, published by Frieda’s Branded Produce in 1975, was developed using a microwave oven. I'm sure there are several ways to cook it, as with most vegetables, but roasting works well and produces less mess. I'd keep it far away from the microwave, though. Spaghetti squash was finally in the limelight. “But you have to be a pretty good cook to know what to do with it,” says Dr. Paris. Or just look for instructions on the internet, scroll past all the pages and pages of superfluous background information food bloggers seem to be compelled to preface their recipes with, and do what it says. It's really not that difficult, and I say that as a dedicated slacker. It's like hard-boiling eggs: if you know the right procedure and time involved, it's easy to get good results. It's not like making a soufflé, or even getting your steak temperature just right. In any event, I didn't know the whole history, hence the article. And now I'm hungry... |
| I've done entries about this topic a few times, so I had to double-check to ensure I hadn't linked this particular article before, or that it's not some variation on a previous article. And also to try not to duplicate a title. It looks like something different, though I can always make stupid mistakes. Bonhoeffer’s “theory of stupidity”: We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones Evil is easy to identify and fight against; not so with stupidity. I'm not so sure evil is so easy to identify and fight against, but I guess that compared to stupidity, it's a cakewalk. The most relevant previous blog entry is here, from two years ago, if you're interested in comparing views on the subject: "Fight The Power" Today's article isn't all that long, so this entry won't be, either. There’s an internet adage that goes, “Debating an idiot is like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.” It’s funny and astute. It’s also deeply, depressingly worrying. I would like to once again draw a distinction between stupidity and ignorance. Ignorance is our natural, base state; it's only through learning stuff that we become not-ignorant. The key there is to be open to learning stuff, even if it sometimes contradicts stuff we've already learned. Ignorance is, therefore, forgivable, and fixable... if it doesn't turn into willful ignorance. For theologian and philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the stupid person is often more dangerous than the evil one. The core of theology and philosophy is to build logical edifices. Unfortunately, often those edifices have no foundation. Someone can be smart and still wrong, due to false premises. In comic books and action movies, we know who the villain is. They wear dark clothes, kill on a whim, and cackle madly at their diabolical scheme. The whole point to comic books and action movies is to have a clear villain, someone that the very clear hero can successfully thwart. It simplifies, and is therefore satisfying. More recently, both sides have been written to be on shaky moral ground, which can be satisfying, too. Once something is a known evil, the good of the world can rally to defend and fight against it. Except that it's blindingly obvious that this doesn't happen on a regular basis. You know Russia's still trying to invade Ukraine? Sure, we're helping Ukraine (the clear Good Guys), but not enough to win a definitive victory against the Bad Guys. And propaganda has convinced some people that the Good Guys are the Bad Guys, and vice-versa. Stupidity, though, is a different problem altogether. We cannot so easily fight stupidity for two reasons. First, we are collectively much more tolerant of it. Unlike evil, stupidity is not a vice most of us take seriously. We do not lambast others for ignorance. We do not scream down people for not knowing things. I don't really buy this, either, and once again, let's not conflate ignorance with stupidity. There are words I struggle to pronounce, because I've only ever seen them in writing. Other people struggle to spell words they've only ever heard. Which of us is more ignorant? Neither, really. But I tend to be more judgmental of people who can't spell than of people who can't pronounce, because I can relate better. I'm aware of this flaw and can therefore work to mitigate it; certainly, I have others I'm not aware of. Bonhoeffer’s argument, then, is that stupidity should be viewed as worse than evil. Stupidity has far greater potential to damage our lives. I mean, I kinda see the point, and agree, to some extent. But none of this addresses the definition problem, whereby, for example, the extreme right thinks that the extreme left is stupid, ignorant, and evil, while the extreme left believes these things of the extreme right. But stupidity is much harder to weed out. That’s why it’s a dangerous weapon: Because evil people find it hard to take power, they need stupid people to do their work. This is why the trope of the criminal mastermind with brainless minions is perpetual. Think Lex Luthor and Otis in the 1977 Superman movie. So, in short, I'm not completely convinced. This may be source-bias on my part (theologians in particular are always suspect for me), but, in keeping with the theme, I try to keep an open mind. I think that earlier entry's article presented a more cogent argument. |
| It's maddening. I'm over here losing my goddamned mind. Look... it doesn't matter how many times you repeat an error, it's still an error. It's still wrong. Like, it doesn't matter how many people mistakenly use "it's" as a possessive pronoun, or "your" as a contraction of "you are," those are objectively wrong and can never be right, no matter how much English changes otherwise. (This, of course, doesn't mean I never make inadvertent mistakes like that.) Similarly, claiming that tomorrow's full moon is a Blue Moon is objectively wrong and can never be right, even if it is being propagated by formerly trusted sources of mine like Atlas Obscura. It makes me call all of their "facts" into question. No, I'm not going to link their offending article. One stupid mistake in a magazine back in the 1940s, and this is what we get: rampant, viral misinformation, combined with anchoring bias (which is the one where the first thing we hear about a certain topic sticks in mind, even in the face of arguments evidence to the contrary). Ugh. As for the "supermoon" thing that you've probably heard in conjunction with that (that's a very obscure pun, because a full moon occurs at opposition, while a new moon represents an astronomical conjunction), well, whatever. It's a real thing, though probably overhyped. By all means, if you can gaze at the full moon tonight and/or tomorrow night, I encourage you to do so. Here, it's supposed to be cloudy. Of course. At least I only have to do this rant every three years or so (except for the time a few years ago when we got two full moons in January, none in February, and two in March, which for fuck's sake should have ended that false definition once and for all). With luck, I'll be dead the next time the false Blue Moon comes around, and you won't have to see me kvetch about it. For the record, once more with feeling, the actual Blue Moon is the third full moon of a season containing four full moons, and the next one occurs next August. It can never occur in the last few days of a Gregorian calendar month. Eh. This is long enough now that I don't need to get into a random article today. One might say this happens once in a Blue Moon; that is, one can say it if one wants me to start this rant all over again. I'll get back to my usual format tomorrow. I will, however, link one of my longer arguments in favor of the traditional definition, in the form of two consecutive Fantasy newsletter editorials: "It's Not a Blue Moon, Part I" "It's Not a Blue Moon, Part II" |
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