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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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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
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"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024"  [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️😎convalesce  Prompt 7. Sept 7. The world is not an ideal place for lots of people. What can YOU do to make it better? Well, the one most overwhelmingly important thing I have already done is: avoid bringing another human into a far-from-ideal world. The second most important thing is that I attempt to bring knowledge and comedy into an ignorant and largely humorless world. In that, I fail most of the time, but at least it makes me feel good to try. And there are other things I do. I recycle, to the extent that I'm able. I help out with causes, when I can be sure that it's going more to the cause than to the organizer. I try to minimize my water use, and refrain from littering. All of that amounts to spit in the ocean, and it doesn't even make me feel good to brag about it. And for every infinitesimal improvement we can make individually, millions of times worse stuff gets done by other people, governments, and big corporations. "Every little bit helps," my ass. You think it makes a difference if you give a dollar to a billionaire? No, they only notice if you try to take one. If there's anything that the pandemic years drove home to me, it's that any effort we make has to be a collective effort—and that it will never be a collective effort. There will always be those who deliberately make things worse. If an asteroid were about to hit the ocean, and the only way to avoid it would be for everyone to, I don't know, jump up and down at the same time, at least half the population will continue to sit on their asses, out of ignorance, apathy, a death wish, or maybe just plain spite. "The other political side wants me to do this, so I absolutely refuse to do it." So you're jumping up and down... for what? Some marginal improvement in your fitness? So you can say you're at least trying to help? I mean, in that particular case, I'd probably do it, just on the off-chance that everyone else will, too. But they won't. Yeah, some people are in a position to make improvements now, and I wish them the best. But I'm not in that position. What we need are big, systemic changes, not that one extra dollar. I can travel less, reducing my carbon footprint. I can move to a plant-based diet, helping the environment while reducing animal suffering. I can drive less, walk more. (I know this because I spent over a year without a car.) I can volunteer my time to causes I care about. I can mentor youth, sharing my vast intelligence and infinite wisdom with the impressionable younger generation. Yes, I can do all these things. But I won't.  FINAL DAY! We get to give out a free Merit Badge every day this week. Want one? Anyone who comments here before 11:30 pm WDC time today could get today's. (I'll need that extra half-hour to pick a winner and send the badge before midnight.) To clarify:  When I say "comment," I mean comment. Not review. Though reviews are always welcome. I also mean "here," not on the newsfeed post. MB recipient will be chosen at random. Maximum of one MB per commenter for the week. If I don't get comments, I'll pick a previous commenter, and maybe not at random. The MB will be the one I commissioned two years ago, "Complexity," which is a publicly available MB. I appreciate all comments; this is just a little incentive. |
"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️😎convalesce Prompt 6. Sept 6. Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. Paul Tournier Can you share a secret? Small or big, tell us. No? Tell us why not. No. ...well, now I have to come up with at least 299 more words. I'm pretty open in here, I think, though there are some things I edge around in an effort to avoid potential problems. This blog is public, though, so once I share something here, it can no longer be considered a "secret" in a literal sense of the word. So asking me to share a secret in here is the same as asking me to destroy it. Some things were told to me in confidence by other people, and those aren't mine to disclose. If I'm ever in doubt about whether someone else's words to me are confidential or not, I assume they are. So those aren't getting discussed. Ever wonder, though, why "secretary" contains the word "secret?" That's not an accident. While the word has largely fallen out of favor in the business world due to sexist connotations, replaced by "office assistant" or some similar term, a secretary is, historically, someone entrusted with secrets. The word survives in government administration, like with the Secretary of State in the US, or the UN's Secretariat. I suppose we didn't want to go with "minister" like in the UK or other countries, despite its inclusion in "administer." How the word "secretary" got applied to desks with top shelves is still a mystery to me. Perhaps it was because secretaries tended to use such desks for organization, while a boss's desk is traditionally shelf-free, as they had secretaries to do all the filing and such. Or it might be used there in the sense not of "secret," but of "secrete," as in hiding, filing, or secreting stuff away. In yet another example of English's weirdness, "secrete" can also mean to ooze forth, like... well, you know what I'm talking about; unless you're a biologist, it's usually considered disgusting. But the noun and verb are etymologically related. I suppose it's no secret that when I can't think of anything else to say about a subject, I retreat into etymology. Most word origins are traced back to Latin or Greek, but even Latin and Greek built on earlier languages. It's just that the further back in time you go, the fewer written records survive, so it's tough to trace everything back to what linguists call Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, the apparent source of most Western languages. But language probably got invented long before PIE, and it's even tougher to peer back into that ancient time. The past holds many secrets, and we will probably never expose them all. We get to give out a free Merit Badge every day this week. Want one? Anyone who comments here before 11:30 pm WDC time today could get today's. (I'll need that extra half-hour to pick a winner and send the badge before midnight.) To clarify: When I say "comment," I mean comment. Not review. Though reviews are always welcome. I also mean "here," not on the newsfeed post. MB recipient will be chosen at random. Maximum of one MB per commenter for the week. If I don't get comments, I'll pick a previous commenter, and maybe not at random. The MB will be the one I commissioned two years ago, "Complexity," which is a publicly available MB. I appreciate all comments; this is just a little incentive. |
"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️😎convalesce Prompt 5. Sept 5. The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go. Dr. Seuss Tell us more about the writer in you. Plans/Aspirations/Fears/Status etc? Plans: None. As a writer, anyway. Apart from continuing to do what I'm doing now. Other than writing, I plan to travel more. I may write about it, but the travel writing field is crowded with young influenzas who can't write for shit, but look good in selfies. Aspirations: None. Used to be, I wanted to get published. I abandoned that goal, I don't know, maybe about when I turned 50? No one wants to publish old, unestablished writers. Well, almost no one. You can probably find a counterexample if you look for one, because it made the news. It made the news for the same reason lottery wins and lightning strikes do: it's rare. Plus, I'd have to be an exceptional writer. I may be a decent writer, but I'm not exceptional in any way. And don't say "self-publishing" at me. While it's absolutely a legitimate route, it involves way more work than I'm willing to do, including marketing. I hate marketing, not to mention it would be hypocritical of me to push ads on people while hating all the ads being pushed on me. Not that I'm above being hypocritical, of course. That just seems a step too far. Fears: Tornadoes, picking up dog shit, anything touching my eyeballs, and success. The tornado thing is probably understandable. Not that I live in an especially twister-prone area; it's just that they are, to me, natural disasters worse than earthquakes, floods, fires, or volcanoes. Picking up dog shit is just something that grosses me out. Thus, I don't have a dog. Every once in a while I'll owe a favor to someone, and sometimes that favor means walking their dog while they're on vacation. Just because I can work through my fears doesn't mean I want to. (Before you ask, cat shit doesn't bother me as much, though it's still not my favorite chore to clean up.) I also dealt with the eyeball thing a few years ago, because I had to. That doesn't mean I'm eager to have eye surgery again. The "success" one does relate to writing. Let's say a miracle happens and I get one of my novels published. Suddenly, I'm expected to write more. You know what happens to me when I'm expected to do something? It becomes work, and I'm violently allergic to work. Status: Another English word with more than one meaning. From context, I'm guessing this is the "how are things going" definition, as in "status report." Answer: cruising along. As for the other definition, where I fit in the social hierarchy, well, I reject the concept of a social hierarchy. But that's really irrelevant; I just like to play with words. In any case, there is one writing-related thing that's been on my mind lately. As I've mentioned a few times, I've done a blog entry every day for nearly 5 years. Whether it's prompted like this one, or a spontaneous personal update, or commenting on some article, I've managed to find something to say every day since December 14, 2019. This wasn't planned; I just blogged every day for a few months, and the plan after that was to go to Scotland for a couple of weeks for the Islay Festival. Then, well, you know what happened in early 2020. I didn't go anywhere. I kept blogging. When I finally was able to go somewhere, I stayed in the US, and still managed to get an entry in every day. This will end. It may end during my upcoming Europe trip, now only 2 weeks away. That's not the plan, but it could happen. My shit gets stolen or broken, or I can't connect to the internet, or I just get too busy and/or too drunk, or I fuck up the time zone difference. I don't know. Ideally, though, I continue on this track until at least December 13, completing a 5-year daily blogging streak. That's as close to a "plan" as I get with writing, these days. In either case, though, blogs here are limited to 3000 entries, and this is entry number 2812. Less than 200 to go. Enough to take me to early next year if I continue at this rate, but then... bam! Brick wall. Other people here have dealt with the limit by deleting old entries. I won't do that. Most never have to worry about the limit, and that's perfectly okay. But I've been considering what to do next. Quit? Start a new blog? Concentrate on fiction and poetry for a while? If I started a new blog, I'd have to think of a title that's somehow works as well as, or better than, Complex Numbers, and on that front, I'm stumped. Oh well, at least it wouldn't be work. Heading into the last days of Birthday week, now. We get to give out a free Merit Badge every day this week. Want one? Anyone who comments here before 11:30 pm WDC time today could get today's. (I'll need that extra half-hour to pick a winner and send the badge before midnight.) To clarify: When I say "comment," I mean comment. Not review. Though reviews are always welcome. I also mean "here," not on the newsfeed post. MB recipient will be chosen at random. Maximum of one MB per commenter for the week. If I don't get comments, I'll pick a previous commenter, and maybe not at random. The MB will be the one I commissioned two years ago, "Complexity," which is a publicly available MB. I appreciate all comments; this is just a little incentive. |
"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️😎convalesce Prompt 4. Sept 4. Photo prompts. (Choose 1,2,3 or 4 and write fiction or non-fiction) PhotoPrompt 3  I'm only posting the prompt pic I picked. One of the others was a blue rubber duck, and I almost picked that one, but dismissed it as "too cute." Ducks and dragons are related, though. A drake is a male duck. A drake is also, depending on the source, a particular subtype of dragon, or a synonym for dragon. The latter has a different etymology, one which is more apparent when you consider the adjective form, "draconic." That should not be confused with "draconian," which is used to describe oppressive policies. Nor should it be confused with the explorer Sir Francis Drake, or his namesake Frank Drake, originator of the Drake Equation, which has nothing to do with dragons. Unless aliens are dragons. Which isn't technically impossible. Another synonym for dragon is worm, or wyrm, which also confused me as a kid. English is weird. Dragons are, unlike ducks, creatures of fantasy. Unless you count Komodo dragons, though I say that's cheating. But I have this hypothesis that dragons were dinosaurs. Why were dragons part of the folklore of several geographically separate cultures? I think it's because of dinosaur bones. Some ancient t-rex or brontosaurus skeleton or whatever got exposed via erosion. Early humans, clever and creative but without our understanding of geological time, might have seen these enormous bones poking out of some sedimentary rock, and pictured what sort of creature might have made them. Clearly, it was a giant, flying, fire-breathing, gold-hoarding monster, because what else could it be? But also, ducks are dinosaurs. All birds are. Lots of dinosaur lineages indeed went extinct, but at least one survived into modern times and their genetically-plastic descendants exploded into the vast diversity of avian species we encounter today. Those eggs you had for breakfast? Dinosaur eggs. That KFC bucket you reluctantly bought over the Labor Day weekend? Kentucky-fried dinosaur parts. Don't feel bad about eating chicken. Their ancestors probably munched on ours. Colonel Sanders was just doling out payback. So, if you're wondering what a dragon would taste like... well, it would probably taste like chicken. Or duck. Unlike our modern birds, though, dragon meat might even come pre-cooked. All that fire breath had to do something to their insides, right? Let's do this again. We get to give out a free Merit Badge every day this week. Want one? Anyone who comments here before 11:30 pm WDC time today could get today's. (I'll need that extra half-hour to pick a winner and send the badge before midnight.) To clarify: When I say "comment," I mean comment. Not review. Though reviews are always welcome. I also mean "here," not on the newsfeed post. MB recipient will be chosen at random. Maximum of one MB per commenter for the week. If I don't get comments, I'll pick a previous commenter, and maybe not at random. The MB will be the one I commissioned two years ago, "Complexity," which is a publicly available MB. I appreciate all comments; this is just a little incentive. |
"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️😎convalesce Prompt 3. Sept 3. You can achieve all the things you want to do, but it's much better to do it with loved ones around you; family and friends, people that you care about that can help you on the way and can celebrate you, and you can enjoy the journey. ~John Lasseter Your most significant other(s) is/are....! Write about your loved ones (furry or not). Right, as if I were capable of love. Okay, okay, that's a joke, and I'm determined not to make today's entry as existentially terrifying as yesterday's. But as I showed then, you can't count on anyone. Just saying. And not just because I was given up for adoption as an infant, either. Still, "love" carries a lot of baggage and assumptions. The Greeks might have gotten it closer to right by slicing it up into sub-loves: eros, agape, whatever. They say the Inuit have dozens of words for snow. While this is probably false, like all legends, it illuminates what might be a greater truth: the more important a concept is culturally, the more words they'll have to describe its various shades and gradations. We just have two words for love: love itself, and like. We've got dozens of words for killing, though. And hundreds of words for penis. All of which is to say that while there are people (and cats) that I particularly care about, I neither have nor want a "significant other." I've been married twice, and you know what Einstein supposedly said about the definition of insanity. Einstein probably didn't say that, though, and it's not really the definition of insanity. You know who (probably) did originate that quote, though? According to some of my fact-checking sources, in its current form ("Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"), it was Rita Mae Brown, in the voice of one of her characters. Rita lives near me. I met her a few times. Exceptionally nice lady. Cat person. I suspect she found it extraordinarily amusing that her quote became misattributed to the guy whose picture is in the dictionary under "genius." Well, enough with the name-dropping. If it helps, I live near John Grisham, too, and never met him. The point is, these days, I'm done with that sort of love. You know how some guys, they'll meet someone of their preferred gender, and their mind immediately fast-forwards ahead to the sex part? Mine fast-forwards to the breakup part, and I don't want to deal with that again. But I have friends. And cats. That's enough for me. Because if there's one thing I learned early and took with me into adulthood, it was how to be comfortable being alone. It always surprises me how much other people depend on each other, as if that rug won't be pulled out from under them at some point. Some say the pain of eventual abandonment is worth the pleasure of another's company, but I'm not so sure. Don't dare think I'm bitter about it, though. I get that some people would be, but I'm not them. Mostly, as always, I'm amused, and laughter is one constant friend I can count on. Let's do this again. We get to give out a free Merit Badge every day this week. Want one? Anyone who comments here before 11:30 pm WDC time today could get today's. (I'll need that extra half-hour to pick a winner and send the badge before midnight.) To clarify: When I say "comment," I mean comment. Not review. Though reviews are always welcome. I also mean "here," not on the newsfeed post. MB recipient will be chosen at random. Maximum of one MB per commenter for the week. If I don't get comments, I'll pick a previous commenter, and maybe not at random. The MB will be the one I commissioned two years ago, "Complexity," which is a publicly available MB. I appreciate all comments; this is just a little incentive. |
"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️😎convalesce Prompt 2. Sept 2. Tell us about an earthshaking Life-or-Death situation in your life. What happened, how did it change you, if at all? I've been close to death three times that I know of, each time from some medical issue. I say "that I know of," because who knows what might have happened had I crossed a street a few seconds later, or decided to go out instead of staying home? Thing is, none of those instances were particularly "earthshaking." For a human over the age of, maybe, 3 or 4, being alive means living with knowledge of your own mortality, even if only in abstract terms. As better writers than me have noted, death is one of the very few certainties, along with taxes and construction on the Capital Beltway. Doesn't make it easier to contemplate, maybe, but you know it's coming. And with age comes even deeper knowledge of the inevitability of drawing one's final breath. You've lost many pets, if you're lucky enough to have had pets. You've lost family. Maybe you've lost friends to the Reaper's scythe. Or, like me, you watch your parents slowly decline into husks of their former selves, to the point where death becomes a release and a relief, not something to be feared. It creeps closer and closer, as sure as getting honked at in Manhattan. The only unknown is: how are you going to handle the knowledge? Back when Facebook was new and shiny, I had an account there (still do, because I can't get into the damn thing to close my account, but that's not really relevant) and I, like many people, became curious about what people I knew long ago were up to. I found a mutual friend of a high school girlfriend, whom I asked about—not trying to start anything back up, but like I said, just curiosity. "Oh, she died a few years ago," the mutual friend told me. Apparently, she'd just gotten back from her honeymoon and was in great spirits, looking forward to her new life, when she collapsed on a sidewalk from an undiagnosed congenital heart condition. She was in her early 30s. Her twin brother, who, somewhat predictably, never much liked me, got checked out; turns out he had the same condition, but knowing about it, the docs were able to treat it. Last I heard, he was still kicking. I even ran across his name in a news story once, a few years back. I may be getting some of the details wrong, because this was long ago, and her death even longer ago, but the result remains the same: that's most likely when it really hit me that anyone can die of anything at any time. Sure, I'd known that intellectually, but that was probably the moment when I felt it in my gut. What changed my perception, at least to some degree, was facing not the prospect of my own death, but getting hit by the news of the death of someone my own age I'd once cared about. Some people deal by trying everything they can to extend their life. I can understand that, though that's not me. Other people deal by deliberately trying to shorten it. That's not me, either. Still others cling to the belief that there's a life after death, that their consciousness will, through supernatural means, survive their body's demise. While I'm not here to disparage anyone's closely held beliefs, I couldn't take comfort in that; one of the many things I'd find scarier than death would be eternal life. No, between watching my parents decline and die, and hearing about my former girlfriend, the only thing that makes any kind sense to me is to live while I'm still alive. Sometimes, that means doing things that have been shown to reduce one's life span, but that's not why I do them. I do anything I do for one overwhelming reason: I fucking feel like it. And that, folks, is why I plan to be in France three weeks from now: because I feel like it. I could die tonight. Or on the trip. Or 20 years from now, or anytime in between. But I lived first. Life's too short to drink the cheap stuff. You wanna live until You die alone and will And I can fly alone at will I'm not so far below I'll live beneath your sky With tainted eyes I've made my mind To live until I die Let's do this again. We get to give out a free Merit Badge every day this week. Want one? Anyone who comments here before 11:30 pm WDC time today could get today's. (I'll need that extra half-hour to pick a winner and send the badge before midnight.) To clarify: When I say "comment," I mean comment. Not review. Though reviews are always welcome. I also mean "here," not on the newsfeed post. MB recipient will be chosen at random. Maximum of one MB per commenter for the week. If I don't get comments, I'll pick a previous commenter, and maybe not at random. The MB will be the one I commissioned two years ago, "Complexity," which is a publicly available MB. I appreciate all comments; this is just a little incentive. |
"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️😎convalesce Prompt 1. Sept 1. It's the site's 24th Anniversary. Tell us about your love or fondness of Writing.com. What makes this a wonderful place for writers? Why are you (still) here? My own site milestone is coming up: as of next Wednesday, I'll have been a member here for 20 years. The funny thing is, I still consider myself a later transplant to the jungle here. When I joined, I met writers who had been around for as long as four years, and they had their communities, their cliques, their ways of doing things. And yet, they welcomed the newbie (me). Some of them are still around, and remain good friends. Some of them are not, and I miss them. Objectively, I know that for a newbie today, there's not a lot of difference between a 20 and 24 year tenure here. And I admit, I'm not very good at paying that long-ago welcome forward; I never do know what to say to, or do for, a new member struggling to figure out the site or learn the ins and outs of WritingML, unless they ask me directly. To be fair to myself, when they do ask me directly (or in the Tech Support forum), I do my best to answer their questions. It just occurred to me that my current daily blogging streak is longer than the time between the site's launch and the day I joined. Perhaps that's enough to change my perspective. And I guess I've become a blogger. I mean, anyone can be a blogger, but I think this site focuses on fiction writing and poetry. I've done plenty of that, and I generally enjoy reading it, but this seems like this is the niche I've slotted myself into. Not what I'd planned, but I'll run with it. The real treasure, as the cliché goes, is the friends we make along the way. I've met more people here than I can count, and I can count pretty high, what with being comfortable with exponential notation and all. And I've met many of them in person. I stood up for one at his wedding. I've helped with another member's business plan. I've gone on road trips with some. I've traveled throughout the US, and even to other countries, to meet up with WDC authors. And I'm willing to continue to do that. Sometimes, the only thing I have in common with the people I've met is a love of reading and writing. Sometimes, that's enough. We get to give out a free Merit Badge every day this week. Want one? Anyone who comments here before 11:30 pm WDC time today could get today's (I'll need that extra half-hour to pick a winner and send the badge before midnight.) To clarify: When I say "comment," I mean comment. Not review. Though reviews are always welcome. I also mean "here," not on the newsfeed post. MB recipient will be chosen at random. Maximum of one MB per commenter for the week. If I don't get comments, I'll pick a previous commenter, and maybe not at random. The MB will be the one I commissioned two years ago, "Complexity," which is a publicly available MB. I appreciate all comments; this is just a little incentive. |
| In August and everything after You get a little less than you expected somehow —Counting Crows I usually do these archaeological expeditions on Sundays, but, as I noted yesterday, all of next week will be (or at least should be) taken up by entries for "Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+].The past, imperfect, goes all the way to April of 2007 today, for a short entry about consumer automation: "Meet George Jetson" My wife wants a robot. Yes, this was long enough ago that I was actually married. No, not for that. I haven't been replaced by a machine yet. Or, well, maybe I have; her friends have been holding a lot of schtupperware parties lately. "Schtup" is a Yiddish word for sexual intercourse. Her friends had these get-togethers where the host would demonstrate various "toys" (mostly made of plastic) and get some sort of commission on sales. It would have been impossible for me not to make a pun on Tupperware parties. By "demonstrate," I don't mean what you're thinking. Get your mind out of the gutter, please. But specifically, she wants a robot she saw that travels around the house, cleaning it. A few years back, my housemate got a Roomba. It was a massive pain to organize around, since neither of us is naturally organized. There's barely enough open floor space for it to do its thing, and I can't be arsed to do all the work it would take to possess less stuff. It collects dust now, on top rather than inside. Now, overlooking for the moment the years of therapy our cats will have to endure if we actually get this little slice of science fiction... Also, the cats were not amused. Yes, I've seen those videos of cats sitting on the damn things while they scoot around, but my cats are different. ...glossing over the price (which, really, is probably comparable to an Oreck vacuum cleaner)... The house is, and was, uncarpeted except for one single room. Not worth spending that kind of dough. Then I'd be the sucker instead of the vacuum cleaner. ...and even forgetting for the moment how this little gadget confirms my theory that if necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the milkman... Huh. I've been saying that for at least 17 years. I had no idea. ...aside from all that, there's something fundamentally wrong here: There exists a household cleaning robot, and I still don't have my flying car. Every time I complain that I don't have a flying car, two responses come soaring in, as if jerked by knees: 1) Flying cars do exist (generally accompanied by a link to a video); 2) People can't drive in 2D; imagine the chaos if they tried it in 3D. For 1, I say "Okay, they exist. Fine. They're not production models and, more importantly, my complaint is not that they don't exist, but that I don't own one." For 2, my response is that I don't give a good goddamn if anyone else has one; I'd be perfectly happy being the only owner of one. I was promised a flying car. It was right there at the 1939 World's Fair: Flying Cars are the Future. The far future, apparently. Point is, how come she gets a household robot, and I'm still stuck driving a vehicle that never leaves the ground (except maybe when I'm being chased by Roscoe P. Coltrane)? Spoiler: she didn't get a household robot. I'm not saying that the lack was a proximate cause of our divorce, but it probably didn't help. There follows a link to a Popular Mechanics article (I presume from the URL), but the link doesn't work any more and I have no idea what point I was trying to make with it. Nor can I be arsed to search it out. And just to forestall another assumption: it's not like I expected her to do all the cleaning. We both did that. Not that I would have done as much if I'd been single, as evidenced by the fact that these days, I hire a maid service, which is almost as much an organizational pain in the ass as the Roomba was. |
| I expect to participate in "Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] every day next week, and this will likely be the last link I comment on for a while. So savor it. Which should be easy enough, because it's about food. Do You Really Need to Bake With a Scale? I am legally obligated to tell you the truth, even if you don't want to hear it. You're probably better off baking with an oven, I think. So listen to me, your baking therapist: You need to stop the negative self-talk. It’s not you—it’s your measuring cup. And it’s letting you down! Which is what I've been saying. But no, I get it, I'm not an expert. My advice is that taking my advice isn't always a good idea. But I've railed on this numerous times, most recently here: "Waxy Scaley" When I tried using measuring cups on five separate occasions. I got five totally different weights. This! Is! Not! Okay! I think we get the point without all the bangs. We all measure flour differently. Some of us dip-and-sweep, others fluff-and-spoon, a few of us live on the edge and simply tilt the bag over the measuring cup, hoping for the best, and there are those who shall not be named who use liquid measuring cups (please don’t). No mention of sifting? Shame. With a baking scale, however, 125 grams of flour (the generally accepted standard weight of 1 cup all-purpose flour) remains 125 grams no matter where and who in the world you are. I could quibble about this. Unless you're using a balance scale, you're measuring weight, not mass. The same mass weighs a different amount depending on where you are on or off the planet. But I won't. Accuracy is indeed important, as is precision, but it's possible to take it too far. The trick is knowing when you're taking it too far. Why am I so focused on flour? Because every crumbly cookie, sunken cake, or leaden bread that made you believe you’re a bad baker can almost always be traced back to too much or too little flour. Not mentioned in the article: the kind of flour you're using can also be important. You know why biscuits (American biscuits, not what the UK calls cookies) are better in the South? It's not because we're better bakers. It's that the proper flour for biscuits is generally only available in the American south. This scientific study supports my assertion; also note their use of grams, not cups (though their mixing of SI and Imperial units made me twitch).But the measuring thing holds true for other ingredients. Baking soda is an essential ingredient in many baked goods, and it works because of a chemical reaction, and chemical reactions are usually driven by mass, not volume. Flour has a structural purpose in baking; given enough moisture and heat it forms a protein network that lends physical shape to your treats. That protein network is mostly gluten. This is one reason why gluten-free baked things taste like mushy ass. The benefits of a baking scale go far beyond flour, though. Ever come across measurements like “a scant ½ cup”? (I’m sorry, what?). It’s never an issue when a recipe is written with weights. I don't think I've ever seen that (in my defense, I don't bake often). But what I have seen is stuff like "heaping tablespoon." Come on. Or how about measuring sticky peanut butter or molasses or honey? Which was the focus of the last blog entry I did on this, the one I linked up there. Or what about when a recipe calls for chocolate or nuts? With so many variables—mini chips vs. regular chips vs. fèves, finely chopped vs. coarsely chopped nuts—a scale is the only way to ensure consistency. While I agree with this, there are some ingredients, like chocolate chips for the eponymous cookies, where the actual quantity is more a matter of personal preference. The point remains, though: a standard cup of Hershey's Kisses (not great chocolate, but they're basically giant chocolate chips), if you can even measure something that bulky in cups, is not going to weigh the same as a cup of mini chocolate chips. This has to do with solids vs. air voids, but that's just on a bigger scale (pun intended) than the flour problem. Even if a favorite recipe doesn’t list weights, you can use this immensely handy conversion chart from King Arthur Flour to figure them out yourself. Half my work in cooking seems to be finding these conversions online. As an aside, it doesn't matter if it's grams or ounces. As long as you're on Earth, it's close enough. Just don't confuse weight ounces with fluid ounces. Once you understand the life-changing magic of baking with a scale, you may never, ever use measuring cups again. Hold onto those spoons, though: For very small amounts, like teaspoons, I prefer to stick to volume measures. Most scales measure in 1-gram increments, so they just aren’t sensitive enough to pick up the nuances of something like ¼ teaspoon baking soda. I used to have a 0.01-gram kitchen scale. Bought it from Amazon. Later, I realized that this probably put me on a drug-dealer watch list. No, assholes, I'm just using it to get the precise amount of cornstarch measured out. By "used to have," I mean it fell off the counter once, and I replaced it with a scale that's less precise but has greater capacity. And is more durable. The article ends with a link to a hamantaschen recipe, for which we are in the wrong time of year. But that's never stopped me before. |
| I have a couple of articles about this, from different perspectives. This one, from Ars Technica, gets a little, well... technical. Researchers figure out how to keep clocks on the Earth, Moon in sync A single standardized Earth/Moon time would aid communications, enable lunar GPS. I'm pretty sure I've talked about this sort of thing in here before, but if so, that was before they'd figured this out. I found one example: "Luna Ticks" Our communications and GPS networks all depend on keeping careful track of the precise timing of signals—including accounting for the effects of relativity. From what I understand, there are two opposite effects of relativity with GPS. One is the relative speed of the satellites; the other is their elevation. While opposite, they inconveniently don't cancel each other out. You also have to account for distance from receiver to each satellite, because of the speed of light. I mention this because while the lag time to satellites in low earth orbit is small, the moon is about 1.3 light-seconds away, and a second and a third (pun intended, of course) is a long damn time for some things. It's relatively easy to account for that on the Earth, where we're dealing with a single set of adjustments that can be programmed into electronics that need to keep track of these things. But plans are in place to send a large array of hardware to the Moon, which has a considerably lower gravitational field (faster clocks!), which means that objects can stay in orbit despite moving more slowly (also faster clocks!). No mention here of accounting for the variable gravitational field of the Moon, which I've seen described as "lumpy." I trust they've figured out how to deal with that, but if not, I'm certain we'll hear about it in an "oopsie!" article in the future. It would be easy to set up an equivalent system to track time on the Moon... I think this author has a different definition of "easy" than I do. I might have chosen "straightforward," instead. ...but that would inevitably see the clocks run out of sync with those on Earth—a serious problem for things like scientific observations. Relativity put a dagger in the back of the concept of "simultaneous;" two space-time events that seem to be simultaneous for one observer can be asynchronous for another. This is generally not an issue on Earth, and doesn't matter to our day-to-day lives (as long as we're not physicists), but I expect it makes a difference when dealing with separate worlds. So, the International Astronomical Union has a resolution that calls for a "Lunar Celestial Reference System" and "Lunar Coordinate Time" to handle things there. Yawn. Come on, you can do better than that. "Loonie time" is right there on top of my brain. Give me a few minutes (and a few drinks), and I might even come up with some forced acronyms, like "Lunar Uncoupled Normative, Asynchronous, Temporal Isochronic ClockS." And that's without benefit of beer. Anyway, We're getting ready to explore the Moon. Son, we've been exploring the Moon since before I was born. Just not very often by way of humans visiting the place. We'll have an increasing set of hardware, and eventually facilities on the lunar surface. Or under it, as I noted in another entry: "Cave People" All that could potentially be handled by an independent lunar positioning system, if we're willing to accept it marching to its own temporal beat. But that will become a problem if we're ultimately going to do things like perform astronomy from the Moon, as the precise timing of events will be critical. Thing about lunar astronomy is... well, it's obvious that not having an atmosphere helps a lot with observations, but we have space telescopes for shit like that. No, the thing is, to the best of my limited understanding, you can put a telescope on the Moon and one on Earth and one out in space, and what you get is effectively one big giant telescope, able to resolve distant objects to greater precision. That is, if all your you get all your ticks and tocks lined up right. As always, it's possible I got something wrong there, but the point is, I can see how synchronization would be important when doing astronomy between Earth and some other world. What does this look like? Well, a lot of deriving equations. The paper's body has 55 of them, and there are another 67 in the appendices. So, a lot of the paper ends up looking like this. If you want to get heart palpitations, go to the article to find out what "this" is. Still, using their system, they're able to calculate that an object near the surface of the Moon will pick up an extra 56 microseconds every day, which is a problem in situations where we may be relying on measuring time with nanosecond precision. This sort of thing is why I strongly object to airy "time is an illusion" proclamations. Nothing that can be calculated to that degree of accuracy deserves to be reduced to "illusion." It may not be fundamental, sure, and it's probably an emergent property, but so is temperature. If time is an illusion, then it's time (pun intended) to revise the definition of "illusion." And the researchers say that their approach, while focused on the Earth/Moon system, is still generalizable. Which means that it should be possible to modify it and create a frame of reference that would work on both Earth and anywhere else in the Solar System. Mars or bust! |
| I promise I have more articles in the queue from not-Cracked than from Cracked, but sometimes, the RNG likes to cluster things. I should probably mention that there are images in the article that may get you called in to HR at work, but that'll probably happen anyway, just from wasting your time reading this blog and a dick joke site. 5 Simple Science Questions We Bet You’ll Get Wrong What is a day? What is the Earth made of? You don’t really know Yeah, I get it. There's a lot I don't know. There's probably even some stuff I get wrong, though I try to fix that when I become aware. Phrasing aside, though, as usual, the article has an interesting take on things. Between time travel, fusion reactors and the brain transplants we hear are happening any day now, science can sound like an intimidating set of disciplines. I don't know about brain transplants, but I did see something recently about a brain implant for thought-to-text. No, not Muskmelon's crazy stunt; this one seems legit.Of course, I immediately saw the potential to reverse this so that advertisers can pay to have their product beamed directly into our brains. And you know damn well that's going to happen, along with people using it for porn. Today, however, let’s set aside the most complicated theories and applications. Porn isn't that complicated, unless you're doing it in space. 5. How Many Minutes Does Earth Take to Rotate Once? Oh, I know this trick question. A solar day is not the same as a sidereal day. The Earth takes 1,436 minutes for each rotation. Or, it takes 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4 seconds. The article explains this in good-enough detail, but the simple explanation is: that's how long it takes for the same distant star (that is not the one we're orbiting) to reappear in the same place in the sky, relative to any point on the earth's surface. But also, that sort of knowledge makes people like me fun at parties, but doesn't much matter for our 24-hour-everyday lives. 4. Would It Be Sexy to Have X-Ray Vision? No. 3. What Color Is the Sun? Another trick question, and also involving the accursed daystar. The Sun is yellow, say most people with eyes. Except when it's red or orange. People who know more about space might offer a different answer. The Sun is actually white, they’d say. Again, details in the article, but basically, white is what happens when you mix a full spectrum of light colors together. And of course the sun has a full spectrum, else we wouldn't sometimes see rainbows. (I may be mixing up cause and effect; our eyes evolved to see that range for reasons). But to confuse us even further, physicists refer to the kind of photon emissions from the sun as "black-body radiation," for reasons I won't go into but you're free to look up. So maybe the sun is "actually" black. 2. What Is the World’s Most Common Substance? Oh, that's easy: Stupidity. What is the most abundant material on Earth — or rather, what is the most abundant material on or in Earth? Um... advertisements? Is it rock? Sure, but you’re going to have to be more specific than that. Anything can be considered rock. Well, maybe not smooth jazz. The most common substance in the world is in fact... bridgmanite. We’ll forgive you for never having heard that word before since scientists only got around to naming it within the last decade. Yep, okay, you got me. Never heard of it before this. My knowledge continues to expand, thanks to a juvenile humor website. 1. Should You Shoot C-4 Explosives, for Fun? I'm a big fan of doing lots of things for fun, so... yes? On the other hand, if you answered “yes” because explosions are cool, we have bad news. The C-4 will not explode, so shooting it might be quite boring. Awww. Yeah, my understanding was the whole point of C-4 was to have a stable explosive. Which sounds weird, but you want it to blow up when you want it to blow up, not while you're transporting it to the thing you want to blow up. So it requires a detonator or whatever. Shooting Tannerite, now... yeehaw! |
| In a twist of cosmic coincidence, today's article is also from Cracked and is also about opposites. 5 Words That Mean the Exact Opposite If You Go to England Jack Reacher makes no sense, and to understand why, you need to understand British English Clearly meant for an American audience. If a British rag had written this article, it would have been "5 Words Yanks Get Backwards." England is a strange land, where they speak a language known as English. You might have trouble understanding what anyone there is saying. Strewth. For example, you might hear someone described as “mean,” and you think that refers to how they say cruel things. You later realize it really refers to how they’re stingy with money. In fairness, those traits often go hand in hand. 5. Tabling an Issue In America, when someone says, “Let’s table that discussion,” they mean, “Let’s stop talking about that for now.” Except these days, you'd say "let's put a pin in that and circle back later." In Britain, when someone wants to table something, it instead means they want to discuss it right now. And this nicely illustrates the hazards of verbing nouns. "Take it off the table" or "put it on the table" would be close equivalents, and less ambiguous. 4. Public School If you went to public school in the U.S., that means you went for free, in a school set up by your local government. Generally badly. In England, however, the term “public schools” refers to the most elite schools in the country, places like Eton and Harrow... They’re run by private institutions and charge fees. I've known about this difference for a while, and I gotta say, in this case, I'm going to side with the US. But it's not like either side of the pond is going to change its usage soon, so it's just important to know there's a difference. The way I remember it is that a pub, originally public house, is also privately owned. 3. The Doughnut Effect One of the few delicacies that doesn't have a different name in the two Englishes. We say cookie; they say biscuit. They say donut too; they just don't use the lazy spelling. However, this item isn't about delicious treats, but about how cities grow rings around them... differently in each country. Oh, just read it.. 2. Luck Out If you luck out, that means you stumbled into some good luck. That is, obviously, the US version. As one should expect by now, the UK version is the precise opposite. Though the character Reacher is American, the author Lee Child is British. It appears here that the author is using “luck out” in the exact opposite way from how Americans do. I'm mostly just including this because the subhead up there called out Jack Reacher. And this is not an invitation to discuss the literary merits, or lack thereof, of the Reacher books. Which I've never read, but I've enjoyed the Amazon adaptation so far. 1. A Moot Point When I was a kid, I read books in both American and British English, which is why I'm largely bilingual now. But I gotta admit, this one confused me for the longest time. If a British person says a point is moot, they mean it’s up for debate, while when an American says it, they mean it’s closed for debate. The article actually goes into some of the semantic reasons for that, which is one reason I read Cracked. This one's similarity to the "table" one is, however, too obvious not to comment on. But the article did that for me, too. |
| Today, we have a bit of linguistic education from that well-respected teaching site, Cracked: 5 Words That Switched Meaning Because Everyone Used Them Wrong ‘Entitlement’ now means you don’t deserve something, which is absurd There are way more than five, but we have to take tiny attention spans into account, here. Some words mean two things that are complete opposites. “Cleave,” for example, can mean both splitting something apart or joining two things together. This is known as a contronym, and I've discussed them before: "Contronyms" . But that was almost five years ago, and today's bit isn't exactly about contronyms.5. ‘Steep Learning Curve’ And already, we step out of theme: that's a phrase, not a word. A steep learning curve indicates a process that’s easy to learn, with production rates rapidly increasing over time. With a shallow curve, on the other hand, rates increase more slowly, indicating a process that’s harder to learn. Though, as the article so helpfully points out, a lot depends on how you define your graph's axes. Ask me, it's probably best to do as they suggest and stay away from "learning curve," especially since that borders on corpspeak. 4. ‘Mystery Box’ If you’re a normal person, you may go your whole life without hearing about mystery box storytelling. If you’re a nerd, however, you know the term well. Mystery box storytelling is when a series lures you in by dangling a bunch of mysteries, mysteries to which the writers themselves do not yet know the answers. Well, I'm a nerd, and I think I know a few things about writing, but I'd never heard that particular phrase. (Again... phrase, not word.) The name “mystery box” comes from a TED talk that J.J. Abrams gave in 2008, initially inspired by people asking him what the island in Lost is. The real mystery box here is how one director can fuck up so many different franchise movies, while still continuing to get hired as a director. If I were inclined toward conspiracy theories, I'd say Paramount (the owner of Star Trek) hired him as a double agent to ruin Star Wars for Disney. It’s a bit odd, though, to call them mystery box shows after Abrams’ choice of theme for one TED talk. Because he used the box to talk about so many different concepts, and because mystery boxes are an actual thing, with one specific mystery: What’s inside, and is it worth the price you paid? But the point here isn't to slam Abrams as a director (I liked a lot of his stuff, just not all of it); it's to show how the phrase got to be misused, and for that, there's lots more background in the article. 3. ‘Entitlement’ Hey, look! A single word, unattached to others! An entitlement is something you’re entitled to. That’s what it means. That’s how nouns work. In the U.S., federal benefits programs are called “entitlements,” based on the assumption that recipients are entitled to them. Some of these programs, like Social Security, are contributory, which means you personally paid into them. Others, like nutrition assistance, are non-contributory, paid from the government’s discretionary budget, but by calling them “entitlements,” the government is still saying recipients are entitled to them. This has bugged me for years: people calling contractual or legal obligations "entitlements" like it's a bad thing. We’ve now reached the point when advocates for entitlements argue it’s insulting to refer to these programs as entitlements: Shit, I've been there for at least a decade. Maybe longer. Maybe less. My relationship with duration (durationship?) can be tenuous. 2. ‘Low Man on the Totem Pole’ And we're back to phrases. You probably think the “low man on the totem pole” is the most junior person in an organization. They have not ascended very far, and they lack power. But have you considered what sort of person would manage to be the bottom figure in a human totem pole? They would need to be strong enough to support everyone else. Well, workers *are* the most important people in an organization. In a totem pole, the bottom figure isn’t some peon being squashed by the important figure on top. They’re the figure in the pole who’s been carved with the most detail, and they may also be the biggest. Eh, I avoid the phrase anyway, for cultural reasons. But now I'll never see it in the same way again. 1. A Special Note on ‘Literally’ Oh, hell, I'm going to hate this part. The dictionary now notes that the word has a second definition, which essentially means “not literally,” and this inclusion attracted a lot of controversy online around a decade ago. "The dictionary" (misleading, as there are several entities competing in that space) is descriptive, not prescriptive, at least the English ones. It pretty much has to base its definitions on how people are using words... even when that usage is objectively wrong, as with emphatic uses of "literally" or any use of "decimate" to mean something other than "remove one-tenth of." Literally doesn’t serve here as a synonym for figuratively, a disclaimer clarifying that they’re joking. It serves as emphasis. In fact, it emphasizes their statement by declaring it’s literal. You know it’s not literal (again, from context), but they’re telling you it is, and therein lies the sentence’s humor. Okay, so, by framing it as comedy, you're moving me to your side. Waltz's Second Law states: "Never let the facts get in the way of a good joke. Or a bad one. Especially a bad one." So, people generally don’t use “literally” as a synonym for “figuratively.” But they used to. Go through classic novels from a century or two ago, and you’ll find many authors doing so. Huh... okay. Despite the criticisms that young people misuse “literally,” using it as a replacement for “figuratively,” doing so now comes across as a very formal or outdated way of speaking. The word did change meaning, but it reversed in the opposite way to what people think, becoming more literal. And there it is, folks: proof that I can be persuaded, given enough evidence. And comedy. |
| Today's trip through the Wonka tunnel of time takes us back about five and a half years, to the end of February, 2019. Or about a month after my last Revisited entry. Random numbers will do that. The entry itself, "Journeys" , was mostly just a personal update, utterly uninspiring and uninspired. This happens sometimes, too.Finally, the last day of the hated month of February. I don't remember when I first noted to myself, "You know? I really, really hate February." But clearly, it was over five and a half years ago. Unfortunately, the weather report here indicates more cold days ahead, and possibly s**w. But at least the end is in sight: three weeks to the equinox. Not a big fan of winter in general. If I can make it that far without straying too far from my healthy-eating-and-exercise plan, begun on the solstice, I'll consider it a win. Then it won't feel so bad when I inevitably fail. See, this is why I'm a pessimist: I can smugly assert that I totally expected to fail, so I was right, and I love being right. There follows a couple of links to WDC activities, one of which is currently inactive, the other of which is, as I understand it, on its final round. I'm starting to get antsy for travel again, too. Part of that, though, is the crappy weather we've been having (normal for February in Virginia, but still crappy), so we'll see if I still have the urge in, say, April. I don't remember, and can't be arsed to look up, if I actually went anywhere in 2019. That long ago, in the Before Time, stuff starts to blend together into some kind of idyllic swirl, an innocent's last gasp before everything went to shit a year later. It's nearly the end of August now, and already I'm mourning the end of summer. Oh well. Soon, Oktoberfest beers will be available, and those always make the transition to autumn more tolerable. And, of course, I have a journey to look forward to. |
| This week, the agent got back to me with dates for travel. I still don't have tickets in hand (or, more likely, email), so things might still change, but right now my trip's scheduled for about 9/21 to 10/10. As a bonus, she came in under my budget, even with my refusal to fly steerage. Finally, hallelujah, eureka, etc... wait. That's just four weeks away. Shit. Snuck up on me. Fortunately, there's not much else to do. I still want a travel laptop or tablet, but that's easy enough; I just have to venture (shudder) into a local retailer. Staples, maybe. Or Breast Buy. I already have a plug adapter. Maybe visit another store to buy some other clothes, but that's easy enough, too. It did occur to me that at one point, I'd heard the EU was going to start requiring visas (or visa-like applications) from US travelers, so I looked that up. {xlink:https://www.cntraveler.com/story/americans-will-need-visa-for-the-eu}Pushed back to 2025. Whew. Seems to me the travel agent would have told me if that was required, but one never knows. I think I've figured out the best way to get cash there: ATM card. Problem: I haven't used an ATM in well over a decade, so I don't actually possess a debit card. It's rare that I actually need cash, as I pay for almost everything with a credit card. The reaction to this usually surprises and disappoints me, and look, I'm hard to disappoint because I'm a pessimist. I usually get comments like "I hate credit cards" or "you must have a really low interest rate" or "wow, your debt must be crushing" or some other response about the inherent peril of using credit cards. Thing is, no, I don't pay extra. I choose cards that feature cash-back promotions, so they pay me. And funny thing about credit cards: at least for now, if you pay off the balance in full when it's due, the amount of interest charged is zero. So I basically use it like a debit card. But there's one drawback (besides needing to make an effort to stay on top of things): if you use the credit card to get a cash advance, that grace period of zero interest goes right out the window, at least for the portion of the balance that was the cash advance. I don't know exactly how it works, because I've never gotten a cash advance, but I can see that fucking up my budget for months, because it accumulates interest during the period between taking the cash advance and paying it back. Does that interest then garner further interest? I don't know, and I don't want to find out the hard way. Point is, I called my bank and asked for a debit card. I also made them give me a PIN for my primary credit card (same bank) because, apparently, some European merchants use chip-and-PIN systems instead of tap-and-signature. Ask me, that's a more secure system anyway, and I don't know why we can't adopt it here. The bank rep didn't instill a lot of confidence in me, though, because she kept saying things like "PIN number" and "automatic ATM machine." I think I reached their Department of Redundancy Department. The idea is that I expect to pay for most things in Europe with the CC, but there are some situations where cash is useful. I don't want to carry a lot of dollars, pay someone to convert them to euros, then pay someone again to convert them back to dollars as I return. At least I won't have to worry about tipping... right? Right? Back in the old days, we used traveler's cheques, but I don't think that's a thing anymore. And most of the countries I've visited up until now were cool with taking US money (though at an unfavorable exchange rate). Apparently, there's a 1% fee for using the debit card at a foreign ATM, but I think that's still cheaper (and easier) than currency exchange. Which I might still have to do on the return, but whatever. That is, unless one of you more seasoned international travelers have any better ideas. I'm open to suggestions. |
| Today's link isn't a podcast. I don't do podcasts. Shouldn't they call them something else now that the iPod is no more? Anyway, from Vox, a collection of stuff from a bunch of podcasts: 17 astounding scientific mysteries that researchers can’t yet solve What is the universe made out of? How should we define death? Where did dogs come from? And more! The key word in the headline there is "yet." “Whatever we know is provisional,” Priya Natarajan, a Yale physicist, told us about research on dark matter. But the sentiment also applies to science overall. “It is apt to change. What motivates people like me to continue doing science is the fact that it keeps opening up more and more questions. Nothing is ultimately resolved.” This is, of course, a good thing. But "nothing is ultimately resolved" can be misleading. Unexplainable isn’t about how scientists don’t know anything. There's a tendency in humans to indulge in binary thinking. That is, believing that since science can't tell us everything, then it can't tell us anything. This is, of course, arrant nonsense. We’re drawn to questions because they are optimistic. They invite us to dream of a better world in which they are answered, where the gaps between questions and our capabilities to answer them are smaller. Ugh. Optimistic? Maybe I should stop asking questions. Besides, finding out that the universe will definitely end is hardly optimistic. I mean, what's the point of doing anything if it's just going to wind down and stop one day? I mean, sure, trillions of years from now, but that's not so long, is it? Here are some of the questions that astounded us the most. I won't list all of them. That would take too long. Just ones I have comments on or can make jokes about. 1) What is the universe made out of? String. String theory: the Universe is a big ball of string, and God is a cat. (Okay, this section is actually about dark matter, unsurprisingly, but my string theory pun is funnier.) 2) How did life start on Earth? Lots of people think it started elsewhere and migrated to Earth. I have another article about that in the queue. Which is fine and may be a testable hypothesis, but, either way, it doesn't get at the real question, which is how did life start, query, full stop. 3) How did dogs evolve from wolves? That's not the best-phrased question. It's not like wolves haven't been evolving for the past 20,000 years or whatever. Though that's hardly long enough for a lot of natural selection to take place. Artificial selection, sure, which is why we have both chihuahuas and Great Danes and call them both dogs. It's like the idea that we evolved from chimps: no, we and chimps (and bonobos) share a common ancestor. 5) What will animals look like in the future? I'm guessing the answer is "animals." 10) Is there anything alive in the human poop left on the moon? You know, I get that this question is academically important. It is also unique on this list because while we don't know the answer, we know precisely how to find the answer, and all it'll take will be another trip to the moon, this time carrying pooper-scoopers. 11) Was there an advanced civilization on Earth before humans? I know it's kinda vogue-y to ask that question right now, but the simple truth is, if there were, we'd know. We might not find their artifacts or other archaeological remnants, but any "advanced" civilization worth that adjective is going to need energy and produce waste. That waste would show up all over the globe, just like our waste is doing now. Besides, if there had been, all the oil would have been gone before we started digging for it. No. There wasn't. 12) What is the definition of “life”? Yeah, that's not a science question so much as a philosophy question. As I've noted before, though, science can inform philosophy. 14) What did dinosaurs sound like? I hope they figure this one out, and it turns out they meowed. 17) How will everything end? With some questions as yet unresolved, I'm sure. |
| Here's SciAm with an article that's all for nought: I'm sure lots of people wanted to make something out of nothing. Sūnya, nulla, ṣifr, zevero, zip and zilch are among the many names of the mathematical concept of nothingness. As well as, of course, nought, which is why the proper term for the first decade of this century is the noughties. Historians, journalists and others have variously identified the symbol’s birthplace as the Andes mountains of South America, the flood plains of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the surface of a calculating board in the Tang dynasty of China, a cast iron column and temple inscriptions in India, and most recently, a stone epigraphic inscription found in Cambodia. I'd never heard the Andes one. It's also such a useful concept that I wouldn't be surprised if more than one culture came up with it independently. For a country to be able to claim the number’s origin would provide a sense of ownership and determine a source of great nationalistic pride. Kind of like how Russia and Poland claim to be the inventor of vodka. In this case, though, it's bragging rights to say "We're Number Zero!" Throughout the 20th century, this ownership rested in India. All the symbols we call Arabic numerals? Yeah, turns out they're of Indian origin. But we're still not completely sure about 0. I've read an entire book on the subject and came away with nothing. Pun intended. However, a series of stones in what is now Sumatra, casts India’s ownership of nothingness in doubt, and several investigators agree that the first reference of zero was likely on a set of stones found on the island. I think part of the problem here is that records set in stone or clay tend to last longer than those on papyrus or paper. Any art or math done on a more ephemeral medium is long gone, and the invention may have preceded its carving into stone. Researchers at the Center for Civilizational Dialogue at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur have been investigating the history of early numeration systems of Southeast Asia. Their findings further strengthened Sumatra’s claim, to which we, the authors, agree. The article goes into some detail about who found what and when. I should mention, though, that the concept of zero shouldn't be confused with our symbol for zero. Earlier efforts might have rendered it as a dot or dash or some other symbol; the important thing is that some symbol was used to designate the lack of something. Like in our number 107, the 0 indicates the lack of a tens place. While the issue requires more deliberation and historical examination, this discovery of a possible nothingness symbol is intriguing. Could zero have been conceptually conceived of and utilized in an ancient and barely known Southeast Asian society? And why not? Just because it's barely known now doesn't mean it wasn't a major power in its own time. And if there's anything major powers need, it's to keep careful records; zero helps with that. Did the use of zero spread from this region westward into India and finally into Europe? Seems to me I've talked about Europe's reluctance to adopt the zero in here before, but damned if I can find it. We have Roman numerals because zero wasn't a thing to them. Nor does one appear in ancient Hebrew, which obviously inspired later Roman and European culture in general. There might have been religious reasons to resist the concept, in addition to the same sort of cultural inertia that keeps the US from adopting SI: "this is the way we've always done things; why change it now?" Is the credibility of the term “Hindu-Arabic” numerals under serious threat? Eh, maybe. Maybe not. I'll leave that for the experts, of which I am not one. But, again, don't confuse numeral with number. It's entirely possible that India didn't invent the concept of zero, but maybe was the first to make the symbol for it look like an empty circle. It's important to note that one of the authors of this article is Malay; he may be biased due to the whole "bragging rights" thing. I mean, come on, don't they have a footy team? That seems to be other countries' main source of national pride, for reasons still unclear to me. Me, I have no dog in the fight and, in the end, it's not like someone can, you know, patent the concept or issue l'appelation controllée like with champagne. The matter is, to me, purely of historic value, though it's usually satisfying to know the truth about something. And sometimes, nothing is something. |
| I figured it'd be important to read this Cracked article, because I'd like to avoid running afoul of the gendarmerie when I go there. 5 Normal Family Activities That Are Illegal in France Want to take a paternity test? Nope. Straight to jail France’s official motto is “Liberté, égalité, fraternité.” They’re a little iffy on the liberté part of that, at least by the standards of places who really care about freedom. Um, have you seen the US? For example, France bans public school students from wearing religious symbols. From what I've heard, there were good reasons for the ban. In the U.S., it would be unthinkable to have any national law on what schoolkids can wear. Um, not the same thing. France is comparable in size to one of our larger states. Smaller than Texas but bigger than California. Texas and California have state guidelines for schools. That particular ban isn't in place there, but we have other quirks. But several strange French laws concern families and kids... I'm absolutely certain that other countries find some of our laws just as strange. 5. Paternity Tests In France, a court may order a paternity test as part of a legal proceeding, but short of that, they forbid citizens from testing paternity. Not my problem and, again, we have weirder laws. 4. Naming Your Kid What You Like In France, courts can rule that parents named their child wrong and order the name changed. In 2015, for example, a court learned that parents were naming a child “Nutella,” and the court renamed the girl “Ella,” to spare her from derision. Yeah, no, I'm gonna side with France, here. 3. Changing Your Surname In France, however, there is no simple process for changing your last name. You can petition a court to change your name, if your motive matches one of the few acceptable ones, but you can’t just fill a form and change your name because you feel like it. This just in: different countries have different laws and customs. Who'd have thought? 2. Disinheriting Your Children In most places, if you die without a will, your money goes to your next of kin, but you can instead write a will leaving your money wherever you like. Not in France, where you must leave money to your children, no exceptions. Eh, I don't see this as much different from estate taxes. Either way, there's a law concerning the disposition of a portion of your estate; the only difference is who that has to go to. But I can see this becoming especially enraging for some men if they spent the kids' entire lives not knowing if they were genetically related, as per #5 above. 1. Swimming Trunks You may have heard tales of French nude beaches, where every part of your body can go proudly on display. From these, you might think France is a lot more free than other countries when it comes to what you can wear when swimming. It's not just France. I think the US is one of the outliers here, also known as "the strange one." When you go to a French pool, you are not allowed to wear swimming trunks. You instead must wear swimming briefs, or what we’d call a Speedo, giving everyone a proper look at the contours of your bulge. I started adding "Speedos" to the shopping list for my upcoming trip, then crossed it out and wrote NO SWIMMING. You're welcome. On the other hand, if you want to show off much more of yourself and wear a thong, nope, pools ban that as well. In summary, lots of rules that make sense in one culture seem strange to others. Part of the reason to travel is to experience these differences. But it's a good thing to have fair warning beforehand, so you don't, say, bring chewing gum to Singapore and end up getting caned. |
| This one's from Forbes, and to me is an exercise in suppressing my confirmation bias, because it's saying the same shit I've been saying, only by an actual mental health professional. Being a professional in a field doesn't mean you're always right; thinking that's the case would be another fallacy. Still, I think the article is worth contemplating. Whether my comments are is an open question. Self-care has become a buzzword in wellness culture and for good reason—it’s essential for our mental, emotional and physical health. Assertion without evidence can also be a problem. These practices can work wonders, but when chasing positivity turns into an obsession—it can lead to what researchers call “toxic positivity.” Which I've ragged on in here before, repeatedly... though not so much as to have exhausted my patience with the topic. In essence, toxic positivity invalidates negative experiences by promoting the idea that one should always maintain a sunny outlook, regardless of circumstances. I believe I've used examples of that before like "My dog died." "That's great! Now you can get a new puppy!" Here are three specific examples of how self-care can slip into toxic positivity and end up doing more harm than good. As this is not Cracked, the list actually counts up. 1. The Social Media Mantra—“Good Vibes Only” While surrounding oneself with positivity can be uplifting, the insistence on “good vibes only” creates an environment where negative emotions are not just unwelcome but are seen as personal failings. I'm not sure this is so much an insistence on toxic positivity as a desire to not get your own vibes harshed. Like, you're at a party, and everyone's having a great time, and one of your friends staggers in late and bleeding. "Got in a wreck," she moans. Normally, you'd probably be there for your friend, call an ambulance for her, maybe even wait in the ER with her. But you're at a party. How dare someone turn it into an emergency! 2. Oppressive Optimism—“Everything Happens For A Reason” I've railed against that duck-billed platitude before, and I'll do it again. Optimism is crucial when coping with negativity... Another assertion without evidence. ...but the belief that everything happens for a reason can invalidate genuine feelings of fear and uncertainty. This is related to "it's all part of God's plan," though that one's more specific to certain religious people. 3. Affirmation Overload—“I Am Strong, I Can Handle Anything” Picture someone going through a tough divorce, constantly telling themselves, “I am strong” and “I can handle anything” to keep up their confidence and stay positive. While this might seem helpful, it might stop them from sharing their pain and struggles with loved ones, out of fear that admitting vulnerability will make them look weak or uncertain about their decision. And maybe that no one wants to be around them if they're not going to give off good vibes. There's not much more to the article, really; the conclusion boils down to "seek help," which is fine advice, but what I'd need help with would be finding a shrink. Too much work. I'll just stay over here and be grumpy by myself. |
| This bit from The Guardian is a couple of years old, but that's okay. Just remember it's British. If #1 isn't "stop reading fluffy internet advice articles," it fails. 1 Exercise on a Monday night (nothing fun happens on a Monday night). Oh. Oh, no. Shit. It's going to be one of those articles. 3 Tip: the quickest supermarket queue is always behind the fullest trolley (greeting, paying and packing take longer than you think). Except when the person pushing that cart is the kind who still pays by check, and goshdarnit, I know that checkbook's in here somewhere, hang on... 5 Consider going down to four days a week. It’s likely a disproportionate amount of your fifth day’s work is taxed anyway, so you’ll lose way less than a fifth of your take-home pay. Taxes don't work like that in the US, and I wasn't aware they worked like that in the UK. 10 Always bring ice to house parties (there’s never enough). Be sure to leave it in the living room, preferably on the couch. 12 Sharpen your knives. Damn, I hate that there's one I absolutely agree with. 14 Buy a cheap blender and use it to finely chop onions (it saves on time and tears). Sure, if you want onion purée. And an extra mess to clean up. Also, what's the point of having finely-sharpened knives if you can't use them to chop an onion quickly? 16 Set aside 10 minutes a day to do something you really enjoy – be it reading a book or playing Halo. No. Set aside 23 hours and 50 minutes a day to do what you really enjoy, and devote the rest of the time to work. 23 It might sound obvious, but a pint of water before bed after a big night avoids a clanger of a hanger. True, but if you're drunk enough, you won't wake up when that pint has been processed, if you know what I mean. 29 Eat meat once a week, max. Ideally less. I believe the expression is, "Sod off, wanker." 39 Send postcards from your holidays. Send them even if you’re not on holiday. This has the added benefit of pruning your friend list, which in turn means fewer holiday gifts to purchase and fewer birthdays to remember. 41 Buy a plant. Think you’ll kill it? Buy a fake one. I don't think I'll kill it; I know I'll kill it. Yes, even if it's a fake one. 42 Don’t have Twitter on your phone. This one's three words too long. 46 Read a poem every day. Technically, limericks are poems. 49 Buy in person! Fuck off! 51 If something in the world is making you angry, write (politely) to your MP – they will read it. This sentence is the only one on the list that I find impossible to translate from British to English. I mean, sure, our congresscritters are the rough equivalent of British MPs, but it's the last phrase after the emdash that broke my brain. 56 Call an old friend out of the blue. Drunk-dial an ex. 62 Go to bed earlier – but don’t take your phone with you. Why? If you're getting the same amount of sleep either way. 65 Instead of buying a morning coffee, set up a daily transfer of £2 from a current into a savings account and forget about it. Use it to treat yourself to something different later. How can I do that if I've forgotten about it? 72 Always use freshly ground pepper. Dammit, how dare they put in another one I'd have to agree with! 76 Ditch the plastic cartons and find a milkman – The Modern Milkman has a comprehensive list. This is some sort of euphemism, right? 89 Politely decline invitations if you don’t want to go. 90 If you do go, have an exit strategy (can we recommend a French exit, where you slip out unseen). Pretty sure that's known in France as la sortie anglaise. 93 Do that one thing you’ve been putting off. Then find something else to put off. 100 For instant cheer, wear yellow. Look at the stars. Look how they shine for you. And everything you do. |
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