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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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| We all know I like Cracked. This is partly because, like me, they try to be amusing and informational at the same time. Sometimes, that doesn't work out on one front or the other. Companies That Make Only Two Wildly Different Products  It’s usually a bad idea for, say, a coffee shop to start selling auto parts As a business, diversifying your product line is a surefire way to grow your customer base... Not always. Some companies, however, decide that they do two things. Two things only. Two wildly different things only. 5. Guinness It’s not just a coincidence of nomenclature — the Guinness Book of World Records is the same Guinness that produces the world’s carbiest beer. No. I mean, yes, originally. Guinness reportedly started the World Records book as a way for pub-goers to settle bets, as the article notes. Later, the publication (which I'll call GWR) got sold to another company, with rights to the name. That company then eliminated every world record related to drinking, on safety (read: liability) grounds. While I understand their reasons, this ripped them from their roots. Would you call a piece of paper and a tree the same thing? No. Then GWR has nothing to do with the Irish manufacturers of dark and delicious malt beverage. Guinness, the brewer, also sells merchandise, and even has showrooms for it. I've been in one in Las Vegas. Well, at least they did pre-pandemic, and I can't be arsed to see if they're still doing that. Point is, though, not only is GWR no longer affiliated with Guinness, but even if they weren't, Guinness would be selling more than two products. 4 Coors Yep, the company that makes beer as cold as the Rockies is also involved in the production of high-tech ceramics. I would argue that they don't make beer, but I'm admittedly a snob on the subject. Also, it's Molson Coors now, and they suck even harder than AB/InBev, which at least has the decency to (mostly) leave craft brewers to their own devices when they Hoover them up. 3 Yamaha The customers for Yamaha keyboards and motorcycles couldn’t be more different, and technically, they’re not the same company. As noted, they're not the same company, so this shouldn't count, either. Also, why can't bikers be keyboardists, or vice-versa? 2 Bridgestone Bridgestone is another Japanese company that successfully divided itself, not out of prudent business sense but for the love of the game — literally. Tires and golf balls? Come on, they're both round, dimpled, and made of synthetic rubber. 1 Michelin Speaking of tires, it’s often said that the Michelin tire company created their restaurant rating system to get people to drive more and wear down their tires faster, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Okay, I'm going to grant them this one. In 1900, people had to be convinced to buy and drive cars at all, so Michelin began publishing car-specific travel guides that included where to get gas, what time the sun set at different times of year (because there were no street lights), and yes, the best hotels and restaurants. In the US, at least, there was another, way worse reason to have to know sunset times. Now you know, once our car-centric society has destroyed the planet and global warming kills us all, you can blame the French. Technically, the Industrial Revolution only kicked into high gear after Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot figured out the whole "thermodynamics" thing, so we might as well blame the French. |
| In rooting through the archives at random, I pulled out this entry from early 2020: "Gotta be Aliens" The linked article, from aeon, is still available as of this post.The entry was, apparently, one of my earlier attempts to criticize popular coverage of the sciences involved in the search for extraterrestrial life. Today, I'm going to talk about aliens again. I checked, and I'd had ET or ET-adjacent entries at least twice before in that month, but it certainly hadn't taken over my blog. If these topics seem random, that's because they are, in part. I don't choose articles at random to put into my queue. I add to it when I come across (or someone sends me) something I find interesting or might have something to quibble or laugh about. It's the order in which I draw from the queue which is random. In this particular case, the linked article plays off the question in its headline: how would we recognise an alien if we saw one? One of the reasons I do this retrospectives is to see if things have changed, either in the world or with my own opinion. As far as the latter goes, I don't think I've changed my mind, and I'm pretty sure I've done several other blog entries supporting my view that complex life is probably rare in the galaxy. In the world, things change all the time. One part that didn't age well was the part about someone saying that what would convince them that aliens were out there would be a photograph. I said: I'm not sure that would convince me. After all, photographs can be faked, and the technology needed to fake them is widespread and always getting cheaper. Since then, we have of course seen an explosion in what's commonly called AI, making it way easier and cheaper to fake a photograph of an alien (or anything). Because discovery of any sort of life elsewhere than on Earth would be such a Big Deal, there would need to be multiple kinds of robust evidence for such a discovery to be accepted. The rest? Like I said, I haven't changed my opinions on the subject. |
| Most Saturdays, for the last couple of months, I've done a travel plans update. This will be the last one: I leave on Friday, and I'm still not ready. That is all. ...okay, maybe not all. And I did get a bunch of stuff taken care of. I got more suitable luggage (pun intended. Suitable? Suitcase? No? Damn.) I acquired a relatively cheap travel laptop so that, hopefully, I can make everyone here jealous by posting what I'm doing (I said this was the last plan update, not the last you'll hear of it). I checked with my mobile provider to ensure I'd still have connectivity over there (of course, I don't really trust them). I even made a few clothing purchases specifically for the trip. Still, I have a few more things to do and less than a week to do them. Then there's my utter lack of confidence in actually trying to speak French, combined with knowing that I'll be spending a few days in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. I suppose I could bully my way through like a stereotypical American tourist, but I'd really rather not. Oh, well. "Beer" is pronounced pretty close to the same way in English, Dutch, and French, so I'm sure I'll be fine. |
| Ran across this road-tripping article from Condé Nast Traveler, and, being no stranger to road trips, I couldn't resist snarking on it. The Golden Rules of Road Tripping Veteran road trippers (including a gas station food evangelist) share their savviest tips and tricks. Maybe I'm just sour because they didn't bother asking me. Ahhhh, the great American road trip. A chance to put rubber to pavement along our millions of miles of roads and see the nooks and crannies of the country we’d never otherwise see. Translation: "I wonder what's really in flyover country?" Yes, this article is US-centric. It's called the great American road trip for a reason. Along with all that good stuff, road trips have the potential for some big pitfalls, too, and in order to make sure your road trip is more life-changing than life-ruining, there are some basic guidelines first-time and veteran road trippers should follow. Because you never know when you're going to be driving some empty stretch of country road and total your car into a deer. Book your hotels ahead of time There are certainly times you should do this, like if you know you're going to spend a couple of days in, like, Kansas City, and you care about location. Or if you're traveling during peak times to popular destinations like, I don't know, the Grand Canyon. But I've never once found a hotel that didn't have any vacancy. I suppose it helps if you decide to schedule your stops so that you find a hotel right after check-in starts. It also helps not to be picky. I've stayed in 5-star hotels, and I've spent nights in sketchy roadside motels. Doesn't much matter to me, as long as there aren't bedbugs, which don't really care how fancy the hotel is, either. Search out your roadside meals It might be tempting to make a highway exit franchise row your lunch stop. But settling for processed tacos or sub sandwiches can mean missing out on some fantastic regional food. You know what's good for that? Google Maps. I can read a paper map as well as anyone, and better than most, but GPS is the best thing that ever happened to road trips. “Some of the best expressions of regional food flavors and unique culinary styles can be found in gas stations,” says Frank Beard, a traveling sales rep who’s become an evangelist for the convenience store industry, and once spent an entire month eating at only gas stations. So this is the "gas station food evangelist" from the subhead. I have a challenge for him: Go to Salt Lake City. Head west on U.S. Route 50, through the Utah and Nevada desert, destination: Reno. Once you pass Ely, Nevada, the road becomes signed as "The Loneliest Road in America," which it really isn't (that would be some roads in Alaska, or, if you want to limit your scope to the contiguous states, Route 6 south from Ely to Tonopah), because you can actually find gas stations along it occasionally. The challenge is: drive this route, stop at one of the aforementioned US50 gas stations, buy one of their corn dogs, and eat it in the car as you drive off. You will quickly lament the state of gas station food, and the lack of restrooms on US50. Why, yes, I am speaking from personal experience. Why do you ask? Make sure your tires are filled and your fluids are topped off I mean, that's way more basic advice than some of the other stuff. It won't guarantee you won't get stuck somewhere, but it does improve your odds. Don’t depend entirely on your phone’s maps While I agree with this (I always carry a road atlas as a backup), there's no need to fear technology, either. GPS can only lead you into a lake if you let it. People act like no one ever got lost or turned around using paper maps, but they absolutely did, and way more often, I'd bet. And like I said above, it's great for finding nearby places of interest, not all of which can afford to advertise on the main roads. Anyway, lots of the advice here is aimed at people taking road trips in groups. Since it's a documented fact that no one can put up with me for more than two hours at a time, I tend to do road trips alone. But there's one piece of advice I feel should have been added: Stay off the interstates. Look, interstates are great. They're an everyday masterwork of civil engineering. Sure, there are some issues with them, especially in urban areas, but, overall, if your goal is to drive from Point A in the US to Point B elsewhere in the US, you can't beat an interstate for efficiency, speed, and convenience. But road trips, in my view, shouldn't be about those things. If you have limited time, and you care more about the destination than the journey, I'm not going to knock you for taking the fast route. I've certainly done it, else I couldn't make the comparison. But, with a few exceptions, you can't see the US from interstates. Taking secondary roads, also known sarcastically as "the scenic route," really gives you a better experience seeing the country. It's a bit harder to find services, but that's what GPS is for. I think of it like playing a video game in hard mode: somewhat trickier and more challenging, but more satisfying, too. To quote from a Brandon Sanderson novel: "Journey Before Destination." |
| As I might have mentioned before, beer is as old as civilization. Just like civilization itself, it's gone through some changes, as this article from The Takeout demonstrates. It's no secret that drinking too much beer can make your head feel like it's spinning. What? Damn, I thought that was the room. But things could get way worse for beer drinkers in the Middle Ages, when the drink could cause full-on hallucinations. Which isn't always a bad thing. Hell, sometimes, that's the goal. The culprit for such false visions, sounds, and sensations was an ingredient called black henbane, which brewers often added to ales. You don't want to try black henbane? What are you, chicken? At the time, the general practice was to make beer without hops. I've noted before that hops, now considered one of the essential ingredients of beer (though some people take it too far), are a relatively late addition to the art of brewing. By "relatively late addition," I mean it's still older than my country, but it still took something like 11,000 years to figure out. Instead, beer makers flavored their goods with plants, herbs, and various other flora, collectively known as gruit. In case you're wondering (I did, when I first saw it), you pronounce gruit almost exactly like fruit. Which makes me want to do a Guardians of the Galaxy parody with "I am Gruit." Perhaps the most dangerous characteristic of black henbane is that it causes dry mouth, causing the beer drinker to be increasingly thirsty, and thus, wanting to drink more beer. Shit, don't say that out loud! If they figure this out, AB/InBev would absolutely bring back black henbane as a way to sell more pisswatery beer-like liquid and thus make more profits. Which reminds me of a thing my dad told me long ago. In New Orleans, during the Depression, he said there was a place that served big plates of Cajun spiced shrimp for free. The catch was, beer was a dime, and if you've ever had Cajun-spiced shrimp (or anything), you might understand how this was a remarkably effective business model for the 1930s. This was problematic, because while a small bit of the plant could cause a drunk sensation, too much of it could result in extreme hallucination, and even death. Ah, yes, another case of "the dose makes the poison." Lots of things are harmless or even beneficial in small quantities, but large ones will kill. Vitamin A comes to mind. By the beginning of the 16th century, the presence of black henbane in beers and ales began to dwindle. Around this time, brewers were discovering that it was cheaper to make their goods with hops rather than gruit, and that the resulting beer had a longer shelf life (even though most beer doesn't last as long as you think). The origin of this perfect marriage of hops and malt is still a bit of a mystery to me, but their preservative qualities were almost certainly part of the reason hops became ubiquitous. The IPA style was, originally, overhopped so the beer could make it all the way from England to India without becoming too skunked. Why didn't they just make the beer in India? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but this was before air conditioning, and beer needs time to cool after being brewed, and India is mostly hotter than hell. By the year 1516, Germany had outlawed henbane in the country's beer production, as part of the German Purity Laws, but not every country across Europe followed suit so quickly. So Germany marched into other countries to impose their purity laws. Okay, okay, just kidding. They didn't do that. Cheap shot at Germany (and it wasn't even technically Germany at the time). I have German ancestry, so don't give me shit about it. Here, I'll make up for it. I'm telling this joke now to get it out of my system because after next week, I'll need to refrain lest I get my ass kicked in France: Why are the streets of Paris lined with trees? Because Germans like to march in the shade. But I digress. The reason beer is defined as it is now (water, malt, hops, yeast) goes back to the Reinheitsgebot, which some say is the oldest still-enforced food regulation in the world, and is probably one of the reasons why German beer is world-famous.And if you're still curious about the effects of black henbane in beer, just remember that the average life expectancy for males in the Middle Ages was 31.3 years. This is where I lost faith in the article. Unfortunately, it's close to the end of it. "Life expectancy" and "average" can be slippery concepts, and, taken together, get skewed by a much higher infant mortality rate back then than any developed country (even the US) experiences today. So that's misleading. I can believe the stuff about henbane, though. It tracks with what I already knew. |
| Somewhat predictably, I'll take a break from the usual today in order to blab about this being my 20-year anniversary here. Unfortunately, I said most of what I wanted to say back on September 1, as we began the site's 24th anniversary: "Four and Twenty" Having my own milestone so soon after that of the website itself, though, is kind of like I'd imagine it would feel like for your birthday to be on December 26: everyone's burned out on celebrating, including me. Especially me. Which is fine. I'm on board with celebrating actual birthdays, but membership anniversaries are just, well, whatever. Still, this being the 20th, one of those nice rounded-end numbers, I felt I should say something about it. Things were a bit different back in 2004. Smartphones weren't ubiquitous yet. The internet hadn't become a mire of scams, ads, and influenzas. And a certain other event that took place on a September 11 was still fresh on everyone's mind. I hadn't intended to join on the 11th, for that reason. I tried to create an account here the previous day (my dad's birthday, and he was still alive back then, so already a significant day for me), but for whatever technical reason, it never took. That's also how my username got the annoying 02 at the end; while the account didn't work, my attempt was enough to block off just "cathartes" as already in use. It's been long enough that I don't remember all the details exactly (hell, 20 days is probably long enough for that, for me), but I vaguely recall creating this account with help from a friend who was already a member, shortly after midnight, forcing my account anniversary to be on a day that was already infamous. I've considered changing my username to something else, but never went through with it. It's kind of part of my identity now, so I'm ambivalent about the idea. So, I'll just finish by posting what I'm pretty sure was my first item on here, created on September 11, 2004—but which I'd written some years earlier: "Ghost Poem #1" [ASR]Odd that it was a poem, I suppose, because I'm more of a fiction writer and, now, a blogger, but I suppose it was something quick and simple to put up here to get started. And even back then, when I had an actual job and a spouse, I was all about quick and simple. Some things don't change all that much. |
| Today, I have secrets to share (yes, I know that just last week, I refused to share secrets). From Smithsonian Magazine: Eight Secret Societies You Probably Haven’t Heard Of Many of these selective clubs peaked in popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries Of course you haven't heard of them. They're secret. The university I went to was infested with secret societies. Still is, as far as I know. The only thing most people knew about them was their penchant for tagging the major landmarks, like the one pictured here, in a fluff piece focusing on their altruism rather than their penchant for trying to take over the world.Naturally, I was never invited to join any of them (or was I?) Not that I would have; I'm firmly of the Marxist opinion about joining any club that would have me as a member. But other secret societies are larger in scope and membership, and some have already taken over the world. It’s not uncommon for public figures to be involved in selective societies, many of which have deep historical roots. One reason for the proliferation of public figures in secret societies is simple: control. You've probably heard rumors about goat-shagging or circle jerks or other compromising activities at initiations. Some of those rumors have a grain of truth to them. The deal is that the society helps you get the power, money, and position you crave, but you have to toe their ideological line, or the pics/videos of the goat-shagging or circle-jerking come out, and you have to resign in disgrace. ...the popularity of these secret clubs peaked in the 18th and 19th centuries. Back then, these societies served as safe spaces for open dialogue about everything from academia to religious discourse, removed from the restrictive eye of the church and state. As far as it goes, those seem like worthy goals to me. In recent years, Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, and other novelists have shined a light on some of the bigger secret fraternal organizations, like the Order of Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, the Rosicrucian Order and the Illuminati. Yeah, look, I'm not going to disparage Dan Brown as a writer. But he's a fiction writer, and fiction writers are known for Making Shit Up. It's right there in the name, folks. I may be biased because I read The Da Vinci Code right after I read the purportedly nonfiction Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which made it obvious to me that Brown had cribbed some of the main points of the latter, and added his own embellishments. So, on to the actual societies featured in the article. As there are eight of them, I'll select only a few: The Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World It is well-known that you want to name your group something innocuous to hide the dastardly deeds they're doing. Like calling your dictatorship a "democratic people's republic," or your fascist movement "socialist," or your propaganda arm the Ministry of Truth. In any case, come on, who hasn't heard of the Elks? Around the turn of the 19th century, two Black men in Cincinnati were denied admission to the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, an organization founded in 1868 with the goal of serving those in need. Barred from membership, Arthur James Riggs and Benjamin Franklin Howard decided to create their own order. Hence the "improved" bit in the name. The Odd Fellows Interestingly, real skeletons appear in the order’s lodges; they are used during initiation to remind members of their mortality, the Washington Post reported in 2001. "Do as we say, or this will be your fate." The Ancient Order of United Workmen While Elks and Oddfellows (along with Meese and Masons) are fairly well-known, I hadn't heard of this one. Sounds like it's time for them to make a comeback. The Molly Maguires Come on, now, even the article admits they made a movie about this one, so its existence is hardly a secret. Still, known or not, some of these societies do operate in secret, which has certain advantages. If you really do want to do good in the world, without the inevitable pressure of the press, that's one way to go about it. Or you could be trying to take it over for nefarious purposes. And that's the problem: Lots of these groups claim to be altruistic, but one can never be sure. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm late for my International Benevolent and Democratic People's Order of Malt meeting. It's kind of like the Knights of Malta, only it's not Catholic, it's missing an 'a' at the end, and it's not-so-secretly about beer. |
| Back before the welcome Birthday Week diversion, I featured an article from Ars Technica on how they're coordinating time between Earth and Moon: "Moon Time" Then, I wrote: "I have a couple of articles about this, from different perspectives." Well, today, the other article popped up. Being from Atlas Obscura, this one may be a little more approachable, but it also gives me more opportunity to be pedantic. Moon Time Is a Thing Now—Here’s Why It Matters Physicists recently created Coordinated Lunar Time, a time zone for our Moon. On the Moon, there is no normal. There is no wind, no rain, no erosion. Leaving aside that these things are "normal" for the moon, there is some wind (the solar wind) and some erosion, though that process works a good bit more slowly there. Nothing flies overhead, and nothing green strains toward the sky. ...yet. There are no daily rhythms like those we experience on Earth—no chirping of crickets, no sunset breeze. I could live with the former, very easily. But there's also no air, so I wouldn't live very long. A lunar day and a lunar night each last two Earth weeks. Roughly. This corresponds with the phases of the moon, and is the result of the Moon always showing the same hemisphere to Earth, and its orbit around our planet. It's all very Newtonian. What’s more, seconds tick by slightly faster than they do on our home world. That effect is relativistic. To understand why Moon time is so strange—and why scientists recently created a new and unique time zone just for the Moon—we have to spend a moment with Einstein. People think of Einstein, they think of the famous equation. But time dilation is another thing entirely. He figured out a bunch of different shit; that's why they called him a genius. Special relativity explains how different places in the universe perceive time and space differently; time seems to move more slowly in a larger gravitational field, relative to a lower gravity environment. And a clock moving through space ticks more slowly than a stationary one. I have no quibbles here. It's just really hard to grok, because it's outside our everyday experience. In the Hollywood interpretation of these theories, a character traveling in space for a long time, or under the gravitational influence of a black hole or other very large object, will age much more slowly than his loved ones on Earth. As usual, Hollywood tends to exaggerate for the spectacle. You have to be traveling pretty damn close to light speed to experience that effect without precise measuring tools. And by "large," the author here means "massive." Black holes are generally pretty small, on a cosmic scale. GPS satellites have to account for it in order to work. So every time you get directions on your smartphone, you experience the practical effects of special relativity. I've noted this before, but it's relevant here. In fact, all navigation is really about time. We invented longitude for this reason. And I've talked about this, as well. Latitude is pretty easy to figure out. Longitude is a lot trickier. First, we needed to invent a prime meridian, an imaginary line drawn from pole to pole along the planet’s surface. Then, for navigation, you need to figure out where you are relative to that fixed line. The simplest way to do this is to use a time scale that is the same at both locations. So longitude is really about clocks. There's been a lot of talk lately, among some science video channels I occasionally watch, about how the Greenwich Meridian, the 0 degree longitude line, is in the "wrong" place. But ultimately, it doesn't matter where we put it, as long as everyone agrees on it. An earlier Prime Merdian went through Paris instead of a suburb of London, and I'm sure the French are just pleased as punch that everyone went with the English definition. So pleased that, even though France is mostly south of England, they use the next time zone to the east. The only relevant thing here is that one needs to define a Prime Meridian for the Moon, which I'm pretty sure they've already done. I say it should have gone through the center of Armstrong's first footprint, but no one listens to me.Anyway, the article goes into how GPS accounts for relative time for Earth. But we can’t just port this system over to the Moon. Clocks on the lunar surface actually tick faster than Earth clocks by almost 58 microseconds per day. It’s not much in a given day, but over the months it will add up, and it’s enough to disrupt the precise timing of GPS. And thus, the calculation of latitude/longitude. “It’s like having the entire Moon synchronized to one ‘time zone’ adjusted for the Moon’s gravity, rather than having clocks gradually drift out of sync with Earth’s time,” NIST physicist Bijunath Patla said in a statement earlier this month. As good a summary as I've seen. The physicists say their efforts to develop Coordinated Lunar Time could be applied to other places in the solar system, simply by adapting the clock system for any other world’s gravity. Yeah, not really "any." The world would need to have a definable surface, which some of the larger planets don't. But we're not about to live in Jupiter's atmosphere anytime soon, so, fine. It’s about time. Thanks, now I can't use that pun in this entry's title. |
| My first random selection of a past blog entry landed on one I'd already revisited. I knew that could happen, obviously, but I was still mulling over whether to do another revisit, or just skip it and roll again. I've decided, instead, to point to the previous Revisited, thus: "Revisited: "Best Waste of Time EVER"" But that's all I'm going to say about it.And then I rolled again, and got this discussion of an article, posted about four years ago: "Orange You Glad This Wasn't You?" That's the one we'll look at today. Something a little different today. Yeah, back then, maybe it was "a little different," but I think now it looks like just another article I could riff on. The link, to a 2020 bit about Tropicana's orange juice marketing disaster back in 2009, is still there... but when I looked, it said "Member-only story." That's their right, of course, but nothing from Medium has ever captured my attention enough to become a "member," and to me, there are very few articles on the internet worth reading that aren't also worth sharing. So I don't bother. I pay WaPo for a subscription, because that's the newspaper I grew up with (if indeed I grew up at all), but that's about it. Therefore, all I can do is talk about my own reactions. Even the specific "rebrand" they're talking about is hidden and forgotten. So why am I linking something about orange juice? Because it's a product, and some marketing techniques apply to a broad range of products... like, for instance, your writing. Not that I'll ever apply these techniques. But, being entirely altruistic and thinking only of my readers, I perform the public service of informing them. Okay, no, I just find this stuff fascinating for whatever reason, and I'd rather learn from others' failures than from my own. But maybe this will help someone else. Or, hey, maybe you just like orange juice. The reality is a bit of both. Coke's "New Coke" fiasco personally affected me. I don't drink orange juice, so I never noticed a rebrand. Yes, almost 40 years later, and I still carry trauma from that horrible year. The article helpfully includes "before" and "after" pics. Not any more, if you're not a member. Function is more important than form. Well... for me. Engineer, remember? But I can admit that when it comes to trying to sell shit, part of the function is to catch a viewer's eye (or ear in the case of radio). That requires form. Much as I rag on myself for having no artistic talent (I don't) or not understanding marketing (I don't), I do have some background in graphic design and artistic composition. Part of being a photographer. I maintain that I wasn't very good at it, but I understand some of the theory, just like I understand some music theory even though I'm a terrible musician. Then I quoted the following from the original article: “Historically, we always show the outside of the orange. What was fascinating was that we had never shown the product called the juice.” Really? I mean, it’s juice. Give me a clear symbol of it, and I’m good to go. And what could be clearer than the actual fruit the juice is from? On which I commented: Somewhere in there, I think, is probably a metaphor for promoting one's writing. I'm not quite sure what it is, but I'm pretty sure it's in there. Having had four years to think about it, I'm still unable to articulate what that metaphor is, but I'm still sure there is one, taunting me. I think it's encapsulated in the line, "Give me a clear symbol of it, and I’m good to go." People respond to symbols; that's kind of our thing as humans, to let one thing stand for another, or for an abstract concept. But I'm reminded of what might have been my first lesson in marketing failures, which, to be fair, could have been an urban legend. The story went something like this: In some less-developed country, it was standard practice to show an image of the contents of the can on the label. If it's beans, for example, the can depicts beans. For carrots, there's a picture of carrots. That way, even those who can't read (a large portion of the population) would know what's supposed to be in the can. Anyway, the fail I heard about was that Gerber tried to enter that market, but couldn't... because their baby food cans had a picture of a baby. Almost every barbecue joint I've ever seen uses a pig as a mascot. This is not because they're marketing to literal pigs. Metaphorical ones, maybe, but their customers generally don't root for truffles and oink. In any case, I think I've discussed other marketing mistakes in here since then. That entry's comment section is also good for examples, because I turned it into a Merit Badge contest, which is something I haven't done for a while. Except for last week's free badge giveaway, of course. But I can't leave this without noting that the header for this blog doesn't exactly depict what's in the can. So I guess I really do fail at marketing. |
"Blog Week Birthday Bastion 2024" [13+] by WakeUpAndLive️~Happiness  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~Happiness 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~Happiness 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~Happiness 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~Happiness 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~Happiness 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~Happiness 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. |
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