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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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| How about we take a lunch break? How Spaghetti Squash Squiggled Its Way Onto American Tables  It took a shift in food culture for consumers to embrace the “noodle plant.” Yes, one reason I'm featuring this article is the glorious alliteration in the headline. The other reason is that I actually like spaghetti squash, and I even liked it when my mother prepared it way back when. Most of the vegetables she cooked ended up like soggy rubber. The year was 1974, and Takeo Sakata was holding a dinner party. “Conversation centered around the spaghetti squash,” a guest later recalled, “and the struggle Mr. Sakata had had in introducing it to the West.” We would have planted it, I guess, sometime in the late 1970s, so that effort was at least partially successful. I guess. Since the 1930s, Sakata had been the exclusive marketer of spaghetti squash in the United States. According to Dr. Harry Paris of Israel’s Volcani Institute Agricultural Research Organization, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on spaghetti squash, “[the Japanese] were the only ones interested in it for some time.” The irony here is that squash is an American vegetable (as with tomatoes, it's botanically a fruit, but we're talking about culinary use here). By which I mean, its origin as a cultivated plant was in Central and South America. Cultural appropriation! (The article eventually goes into its cultivation history.) Americans took a long time to warm to this mild-tasting, oblong yellow squash, set apart by its densely coiled inner fibers, which separate when the squash is cooked into strands that distinctly resemble noodles. “You’d be surprised how many examples there are of things that have been around a while until they are rediscovered by people who appreciate them,” says Dr. Paris. He compares the spaghetti squash with the zucchini, a crop that was local to Milan, Italy for decades before it became the world’s most popular summer squash. To me, the greatest thing about spaghetti squash isn't the spaghetti-like feature (though that's pretty cool). It's that the stuff doesn't taste even a little bit like zucchini or yellow squash. Not that I hate those squashes, but I never choose them on purpose, either. It would take a massive shift in Western food culture before consumers finally took notice of spaghetti squash: this time, as a health food. Well, shit. If I'd known it was a health food, I'd have hated it. Like with kale. In the late 20th century, the marketing of Sakata’s spaghetti squash began to center around its appeal to an increasingly calorie-conscious public. The flesh of the squash had long been compared with noodles, but now, for the first time, it was marketed as a healthier alternative to them, with one-fifth the calories, one-quarter the carbs, and a negligible amount of fat. Let's be real: it's not exactly like spaghetti, or any other noodle. But it's similar enough that one can do the same things to it as with spaghetti, like loading it up with butter, bolognese sauce and Parmesan cheese, thus negating most of its health benefits. Although recipes of the 1980s and 1990s still suggested boiling or steaming the squash, one of the first recipes to present it explicitly as a healthier pasta alternative, published by Frieda’s Branded Produce in 1975, was developed using a microwave oven. I'm sure there are several ways to cook it, as with most vegetables, but roasting works well and produces less mess. I'd keep it far away from the microwave, though. Spaghetti squash was finally in the limelight. “But you have to be a pretty good cook to know what to do with it,” says Dr. Paris. Or just look for instructions on the internet, scroll past all the pages and pages of superfluous background information food bloggers seem to be compelled to preface their recipes with, and do what it says. It's really not that difficult, and I say that as a dedicated slacker. It's like hard-boiling eggs: if you know the right procedure and time involved, it's easy to get good results. It's not like making a soufflé, or even getting your steak temperature just right. In any event, I didn't know the whole history, hence the article. And now I'm hungry... |
| I've done entries about this topic a few times, so I had to double-check to ensure I hadn't linked this particular article before, or that it's not some variation on a previous article. And also to try not to duplicate a title. It looks like something different, though I can always make stupid mistakes. Bonhoeffer’s “theory of stupidity”: We have more to fear from stupid people than evil ones Evil is easy to identify and fight against; not so with stupidity. I'm not so sure evil is so easy to identify and fight against, but I guess that compared to stupidity, it's a cakewalk. The most relevant previous blog entry is here, from two years ago, if you're interested in comparing views on the subject: "Fight The Power" Today's article isn't all that long, so this entry won't be, either. There’s an internet adage that goes, “Debating an idiot is like trying to play chess with a pigeon — it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory.” It’s funny and astute. It’s also deeply, depressingly worrying. I would like to once again draw a distinction between stupidity and ignorance. Ignorance is our natural, base state; it's only through learning stuff that we become not-ignorant. The key there is to be open to learning stuff, even if it sometimes contradicts stuff we've already learned. Ignorance is, therefore, forgivable, and fixable... if it doesn't turn into willful ignorance. For theologian and philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the stupid person is often more dangerous than the evil one. The core of theology and philosophy is to build logical edifices. Unfortunately, often those edifices have no foundation. Someone can be smart and still wrong, due to false premises. In comic books and action movies, we know who the villain is. They wear dark clothes, kill on a whim, and cackle madly at their diabolical scheme. The whole point to comic books and action movies is to have a clear villain, someone that the very clear hero can successfully thwart. It simplifies, and is therefore satisfying. More recently, both sides have been written to be on shaky moral ground, which can be satisfying, too. Once something is a known evil, the good of the world can rally to defend and fight against it. Except that it's blindingly obvious that this doesn't happen on a regular basis. You know Russia's still trying to invade Ukraine? Sure, we're helping Ukraine (the clear Good Guys), but not enough to win a definitive victory against the Bad Guys. And propaganda has convinced some people that the Good Guys are the Bad Guys, and vice-versa. Stupidity, though, is a different problem altogether. We cannot so easily fight stupidity for two reasons. First, we are collectively much more tolerant of it. Unlike evil, stupidity is not a vice most of us take seriously. We do not lambast others for ignorance. We do not scream down people for not knowing things. I don't really buy this, either, and once again, let's not conflate ignorance with stupidity. There are words I struggle to pronounce, because I've only ever seen them in writing. Other people struggle to spell words they've only ever heard. Which of us is more ignorant? Neither, really. But I tend to be more judgmental of people who can't spell than of people who can't pronounce, because I can relate better. I'm aware of this flaw and can therefore work to mitigate it; certainly, I have others I'm not aware of. Bonhoeffer’s argument, then, is that stupidity should be viewed as worse than evil. Stupidity has far greater potential to damage our lives. I mean, I kinda see the point, and agree, to some extent. But none of this addresses the definition problem, whereby, for example, the extreme right thinks that the extreme left is stupid, ignorant, and evil, while the extreme left believes these things of the extreme right. But stupidity is much harder to weed out. That’s why it’s a dangerous weapon: Because evil people find it hard to take power, they need stupid people to do their work. This is why the trope of the criminal mastermind with brainless minions is perpetual. Think Lex Luthor and Otis in the 1977 Superman movie. So, in short, I'm not completely convinced. This may be source-bias on my part (theologians in particular are always suspect for me), but, in keeping with the theme, I try to keep an open mind. I think that earlier entry's article presented a more cogent argument. |
| It's maddening. I'm over here losing my goddamned mind. Look... it doesn't matter how many times you repeat an error, it's still an error. It's still wrong. Like, it doesn't matter how many people mistakenly use "it's" as a possessive pronoun, or "your" as a contraction of "you are," those are objectively wrong and can never be right, no matter how much English changes otherwise. (This, of course, doesn't mean I never make inadvertent mistakes like that.) Similarly, claiming that tomorrow's full moon is a Blue Moon is objectively wrong and can never be right, even if it is being propagated by formerly trusted sources of mine like Atlas Obscura. It makes me call all of their "facts" into question. No, I'm not going to link their offending article. One stupid mistake in a magazine back in the 1940s, and this is what we get: rampant, viral misinformation, combined with anchoring bias (which is the one where the first thing we hear about a certain topic sticks in mind, even in the face of arguments evidence to the contrary). Ugh. As for the "supermoon" thing that you've probably heard in conjunction with that (that's a very obscure pun, because a full moon occurs at opposition, while a new moon represents an astronomical conjunction), well, whatever. It's a real thing, though probably overhyped. By all means, if you can gaze at the full moon tonight and/or tomorrow night, I encourage you to do so. Here, it's supposed to be cloudy. Of course. At least I only have to do this rant every three years or so (except for the time a few years ago when we got two full moons in January, none in February, and two in March, which for fuck's sake should have ended that false definition once and for all). With luck, I'll be dead the next time the false Blue Moon comes around, and you won't have to see me kvetch about it. For the record, once more with feeling, the actual Blue Moon is the third full moon of a season containing four full moons, and the next one occurs next August. It can never occur in the last few days of a Gregorian calendar month. Eh. This is long enough now that I don't need to get into a random article today. One might say this happens once in a Blue Moon; that is, one can say it if one wants me to start this rant all over again. I'll get back to my usual format tomorrow. I will, however, link one of my longer arguments in favor of the traditional definition, in the form of two consecutive Fantasy newsletter editorials: "It's Not a Blue Moon, Part I" "It's Not a Blue Moon, Part II" |
| Sorry, starry-eyed anarchists, there are always rules, and they're made to be followed. Some of them, admittedly, don't make a lot of sense, like those old laws about having to get a license to wear a beard or whatever. According to Cracked, however, some rules are just unjust. (Paradox!) Laws exist to maintain order in a chaotic society. Ideally, yes. In practice, laws exist to protect the interests of the rich and/or powerful. Sometimes, laws are more in place to keep everything moving smoothly and prevent headaches more than to punish Great Evil. Because Great Evil makes the laws. Here are five laws that make logical sense, but are deeply unjust… As usual, it's a countdown. 5. No Dogs in Antarctica Up until fairly recently, they were a central part of any activity on the continent, but in 1993 they were banned because of worries about them transmitting diseases like the thoroughly old-timey sounding “canine distemper” to native wildlife, like seals. Sounds like Paradise to me. Well, except for the whole "desert" and "bitterly cold" and "dark six months out of the year" parts. 4. No Bread in Space If you’re off to space as an astronaut, though, despite heading into a high-stress environment and situation, you won’t be able to rely on the airy, stretchy internal hug of a tasty sandwich or pastry to calm you. Look, I like bread. Bread is probably my favorite food, when you consider all of its myriad forms, including pizza crust; as well as its cousin, beer (which I suspect is also a no-no in space). But it's hardly the worst thing you have to give up in space. Gravity comes to mind. So does the ability to use a toilet. 3. Getting Your Taxes Wrong The American process of paying taxes is basically a massive system of mathematical gaslighting that seems designed to make April a forever horrible month. Which might explain T.S. Eliot's famous opening line of The Waste Land, and why he abandoned the US in favor of England at the ripe old age of 25. Surely their bureaucracy is less impersonal and stress-inducing than our own. If you get those calculations wrong, because percentages were probably taught to you by a depressed and underpaid English teacher during a staffing shortage, congratulations on committing tax fraud. As the article notes, they do have to prove that it was intentional. But it still sucks to make a mistake. 2. Jaywalking I do this on purpose in NYC just so I can be labeled a scofflaw. I also once spit on the sidewalk there. I'm such a rebel. This all seems a little ridiculous, and, to be honest, unnecessary. Jaywalking already has its own, independent legal system of punishment, known as “physics.” Except that the vast majority of jaywalkers never receive that punishment, and when they do, it can be traumatic for the vehicle driver as well. 1. No Putting Your Head Under the Soda Machine and Guzzling Sadly, this one also applies to beer taps. Maybe it's better in Antarctica, after all. |
| It's Wayback Day again, so let's see what the past has in store for us today. Reaching deep into the bowels of the past, I plucked out something from May 16, 2007: "Larry Flynt is a Better Man than I Am." This was so bloody long ago that it might as well be a different planet. The link in the article is, unsurprisingly, broken; I had to dig around a bit more for context, and the context is that Jerry Falwell had kicked the bucket the day before. I really should mark May 15 on my calendar as an annual day of rejoicing and merriment. My mother told me never to speak ill of the dead, something ingrained in me from an early age, so yesterday's blog entry was rather difficult for me to write. "Yesterday's blog entry" was a celebratory post announcing the death of that smarmy subhuman trash. At this point, I can't remember if it had actually been difficult for me to write, but I rarely outright lie in these entries; certainly, I've since overcome my reluctance to speak ill of the dead, if the deceased in question was a pox on the ass of society. As for the title of the entry in question here, a quote from the now-defunct article, which in turn quotes pornographer Larry Flynt: I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends. He would visit me in California and we would debate together on college campuses. I always appreciated his sincerity even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling. Flynt himself bought the farm in early 2021, having outlived Falwell by well over a decade. I don't remember any obituaries about him at the time; I just now looked that up. I wrote then: And that's what it comes down to for me, folks. Whatever you may think of the porn industry, it doesn't try to hide behind some nebulous concept of greater good or try to justify its actions on shaky moral grounds. Lots of people want porn, and people like Flynt sell it. Period. Everyone involved, from the producers to the talent to the consumers, are completely aware, every step of the way, that it's all about selling the illusion of sex (or intimacy, as I would argue) in return for money. There's no "it's good for you;" there's no "buy our porn and all your sins will be forgiven." Reading between the lines here, I think that was a statement against hypocrisy. While we're all hypocrites, and an examination of anyone's life or words will reveal contradictions, some hypocrisy is more blatant than others. As I recall, that slimy fool's son was also caught in a massive hypocrisy a few years ago. Some sort of sex scandal involving pool boys or some such. Look, I honestly don't give a shit what antics you get up to in private, so long as everyone involved is, at least, consenting adults. But if you rail against extramarital sex and then turn around and indulge in it, the rest of us are absolutely right to call you out on it. I should emphasize that none of this is actually meant to praise Larry Flynt, who did his own share of damage to the world. But my long-ago entry title stands: he was, at least in this instance, a better person than I was. As for why I bothered with this in the first place, well, Lynchburg is only about an hour's drive from here, through some of the most beautiful countryside in Virginia. I have friends there, and, at the time, had even more. One of my friends there is in a same-sex marriage, which, again, I don't care—except to the extent that it would make Falwell spin in his grave. Attach a dynamo to it and you could power half of Lynchburg. I think, though, my last line was a sick burn: And if you want to know who was the better American, well... consider that Falwell's business never had to pay taxes. |
| This article is over 10 years old, but that's not a big deal because it's about marketing campaigns of the past that, in hindsight, might have been a bit questionable. Turning everything into a "top 10" list may turn out to be a bit questionable, too. For the full effect, you'll have to go to the link. There are pictures. Often the criticism of vintage ads focuses on their inherent sexism, racism, or other displays of social prejudices, which we find laughable today, despite their continued presence. "Laughable?" Okay, I'm hardly a perfect writer, and I don't always turn out to have used the most appropriate word, but I think "cringeworthy" might be closer to the truth here. Or possibly "horrifying." But what about ads that steered consumers into dangerous territory, espousing outmoded scientific evidence or misleading half-truths to convince people that appallingly toxic products, or even deadly ones, were actually good for them? And what ads of today, or of 11 years ago when the article was published, will be similarly disparaged in the future? I build my life around avoiding ads and commercials (historical ones like these are okay), so I rarely see any, but the practice of convincing people that something's good for them, when it isn't, is still going on. But what about ads that steered consumers into dangerous territory, espousing outmoded scientific evidence or misleading half-truths to convince people that appallingly toxic products, or even deadly ones, were actually good for them? I do think it's important to distinguish between ignorance and prevarication. Ignorance is when we just don't know enough, and might not even know we don't know enough. It can be forgiven, if later corrected. Outright lying, though, that's reprehensible. So here’s a look back at 10 colossally painful advertisements, which make you wonder: What modern “health” products – vitamin water, granola bars, acai berry supplements – might look a little more evil in the future? All of them, very likely. And anything "homeopathic," I'd hope. 1. Junk Food, Now Fortified with Vitamins and Minerals Hm. No mention of Wonder bread or sugary breakfast cereals? Those were marketed under the veneer of "healthy" for way too long. 2. Let Them Eat Lead This isn't even one of those where they could claim ignorance. (And no, "eat lead" here isn't a euphemism for "getting shot") 6. Plastics, Plastics, Everywhere On the flip side, this may be excusable ignorance, heinous only in hindsight. At least... if it weren't for the whole "babies wrapped in plastic" thing, which I did, indeed, find laughable. 9. Shock Your Way to Physical Perfection In 1922, “Violet Rays” were said to cure pretty much anything that ailed you. This Vi-Rex device plugged into a light socket so users could give themselves home shock-treatments, which would supposedly make you “vital, compelling, and magnetic.” And this one outright cracked me up. Various recalls and lawsuits erupted throughout the U.S., forcing the FDA to finally prohibit their manufacture. The last batch of Violet Ray products was seized in 1951. For the mathphobes out there, that was nearly 30 years. 10. DDT For You and Me And here's one I can't be arsed to figure out if it was ignorance or lying. But it's worth it to see the article just for the advertising graphic here. The spread of DDT across mid-century America is mirrored today by the success of Monsanto (one of the companies that originally manufactured DDT) in placing its genetically modified products on store shelves before researchers have a full understanding of their larger ecological impacts. Sigh. I'm glad they put this derpity-derp at the very end of the article, because had it been up front, I would have known I could safely ignore the whole thing. You know what they're going to look back on in the future and laugh? Well, lots of things, but the neuroses about GMO foods will surely be one of them. That's if we're able to feed enough people to have people to look back on us and laugh. |
| Writing is all about symbolism. Even if you don't use it consciously, it'll show up. When your work is being discussed in a graduate-school literature class, they'll find it, though you swear that wasn't what you meant. Failing all of that, every one of our letters and punctuation marks is also a symbol. So there. Today's article, from Cracked, takes us out of the realm of writing and into consensus reality. To brag a bit, most of these, I already knew. I just never figured it was worth an article. That's why they get paid the big bucks over there, I guess. Symbolism might mostly seem like a word overused by English teachers and people who don’t understand movies as much as they think they do, but it’s nevertheless both omnipresent and essential. The Venn diagram (a symbol) of "English teachers and people who don’t understand movies as much as they think they do" is a pair of concentric circles (probably). Weirdly, too, some symbols become so commonplace that while their intended meaning holds up, their origin can get lost to time. And sometimes their meaning completely shifts; the swastika, for example, started as a symbol for the divine. Here are five bits of everyday symbology you might not know about… Or, as in my case, maybe you do know about them, but you never know what new information you might find. Of course, standard disclaimer: this is from a comedy site, not a scholarly research paper. 5. Barbershop Pole I have vague memories of asking my parents about this one when I was a kid. What I have no memory of is how they might have answered it in a way that Kid Me could have understood. But I eventually got the pole truth. The fact is that it has absolutely nothing to do with haircuts, and more to do with something a little more morbid. It comes all the way from the middle ages, when barbers also performed basic surgery, most notably bloodletting. They had the right tools at the time. And yeah, this reminds you of Sweeney Todd for good reason. 4. Eagle on the Dollar Bill The fact that these bits of cotton and linen are packed tip to tail with symbolism shouldn’t be new to anybody. Almost all money is rife with symbolism. Even Monopoly money. It's like, "We have a flag, but there's just not enough symbolism on it, so let's put it on the money." Most notably, the eagle seal on the back is repeatedly, almost obnoxiously obsessed with the number 13. Which is very spooky, if you are not aware of how many original colonies there were. And if you're not, and you're over the age of 13, then you probably don't know enough to bother with symbolism, anyway. It would have been much more amusing had they gone with Franklin's proposal to make the turkey the national bird. Which, I think, was one of ol' Ben's jokes, but it could have happened. 3. The Bluetooth Symbol Not to toot my own flute here, but yeah, I knew this one too. Didn't even need to have it pointed out. Well... to be completely honest, I misinterpreted the symbols, but I knew it was based on Norse runes, at least. One symbol that I would bet almost no one would be able to crack without help, though, is the symbol for Bluetooth. Hi! I'm almost no one. Well, the bluetooth symbol is actually a rune, because Bluetooth is ancient magic that was found in a Viking tomb. Which is only half bullshit. It’s not magic, but it is a rune with Viking connections. I'm still not sure about the sobriquet "Viking." I've done other blog entries about that. People ascribe the runes magical powers, but the facts are: they existed and were used for writing both magical and mundane. I'm not real clear on their connection to Greek and Roman alphabets (we use a modified Roman alphabet, of course), but there's too much similarity in some of the symbols to be entirely coincidental. The symbol itself is a combination of the runes hagal and bjarkan, or “HB” for Harald Bluetooth. The rune names have variations, too, because they weren't limited to what's now Norway. To make matters more complicated, hagal, or hagalaz, has a more common variation that looks kind of like an H with two slanted crossbars instead of the one horizontal one. The one used in the Bluetooth rune is more like what we call an asterisk, with six radiating arms, four of which are embedded in the bjarkan, or berkana, rune (the "B" looking part on the right). For full disclosure, then, I didn't see it as hagalaz/berkana, but as a reverse kenaz with a berkana. It's a connection I should have made, but didn't. Kind of like when I try to use Bluetooth: it should make the connection, but usually doesn't. 2. Cartoon Heart If you’ve ever read an anatomy book or committed a horrible, grisly murder, you probably know that the human heart looks a whole lot less cute than the version we get on Valentine’s Day cards. Few internal organs are "cute." So how did we end up with the cute little peach-shaped symbol? Well, there’s two prevailing theories... I propose a third, which is that it vaguely resembles certain sexual organs, in certain circumstances. 1. The Middle Finger Okay, this one, I can't claim prior knowledge of, except some vague idea that it resembles certain other sexual organs. It's important to learn new shit, especially about such a grand and noble gesture. Have you ever been walking around and found yourself in a confrontation with a fellow human? Maybe you’ve been in an argument with a parent, sibling, friend or partner. However you got there, you may have noticed them proffering a single, extended middle finger in your direction. Sadly, this article stops short of actually explaining the origin of the New Jersey State Bird, so I had to go to that equally questionable source, Wikipedia: "The gesture dates back to ancient Greece and it was also used in ancient Rome. Historically, it represented the phallus. In the early 1800s, it gained increasing recognition as a sign of disrespect and was used by music artists (notably more common among actors, celebrities, athletes and politicians; most still view the gesture as obscene)." In the UK, it is, or maybe was, more common to use two fingers. I don't know why that is, either (there's a story people tell involving longbowmen at the Battle of Agincourt, but I'm pretty sure that's the hand-gesture equivalent of folk etymology). There exist myriad symbols beyond these, many of whose origins are still shrouded in mystery. Perhaps another time, I'll delve into some of them. |
| A certain comedy site has trained me to see numbered lists in countdown order, and also to expect comedy from them. This, however, is not Cracked, but Mental Floss. Consequently, I'll have to supply my own comedy. 9 Creative Ways People Kept Cool Before Air Conditioning People have tried everything from funky fan chairs to enormous ice chambers to survive a sweltering summer day. Full disclosure: the house where I spent my childhood was located in one of the hottest and most humid parts of the mid-Atlantic (Chesapeake Bay area), and did not have air conditioning; plus, it was located about 100 meters from a massive swamp. This might have "built character," as my dad would have put it, but it did not; it ensured that I would never, ever go without air conditioning, ever again. Not going to quote all of them here. 1. Fan Chairs At first I thought of those movies and stage plays where the important person sits in a chair while servants wave giant feather fans. The important person stays cool; the servants get hotter. Basic thermodynamics. People used their feet to operate the fan that moved above their head, much like someone would power an old sewing machine. What? No servants? That de-feets the purpose. 2. Sleeping Porches Also known as "baby disposal chutes." (For the full effect, go to the article; there are pictures.) Another president interested in keeping cool was William Howard Taft, who had a “sleeping porch” erected on the roof of the White House in 1910. He must have had servants reinforce the roof, or it would have collapsed. Taft made Chris Christie look like Kate Moss. 4. DogTrot Homes The cats can just fend for themselves. On a more serious note, one wonders why this architectural innovation is featured here, but the shotgun house is not. Despite the name, these have nothing to do with firearms, but were designed to funnel any breeze through the home's three rooms. My childhood home, noted above, started out as a shotgun. Oh, right, because that style is associated with servants' dwellings. 5. Punkahs These hand-operated ceiling fans have their origins in colonial India. Each year, thousands of poor seasonal workers were contracted, or otherwise compelled, to spend monotonous days pulling a cord that swept a piece of fabric back and forth across a room for the country’s elite. AHA! I knew we'd get to the servants. "Otherwise compelled," my ass. 6. Drinking Buttermilk EW! I'll just sit here and sweat, thanks. The Indian subcontinent gave the world another refreshing idea for keeping cool in the searing heat: drinking buttermilk. I guess it worked in the long run; they just landed a robot on the moon. We now have two worlds known to be inhabited entirely by robots, with just one known to be inhabited by carbon-based biological life. Robots, incidentally, are okay to use as servants. For now. 9. Not Stressing About the Heat How did I handle the oppressive heat and humidity when I was a kid? Well, there was a giant body of water in my front yard, and I learned how to swim. No servants required. |
| Nothing is forever, but some things endure for quite some time. Poet of impermanence Enheduana is the first known named author. Her poems of strife and upheaval resonate in our own unstable times Ironic, then, that works about societal change have survived over 4,000 years. About 4,200 years ago, the area we now call southern Iraq was rocked by revolts. History doesn't repeat itself. It echoes. The once-independent Sumerian city states had been brought under one rule by the legendary king Sargon of Akkad. For comparison's sake, I tried to figure out when Sumer became, well, Sumer. There's a pretty wide range of possible founding times. Seems like the Sumerian civilization had been around for at least 1000 years before the time of this poet, and possibly even 3000. That's a pretty long time for a civilization. One such revolt is depicted in a fascinating poem known as ‘The Exaltation of Inana’. Besides being a poetic masterpiece in its own right, ‘The Exaltation’ bears the distinction of being the first known work of literature that was attributed to an author whom we can identify in the historical record, rather than to an anonymous tradition or a fictional narrator. The narrator of the poem is Enheduana, the high priestess of the city of Ur and the daughter of Sargon. According to ‘The Exaltation’, she was cast into exile by one of the many revolts that plagued the Old Akkadian Empire. Regular readers might also recognize ancient Sumer as the source of the world's oldest known joke. It is a fart joke. I'm just reminding us of this so we don't start thinking that all Sumerian literature was highbrow. We do not know for sure whether the poem was written by the historical Enheduana herself, as a literary retelling of a real event, or by a later poet writing in her name, in the ancient version of a historical fiction that was meant to celebrate the famous high priestess. I think this is important to note, also. Whatever the provenance, though, it exists. The clay cuneiform tablets shown at the link are also remarkably well-preserved. The poems do not merely register the reality of an historic upheaval – they go one step further by turning that instability into a cosmic insight, an occasion to reflect on what the world is really like. They contain, compressed within their often-cryptic verses, the germ of an ancient philosophy of change. An ancient philosophy of change, sunk into clay to preserve it for a very, very long time. Like I said... irony. The article presents excerpts of translations of some of the writing (it was only a couple of days ago that I did an entry about translation). It's fairly long, but I found the whole thing intriguing, even the way the author related the upheavals of ancient Sumer to some of the changes we're going through today. I'm not saying I agree, but having the perspective of history can be useful. I just wanted to make one more observation here, relevant to writers in general. It's not complacency and peace that generates lasting works of literature, but upheaval, change, and tragedy. Something to keep in mind if you want your works to last over 4,000 years. |
| After that bit of head-stretching yesterday, here's something a little closer to home: Admittedly, "boring" is subjective. By what criteria? Are your expectations too high? Are you a teenager and find everything boring? Do you live in a big city and wish someone would mug you more often? Well, I've been to all but three states in the US, so I obviously have my own thoughts on this list. 1. Nebraska According to the next traveler Nebraska is the most boring state in America, and they stated that there is nothing that would motivate them to visit again. And naturally, this is one of the three states I haven't been to. But assuming it's an average of Kansas and South Dakota, sure, traveling across it probably induces boredom.. They seemed to believe that the state lacked excitement and allure compared to other states. Many fellow Americans agreed, and another stated, “There is nothing but cornfields.” What? You don't like to eat? You don't like to drink bourbon? You have some deep-seated hatred of farming culture, despite, you know, depending upon it? I can believe Nebraska is boring to drive through. However, statements such as these say more about the urban ennui of the statement-makers than about the subject matter. 2. Delaware Oh, come on. You just included this one so people couldn't go "that's why they call them flyover states." The commenter wrote that all three counties of it are nothing but an elaborate tax dodge masquerading as a state. That bit is legitimately funny. Like, three counties in a trench coat pretending to be a state. 3. Kansas Yeah, well, see above. 4. North Dakota I admit I had to play little games with myself while driving across North Dakota in order to alleviate the boredom, but the state has a unique beauty to it. That probably extends across the border into southern Manitoba and Saskatchewan, but I have no first-hand evidence of this. The worst thing about ND, from my perspective, was trying to find a place to crash. There was an oil boom going on while I was there, and everything was full. 5. Iowa I... kinda love Iowa. Not the politics or anything, but the scenery. It's not nearly as flat, or as uninteresting, as people make it out to be. Maybe this is because I don't use interstates on my road trips. 6. Ohio Despite being the birthplace of many famous individuals, such as the Wright Brothers and Neil Armstrong, this traveler believes that Ohio is lackluster regarding things to do and see. The user argues that Ohio is simply a state to pass through rather than a destination worth stopping at. They acknowledge Ohio’s impressive record of producing more astronauts than any other state but ultimately deems it insufficient in excitement and interest. Oh, fuck right off with that. You want excitement? Stay in NYC and L.A., and leave the rest of us alone. We don't want you, either. On the other hand, it could be that so many astronauts come from Ohio because they felt a deep-seated desire to get as far away from the state as possible... I won't quote the rest, other than to say that one of them, Michigan, is also one I haven't yet visited. (The third one I'm missing is Alaska.) But it's clear to me that some of these responders have no sense of adventure, or beauty. Despite my gripes above about driving across certain plains states, fact is, I'd do it again. Sure, I have a much higher tolerance for what others consider boring, but in practice, it's a beautiful country with lots of hidden gems scattered across it. I'd do it all again. Hell, even getting stranded in South Dakota a couple of years back ended up being quite the adventure. In short, if you find one of these states boring in general, that's on you, not the state. |
| Oh hey, an actual writing-related article. “Whatever!”: In Defense of Anachronism in Ancient Rome James Hynes on Navigating the Past and the Present in Historical Fiction It's from LitHub, so it's a book promotion, but it brings up issues I've discussed in the past. Five times in my historical novel Sparrow, the character Calidus, a young provincial Roman who is the oldest son of a brothel owner uses the late twentieth century idiom, “Whatever.” Let's be real, here: That dismissive one-word sentence is associated with Generation X, not just a particular time period. But. Y'know. Whatever. On each occasion one of his free employees is telling him something he doesn’t particularly want to deal with. I'm unclear as to whether "free employee" means "an employee who is a free person," or "an employee who is not paid," aka a slave. Not going to read the book to find out. Article says he's a slave-owner, but that meant something different in ancient Rome than it did in 19th century America. Writing dialogue for characters in historical fiction is always tricky, and the further back in time you go, the trickier it gets. I can believe it. You know what's even trickier? Going in the other direction and writing future science fiction. If you’re writing a story set in an American or British city during the mid-twentieth century, you have reams of literature and hours of film from which you can steal idioms, catchphrases, and slang, and even if you go further back—to, say, the reign of Henry VIII—you can still do a fair approximation of how people might actually have talked. But if you’re writing a fictional narrative set in classical or late antiquity, and you’re writing it in English—the market for novels in Latin or Koine Greek having dried up somewhat in recent centuries—you have to resolve the problem of how to, on the one hand, make people sound period appropriate, and, on the other, be psychologically and emotionally understandable to a twenty-first century reader. And that's as much as I'm going to quote from the piece; there's a lot more there, if you're interested. Here's what I think the author is either missing, or dancing around, though: It's all translation. Let me give you an example from the relatively recent past: The Gettysburg Address famously starts out with "Four score and seven years ago..." This doesn't need translation into English, because it's English, but it might require one to explain to younger audiences that a "score" is an old word for "twenty." I don't know if the construction was considered archaic even in the 1860s, but as written, it's weighty rhetoric that comes across much more profoundly than if he'd said "Eighty-seven years ago..." But how would one translate it into a different language? Or into a potential version of English 250 years from now? Or a thousand? Kind of like how modern English writers have to translate Beowulf, which is technically written in English, but the language has drastically changed since then. I suspect it's not difficult in French; their version of "eighty-seven" is already "four twenties seven." But other languages, and future English, might lack context. So a skilled translator would come up with a phrase that captures Lincoln's rhetorical gravity (I'm told he actually wrote his own speeches), in the context of the language to be translated into. Got me? Basically, an original text or speech has plain meaning, but also it induces certain feelings in the reader/listener. One can translate the plain text easily enough with knowledge or Google, but that won't necessarily convey the same feeling in the audience. The trick in effective translation is to not only get the words and sentence structure right, but also the weight of the words. That is to say, I could totally see a version of the Old Testament where Moses occasionally says, "Okay, God. Whatever." I got to thinking about this, not in relation to historical fiction (a genre I generally don't care for, though there are exceptions), but concerning science fiction and fantasy (genres I live and breathe). And I remember touching on it in a long-ago issue of the Fantasy newsletter here. So, let's take Star Trek as an example, because it's a franchise I'm rather familiar with. Depending on the series, it can be set around 200 to a thousand years from now. We know English has changed quite a bit in 200 years; just read Poe or Shelley (either of them), but it's still intelligible. Shakespeare, whose writing often requires study and interpretation now, was a bit over 400 years ago, as far back in time from the series run of The Next Generation as the setting of TNG is forward. So it's very reasonable to assume that, in the latter part of the 24th century, English will have changed; accents will have changed proportionally; there would be evolution and loan words and all the stuff that make languages different over time. But TNG actors speak in late-20th century fashion (and their hairstyles, when they exist, are quintessentially 1980s). This isn't just laziness on the writers' part, not wanting to invent 24th century idioms, but also a way to connect with the audience. It is, in essence, a translation. It's not just the language, though. Much has been made in fan circles of the changes in alien design over time in that franchise. Especially the Klingons. Early attempts were basically humans with bushy eyebrows. TNG introduced the forehead plates. Discovery, though it was set before the original series, altered them even further, making them more obviously alien. And now in Strange New Words, set between Disco and TOS, the Klingons have gone back to more of a TNG-style design. Sure, this has been lampshaded in-universe as some sort of genetic virus or deliberate modifications or whatever. But I assert that it didn't need to be. Klingons are whatever the current audience needs them to be, because their appearance is translated. There are also budget constraints, of course, but that's not what I'm talking about, here. All of which is to say: Sure, have an ancient Roman say "whatever" or, if you want to play with Latin, "quisquis." It makes just as much sense as a future spaceship captain telling his crew to "Hit it." Now I just need to remember to adapt this entry into a future Fantasy newsletter, because I'm lazy enough to save myself the work. |
| It's Sunday again, so we go back in time to a random entry from the past. This one's from March of 2021: "Untruth and Consequences" This was very close to the 1-year anniversary of the pandemic being officially declared, with all the disruption that it led to. The entry itself, though, is a riff off a Cracked article about disinformation. The link is, unsurprisingly, still there; disinformation is still rampant. Much of the entry, and the article, is as relevant as ever, if you discount the references to pandemic restrictions. So I just want to point out a few things that slipped through the cracks (pun intended) last time. Online Groups Are Getting Really Weird What I might not have been clear about is that in the 30 or so years that I've been online in one form or another, there has never been a time when online groups weren't sometimes weird. Though things may have been easier to deal with in the days before everything was commodified, advertised, bowdlerized, centralized, and sanitized. Yoga And New Agey Types Are Getting Into It Humans usually find it easier to forgive or excuse the misdeeds of their in-group while magnifying those of their out-group. It's the difference between, say, "Boys will be boys" and "Lock up that miscreant for life." Or, "A [person in minority] stole my car stereo once, so I hate all [people in minority]" and "Almost all mass murderers and serial killers are white guys, but that doesn't mean white guys are mass murderers and serial killers." It's important to guard against this tendency, I think. It's not a matter of "both sides are bad," but of recognizing that every demographic group has both good people and assholes in it. Except Nazis, of course. They are, by definition, bad. The point is, if you're on the political left, for example, you might be tempted to think that accepting misinformation is tied to consuming right-wing media all the time, when the left (and make no mistake, New Age is definitely "left") is just as susceptible to faulty group-think. The reverse is also the case. I noted this in the original entry, but the above expands on the idea: You won't hear me say "both sides are bad," but what I am saying is that bullshit doesn't take political sides; it's an equal-opportunity brain rotter. I'll end this Revisited entry with what I still feel is the most important point, from my own perspective: Once you start believing one unsupportable thing, you can be open to believing more. That's one reason I hammer on about science. But hey, at least, this week, I didn't land on one of my infamous early short-ass blog entries. (In my defense, I think those happened before the Newsfeed existed.) |
| One thing that often bugs me about science fiction movies and shows is when they get the "science" part wrong. How long could you survive in space without a spacesuit? The vacuum of space is unforgiving, and time is not on your side. It usually doesn't stop me from enjoying the story, unless it's egregious, but how long would it take to make sure you get something right? Today's topic, though, is one that we don't have much empirical data on. It's not like we can shove people out of airlocks and time how long it takes until they die. Well... not ethically. And yet, some recent shows don't seem too far off the science on this one. Many of us have dreamed of going into space. Preferably inside of something. But traveling in space brings a whole set of challenges and hostile environments, so it's vital to recreate the conditions on Earth that have allowed life to evolve and flourish. As I've mentioned before, we can only live in a zone of atmosphere proportionally thinner than an eggshell. Everywhere else in the universe, as far as we know, will kill us in varying amounts of time, from instantly to slightly longer than instantly. Hell, even our evolved environment kills us, but usually over a matter of years, not seconds. Spacesuits allow astronauts to venture outside their spacecraft for short periods, by providing the air, water, pressure and physical protection needed for a human to survive. Sucks if you're one of the people who also need companionship to survive. I guess there's the two-way radio for that. Sci-fi movies and shows, including "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "The Expanse," have portrayed astronauts suffering — and surviving — short exposures to outer space without a spacesuit, while others have depicted a range of grisly deaths. I thought The Expanse was great, but it didn't always get the science right, either. "Within a very short time, a matter of 10 to 15 seconds, you will become unconscious because of a lack of oxygen," according to Stefaan de Mey, a senior strategy officer at the European Space Agency (ESA) charged with coordinating the strategy area for human and robotic exploration. I still don't think that's the worst part. Bodily fluids, such as saliva and tears, would begin to boil. A human body would also expand, but the skin would be elastic enough to cope with the pressure change, de Mey said, adding that horrific movie portrayals of exploding humans are not accurate. And it's even worse than that. Fluids don't start to boil because they get hot. They boil because the pressure drops. You know how water boils at a lower temperature in Denver than it does in New York? Well, space is even more empty than Denver air, and the boiling point drops even further. Depending on where you are, you can boil and freeze at the same time. Because you'd be unable to alter your dire situation, brain death would follow within minutes, unless you were rescued and brought back to the safety of the pressurized, oxygen-rich environment of a spacecraft and resuscitated. "Within minutes?" Weasel! Of course, as I said, we have no empirical evidence of this, so uncertainty is understandable. So I'm going to go with the time it took to rescue Star-Lord in Guardians 3. Spacesuits also protect from various types of radiation. In LEO, there is protection from some forms of radiation. Prolonged or long-term exposure to electromagnetic radiation from the sun would cause health issues, including radiation sickness and an increased risk of cancer. UV light would also burn the skin. Sure. I just got yeeted out an airlock, and my first (and last) thought is, "Boy, it sucks to be exposed to this much radiation." Being in space without an EVA suit becomes very deadly — very, very quickly. While someone could survive this grim scenario, they would want to have very little air in their lungs and get back to the safety of a pressurized spacecraft within seconds — or hope to be rescued and resuscitated within minutes. I think the important takeaway here is that death by airlock isn't instantaneous, not like if you're standing next to the fusion reactor when it explodes. No, you'd have time to think about it, much like those seconds between when you jump off the building and hit the pavement. In the latter case, though, the last thing that goes through your mind would be concrete. |
| What's worse than a scary story? A scary story that happens to be factual. Urban legends—those unsubstantiated stories of terror that allow us to use our imaginations to fill in increasingly horrifying details with each retelling—have been with us forever. Longer than the adjective "urban," even. Or the cities it references. While the internet has made the dissemination of them easier, humans have been goading one another with spooky anecdotes for centuries. Yeah, and some of them become actual myths, legends, or religions. Urban legends often come with a dose of skepticism. (No, a killer with a hook hand has never terrorized necking couples.) But sometimes, these stories turn out to be true. That's what the hook-hand no-neck conspiracy wants you to think. As the title suggests, these are supposedly verifiable. No Jersey Devil, no Mothman, no Nessie. I, however, couldn't be arsed to research them, so take it however you want. 1. Rats in the toilet bowl Never saw a rat there, but I did get attacked by a frightened, wet mouse once. Not where I live now. And I have seen articles about toilet snakes. And I don't mean the plumbing kind, but the no-legs forked-tongue scaly kind. 2. Cropsey For years, kids living in and around Staten Island raised goosebumps by relating the tale of “Cropsey,” a boogeyman who lived in the woods and made a nocturnal habit of disemboweling children. It's important to have a bogeyman to scare your kids into behaving. Well, as much as a kid can behave, anyway. It's generally best if said bogeyman is fictional, though. Parents no doubt eased their kids’ fears by telling them no such monster existed. Ha! You overestimate Staten Island parents in the 1970s. "Oh, he totally exists, but he only eats kids that don't do their homework." Incidentally: "bogeyman" is probably a more proper spelling, but boogeyman, boogieman, bogyman... whatever. The article spells it with two Os. I stick to the official spelling, to help distinguish the kid-scaring villains from the disco-dancing kind. In a nod to equality, the bogeyman can be female, nonbinary, or genderfluid, too. But he did. In 1987, Andre Rand was put on trial and convicted for a child abduction. He was probably mad he was named after the worst libertarian ever. To be sure, this one might be a case of "he killed a couple of kids and the legend grew." Still, the only acceptable number of kids' deaths at the hands of a serial killer is zero—unless, of course, the kids in question don't finish their vegetables. 3. The leaping lawyer Sooner or later, Toronto residents hear the tale of a lawyer who had a peculiar fondness for running full-bore into his office windows to demonstrate how strong they were. I'd heard about this one. Maybe from the Darwin Awards? I don't remember. In a eulogy, managing partner Peter Lauwers called Hoy “one of the best and brightest” at the firm. Not exactly a persuasive ad for your firm's services. Still, it's at least mildly amusing that there's a lawyer named Lauwers. 4. The body under the bed Vacationing couples. Newlyweds. Disneyland guests. All have been the subject of an urban legend involving hotel occupants who fall blissfully to sleep, only to wake up to an awful stench coming from either under the bed or inside the mattress. Gleefully reported by the competing hotels. While finding a dead person in your room would be legitimately horrifying, disgusting, and weird, things could be worse. 5. The Maine Hermit For decades, people who vacationed in central Maine’s North Pond area were puzzled by items that would go missing. The only really horrifying thing about this (dude was certainly strange, and he'd steal shit, but to the best of my knowledge, he never physically harmed anyone) is that Stephen King didn't think of it first. Skipping a few for brevity's sake. 8. The legend of the bunny man If you lived in or around Virginia in the 1970s, you were probably exposed to the story of the Bunny Man. In the tale, an escaped mental patient takes to gutting bunnies and hanging them from a bridge underpass. I'm actually kind of salty that I never heard of this, despite spending my hearing-about-bogeymen years two counties over at about the right time. Or maybe I did, and I just blocked it out of my head. 9. The legend of Polybius Vintage video gamers have long traded stories about a coin-operated arcade game circa early 1980s Portland that had strange effects on its players. The game, titled Polybius, was alleged to have prompted feelings of disorientation, amnesia, game addiction, and even suicide. Here, the article departs from "verified." This isn't even a case of "well, maybe it's true." There's no evidence that this is anything but an actual legend, myth, falsehood, whatever. Of course, that's what they want you to think. That one seems to be an outlier here, though. There are a few more at the link. While it's not always true that truth is stranger than fiction, it certainly can hit harder when you realize that the bogeyman is real. Now go clean your room! |
| So far, in my random meanderings around the solar system, I've hit Mercury, Earth, Pluto, and the mysterious, undiscovered-as-yet Planet Ix. This... this is the one I've been dreading. I should point out that this article is from the BBC. The thing about the BBC is that they have this reputation, at least on my side of the pond, for being stodgy, straightforward, mostly reliable, and largely disinclined to the tabloid excesses of certain other UK outlets. This reputation is only slightly deserved. They have a remarkable sense of humo(u)r sometimes, but often, you have to look for it. For example, their native video player? Some years ago, I noticed that the volume control slider goes to 11. That cannot be an accident. So with that out of the way, it's time to dive in... The butt (snigger) of countless jokes, Uranus is almost certainly the most unloved planet in our solar system. It always seems to get overlooked when the mission invitations go out. Okay, good, acknowledge the issue in the lede. People are going to make the jokes anyway; you might as well get ahead of them. (To head off more of the tiresomely inevitable, yes, I've seen the Urectum clip from Futurama.) Spacecraft have been sent to Mercury, Mars, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter. There is even one on its way to non-planet Pluto. Dwarf planet. Also, this article is from 2014, before New Horizons zipped past Pluto. It's not like Uranus has changed much in 9 years, apart from progressing further in its orbit. But Uranus (pronounced “yur-an-us” in polite astronomical circles) does not deserve its dull, or comic, reputation. Pronouncing it Urine-us doesn't help matters. One could go back to its Greek origins and pronounce it "oor-an-ohs," but that's just weird. I usually call it "the seventh planet" to avoid the inevitable bad jokes, but that doesn't work either, and besides, I end up watching people mumbling "Mercury, Venus, Earth..." while counting on their fingers. “Uranus really stands out,” says University of Oxford planetary scientist, Leigh Fletcher. I'm just going to pause here while you get this out of your system. With a volume 60 times that of Earth, Uranus is a compressed mass of toxic gases, including methane... NOT HELPING. “We don’t have a solid surface on any of these giant planets,” says Fletcher. “There’re no sharp boundaries, nothing to stand or sail on, but there’s a continuous progression from gas to liquid to some sort of solid.” Okay, jokes aside, this is hard to wrap one's head around. We're used to pretty low pressures, and clear dividing lines between the three classical states of matter. Sure, you can always think of exceptions, like silly putty, but for the most part, gas, liquid, and solid (dammit, more pun fodder there) are well-defined. Even the extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean isn't enough to push water into some sort of boundary state. In a giant (Uranus is classed as an ice giant), the pressures get way higher than that. It's difficult to visualize, but it gets weird. Circled by 26 small moons, a few faint rings and a weak magnetic field Uranus appears to be tipped over on its side. Every planet has a slight tilt when it spins – it gives us our seasons – but unlike every other planet in the solar system, Uranus rotates on an axis pointing almost directly at the Sun. Something that Fletcher describes as “really weird”. This is a bit misleading, but only a bit. It's close enough in essence. For one thing, the axis doesn't point at the Sun (except for twice in an orbit); it would be more appropriate to say that the axis is roughly parallel to the plane of the solar system. “Imagine a world where winter lasts 42 Earth years and you don’t see the Sun once during that time,” he says. That's probably easier to imagine than the whole states-of-matter weirdness in the depths. Fletcher is part of an international team that believes Uranus has been neglected for too long. See? Subtle. This group of space scientists and engineers from Europe, the United States and several other nations, including Japan, is working on a $600m mission proposal for the European Space Agency (ESA) with the aim of sending out a space probe, within the next 10 years, to discover why Uranus is so odd. Go ahead, call it the Uranus probe. You know you want to. From what I can tell, this mission never materialized. Bummer. However, there is a good reason why, in the entire history of space exploration, only one mission has visited Uranus: it is extremely difficult. And as the article notes, that one mission was a flyby. There's also some issues with launch windows. Any mission out that far requires gravity assist from other planets, and they have to be in a good configuration to do that. So it's doubtful that we'll send a robot out there in my lifetime. That's okay. Once I'm dead, I won't be able to get mad at all the stupid ass-puns. |
| Science fiction is blurry. By which I mean, the edges of the genre kind of blur into other genres: horror, fantasy, adventure, mystery, snob-lit, whatever. This makes the genre remarkably difficult to define, other than "I know it when I see it." So keep that in mind when looking at this collection of early 20th century SF. How Scientific and Technological Breakthroughs Created a New Kind of Fiction Joshua Glenn Chronicles the Development of Sci-Fi in the Early 20th Century If you insist, as I do, that the fundamental thing that makes it science fiction is exploring the ramifications of new or potential discoveries or inventions on people, society, and culture, then SF actually got its start in the early 19th century. But there's no question that it took a while to blast off. But I'm not here to argue about genre, which is essentially a marketing tool. The article itself is a marketing tool, promoting the guy's book. That's fine; lots of us are here to promote our books or find stuff to read. During the early twentieth century, the world’s scientists were wonderstruck by the revelation that the spontaneous disintegration of atoms (previously assumed to be indivisible and unchangeable) produces powerfully energetic “radio-active” emissions. Wait'll they find out about quantum physics. Throughout the nineteen-aughts and -tens, scientists and snake-oil salesmen alike would ascribe to radium—and radiation in general—vitalizing, even life-giving powers. I've noted things like this in here before. Now, look, I'm not going to quote from the rest of the article, here. It's not really necessary, and it provides quick descriptions of several early 20th century SF books. If you're interested, the link is right there; if you're not, see you tomorrow. But I find it interesting to delve into the history of the future; that is, what people thought the future might be like in the past. If that makes sense. It's not about seeing what "came true" (I've noted before that science fiction doesn't predict; sometimes it warns, but most often, it inspires); it's about seeing what attitudes people had then and how they might have shifted. And some themes continue to the present day: what would alien life be like? What if we could create life? How do we deal with the ethical issues of technology? So, yeah. Maybe I'll expand on this in a future Fantasy newsletter (there's no official SF newsletter, but close enough). Until then, step into the time machine, if you dare. |
| Some science explaining from The Guardian (hence the British spelling): The big idea: why colour is in the eye of the beholder We might think the sky is blue and trees are green, but the truth is rather stranger I'll be using US spelling for my bits. In February 2015, a Scottish woman uploaded a photograph of a dress to the internet. Within 48 hours the blurry snapshot had gone viral, provoking spirited debate around the world. The disagreement centred on the dress’s colour: some people were convinced it was blue and black while others were adamant it was white and gold. Has it been eight and a half years already? I guess so. As with so many things on the internet, the followup took a dark turn later.Everyone, it seemed, was incredulous. People couldn’t understand how, faced with exactly the same photograph of exactly the same dress, they could reach such different and firmly held conclusions about its appearance. It shouldn't be that surprising. We're still arguing over how to pronounce .gif (it's a hard g, by the way), and that format is like 30 years old at this point. The confusion was grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding about colour – one that, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, shows little sign of disappearing. That's at least partly because anchoring bias, where you stick with the first thing you learn about something, is rampant. For a long time, people believed that colours were objective, physical properties of objects or of the light that bounced off them. Even today, science teachers regale their students with stories about Isaac Newton and his prism experiment, telling them how different wavelengths of light produce the rainbow of hues around us. That's not really a bad thing, or even basically wrong. It may be simplistic, but that's nothing surprising when it comes to explaining science concepts to grade-school students. What's arbitrary is that Newton, who bridged the worlds of mysticism and science, assigned seven color names to what's really a continuum—seven being a magical number associated with astrology and the days of the week, among other things. But this theory isn’t really true. Different wavelengths of light do exist independently of us but they only become colours inside our bodies. Colour is ultimately a neurological process whereby photons are detected by light-sensitive cells in our eyes, transformed into electrical signals and sent to our brain, where, in a series of complex calculations, our visual cortex converts them into “colour”. The point of using a prism, or observing a rainbow in the sky, is that the refraction angle of light through a medium (glass or mist) depends on wavelength, which is how you get rainbows and Pink Floyd album covers. One cause of the problem – or perhaps its symptom – is language. In English we divide colour space into 11 basic terms – black, white, red, yellow, green, blue, purple, brown, grey, orange and pink – but other languages do things differently. Know how I know the author is male? Because he left out fuchsia, chartreuse, turquoise, etc. Also, his name is James. But mostly it's the color names. You'll note I said seven above while this list is longer. Newton reported red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Black and white aren't spectrum colors. Brown is basically dark orange. Pink is light red. Purple is weird and I don't have time to get into why right now (or why it's not really the same thing as violet). Indigo was totally made up by Newton so he'd have seven colors. Many don’t have words for pink, brown and yellow, and some use one word for both green and blue. The Tiv people in west Africa use only three basic colour terms (black, white, red), and at least one Indigenous community has no specific words for any colours, only “light” and “dark”. This could easily send me off on one of my "language shapes and reveals how we perceive the world" rants, but, to borrow a term from optics, I'm focusing on different stuff here. The Aztecs, who were enthusiastic farmers, used more than a dozen words for green; the Mursi cattleherders of Ethiopia have 11 colour terms for cows, and none for anything else. We have special color names for horses. The meanings of colour are no less socially constructed, which is why a single colour can mean completely different things in different places and at different times. In the west white is the colour of light, life and purity, but in parts of Asia it is the colour of death. In America red is conservative and blue progressive, while in Europe it’s the other way around. This last bit has long amused me, because red represents both the Republican party in the US and the Communist party in China (and in the former USSR). There's a bit more at the link; I'm afraid I copied way more than I usually do, here. It ends, in proper British fashion, on a pun, which I always appreciate. The point, though, is something I've been saying for some time: that color isn't an intrinsic property of things. Wavelength, however, is measurable and objective (it is, in part, how we know the chemical composition of distant stars). That dress, incidentally? It's always blue and gold to me. No amount of staring or mental gymnastics can change my perception of it. Other optical illusions, usually, become clear to me upon reflection (pun intended). This one's persistent. And after almost 10 years, it still reminds me that we all have different perceptions. And I do need reminding of that, from time to time. |
| Today's article, presented after languishing in my queue for several months, is from The New Yorker, so it's long and rambling and to be honest, I didn't read the whole thing. I'm linking it anyway. Dimming the Sun to Cool the Planet Is a Desperate Idea, Yet We’re Inching Toward It The scientists who study solar geoengineering don’t want anyone to try it. But climate inaction is making it more likely. For starters, the headline is a bit misleading. It makes it sound like people are actually going to turn down the dimmer switch on the accursed daystar itself. We don't have that technology yet. If we decide to “solar geoengineer” the Earth—to spray highly reflective particles of a material, such as sulfur, into the stratosphere in order to deflect sunlight and so cool the planet—it will be the second most expansive project that humans have ever undertaken. (The first, obviously, is the ongoing emission of carbon and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.) We do have that technology, or are very close to it, so it's a matter of "should we" not "could we." I would also like to point out the logical fallacy right there in the first paragraph: the idea that our "most expansive project" is "the ongoing emission of... heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere." Normally, I'd quit reading right there, from a combination of mistaking a result for an intention, and, well, it being in The New Yorker. Belching out greenhouse gases wasn't what we set out to do. It would be like saying you set out to purposely damage your liver by drinking booze and popping Tylenol. The idea behind solar geoengineering is essentially to mimic what happens when volcanoes push particles into the atmosphere; a large eruption, such as that of Mt. Pinatubo, in the Philippines, in 1992, can measurably cool the world for a year or two. You know what else would work? Nuclear winter. That doesn't mean it's a good idea, either, but it would work, at least temporarily. It is being taken seriously because of something else that’s speeding up: the horrors that come with an overheating world and now regularly threaten its most densely populated places. Nothing wrong with thinking about it. That's just science. Implementing it would be a different story. Even before 2030, we may, at least temporarily, pass the 1.5-degree mark. Ah, the naîvité of last November. We've already crossed that line, snowflake.It’s likely, in other words, that conditions may force a reckoning with the idea of solar geoengineering—of blocking from the Earth some of the sunlight that has always nurtured it. Like I said, thinking about it is fine. When it comes to actually doing it, though, you have to deal with the possibility of overcorrection, which could make things worse in the other direction. Everyone studying solar geoengineering seems to agree that it’s a terrible thing. “The idea is outlandish,” Parker told me. Mohammed Mofizur Rahman, a Bangladeshi scientist who is one of Degrees Initiatives’ grantees, noted, “It’s crazy stuff.” So did the veteran Hungarian diplomat Janos Pasztor, who runs the Carnegie initiative on geoengineering governance, and said, “People should be suspicious.” Pascal Lamy, a former head of the World Trade Organization (W.T.O.), who is the president of the Paris Peace Forum, agreed, saying, “It would represent a failure.” I'd take the experts' opinions over that of ordinary people (including me) any day. I can't help but feel that these quotes were cherry-picked, however. (Sulfur dioxide is the most commonly discussed candidate, but aluminum, calcium carbonate, and, most poetically, diamond dust, have also been proposed.) The poetry about using diamond dust isn't that it's diamond dust. Diamond isn't nearly as rare or precious as people are led to believe. We can make it easily in laboratories. No, the irony is that diamond is carbon, and carbon (in other molecular forms) is part of the problem. The question is more: what else would it do? On a global scale it could, at least temporarily, turn the sky hazy or milky (hence the title of Kolbert’s book); it could alter “the quality of the light plants use for photosynthesis” (no small thing on a planet basically built on chlorophyll—studies have shown that U.S. corn production increased as polluting aerosols went down in the wake of amendments to the Clean Air Act); and it might damage the ozone layer, which is only now repairing itself from our recent assault with fluorocarbons. And those are just the known unknowns. Worse, if they did this (and I'm not saying they will, or should), then any random weather disaster will be turned into the dust cloud's fault by ignorant hicks. "A tornado hit my house. Goddamn weather machines!" "My garage fell into the river! That geoengineering caused a flood!" Don't believe me? Look at any random weather disaster now and see how fast someone screams "climate change" before the scientists even have a chance to weigh in on it. Or, in another field, the people who are absolutely certain that a certain vaccine is worse than the disease. Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. The article touches on that, a bit, and I won't quote from it further; as I said, it's long, though not nearly as convoluted as a lot of the stuff that rag puts out. I will, however, point out that there are other possible mitigation efforts under thought. One of the most interesting, to me, is enormous carbon capture plants, designed to essentially filter the atmosphere to directly reduce the proportion of greenhouse gases. (Sure, vegetation does this too, but this could potentially be faster than trying to plant billions of trees.) It reminds me of the massive atmosphere plants in Burroughs' Mars books, a last-ditch effort of his fictional Barsoomians to prevent the ultimate climate disaster. In other words, think big. Just remember that not every idea is going to be a good one. |
| A couple of weeks ago, I revisited an entry that I noted was probably my shortest one ever, but wasn't about to check. So, behold, today the RNG gives me, from December 24, 2010, is longer by a word or two: "Enjoy this Christmas" ...that is, of course, if you don't count the ~4 min linked video which, much to my surprise, is still available as of this writing. I'm not going to embed it again, because I don't find it as amusing as I did 13 years ago. Nothing wrong with it, of course; it's John Cleese narrating a parody of Night Before Christmas. I don't find it offensive or outdated, just a bit hacky, like most parodies that I didn't write. And the video graphics seem dated. I'm clearly a different person now, with a slightly different sense of humor, than I was in those halcyon days of yore. Also, apparently, video embedding here is older than I thought. My sense of time is whacked, sometimes. And no, not because I'm linking a Christmas video in August; that's just the inevitable result of using a random number generator to pick these older entries. I'm not encouraging Christmas creep here; let us at least get through Halloween, and preferably also Thanksgiving here in the US, before we start up with the Santa shit again. Which means, sadly, Cleese lied. |
| Back in May, I linked an article showing that Yosemite Sam (pronounced Yo-sem-it-ee) is probably Jewish: "Sam: I Am" Now, Cracked takes a different crack at the character. "Nonsense?! Why, you dadburn rassa-frassin varmint..." If Yosemite Sam is remembered for one thing, it would be his massive, marvelous mustache. But if the Bugs Bunny villain is to be honored for a second accolade, it would be his colorful, almost-but-not-quite-off-color vocabulary, which has the whiff of obscenity but is cloaked in euphemisms and old-timey lingo. Which is somehow even funnier than actual swear words. Now, these aren't necessarily original to Warner Bros. cartoons. Lots of minced oaths have been around for a long time, possibly in some form since at least ancient Sumeria. They say a lot about cultural taboos. For example, in keeping with my 18+ rating, I can only say "fuck" once in this entry. But I can say "frak" as many times as I want, and everyone knows what the frak I really mean. You might note there's an issue with the numbering in the article. Doesn't matter; I'm only going to highlight a few. 10. Landlubber Landlubber has been around since the 1700s, and I love it even though I’m a landlubber myself: i.e., a non-sailor, as I might be disgustingly labeled by a seafarer. Though no sailor, when Sam occasionally found himself in sea mode, he’d modify his folksy lingo accordingly, adopting this term. Mel Blanc's voice was, as we know, extraordinarily versatile. But Sam's voice and a classic pirate accent always seemed similar to me. As the article points out, this isn't exactly a minced oath, or even fightin' words. 9. Dad-Burn As in, “Dad-burn it!” Sam’s lingo is one of the few remnants of this sense of dad as a euphemism for God. This one, however, is a classic minced oath. You can't say goddamn in a kids' cartoon. 6. Varmint I reckon this is the most characteristic Yosemite Sam word: He is the patron saint of calling critters varmints. The term has referred to vermin since the 1500s. By the late 1600s, a broader meaning emerged relevant to Sam and Bugs: “An animal of a noxious or objectionable kind,” as the Oxford English Dictionary puts it. It should be obvious, but it may not be, that "varmint" is a linguistic morph of "vermin," while "critter" comes from "creature." All varmints are critters, but not all critters are varmints. The distinction might be better explained here: "So basically, a varmint is a sub-set of a critter that's not tasty enough to eat or hunt into oblivion. Sort of like the difference between a plant and a weed"4. Lily-Livered There’s an implication of femininity here, which is a heckuva accusation for a man to throw at a rabbit. Have you met Bugs? That bunny was genderfluid before the term "genderfluid" ever existed. Anyway, as the article points out, "lily-livered" has nothing to do with perceived gender role. 2. Eejit This variant spelling of idiot signals that the speaker may not have any right to ride a high horse of non-idiocy. A predecessor is found in 1853: eediot. In addition to being unable to imagine Sam sounding out the word "idiot," it may be that "idiot" was at a point in its linguistic evolution that "retarded" is right now. Both words were originally value-neutral ways of saying that someone has diminished mental capacity. Humans being humans, such words inevitably become slurs, and we have to find new value-neutral terms, which are destined to inevitably become slurs. Don't believe me? Try calling someone "special" these days. 1. Rackin’-Frackin’, Rassa’-Frassin’ Ah, yes, the absolute Platonic ideal of a minced oath. Words like this are the lexical equivalent of grawlix, a comic strip gimmick consisting of symbols that indicate swearing, like %*!#$. And despite over half a century of enjoying comic strips, this is the first time I've encountered the word "grawlix." I love learning new stuff. Incidentally, I got in huge trouble for using grawlix (though obviously I didn't know that term then) back in middle school. I was trying to avoid getting into trouble, you see. Turning over a new leaf, as it were. I don't remember the context after all this time, but I'd written a note containing the "words" @$$ and $#!+. I thought I was being clever, you know, replacing "ass" and "shit" with what would now be perfectly legitimate substrings of internet passwords. The teacher, though, wasn't stupid, and translated them immediately, sending me across the hall to the principal's office, all while probably thinking what a doggone varmint I was. Well, #@%* me. |
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