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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| For anyone who still reads, from Big Think: 5 stories that teach you philosophy (better than some philosophy books)  Want to study philosophy but skip some of its heavier tomes? These five novels are a great place to start. (Existential despair guaranteed.) Sure, because why bother chewing when you can have your meal pre-processed? Okay, sure, that's an unfair comparison. Sometimes, fiction is what it takes to really get your ideas across. Philosophy is a rewarding discipline to study. Actually reading philosophy? That can sometimes be a slog through scholastic drudgery. I suspect that's true for any discipline. If you want to dive into some philosophy but aren’t in the mood for its heavier tomes, you can find many excellent fiction stories that explore philosophical ideas in accessible and enjoyable ways. I would argue that most fiction involves some philosophy. Yes, even mass-market pulp fiction. Maybe except for romance. “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (1973) “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a short story focusing entirely on a philosophical issue. Specifically, it presents a full-throated argument against utilitarianism. The idea's been stolen, too. Notably, an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds directly cribbed the premise. And I'm pretty sure someone else did it before Le Guin, in turn. It's not about whose idea it was, though; it's about the idea. Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (1791) Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as The Story of the Stone, is an 18th-century novel. It is considered one of the great classic Chinese novels, alongside Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. As an ugly American, I hadn't even heard of this one. So I can't weigh in on the content, except to say that any overview of world philosophy does need to include, well, the world. Solaris by Stanisław Lem (1961) The 1961 novel follows a group of astronauts trying to communicate with the planet Solaris. It should surprise absolutely no one that science fiction ties in with philosophical ideas. And yet, some still scoff at the entire genre. Candide: Or, Optimism by Voltaire (1759) His vast bibliography includes numerous letters, pamphlets, plays, and novels. One of the funniest is certainly Candide: or, the Optimist. Imagine if the Monty Python trope were one French guy writing in the 18th century, and you’ll have a sense of Voltaire’s humor. Yes, sometimes philosophers write fiction. And sometimes, it doesn't suck. I haven't actually read this one, though. But I've said this for a long time: The optimist insists that we're living in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears that this is true. The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925) The Trial follows Joseph K, a man who is arrested one morning for reasons never made clear to him. His attempts to follow the byzantine rules of the legal system alternatively benefit or harm his case with little rhyme or reason. He is told to attend court sessions without being told when or where and blamed for being late. I really should read Kafka, even if he didn't write science fiction. Anyway, mostly, I just wanted to share, though I'm only personally familiar with two of the five works. Thing is, though, pick almost any book that's not for sale at an airport, and there's sure to be some philosophy in it. Sugar-coated, maybe, but that's how the medicine goes down, I'm assured. |
| From Nautilus, a reminder that "bug bomb" used to mean something very different. Maybe they should have called it a bugapult instead of a catapult. Alongside sticks, stones, and bone, humans also once harnessed a surprising ally in their early weaponry: insects. To bee, or not to bee? Researchers hypothesize that humans started using them on the battlefield as far back as 100,000 years ago, long before the beginning of recorded history. Yeah, okay, but I'm going to need something more than guesswork. Venomous stingers, refined through millions of years of evolution, can tear the skin and unleash poison. Bacteria that cause deadly diseases in humans and other animals can hitch a ride as insects scatter and swarm across a human landscape. Clearly, they didn't know about the whole bacteria thing, just that bugs somehow caused illness and death sometimes. Bee Cannons Beehive bombs may have been some of the first projectile weapons, according to scholars. As early as Neolithic times, evidence suggests that warriors would attack enemies hiding in caves by throwing hornet nests through the openings. I'll give them a pass on confusing bees, hornets, wasps, etc. Bee-cause the idea of a bee cannon is darkly humorous. Bee Grenades As early as 2600 B.C., the ancient Mayans conscripted bees for warfare. Mayans, traditionally skilled potters, are understood to have created specialized bee grenades from clay. This is even more funny. If, of course, you're not the one getting stung by the bees (or whatever). Scorpion Bombs When the Roman emperor Septimus Severus waged the Second Parthian War to expand his control to Mesopotamia in 198-99 A.D., little did he know that his soldiers would also be up against venomous stinging creatures. I can also forgive the stinging insect confusion above because a) they know the difference between "venomous" and "poisonous," and b) they didn't call scorpions "insects." Yeah, I know, calling everything a "bug" is just as wrong, from a taxonomic point of view, but everyone knows what you mean and it's easier than saying "arthropod." Porcelain Flea Bombs In 1920s Japan, a mosquito-borne encephalitis virus killed 3,500 people on the island of Shikoku. General Shiro Ishii, a microbiologist and an army officer, was sent to Shikoku to study the epidemic, and he quickly began to plot using the great destructive power of insects for war. Hm... Porcelain Flea Bombs would make an excellent band name. Maggot Bombs In the interest of expanding their repertoire, Japanese Unit 731 began experimenting with house flies—a pest known to flourish among human habitations. Borrowing from the design of the Uji bombs, they developed the maggot bomb, officially known as the Yagi bomb. As the article notes, no maggots were actually involved, but adult flies were. Because of the horrors such weapons visited upon their human victims, the Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of biological weapons in war, and by 1972, international authorities had outlawed even their creation or possession. Oh, yeah, that always works. However long ago bug warfare actually started, I'm once again impressed at the creativity of humans when it comes to destroying or inconveniencing other humans. |
| An "everything you thought you knew was wrong" article from The Conversation: Shakespeare’s language is widely considered to represent the pinnacle of English. Oh, right, sure, English only went downhill from there, and no other authors or poets ever created, or could create, anything worthwhile. I don't even know why we try. But that status is underpinned by multiple myths – ideas about language that have departed from reality (or what is even plausible). The sarcasm about pinnacles (can you put those on pizza?) aside, I'm all for correcting misconceptions. The Encyclopedia of Shakespeare’s Language project at Lancaster University, deploying large-scale computer analyses, has been transforming what we know about Shakespeare’s language. Speaking of which, has anyone told one of those LLMs to write a Shakespeare play yet? I bet they have, and I just haven't heard of it. 1. Shakespeare coined a vast number of words Well, he did, but not as many as people think – even reputable sources assume more than 1,000. Whatever the actual number is, anything we (or our computers) come up with is still an estimate. The word “hobnail” first appears in a text attributed to Shakespeare, but it’s difficult to imagine it arose from a creative poetic act. More likely, it was around in the spoken language of the time and Shakespeare’s use is the earliest recording of it. "Difficult to imagine" isn't evidence of anything. However, I can absolutely believe that unrecorded spoken language preceded things being written down. Speaking was the social media of the time. 2. Shakespeare IS the English language The myth that Shakespeare coined loads of words has partly fuelled the myth that Shakespeare’s language constitutes one-quarter, a half or even all of the words of today’s English language. Yeah, even if I had heard something like this, which I don't think I have until this article, my bullshit meter would have beeped. 3. Shakespeare had a huge vocabulary Ludicrously, popular claims about Shakespeare’s huge vocabulary seem to be driven by the fact that his writings as a whole contain a large number of different words (as noted above, around 21,000). But the more you write, the more opportunities you have to use more words that are different. This means Shakespeare is likely to come out on top of any speculations about vocabulary size simply because he has an exceptionally large surviving body of work. Seems like this is a version of survival bias. 4. Shakespeare has universal meaning Sure, some themes or aspects of the human condition are universal, but let’s not get carried away and say that his language is universal. Canonically, he stole Hamlet from the Klingons. The mantra of the historical linguist is that all language changes – and Shakespeare isn’t exempt. If the meanings didn't change, we wouldn't have whole bodies of work translating Elizabethan English to some modern version. 5. Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin Within some theatrical circles, the idea that Shakespeare didn’t know much Latin emerged. Indeed, the contemporary playwright Ben Jonson famously wrote that Shakespeare had “small Latin, and less Greek”. Shakespeare lacked a university education. University-educated, jealous, snooty playwrights might have been keen to take him down a peg. I'm not going to address this directly, but one thing I keep seeing is, I think, related: the conceit that Shakespeare didn't write what we attribute to Shakespeare. The reason this is related, in my view anyway, is that both of these claims seem to be rooted in academic snootery. "How could a commoner have written such scenes and verses? It absolutely had to have been someone more educated." For all I know, they may be right. I'm no expert, so I'm not weighing in. But claiming that on the grounds of literary snobbery just rubs me the wrong way. Whoever wrote those plays didn't write them for ivory-tower academics; they were the 16th-century equivalent of our pulp paperbacks, written for the amusement of the general public. And besides, it just doesn't matter. Four hundred and some years later, we're still analyzing and reinventing these words, coined or not, and whoever originally penned them is long gone. As much as I like to dispel myths and correct misunderstandings, we know for sure that the words exist, as well as some historical context for them. And that's what really matters. |
| Oh, wonderful. More about tipping in the USA, from USA Today. I'm not tipping a slack-jawed teen for no work. Let's fix our tip culture. The social contract has been shredded, and we're all left fumbling with our wallets while the person behind us in line judges our generosity for a transaction that once went untipped. Okay, well, worrying about the person behind you is a "you" thing. They might be just as fed up with tip creep as you are. Food "tipping" has become an absolute circus, and I’ve had enough. "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" The practice should be a straightforward way to reward exceptional service. Now, it’s a guilt-ridden tap dance where a rogue iPad demands a 25% premium for a slack-jawed teen handing you a muffin. Don't blame the teen, dammit. They just work there. Tipping has become a source of national anxiety, a phenomenon known as "tipflation," and frankly, it's exhausting. Ugh. Anxiety is not what "tipflation" (goddamn stupid silly portmanteau) is. It's the proliferation of tips to inappropriate places, and increasing expectations for percentages. If we don’t draw some clear lines in the sand, we’ll soon be tipping the self-checkout machine at the grocery. Some people already are. In the spirit of restoring some sanity, allow me to propose 10 reality-adjusted food tipping rules for 2025. Yeah, that'll work out great. (I'll comment on a few here.) 1. The full-service sit-down meal ‒ 18-22% There's little argument about this one. Until we find a way to do away with tipping culture, this stands. One might quibble with the amounts, though. 2. The counter offensive ‒ 0% Most dining experiences these days stand in stark contrast to the classic waited table. If you order at a counter, pick up your food from someone hollering a number, fill your own drink and bus your own table – congratulations, you’ve just provided your own service. I use the McDonald's Rule: if the level of service is that of McDonald's, where you don't tip, then you don't tip. 5. Coffee, cocktails and courtesy ‒ $1 minimum per drink, double it for effort Coffee shops usually fall into the "counter service" category. Unless they're bar-like. Anything bar-like, you tip. 9. No SALT Don’t tip on state and local taxes (SALT). The government is literally charging you to eat. You should not pay someone else a percentage of that amount. Look, the problem with that is: it takes extra work. Say you go and eat out and it costs $25. Locally, taxes amount to about 10%, so the check comes with $27.50 or so. That's going to be the bottom line on the receipt. If you tip 20%, that's either $5 or $5.50. Is it really worth your time to dial in precisely on the pre-tax amount? It just seems really picky to me, when you can just see the final total, double it, and move the decimal one to the left. Let’s reclaim some common sense in 2025. No. No, let's not. Common sense is neither common, nor sense. Conspicuously missing from that list: what to tip a rideshare. And you absolutely should tip a rideshare. |
| Leave it to the French to come up with new ways to confound scientists. From Smithsonian: Doctors Detected a Mysterious Antibody in a French Woman’s Body. It Turned Out to Be a Brand New Blood Type Called “Gwada negative,” it marks the discovery of the 48th known blood group system in humans Of course it's a new blood type. It's only an antibody if it's from the Antibody region of France. In 2011, a French woman was undergoing routine medical testing before surgery when doctors discovered a mysterious antibody in her blood. Personally, I think we should tell kids that antibodies are little ants crawling around under their skin. Yes, it's wrong, but so is teaching them that only the ABO blood classification system matters. And my suggestion would be funnier. Now, scientists say the woman is the only known carrier of a new blood type called “Gwada negative.” It’s the only blood type within a new blood group system that scientists have dubbed “PigZ,” which is now the 48th known blood group system in humans, as the French Blood Establishment (EFS) announced last week. I was going to make a comment about the inappropriateness of "PigZ," but then I saw the part about there being a French Blood Establishment, and that's way more amusing. Sounds more like a secret society of French vampires. Humans have four major blood groups—the same ones identified at the beginning of the 20th century: A, B, O and AB. Since then, scientists have also determined that blood cells are influenced by a protein called the Rhesus factor. Apparently, that has nothing to do with Reese's Cups, but a lot to do with rhesus monkeys, which are properly named rhesus macaques, which is yet another source of amusement. But the full range of human blood is more complex. Scientists now know blood types result from the presence or absence of at least 366 antigens, according to the International Society of Blood Transfusion. Slight variations in which of these antigens are present can lead to rare blood types. The ABO blood group system is only one of many—with the new French research bringing that total to 48. To be serious for a moment, I didn't know any of that, so hey, I learned something. But more importantly, I had a chuckle. |
| I'm sharing this two-year-old article from Inverse, not for the movie reference, but for the tech itself. 40 Years Ago, a Wild Sci-Fi Movie Predicted a Life-Changing Invention Playing fast and loose with its reductive portrayal of the brain, the film’s mind-sharing technology is far from reality. I'm going to skip past the movie part, actually. For one thing, science fiction doesn't "predict;" it, at best, speculates or extrapolates. The original Star Trek communicators, for example, didn't predict flip phones; flip phones were inspired by communicators. For another thing, that was hardly the first SF creation to consider mind-recording technology. And finally, full disclosure, I never saw the movie (Brainstorm) and doubt I ever will. Four decades later, with the rise of brain-computer interfaces (or BCIs) melding the mind with machines, we may be closer to making thoughts tangible, if not to others but to devices like prosthetic limbs and speech synthesizers. Which is a noble goal and all, but let's stop for a moment and consider the direction other technology has taken. Your computer or phone, for instance, tracks your every move, tap, click, and keystroke. I'm not paranoid enough to say "you're being watched at all times," but the potential is there, and you very well might be. I've long said that as soon as we develop a technology that lets us share thoughts directly (which itself would be a nightmare scenario), someone will infest it with advertisements. The primary aim of BCIs is to assist individuals with disabilities, such as paralysis, by enabling them to control prosthetic limbs, communication devices, or wheelchairs using their brain signals. Much research and innovation has gone into offering a means of communication for individuals with severe motor impairments, such as those with locked-in syndrome, allowing them to express thoughts and needs. And, like I said, that's great. It's the inevitable follow-on that delves into dystopia. If you have technology that lets you convert brain states into action, it's not all that far off from being able to induce the brain states that you want, eliminating all that pesky rebellion in the people you want to control. Not to mention how easy it would be to zap a brain through an electrode. That’s the extent of BCIs at the moment. We’re not anywhere close to recording whole memories or sensations — let alone afterlife experiences — nor conveying them telepathically through a headset. The "afterlife experiences" thing, if you don't read the article, is a reference to a major plot point in the movie, one which I say takes it from SF to fantasy. And sure, we may not be close now, but research has a way of eventually getting results. And that's the true power of science fiction: not to predict, but to warn. You get to talk about the ethical implications of something before it becomes reality. That has been the case with SF from its very beginning. It's kind of like how horror movies teach us things like "never split up" and "don't dig up that 4,000-year-old corpse." Only with a slightly higher threshold for realism. It's unlikely that this will reach that point in my lifetime, though further advances have been made even in the two years since this article came out. But, you know, some people think we're already there. You can spot them because they're wearing the classic paranoid-fashion accessory, tinfoil hats. Those don't work, by the way. What you need are implanted electrodes. |
| This is a few weeks old now, which matters in this case, but I wanted to share this anyway. From BBC, something new under the sun: A powerful new telescope in Chile has released its first images, showing off its unprecedented ability to peer into the dark depths of the universe. You know why I didn't become an astronomer? It involves going to high, cold, remote places. Well, I'm okay with remote, but fuck those other two qualities. I'm perfectly content staying below a few hundred feet above sea level, in a relatively warm spot, and reading about it. And, of course, looking at the pictures. Seriously, go look at that picture. Chances are, you've seen it already because, like I said, kinda old news now, but it's still awesome. The Vera C Rubin observatory, home to the world's most powerful digital camera, promises to transform our understanding of the universe. I'm going to address this because the article doesn't: the name of the telescope isn't "woke" or "DEI" or some doggy treat for feminists. Vera Rubin was one of the most important astronomers of the 20th century. I'd put her right behind Edwin Hubble in terms of discoveries that shattered our worldview and helped us build another one, and Hubble, as you might know, already had a telescope named after him. To be more specific, Rubin was the astronomer who figured out that galaxies weren't behaving like they should if you only accounted for the visible matter in them. This led to the dark matter hypothesis, which also turned out to fit other observations and can be used to make predictions, so it's very important to astronomy and cosmology. While they don't yet know exactly what dark matter is, it led science down a more productive path. That's oversimplified, of course, and she obviously did more than just that, but the point stands. If a ninth planet exists in our solar system, scientists say this telescope would find it in its first year. Pluto fans seen turning red, smoke pouring from ears and nostrils. It should detect killer asteroids in striking distance of Earth and map the Milky Way. It will also answer crucial questions about dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up most of our universe. That last bit being, as I mentioned above, the most fitting. But the other stuff is important, too. This once-in-a-generation moment for astronomy is the start of a continuous 10-year filming of the southern night sky. This is completely off-topic, but "filming" is exactly what the telescope doesn't do. It features, as the article goes on to explain, a very large digital camera. We have words for recording images that no longer describe what's being done; "filming" is one of them. So is "footage" used to describe video images. I have invented a word for these words that describe processes that are now as obsolete as the floppy disc or punch-card computers. Here it is: Anachronyms. Of all the words I've coined, I like that one the best. Anyway, the rest of the article goes into some of the technical capabilities of the telescope, and what they expect it to be able to do. It's all very cool, and I look forward to hearing about the results. |
| This one may have come up at an inopportune time, considering recent events in Texas and North Carolina. But I figured, there's always a flood somewhere, or will be soon. This flood story is from BBC History: Long before the Bible, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation predicted one of its most famous stories A Mesopotamian myth from nearly 4,000 years ago tells of a man who builds a boat to save the world from a divine flood, long before the Bible’s famous story I guess they're weaseling their words so as to not ruffle any feathers (to mix a species metaphor). I have no such qualms, so I'll rewrite the headline to be more accurate. Hell, I'll even keep the British spelling: "Long before the Bible, an ancient Mesopotamian civilisation provided inspiration for one of its most famous myths." Because the Ark thing was clearly stolen from earlier writings, and your religious stories are just as much mythology as the other guy's religious stories. When most people think of a legendary flood of world-ending proportions, their mind will jump to the story of Noah; a man chosen by God to build an ark, gather animals and survive a divine global deluge sent to cleanse the world. I don't know about "most people." Perhaps most English readers who have access to this online article. Long before it appeared in the Hebrew Bible, a remarkably similar tale was written down on clay tablets in ancient Mesopotamia – the home of civilisations that flourished in what is now Iraq, more than 4,000 years ago. Again with the wording. Was Charlie Chaplin's mustache "remarkably similar" to Adolf Hitler's? Chaplin's came first. I suppose "remarkably similar" has the property that the equals sign does in arithmetic: you can switch sides. Still, language may be math, per yesterday's entry, but it's not arithmetic, and that sentence construction seems to imply that the older story might have copied the newer. I will also point out that a flood story makes a whole lot more sense to have its origins in Mesopotamia than in the Levant. The setting for this myth is ancient Mesopotamia, a civilisation whose name literally means “the land between the rivers”. These rivers – the Tigris and Euphrates – run through modern-day Iraq and parts of Syria and gave rise to some of the world’s first urban civilisations, including the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians. Which gave us beer, which is the really important thing. From as early as 3000 BCE, these cultures developed literature, law codes, the first cities, monumental temples, advanced irrigation and vast mythological traditions. And beer. Among these stories is the Atra-Hasis Epic, a myth composed in the Old Babylonian period (c. 1900–1600 BCE), which contains the oldest known account of a divine flood sent to destroy humanity – and a chosen survivor tasked with saving life on Earth. Okay, I don't think I've ever heard it described as the Atra-Hasis Epic. Just goes to show I'm still learning. In the myth, the Mesopotamian gods have created humans but quickly come to regret it, as the unruly people disturb the gods with their chaos and violate the cosmic order. I should write a story about how humans created gods but quickly come to regret it. “The gods decide to send a deluge to wipe out humanity,” explains Al-Rashid, “because they become too loud and annoying, effectively.” Anything to deflect blame from yourself, I suppose. If my neighbors become too loud and annoying, I might say something, or call the appropriate civil authorities, or wish a flood upon them. But I didn't create my neighbors. If I did, I'd acknowledge my own complicity in the disturbance of my peace. But one god, Ea (also known as Enki), disagrees. In secret, he warns a wise king named Atra-Hasis, whose name means “exceeding in wisdom”. Ea instructs him to build a boat, a great vessel that will preserve “the seed of all life on Earth”. It's long occurred to me that, while most of our names tend to be derived from ancient languages, at some point, there weren't ancient languages to draw from, and you get more literal names. The English equivalent would be like when you name someone Patience or Hope. ("Robert," incidentally, comes from Germanic roots meaning something like "bright and famous.") Atra-Hasis persuades his community to help him build an ark. “He’s got everyone in the town to help him build this boat basically in a day,” Al-Rashid says. “And they're having a feast to celebrate.” But the feast is overshadowed by the king’s dread. Atra-Hasis gives a speech filled with puns and wordplay that hint at the catastrophe to come. Sadly, puns almost never translate between languages, so much of the nuance is lost in translation. You get this with the Bible, too. Some verses that make people scratch their heads when read in English (or almost any other modern language) make perfect sense as puns in Ancient Hebrew or Greek. I'm no expert on either language, so I won't provide examples; they're easy enough to find online. Point is, some of our first recorded stories included puns. The first known joke, however, was a fart joke. One of these is the lowest form of humor, and it's not the pun.This Babylonian version of the flood myth wasn’t a one-off, either. Instead, this was a recurring motif in Mesopotamian theology. Yes, because they lived along rivers, and what do rivers do? And this archetypal structure isn’t limited to Mesopotamia. Similar flood stories appear in cultures around the world – from India’s tale of Manu to China’s story of Yu the Great, to Native American myths and Aboriginal oral traditions in Australia. It would be a stretch indeed to claim that all of these flood stories had a common origin. They certainly weren't based on any event that actually affected the entire world. But if you live along a river, and it floods, and you lack knowledge of the size or shape of the planet, it can easily seem that your entire world was destroyed. Why? Well, obviously because the gods were pissed off. There's really no other logical explanation. Certainly not anything involving weather patterns or hydrology, because that shit hadn't been invented yet, but gods had. But, as the article notes, the link between Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean is well-documented. So there's no real mystery as to how one morphed into the other. Because we are, fundamentally, a story-telling species, and we love to copy and modify others' stories. |
| So, you were told there would be no math? Lies. There is always math. From Quanta: Where Does Meaning Live in a Sentence? Math Might Tell Us. The mathematician Tai-Danae Bradley is using category theory to try to understand both human and AI-generated language. And no, I don't understand it, either. If everyone understood this stuff, it wouldn't need a whole article, would it? Growing up, Tai-Danae Bradley had no love for math. In 2008, she entered the City College of New York, where she played for the basketball team and hoped to start a career in sports nutrition. Which would have required math. But in her sophomore year, her calculus professor changed her mind. Mathematics, she learned, was the language that all the sciences are written in. Well, all the real sciences, anyway. Now, as a researcher at the artificial intelligence company SandboxAQ, and a visiting professor at the Master’s University in California, Bradley is using the language of math to try to better understand language itself. I've known for a long time that language is mathematical. Not that I had the means or ability to analyze it myself, of course, but, like with a turbulent river or a thunderstorm, there's math that describes it, even if we haven't quite figured it all out yet. Her lens is category theory, a way of stepping back from the specifics of any individual field in favor of a broader underlying framework that bridges all of them. By thinking of language as a mathematical category, she’s been able to apply established tools to study it and glean new insights. Which is one reason this article caught my eye; I like it when things from different fields of study can be connected. The bulk of the article is in interview format. (Don't worry; there's nothing we'd call "math," unless you count some equations in illustrative photographs.) I'm not going to quote much of that; it's there and I think it's pretty much accessible. There's really only a couple of quotes by Bradley that I wanted to highlight, like this one: I’m very interested in this phenomenon where things that feel different turn out to be fundamentally related. And I am, as well, though I don't have the formal tools to analyze such things. This is why I like to learn a little bit about a lot of things rather than a lot about one or two things. Ideally, I'd learn a lot about a lot, but I'm entirely too lazy for that. So I pick up what I can, when I can. Like this article, for instance. One final quote, then: I think in five years, we might have new mathematical ideas that were inspired by language. And this, I want to see. |
| Let's wrap up my entries for this round of "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] depressed arches You know how, sometimes, it feels like you just can't go on? Nothing's right, but you don't have enough desire or ability to try to make it right? I don't know; maybe you're one of the lucky ones who never feel that way. But I think most people, especially creatives, get depressed at some point, even if it doesn't descend to the clinical level. Sometimes, paradoxically perhaps, it can add fire to one's work. Bruce Springsteen, one of the most prolific songwriters of all time and one of the most energetic in concert, disclosed in his autobiography that he suffered from depression, to the great surprise of anyone who's never heard one of his hundreds of songs. I don't know if Leonard Cohen did, but shit, man, just read his poetry. Lots of great comedy comes out of depression, because, really, what can you do but laugh and try to make others laugh, too? Not to mention every Russian writer ever, and at least half the French ones. Thing is, though, when you're an arch, you have no choice. You have one job: supporting everything above you. And you do it, through rain, snow, sleet, and (at least relatively minor) earthquakes and hurricanes. Worse, when you're a depressed arch, the thing you're holding up tends to be very heavy, like train tracks. Well, those aren't all that heavy, comparatively speaking, but sometimes there's a train and then you really feel the weight. But that's not even the worst thing. No, the worst thing is knowing that you didn't have to be an arch. You could have been a solid wall, except that someone decided that something—trucks, pedestrians, a river, wildlife, whatever—absolutely had to get from one side of the thing you're holding up to the other. And your span is too wide to simply throw a beam on top, so to be able to hold up something that's not you, you become an arch. You don't even get paid. Maybe, sometimes, you appear in some book on structural engineering and/or architecture, or get your picture posted to Wikipedia, but otherwise, you just sit there. Brooding. Not for all eternity, mind you, because you're acutely aware that everything eventually crumbles to rubble and dust, but sometimes, it sure feels like it.Perhaps, on better days, when the sun is shining and the people admiring your smooth lines and graceful curves are happy and smiling, you realize that things could, indeed have been worse: you could have been located on the bottom of someone's foot. |
| Today, I'm sharing an older article from Mental Floss. Usual disclaimer for that site: I don't trust its fact-checking, if indeed it does any. And to be honest, I'm not doing a lot of research for something this inherently silly. Just be careful: to use a different but related origin myth, the number of people who think "Ring Around the Rosie" is about the Plague is substantial, even though that claim has been pretty thoroughly debunked. So I'd urge anyone reading this not to spread this around at tailcock parties as Absolute Truth. Tongue twisters have been screwing up speaking abilities around the world for centuries. They do have a purpose, though. As entertaining as tripping over tricky terms can be, early English twisters were also used to teach pupils proper speech. From what I understand, actors use them to help with enunciation and controlling one's speech. I remember using "red leather, yellow leather" for that. It was surprisingly difficult, even for those with English as a first language. In a note to teachers in his 1878 book Practical Elocution, J.W. Shoemaker reminded them of the “higher motive” of these confounding sayings: “To The Teacher—While many of the exercises ... may create amusement in a class, a higher motive than 'Amusement' has prompted their insertion. Practice is here afforded in nearly every form of difficult articulation.” As if there were a higher motive than amusement. Pfeh. ...some of these difficult phrases go way back to when elocution was practiced as routinely as multiplication tables. Do they even do those in schools anymore? 1. Peter Piper This might be memory revisionism on my part, but I don't recall that particular twister being very twisty. I just tried it again (my cats heard me, but they already think I'm weird), and it's still not difficult. What I find interesting isn't the alliteration, but that "piper" is part of the botanical name for pepper. But not the pickled kind. Come to think of it, when's the last time you saw pickled peppers? Several spice enthusiasts have also suggested the Peter in question was based on 18th-century French horticulturalist Pierre Poivre, though that connection should probably be taken with a grain of salt (or pepper, in this case). Considering that "poivre" is the translation of "pepper," yeah, I don't know. Again, though, it's the "black pepper" kind, not the "green pepper" kind, which is similar: poivron. Or piment for those degenerates in Québec. At least it's not as ambiguous as the English word. 2. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck? Oh come on, that's not even a twister; it's more... I don't know, wordplay? The difference in pronunciation between "wood" and "would" is indistinguishable, at least in American English, and tongue-twisters generally rely on similar but different sounds, like "picked a peck of pickled..." And one wonders what was actually meant by "chuck" in "woodchuck." It might very well be the American version of woodcharles. In 1988, a fish and wildlife technician for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation made national headlines when he posited if a woodchuck could chuck wood (because they actually can’t) it would be able to chuck about 700 pounds of the stuff—but that little detail must not have fit into the linguistic flow of the original rhyme. Stop making sense of nonsense. Woodchucks (better known as groundhogs, famous for their ability to destroy flower beds, predict weather and cause time loops) may not chuck wood, but one doesn't pick pecks of pickled peppers, either. You pick peppers, then pickle them. Even if you're Peter Piper. But the nonsense is more fun, and we've already established that there is no higher purpose than amusement. 3. and 4. Betty Botter and Two Tooters I have vague memories of the first one. As for the second, I'm pretty sure we never learned it. Because if we had, we'd have changed it to "Two Hooters." 5. She Sells Seashells Finally, a legitimate twist-tonguer. At least for me. The code-switching necessary to go from s to sh and back to s is notoriously difficult. Like, when I was a kid, being trained in how to train a dog, I commanded the dog to shit. The other humans couldn't hide their laughter. The dog, fortunately, interpreted what I meant: sit. I think she was laughing, too. This was, of course, before I developed my potty mouth, and had no clue that "shit" was a 13+ word. But, just as with anything, you practice until you get it right. Most of the time. Maybe. 6. I Scream, You Scream Oh for fuck's sake, that's not a tongue-twister; that's a pun. (To be fair, the article acknowledges the lack of twist involved). 7. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious OH COME ON. That's an exercise in spelling, not speaking (this time, I cheated and used copy/paste). Still, the origin story is interesting, if true. Spoiler: no, it wasn't Mary Poppins. Well, not really. Unless you're a Disney lawyer reading this, in which case it was definitely Mary Poppins and please don't sue me. 8. Pad Kid Pad kid poured curd pulled cod I hadn't heard of this one, and it turns out there's a good reason for that. Not yet as recognizable as some other more traditional rhymes, this short sentence was developed by MIT researchers in 2013 as the world’s trickiest twister. Worse, it's more nonsensical, and not in a fun way, than the older and more famous ones, which at least follow some semblance of English grammar and syntax. To me, this makes it inferior, even if it was developed at MIT. If you want English grammar and syntax, you'll need to go up the Chuck river to Harvard. And still, I wonder why they didn't somehow work the word "card" into that one. I guess they're still trying to live down the card-counting story. |
| This Stylist piece is a few years old, though that probably doesn't matter. Nah, see, if I want a challenge, I'll play my video games on a higher difficulty level. No-one likes to think of themselves as a flaky reader – and yet most bookshelves are home to at least a handful of reads that their owners have never finished. "Flaky," my ass. (Don't worry; my ass isn't actually flaky.) We're here for maybe 30,000 days, more likely less, so why waste one of them forcing yourself to read something you neither have to (for school, e.g.) or want to? Peer pressure? Lit-snobs insisting it's essential reading? I get that there are different levels of "want," but at some point, it's perfectly okay to say, "this isn't working out for me" and moving on to something more productive, like polishing the dolphin. Either these titles are there for intellectual window-dressing (aka, your untouched uni texts from 10 years prior), or more likely, you’ve waded through 50 pages before throwing in the towel. Fortunately, my uni texts (that's just textbooks for my fellow Americans; Stylist is a British rag) were 90% engineering tomes, and certainly not untouched. Well, untouched for 40 years now. But not unopened. You know what fiction book I did have to read, for a class in engineering ethics? Frankenstein. No regrets there. Stylist is also a site aimed at chicks, but that's not going to stop me. There’s a peculiar guilt associated with these unfinished books. Yeah, that sounds like a "you" problem. I don't feel guilt about it unless I've promised someone I'd read something, and then didn't. They remain lurking on the shelf like an unwanted guest, picking up dust; a reminder of our weak-willed preference for cheap domestic noir over weighty, improving tomes. That particular sentiment is almost American in its self-flagellation. I don't feel like it improves me to force myself to read something I'm just not into. One such example is already on this list; I'll get to it. The books we struggle to digest may be famously difficult reads; but they also tend to include hugely popular authors and titles, whose hype not everyone is convinced by. I've mentioned before my refusal to read James Joyce. It's led to my reading mantra: "Incomprehensibility is not depth." Well, it's not an absolute refusal; I gave it a shot. Lots of people are impressed by it. I am not. And some of the world’s most revered writers count in their mix; showing talent is not always matched by reader enthusiasm. This is something we need to remember as writers: no matter how good you are at your craft, there will always be people for whom your writing just doesn't click. Conversely, you can suck at it and still inexplicably become popular *cough*stephaniemeyer*cough* Below are the top 10 in all their unfinished glory, as revealed on the website For Reading Addicts. Disclosure: I didn't visit the link provided to that website. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller Joseph Heller’s satirical novel is based around a group of airmen in WWII Italy grappling with red tape, and is deliberately absurd and nonsensical in style. I tried. I really gave this one a shot. It's one of the few books whose title has actually become an idiom. And I can't explain it: I love absurdity and nonsense. Perhaps it's because it's American absurdity and not the British or French or Russian versions; I don't know. But I just couldn't get into that book at all, and abandoned it after I don't know how few pages. Guilt? Nah. I understand quite well what a catch-22 is, and I'm more familiar than I'd like to be with the bureaucratic labyrinth. The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling J.K. Rowling’s first foray into adult fiction sold over two million copies before it was even released. I don't know about over there, but on this side of the pond, we need to use the term "adult fiction" very carefully; it can be a synonym for porn. I believe the implication here is that it's a book about adults written for adults, but even there, I've always resisted the idea that one needs to be in the same demographic as the protagonist in order to enjoy a work of fiction. Given Rowling’s peerless skills as a writer, a high drop-off rate is likely the result of readers who brought it on the author alone – in fruitless search of some Harry Potter magic. Okay, well, first of all, "peerless" is overstating the case. She got better over time, sure. She got filthy stinking rich over it, sure (I think that was mostly from movie royalties). But I have my doubts that that's the reason people abandoned the work. I wouldn't know. The Lord Of The Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic ranks among the top bestselling fiction of all time, having shifted over 150 million copies worldwide. But coming in at 576,459 words, devouring it is not a feat for the faint-hearted. It's not always about length. Sometimes, it just doesn't work for a reader, like I said above. I had no issue finishing LoTR (and certainly not the much shorter (pun intended, of course) The Hobbit). Other people have different tastes. Shocking, I know. You know what I couldn't get into? The Silmarillion. Protip for fantasy writers (well, it would be a protip if I were a pro): don't publish your worldbuilding notes. They're boring. Lest you think, "Well, of course, Waltz, you're well-known as a Fantasy reader, what with the newsletter editorials and all," I should note, for full disclosure, that I gave up on Wheel of Time before finishing the first novel in the series; and that it took me longer, but I got tired of Game of Thrones during the... third? Maybe fourth? book. I don't remember exactly. It's not the genre; it's that nothing was really happening. I feel no guilt about either of those abandonments (though I keep thinking I should give WoT another chance because one of my favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, took over to wrap it up after the original author, Robert Jordan, kicked the bucket). Fifty Shades Of Grey by EL James The bondage bonkbuster is the fastest selling paperback of all time... I'm absolutely stealing "bonkbuster." Despite being a pervert, I have absolutely no interest in even starting this one. Unfinished business here has the telltale signs of those who want to know what the excitement is about but then don’t last the 514 page count. I'm sorry, if you're a regular reader and you can't make it through a measly 514 pages (it can vary, but maybe 150K-175K words), it may well be because the writing sucks. No matter how titillating (I don't know if that's a pun or not) the writing is. Ulysses by James Joyce James Joyce’s most famous work is notoriously difficult to read. Surely no other book has quite so many articles dedicated to how to make your way through it – and yet is still considered a masterpiece. If you need a study guide, it's not a book; it's a text. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville This classic 1851 novel is based around a doomed whaling mission, interweaved with rich symbolism and existential questions on the meaning of life. In an effort to get me reading more highbrow literature when I was a kid, my dad urged me to read that one. Perhaps because he related to it, as a sailor. Maybe he genuinely liked it. And it's not the "classic" status that stops me. Hell, I enjoy reading Shakespeare from time to time, and there are plenty of other books from the 19th century that I found compelling. Only reasons to read it, though, are a) if you're really very quite interested in the techniques and technologies of 19th century whalers, or b) you want to fully understand Wrath of Khan. Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir about her quest for identity in the wake of a messy divorce inspired millions of women to hit the road solo on similar pilgrimages of self-discovery. Look, I'm not trying to minimize peoples' personal experiences here. But EPL was hardly the first story in the genre that I call "divorce porn," where some lady, and it's always a woman, gets divorced and then goes to some exotic-to-her location, fucks a native, and decides she's found meaning in life. I've thought about writing the male-protagonist version, but I can't figure out how to do it without it being a satire. But for effective satire, I'd have to read the source material. And I don't wanna. Okay, maybe it's because my ex ran off to Switzerland. Shut up. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand Even the hardiest reader might quake in the face of Ayn Rand’s 1,200-page dystopian novel based around a crippling economic crisis faced by millionaire tycoons and their “looter” foes. Perhaps the best example of literary analysis I've seen from this century was a short passage from a blog post made in 2009 by someone named John Rogers (whom I know absolutely nothing else about): “There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." Okay, I'm going to cut it off here for time; there are two others on the list, neither of which I really have an opinion about one way or the other. If you gave up on my commentary here, the tldr version is this: Don't be ashamed at giving up on a book, and don't let other people, including me, tell you what you should consider "good" or not. |
| Almost done with my "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] entries: one more after today's. Barbican I think Barbican would make an excellent band name. It would have to be one that plays rock. Because fortifications were made of rock? Yeah? Yeah? Come on, that was funny. I'm not sure if they'd get to play at the Barbican. It seems way too highbrow for that kind of music. But then again, I don't know; England helped to elevate rock to high art. Okay, they made rock a high art, and we just kind of followed along over here.All I really know about that particular complex, though, is that it exists. That, and what I just read on the Wiki page I just linked. Of all the London landmarks with distinctive architecture—Elizabeth Tower, the Eye, the Shard, Tower Bridge, the Old Bailey, to name a few—Barbican Centre is one I've never, ever seen in an establishment shot for scenes set in London. Perhaps there's one out there somewhere; I haven't seen every movie and show in existence, nor would I want to. (Apparently, it was used in some scenes in the Star Wars spinoff series Andor, which I've only seen part of, but that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about.) The equivalent for the US is, I think, having a good idea of what the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building look like, but never having seen Lincoln Center. Which is understandable. Historically, a barbican was a kind of fortification. Specifically, a "fortified outpost or fortified gateway." Like all defensive structures, they were useful until they weren't. The arms race that saw improved armor lead to improved weapons which led to improved armor which led to improved weapons, and so on, was mirrored in the defensive walls vs. siege engines race.Sometimes I think that, if it weren't for war, we wouldn't have been nearly as inventive. Oh, who am I trying to fool? Myself? No, I don't think that "sometimes;" I think that all the time. Even the Space Race was part of a war, albeit supposedly a cold one. But sometimes, we can turn the language of war over to peaceful pursuits. Like, I don't know... the arts? We can still argue about their aesthetics and meaning, but at least we don't usually kill each other over the disagreements. |
| From Noema, heresy and blasphemy: The Cult Of The American Lawn Manicured grass yards are ecological dead zones. So why are they being forced on people by their neighbors and homeowner associations? Because you will conform! Or be cast out! When Janet and Jeff Crouch sought to enliven their front yard in suburban Maryland with native black-eyed Susans, Joe-Pye weed, asters and coneflowers, they had no inkling that they were doing anything controversial. Some places, that gets you the death penalty. Their endeavor eventually lured butterflies, bees, goldfinches and sometimes snakes to a thrumming oasis at the edge of Cedar Lane Park in Columbia, Maryland. Ugh! Nature! But it also stirred the anger of a neighbor who, aided by the local homeowner association (HOA), demanded the Crouches revert to the norm. People’s yards are for lawns, they insisted, and little else. "Land of the Free... Wait, not like that!" In 2017, the HOA demanded that the Crouches restore their grass lawn or risk fines or worse. By "or worse," perhaps they mean the power some HOAs have to take your house away due to unpaid fees or fines. Homeowners' Associations: Not Even Once. How did the American lawn become the site of such vicious disagreements? American culture embodies a zeal for individuality and property rights — of the idea that people should be able to conduct their own affairs in their own territory without the neighbors or the government imposing their views and forcing conformity. Like so many other cultural quarrels, the lawn has this deep contradiction at its heart. Well, at some point, "my right to always have my property values go up" became more important than "your right to do as you wish on your property." The invention of lawnmowers in the first half of the 19th century and, later, sprinklers reduced the amount of labor needed to nurture a lawn, and a new vision of park-like suburbia started to bloom... Oh, that's right, blame technology and not human nature. The growing popularity of golf, with its courses’ trimmed grass aesthetic, and the spread of car culture helped push Americans deeper into a cult of civilized lawns. I've heard that in golf course subdivisions, the most valuable houses are the ones right next to the courses. I can kind of understand why, but personally, I'd get tired of golf balls whacking against the sides and roof. Not to mention the windows. The lawn care industry began to heavily market an American sense of pride in the home and disciplined yard work as a leisure pursuit. Leave it to Americans to apply the Protestant Work Ethic to their leisure time as well. “The American lawn is a thing, and it is American, deeply American,” Paul Robbins, an expert in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of the book “Lawn People,” told me. “There becomes a kind of local social pressure to make sure you’re not letting down the neighborhood — you’re keeping up the property values. Those then become morally normative.” I've never fully understood the "keeping up property values" bit. To me, a home is a home, not an investment (a second or third or whatever home can be an investment, I'll grant). Also, higher property values means higher property taxes in most states; why willingly pay higher taxes? This is America! Around 40 million acres of lawn, an area almost as large as the state of Georgia, carpets the nation. Lawn grass occupies more area than corn. And we have a metric shit-ton of corn (that's maize for you Brits) here. It’s a waste of space, Douglas Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware, told me. More biodiversity on American lawns could soak up carbon, better mitigate floods, support pollinators that propagate our food and host the insects that form the crucial early threads of the terrestrial food web. The Lawn-Order people, in general, want to keep bugs out of yards, and in general don't accept the idea of climate change and therefore the need for carbon sequestration. Of all the things that Mike and Sian Pugh loved most about the ranch-style home they bought in Loudon County, Virginia, in 2005, the meadow at the rear of the property was foremost. It's Loudoun County, not Loudon. Though that's how you pronounce it. You know, just for the record and all. But someone complained about the chickens the Pughs were raising, contravening HOA edicts, and the dispute ramped up to include the meadow itself. Seriously, if I ever move again (unlikely; I expect to croak before needing assisted living, and that's the only thing that could make me move at this point), one of my hard-and-fast rules will be "NO HOA." Resistance to the imposition of lawns has gathered steam in recent years. They are increasingly viewed as a crucible of environmental breakdown. A growing number of homeowners, alarmed by a loss of nature that imperils birds and bees, have started to question whether their lawns need to be closely cut and strafed with chemicals. We've got one house in the neighborhood where the hippie owners (a contradiction in terms if there ever was one) turned their entire front yard into a garden. I find it interesting. I have no idea what the other neighbors think of it. But I don't live in an HOA, and it's been a garden for some years now. Hartzheim identifies as a libertarian but told me she considered neat lawns a sort of civic virtue, which she acknowledged could be inconsistent with her usual suspicion of onerous regulations. "Could be inconsistent with" is a funny way to spell "fucking hypocritical." Hoogland was born in the Netherlands and has spent decades in the U.S. She lamented the American attitude to lawns — “an enigma” to her. “Americans are more afraid of pests, and there is this infatuation with cleanliness — I don’t really understand it,” she said. See, this is why we need outsider perspectives. The article is quite a bit longer than that, though I don't think it's too awfully long. But I have no mow comments for now. |
| Wait, it's July now? How did that happen? Well, whatever sorcery was involved, here's an entry for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]: Rococo Long ago, in my town, there was an upscale Italian restaurant named Rococo's. The exterior was nothing special; in fact, I recall it as just another corner space in just another strip mall. It was only after you went inside that you were like, "Oh, shit, I'm underdressed and I shoulda brought a date." The food, which I ate despite being underdressed and single, was delicious. Sadly, the restaurant didn't last very long (apparently the owner went baroque), but during the time it was open, it was the subject of fierce debate: Is it pronounced "roe-COE-coze" or "ROE-coe-coze?" I'm not sure if the owner ever settled the debate, or if she sat back and enjoyed the free publicity that the .gif format would later enjoy. Turns out that the architectural style, which is way more ornate than that restaurant's decor ever was, suffers from a similar ambiguity of pronunciation, as sometimes happens with English words of French origin. Yes, it was originally a French style, which only adds to the confusion about the name of a defunct Italian restaurant. For example, people in the US can't agree on whether to pronounce "route" like "root" or like "rout." Italian restaurants don't seem to last, here. The only ones that do are the basically fast-food ones that do pizza and calzones and other street food. Someone will open up an upscale one like Rococo's, it'll be booming for a year or so, and then people start flocking to the next shiny new thing. Not that there's anything wrong with pizza, mind you; it's Nature's most perfect food. It's just that, sometimes, you may want to visit a place with ceramic plates and metal utensils. And wine served in stemmed glasses, not plastic cups. I don't recall if Rococo's's wine was any good or not; it's been that long. But the story has a happy ending, or at least it's a story that hasn't ended yet (there's no such thing as a happy ending; there are only authors that stop before the end): the former owner's adult sons got together with her and opened a combination beer and wine store and restaurant, called Beer Run. Then, they opened another, larger space called Kardinal Hall, located in an old factory building that's within easy staggering distance of no fewer than four craft breweries—or, as I like to put it "a great way to spend the day." You know what we don't have here in Charlottesville, a city with significant French influence? Rococo architecture. Get that ornate shit out of here; we don't do that in central Virginia. If it ain't brick, it ain't right. I imagine rich people in their Colonial brick mansions with the white trim and double-hung windows covered with blackout shades so that any casual peeping Tom walking by don't see that they've secretly decorated the interior with gold, intricately-carved crown moulding, and Renaissance frescoes. That would amuse me. But I no longer know any rich people around here, and even when I did, I never got invited to their parties. Eh, the food couldn't have been all that great, anyway. |
| The random numbers gave me this one today, from Popular Science earlier this month. Vertically rolling ball ‘challenges our basic understanding of physics’ The lab-built orb can roll down a 90-degree surface. Yeah... that bit in the headline is apparently an actual quote from the scientists involved. But, as we'll see, the article didn't convince me that this is the kind of thing to say that about. Take recent observations made by a team at the University of Waterloo, for example. Under a very specific set of conditions, these experts achieved something previously thought impossible under gravity’s constraints: they documented a sphere not falling or sliding, but rolling down a vertical surface. I'm not saying it's not cool, mind you. “We double-checked everything because it seemed to defy common sense. There was excitement in the lab when we confirmed it wasn’t a fluke and that this was real vertical rolling.” But that's what science is for, in part: to "defy common sense." The surreal display of physics relied on a pea-sized soft gel sphere’s finely tuned elasticity and its relationship to a vertical surface—in this case, a glass microscope slide. If researchers crafted a polymer orb that was too soft, then the sphere inevitably either stuck to the slide or slid down it. If the object was made too rigid, then gravity caused it to simply fall straight down. It seems to me, based on that paragraph, that far from being an accident that would require rewriting physics from the ground up, they were working on this specific setup, and have a pretty good idea of what causes the behavior. As they explain in their study recently published in the journal Soft Matter, these attributes produce a “dynamically changing contact diameter and a unique contact asymmetry.” That sounds awfully close to bizspeak jargon. But it's science jargon. No, I don't fully understand it, either. Harnessing the physics of vertical rolling could one day be applied across soft robotics to create new machines capable of inspecting pipe interiors, exploring difficult-to-reach cave systems, and future devices destined for the moon or Mars. I guess everyone wants to know what the practical use for something is. There doesn't have to be one. If you're going to insist on listing possible practical uses, though, it might be good to be more details on exactly how it'll be useful. For example, we already have robots for inspecting pipe interiors; what would this do differently? That's about it, really. My issues with the reporting aside, it's a pretty cool concept, and that was reason enough for me to share it. |
| Another entry for the architectural round of "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] Carson Mansion Ever wonder what makes a house a mansion? I know I have. You expect that houses exist on a continuum, from those trendy one-room trailer dwellings all the way up to, I don't know, something that burned down outside L.A. earlier this year. At some point on that continuum, it stops being "house" and becomes "mansion," like a high enough hill becomes a mountain, or pond to lake to sea, or pebble to rock to boulder. Well, unless you're in a profession that needs to strictly define ranges within that continuum, it turns out it's not that simple. The Great Salt Lake is, for example, larger than the Dead Sea. Perhaps, then, what makes a house a "mansion" isn't size (after all, there are castles which serve as homes but aren't called mansions), but appraised value? Or perhaps the presence of servants' quarters? Or is it some distinguishing architectural feature? But then you also have words for similar things like "manse" or "manor." Those are, perhaps obviously, derived from the same Latin root word, one which also evolved into the French word that translates to house, "maison." So, apparently, if you call it a mansion, and enough people nod and say "Yep, that's a mansion," then it's a mansion. Not everything has to fit into neat little boxes. One can imagine a scenario where, upon measuring someone's expensive and recently-built abode somewhere in the US, an inspector might say, "I'm sorry, ma'am, but your dwelling comes in at 14,999 square feet, and, as you know, to be considered a mansion, it must contain at least 15,000 square feet." On the plus side, that could be amusing and I'm going to have to work it into a story at some point. It's not always straightforward to measure the area of a house, though, whether you're measuring in square feet, square meters, or, in the case of some mansions, acres or hectares. You'd think it would be easy, but often, it's not. Obviously, if the house is a rectangle, like mine, you can just measure the long side and the short side, multiply them together, then multiply by the number of floors. Right? Wrong. What you're really measuring is floor space, so you have to account for wall thickness. Also, interior wall thickness. Also, stairs, which, well, which story do you count them in? And what about bathtubs, sinks, kitchen cabinets? They count? But then you get weird old houses or mansions or castles, for instance the one featured today, for which I can just imagine some intern getting sent out to measure its livable area as part of their hazing. Er, I mean, training. Even that Wiki page provides only approximations and hedges them: "In excess of 16,200 sq ft (1,510 m2) on 3 floors (excluding basement) plus 103-foot (31 m) tower."As an aside, I always wanted a house (or mansion; I'm not picky) with a tower. Still, even if I were wealthy enough to afford one, I wouldn't want to be the one maintaining it. My own relatively simple house is hard enough to keep up with, and I'd feel bad having servants to do it for me. They can be cool to look at, though, and us peons will just have to settle for admiring the exterior. At least until the owner's goons chase us off the property. |
| Well, today's article is likely to be almost as controversial as the one about bagels. But, I'm guessing, it's a bit more of a sensitive topic. As a disclaimer, I know almost nothing about the source here, so I have no idea what agenda, if any, it might have. Well, for starters, what I "know" is that it's not anyone else's goddamn business. Not satisfied with managing your own life path? Better try to tell other people how to live. Ashley Manta knew she didn't want kids as early as her teen years. "Oh, my dear, you'll change your mind!" "Just wait until your biological clock starts ticking!" "It's different when they're your own!" "Even as I got older, after college and grad school, when I looked at my friends who had kids, they always seemed exhausted, stressed, and financially strapped," Manta says. "Kids are expensive! I'd rather spend my money on growing my business, traveling, and saving for the future." Then there are the people who consider "exhausted, stressed, and financially strapped" to be badges of honor. Manta is far from alone. The subreddit r/childfree has 1.5 million members, and there's a sterilization subreddit with 17,000 people dedicated to discussing permanent birth control options like getting their fallopian tubes removed (called a bilateral salpingectomy). I have mixed feelings about reddit; I don't visit the site often and I don't have an account there. But if that's what it takes to find people to help support you in a world that seems increasingly and bafflingly pronatalist, I won't rag on it. I will point out, though, that this article is very woman-centric. That's okay. There's a real difference in how society views childfree women than childfree men, which is really weird when you think about it, but weird is par for the course when considering human society. The article goes on with a fair amount of detail about the bilateral salpingectomy, or bisalp, but I'm not here to talk about the mechanics of it, just the social aspects. So I won't reproduce it here. (Pun absolutely intended.) The current political landscape is a major reason that child-free people like Manta are seeking out permanent forms of birth control. "When Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Dobbs decision in 2022, I knew I needed to start looking into more permanent forms of birth control," Manta says. At the risk of getting political, this may be an example of what they mean when they talk about "unintended consequences." "Around the same time, I started considering what it would look like to live in a state other than California, specifically Texas where I have family, and I knew I would never feel comfortable living in an anti-choice state if there was any possibility of my becoming pregnant." And don't give me that "so just don't have sex" bullshit. Rape is a real (and horrible) thing that happens to real people, and, contrary to what certain ignorati proclaim, it does sometimes result in pregnancy. Also, I've rarely heard of anyone saying that to men for the same reason. Anne Langdon Elrod, 27, has known she doesn't want to have children for several years. In 2019, she says, she came to the realization that American society often falls short in supporting expectant and working mothers. Not only are children now a luxury, but they're an expensive luxury. "And a coworker of mine explained to me that pregnancy is considered a preexisting condition, and many women are unaware they need to enroll in such insurance before becoming pregnant — unless their employer offers a group plan. Hearing her perspective opened my eyes to the complexities women face when planning for motherhood." Way back in the early 90s, I distinctly remember reading a passage from my company's health insurance handbook: "Pregnancy is treated like any other illness." I have no idea why more people didn't catch that and call them out on their phrasing. Anyway, obviously, I have no personal experience with this, being very much not female. But some of my favorite people are women. Some of them have kids. Some don't. It is, and it should be, a personal choice. I don't mean "choice" in the way it's been co-opted into the everlasting argument about abortion, but a proactive choice. I've known women who were told, in no uncertain terms, that it didn't matter that they knew, absolutely knew, that they didn't want to be mothers; the doctors wouldn't do anything permanent lest they change their mind and end up suing the doctor. I didn't experience that as a man; I just got "okay, here's a referral to a urologist." That was nice for me (well, apart from a few days of soreness), but the inequality of it pisses me off. My real point here, is this. Or, rather, the points are these: 1) it ain't nobody's business if you want to have kids or not, regardless of sex or gender, except maybe your life partner's if you have one; and 2) Adults should be trusted to know their own minds, not infantilized with things like "oh, honey, you'll change your mind." And just to be clear, I'm not hypocritical enough to say "don't have kids" here; that would be making it my business, which I just said it wasn't. (While I have been known to say that, it's usually in reference to someone who's on the fence about the decision and, maybe, experiencing social pressure to do the opposite.) What I am saying is: let's not shun or shame those who make that decision. I can only imagine how terrible it is to really want children and be unable to have them (though that describes my parents), but it's also a Bad Thing to not want children and be forced to have them. |
| Pay attention now, because this may be the most important article I share all year. Possibly even in the entire blog. It sometimes surprises people who aren't familiar with the area to learn that NYC tap water is damn good. I mean, how could it be? It's the largest city in the US and one of the oldest, with infrastructure dating back to the 18th century. The city is famously grimy, and don't get me started on the industrial waste in the rivers. But the tap water? That, they got right. Hence the popular hypothesis that it's the water that makes the bagels there so iconic. But a moment's thought should be enough to question this. Apart from the pizza dough (also the best in the world, obviously), other bread-like substances, also made with NYC tap water, don't stand out in popularity the way the bagels do. The bread is good, mind you. Just not much different from what you get anywhere. Also, the beer. Beer is usually around 90-95% water, so that ingredient is of massive importance in the beverage. But there's nothing special about NYC beer. I mean, some people think Brooklyn Brewing makes an exceptional product, but they're wrong. (It's not bad, though.) So, anyway, the article. I’m just going to say it: New York City has the best bagels in America, and probably in the world. The absolute greatest, fresh out of the wood-fired oven at St. Viateur in Montreal come close, but what New York has over its Canadian counterpart is a far wider availability of good bagels almost anywhere. There are those who would get very, very angry at the above. I've heard that the Montreal bagel place mentioned there is truly the epitome of paragons. I haven't been there, so I don't know. But the last point there is important: there exist many fine bagel establishments in NYC, whether in Manhattan our out in the other boroughs. The folk knowledge used to explain the concentration of high quality bagels has become gospel: it’s all about the water, that there’s something about the pH or the mineral content in NYC tap water that causes the city’s dough to be intangibly superior. Folk knowledge can be right. Usually, it's not. America’s Test Kitchen conducted a taste test, pitting bagels made with both Boston and New York City municipal water against each other. The results amongst tasters showed the two batches to be virtually indistinguishable. I have my issues with blind taste tests. Taste isn't a disconnected sense. Sometimes, something tastes better just because it's rare and precious. Sometimes, it changes with ambiance; imagine being served a five-course dinner at a dive bar, and maybe you know what I'm talking about here. You can "prove" to me all day that a $300 bottle of scotch doesn't taste all that different from a $50 bottle of scotch, and it wouldn't matter; I'd still like the $300 bottle better. Because privilege is a glorious spice indeed. That said, I think with bagels, it's okay to do this. I just think they ought to have used other cities' water too, and maybe some well water too. You know, for science, and not just because I'm imagining eating that many bagels. So what actually makes them better in New York? In my opinion, it’s the people. Bagels arrived in New York City by way of Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Poland in the late 1800s, and ever since, New Yorkers have been perfecting the craft of bagel rolling and boiling, holding on fiercely to tried and true techniques and recipes even in the modern era. Yeah, um, that's still an opinion with no data backing it up (other than "okay, so maybe it's not the water.") Sure, it's an opinion I agree with. Still. This is, of course, also why New York pizza is superior. Only difference is nationality/religion. When you have a history spanning centuries and generations of people making the same food, often in competition with one another, it’s that pride and local association which produces greatness. It’s why Philadelphia makes the best cheesesteaks, Texas has the best barbecue, and why New York City makes the greatest bagels. I can accept this proposal. Except for one important thing: Texas does not, in fact, have the best barbecue. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to run away from this angry mob of Texans that suddenly appeared. |
| An entry for "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]: Purcell and Elmslie ...would be a great name for a band. Or, you know, a duo. Like Simon and Garfunkel, Sonny and Cher, or Hall and Oates. You know, when I first heard Hall and Oates on the radio, I thought the DJ called them "Haulin' Oats." I had to verify I didn't switch to a country station accidentally. This is probably why they styled themselves Daryl Hall & John Oates: to avoid precisely that mondegreen. Didn't stop them from failing to enunciate their lyrics (or from writing mayonnaise songs). I suppose they could also have avoided it by being Oates and Hall. Or by coming up with an actual name, like Whitebread or Nospice Boys. (Apparently, when they were roommates in college, their mailbox said Hall & Oates, which is much more legible in print than through a shitty radio).It may seem like I don't like them. This is not the case. They were (and presumably still are, though they divorced last year) talented musicians, and they deserved their fame and airplay; lots of people liked their muzak. It's their genre that leaves me cold, offending me with its inoffensiveness. Simon and Garfunkel, on the other hand, crafted nothing but greatness. Okay, maybe they had a few stinkers, but for the most part, their stuff was amazing. I'd be remiss if, after all that, I didn't mention the musical comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates, a couple of women who usually make me laugh. They apparently named themselves that because of the lower billing of the second names in those duos. One of them apparently called it the "silver medal," which I suppose works better than "second fiddle," because back when I was in an orchestra, in high school, I was often second fiddle. (I didn't mind; the first-chair violinist was much less lazy and much more talented than I was.) It's because of those classic duos, though, that I've often wondered how they decide which order to name themselves in. Maybe it's ego for one of them; musicians can certainly have those. Maybe it's just a matter of marketing, and their manager decides. Maybe they just pick the one that most easily rolls off the tongue; this is almost certainly the case with Sonny and Cher, the latter of which had 90% of the talent. But it still makes me wonder why they didn't just pick a band name, like Walter Becker and Donald Fagen when they came up with Steely Dan (yes, I know, they started out trying to be a multi-person band, but that didn't last long). Would they have achieved their greatness as "Fagen and Becker?" Probably, because they were awesome. But "Steely Dan" is a great name, and the story of how they chose it always makes me smile. For the literary connection, of course. No, I'm not going to link that; feel free to look it up if you don't already know. I guess the band name thing wouldn't work in a more serious profession, like law, medicine, or architecture. I managed, though, when I partnered with one other person to create an engineering and landscape architecture firm: we didn't use our names, but came up with a company name we both liked. That was 100 years after Purcell and Elmslie, though, so I suppose times changed. And look at that, I'm all out of time, and I haven't even addressed the actual title (I will say they were architects). That's okay. I'd never heard of them. Like with the name Steely Dan, the information is out there waiting to be discovered. |
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Anyone who has dealt with the courts wonders, "What crazy person designed this?" Unfortunately, my daughter is currently enmeshed in the system and some of the hoops she has to jump through just don't make any sense at all.
