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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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| Interesting word, 'penultimate.' As the Latinized synonym for "next-to-last" or "last but one," it is, like most Latinizations, considered more erudite, perspicacious, or even loquacious than the vulgar Anglo-Saxonisms that mean the same thing. But it's also sometimes misunderstood, which means it either needs to be explained, put in proper context, or avoided entirely (the latter of which will do nothing to mitigate its misunderstoodiness). I don't say this to rag on anyone or try to make them feel stupid, not like when I rail against misuse of apostrophes. But I've seen it used as if the writer thought it meant something like "beyond ultimate," which is just nonsense, like giving 110%; or, alternatively, in the same spirit as 'inflammable,' that it's just a wordier synonym, like 'utilize' for 'use.' That's not the odd thing, though. As I've noted in the past, we all start out ignorant and have to learn things, such as words and what they mean. That's okay, as long as one doesn't cling to the mistake out of pride or stubbornness. No, what's odd is that, unlike other words, the wrong usage has not (yet) taken off and become standard. 'Decimate,' for instance, is meant to describe the loss of 1/10th (or 10%, same thing) of something. It comes from Latin, again, naturally, and shares a root with 'decimal' (hence the 1/10). Supposedly, a legion that needed to be punished would be purposely decimated in order to keep the remaining 90% on their toes, much like layoffs today are meant to strike fear into the hearts of uppity workers, lest they labor under the misunderstanding that they have any power whatsoever. But so many people have misused the word that it's now a synonym for the similar-sounding 'devastate,' and it drops the 'decimal' connection completely, losing its reference to any particular number or fraction. Any group or area that suffers significant losses, be it a tenth or half or whatever, is said to be decimated. I said it was wrong, up there, but it's not, really; it's just an example of how language changes. Look up 'decimate' in a dictionary and you might find reference to its old meaning, but it's clear that the English word has fully embraced its new, less numerically precise, definition. Not that we should look to dictionaries to resolve arguments. As I've noted repeatedly, they're descriptive, not prescriptive; that is, they describe how language is widely used, rather than prescribe how language should be used. If enough of us pedants rose up in protest and demanded that 'decimate' be used in the Latin sense, they'd have to add that definition back to the dictionaries. Point being, I don't know what threshold the wrong use of a word or phrase has to reach before becoming accepted to all but the most dedicated language police. But it seems 'penultimate' hasn't reached that threshold, and by using it to describe the second-to-last entry in this blog (that is, this one), I hope I'm doing my part to keep the definition clean. Tomorrow, then, I say goodbye. |
| From a source I don't think I've linked before, The Nation gives us this day our daily gloom. Automation in Retail Is Even Worse Than You Thought  New technology is not just making shopping more challenging for workers and consumers—it’s poised to rip off the most vulnerable. Naturally, the first thing I thought of when I saw the headline was the vile abomination known as "self-checkout," which forces us to do their job for free while treating every customer as a potential thief. Brianna Bagley’s favorite hobby is playing Horizon Zero Dawn, a role-playing game featuring a young hunter who battles murderous robotic organisms on a postapocalyptic planet overrun by machines. While I've never played HZD, the phrase "robotic organisms" is an actual oxymoron, not a funny one like "military intelligence" or "honest politician." When she isn’t leveling up in the game, Bagley is hard at work in the produce department of a chain supermarket in Salt Lake City, Utah. "Work hard, and you'll succeed in life!" I also can't resist wondering if, with her name, she started out as a bagger, back when baggers existed. During the pandemic, Bagley earned about $15 per hour in a supermarket e-commerce department dedicated to filling online orders and preparing them for delivery. "Work hard, and you'll succeed in life!" Bagley’s experience is of a piece with the broader trend in retail toward automation and other technological shortcuts. Technology was supposed to make life better for all of us, not just the rich. Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and 13 colleagues wrote to the CEO of the supermarket behemoth Kroger in November about electronic price tags (often called electronic shelf labels or ESLs). These digital displays allow companies to change prices automatically from a mobile app. Tlaib warned that this so-called “dynamic pricing” permits retailers to adjust prices based on their whims. This is not much different from when gas stations switched to digital signs, though. Used to be, if you owned a gas station and wanted to change the prices on the sign, you'd have to go out and climb up on a ladder. Or, rather, make your hard-working minimum-wage employee do it. Then you'd have to change the price on each pump. Now? The whole thing's automated, and the hard-working minimum-wage employee can do it from a terminal or something, without leaving the checkout desk. And they (the owners, not the wage slaves) can do it on a whim. The difference is, everyone needs food. Just as Uber raises prices during storms or rush hour, retailers like Kroger use ESLs to adjust prices based on factors like time of day or the weather. "Snow tomorrow! Double the prices on bread and milk!" “My concern is that these tools will be abused in the pursuit of profit, surging prices on essential goods in areas with fewer and fewer grocery stores,” Tlaib wrote. Though, despite my worker-centric position, I'm not opposed to profit. I just want more of it to go to the people who actually do the work. Warren and Casey also voiced concern about Kroger’s partnership with Microsoft to install facial-recognition technology in stores, which could be used to identify individual customers: When a shopper approaches the shelf, she would see a price calibrated specifically for her. Leaving aside for a moment the huge gap between "could be" and "is," this is a very good reason to continue, or resume, wearing masks in grocery stores and other places with cameras. Retailers could use shopper data to charge higher prices to those who can afford to pay more, but since stores do not have to disclose who is making pricing decisions or why, the senators worry that shoppers on a budget are particularly vulnerable. There's a giant logical hole in their reasoning here. Unless the store also switches to the scan-as-you-go system, which some have tried but is even more prone to customer abuse than self-checkout, how do they coordinate the price on the shelves with the price that the individual customer pays at checkout? Say, for example, they set the price of a can of tuna at $1.49 for me and $1.99 for the next person. That's bad, sure, but then we go up to the checkout and, what, more facial recognition software at the cashier? That seems like a lot of computing power, and computers are known to break down at the slightest fart. This, of course, is not the same thing as surge pricing, which, as I've noted before, few have a problem with if the perspective is turned around: "We charge less for drinks during Happy Hour" is more palatable than "We charge more for drinks after 7pm," though the result is the same. Walmart plans to install the tags in 2,300 stores by 2026. The nation’s largest retailer emphasized the benefit to shoppers: “This efficiency means we can spend more time assisting customers.” No. This efficiency means we can hire fewer "associates," thus increasing the bottom line by the difference between the amortized cost of the system, plus any ongoing maintenance, and the wages they're no longer paying. The experiences of workers cast doubt on such claims. I spoke to William Knight, a 10-year veteran of the grocery industry who spends their off hours crafting cyberpunk stories inspired by the novel Neuromancer. (Knight’s latest is a dystopian tale about an America ruled by just three corporations.) I gotta say, I love the little personal bios here. I'm including this one because it's writing-related. Tom Geiger is the special projects director of Local 3000 in Washington. He told The Nation that employees at Fred Meyer (a chain owned by Kroger) have complained about electronic labels heating up stores. “These digital strips that relay this information, they literally emit heat that makes the stores warmer than it would be otherwise.” Geiger cited the negative impact to people and the planet. “I don’t know how much energy that is using. Wouldn’t you want shoppers and workers to be comfortable? And how much is it costing?” Maybe he needs a device to count the radiation... okay, no, I need to stop making fun of peoples' names. Seriously, though, that heat is classical entropy, and it is, from what I've heard, well-understood and quantifiable. It can also be balanced against the reduction in entropy caused by, for example, using LED lighting and more efficient refrigeration, as well as laying off more staff because humans are also a big source of entropy. Okay, so maybe not that seriously. But kind of. Automation may also have unintended social consequences. I gotta admit, I'm a little tired of hearing "unintended consequences." They always exist. They also result from continuing to do things the old way. Workers’ main fear is that jobs might disappear altogether. And that's a legitimate one because, like I said up there, automation doesn't usually help the employee. Instead of making the staff jobs less stressful, they just allow management to have fewer employees, all of whom have approximately the same level of stress, and pay, as before. Bagley draws another lesson from her favorite video game. In Horizon Zero Dawn, the hunter discovers that her own mother had a role in creating the technology that launched an apocalypse. Dammit! I hate spoilers! |
| Perhaps appropriately, our final venture into the shadows of the past involves examples of beautiful retribution: "In Spite Of" The linked article, from Mental Floss, is still available, which is good because that means I get to highlight some of the examples I didn't last time.But first, some commentary on the original post. Me: Few things in life feel better than nuclear revenge. One of those few things that does is the schadenfreude I feel when someone who deserved it suffers misfortune, and I didn't have to be its vehicle. While I believe in disproportionate retribution, setting it up takes a lot of work, and not getting caught while still having them know it was you takes more. Me: I mean, sure, it's nice to be able to forgive sometimes, too. I realize this contradicts what I said above. Whether I forgive or retaliate, and the degree to which I do either, depends on the deed as well as the other party's motivations (to the extent that they make them clear) and level of remorse. Since it's so situation-dependent, the best advice is: don't piss me off. Honestly, though, it's most likely that I just avoid the offending person entirely. Anyway, here are a few of the items that I now feel are also worthy of quotation: 2. The Tyler Spite House In 1814, as soon as ophthalmologist Dr. John Tyler discovered that the city officials of Frederick, Maryland, planned to build a road on an empty plot of his land, he started searching for a way to stop them. What he found was a law that prohibited road construction if a building was in the way. I have many questions here, not least of which is: what exactly did an ophthalmologist do in 1814 (apart from building a spite house)? Anesthesia hadn't been invented yet, nor had sanitary practices in medicine. This was the era when barbers doubled as surgeons simply because they had steady hands and sharp blades. It wasn't exactly the Dark Ages, but it's also around the same time as when the cutting edge (pun absolutely intended) of dentistry was wooden teeth, and leeches had a far more active role in patient care. But, since one of my few actual phobias involves eye stuff, I'm not going to look this up. Tyler hired a builder to break ground immediately, and city workers were forced to abandon their assignment when they arrived the next day (apparently, Tyler was there when they arrived, seeming very pleased with his endeavor). My other question involves the application of eminent domain, which I guess wasn't as developed (pun also intended) then as it is now. 6. Adidas and Puma Brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler had a hit on their hands in 1936 when athletes won seven gold medals at the Berlin Olympics while wearing the sneakers the duo had created. But by 1948, a feud between the two led to a split in their shoe business: Rudolf launched Puma (after a brief flirtation with the name Ruda), while Adolf formed Adidas (a portmanteau of his first and last name). There is, and I don't mean this as a slight because it's part of my ancestry too so please don't retaliate against me if you're German, no revenge like German revenge. Based on the link to their names at the source link, they were from a small town called Herzogenaurach, the pronunciation of which probably contributed to the feud. If you worked for Adidas, you wouldn’t be caught dead in a bar favored by Puma employees, and if your Adidas-employed family loved a bakery on the Puma side of town, you’d have to get your streuselkuchen elsewhere. When I was a kid, we convinced each other that Adidas was an acronym for All Day I Dream About Sex, and Puma was Pee Under My Ass. I was a Reebok kid, anyway. 8. The Alameda Spite House One legend holds that a previous landowner retaliated against the city of Alameda, California—and an unsympathetic neighbor—after his property was seized under eminent domain; he built the tiny house on what land he had left. I'm just including this one now because it also might have been related to eminent domain, though in a state on the other coast. But as the article notes, we don't know that for sure. 13. The Hess Spite Triangle I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that maybe this was due to German ancestry, as well. It all started in 1913, when the city began seizing properties and razing buildings in the area to make room for an extension of Seventh Avenue. At least this time, it was individual vs. government, which is almost always more satisfying than interpersonal feuds. Incidentally, if you're not American, or even if you are, you may not understand how eminent domain works here today. A government entity can, indeed, take an individual's land at will, but, supposedly, only for public projects, and they have to pay "fair market value." In reality, lawyers almost always get involved in arguments over what that value actually is, and I imagine they eat up more of the payment than they advocate for. Also in reality, the line between public projects and private ones can be blurred, thanks to things like zoning laws and pro-business decisions by a former Supreme Court. But don't take my word for it. I'm not a lawyer, as is evidenced by my lack of a vacation house, spite or otherwise. 14. Brückenmännchen Brückenmännchen translates to “little bridge man,” and this sculpture—of a man bent over, butt out—was added to the old Rhine river bridge connecting Bonn and Beuel in Germany in the late 19th century after the two villages argued over the construction project. Like I said: Germans. When the old bridge was destroyed in the Second World War, the Brückenmännchen was recovered and attached to a new bridge. It was eventually destroyed by vandals in 1960, and today a replica is displayed on Germany's Kennedy Bridge. I have many questions. 31. Redneck Stonehenge The point had been made. “Don’t mess with a redneck who has a backhoe,” he said. Truer words were never spoken. 38. Striped House It’s no secret that stripes tend to clash with whatever’s around them. Such was the case in London, where a property developer named Zipporah Lisle-Mainwaring decided to paint her townhouse with vivid red and white stripes in 2015. This sort of thing is why so many subdivisions in the US are ruled by the iron fist of a Homeowners' Association, or HOA. I tried to explain HOAs to someone in Belgium, and the best I could come up with was "You know all the stuff you hear about individual freedom and property rights in the US? Well, HOAs throw all that in the crapper, and Americans join them on purpose." Lisle-Mainwaring had originally intended to demolish the space and transform it into a luxury home; when those plans were denied, people speculated she gave the building its garish makeover out of spite. (She, however, said that she painted the building to “add to the gaiety of the nation.”) Nah, if she wanted to do that, it should have been a rainbow theme. And that's it, then: an appropriate enough final Revisited for this blog. I just hope no one retaliates. |
#oralsurgeryteam Whenever I hear or see the word "team," these days, I cringe. Partly, this is because of its association with sports, which I think need to be toned down some; there are other ways to practice competition and cooperation than ball-chasing. But mostly, it's because of the insistence that everyone be a "team player." There is, of course, nothing wrong with being a team player. But too often, that's code for "give it everything you got so I can take credit and you get to keep your job." It could be worse, of course; your boss could keep insisting that the workplace is a "family." That's even worse than a team, because at least with a team, you get to decide to go play for someone else or just walk away; options are far more restricted with family. And families can get pretty dysfunctional. Not mine, really, but in general. I always wanted a mug or something with "I put the 'me' in 'team'" on it, but I never got one; I don't drink coffee anyway, and I eventually opted to just walk away. But if you're going to insist on calling your workers a team, why not go all the way? Organize a football league. By football, I mean soccer; I'm afraid I'm being thoroughly internationalized. You can have the Oral Surgery Team facing off against the Grocery Workers Team, or the Emergency Room Team facing off against the Hardware Store Team. I don't mean just sponsorships, either. When I tried playing baseball as a kid, I got assigned to the Hardware Store Team. We wore shirts with the giant logo of the local hardware store on the back. Which, as an aside, leads me to the other problem I have with sports, which is that they're often basically ads. Sometimes they're ads for a college or a city, but they're also ads for products. This is most obvious with car racing, which may not actually count as a sport because there's no ball involved, but does involve teams. Anyway, yes, the players would be amateurs. That's the point. It's never enough to just have fun with your chosen hobby; you have to compete to see who's best, and the less-best get left in the dust. This was bad enough when competitions were local or regional, but now, with the internet, they're worldwide, and you're competing against 8 billion other people. That makes it hard to really stand out, on a par with winning a lottery. But hey, sometimes you gotta take one for the team. |
| Articles like this one from The Guardian give this old pessimist some hope. Strength of character, you see, isn't about clinging stubbornly to one's beliefs. It's about being open to changing one's mind due to overwhelming evidence, especially when going against the collective will of your tribe. Admitting you were wrong demonstrates good character, as well. Researchers believe personal stories are more persuasive than facts alone in addressing vaccine skepticism This doesn't surprise me. This shouldn't surprise anyone who writes, be it fiction, nonfiction, or anything in between (tabloid journalism or political speeches, e.g.) And that goes for almost any subject. If you're told that eleven million people died as the result of actions taken by Nazi Germany, you might register that as a fairly large number; if you read the Diary of Anne Frank and learn its associated stories, the horror might actually hit home. There's a quote attributed to Stalin related to this: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic." There's no evidence that Stalin ever actually said or wrote that, and plenty of evidence of similar sentiments from earlier in history. Stalin or not, there is a darkness lurking within the persuasive power of anecdotal storytelling. As with almost everything, its power can be used for good or evil, much as a hammer can be used to create or destroy. I'll get to that shortly, after I look at the article a bit more. When Nikki Hill Johnson’s first daughter was born in 2012, Johnson didn’t hesitate to take her to the doctor for routine infant immunizations. And so the anecdote begins. Soon after the birth, South Carolina-based Johnson, now 42, joined a fitness- and nutrition-oriented multilevel marketing company (MLM). Speaking of Stalin, wow, that's one big giant red flag. There, she encountered a colleague who made her question the safety of vaccines. This does not surprise me, either. Once you hold one set of beliefs without evidence (in this case, that MLMs benefit anyone but the founders thereof), you invite other sets of beliefs without evidence into your mind (in this case, that vaccines aren't safe). I'll take that even farther. Not only are these beliefs without evidence, but they are beliefs with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This isn't like religion, where it's not possible for realists to prove that the supernatural doesn't exist (only that it doesn't have to exist); this is willful blindness to overwhelming evidence. “I remember someone in the community talking about their child who had been ‘vaccine injured’,” Johnson recalls. “It sparked a fear in me.” Here we come to the dark side of anecdotes: they can be used to sow doubt and fear just as much as they can be used to elicit compassion. Hearing a story like that, believing it to be true, taps right in to our worst nightmares. It's like those attempts to keep kids from doing drugs: "John tried heroin once. Once. Then his arm fell off, his eyes exploded, and he died in agony." Except those are well-meaning, whereas vaccine rejection (I will not call it skepticism, because skepticism isn't about blindly rejecting a premise, but about looking at it rationally) actually does kill. There also needs to be a better understanding of the difference between correlation and causation. "Jane ventured into the park and died. Don't go into the park." Except that it wasn't anything in the park that killed her; it was a heart attack. So it must have been exercise that actually killed her. See? Exercise can kill. The science of vaccinations and immunization schedules also seemed impenetrable. “I was very conflicted, and felt like: ‘I don’t know any of this stuff, I didn’t go to school for this,’” she says. And I have to admit: That, I understand. Science in general is beyond the grasp of most people. They don't understand it any more than I understand what dolphins are saying to each other. Just to be clear, I'm not ragging on that. I can't understand all of it, either. No one can, not even other scientists. Those who aren't lawyers can't comprehend the nuances of law. Those who aren't archaeologists might think Indiana Jones is true to life (spoiler: it is not). The answer, however, is not to "do your own research" by finding and believing those anecdotes that either speak to your existing biases, or claim to be able to calm your fears. Johnson joined “crunchy” Facebook groups full of moms concerned about potentially harmful substances affecting their children, and started taking advice from a trusted anti-vax family member who seemed particularly credible because she was a nurse. And, of course, there's that minefield. Anyway, there's a lot more to the article. It may or may not help. But at least it's on the right path. |
#stop5g There is a town in West Virginia, not too far from where I live across the state line, called Green Bank. Green Bank was apparently named after the green bank of a nearby river; as with many such names, I think you'd be unsuccessful in finding any such greenery. Kind of like how a subdivision is defined as a place where they cut down all the trees and name the streets after them. The reason Green Bank is known outside of an obscure county in an economically depressed area is because of the Green Bank Telescope, a large radio telescope used for astronomical observations and probably sneaky spy stuff too. Thing is, radio astronomy is notoriously subject to interference from Earthbound electromagnetic radiation. I say "electromagnetic radiation," because that's what it technically is, but it unfortunately contains the word "radiation," which is ooga-booga scary. The light that we see is technically radiation, and it's mostly harmless—we don't put on sunscreen to shield ourselves from visible light, but from invisible ultraviolet. So, yes, some portions of the EM spectrum are harmful. Some are not. Has to do with wavelength and energy. So Green Bank, WV is part of the National Radio Quiet Zone, a fairly large area with restrictions on what EM devices are allowed to operate. The NRQZ is fairly large; its edge is, in fact, within easy walking distance of my house in Charlottesville. The closer one gets to Green Bank, the more restrictions; in the town itself, you're not allowed to use microwave ovens, Wi-Fi, or cell phones.For some people, I know, that sounds like Paradise Itself. Reportedly, some people have moved to the town solely because of their delusional belief that they're allergic to EM waves. For me, that would be the Third Circle of Hell. Yes, only the third; I can think of worse places to live than West Virginia. I know I shouldn't say that as a lifelong Virginian, but yes, objectively, there are worse places. Cleveland, e.g. But, despite the relatively minuscule number of crazies flocking to GB to escape the evil waves, there are a whole lot more people who bought into the lie that 5g cellular networks are dangerous. And those people are everywhere. If you don't have good mobile service in your area of the US, and it's not part of the NRQZ, you can blame them. And you can also blame the people who want good cell coverage, but refuse to allow towers in line of sight because they're "ugly." Sometimes, the NIMBYs get compromised with cell phone towers that are camouflaged to look like very tall trees. You see them sometimes from interstates: rising mightily over the surrounding forest, a few desultory green branches stuck into the tower's structure. They don't fool anyone. They're like incompetent snipers in ghillie suits. Every time I see one, whether I'm driving alone or with someone else, I go "Duuuuhhhhh... I'm a TREE."I'll just end with this: it was at Green Bank that Frank Drake came up with his famous equation-that's-not-an-equation for estimating the probability of tech-capable extraterrestrial life. I've talked about it quite a lot in here; just do a search on the blog for "Drake Equation." This is really irrelevant to anything, but then, so is opposition to 5g. |
| Just in case anyone still doubts the value of science, here's incontrovertible proof of it, from Physics magazine: Cooking Flawless Pasta Scientists have pinpointed energy-efficient ways to cook al dente pasta and developed an infallible recipe for the perfect cacio e pepe sauce. I would only object to the adjective "infallible" there. No matter how refined the recipe, someone will find a way to muck it up. A bowl of steaming hot pasta covered in your favorite sauce and dusted with a healthy dose of parmesan cheese comes high on the list of ultimate comfort foods. I don't believe in the concept of "comfort food." If your food doesn't make you feel good, re-evaluate your life choices. But cooking that pasta to perfection can be more difficult than seemingly simple recipes imply. Recipes can never tell the full story. For one thing, pasta texture is dependent on things like water hardness, a term that must confuse the living hell out of non-native English speakers. There are also variables such as elevation; it's pretty well-known that water boils at a lower temperature on mountains due to decreased atmospheric pressure.So one needs to understand one's local environment and modify recipes accordingly. In one study, Phillip Toultchinski and Thomas Vilgis of the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany, studied whether perfectly al dente spaghetti could be prepared in a more energy-efficient way. Yes, "perfectly" is also a subjective concept, but as some of these studies note, you can decide on optimal, measurable, objective parameters and test to determine what process results in a product closest to those parameters. In a second study, Matteo Ciarchi and Daniel Busiello of the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Germany, Giacomo Bartolucci of the University of Barcelona, Spain, and colleagues developed a recipe for making perfect cacio e pepe, a three-ingredient cheese sauce that is surprisingly easy to mess up. Just how many Max Planck Institutes are there, anyway? There were other physicists, you know. Also, please take note that none of these researchers did their work in Italy. If I were writing the grant proposal, I'd leave room for a lengthy research trip to the country that's known for its pasta. You know, for science. Judging solely by the names, though, at least some of these researchers might have been Italian. “It is very difficult to make this sauce,” says Busiello. “You are almost always doomed to fail.” With that attitude, though, maybe Russian. The study by Toultchinski and Vilgis was inspired by a brouhaha over a 2022 Facebook post by physics Nobel laureate Giorgio Parisi. In that post, Parisi suggested that chefs could reduce the energy needed for cooking pasta using a “heat-off-lid-on” method. Oooh, yeah, that might stir up a good bit of anger. But chefs questioned whether this method could achieve al dente pasta—pasta that is soft on the outside and crunchy at its core. Well, chefs, all you had to do was try it. The article goes on to describe how the researchers themselves tried it, and the results. Vilgis says that while these results show that pasta can be cooked in a more energy-efficient way, when it comes to taste and texture, there is no substitute for the tried-and-tested method. “If you want perfect al dente pasta, you have to cook it the traditional way,” he says. Sometimes, science shows that we've been doing something wrong all this time. It's designed to test assumptions we've made from intuition, tradition, and the self-contradictory "common sense." But, sometimes, it turns out the other way; that the traditional method is, after all, the best. And that's good, too. The second pasta study by Ciarchi, Busiello, Bartolucci, and colleagues focused on how to make a popular but tricky sauce called cacio e pepe. For this sauce, pecorino cheese is mixed with pasta water and black pepper to make a glossy emulsion that coats the pasta in cheesy goodness. Call me ignorant, but I had no idea "cheesy goodness" was a scientific term. As before, methods and results are provided; I'm skipping over a bit. “The team came up with a really practical recipe to getting the perfect sauce every time,” Fairhurst says. He adds that these kinds of studies—where physicists apply their knowledge to food problems—can really help consumers engage in science. “It’s everyday science you can do in the kitchen; you can’t do that with particle physics problems.” Well, now, I suppose that depends on your kitchen, doesn't it? |
#stressed There is a myriad of ways to denote stress in online writing. One can bold the desired portion of text, or use italics—though the latter runs the risk of being confused with certain styles of quotation, such as the one I use in this blog. Another option is to underline the stressed text. Classically, an underline denotes a book title, but I think that style has fallen out of favor. Besides, if you do use it for that, the words generally follow an established capitalization pattern; this and other context clues should be sufficient to distinguish text underlined for stress from text underlined for a book title. There are also numerous colors that can be used to make words and/or phrases stand out. And let's not forget the potential of increasing a word or phrase's size, though it must be remembered that this can cause problems with formatting and flow. Don't overlook the impact (pun intended) of font type, either: a word in Impact will definitely stand out amidst the standard font here; Times can give your stressed bits an old-time serif look; and Comic, while sneered at by font snobs, has its uses, especially as the long-sought sarcasm font. Let's not forget the trick of making certain portions of text *stand out* using only ~keyboard~ strokes, or even  emoticons/emoji. Just remember, though: the use of quotes like 'single' or "double" quotation marks should be reserved for dialogue or quoted text, and never for emphasis or stress.Nor should Capital Letters be used for stress. I use them sometimes to indicate Important Ideas, but I'm probably wrong to do so; it's a kind of stylistic signature for me. Also, the technique of typing in ALL CAPS is frowned upon except in rare circumstances, and definitely not to be used exclusively because then it makes you look like you're writing your manifesto. To *really* make your desired text stand out, you can use almost any combination of these techniques. The possibilities are... well, not limitless, but numerous, and a better mathematician than I am could probably enumerate them more precisely. But as I said up there at the beginning, "there is a myriad of ways to denote stress;" the word 'myriad' comes from a Greek word meaning ten thousand, and ten thousand is a pretty large number, more combinations than you probably truly need. It's a good number, so we'll go with that for now. The stress on 'myriad,' incidentally, falls on the first syllable. |
| Okay, here we go again. From Big Think: What if we’re alone? The philosophical paradox of a lifeless cosmos If humanity lives in an otherwise barren Universe, we’ll have to forge philosophy that fills the void. As there isn't any credible, unambiguous evidence of extraterrestrial life, the headline seems to be arguing "paradox" from the widespread belief of "there just HAS to be other life out there," which in turn comes from the essentially misanthropic "we're not special" argument. The idea that we might have cosmic neighbors has captivated the human imagination for decades. It’s not just sci-fi enthusiasts who ponder the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) — the general public seems to lean strongly toward the belief that we’re not alone. And we're off to a bad start in the lede, which makes no distinction between "life" and "extraterrestrial intelligence." Now, one could argue that intelligence is a quality of all life, from bacteria to blue whales, but that's not what ETI usually connotes. ETI refers, in the public imagination at least (and the article is written for the public, not for scientists), to technology-wielders like ourselves. This is one reason I don't like to use "intelligence" in this context. Another is that there are demonstrably other intelligent species right here on Earth, and none of them seem inclined to make rockets or broadcast radio. So, for the purpose of my discussion here, I'll use ETL as shorthand for extraterrestrial life, and ETT for extraterrestrial technology. Both are entirely hypothetical, but, as I've noted dozens of times, ETL is far more likely than ETT (but it's almost certainly a prerequisite for it), and there's nothing about evolution that requires the development of a species that likes to send robots to neighboring planets. As for "the general public seems to lean strongly toward the belief that we're not alone," remember, "the general public" is pretty damn gullible when it comes to reports of strange lights in the sky and whatnot. Columbia University Professor David Kipping often finds that, when discussing astronomy and the potential for life elsewhere in the Universe, people almost universally insist, “Surely we can’t be the only ones!” Ah, yes. Argument from incredulity. It's a big universe. I mean, it's really, stupendously, mindbogglingly, incredibly big. So I understand the insistence that there's ETT out there somewhere. I actually share that belief. But just as you humans find it difficult to grasp just how horrendously huge the universe is, you also have little grasp of tiny probabilities. If you did, none of you would ever play the lottery. Oops. I meant "we" and "us," fellow humans. As we'll see, though, the chances of ETL alone are probably much higher, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if we found some. Occam’s razor nudges us toward the notion that “life out there” is the easiest explanation — it just feels right. Snort. The interpretation of Occam's Razor is: "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity." It may "feel right," but throwing ETT or even ETL out there as a given is the literal definition of multiplying entities beyond necessity. That said, Occam's Razor isn't proof of anything. It's meant to guide hypotheses and research, not proclaim that the simplest explanation is definitely the answer. If you hear a funny noise from your car's engine, for example, you start by looking at the simplest possible explanation, maybe a loose belt. But if all the belts are tight, then maybe it's because your engine is fried: a much more complicated fix. The principle of mediocrity chimes in, reminding us that our little corner of existence is probably not all that unique. I can't argue against that bit. And the Copernican principle gives a knowing nudge, sweeping away humanity’s old, self-centered fantasy of cosmic importance. The difference between that and the idea of ETL is that we have concrete proof that Earth isn't the center of the universe, whereas there's no proof yet of ETL. To believe we’re alone in this vast, wild expanse feels not only improbable but strangely outdated, like clinging to some universal map where Earth is still at the center. Now, I have to admit that the idea of humanity's uniqueness is a religious tenet to many people, and I have no desire to argue one side or the other from a religious perspective. I want there to be ETT just to poke the eye of dogmatic religion, but that doesn't mean it's there. With the discovery of exoplanets, we’ve learned that our galaxy overflows with diversity: Billions of planets orbit stars in the so-called habitable zone, where conditions might support liquid water. Which is a fine argument in favor of ETL. Once, Earth’s oceans seemed unique; now, hidden seas on moons like Europa and Enceladus suggest that watery worlds may not be so rare after all. But let's not forget that Europa and Enceladus both orbit gas giants outside the Sun's habitable zone. Still, that only increases the chances for ETL to gain a foothold, right? Well, maybe. Venus and Mars are both in the Sun's habitable zone, and we still haven't found unambiguous evidence for life, extant or extinct, on either. As Professor David Kipping aptly points out, the data paints a tantalizing picture — just as compatible with a Universe brimming with life as it is with one where we stand solitary under the stars. To insist there must be life out there, he reminds us, is to trade evidence for optimism. And I think we all know where I stand with optimism. Still, it's absolutely important for us to make the search. It's also important to make the distinction between ETL and ETT as I do, because the signs we're looking for are different for each (though of course if we find ETT, it almost certainly implies ETL; just not the other way around). Even under ideal conditions, life doesn’t simply spring forth; no experiment has succeeded in replicating it. No, but that may be because the process takes longer than your usual lab experiments. What experiments have been done suggest that it's possible. Whether it's inevitable or not, or simply very difficult, we don't know, due to small sample size. Earth’s unique circumstances — a stabilizing Moon, plate tectonics, and precisely the right chemical mix — might be one in a trillion. If it's only one in a trillion, then the universe harbors quite a bit of life. But it might also be one in a googolplex. Or it could be one in 2. We don't know. As I've said before, once you've won the lottery, the odds of having won the lottery are 1 in 1, and prior probabilities make no difference except to remind you how lucky you got. Evolution adds yet another filter: While microbial life could be common, the leap to intelligent beings may require an almost comical series of accidents and near-catastrophes. There's that word again. Intelligence. It's too slippery in this context, and too easy to make self-contradictory jokes about (if you can type "there's no intelligent life on Earth either haha" the simple act of typing that and sending it over a worldwide network of computers, using old and new technology developed by humans, proves your statement wrong). We share the world with several other beings that can be labeled intelligent: crows, elephants, cats, octopodes, etc. And we don't have the capability to communicate with them beyond a very basic level, and, as I noted above, none of them are trying to send radio signals. So what we're looking for, again, is technology. Okay, I've gone on long enough, though the article continues for a while. I'll just point out one other thing that the article touches on later: it's remarkably hard to prove a negative. If we find ETL, that's enough to show that ETL exists. If we don't find it, though, that doesn't mean none exists. Like I said, it's a big universe, and the maps have always shown fantastic creatures in unexplored places. And sometimes, we search those places, and find fantastic creatures—just not the ones we were expecting. |
| Just digging back to April of 2021 today, a time that is simultaneously far in the past and only four years ago. I did an entry based on a Cracked article: "Real Men of Genius" The title, which I didn't explain then, comes from an old (90s-noughties) ad campaign for a product I despise, but whose promotions I found amusing. Yes, ads can be amusing. Maybe once a decade. The article itself still exists; Cracked seems to have a pretty good archive, which is good, because I haven't been impressed with their latest output.Me: It's been said that with genius comes a certain level of insanity. I didn't clarify this then, but I don't really believe what's "been said" in this case. Humans can be weird; weirdness isn't necessarily insanity; and a famous person's weirdness tends to get amplified. The article doesn't mention mental illness; that was all my take, and I probably shouldn't have done it. That amplification seems to be the case with the first one, about Nabokov. Lots of people have sleep problems. Would his have been well-known if he hadn't been? As for the next item: George Patton claimed to be the reincarnation of several past soldiers. What I didn't acknowledge then, and probably should have, is that lots of people hold a belief in reincarnation. It's more common in Eastern cultures, but it's hardly unheard-of in the West. So, whether one believes Patton or not, he was hardly alone in his assertions. Not really anything else to add or subtract, except that I'm pretty sure some of your beliefs, habits, or activities, and mine, would get pegged as weirdness if we were famous. The title of the original article specified "famous smart people with little-known problems," but it's not like you could build an article around unknown people with little-known problems. |
| A bit from Psyche that, as if I were a superconductor, I just couldn't resist: Why it’s possible to be optimistic in a world of bad news The original optimist, Leibniz, was mocked and misunderstood. Centuries later, his worldview can help us navigate modern life As far as I'm concerned, the only way to be optimistic in a world of bad news is to ignore the news entirely. Ignorance is bliss. No news is good news. Stay in your cave watching shadows flicker. Not clear to me: why optimism is supposed to be a good thing. As for Liebniz, well... he was, famously, a contemporary of Newton. They both invented calculus, mostly independently, and with different approaches. Newton, when he delved into philosophy, was into astrology and alchemy, things that have been thoroughly debunked. So just because someone discovers something about math or science doesn't mean their philosophy should be taken as established fact. See also: Pascal, Descartes, Fermi, etc. What does it mean to be optimistic? We usually think of optimism as an expectation that things will work out for the best. There are no happy endings. There are only stories that end prematurely. Nowhere is this better exemplified than in the formulaic fairy-tale ending: "And they lived happily ever after." Because, unless you take that metaphorically to mean that now they've achieved a sort of immortality since they've been recorded in a story, that's not how any of this works. In short, that definition of optimism is demonstrably and empirically wrong. While we might accept that such expectations have motivational value – making it easier to deal with the ups and downs of everyday life, and the struggle and strife we see in the world – we might still feel dubious about it from an intellectual perspective. Obviously, I do feel dubious about it from an intellectual perspective. Also, an emotional one. I do not, however, consider it to have motivational value. If I think things will somehow work out for the best, I have no motivation to work at it. If, however, I expect the worst, then I'm motivated to make things better. Not that I actually do, mind you. My engine's always running, but the gearshift's almost never engaged. Optimism is, after all, by its nature delusional; ‘realism’ or outright pessimism might seem more justifiable given the troubles of the present and the uncertainties of the future. "Seem?" No. It absolutely is. Those of us familiar with Voltaire’s celebrated novel Candide, or Optimism (1759) might be reminded of his character Dr Pangloss, and his refrain that all must be for the best ‘in this best of all possible worlds’. You know the real difference between an optimist and a pessimist? The optimist thinks we're living in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist knows that we are. Pangloss, a professor of ‘metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology’, is a vicious caricature of the great German polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and his catchphrase is Voltaire’s snappy formulation of the German’s attempt to provide a logical argument for optimism. Well, that settles it: now I have to read Voltaire. Or, really, a theological argument. Leibniz didn’t set out to explain why some people are perpetually cheerful about their prospects, but why an all-powerful, all-seeing and all-loving God allows evil to exist in the world. So much time has been wasted on that question (known to philosophers as "theodicy.") So much ink, so many electrons, so much conversion of useful energy into useless energy, that the entropy generated by the efforts surely accelerated the inevitable heat death of the universe by centuries. And it has one really blindingly obvious solution: there is no all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-loving god. This ‘problem of evil’ has been debated for millennia, but it was Leibniz who first attempted to reason his way to an answer, rather than look to scripture for one. I'll give him a few Philosophy Points for that. His inspiration came from his realisation, in the early 1680s, that the path taken by light through a system of prisms or mirrors always followed the ‘easiest’, or ‘optimal’, path from source to destination. Which, scientifically, turns out not to be the case, but he couldn't have known that. Up until that point, it had generally been assumed that the cosmos was precisely the way it had to be... While there might be many possible ways to make a world, there’s only one optimal way. And this view of the world came to be known as optimism. And here's where I get to kick myself: for someone with such strong opinions about optimism, and such a keen interest in etymology, I never knew that or made the connection, but it does seem to be true (though Liebniz wasn't who coined the word). Leibniz’s view, put forward in his book Theodicy (1710), did not win instant acclaim. And yes, that's where that word comes from. Liebniz put together the Latin roots for "god" and "justice," and turned it French; it was later Anglicized. But was Leibniz on to something? Could his worldview help us regain a clearer sense of how to be optimistic in the present day? Even if the answer to that is "yes," which I'm not taking a stand on either way, I'm still not clear on why this would be desirable. In his day, the idea that the world could be arranged any differently was novel to the point of outlandishness. Over centuries, that gradually changed as it became clearer that the cosmos contains places that are nothing like Earth, and that our planet itself had been dramatically different in the past. But it shot to prominence in the middle of the 20th century, when both philosophy and physics converged on the idea that ours is only one of many possible universes – or, at least, that this is a useful way to think about certain problems in logic and quantum theory. That's a popular idea now, embodied in more than a few works of film and literature. The problem is, lots of people seem to accept it as scientific fact—which it is not. It is, as the article notes, "a useful way to think about certain problems," but that doesn't mean it reflects reality. This intellectual respectability has turned into cultural ubiquity: the idea that there are many possible worlds is intuitively appealing in a time when ever fewer people accept the idea of a divine plan. We are more likely to believe that the future is open, with many alternative paths we could take from today to tomorrow. And that may well be the case. Here's the problem, though: this article frames that philosophy in terms of the aforementioned theodicy. Humans, the story goes, have free will. The same story tells us that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-merciful. But if God is all-knowing, then God already knows what we're going to do. In other words: ask yourself, "Can God be surprised?" An all-knowing entity couldn't possibly be surprised, any more than it could create a rock so heavy even that entity couldn't lift it. And if God already knows what we're going to do, then we can't have free will (my own argument against free will has nothing to do with divine powers; I'm just taking the theological tack for this discussion). Hence, the whole concept of Original Sin falls apart, and with it much of Western theology. In other words, God knew Eve and Adam would munch that apple (or whatever), so punishing them for doing so amounts to Original Entrapment. Once, we might have assumed that our fates lay in the lap of the gods, or that implacable physical laws dictate our every move. Today, we think the responsibility lies with us. The reality, I think, is somewhere in between. We are subject to physical laws. We are also agents of change. Arguing about which is real is reminiscent of the nature vs. nurture debate, the answer to which is "both." The key to making Leibniz’s version of optimism relevant to a secular, 21st-century worldview, is to make ‘the best of all possible worlds’ an aspiration, not a statement of belief. Oddly enough, I agree with that assessment. I just come at it from a different angle: as a hopeful pessimist, I think things can change for the better, but, absent well-meaning and well-thought-out human intervention, probably will not. This might sound abstract or fanciful. But in fact, as I detail in my book The Bright Side (2025)... Yes, yes, this whole article is a stealth ad for a book. I've repeatedly stated my philosophy on that. I know this entry delves deeper into theology than my rants usually do. It just seemed to be the proper reaction to the ideas presented. |
#proudboys As I've hinted in previous entries for JI, "pound" has several meanings. As a verb, it can mean to thump repeatedly, as in "go pound sand" or "his heart pounded in his chest as he ran from the angry mob." It can also mean to have dominant sex with, probably because of the similarity of that to the rhythmic thumping associated with the first verb version of "pound." That's not even getting into the nouns, the ones for weight or currency (related to weight) or the place where they keep stray dogs (probably unrelated to weight and maybe related to "impound"). So when you say "pound proudboys," it's unclear whether we're supposed to lock them up with the other stray dogs, bone them, or punch them repeatedly into submission (and then maybe bone them). I am, of course, not advocating for nonconsensual sexual relations; I'm strongly implying that, for them, it would be consensual. Not that I'd volunteer, mind you. Even if I did swing that way, which I don't, I could think of much better uses for my time and energy. Still, they might have better luck in getting what they want if they named themselves Pride Boys. And, hey, I'm not judging, or kink-shaming. That would be massively hypocritical, even for me. And it wouldn't be something to be proud of. |
| I'm jumping the queue with this article from Slate. I feel like it touches on some things that might help us better frame national and world political discourse, and I didn't want to wait for blind chance to select it at random some indeterminate amount of time from now and probably in a different blog. Oddly enough, it all starts with a woman's dress from ten years ago. It’s Been 10 Years Since “The Dress” The viral image holds a lesson in why people disagree—and how we can learn to better understand each other. You know the one, unless you were living under a rock, have a memory even worse than my own, or are way younger than my usual readership demographic: a single photo of a dress, illustrated at the link, which some people saw as white and gold and others saw as blue and black. It was not a tranquil time. People argued with their friends about the very basics of reality. Spouses vehemently disagreed. Each and every person was on one side or the other side. It could be hard to imagine how anyone in their right mind could hold an opinion different from your own. That sounds like hyperbole now, but I'm pretty sure relationships ended over this thing. To recap: A cellphone picture of a wedding guest’s dress, uploaded to the internet, sharply divided people into those who saw it as white and gold and those who saw it in black and blue—even if they were viewing it together, on the very same computer or phone screen. And this wasn't your usual optical illusion, either. Normally, you can trick your eyes and/or brain into seeing through the illusion. The dancer moves clockwise, until you decide she should be moving counterclockwise. The plates are all upside-down until you stare long enough and they flip right-side-up. This square is darker than this other square, until you directly compare the colors used with each other, ignoring the other inputs. That sort of thing. This one involves color, too, but, as far as I know, once you saw the dress one way, no amount of convincing or trickery could make your brain flip to the other color scheme. I know that was true for me: how I saw it was how I saw it, and no trickery or convincing made me see it the other way. No, I'm not telling you what colors I saw. It's irrelevant. What is relevant is that I believed other people when they said they saw different colors (well, except for the trolls who insisted on, say, mauve and pink just to mess with the rest of us) and, being the curious type, I always wanted an explanation. I don't recall any from back then; this article, however, almost satisfies my curiosity on that front. The notorious dress, under natural lighting conditions, is unambiguously black and blue, for (almost) everyone who saw it in person, or in other photographs. It was just the one image, snapped by a mother of a bride and uploaded to Tumblr by one of her daughter’s friends, that caused so much disagreement. How can it be that there is such strong consensus about the colors of the actual dress, but such striking disagreements about its colors in this particular image? And no, it's not because everyone who sees it a different way is brain-damaged... which is a preview of the point made soon after in the article: While the colors of a piece of clothing might be a trivial thing to disagree about, we can all learn a thing or two from the dress about how to navigate high-stakes disagreements. And no, it's not just about how to argue or debate effectively. Why did people disagree about the dress? It’s all in the lighting. There's more of that explanation at the article; I don't see the need for, or wisdom in, reproducing all of it here. There are also some other examples of color perception differences. One thing that you might notice about all of these examples: Your brain never tells you “We really can’t tell what the color is because we don’t have all necessary information available.” There’s no flag that goes up saying “Just FYI, your assumptions did much of the heavy lifting here.” The brain prioritizes decisive perception (giving you the ability to take decisive action) over being paralyzed by uncertainty and doubt. A lesser author might have made up some evolutionary guess for why that is. Like "This is because our ancestors needed to act quickly when they thought they saw a tiger, instead of standing there wondering if it's a predator." I just made that up. It might be true. It likely is not. Sure, there's an evolutionary reason for it; what's guesswork is what that reason is and how far back it goes along the evolutionary tree. In any case, I appreciate the lack of made-up evo-psych "explanations." This might be all fun and games when applied to internet memes, but similar convictions—sincerely held and self-evidently true to the individual—in domains like religion or politics will also be determined in large part by differential priors. And that, simply put, is the metaphor that makes this article both useful and timely. The phrase "differential priors" isn't strictly defined here, but it can be inferred by the examples used: as I understand it, it refers to unconscious assumptions based on one's unique experience. Kind of like how someone growing up poor will have a much different relationship to money than someone who grew up rich. Rather than thinking people must just be plain wrong, or stupid, a better way might be to take the disagreement seriously and try to actively elicit and discern the differential priors that led to the diverging conclusions. I get the impression that this is easier said than done. But it may be necessary in a world where we're calling anyone who disagrees with us things like "stupid," "woke," "Nazi," or "evil." Between sincere and well-meaning parties, the very fact that the disagreement exists in the first place must be due to a difference in the priors that informed the formation of the conviction. The caveat there is "sincere and well-meaning parties." That must be discerned, too. And that's hard to do when you don't see your political opponents as sincere or well-meaning. I think internet trolling contributes to muddying the waters here, but trolling existed long before the internet. All that remains is to determine what those [differential priors] might be. And like I just said, that's work. I know I'm lazy. I've built my entire life around being lazy. But this is too important, the stakes are too high, to be intellectually lazy. So, next time someone says something I vehemently disagree with, I'm going to try to get a better handle on their point of view before dismissing them as an idiot. They might still be an idiot, but as idiots have the right to vote in my country, it may be wise to see things from an idiot's perspective. And it might turn out that they're just coming at the topic from a different angle, or in different lighting. For what it's worth, I never assumed the people who saw the dress differently were stupid and trying to destroy the country and/or world. And I should probably apply that to political disagreements as well—at least until I'm sure they're trying to destroy the country and/or world. |
#brain Not much I can say about "pound brain" except that, from what I hear, the brain itself doesn't contain pain receptors. So no matter how much you pound your brain, it's not the gray matter itself that hurts; it's the slightly harder stuff surrounding it. Why you'd pound your brain is another issue, but, I mean... *gestures at everything in general* I get it. My ex-wife had brain surgery. They took out a chunk of brain in an attempt to fix a neurological problem. This happened shortly before we separated. When I'm feeling charitable, I'll assume that the extracted bit was the bunch of neurons that made her fool herself into believing she liked being around me. When I'm not feeling charitable, I'll think that she had the surgery before the separation so that, in case something went wrong (as something sometimes does when someone goes digging around in a brain with surgical implements), I'd be on the hook to care for whatever was left of her. The reality, of course, is probably something else entirely. Which is only fair, because whatever we think we know about the brain itself, we're probably wrong and definitely operating from incomplete information. And that makes it marvelous that we can even consider poking around in there with scalpels and forceps and whatnot, let alone doing so with any success. For instance, there was this widespread belief that the two hemispheres of the brain ruled different aspects of one's personality. A "right-brained" person was, by this theory, creative, artistic, emotional, and so on. A "left-brained" person, in contrast, was considered logical, rational, methodical, etc. Because people don't like to change their brains, this model persists in the popular imagination, but as it turns out, it's about as accurate as phrenology or astrology. Sure, some people are more creative and others, more methodical, but it has nothing to do with dominant cerebral hemispheres. For another instance, there's a tendency to use metaphors to describe the brain's function. The latest involves comparing the brain to a computer, with different sections serving different functions like processing (CPU) or memory (hard drive). Before computers, it was fashionable to compare the brain to a machine; the image of cogs turning when someone is thinking persists in cartoons and whatnot. These are more reflections of the current state of technology than of reality. But, like the Bohr orbital model of an atom, they can serve their purpose even though they're inaccurate. So I say this: the brain is like a car. You don't have to know exactly how it works to use it, but a lot of people are really, really bad at doing so. |
| From The Guardian, an article that I'm going to try to be skeptical about, because I already agree with it. The big idea: why it’s great to be an only child The notion that it’s bad to be brought up without siblings should be banished for good It won't be banished for good, though. People cling to their preconceptions. Hell, I know someone who was absolutely convinced that their cat would "steal the baby's breath." This was someone otherwise fairly rational. When I was growing up, only children were generally regarded as unfortunate souls; lonely, socially clumsy and often bullied. Well, being bullied can happen to anyone, but I imagine it would help to have a sibling on your side for defense and/or painful retribution. I'm not convinced, however, that it can make up for the bullying and/or annoyance of having said sibling in the first place. One can avoid bullies, much of the time; one cannot avoid one's sibling. But the stereotype has proved to be tenacious – so much so that many people still feel anxiety about the issue: parents over whether they have deprived their child of the experience of having siblings, only children that they may have missed out on a crucial part of their development. Such experience and development could, I will reiterate, go both ways. It can be positive. It can also be strongly negative. I'd imagine it would be worse to have a shitty sibling than none at all. And from my own experience, having none instilled in me a powerful sense of individuality, of not having to lean on anyone else. Based on current data, it’s estimated that by 2031 half of all UK families will be raising just one child. Obviously, this article focuses on the UK, and I don't know what the stats are for other countries. I'm not sure the exact details matter; such predictions are like weather forecasts, and shouldn't be taken as absolute truth. The author's point seems to be that being an "only" used to have stigma because the situation was rare; the situation isn't rare anymore, but the stigma remains, so she throws the numbers around to support the "not rare anymore" point. As a clinical psychologist with more than 40 years’ experience working with families and children, I’d like to reassure parents that having one child is now an excellent decision – and here are some of the reasons. As someone who lacks all sorts of credentials, I'd like to reassure people that having no children right now is an excellent decision. Have you seen the world? Can you honestly say they'd have a better life than you did? Can you really afford the luxury? First, a lot of the stigma, the source of so many difficult developmental experiences, has melted away because of the numbers game. It’s simply much less unusual to have no siblings, and less likely to draw unkind attention. I think the point here is that kids are mean to anyone who's different, but being an only isn't all that different anymore, so the hammers don't go after that particular nail. Second, the data that gave the stereotype of an ill-adjusted, unhappy only child a veneer of scientific credibility has been thoroughly debunked. Much of it was the result of a questionnaire that American psychologist EW Bohannon gave to 200 adults in the late 19th century. This is the bit I'd pay most attention to. Old study, single researcher, small and demographically narrow sample size. From this “study” – based on secondhand opinions, biased language, and without a control group – Bohannon concluded that only children were generally spoiled, selfish, intolerant and self-obsessed. I'm not intolerant, goddammit. More recent, better-designed investigations have, unsurprisingly, utterly failed to uphold these claims. Go figure. That isn’t to say that there aren’t any differences at all between single children and others. For example, recent research in China found that they are often more competitive and less tolerant of others; but they also tend to be better at lateral thinking and are more content spending time alone. Again, I contend that being able to be alone is a positive personality trait. It's good to not cling to others for validation or emotional support. Often people’s anxieties about single-child families are projected into the future. Isn’t it better to have siblings to share memories with in adulthood and who can lighten the load of caring for elderly parents should that become necessary? I'm always seeing instances where one of the parents' many kids is the primary caregiver in those situations. Hell, it happened to the friend of mine that I had to convince about the cat thing up there. I still maintain that having kids so you'll have someone to take care of you in old age is one of the biggest acts of selfishness. It’s true that I’ve worked with a number of only children who complain of exhaustion as they care for their parents in later life. But I would counter that by noting that the worst relationship issues I’ve had to deal with in my clinics are not those between couples, but among adult siblings when it comes to sharing out responsibility for the care of their parents, and who’s entitled to what once they die. When parents are even moderately rich, all the lessons they supposedly taught their kids about sharing and cooperating apparently go right out the window. The common metaphor is that of vultures circling a dying animal, but that doesn't really happen and it's not fair to the noble vulture to compare them to selfish brat offspring. Finally, are parents who have large families happier than those who have just one child? Apparently not. Ugh. "Happier." I've ragged on this concept before, I know, but I don't think it should be relevant. Part of this is because people are, believe it or not, different. It could be that a couple wants a large number of offspring, and they might be happier. It could be that a couple wants none, and they'd be unhappy with even one, let alone more. Happiness is notoriously subjective, and someone might convince themselves they're happy just because otherwise, they'd have to change something, and change is painful. Or maybe they can't change, so they do the self-convincing. When it comes down to it, there are advantages and disadvantages, and any disadvantages for the child can be compensated for by skilful parenting. This is perhaps the key message for mothers or fathers worried about the issue: nothing is set in stone. In the case of only children, helping them learn to share, and prioritising flexibility – even allowing for some disorder – in day-to-day scheduling is extremely helpful, as these are some of the skills children with siblings acquire as a matter of course. And then you get stuff like this, which is clearly geared toward the neurotypical. So, this is an example of how I handle confirmation bias: don't just agree with the article; find things to criticize about it. Remember what I just said about happiness? I can't change having been an only child. I couldn't make siblings appear out of thin air (multiverse theory notwithstanding) even if I wanted to, which I don't. My unique situation is the hand I've been dealt; fortunately, it's full of aces. |
#tiktokgirls Today's title, which is pronounced "Pound TikTok Girls," might seem like it could push the boundaries of this item's Content Rating. What if I said that, in this case, they're asking TikTok Girls to volunteer at the pound? Or that, like it or not, "girl" can describe any female-presenting human or other animal, including adult specimens, as in "girlboss," "Golden Girls," or "cowgirls?" And my cats are good girls, even though they're seniors now. As in "old," not "about to graduate." So yeah, I'm not advocating violence on anyone underage. Well, unless they steal something from me, but that's not the case here. In any case, "pound" or otherwise, I'm not going to look this one up. I'm pretty sure doing so would put me on a List, and that's even though I could use a VPN, private browsing, adblock, scriptblock, etc. "They" will find a way to find me just for typing tiktokgirls into a search box. And, as you might imagine, what I said in the Exclaimer! above about Instagram goes double for DikDok. This has less to do with its ties to the Chinese government (it's not like Instagram's owner is any better) and more to do with just how vapid and insipid (both really fun words) all the KitKots that escape into the wild are, and their insistence on promoting the use of vertical video. My primary connection to the internet is via a laptop, which has a screen in landscape mode. And even when I'm using my Android, I prefer to hold it in that orientation on the few occasions when I watch videos. We've spent several generations training ourselves that landscape mode is the correct orientation for moving pictures, and suddenly the newer generation thinks they have the right to change that? No. They do not. "Oh, but that's just the style these days?" Yeah? So are Crocs; that doesn't mean I have to like it. Which, just to be perfectly clear, doesn't mean I want the government to ban either one. No, I want something far more difficult than that: that people decide, all on their own, that things like Crocs and vertical video are stupid-looking and shouldn't exist. Meanwhile, I'll continue to pretend that they don't. Consequently, while I continue to assert that there's no such thing as useless knowledge (especially for a writer) and that deliberately maintaining one's ignorance is an affront to Nature and humanity, I'm going to have to maintain my ignorance on this particular tag. It goes into the nearly-empty box in my brain labeled "Things I Don't Really Want To Know." It's in good company in there with "how does it feel to go through a wood chipper" and "what's really in the sausage I just had for breakfast." So, what the tag is about, and why it'll get a post banned from Instagram, will remain mysteries to me unless someone else wants to tell me. And that's fine; what's life without a little mystery? |
| For my weekly trip to the past, this time, we're not going very deep at all. In November of 2023, I wrote this for a blogging activity which is no longer with us, hence the "invalid item" link therein: "Forgive Me, For I Have Zinned" The entry revolves around National Zinfandel Day, which in that year fell on November 15 (the earliest it can occur, as it falls on the third Wednesday in November.)I did a whole blog entry on these calendar events, just a few days ago. In brief, yes, I know a lot of them are just product promotions. This one's no exception; the website lists it as being founded by "Zinfandel Advocates & Producers (ZAP)," which is totally the name I'd come up with if I were putting together an industry coalition for zinfandel. But then they had to go and make White Zinfandel, which is emblematic of everything that's wrong in the world. So many of those emblems these days. Now, to be somewhat fair, I've heard it's improved since the last time I had the misfortune of sipping it. Nor have I had any in the time since that entry. The first offense of white zinfandel is that it's actually a blush, or rosé. True enough, but I don't think I was clear that this is an offense because it breaks the rules of wine categorization. Some rule-breaking is fine and necessary for innovation. This sort of thing just confuses people. The second offense is that it's inoffensive. It's the wine equivalent of white bread, American cheese, and light beer: something seemingly crafted to appeal to the lowest common denominator, and I'm not low nor common nor a denominator. Bland, characterless, etc. Apparently, white zinfandel was invented on accident by Sutter Home (which I always called Stagger Home). Other wineries produce it now as well, but the point is, it's unsurprising that white zin is as much an American product as all those other mass-market foods and drinks. Plus, I forgot to add, fake milk "chocolate." And finally, the wine I tried when it was all the rage in the States was cloyingly sweet. (As I noted above, that may no longer be the case.) How can I call it characterless and cloyingly sweet at the same time? Because I can. Finally, "white" zinfandel tastes completely unlike the red variety, such that when I finally got around to tasting actual zinfandel, it was a real epiphany. I might actually like it better than Shiraz. Jury's still out on that. I can say for certain, though, that I prefer both of those over cabernet sauvignon. There was a bumper sticker floating around some time ago: "Absolve yourself of white zin." I haven't seen white zin in stores for a while. Maybe it's just because I haven't been looking, but hopefully, it's at least partly because tastes have improved. Given the continued presence of those other offensively inoffensive products, though, somehow I doubt it. |
#roosterapparatus There are things I've wondered about since I first encountered them, and that curiosity was so powerful that I researched it. This was harder in the old days, before the internet made such research simultaneously easier and less reliable. One of the things I wondered about pre-internet was why it is that a rooster crows, but a crow never roosters. But I didn't care enough to look it up. What I did try to find out, at some point, was why one could use either 'cock' or 'rooster' for the male poultry specimen. As it turned out, the latter word was apparently a US invention, attempting to avoid one of the more salacious meaning of 'cock.' Typical US. If the euphemism origin is true, it would be one of those relatively rare occasions when a euphemism doesn't eventually take on the same connotations as the word it replaced. That is truly weird, as that particular body part is of such paramount importance to the world that almost any word, and several gestures, can, depending on context, refer to it. One thing I have never attempted to find out, despite having lived on a farm, is how chickens reproduce. At least, apart from the obvious and clichéd chicken / egg cycle. I just didn't care, partly because we didn't have chickens and partly because I just didn't care. But you pick up things here and there, so I know more about the process than I really wanted to. All of which is to say that roosters don't really have an apparatus as we would identify it. As per the Exclaimer! up there, the tag in the title, apparently a smushing of rooster and apparatus, is banned on a certain social media platform, but it doesn't seem to be because of its reference to the nonexistent cock cock. No, a brief search revealed that the words refer to a business that sells artisanal glass products which may or may not be pressed into service for smoking the devil's cabbage. Whether the association with the natural substance which is still illegal in most places is the reason for the ban, or maybe they're just a shady company using legitimacy as a kind of smoke screen, or perhaps something else entirely, the name really is a good one. Not because of chickens or cocks, but because, as my Google search revealed, there aren't many other uses for the particular combination of "rooster" and "apparatus." Memorable and unique; good company name, though I'd have never guessed the product from the tag name. I guess maybe I was expecting it to refer to weather vanes, the clichéd depiction of which almost always involves a rooster. But no. Not dongs or schlongs, but bongs. |
| Here's a great example of science imitating art. From Wired: Science Has Spun Spider-Man’s Web-Slinging Into Reality When a US research lab accidentally created a sticky, web-like substance, it turned to Peter Parker and comic-book lore for inspiration on what to do next. The original Spider-Man had Parker sciencing up his own web-shooters and web fluid, which was less a metaphor for puberty and more a comic book shortcut to giving him web powers that weren't inherently gross. Unrealistic? Sure, but so is everything else in comic books, including getting superpowers from being bitten by a radioactive spider, and that's okay. Slowly but surely, we are making good on the gadgets we imagined, as kids, that the future would hold. And yet, no phasers. The Starfleet tricorder from Star Trek? Almost there. But web-shooting? Web-slinging? That wasn't one we really thought would make the crossover. Yeah, I gotta agree on that one. And it wasn't exactly in the plans for the scientist who has made the strong, sticky, air-spun web a reality either, Marco Lo Presti, from Tufts University’s Silklab. Okay, but Silklab definitely sounds like a superhero hangout. Or maybe a supervillain lair. A very smooth one. Fio is Fiorenzo Omenetto, professor of engineering at Tufts and “puppeteer” of the Silklab. Oh, definitely supervillain lair. “You explore and you play and you sort of connect the dots. Part of the play that is very underestimated is where you say ‘hey, wait a second, is this like a Spider-Man thing?’ And you brush it off at first, but a material that mimics superpowers is always a very, very good thing.” What? No! It's a very, very bad thing in the hands of supervillains. A lot of the Silklab’s work is “bio-inspired” by spiders and silkworms, mussels and barnacles, velvet worm slime, even tropical orchids—so working out whether this sticky web could become something useful might seem like an easy side-step for the team. Velvet Worm Slime definitely needs to be the name of a band. Probably an emo/punk/EDM one. In Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s original 1960s comic books, starting with Amazing Fantasy #15, Peter Parker builds a “little device,” one fastened to each wrist and triggered by finger pressure, to produce strands of ejectable ‘spider webs.’ By the time of the mid-2000s Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, the web-shooting switched from a wrist-worn spinneret gadget to an organic part of his superhero transformation. And we've never let Raimi hear the end of puberty jokes since. The article describes the web-fluid development in more detail; of course, despite the hype, we're not going to get friendly neighborhood web-slingers anytime soon, if at all. So, Spider-Man capabilities when? “Everybody wants to know if we're going to be able to swing from buildings,” says Omenetto with a wry smile. But we're not there yet—so far the Silklab team itself has speculated about some potential uses for the material: the retrieval of an object that’s lost underwater, perhaps, or a drone that captures something in a remote environment. When I was a kid, there was this sticky goo that would stretch but hold together, and you could use it to pick up pennies off the sidewalk, at least until it got too dirty to be useful. This doesn't seem much more useful than that goo, at least not yet. Lo Presti is interested to hear from anyone who has read his paper and thinks they might be in need of a web-shooting silk fiber. "Hello, I am an aspiring supervillain and I am in need of a web-shooting silk fiber to achieve my plans of world domination." Some humans are pretty clever, though, and I'll bet they'll find uses for this that don't involve costumed vigilantes swinging from skyscrapers. Still, I do appreciate the comic-book theme here. |
#imfine Imfine would make a great character name, don't you think? It's perfect for science fiction and/or fantasy, with maybe a little comedy thrown in. You could have someone named Imfine Owyudoon, for example. "It's pronounced 'ihm-FEEN,' they might insist, much as Young Frankenstein insisted on Fronk-in-steen. Or maybe it's French: "eem-feen-ay." And it has, as my use of the third person pronoun suggests, the advantage of not being obviously one gender. Sure, it might be close to Imogene, with the above pronunciation, but so what? You can use it for characters of any gender, which is helpful for keeping readers guessing or planning a plot twist. Other possibilities: Imfine Andyu Imfine Thanxforaxin Imfine Reilly Imfine Eyeswere Imfine No'Imnot So I went ahead and did a search for the word, to see if someone else has already had my idea (as per 99.99% of the time), and, true to the shithole Google has become, the first result was a shopping site with that exact name. I won't promote unfettered consumerism or provide free advertising by linking it here; all I'll say is that it looks like the shop has an Instagram presence, which I'd imagine is somewhat tricky (you have to read the Exclaimer! dropnote above to understand why). Then there's something called the I'm Fine Project, or imfineproject, "sculpting mental health awareness through art." Look, I'm not going to rag on that; if it helps, it helps (though I have no idea whether it does). But I will say that their description includes the line, "At workshops participants use clay to create a mask..." and that's how I know that, no matter what mental health problems I might have, it wouldn't be for me. Attempting to create "art," unless you count writing as an art, always ends in the same way for me: frustration, increased agitation, and throwing the failed attempt across the room or ripping it up into the trash. In other words, it would make everything worse. Speaking of artists, according to the search there's also apparently a musical artist called imfine, also somehow with an Instagram presence, so as usual, someone beat me to the naming idea. |
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