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Tuesday, Jul. 2, 2024

7:07pm EDT

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Complex Numbers

by Robert Waltz

Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #1196512

Not for the faint of art.

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.

http://www.ddewey.net/mandelbrot/

Signature for Honorable Mentions in 2018 Quill Awards

A signature for exclusive use of winners at the 2019 Quill Awards

Signature for those who have won a Quill Award at the 2020 Quill Awards

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Show Recent Comments

10 Most Recent Blog Comments:

tracker

about 10 hours ago
In response to "Imma Let You Finish, But..."

I am a sports fanatic!!!! You will see more of me.

1 Like

tj ~ endeavors to persevere!

a day ago
In response to "Revisited: "Rock you like a...""

I also purchased a generator because our power would go out anytime the wind blew. It seems to have worked, we seldom have power outages now. Living in Minnesota, all we get when the hurricanes push threw are thunder storms and rain. But, it's Minnesota, so thunder storms and rain are normal. This year does seem to be rainier, however.

I'm thinking, after reading this, that I should invest in a couple of rain barrels and bottle the water up. I could probably sell it online to drought stricken people.

1 Like

Kåre Enga in Montana

Jun 29, 2024 at 2:16pm
In response to "Je Voyagerai"

I once was allergic to going on a cruise. But... I should... just for the experience. I've gotten out of my comfort zone for experience.

With the crush of tourists these days any travel should include how much you want to put up with "other people's vacation" as opposed to your own.

1 Like

Lazy Writer est 4/24/2008

Jun 29, 2024 at 1:38pm
In response to "Je Voyagerai"

Happy traveling..be safe.

Elisa: Middle Aged Stik

Jun 29, 2024 at 11:12am
In response to "It Ain't Wrong"

Ain’t apparently begins as amn’t, a contraction for am not, which you can still hear in Ireland and Scotland today

I mean, an abundant number of Scotch and Irish immigrants ended up in the American South, so this tracks.

While a lot of people consider ain’t improper, it’s a very regular and legitimate part of many forms of English, including in Black English (AAVE). Be mindful that judging someone’s use of ain’t as “wrong” can be a very socially loaded act, to say the least.

For some reason, this reminds of one of the reasons I stopped reading Ask A Manager. A bunch of people were getting real uppity about the use of the phrase "baby daddy". Unsurprisingly, many of these people appeared white. One Black person in the comments finally had enough and threw down with this remark:

"I gotta say, as a black woman it grates to have phrases that come out of AAVE be appropriated, assigned negative connotation (likely because they come from black culture), then discarded with prejudice. If you’re using the phrase to conjure up stereotypical imagery, I can get on board with putting an end to that. But there are plenty of people for whom baby daddy or baby mama are not pejorative at all, just descriptors of the relationship in their dialect, and correcting them to “Father of my child” is just another case of denigrating minority speech patterns and legitimate AAVE grammatical constructions and upholding “white is right” standards."

(For more context, check out this link

1 Like

🌕 HuntersMoon

Jun 28, 2024 at 10:54am
In response to "It Ain't Wrong"

Ain't you on a roll today...

3 Like

Adherennium Dr of Phoolishness

Jun 27, 2024 at 11:53am
In response to "Wave Rider"

Horrifying fact, I once painted a reproduction of the Hokusai wave on our bathroom wall. Eventually of course it was painted over, but I like to fantasise that in some distant future it will be archaeologically excavated and held up as an example of early cultural appropriation, (badly executed too.)

1 Like

Annette

Jun 26, 2024 at 8:16pm
In response to "The Oz Hypothesis"

The nekked wimmin look like something that I might have drawn in first grade.

1 Like

Aiva Raine

Jun 25, 2024 at 10:16pm
In response to "Can't Spell Success without Sucs"

Ok- this made me truly LOL- "sipping a gin and tonic made with low-paid laborer tears"

Thank you. Totally agree with the rest of your article.

Money doesn't solve all problems but it sure as hell eliminates many and makes it easier to go places or buy things that can create some happiness. IE- a property somewhere quiet and peaceful and a trailer with which to chill on said property.

Rich people are typically clueless assholes.

1 Like

Anni Pon

Jun 25, 2024 at 9:30am
In response to "Can't Spell Success without Sucs"

I've never heard anyone say, "That guy is so successful, but he doesn't really make much money." Or anything similar. Sure, you can have a positive impact on the world without making lots of money, but people won't call it success.

2 Like

June 3, 2022 at 12:02am

#1033272

Like a Version

Note: Tomorrow's entry will be delayed. I'm going to a beer festival in DC tomorrow. Assuming no one opens fire into the crowd (this is America, so it's a nonzero chance), I'll return home on Saturday and then blog. Between expecting to be drunk and having a drunk friend to deal with too, I doubt I'll be able to get online at my usual time.

So, like, time for an article about language.

Why do people, like, say, ‘like’ so much?

Link is from the Guardian so the spelling is, like, British.

Why do people have such a problem with “like”? Is it because it simply won’t go away? In 1992, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a robust defence of the word and the way it carries “a rich emotional nuance”, responding to what had already been a decade of criticism. This did nothing to settle the debate.

Some people get annoyed over the stupidest things. This is one of them. Who cares?

You know what other word gets overused and we don't think about it until it's pointed out? "Up."

Scores of recruitment specialists and public-speaking coaches have publicly bemoaned the word’s rise and say those who use it prevent themselves from getting opportunities.

I don't know what a recruitment specialist actually does, but I think public-speaking coaches are the people that try to get us to stop saying "ummm..." too. Which does nothing to actually promote public speaking; sometimes a speaker has to pause for thought without giving the audience an opportunity to think she's stopped speaking.

Sure, if it becomes a vocal tic, perhaps then it's truly annoying, as with any other word or phrase. Until then, to me, using "like" as an intensifier is merely the sign of a casual conversation. Hell, I even use it in my writing in here. Deliberately.

In 2010, Emma Thompson complained to the Radio Times that she “went to give a talk at my old school and the girls were all doing their ‘likes’ and ‘innits?’ which drives me insane… I told them ‘Just don’t do it. Because it makes you sound stupid.’”

Well... "innit" is unique to England, as far as I know, and it really does make you sound like a chav.

There’s certainly an element of sexism here and the detractors of “like” say it makes you sound girlish and stupid, arguing that this is a newish tic said mostly by women and that it’s a meaningless “filler” word that doesn’t add anything to a sentence’s meaning. But they are, in fact, wrong on every count.

As the article eventually points out, the liberal sprinkling of "like" was popularized in the US in the early 80s, the whole Valley Girl thing. But who made men the gatekeepers of language?

The first of these is the quotative “like”: “He cooked a spag bol for me last night, I was like, that’s delicious.”

Maybe this is because I'm American, but "spag bol" would enrage me way more than the use of "like" there.

The other hated “likes” are as a discourse marker, “What did I do last night? Like, had dinner, hung out”; an adverb to mean approximately, “It was super quick to cook, like 30 minutes”, and what’s known as a discourse particle, which goes in the middle of a phrase, rather than at the end of it, “This dinner is like the best I’ve eaten.” But there are more uses than that, for example the Geordie tradition of finishing sentences with a like. “He cooked dinner for me, like,” and increasingly “like” is also used as a noun because of Facebook and Instagram, “I gave it a like.”

Always good to know what part of speech you're using. As for the social media aspect, hate the media, not the noun.

In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, written at the start of the 17th century, Valentine says to Cesario, “If the Duke continue these favours towards you, Cesario, you are like to be much advanced.” The linguist Anatoly Liberman says that this version of “like” was being used as a shorthand for likely, and may be the beginnings of our contemporary usage.

Here's where they lose me. I'd need a bit more support for that hypothesis. The dialogue isn't "You're, like, gonna get promoted," but as noted, a shorthand for "likely," perhaps to fit better in iambic pentameter.

But the biggest lie about “like” is that it’s stupid; that it adds nothing to the meaning of a sentence. “People say language is random. But language is almost never random. You can’t just stick that like in anywhere,” says Fought. “So for example, if I say, ‘Oh look at that boy over there. He’s wearing a top hat. And he’s like, 10.’ That makes perfect sense. But if you say ‘How old is your brother’? And I say ‘He’s like, 10’ that’s a little more unusual. Or if I said, ‘My, like, grandma died.’ That’d be a very strange context to hear it. So there’s patterns. There’s ways to do it more grammatically.”

English evolves, but as with any evolution, there are constraints.

So if linguists are largely agreed that “like” is, at least in some contexts, no bad thing, why does society still bristle at it? Katherine D Kinzler, the author of How You Say It, a book about linguistic bias – which she argues is one of the most persistent prejudices in our society – says that taking someone to task for the way they speak is one of the last societally accepted ways to exercise our prejudices.

I can buy that. I'm in the South, but near the cusp of North, and even around here, a lot of people think a Southern accent marks someone as having lower intelligence. This ain't necessarily so. Sure, plenty of Southerners are dumb as dirt. So are plenty of everyone else.

...the best linguistic studies today suggest people who say “like” may actually be more intelligent than those that don’t. One, published in the Journal of Language and Social Psychology, which examined 263 conversational transcripts, found that “conscientious people” and those who are more “thoughtful and aware of themselves and their surroundings” are the most likely to use discourse markers such as “like”.

"May" is the key word there. (And don't get me started on may vs. might

.) One study does not science make. But it's at least a falsification of the premise "all likers are dumb."

Anyway, just another thing I thought I'd, like, share with y'all.

6 Like • Comment • View 5 comments

June 2, 2022 at 12:01am

#1033199

Don't Do It

Here's my first entry for June's "Journalistic Intentions"

[18+], with a theme of tropes.

Ripped from the Headlines

For anyone too lazy to click on the link (as I usually am), to summarize: this is when a show or movie or whatever is based on current events. It's not usually a true story, but if, like, there's a story about some priest sexually abusing an altar boy, the movie will be about a different priest sexually abusing a different altar boy.

Not that anyone has the balls to actually make such a show.

I don't care about such shows. By which I mean, I don't give a shit if something is based on something out of real life, or entirely made up. Well. It's not like you can entirely make something up, or entirely be accurate to the details of a real event. Even the most outlandish science fiction or fantasy at least adheres to some anchor in reality, even if it's only to consider what one would do in a weird situation.

But there is one instance of this trope that I absolutely will not watch or read, and that is a COVID story.

Fortunately, I haven't seen anything like that yet. That doesn't mean it's not out there. It probably is. It's not like I'm aware of everything that gets released. But if I become aware of it, I'll wish I hadn't.

I don't want to see a movie based on the masking argument. I don't want to read a book centered around the vaccination argument. I really don't want to see anything titled "Love in the time of Coronavirus" or anything similar to that.

And above all, I will puke my fucking guts out if I even hear the merest whisper of a romance that involves two (or more; I'm cool like that) people managing to find a way to hook up in spite of social distancing and mask mandates.

No. I want my entertainment to, ideally, forget that the 'rona is or was ever a thing. I want my fiction to go on like nothing ever happened, like millions of people didn't die from it.

Just don't do it.

Failing that, at least don't make it central to the plot.

Pretty much any other current event is fair game: climate change, civil unrest, school shootings, war in Europe, terrorist incidents, whatever. I'm just not going to put up with covfefe-19 plots. Period. The only masks I want to see in movies or on TV are the ones worn by superheroes and the villains that oppose them.

And why? I know I should be able to, as a writer, articulate exactly why this is. The block, I think, isn't about writing, but more emotional -- a visceral reaction to overusing something that's occupied our brains enough for the past 28 months or so. Note that I'm not saying we should pretend, collectively, that it's not happening or didn't ever happen. Just that I don't want it encroaching into my fiction.

Other than that? Rip the hell out of the headlines. Truth can be stranger than fiction and all that. Just stay away from a certain virus.

You know. Avoid it like the plague.

6 Like • Comment • View 6 comments

June 1, 2022 at 12:02am

#1033122

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Another link courtesy of Elisa: Middle Aged Stik

today. I promise I have way more of my own than ones I've been pointed to, but such are the vagaries of the random number generator, peace be upon it.

So we begin June with a rather depressing -- but fascinating -- article.

The Devastating Decline of a Brilliant Young Coder
Lee Holloway programmed internet security firm Cloudflare into being. Then he became apathetic, distant, and unpredictable—for a long time, no one could make sense of it.

I would never have heard of Cloudflare until just now, except that I have a script blocker installed to help prevent popup ads and some tracking. Usually, it's unobtrusive. Sometimes, some actual content gets blocked and I have to figure out which of the scripts are causing that, which requires research and experience. Point being that Cloudflare is a recurring one that I know it's safe to, at least temporarily, disable.

Ironically, per my script blocker, this source, Wired, doesn't seem to use Cloudflare.

Now. I'm not going to quote much from the article today. It's very long and, in the tradition of the rambling New Yorker style, it pops back and forth between anecdote and meat. Honestly, the story of Cloudflare, or even Lee Holloway, is background to me, mostly just the example used to anchor the information about the medical issues involved.

Because it's long, I realize it's unlikely most of my readers will take the time to actually delve into it. So, if you're going to read it, do it now, because I'm about to spoil the plot.

Ready?

Here we go.

Dude helps start a tech company that both does good things and makes money (rare). He shows signs of going off the rails. His first wife leaves him, taking the kid. After getting married again (which could also be taken as a sign of mental issues), and having another kid (ditto), and going further off the rails, he gets diagnosed with a rare (though not as rare as a company that both does good things and makes money) form of early-onset dementia for which there is no cure.

Having dealt with different forms of dementia in both my parents, in addition to my abiding interest in philosophy, I was interested mostly in the underlying discussion. It's not that I don't feel for the guy, or his family; it's just hard for me to work up too much sadness for people I don't know.

This central question is expressed in the article, after the first part of the anecdote I mentioned.

What makes you you? The question cuts to the core of who we are, the things that make us special in this universe. The converse of the question raises another kind of philosophical dilemma: If a person isn't himself, who is he?

And that's what I'm focusing on here.

I've had occasion to hang out with people, many of whom are very nice so this isn't a cut on them, who airily declared things like, "You are not your body."

I disagree.

I mean, okay, in the ultimate case, sure. I have, fortunately, rarely had occasion to look at a real live dead body (okay, you know what I mean), but when you see such things in movies, people are like, "That's Joe. Poor guy." Well, it's not Joe, is it? It's Joe's body. Joe's left the building. It's a bit like when you look at a photograph or painting of someone and say "That's Joe."

Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

But a living person has continuity, not just of mind as the article mentions, but also of body -- though even that is more of a pattern continuity than a matter continuity.

Still, the existence of dementia (or other brain issues) points, in my opinion, to the inescapable conclusion that insofar as you can say "I am" at all, you are your body, which perforce includes your brain.

The "You are not your body" crowd is expressing, as I understand it, a form of mind-body duality, the idea that the mind, or spirit, or soul, or something, exists independent of the physical form, perhaps even persisting beyond death.

But when my parents, first my mom followed by my dad, fell ill, I seriously began questioning such things. Not that I ever fully accepted an afterlife, but it's such a pervasive belief that I never really argued about it, either.

If the mind persists beyond death... which mind? By the time my father died, his brain had deteriorated to the point where he was largely nonfunctional. If I met his ghost, would I meet the one with Alzheimer's? His spirit from ten years earlier, before he had to go to a nursing home for it? From 40 years earlier, when I was a child? Or the one from when he was a teenager, running away from home to go to sea? Or something else entirely (at which point I couldn't really say he was "Dad").

The point being that the brain changes all the time, and these changes are reflected in the mind. We can call disorders of the brain "mental illness" or "dementia" or whatever, but that's just a way more obvious change. It's a label we put on so that people can understand that something the affected does is an illness with physical signs, not just them being weird.

Some might argue that it's not the mind, but the soul, whatever that is, that persists. Okay, I'm not going to try to shatter any closely-held beliefs here, but if "you" are the sum of your experiences, tethered to an ever-changing mind tethered to an ever-changing brain, which "you" survives? If you don't have your memories, you're not really "you." If you don't have a neural network to shape your thoughts, or a body to keep running and send signals back and forth to, who or what are you?

From my surface understanding of information theory, which, oddly, seems to be a good candidate for explaining Everything, I've heard that no information can truly be destroyed. So in one sense, we live on, in echoes, having affected people and things along the journey.

But personality? That's inextricably tied to the material. Might as well ask "what happens to a candle flame after it's snuffed out?"

Anyway. That's my philosophy for the day, inspired by the story of a guy whose work echoes in most every corner of the internet.

7 Like • Comment • View 2 comments

May 31, 2022 at 12:02am

#1033080

Misinformation

Today's somewhat more serious link is courtesy of Elisa: Middle Aged Stik

. She's running a blog contest next month (this isn't a part of that) which you should totally enter if you blog, or if you're thinking about starting. It's found at "Journalistic Intentions"

[18+].

Denialism and misinformation are obstacles in both sci comm and ag comm

Let's put aside for the moment now the completely unnecessary and annoying abbreviations at the end of that headline. Yes, I noticed. Yes, I care. But I think it communicates the information adequately, and if it doesn't, the article itself makes it clear.

What do science communication and agricultural communication have in common?

In the lede, at that.

A lot actually, as science and agriculture overlap in so many ways. Agriculture is a field where science and innovation meet tradition and passion.

Okay, look, I'm not completely ignorant of agriculture. But it's not the only occupation that mixes science with "tradition and passion."

Those of us in ag can learn and build from the challenges of science communication, which mirror our own struggles.

But I'm more familiar with "sci comm" as she calls it.

First thing that came to my mind when I read this far was: "you know, this is the perfect opportunity to blast the anti-GMO crowd. Let's see if she does that."

One of the biggest hurdles in any type of science communications — whether that be in the medical, climate, or agricultural fields — is denialism. Science denialism is the rejection of facts and scientific consensus in favor of controversial or radical ideas.

She's giving denial too much credit there, I think. It isn't "controversial or radical" to, for instance, insist that the Earth is flat, vaccines make your dick explode, or that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening. It's just ignorant.

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it would be about the prevalence and damage misinformation can cause.

No, it would be about how there is no way we'll ever do the right thing as a society.

The general lack of knowledge and familiarity with modern agriculture along with pseudoscience is the root of many anti-agriculture ideologies: from anti-GMO to animal rights activist groups.

Ah, good. Good. There it is.

It’s definitely not a matter of intelligence. It can be very difficult to separate the facts from the fiction without much background knowledge or familiarity on the topics at hand.

On this, we can agree. As I've harped on several times here, intelligence is not the same thing as knowledge. A person can know a lot of trivia and spout it at a bar to win the prize, but all that means is they have a great memory. Which is part of, but by no means all of, "intelligence."

And there is a lot of information out there, even if we stick to good information. No one person can be an expert -- or even an apprentice -- at everything.

Science is more than just fun facts about how the world works. It’s a continuous structured process of discovery. It relies on observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses against the evidence gathered.

That's as good a working definition of science as I've ever seen.

There is also a lot of money to be made off of fear and misinformation. “Organic” and “natural” branding is a $350 billion business, and by convincing people there is something wrong with modern agriculture or conventional food — livestock care and more — it quickly leads to greater profits for certain food corporations or more donations to vegan animal-rights groups.

I'm not going to come down against "organic," though I've long objected to the term as being confusing, as anything based on hydrocarbon chains is "organic." Some people want lab-created-pesticide-free foods; I get that. I have, however, railed on the use of "natural" in here before, and probably will again. As a label, "organic" actually has a specific meaning when applied to food. "Natural" does not.

However, I find it extraordinarily unlikely that eight billion of us can all be fed using "organic" techniques. Conventional agriculture just yields more food, and there's a finite supply of farmland.

Not all studies are created equal. Sometimes bad science occurs — and is even published. Whether an outdated method was used or too small of sample a size. In some cases, the conclusions drawn by the research team may not fit the data or may overstate the data. Confounding variables or using cell or animal models to draw definitive conclusions about humans can contribute to this as well.

I've alluded to this sort of thing before, too, especially the part about sample size. I'd also add that statistics can be massaged to a desired outcome, like the much-hyped studies that show that chocolate is good for you (funded by candy makers) and those that insist that alcohol is bad for you (okay, okay, those might actually have some merit, but I don't care).

That’s why it’s important to fully read the study and see if it makes sense.

Record scratch.

I've read scientific studies. Inevitably, I have to show them to my housemate, who's a scientist, to understand the lingo. Even there, if it's not her field (biology), she's often at a loss. Point being that even I don't have the necessary background to completely understand a scientific paper; how can someone who doesn't have a technical education hope to grok it? Also, "sense" doesn't always apply. There's nothing about quantum physics, for example, that makes any kind of everyday logical sense, and yet I'm told it's one of the most successful scientific theories ever developed, in terms of predicting the results of quantum experiments.

This is one reason I innately distrust "common sense."

I'll grant that agricultural science isn't nearly as complicated as quantum chromodynamics, but then, what is?

Poor reporting, misleading headlines, celebrities, and people trying to sell you something all contribute to the spread of misinformation. They may exaggerate the claims of a study or misinterpret it all together (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). Media can spread bad science, even after it has been retracted and refuted.

As I've been saying. Sometimes I catch these and post them in here. If you've been following along, you've probably seen a few.

Unfortunately, this runs the risk of spreading bad science. People might remember the articles but not my snark. But ignoring them could be worse.

Many of the misconceptions we deal with in the agriculture space are connected to a societal disconnect from science. This disconnect can make science and scientists feel inaccessible to the general public. This reflects the same disconnect of farmers and other agriculturalists may feel. This disconnect breeds distrust in authority and expertship, not just in science, but in agriculture. However, too much skepticism can be as damaging as too much trust.

There was a lot of hype a while back about a pair of identical male twins. After an absolutely horrifying and cringe-inducing circumcision accident, the people whose job it is to make such a decision decided that they'd just turn the one twin into a girl. I'm doing this from memory, but you can check it out if you need to. Some scientist reported on it. It was widely reported that the "girl" twin was successfully socialized into liking frilly shit and Barbie dolls and whatnot. A whole lot of people jumped on this, pointing to it as "proof" that gender is entirely a social construct.

There was just one problem.

Well, lots of problems, really. The first was the vanishingly small sample size of one. But the major problem was that the scientist in question made shit up, exaggerating the altered twin's predisposition to "girly" things. In reality, both kids wanted to play with toy trucks and water pistols and other "boy" things.

Of course, by the time this came out, the damage had already been done and people were already screeching about how gender is all nurture, not nature. Lots of people remember the original study; few remember, or even found out, that it was more biased than a Russian election.

Okay, fine, you made me look it up. Here's

a better-researched summary. Goddammit, they both offed themselves. That's fucked up.

None of the above is intended as any kind of commentary on trans people. Just on biased researchers who do unethical shit to promote their pet hypotheses even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It happens, especially when someone has a particular wish that something were true and is willing to distort the evidence to "prove" their point. Science tends to weed these out eventually, but again, the general public often doesn't catch on soon enough. See also: anti-vaxxers, who owe most of their existence to a disgraced former scientist who claimed -- falsely -- that vaccines cause more problems than they fix. His study was debunked long ago, but the stench remains, like when you smoke a cigarette in an enclosed space.

Anyway. The "ag comm" article is much more detailed than the excerpts I've pasted here, of course, and it's absolutely worth reading -- though my inner cynic insists on reminding me that it won't have any real effect.

1 Like • Comment • View 1 comment

May 30, 2022 at 12:01am

#1033039

Egg Zactly

You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. But you can make hard-boiled eggs.

We Tried 7 Ways to Hard-Boil Eggs and Found a Clear Winner

It's pretty rare that I'll boil eggs, but when I do, I think my method came from Joy of Cooking (because you really, really do not want to know how my mother attempted to do it; suffice it to say, green stuff happened): Boil water. Lower cackleberries in. Turn off heat. Cover. Let sit for 11 minutes. Prepare a bowl of ice water during the interminable wait. Remove eggs (not with your fingers, idiot) and give them an ice bath for like 3 minutes. Peel under cold running water. Swallow whole.

So I guess technically, they're not boiled for more than a couple of seconds, because you turn the heat off. Whatever. It works. The ice bath makes them easy to shell. Even that simple process, though, is more work than I usually want to do for eating, especially something that is, for me, about a 6 on the 1-10 scale from "nasty" to "delicious."

Now, let's see the science:

Hard-boiled eggs are one of those kitchen staples I always have in the fridge. They’re great for out-of-hand snacking, they instantly add a protein boost to salads, they form the basis of a super-speedy breakfast, and — with just a little extra effort — they become deviled eggs, the perfect cocktail snack.

"A little extra effort?" Spoken like a non-lazy person.

If you go online to find the best way to hard-boil eggs, you’ll find umpteen different methods, all purporting to be the best (many of which don’t even involve boiling).

No, if you go online for that, you'll find this article that I'm quoting. Also, I'm not claiming my way is the best. Just that it works.

The article includes a helpful photo of the resulting eggs, halved, so you can compare what each yolk looked like.

I was delighted to find that most methods worked quite well. A couple gave less-than-stellar results, and some received higher ratings from me because they produced great eggs with less effort.

Now, see, that's useful to me.

Method: Bake in a Muffin Tin

I'm no cooking expert, but my first reaction was "no way would this work out."

This method took the longest from start to finish than any other, and the results were undesirable—the whites were overcooked, and the eggs didn’t peel cleanly.

Good to know my suspicions were close to correct.

Method: Bring to a Boil, Then Remove from Heat

Aha!

For testing purposes, I used the straightforward instructions from Martha Stewart.

HAH! No.

Although this technique was pretty quick and yielded nicely cooked eggs, I would not use it again because the eggs were so difficult to peel.

Huh. Like I said, it works for me. Maybe it's because she's using fresh eggs. I never have fresh eggs. In fact, one of the few reasons I have to hard-boil eggs is when they're approaching expiration and I want to extend their pseudolife just a little longer.

Method: Simmer

Maintaining that brisk simmer was very tricky. I kept having to adjust the heat up or down, so this method involved a lot of babysitting.

That alone is enough to make me go "next!"

Method: Pressure Cook

I have nothing against pressure cooking. I like the science behind it. I'm told, and this article verifies, that you can do it with an Instant Pot, but it just seems like another gadget in a crowded kitchen to me. When I was a kid, we had the giant cast-iron kind with the railroad whistle steam valve. My mother was afraid of it, and only my father got any use out of it. We didn't have a microwave, so this was the next best thing to get things to cook in a hurry.

Method: Boil

Following Bon Appetit’s method, you lower eggs into a large saucepan of boiling water, then adjust the heat to maintain a gentle boil for 10 minutes for an “ever-so-soft center to the yolk” (aka the jammy egg).

I don't understand the difference between "simmer" and "gentle boil." As I noted above, I'm no cooking expert. I just like to eat, so I learned some basics.

Method: Steam

Too much equipment again, but the author claims this works.

Method: Boil Then Simmer

Oh, wait, I guess this is closer to my method than the one above, although I don't simmer. I just turn off the heat entirely. It's not like a covered pot of water loses that much heat in 11 minutes.

The claim is that starting the eggs in hot water helps prevent the whites from sticking to the shell, thus making peeling easier.

Which is, as I noted, important, but is there actual science to that?

I was a little dubious about using 3 quarts of water for just 6 eggs, but López-Alt explains that this volume ensures that the timing and temperature are spot-on.

Yeah, I use way more water than you'd expect for my method. My reasoning is that a larger volume of water loses heat less rapidly. Basic thermodynamics and volume to surface area ratios. The tradeoff is it takes longer to boil. But if you're going to simmer them, why would this matter? Whatever.

So that's it, then. None of these are precisely my method, which, again, I'm pretty sure I stole from Joy. But I do like reading about the trade-offs between ease of cooking and quality of the result, because I'm always looking for the easiest, fastest way to achieve a good outcome. It's a matter of optimization, you know.

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May 29, 2022 at 12:03am

#1032975

Food History

Once again, Cracked exposes some of the scurrilous lies we've been subjected to our whole lives.

15 Foods That Aren't From Where We Thought

As usual, I'm not copying all of them here; just a few I feel the need to comment on.

Gone are the days when you were stuck eating whatever your grandma learned how to make from her grandma.

Yeah, Grandpa gets a shot now too.

Today, you can host an international culinary gang bang if you want, but in the process of globalizing food, some people became fusion pioneers, tried to pull one over on us, or just plain got confused.

One thing that's always bugged me is "authentic" cuisine. I don't give a ratatouille's patoutille if a food is "authentic." I only care that it tastes good. One of the few perks to living in the declining days of civilization is being able to get food from all over the world, and to mix it all together if you want.

15. Philly Cream Cheese is From New York

When the inventors of cream cheese were trying to come up with a name for their product in 1880, they settled on “Philadelphia cream cheese” because the city was known to be off the chain, dairy-wise, even though everything about the product was distinctly New Yorkian.

I have no idea if this (or many of the things on this list) are verifiably true or not, but come on, now, New York and Philadelphia? It's not like they called it London Cream Cheese.

14.Hawaiian Pizza is Canadian

Everyone’s least favorite flatbread could more accurately be called “Hawaiian-inspired pizza,” as it was created in Ontario by a Greek immigrant inspired by the sweet-and-savory flavors of Americanized Chinese food to capitalize on the growing Tiki trend.

On the flip side, Canada needs to stay in its lane, food-wise. As an aside, if you want to start an internet argument, the only surer way than to call Chicago "pizza" "not pizza" (as I always do) is to come down hard on liking or disliking ham and pineapple pizza.

The fact that it's ham and not Spam should, incidentally, be your first clue that it's not actually Hawaiian pizza.

12. French Fries Are Belgian (And Kind of Spanish)

Potatoes are a distinctly New World food, first brought to Europe by Spanish explorers and sliced and fried in Galicia in the 16th century, but the crispy little salt delivery vehicles didn’t really take off until Spanish colonists brought them to Belgium, which was called the Spanish Netherlands at the time, just to confuse us in the future.

This is debatable. The name "French fries" is almost certainly American, but as the article points out, potatoes themselves are definitely American (at least continentally speaking). At least one notable source claims that fries (chips, whatever) were a French thing.

That link claims (in French) that they were originally called "pommes de terre frites", which is either "fried potatoes" or "scorched earth apples," depending on how well I've been learning French. Today, the French, and French-speaking Belgians, just call them frites (you probably already knew this; it was one of the French words I learned before I seriously started learning French). Still no word on what the English call English muffins. Actually, I'm kidding; from what I understand, they just call them "muffins."

And yet, an Uber driver from Paris whom I've had occasion to ride with (and practice pronunciation on) says that frites are Belgian, so who do you trust? A food historian or an expat Uber driver?

On the other hand, Parisians are like New Yorkers in that they think everything of note was invented in their home city. In some cases, it's even true. So. Like I said. Debatable.

10. Croissants Are Austrian

Case in point.

8. Vindaloo is Portuguese

and

7. Tempura is Also Portuguese

Look, I've got nothing against the Portuguese, but I'm not taking culinary lessons from a culture that's primarily known for salted cod.

5. Egg Rolls Are American

Those Chinese-American restaurateurs also created the egg roll as a version of the lighter and crispier spring roll that would appeal more to their American customers, who we all know hate the lighter versions of things.

Which of course explains why they're no longer making Bud Light. Just kidding. They piss out way too much of that.

And finally (seriously, go to the article for more of this)...

1. No One Wants to Claim Danishes

Legend has it that Danishes were invented by accident by a thoughtless French chef in the 17th century, who opened a bakery in Paris to sell the “thousand leaves” pastries that became so popular that he franchised to Italy, where Austrian tourists apparently noticed them. Fast forward to 1850, when striking Danish bakers were scabbed over by bakers from Vienna, who didn’t know how to make Danish pastries, so they made … Danish pastries. It became a hit in Denmark, where it’s called a “Viennese,” while Germans call it a “Copenhagener” and Americans, of course, a “Danish,” because despite its universal popularity, no one apparently wants to take the credit.

With a history like that, one wonders how Europe ever devolved into World Wars.

Anyway, food is like language: constantly changing and borrowing shit from other countries. While it's of academic interest to me to figure out the origins of certain foods, ultimately, it was all because some primitive proto-human once decided to eat a morsel that accidentally fell into this newfangled "fire" thing. It caught on, and deliberately burning their food enabled humans to more easily digest protein, which in turn enabled us to power our enormous brains, which eventually led to people continuing to be stupid anyway.

Or something like that.

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May 28, 2022 at 12:03am

#1032941

Trouble

There weren't a whole lot of interesting things that happened on this day in history, and I picked this one at random.

On This Day
28-May-1974
Collapse of the Sunningdale Agreement

Here's the thing, though. Well, two things.

1. What little I know about Irish issues can be stuffed into a thimble; and
2. The linked article is largely unsourced and suspect.

So I won't talk directly about the Sunningdale Agreement. You can go to that page and read it yourself if you want. I'm not saying it's not interesting, but anything I say I'd be talking out my ass.

Not that I've never done that, but I'm trying to go into recovery.

What I am aware of is that a big part of the problem has to do with religion. Catholics, Protestants, whatever. Blame Henry VIII, I guess. The whole thing is way above my pay grade.

A friend of mine, a Wiccan, took a trip to Ireland once. Someone asked her something like "So, are you Catholic or Protestant?" (This is apparently less volatile a question than which football club you support).

"Actually, I'm Pagan," she said.

"We're all Pagan, dear. Are you a Catholic Pagan or a Protestant Pagan?"

I have no real reason to believe that actually happened, but it's how she told it. I've seen it elsewhere, so it might have been a joke. Either way, it adheres to Waltz's First Rule of Comedy: Never let the facts get in the way of a good joke. Or a bad one. Especially a bad one.

Speaking of bad jokes, I'm also reminded of this old one:

An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman are all drinking in a pub, getting loud. Problem is, they're all stuttering terribly. The other patrons are starting to get annoyed. This gorgeous woman comes up to them and says, "Tell you what, boys. If any of you can tell me where you were born, without stuttering, I'll show you a night you will never forget."

The Englishman is the first to speak up. He braces himself, prepares, and says, "Liverp-p-p-p-pool. Shite."

The Scotsman is next. He goes, "Edinb-b-b-b-burgh. Ach, dammit."

The Irishman looks calmly at the woman and says, "London."

Surprised, she takes him by the hand and leads him upstairs.

Half hour later they come back down. Irish guy's got a big grin on his face, he sits down, quaffs the rest of his ale, and goes, "...d-d-d-d-derry."

I suppose that the most unbelievable part of the joke is where those three were drinking together amicably, but I suppose it can happen.

Point is, I guess, that wherever you are, someone's not going to like the government, and that's why shit like this is relevant. Because, as always, if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. Well, not necessarily "you." Like I said, I'm not well-versed in this aspect of history, but then again, I'm not in charge of anything but a couple of cats and a bit of property.

And this is really why I'm doing these entries: to learn.

There's no perfect government, and some people will never be pleased with whatever government they end up with. Ideally, that's what democracy is for, but things rarely turn out ideally, so you get demonstrations, riots, insurrections, civil wars, not-so-civil wars. These only get worse when other nations get involved, too. Again, I can't speak to the Irish situation, but there's another country right now that recently annexed part of a different country, and still wants more. Not exactly parallel, I suppose, but another echo.

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May 27, 2022 at 12:05am

#1032910

Under the Sea

I don't really have a lot to say in response to today's article. I just found it to be interesting, and the best-written piece I've ever read on what it's like to be a whatever; in this case, a Navy submarine sailor (so if you want to weigh in here, Sum1 Is Home!

, feel free).

Nukes, Nubs And Coners: The Unique Social Hierarchy Aboard A Nuclear Submarine
Getting assigned to your first sub doesn’t make you a submariner and once you become one you’ll find yourself in a social structure unlike any other.

I would imagine that if you're working with a bunch of other people in exceedingly tight quarters, for months at a time, you'd need some traditions and customs in addition to the usual military codes of conduct. Hell, I can't be stuck with most people for more than a few hours at a stretch without having to retreat. Months? And to think I almost joined the Navy, albeit through the Academy.

A new crewmember is a Non-Useful Body, or NUB. He or she uses our limited supply of space, water, food, and oxygen. They are not welcome, but BUPERS (Bureau of Personnel) keeps sending them.

I get that any new people in the military get hazed and mocked. I even get why (there are a few reasons, not least of which is that if you can't take shit from your superiors, you certainly won't be able to take shit from the enemy). But it's one reason I never signed up. It'd be like:

Chief: "Waltz, I'd call you a tool, but that would be an insult to tools."
Me: "Yes, Chief. You're correct. I am utterly incompetent and always will be. I shouldn't even be here."

Or:

Chief: "Waltz, you're completely useless."
Me: *shrug* "Then why do you even want me to try?"

I think the psychology is meant to make the enlistee really very badly want to prove their NCO wrong. But I figure that would just be disrespectful; why not prove them right instead?

Anyway. Not much else to add to the article. Like I said, I just found it enlightening, as my primary source of information on what it would be like to be stuck with a bunch of people in an airtight vessel was Star Trek, and as much as I like Star Trek, I was never under any illusion that any of it was realistic, especially the wide corridors, spacious bridge, and ample recreational areas.

Incidentally, I once got curious to find out why the command center of a vessel is usually called a "bridge." Apparently it's a holdover from the riverboat days when the controls were on a deck that literally bridged the boat

, between the paddlewheels.

Or so I was told. It's entirely possible I was misinformed. After all, I'm useless.

Incidentally, if you want to mess with a sailor, call a ship a "boat," and call a boat a "ship." Want to know which is which? Don't ask me. But I very nearly picked up a Navy officer lady at a bar one time with that discussion. Until I remembered that I have a sworn rule against picking anyone up at a bar.

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May 26, 2022 at 12:49am

#1032870

Going Bananas

More for "Invalid Item"

today.

What would happen if Andre opened a bar in your town/area? (I did say maybe!)

Well, Andre, first thing you need to know, as I noted way back in "A Tour of the Town"

, no bars are allowed in Virginia, so you'd be arrested, fined, and sent to toil away on the vast banana plantainations of the Piedmont.

I suppose if we're being technical about it, you could open a juice bar, or a vegan smoothie bar. Those are legal. But you'd fail. No one cares. Oh, there'd be a glut of people checking it out for the first week or so, taking selfies to show how virtuous they are, but then... crickets.

Now, if you opened a restaurant that also happened to have a place that serves various delicious fermented and distilled beverages, behind a long table with stools lined up in front of it, well, that would be okay. As I noted in the above entry, there are plenty of those around.

Which is, after all, the problem: there are plenty of those around. Market's saturated. You'd need an angle, and as far as angles go, bananas just ain't gonna cut it. Oh, sure, you could import (or grow in greenhouses, because I was just kidding about the banana "plantain"ations above) different varieties than the standard Cavendish, and introduce people to the wide range of genetically engineered berries that constitutes the musa family of plants. But that would only have limited a-peel. The advantage of bananas is that they're easy to eat -- probably the easiest fruit, because, unlike, say, apples or blueberries, you don't have to wash them first -- and they're easy to peel and shove into one's gaping maw. They're almost as easy as granola bars. This is important, because I'm lazy.

But it's that very ease that would make a banana bar, in reality, not a viable enterprise. We can eat them at home. Even the making of banana bread (which I think is actually bald cake; see also "carrot cake") is relatively simple. Not that I've ever done it. Every time bananas sit on the counter at my house too long, my housemate slaps them into the fridge to make banana bread with. She then proceeds to never make banana bread.

Still, there are two banana markets left untapped here in Charlottesville: wine and beer.

As I've noted before, there's plenty of wine and beer here. But not banana wine,

which is actually a thing, or banana beer,

if you can deal with the inevitable accusations of cultural appropriation.

Those articles I just linked are a bit light on details, I know, but you're a smart monkey. You'll figure it out.

I will, however, take this opportunity to do my wine vs. beer rant.

At their most basic level, beer is a fermented beverage made from grain, while wine is a fermented beverage made from fruit. As with many things, though, the definition from there gets as fuzzy as a monkey's back.

As I've noted repeatedly, I'm a fan (and a snob) of both, though given a choice, I'll usually lean in the direction of beer. But I tend to lean in all kinds of directions after I've had a few, so really, I'm not picky about wine vs. beer, only about the particular wine or beer. And I'm also technically-oriented, having achieved a degree in engineering, so this fuzziness bothers me. Allow me to explain.

Cider is also a fermented beverage made from fruit (usually apple or pear), though it's not marketed as wine, but usually alongside beer. For instance, it's found amongst the tap selections at the drafthouse cinema, and in the beer section at grocery stores around here. And yet it's not called wine or beer; it's called cider.

Additionally, you'll sometimes find a delicious and dangerous product called "barleywine." Barleywine is beer; it just has a higher ABV than is commonly found in beer, because, I suppose, wine generally has a higher alcohol content than beer. And yet many beers, usually Belgians or those called "Imperial," also have a higher ABV than ordinary beers, usually in the 8-12% range.

You could make the distinction that beer is fizzy, while wine isn't... but there exist exceptions to that as well, such as champagne. One could also make an argument involving sugar quantity, but there exist sweet beers and dry wines; the fermentation process works only on sugar, so the starches in grain (or potato or plantains) must first be converted to sugar, which is chemistry so basic that even your saliva does it (not that this is a recommended method of commercial production of beer). And sometimes you get residual sugars. Sometimes a lot, as with port wine, or sour beer.

As if the matter weren't complicated enough, there's also sake, which is made from rice. Rice is a grain, not a fruit. But when describing sake to an English-speaking person, it's generally called "rice wine." Sake is usually marketed like wine, not like beer. And it's not like rice beers don't exist. Most of them suck monkey ass, but they exist. The big, brightly-colored cases of macrobrewery product you find at convenience stores, for example, are often rice-based. In the case (other definition) of rice product, as with barleywine, it's largely a matter of ethanol content and the process they use.

All of which is to say that a monkey could, in theory, sell both banana wine and banana beer in a banana bar. And be functionally alliterate.

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May 25, 2022 at 12:01am

#1032826

Later

Today's article is five years old. Given the subject matter, it seems appropriate.

Why some people are always running late
It’s not always rudeness or scatter-brained behaviour – it can be something much deeper, writes Laura Clarke.

I thought I might have linked this one before, but I couldn't find it in a search. I've been at this for a long time and I have a shit memory.

We all know that person: there’s the child minder who is always late, the colleague who misses every deadline, even if just by a few hours, the friend you must tell to arrive 30 minutes earlier than she needs to for your lunch reservation.

30 minutes? Amateur. I dated a woman who had to be asked to show up two hours early. Even then, she was often late for the actual time. Hell, one time we left for a trip 28 hours after we were supposed to. She called to change plane reservations (this was effectively pre-internet) three times.

We didn't date very long. Bad enough my first wife was two hours late to our wedding. She had an excuse, at least (illness).

A look into the psychology of lateness offers a glimpse into a mind that that may be malfunctioning.

Seems to be a lot of that going around these days.

Perceptions of unpunctual people are almost always negative — even if misguided.

They should be negative. However, I'll tentatively accept the article's assertion that it's not always the reasons we think.

Some excuses, particularly for acute lateness, are fairly universally accepted —an accident or illness, for example. But others aren’t so easy to swallow. Some late people will pass it off as a symptom of being big-thinking and concerned with loftier matters than time-keeping, as an endearing quirk, a mark of doing one’s best work under pressure, or having the body clock of a night owl rather than a lark.

Okay, go right to hell with all those, especially that last bit. Maybe it's why you're late for work -- I almost always was, and for that reason -- but it's definitely not an excuse to miss your 8pm dinner reservation.

Being consistently late might not be your fault. It could be your type. The punctually-challenged often share personality characteristics such as optimism, low levels of self-control, anxiety, or a penchant for thrill-seeking, experts say. Personality differences could also dictate how we experience the passing of time.

Well, we can get all philosophical about whether those things are your fault or not, delving into questions of free will, but either way, it's still your responsibility. It's like... maybe you have the kind of personality that makes you love driving fast. I can understand that. But it's still your responsibility to pay the inevitable speeding ticket.

In 2001, Jeff Conte, a psychology professor at San Diego State University ran a study in which he separated participants into Type A people (ambitious, competitive) and Type B (creative, reflective, explorative). He asked them to judge, without clocks, how long it took for one minute to elapse. Type A people felt a minute had gone by when roughly 58 seconds had passed. Type B participants felt a minute had gone by after 77 seconds.

Leaving aside for the moment my skepticism about Type A and Type B, how many people did he study? Were they all undergrads? Did they control for people on the autism spectrum? What was the spread (I highly doubt every single participant had exactly 58 or 77 seconds; there had to have been some overlap)? Was the study replicated? The link from the article isn't much help.

Late people often have a “bizarre compulsion to defeat themselves,” wrote self-proclaimed late person and TED speaker Tim Urban in 2015.

Hey, I have one of those, but I'm not a late person. Sure, I'll procrastinate stuff, but when it comes to meeting up with other people, I'm on time. Usually.

He gave these poor souls a name: CLIPs, Chronically Late Insane People.

You go to hell with that acronym, too. It's demeaning to people with actual mental illness.

And depression often comes with low energy, making mustering the motivation to get a move on all the harder.

I can relate to that, as well, but when I'm depressed, I'm more inclined to just blow something off rather than be late for it.

For those left waiting, there is hope. You, too, can dictate what you’re willing to put up with.

“Instead of getting angry or upset, you can take a stand and set boundaries,” she says. “Talk about what you will do if the other person isn’t on time.” For instance, tell your late friend you’ll go into the movie without them if they’re more than ten minutes late.

That's way too generous. I'm not going to miss one second of the previews. You get there on time or early, or I watch the movie without you.

In summary, the article might have some good points. I don't know. But perhaps it will help someone. I especially liked the part about the rest of us not putting up with other peoples' lateness.

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May 24, 2022 at 12:03am

#1032786

Sam: I Am

Just having a bit of fun today.

The Mysterious Jewish Roots of Yosemite Sam
Yo, Semites: Was the gunslinging, rabbit-hating Yosemite Sam Jewish all along? We spoke with the creator’s family to learn the truth

The article riffs on a certain former president's mispronunciation of Yosemite, but I'd be more interested in knowing if Porky Pig was Jewish. Yes, I know pigs ain't kosher. But as far as I know, Porky never ate pork, so... hm.

In one corner of Jew Twitter, Trump’s fuck-up also prompted an unexpected revelation about a 75-year-old cartoon character: Yosemite Sam. Yes, the belligerent, rabbit-hating, Bugs Bunny-antagonizing cowboy from Looney Tunes. Was he in fact… Jewish?

Twitter is nevertheless still a craphole.

"It being a strange world, Yosemite Sam is actually Jewish. He bore more than a passing resemblance to his creator, Isadore Freleng, and his full name is given in one episode as Samuel Rosenbaum."

Shouldn't be that strange. Jews are everywhere. There's probably one sneaking up behind you right now.

Later, by phone, Beck elaborated. “He’s a Western-bad-guy type. And we don’t associate Jews with that, I don’t think,” Beck says. “Bugs himself might have some Jewish tendencies, with Mel Blanc as his voice and a certain New York speech pattern.”

Oh? We doing stereotypes now?

According to Shaw, her father created Yosemite Sam in 1945 because he felt Bugs Bunny needed a stronger adversary than the dim-witted Elmer Fudd.

Dim-witted or not, he was brilliant in What's Opera Doc.

Freleng was also known to hide the occasional Jewish pun in his work, such as a 1954 cartoon titled Muzzle Tough (say it out loud).

The Warner Bros. cartoons had the best puns, period.

Speaking of, there’s the distinct possibility that Goofy is Jewish, having been developed by pro-labor Jewish cartoonist Art Babbitt, who helped lead a strike of lower-paid Disney workers.

Look, no. Warners: Jewish. Disney: Waspish. The Mouse and the Rabbit have battled since the dawn of time, and will be rivals until its end.

Anyway, in case it's not clear (sometimes I wonder these days), none of this is meant to be insulting to anyone or any group. These are cartoon characters we're talking about. Like I said, just a bit of fun.

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May 23, 2022 at 12:02am

#1032742

Annoying Things

For "Invalid Item"

The most annoying thing about your town/area

Of course there are no annoying things about where I live. Everyone is happy, nothing is inconvenient, and the sun is always shining.

I can hear your "Yeah, right" from here.

As I've noted before, when it's not freezing (defined by me as 55F or below) outside, I like to sit on my deck. I paid a lot of money for that thing and by Marduk's manhood, I'm going to use it.

This is normally quite pleasant. Songbirds are tweeting (and not complaining about Elon Musk), bees are buzzing, owls are hooting (yes, yes, I did my Duolingo lessons; shut up) and crickets are cricketing. Right now, the leaves are lush and green, and blocking the view of the backyard neighbors' houses.

Yes, very pleasant, except during the day and at night.

During the day, everyone gets their yard work done. This wouldn't be so bad if everyone did it at the same time. But no; that would be too kind. The neighbor mows his lawn. Then, when that's finally done, the other neighbors mow their lawn. After that one's finished, one of the people behind me mows their lawn. And then another. And then another.

There's no respite in the non-grass-growing seasons, either. If it's not lawnmowers, it's jet-engine-powered snowblowers or leaf blowers. And sometimes chainsaws. One time, the people two doors down had their ancient elm tree cut down, one of only two in the neighborhood. That took all day so it wouldn't fall on someone's house. And it was loud. On the plus side, I now own the only remaining elm around. One of these days I'm going to have to get it removed, too, and as loudly as possible, because even elms die at some point. I'm hoping to hire an artist to turn the stump into a throne where I can sit, with a beer and a cigar, and survey what's most definitely not my domain.

And then, at night? You can hear further at night for some reason. Probably because hardly anyone mows their lawn after dark. I can hear a passing train right now, and that's nearly a mile away. Well, honestly, that doesn't bother me much; I spent my childhood near railroad tracks, and the rumble and horn are kind of soothing. So that's not really an annoyance, but it does tell me that pretty much anything within a mile is going to reach my eardrums. Like sirens and semis on the interstate. Parties to which I'm not invited. Domestic disputes. Gunshots. Okay, the gunshots are pretty rare, but this is still America.

And also the nightly muscle car race. For some reason, that's still a thing. When electric cars started becoming mainstream, I rejoiced because I thought it signaled the end of the muffler-less disturbance of the peace. But no. People started complaining that you couldn't hear them coming, so they made them purposely louder, thus negating 3/4 of the purpose of having an electric car. Instead of, you know, learning to not walk in the middle of the goddamned street.

Not to mention the sirens. There's almost always a siren somewhere. Especially after the gunshots.

But all those aural annoyances are actually minor compared to the biggest annoying thing about living in Charlottesville:

This town is infested with douchebags.

It's not just the fashion, either; it's the attitude. Entitled, demanding, uncool. This is primarily evident while driving, but I also derive vast amusement from lurking on the local Nextdoor app. Like, for instance, people complaining about neighbors doing loud yard work. Or the latest, some guy complaining about always backing out of his blind driveway into traffic. I mean... have you tried backing into the driveway? Or putting up one of those convex mirrors? Or both? Come on. Or maybe taking out your muffler so they can hear you coming.

My town has not yet instituted a plastic bag ban. I hope they don't; I use those things for trash, and without plastic grocery bags, I'll have to actually purchase small plastic trash bags, thus imposing the same environmental impact but at greater cost to myself. Bans are well-meaning, I'll grant that, but like most of the bullshit people do in response to pollution or climate change or whatever, they don't do a damn thing. Remember when everyone was trying to ban plastic straws? It's like that. Rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg. Anyway, the point is, if they do start to discuss one, I have this fantasy about showing up at City Hall with a prepared speech about banning douchebags instead.

Won't happen. Too lazy. But I can make jokes about it.

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May 22, 2022 at 12:10am

#1032703

Speculations

Sigh. Here we go again.

There Used to Be Aliens in Our Galaxy, but They Killed Themselves Off
ETs have a thing for self-annihilation.

No. Just... no. That shit makes it sound like an established fact, which it very definitely is not. It does, however, appeal to the cognitive biases of many people, so of course people (other than me) nod sagely and go "Yep, exactly as I thought. And we will, too."

To be clear: There is not one shred of credible evidence that there is, or was, or will be, other technologically proficient civilizations in the galaxy. Speculating that there could have been is fine. Boldly declaring in a clickbait headline that there were is egregious pandering.

In a new study, researchers suggest the answer to the Fermi paradox could be pretty bleak: Maybe all the intelligent civilizations have annihilated themselves. Jeez, 2020, that’s a little on the nose.

Oh yeah, the article is from 2020, which I suppose partially explains the pessimism.

And sure, "maybe" all the intelligent civilizations (please do me the courtesy of sparing us any snark about how we're not intelligent either, hurr durr) have annihilated themselves. Maybe they never existed in the first place. Maybe they ascended to a higher plane of being. Maybe they visited Earth in the past and are now thought of as gods. Maybe they take joy rides in our atmosphere just to fuck with Navy pilots.

Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.

I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but the Fermi paradox isn't a paradox.

This is the Fermi paradox stated at its most succinct: The universe is unfathomably gigantic, but so far, we’ve never seen any sign that there’s intelligent life anywhere else.

Let's change "intelligent" to "technological," okay? It avoids a joke that was funny once, when Monty Python made it, and it better describes what we're actually looking for Out There. For instance, there are several other species on Earth -- macaques, corvids, cetaceans, felines -- who demonstrate what we call intelligence without displaying the slightest tendency to go and build spaceships or Dyson spheres. We'd never see signs of alien crows or dolphins on planets thousands of light-years away, because they'd be happily hanging out in their evolutionary niches, just like ours do, without sending radio signals or forcing their sun to become a message generator. Or whatever.

In short, there is not a single element in the process of evolution that requires a species to build rockets. For all we know, the chance of it could have been one in a trillion. One in a trillion trillion. One in a googolplex. We don't know because we have no baseline for it, only one data point -- us -- and the persistent gut feeling that we built rockets and we can't be all that special.

Once you've won the lottery, the chance of having won the lottery is unity. The chances of winning the lottery are irrelevant at that point, except as a way to contemplate just how lucky you got.

Why aren’t they sending telescope satellites through our part of space? And how can it be that out of all the planets and systems we’ve peeked into so far, we’ve seen nothing?

There are as many individual theories as there are theorists, and these run a huge gamut.

These aren't theories. These aren't even hypotheses. These are speculations. Which, again, is fine, but let's not pretend that we know anything about extraterrestrial life other than we don't know anything about it.

They could even be extinct. In fact, the research includes parameters for extinction and the idea of “self annihilation,” a probability that could be extraordinarily high.

Or it could be extraordinarily low. Come ON.

Here's another thing to consider: we only came about because of unique characteristics of Earth's history. No life-ending catastrophes. Some pretty big ones, sure, but, for instance, the dinosaur-killer paved the way for the rise of mammals and birds (which are descended from some dinosaurs), but, for example, we weren't fried by a nearby supernova, pushed into interstellar space, or swallowed up by a rogue Jupiter-class planet.

Any of these things could have happened, and certainly did happen to other planets in the galaxy. That, we know for as close to a fact as we'll ever get. And any of them could stop right in its tracks any nascent technology-using beings. No need to invoke self-annihilation when we live in a dangerous universe that's actively trying to kill us.

Invoking self-annihilation is just playing to the fears and fever dreams of the readers. Again, could it happen? Sure. I'd postulate -- speculate, that is -- that if there is another tech civilization in the galaxy (I'm leaving out the rest of the universe here because it's big, far away, and long ago), that only they would have the ability to self-annihilate. Dolphins don't look to be on the verge of causing the Aporpoiselypse (okay, that's a stretch, I admit it), and ravens seem to be content with messing with our heads rather than murdering us or themselves.

In other words, I suggest that technology is a prerequisite for deliberate self-annihilation, but we have no data on how likely it is.

“Since we cannot preclude the high possibility of annihilation, [this result] suggests that most of the potential complex life within the Galaxy may still be very young,” the scientists explain. That means there could be a proliferation, but it’s of other civilizations that can’t push out into the galaxy yet—just like us.

Translation: we don't know shit, but we're gonna speculate anyway.

And just to reiterate, nothing about evolution requires the emergence of a species with technological capabilities. I have no doubt we'll find "life" elsewhere. Just not, you know, Klingons or Vulcans.

So. Anyway. I know I've ranted about this sort of shit before, but it's one of my prime annoyances, so you get to hear about it again. And probably will also in the future.

3 Like • Comment

May 21, 2022 at 12:02am

#1032660

Sermon on the Mound

Hey, this time it's not a war.

Well... kind of not a war.

On This Day
21-May-1988
Sermon on the Mound

When most people think of the 1980s, they think of the movies, music and hairstyles of the era. And generally, they mock these things, forgetting that, 40 years from now, our movies, music and hairstyles will be mocked.

To be fair, today's music sucks almost as bad as it did in the 80s. Oh, there are (and were) exceptions, but for the most part, the 80s were a musical wasteland for me, broken up only by the presence of three great Springsteen albums, Pat Benatar, the continued existence of Rush, and the debut of Melissa Etheridge.

But I digress. That's what most people think about when they encounter something about the 80s. Me? I mostly remember the Axis of Evil, which was centered around Reagan and Thatcher, the ascendance of whom proved to me that this world was too wicked for me to ever be responsible for bringing a child into.

Periodically, someone will bring up the idea that women should run the world, that they'd do a better job of it. I reply with "Margaret Thatcher." At which point they shout, "SHE DOESN'T COUNT."

Now, I generally try to avoid the Big Taboos in here: politics, religion, and sex; and today's anniversary contains all of these things. Well, okay, maybe not sex. Unless you're into that sort of thing, which, hey, you do you. As with religion and politics.

In the address, Thatcher offered a theological justification for her ideas on capitalism and the market economy.

You know what's interesting about theology? You can use it to justify anything. During the time when slavery was a thing here in the US, the pro-slavery people used religion to justify their ownership of people

, and abolitionists used religion to fight against it.

Who was right? Obviously the latter, but it wasn't a religious victory.

What people think happens is: they follow their religion and their ideals spring from that. Given, however, that the same religion (and I'm talking about pretty much any of them here) can provoke such vastly opposing ideals, it seems to me that, instead, people come to some conclusion and then reverse-engineer their religion to support it. So you get, for example, what we have here in the US: different Christian denominations preaching opposing things, like "poverty is a virtue" and "prosperity is a virtue."

That particular dichotomy echoes some of the stuff Thatcher said in her address.

As the link above doesn't contain the actual text of her speech, here it is.

The UK is, of course, a completely different country from (they would say "to") the US. We made sure of that back in the 18th century. They're explicitly a theocracy; we are not (though there's a strong effort to make us into one). And yet, I often note parallels. When they lean right, we lean right. When they lean left, we lean left. When we have high unemployment, they tend to have high unemployment, and the reverse. We may be two countries separated by an ocean and a common language, but for whatever reason, our fates are linked. I'm not implying any directional causation here, only correlation.

Which is one reason I find it interesting that some of the stuff Thatcher said in her speech on this day in 1988 is still echoing down the corridors of time.

We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. "If a man will not work he shall not eat" wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians.

This particular quote stood out to me as, perhaps, a reason why the speech was mocked as the Sermon on the Mound. In the actual Sermon on the Mount, as recounted in the NT, Jesus is reported to have said: “Why take ye thought for clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”

As an outsider to both religion and UK politics, these statements strike me as incompatible. Oh, sure, you can do mental gymnastics to attempt to reconcile them -- see my above comment about theology -- but the Paul quote seems to be a straightforward call for toxic productivity, while the Jesus quote encourages slacking off.

Again, as an outsider, the tension between Jesus and Paul seems to me to be the fundamental cognitive dissonance of Christianity.

Personally, I'm on Jesus' side on this issue.

To assert absolute moral values is not to claim perfection for ourselves. No true Christian could do that.

I don't know if this is irony or not: there is a logical fallacy called the No True Scotsman Fallacy. It goes something like this:

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."
Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge."
Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

So there was Thatcher, addressing a church in Scotland, explicitly invoking the No True Scotsman fallacy.

I'm gonna go ahead and call that irony.

When Abraham Lincoln spoke in his famous Gettysburg speech of 1863 of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people", he gave the world a neat definition of democracy which has since been widely and enthusiastically adopted. But what he enunciated as a form of government was not in itself especially Christian, for nowhere in the Bible is the word democracy mentioned.

1) I'm using this quote as justification for ragging on the Sermon on the Mound. If Thatcher can quote an American, then by Bast's breasts, an American can quote Thatcher.

2) Nowhere in the Bible is pedophilia (UK: paedophilia) mentioned, and yet we have laws against that. For example.

3) Of course Lincoln wasn't espousing Christianity. We, unlike the UK, are not a Christian country -- despite efforts from the modern-day Axis of Evil. Lincoln's relationship with religion was, from what I've seen, complicated.

A friend sent me a photo the other day. Without context, at first it was a little hard to figure out, but it finally clicked for me. The photo showed a statue of Thatcher, which for whatever reason was surrounded by a security fence. As I'm painfully aware of here in Charlottesville, statues are an endangered species these days; statues of terrible people, even moreso. I wasn't aware that their impending extinction carried over across the pond, but see above about how we tend to move in parallel. But you could still see the image of the Iron Bitch (probably bronze in this case) looming above the fence.

Outside the fence, some bloke was sitting at a table selling chicken eggs.

To paraphrase Chris Rock, I'm not saying that egging a statue of Thatcher, or selling the means to do so in front of the statue, is right... but I understand. Maggie, you wanted an unregulated, free market economy? Well, there it sits.

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May 20, 2022 at 12:01am

#1032613

Nerdy Words

Just a grab bag of vocabulary today.

Do you know what a quincunx is? Here are 15 of the most unusual words in the English dictionary

I did, in fact, know what a quincunx is, but since most people don't and it sounds like the quest objective in a sorcerous pornography holodeck game program, I never use the word.

It's kind of like why no one ever uses the word "weenus" to describe the loose skin on your elbow. Which is what it is.

Here at stylist.co.uk, we like to consider ourselves wordsmiths.

Just because you're sitting in a garage doesn't mean you can call yourself a car.

But even so, we were stumped when it came to a list of some of the most unusual words in the English dictionary.

Really? Because some of these are fairly common, at least in the US.

As usual, you'll have to go to the link to see all the words. I'll just highlight a few.

Flabbergast

Verb: Surprise someone greatly.

I've only ever seen this used in the passive sense: "I was flabbergasted." Another word that sounds vaguely criminal, but isn't.

Floccinaucinihilipilification

Noun: The action or habit of estimating something as worthless.

This one, along with antidisestablishmentarianism, I learned early on and memorized the spelling and pronunciation. Just because I'm a nerd.

Omnishambles

Noun: A situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations.

I don't think I've ever seen this one, but it strikes me as being very pleasantly British. Though it could be applied to either of our governments.

Penumbra

Noun: The partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object.

Oh, for shit's sake. How is this one in any way obscure or unusual? Sure, it's not an everyday word like "drink" or "intricate," but I think I first encountered it in a children's astronomy book in relation to lunar eclipses.

Anyway, no, I don't expect highbrow literature from Stylist. It's not, after all, Cracked. But I'm a sucker for an interesting word list, or at least a list of interesting words, so here you go.

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May 19, 2022 at 12:01am

#1032584

One Great Thing

"Invalid Item"

prompt today.

The biggest plus for living in your town/area

It's not Cleveland.

Seriously, though, I've already covered this: the proliferation of breweries both in and around town. I've mentioned several of the more urban ones, but there are just as many outside town.

But it's not just beer. No, lest anyone start to wonder if I can only think about One Thing, nothing could be further from the truth.

For example, we also have, right here in town, one of the few sake breweries in the US. While it's not the best sake, it's ours.

There are also several cideries in the area, making delicious beverage from apples and pears.

In addition, there's the wineries.

Those aren't technically in town, either, but the surrounding area is home to a large number of vineyards. As I mentioned before, it was Jefferson's idea to plant some French vines in the area, as he figured the climate was somewhat similar to parts of France. The attempt wasn't very successful.

But science advanced over 200 years, and in the 1970s, on a nearby farm dominated by the ruins of a house also designed by Jefferson, an oenologist figured out the trick to producing relatively large quantities of delicious spoiled grape juice. That vineyard is still around. I got married there once. I don't know why, but they shared their secret with other vineyards. If you've ever wondered about the explosion of wineries over the past 40 years when you're driving through unlikely places (like Indiana or New Jersey), well, you have Barboursville to thank for that.

One time, I was in California, a place much better known for its wines. Whilst sampling some good ones, I was talking to the owner (it was a small place) and told him I was from Virginia. He scoffed at the idea of Virginia wine. I of course took it poorly. The next time I was there, I brought with me a bottle of Viogner, one of the grapes that do really well around here, to give to him.

Look, I'm not saying we're as good as France or California, or even a good Argentinian Merlot or an Australian Shiraz, but our vineyards don't suck and, you know... shop local.

We're also home to Trump Vineyards, about which the less said the better. Naturally, it's the one wine I won't drink.

I can't end this without also discussing distilleries.

Our neighbors in Kentucky and Tennessee get all the publicity when it comes to distilled spirits (primarily bourbon and rye). And for the most part, it's well-deserved. But recently, we've become home to several small distilleries, including Vitae in town, and Silverback out in the country. Decent product from both of them.

Now, plenty of locations have a good selection of fine fermented and distilled beverages, but the particular combination here makes the town a great place to live.

So you see, I don't just think about One Thing.

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May 18, 2022 at 12:02am

#1032550

Little Water

First of all, I want to thank everyone involved in this year's Quill awards: nominators, judges, and espeically Jayne

for selecting this blog once again. Also congrats to all the other Quill nominees and winners. I'm grateful. But I'm also pissed off, because that means I have to keep up the quality and avoid slacking off, which violates my ethical principles.

That said, today's link doesn't require a lot of brainpower. In fact, the less, the better.

Why Is Minneapolis-based Tattersall Distilling making vodka for Arby’s?
The fast food chain is releasing an “extremely limited” line of fry-flavored vodkas, and it tapped two Minneapolis companies to help.

I'm sure you'd expect me, a soi-disant connoisseur (goddammit, French lessons) of quality adult beverage, to have Opinions on this. After all, I've come down strongly against Chicago "pizza," Cincinnatti "chili," and several other abominations of the Midwest. And, well, I do have opinions, but it's more complicated than that.

Arby’s really is releasing two variations of fry-flavored vodka, and two Minneapolis liquor companies are helping with the rollout.

Hurk.

Arby’s picked Minneapolis-based Tattersall Distilling to develop the liquor and Surdyk’s to distribute it.

I've only been to Minneapolis once, and I focused on beer; I'd never heard of Tattersall. Some of their stuff

looks quite good. They even have an Aquavit, which is rare in the US, and is an example of yet another name for a distilled spirit that roughly translates to "water of life." Appropriately.

Slated to be available exclusively online starting Nov. 18, the vodka will come in two flavors: curly fry and crinkle fry. And yes, there’s a difference between the two, said Kreidler. Both are potato vodkas, but the crinkle fries are flavored with Kosher salt and sugar, while the curly fries are flavored with cayenne, paprika, onion, and black pepper, he said.

I have a pepper vodka in my stash. Ghost pepper. I keep meaning to make Bloody Marys with it.

Incidentally, there's a persistent misconception that all vodka (which is not "life water" but just "little water") is potato vodka. It's not. You can make vodka from just about anything you can distill: yeast eats sugar, and it's basic chemistry to convert starches into sugars. The whole point of vodka is to distill it so that the taste of the original grain is barely noticeable, if at all.

But then they keep adding flavors to the stuff, like vanilla or chocolate or, as I noted above, ghost pepper. A lot of people like it, as is evidenced by the fact that they keep selling it. For me, the jury's still out.

And yet potato is really the only choice for something like this.

Since the announcement on Tuesday, the response from consumers has been varied. On Instagram, one user decried the vodkas as “heinous swill.” Others accused Tattersall of being a “sell-out.” But there were plenty of social media users who seemed excited at the prospect of fry-flavored liquor.

Well, they got people talking about it and forming opinions before even trying the vodka. Mission accomplished.

“You really can’t claim to be ‘craft’ and then attach yourself to a massive fast food chain,” Keller says. “That doesn’t exactly present well to an existing audience. … Consumer culture sees right through that stuff.”

Yeah, that's Gatekeeping 101.

Now, this article was from last November. I haven't looked into it since then. As it was intended as a limited release, it's probably a -- pun intended, of course -- flash in the pan.

That's okay; I have no burning desire to sample it. And yeah, I do think it sounds like an abomination, but I don't give a shit about the corporate connection. Also, if it sounds good to you, and you can find some? Try it. If it doesn't? Don't drink it.

Just... if someone tries to make Big Mac flavored vodka, don't tell me; I don't want to know.

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May 17, 2022 at 12:01am

#1032516

Industrious

"Invalid Item"

The industry is/was your town/area noted for?

Brains.

Also, tourism.

Those two industries are incompatible.

As I noted a couple of weeks ago in "Charlottesville"

, this town probably started as a rest area. Not a destination, but a place to spend the night and drink while on the way from an actual place to another actual place. Tourists still come and go.

As for "brains," I'm making a pun. A lame pun, but still a pun.

These days, people only care about college for two things: 1) job preparation and 2) sportsball. But in the good old days, a college -- or, in this case, a university, the distinction between which is still a bit hazy to me -- was a place to expand one's mind. After UVA was founded in the early 1800s, Charlottesville became more of a destination. Now, instead of tourists coming and going, students came for four or more years (or in the case of Poe, one semester) before leaving.

Me, I came and stayed. I just like it here.

Now, I'm not saying university makes a person smarter. More knowledgeable isn't the same thing as smarter. It's the difference between being able to win a trivia contest, and developing a Grand Unified Field Theory or whatever. But one of the original purposes of a university was to expose a person to a wider range of culture, knowledge and experience than they'd have gotten in one farm or town.

Times change, and thanks to faster transportation and the internet, you can get that bit anywhere. Not that either invention is without its downsides. Now, like I said, people seem to only do higher education for vocational training (I'm guilty of that myself) and sportsball. And maybe partying, which we were known for in the days before they foolishly raised the drinking age to 21.

In any case, as I noted before, UVA is the largest employer in town, so it's the "industry" that drives our economy. But it's not only the college; there's a hospital affiliated with it. As with any hospital, opinions vary on it, but I consider them world-class. (They certainly do charge world-class fees. Or, rather, America-class, because we have to pay for that shit ourselves). In particular, there are only three places I'd want to go for neurological problems: Mayo, Johns Hopkins, and UVA. One of these is two miles from my house.

It's where they flew Superman to when he broke his neck.

Hence, "brains."

As with most college towns, there are certainly other big businesses here as well, though we don't have much of the hot, sexy tech industry. Which suits me just fine; the last thing we need is a SpaceX launch facility or an Amazon whorehouse. There used to be a clothing factory here, and there are some defense-related employers as well, making us a target. And the usual assortment of retail outlets, including at least one that's unique to us. But it wouldn't be Charlottesville without UVA.

And purveyors of fine fermented and distilled beverages.

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May 16, 2022 at 12:05am

#1032463

A Total Eclipse of the Moon

It is a night of a lunar eclipse. The actual full moonination (I just made that up) occurs at 12:14 am (yes, I keep track of these things), which would be when the lunar orb is fully within the shadow of the Earth. That puts it way high up in the sky, to use a technical phrase from astronomy -- perfect for viewing. Usually, during a lunar eclipse, the moon takes on a deep red glow, the reflected light of every sunset and sunrise on our planet simultaneously. It's all really very cosmic.

It's not all that rare; a lunar eclipse happens every few years. I'd say "once in a blue moon," but that would only make the confusion surrounding the definition of a blue moon that much worse. I've ranted about that before. I'll rant about it again. But not today. Common or not, I like to look at these things, especially now since it's the first one since I got new eyeballs.

Naturally, the sky where I am is completely covered by a thick blanket of clouds.

I should probably be more frustrated by this than I actually am, but -- though I hate it when someone goes "well, it could be worse" -- it could be worse. I got the news yesterday (Sunday) that my last remaining aunt, who had a stroke back in February, died over the weekend. She was in her 90s, so it's not like it was totally unexpected or anything, but still sad.

My cousin told me the funeral would be on Wednesday. I went online and started looking for near-last-minute transportation, because I still don't have a car. "Oh, you have to travel in two days? You must be desperate. Here, let us give you the highest price we possibly can." Usually I take a train to NYC, because it's a lot less stressful even if it takes longer. But the trains were booked solid. Still, one cool thing about our little airport here in Charlottesville is that they have daily nonstop flights to La Guardia. That's flights, plural. No puddle-jumping to IAD and getting drunk in the airport bar while waiting for your connection, and lots of options to choose from -- all remarkably pricey on short notice.

Right after I booked the ticket, he called to inform me that, well, no, the funeral would be held in two weeks instead. On Memorial Day weekend.

To his credit, he offered to reimburse me for canceling my really very goddamned expensive booked flight. I mean, seriously, I've flown to Vegas for less. Shit, I've flown to bloody England for less, but that was over a decade ago so maybe it doesn't count. It's pretty close to what I paid for a trip to goddamned Maui.

Problem is -- setting aside for the moment the absolute joy that traveling on Memorial Day weekend is -- I just can't go that weekend. My housemate has her own family plans, and has had them for some time. We have pets. Finding a holiday weekend cat-sitter on short notice is harder than watching an eclipse through the clouds, and I'm not leaving the cats alone.

So it looks like I'll miss the funeral. Hopefully I can take the trip sometime in June or July, go visit my cousin, see the grave where she'll be buried with my mom, her other sister, her brother, and her parents.

Still mostly cloudy here, though I just looked up and saw a single star. It looks like Mars but it's in the wrong place, almost directly overhead. I don't think it's Antares, either; that should be closer to the moon. I can't really tell what it is, because I don't see any other stars to get my bearings.

The whole neighborhood is dark. I think everyone's trying to look at the sky.

Ah. The clouds parted, briefly, and I got a glimpse of the blood-red moon.

Mission accomplished.

Oh, incidentally, the airline completely refunded my ticket price. If I were a total asshole, I'd tell him it was nonrefundable and collect the money, but I'm only a partial asshole.

I'm not entirely in the shadow, you see. Or, well, technically, right now I am, but at least I'm looking at the stars.

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May 15, 2022 at 12:23am

#1032420

Waters of Life

I might have overindulged earlier, which is why I'm running a little late today. Just as well that this one doesn't require a lot of brain power, because I'm pretty short on that right now.

No Longer Ignored, Mumbai’s Ornate Drinking Fountains Are Bubbling Back to Life

I simply found this story interesting. It's related to civil engineering, my profession, but even without that I just think it's cool.

“While studying these fountains early on, I realized that they were unique, but neglected and not really spoken of,” he says. “The city seemed to have forgotten them.” It pained him when he read about the demolition of pyaaus, or water fountains, and made it his mission to protect as many as possible.

While the person quoted here, Rahul Chemburkar, is an architect and not a civil engineer, the professions are related. Architects get to be more artistic, though.

Water supply (along with waste management) is one of the most important aspects of being able to live in cities.

“It is our moral duty to protect this part of the city’s heritage,” he says. “And if we could revive this idea [of public drinking fountains], it would be in contrast to the plastic bottles we drink from.”

Access to clean water is a basic human need. It's harder in cities. What I like about this article is that in Mumbai, it's more than just a public works project; it's part of the city's character.

This is where you'll have to click on the link to actually see pictures and drawings of the fountains in question. They are marvels of civic art.

The Keshavji Nayak pyaau, inaugurated in 1876, looks nothing like a public drinking fountain—it resembles a pavilion or shrine, with red sandstone pilasters, a cupola covered in carved peacocks, and statues of bulls at the entrance, a feature seen in many Hindu temples.

For instance, there's a pretty cool before-and-after pic of that one.

Beyond restoration, Chemburkar conducts frequent walks and lectures, via the Mumbai Pyaau Project, and sketches postcards of the fountains. I went on a walk last March, before the pandemic, and, along with architecture students, tourists, curious locals, learned about structures that I would have never noticed. The walk also nudged the group to contemplate today’s water-supply challenges.

And of course, there's a lot more to water access than just having fountains available. Just ask the Southwest US right now. But I can't be arsed to get into the politics of it in my current condition, so I'll just leave this here as something cool to share.

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