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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| Etymology is something of an interest of mine, combining history and language studies... and maybe a bit of mob psychology in the mix. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50042/whats-real-origin-ok What's the Real Origin of "OK"? Yes, this is from 2013. So what? It's not like language is going out of style anytime soon. By Arika Okrent Oh, I see what you did there, OK-Rent. "OK" is the all-purpose American expression that became an all-purpose English expression that became an all-purpose expression in dozens of other languages. Still not as versatile as "fuck," but, OK. There may be more stories about the origin of "OK" than there are uses for it Just as intriguing for me as etymology is folk etymology; that is, the stories we tell ourselves about the origins of words or expressions. Some of these are just blatantly wrong, such as the idea that the monosyllabic vulgarity I mentioned above originally came from the acronym "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" (now immortalized as the title of a Van Halen album) or "Fornicating Under Consent of the King," each of which expressions contains entirely too much Latin for to be taken seriously - but people still believe one or the other. Or, one time, I used the phrase "rule of thumb" around an angry woman, who proceeded to chide me for using an expression that "came from an ancient rule about only being able to beat one's wife with a stick no bigger than your thumb." Which is patent nonsense, but OK. No point in arguing with people like that; they're not going to change their minds. Point is, even the false etymologies tell us something about human nature and what we're inclined to believe. The truth about OK, as Allan Metcalf, the author of OK: The Improbable Story of America's Greatest Word, puts it, is that it was "born as a lame joke perpetrated by a newspaper editor in 1839." Lest anyone still be laboring under the misapprehension that comedy isn't meaningful. It wasn't as strange as it might seem for the author to coin OK as an abbreviation for "all correct." There was a fashion then for playful abbreviations like i.s.b.d (it shall be done), r.t.b.s (remains to be seen), and s.p. (small potatoes). They were the early ancestors of OMG, LOL, and tl;dr. And we thought the military went overboard with its acronyms. OK got lucky by hitting the contentious presidential election jackpot. During the 1840 election the "oll korrect" OK merged with Martin van Buren's nickname, Old Kinderhook, when some van Buren supporters formed the O.K. Club. This process, of a thought taking on a life of its own, is the sort of thing that Dawkins meant when he coined the word "meme," not captioned cat photos. Ironically, such a shift in definition is itself the hallmark of a meme. Now, you might ask yourself, "How do we know this is true and not the other origin stories?" But that strays perilously close to "How do we know anything at all?" I find epistemology to be a fine, upstanding word, but not something I'd like to argue about. But, as Metcalf says, its ultimate success may have depended on "the almost universal amnesia about the true origins of OK that took place early in the twentieth century. And that's the fascinating part to me - to trace how these things develop over time. Sometimes we don't know and have to guess, but even the guesses can shed light on meaning. I'm OK with that. |
| Running a little late today thanks to my good buddy Al Q. Hall. So this one's gonna be short. It's also very obviously an ad for the author's book, but hey, that's okay; they're up front about it this time, and I don't begrudge another writer the opportunity to promote their book, as long as it's not a stealth ad. https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2018/12/14/think-better/ How to Think Better Periodically, someone comes along and says, proudly, something like "I specialize in thinking outside the box." Here's the thing: First learn to think, period. Imagine if you could take a pill that would double your intelligence. What would that feel like? LSD, very likely. Not that I have any experience with that. Writing your thoughts is the key to better thinking. Duh. Cognitive scientists believe that working memory is one of the major components of intelligence. Working memory is like the RAM for your mind. It consists of all the things you’re keeping in mind simultaneously. If working memory is key to intelligence, than I'm dumb as a rock. People who can hold more numbers in their heads, have higher working memories and are often more intelligent generally. Correlation? Causation? Who cares? Are you struggling with an important problem in life or work? Your first instinct should be to get a piece of paper and start writing it down. Jot down all the elements of the problem, including all your different ideas for a solution. Who uses ancient technology anymore? One of my most popular studying tactics was the Feynman Technique. This technique boils down to using writing to make it easier to understand hard problems in math, science and other subjects. No snark here; Feynman was a legit genius. Still, that doesn't mean we'll be geniuses if we emulate him. Without writing, it isn’t simply that I would have tons of unrecorded ideas, bumping around in my skull, but that those ideas wouldn’t exist. They are created by the act of writing, much more so than they are being recorded. I feel like this is dead obvious, but maybe not to someone who's not a writer. I could go into another discussion of how language is a compression algorithm, but I'm going to need to drink a lot of water, take some Advil, and veg out by bingeing Season 2 of Altered Carbon on Netflix. In other words, the opposite of thinking. |
| First, let me set the mood here. Got that going? Good. Now a few words about The Wizard of Oz. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190808-the-subversive-messages-hidden-in-the-... The subversive messages hidden in The Wizard of Oz It’s easy to mistake the 1939 classic as traditional family entertainment – but 80 years on from its release, the musical is more radical and surreal than ever, writes Nicholas Barber. (Article is dated six months ago, near the actual 80 year anniversary) In December 1937, Walt Disney Productions released its first feature-length cartoon, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It went on to be cinema’s biggest hit of 1938, a success that not only encouraged Disney to make other fairy-tale cartoons for decades to come, but also encouraged another studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to try its own fantasy musical about an orphaned girl and a wicked witch: The Wizard of Oz. 80 years on, Disney has clearly won that particular war. Only now they're making fairy tales about superheroes and Jedi. Whatever works. The pig-tailed Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) is so wholesome, the Harburg and Arlen songs are so delightful, and the Technicolor adventures are so exciting that it’s still easy to mistake The Wizard of Oz for traditional family entertainment, 80 years on from its release in August 1939. But it upends the conventions of good-v-evil storytelling in ways that would have had Walt Disney fuming. Much has been written about the symbolism inherent in Oz. I won't belabor the point here, but there's definitely a darkness to it. The article skips the symbolism, too, opting instead to look at the movie through the lens of world events at the time, as well as the things we've experienced and learned since. The message is that people will march behind any authority figure who makes a splash, however undeserving they may be. It’s a subversive message in 2019, and it was even more pointed in 1939, when fascist dictators were stomping across Europe. Or, perhaps, haven't quite learned. It’s significant, too, that the Emerald City of Oz isn’t the turreted faux-medieval Ruritania where Snow White lives, nor is it the Istanbul-ish collection of domes and spires drawn by WW Denslow in the original book’s illustrations. Instead, it is a modernist mass of neon-striped skyscrapers – and, like almost everything else in the land of Oz, it is blatantly artificial. Yeah, that's not just an artifact of the limited capabilities of special effects in 1939. A lot of it was deliberate. A couple of years back, someone decided that it would be a good idea to update Oz (the book and its sequels) into a series called Emerald City. It, too, was a reflection of its time, our time, dealing with modern issues of feminism, gender, and culture clashes, especially the one between science and religion. Critics were less than thrilled. Critics aren't always right, though; in my own opinion, the series started out very strong, but devolved into chaos. I maintain it's worth watching, though it was cancelled after only one season. Notably, the showrunners knew about and exploited the popular connection between Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/pink-floyd-dark-side-wizard-of-oz/ It's important, I think, to experience entertainment in the context of its time. A lot of the songs from the late 60s and early 70s, for example, are impenetrable if you don't know about the Vietnam War. But we tend to ignore history, or, worse, forget about it, so the occasional article like this one helps us to keep things in perspective. |
| What... is "art?" https://www.cracked.com/pictofacts-1570-dumb-things-people-misunderstand-about-f... Dumb Things People Misunderstand About Famous Works Of Art We all know insufferable people who claim to understand Art with a capital A, and who deliver condescending lectures to the rest of us. But the thing is, sometimes the thing people commonly believe about famous art stuff is objectively wrong. Nothing profound, deep or intellectually challenging today. Just a fun Cracked link. Also, not much to quote, but I'll share my own thoughts about these. Unfortunately, to understand what I'm saying, you might need to actually click on the link (open it in a new window so you can switch back and forth if you want). If you can't be arsed (or you don't want to open a link that contains a few fine-art boobies), just give this one a miss. I won't mind. Hell, I won't even know. Also, while Cracked links have thus far been eternal, with the departure of David Wong, who knows how long the site will last? Check these out while you can. For anyone unfamiliar with Cracked, they have user-generated content from time to time, usually in the form of a Photoshop or caption contest related to a certain theme. This is one of the latter. 30. Yeah, see, the thing about Art is that you can't really control how people use it, copyright issues notwithstanding (memes tend to fall under parody/fair use, but for fuck's sake this isn't legal advice). Witness the chick who did the surreal painting of a pear with a mouth.  29. I say that painting is hanging upside-down. How could one ever tell? 28. Damn. There goes another cherished misconception. 27. I wonder if Theo knew how to pronounce his surname. We certainly can't agree on it. 26. So that's how it is in their family. This makes the Rocky Horror parody even more amusing. 25. Pretty sure that doesn't improve anything. 24. Da Vinci: pioneer of gender studies. 23. Right, because Camembert cheese reminds me of time. As an aside, I own a functioning Melting Clock. Well, it's functioning when I bother to stick batteries in the thing. 22. Probably his neighbor's much larger penis. 21. Thus inspiring fetish furniture for the rest of time. 20. "But the art form was driven by religion rather than juvenile horniness." Hey, it's Rome; why not both? 19. And this is why no one appreciates art. 18. Nope. Definitely aliens. I could go into a discussion of how the modern obsession with aliens is a tech-era upgrade of the older obsession with angels, but a) it would take too long and b) I'm pretty sure I've done it elsewhere. 17. Well, you can see how well that worked out. 16. Actually knew that. 15. Maybe he saw in his mind the pronunciation of his surname, and it made him insane? 14. Why No One Appreciates Art: The Sequel. 13. Picasso was a massive horndog. 12. "Serene moment of life?" That painting always filled me with existential dread, much moreso than Munch's "The Scream," but I would never have figured out that meaning. 11. Either way, I don't get it. 10. Why No One Appreciates Art: Everyone's a Critic. 9. Well, at least they died doing what they loved. Each other. 8. Oh, sure, that's obvious. NOT. 7. Hey, whatever happened to the little girl statue someone put in front of the bull? Oh, someone moved it , thus changing its meaning because art depends on context.6. No wonder Charles X is in a wheelchair. 5. You could say it was all a *puts on sunglasses* varnishing act. 4. Personally, I always imagined that statue on a porcelain throne, because I'm actually 12. 3. At least the original one doesn't include Jesus. 2. But WHY? 1. If you scream too long into the abyss, the abyss screams also into you. I'll just wrap this up by saying I didn't exactly fact-check any of these. They could be utter bullshit. But at least they're amusing. |
| Worth reading if you want a decent takedown of "lifehacks." Or even if you don't. Especially if you don't. https://medium.com/personal-growth/the-problem-with-hack-culture-b0ddf43784e9 The Problem with ‘Hack’ Culture Most of it is complete, utter bullshit I mean, really, it's right there in the subhead. Venture down the self-help aisle of any bookstore and you’ll see it littered with titles about hacks, quick fixes, burning fat, and accessing mystical sounding theta brainwaves. Lifehack: Don't browse the self-help aisle. Better yet, if you know there's something you want to improve, go to Amazon, find appropriate books and read the reviews. Yeah, yeah, I know, support your local bookstore and all that. But don't feed their "self-help" beast. But the internet age has ushered in a whole new era: The maddening proliferation of hope — clouded in broscience. "Broscience." I'm not sure I like that. But it's apt. Use polyphasic sleep to hack your energy levels. That one might work if, like me, you're naturally polyphasic, and can adjust your schedule accordingly. Then again, it might not. The problem with all of these grand promises? The vast majority of them are bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit wrapped in complex sounding broscience. Sturgeon's Law again. 90% of all published works are crap. Now here's the part that addresses us as writers. But the reality is that the onus shouldn’t be on the consumer of information; it should be on the writer, speaker, or influencer who has the power to make a difference. When you have a platform, you have a responsibility. The downside of free speech is that everyone can exercise it. Wait, that's the upside. No, the actual downside is that it requires discerning consumers of said speech, which is difficult if you don't even know what to watch out for. I'll mention a few keywords to watch out for, apart from "hack:" cleanse, homeopathic, natural, ancient. I'm sure you can think of more. For too long now, we’ve focused on the details, the finishing touches, the small things that may or may not work: Why am I concerned with whether or not I put cream or butter in my coffee but OK with binge drinking at the bar a few times a month? Because I don't drink coffee but I do drink beer? Oh, wait, the author apparently thinks binge drinking is bad. Never mind. In our diets, we go nuts over whether 80 percent of calories should be carbs or fat, all the while overlooking that a lot of what we eat — both carbs and fat — comes wrapped in plastic and bears little resemblance to anything found in nature. I keep seeing that the true enemy is "processed" or "overprocessed" foods, but I haven't found a good definition for those, yet. I mean, technically, cooking is a process, and - raw-food-diet bullshit aside - cooking is what makes a lot of food more nutritious and digestible. Potatoes, for example. It's probably what allowed our ancestors to evolve these great big brains that most of us don't use. We are seeking the silver bullet when the reality is we need to zoom out and nail the basics before we even consider the final 2 percent. And there it is, folks, the buried lede. It’s for these reasons that I wrote The Passion Paradox and Peak Performance. Am I a self-help guru? No way! But I do feel qualified to bring the focus back on the concepts that actually make a difference. Look, dude, I'm not saying you're wrong, or that you're right. But I'm not clicking on those book links. Isn't the major part of the problem that too many people "feel qualified" to do this or that, without being actually qualified? Also, I hate reading this far along a halfway decent article only to find that it's a commercial in disguise. Bah. So, I'm done here. I feel like he has good points, but those are somewhat muted by the fact that he's doing exactly what he's railing against. Of course, I "feel qualified" to make these assessments. |
| Language. It's ubiquitous -- you're using it right now -- and yet its origins are as mysterious as that of life, the Universe, and everything. Of course, that doesn't stop us from speculating. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/toolmaking-language-brain/56... A Sneaky Theory of Where Language Came From It might have hijacked our early ancestors’ brains. I’ve come to see Bovaird, who teaches wilderness-survival skills in western Massachusetts, because I want to better understand the latest theories on the emergence of language—particularly a new body of research arguing that if not for our hominin ancestors’ hard-earned ability to produce complex tools, language as we know it might not have evolved at all. I'm just going to throw out here the observation that when I think of "wilderness," one place that doesn't come to mind is western Massachusetts. But, okay. That's irrelevant to the discussion. I just thought it was funny. It's well-known by now that humans aren't the only species to use tools, or for that matter communicate with each other. And yet, as far as I've been able to determine, we're the only extant species that uses tools to make tools. This nesting of concepts is, in my view, essential for language as we know it today. Oren Kolodny, a biologist at Stanford University, puts the question in more scientific terms: “What kind of evolutionary pressures could have given rise to this really weird and surprising phenomenon that is so critical to the essence of being human?” And here we start to steer into my least favorite subject: evolutionary psychology. Stout found that his students’ white matter—or the neural connectivity in their brains—increased as they gained competence in flintknapping. His research suggests that producing complex tools spurred an increase in brain size and other aspects of hominin evolution, including—perhaps—the emergence of language. Yeah, put like that, we're also steering perilously close to Lamarckian evolution -- unless it's just badly phrased.When hominins like Homo ergaster and Homo erectus taught their close relatives how to make complex tools, they worked their way into an ever more specialized cultural niche, with evolutionary advantage going to those individuals who were not only adept at making and using complex tools, but who were also able—at the same time—to communicate in more and more sophisticated ways. Which puts us back on secure Darwinian footing. Rudimentary language, which evolved in the context of toolmaking and teaching, was ultimately able to break away from its immediate contexts—this is the hijacking part—eventually employing those original cognitive pathways for its own unique purposes. I think I see what they're getting at here. It's the development of the metaphorical aspect of language, an idea I find fascinating. Basically, at some point, we developed the capacity to relate something to something else that's superficially unrelated. For instance, you might count your sheep and find that there are 13 of them. And you might count the number of trees in your immediate vicinity and also get the number 13. The cognitive leap is to make 13 a separate concept - and suddenly, there can be 13 of almost anything that's countable. Or, if numbers somehow instill a feeling of deep dread, one might notice that the caudal appendage of a cat is similar to the caudal appendage of a dog, and rather than having separate words for the two anatomical protuberances, one might allow the word "tail" to do double duty - which can then be extended to describe what sticks out of the hind end of almost any animal that has one. These are concepts we take for granted, but they represent massive cognitive leaps. The article goes on to describe some pushback that this hypothesis has gotten, which is good -- though the article is clearly biased to the hypothesis. I'm not sure this particular article proves or disproves anything. As I always say when I'm not quite sure whether I like a beer or not, "further research is necessary." Scientifically, the question is, okay, they've made the hypothesis of the connection between complex tool-making and language. What predictions does this make, and how can we test the predictions? Until more study is done, it remains just an idea. It's entirely possible, for instance, that other forces led to both the development of complex tools and the development of complex language; correlation doesn't necessarily prove causation, as is the case in every discipline. Still, interesting enough for me to read and share the idea. After all, that's what language is for. |
| Every once in a while I get lazy. Okay, you got me - I'm always lazy. But today, very little commentary is needed. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/may/13/so-you-want-to-be-a-writer-colum-m... So you want to be a writer? Essential tips for aspiring novelists How to write a killer opening line. Why Google is not research. When to rip it up and start again. Whatever you do, just write! Since you're here reading this, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're a writer. No one really knows what they're doing, and it's a lifelong learning process, so it doesn't hurt to go back to basics - if, indeed, these are basics. There are no rules. Or if there are any rules, they are only there to be broken. Embrace these contradictions. You must be prepared to hold two or more opposing ideas in the palms of your hands at the same time. That's actually good advice for a lot of things. While people who embrace contradictions are slammed as "hypocrites," the fact is we're all hypocrites. Being able to have two opposing viewpoints is a hallmark of humanity, not a condemnation of it. Don’t write what you know, write towards what you want to know. I always say "Don't write what you know; know what you write." (The above quote contains a comma splice, which breaks the rules, but hey, this author claims there are no rules. Fine.) Anyway, this amounts to the same thing. Writing a character into being is like meeting someone you want to fall in love with. Eh. Maybe. I'd add this to the section: just as you have to embrace your contradictory nature, characters have to have internal contradictions, too. Or they're boring. The article touches on this with "Complicate them. Conflict them." Try not to use dialogue to convey information, or at least a slab of obvious information. There is only one way to convey information: put it in the writing. One subset of this is to provide exposition. Another subset is to have characters explain things. Neither is always right. But there is such a thing as too much information. In any case, as with all writing advice, take it or leave it. I just thought this particular article, ancient though it is (2017), was particularly thorough. Unlike this blog entry. |
| I try to stay away from overly political issues here, but this one affects all of us here in the US. Other countries, here's your chance to pile on and laugh at us. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/nov/14/health-insurance-medical-bankrup... 'I live on the street now': how Americans fall into medical bankruptcy Having health insurance is often not enough to save Americans from massive debts when serious illness strikes “I paid my $300 copay. After the surgery, I started receiving all these invoices and came to find out the only thing covered was my bed because the hospital was out of network,” said LeClair. “My bills were hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I had no choice but to file bankruptcy.” One of the biggest issues I had to face upon early retirement was health care. Or, to be precise, how to pay for it; the nearest hospital is less than two miles from me, and it's one of the best. Fortunately, my ex and I parted on good terms, and we stayed legally married for several years specifically so I could stay on her health insurance (she worked in a lab associated with said hospital, so there was no "in-network" question). A good thing, too, because it was during this period that I had a heart attack. I don't remember what the total pre-insurance cost of the ER, treatment, and subsequent hospital stay was, exactly, but there were six numbers before the decimal point. The two after the decimal point were irrelevant. Nor do I remember how much I had to pay out of pocket, because it wasn't a hell of a lot. When we finalized the divorce, I was able to continue through COBRA, to the tune of about $550 a month. When he lost his job due to the prolonged hospital stay and leg amputation, his employer offered Cobra, a health insurance program for employees who lose their job or have a reduction in work hours, but he couldn’t afford it. I paid that premium every month, on time, but the people administering it are complete morons who, moreover, don't give a damn. And when the 18-month extension ran out, I got a notice that the insurance was cancelled, not because time ran out, but, according to their termination notice, for "non-payment." This happened in a July, and the official "non-payment" declaration meant that I couldn't sign up for Obamacare even if I tried. So there I was, "pre-existing condition" and all, screwed. When the open enrollment time rolled around - the following December - the cheapest plan I could find, the one with the highest deductible, was about $1500 a month -- and the nearby hospital, the one where all my doctors were, was, you guessed it, out of network. $1500 a month, if you're not math-inclined, is $18,000 a year, which is more than I got paid at my first full-time, salaried job. Which included health insurance as a benefit. In short, fuck that. I spent a year and a half uninsured. Not a huge deal in hindsight, because I was fortunate in that I have relatively cheap prescriptions and only three doctor visits a year, with only one of those being a specialist (cardiology). But if I'd fallen seriously ill again, I'd have been boned. It was only this past December that I found a slightly more affordable plan, with my hospital in network, though it still requires a high deductible. However, I have recurring nightmares of them deciding to simply not pay for anything that actually happens to me, like the person in the linked article: At the time, Hillman was receiving several collection notices in the mail for past hospital stays and tests amounting to several thousand dollars, often having no knowledge of the bills that health insurance didn’t cover until receiving the collection notices. So, you can pay them $800 a month, with a $7500 deductible (for those of you in civilized countries, that's the amount I have to pay out of pocket each year before insurance kicks in -- assuming of course that I get billed for that much, which, to be frank, is easy, because that's like two aspirins and an EKG) with absolutely no guarantee that insurance would actually cover something you need. “One of the biggest hurdles you face as a patient is just the sheer confusion of the process. You think you just show up and present your card, sometimes pay a copay, and that’s it. You don’t expect all these plan limitations and authorizations,” Hillman added. “What are you going to do if your authorization gets denied? You don’t really have a choice to not go get care. All these processes that are in the finest of fine print. And sometimes it feels like you are literally paying for nothing.” Oh, but I do have a choice. I can refuse treatment, and possibly die as a result. This might be difficult to implement in practice, though. If I were to collapse on a sidewalk somewhere, it's unlikely that they'll just let me croak there like I want, instead of charging me $100,000 for an ambulance ride to the ER. After all, someone might trip over my corpse and then sue... I dunno, someone. Thing is, I'd rather die rich than live poor. But I don't know how to communicate that to the paramedics. |
| Today, in Adventures in Confirmation Bias: https://hbr.org/2020/01/the-dark-side-of-self-control The Dark Side of Self-Control An ability to override short-term impulses that conflict with long-term goals is a hallmark of successful people. Okay, that's not confirmation bias; that's a tautology. When one defines "success" as "achievement of long-term goals," of course anything that delays or inhibits those long-term goals is subjectively bad. Research has shown that people with strong self-control have better health, relationships, finances, and careers. They are also less likely to have problems with overeating, overspending, smoking, alcohol or drug abuse, procrastination, and unethical behavior. Fine, but let's get to the chorus. Say it with me: Correlation is not causation. There, wasn't that easy? I don't consider myself someone with a great deal of self-control. Let's look at the Seven Deadly Sins above and see how I rank: 1) Overeating - sure, I've had problems with this. Less so now. And, granted, that's the case because I sacrifice short-term happiness in pursuit of a goal. 2) Overspending - this is ill-defined. Once basic needs - food, clothing, shelter, etc. - are taken care of, overspending can be defined as spending beyond one's means. But means differ, and I can't always fault someone for overspending on basic needs alone. As for where I fall on this scale, well, that depends on what's meant by "means." My income is highly variable, but I watch every penny. Usually I watch them fly away. But I don't hold any interest-charging debts. 3) Smoking - tough call. I smoke cigars, yes, but I quit cigarettes cold turkey a long, long time ago, and didn't use any kind of tobacco for many years. 4) Alcohol abuse - some would call any amount of drinking "abuse." I have a brand to maintain, so I'm not going to go into detail, but I don't drink nearly as much as I sometimes project. Again, this is partly because I have a goal, and alcohol is high-calorie. I don't consider the occasional drink, and the even rarer bender, to be "abuse." I'm sure other people can argue that. I don't really care; I like beer. 5) Drug abuse - I'm just going to go ahead and assume that means "drugs other than alcohol" since the legal drug is separated out. I can't say I've never smoked weed, but that's all I've done, and then only rarely, and I have little interest in mind-altering substances other than booze. "Gateway drug," my fat nerdy ass. 6) Procrastination - Okay, guilty as charged. 7) Unethical behavior - I'm not sure I'm the best judge of my own decisions here. This category is simply too broad. I can say that I'm concerned about ethics and look at everything I do, not only for how it affects me, but also how it affects the people around me. Obviously, I'm not perfect, but I also don't work for a telemarketer or try to cheat people out of their money. Enough of that, then. Let's look at the dark side of trying to do everything "right." Self-control can restrict emotional experiences. One of the reasons why people high in self-control resist temptations is that they experience less tempting desires. This tracks with other articles I've read. Who is more praiseworthy: someone who can walk past a box of donuts without ever wanting one, or someone who experiences temptation every time, but never gives in to it? I don't have a good answer to that. I have also asked a similar question about antisocial behavior, say, stealing. Person A walks into a store, picks up what they need, pays, and walks out. Person B is constantly thinking about how they might shoplift something, but never does; also pays and walks out. Both of them have avoided stealing anything, but Person B is the one with actual self-control. Self-control may lead to long-term regret. When people reflect on their lives, they tend to regret exerting too much self-control (e.g., choosing work over fun) and missing out on the pleasures of life. I retired early because I realized that, should I make it to anything resembling a "deathbed" rather than getting hit by a bus or shot by a mass murderer, I knew I wouldn't be thinking, "man, you know what? I really should have worked more." Self-control can lead to increased workload. People tend to rely on others with high self-control, and this might make the latter feel burdened. Not much to say about this, really. Too much hypothesizing. Self-control can be used for ill. Self-controlled people seem to be more successful in whatever their endeavors are, including antisocial ones. Which kind of contradicts the whole "people with less self-control are more unethical" assertion above. Self-control isn’t for everyone. For some people, exerting self-control can feel alienating — as if they are required to suppress their true selves. Seems self-evident to me. Self-control can lead to bias. Lay people and policy makers often see complex social problems (overeating, overspending, smoking, alcohol or drug abuse, criminality, etc.) as primarily self-control problems. However, this emphasis on self-control might obscure the social, economic, or political sources of these problems. For example, the obesity epidemic is often seen as exclusively a self-control problem. Yet, we know that the roots of this problem also lie in factors such as reduced prices of processed foods, larger serving sizes, or increased sedentary nature of work and leisure. This one-sided emphasis on self-control, also referred to as “puritanical bias,” reflects an ideology that puts the blame for wrongdoing entirely on the individual and neglects the impact of broader societal factors. I'm quoting more of this one because this is where we get to my Adventures in Confirmation Bias. I've railed against puritanical judgements in here before, and I'm just glad to see I'm not the only one. Again, I don't use illegal drugs, but I can kind of understand why some people do; external factors can overwhelm one's own self-interest (in terms of not going to jail, short and long-term health effects, etc.) So I'm not entirely sure what the takeaway from this is. Partly it's because it's kinda fuzzy; "research has shown" isn't exactly precise science, and without knowing what research, how it was conducted, who funded it, the confidence levels, and other factors, it's basically junk science. I guess the bottom line, for me, is something that I've already internalized: that self-control is often overrated. But again, that's where the confirmation bias comes in. Still, I thought it's worth sharing just to present the viewpoint that everything has its pros and cons. |
| This one has been on my list for a while, but it's appropriate that it came up by random selection now, as I spent a few hours alone on the road today. https://www.afar.com/magazine/a-love-letter-to-driving-alone A Love Letter to Driving Alone Embarking on a road trip by yourself is solo travel taken to another level. As I've mentioned before, I've taken numerous solo road trips: at least three halfway across the country, and at least four all the way (I live pretty close to the Atlantic Ocean). I might have lost track. And technically one of the halfway trips was with friends, but I did most of the driving. And I like it. When I was a kid, I had a picture in my mind of how my future adult self would look— a snapshot that never moved or changed. In it, I am driving a Jeep Wrangler with a removable top through a barren desert, Thelma and Louise–style, with a floppy-tongued dog riding shotgun as my partner in crime. Except for the dog thing, Jamie Feldmar would be my spirit animal. Not that there's anything wrong with dogs; I just don't need the hassle of animal companions on a road trip. But I have done fairly well for myself in the driving-alone-through-epic-scenery department. In fact, it’s one of my preferred ways to travel, ideally with the music cranked up, in a high-torque car, and several hours of daylight until my next destination. I am, in that moment, completely in control, cruising through remote and sometimes forbidding landscapes, marveling at the natural world and knowing that I—and I alone—get to have this moment. I get it, Jamie. Driving alone is not always smooth sailing. One night, in the foggy Pyrenees in southern France, my GPS died halfway to my farm stay, and I drove in a panicked circle across a cornfield as night fell One thing I haven't done is drive in a foreign country. Well, Canada, but that hardly counts. But I never, never, never drive any appreciable distance without at least two GPS backups, one of them being a paper map. I am aware that it is a great luxury to be able to do this. I am able, most of the time, to capably drive across these stunning surroundings without fear, though many of my female counterparts in other parts of the world would not. It is not clear to me what gender Jamie is. With that name, it could be any. The "Thelma and Louise" reference makes me think one thing, but "female counterparts" seems to imply the other. Of course, it doesn't matter in terms of the feelings described in this (very short) article, but since they brought up the concept of privilege, there is a distinction. To outward appearances, I'm a standard-issue American white guy. Right now my hair is fairly long (The Dude abides, after all), but I tend to keep it short on road trips. Why? There are still places in the US where Bob Seger songs and Dennis Hopper movies still ring true. Long-haired hippie-freak Waltz is in more danger than short-haired gender-conforming Waltz would be. Obviously, no road trip is risk-free; driving is one of the most risky things you can do, at least among the list of things that aren't overtly stupid like playing Russian Roulette. I think the number I heard quoted was something like a 1 in 800 chance of becoming an ex-human in any given year, which is pretty good odds compared to the one-in-six chance of kicking it in the Russian Roulette game, but lousy compared to, say, air travel or staying at home and quivering in fear (the latter also being more risky than air travel). And the risk of something bad but nonlethal happening, such as being robbed or getting a flat tire in the middle of nowhere on a dark and stormy night, is also nonzero. But why marginally increase those odds by presenting myself as anything but a culture-conforming normal person? Now, my perspective is, obviously, that of a standard-issue American white guy, and I can't presume to know what it might be like to be a chick, or an African-American, or a Hispanic person driving through southern Texas -- but the statistics imply that I have less to worry about. I can mosey into a Montana biker bar -- and I have -- without anyone batting an eye. There are few places that I don't feel, if not welcome, at least tolerated for the money I'm presumably about to spend. So yeah, it is a great luxury to be able to do these things. I don't know if "without fear" is purely accurate, but I feel like I've at least made a risk assessment and determined that it's worth it. There's always risk; as I noted above, there's risk to just staying home. If I have an actual fear, though, it's that I'll crack my skull in the bathtub or something and my cat-chewn corpse won't be found for weeks. Because then I died doing something stupid instead of on an adventure, however tame that adventure is. I always wonder, especially as I’m navigating some mildly treacherous path carved into the side of a mountain, how this road was built. Who drafted this route? Who blasted the raw earth and smoothed the asphalt? How long did it take? How did they know it would work? I have to say, as a civil engineer, I appreciate these questions. Many people take roads for granted - and that's largely by design. We should be able to take them for granted; it means they're operating as designed. But most roads, especially the larger ones, had some engineering input, if not design from the ground up, so to speak. You only notice that, though, when something goes wrong: a flood indicates a failure of the drainage system, or rough asphalt may indicate a poorly thought out surfacing mixture. Or, you know, if a bridge that we don't have the money to maintain falls into the Mississippi. On one of my epic road trips, I swung by the Hoover Dam. There's a plaque on it, right in the middle, on the state line (or at least close enough for government work): A MODERN CIVIL ENGINEERING WONDER OF THE UNITED STATES –– ONE OF SEVEN SELECTED BY THE AMERICAN SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS • 1955 • ← NEVADA • ARIZONA → (source) And when you're standing on that amazing hunk of concrete, it's absolutely obvious that there were civil engineers who sweated over every last aspect of its creation, not to mention the hundreds of construction workers involved. But I think I'd add the US road system to my list of Great Achievements of Civil Engineering. |
| Can't be arsed to snark on anyone's internet article today. I had a decent birthday, as these things go -- at least, I didn't spend it in a hospital bed, and any birthday I don't spend recovering from a heart attack and the treatment thereof is, by my definition, a good birthday. My default garb is, and has been for several years, an outfit that includes black jeans. I'm too lazy to even go to actual stores for these; I pick them up from Amazon. Over the past year, I've ordered four pairs. Each one has been one size smaller in the waist than the last. The latest pair arrived today, and it is still too big. So I call that a win. That said, it being my birthday, I might have overindulged a tad. My friend and I went to a local Japanese restaurant, where we shared a bottle of excellent sake, and thence to a nearby brewpub. (I know, I know, quelle surprise). Tomorrow, I'll probably be back to my usual self. Today, I couldn't even find a song to reflect my mood. Well, that's fine. We make our own songs, I suppose, even if we can't share them with anyone. |
| Tangentially related to yesterday's entry, I suppose... http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181021-japans-unusual-way-to-view-the-world Japan’s Unusual Way to View the World Wabi-sabi offers a refuge from the modern world's obsession with perfection, and accepts imperfections as all the more meaningful – and, in their own way, beautiful. Plato was a Westerner. From him we got a lot of good ideas (and some bad ones), but the one most relevant here is the "Platonic ideal," which has nothing to do with Platonic relationships and only a little bit to do with the Platonic solids, or whether Plato should be a planet or not. A key part of the Japanese Aesthetic – the ancient ideals that still govern the norms on taste and beauty in Japan – wabi-sabi is not only untranslatable, but also considered undefinable in Japanese culture. Often muttered in moments of profound appreciation, and almost always followed by the word muri! (impossible!) when asked to expand, the phrase offers an unusual way to view the world. Unusual, I suppose, if your heritage is European (and by extension, heavily influenced by Greek philosophers). I heard once, long ago, though I can't be arsed to verify it now, that one of the southwest Indian cultures - Navajo? Anasazi? - always deliberately threw a stitch or three in their weaving to introduce deliberate imperfection. Even that, though, (if true) strikes me as a bit hubristic -- the idea being that without that deliberate goof, your blanket will be perfect. I have a suspicion that our penchant for perfection is partly a product of alliterationthe cookie-cutter sameness of consumer items in the industrial world. And yet, Japan is at least as industrialized as we are. As to why they sought imperfect, rustic pieces, Prof Otabe explained that “wabi-sabi leaves something unfinished or incomplete for the play of imagination”. This opportunity to actively engage with something considered to be wabi-sabi achieves three things: an awareness of the natural forces involved in the creation of the piece; an acceptance of the power of nature; and an abandonment of dualism – the belief that we are separate from our surroundings. Now, see, here's where something either gets lost in translation for me, or perhaps I simply have a different worldview. Consider the three goals supposedly achieved above (rule of three doesn't only apply to comedy). The first two emphasize nature as something apart and distinct from us, while the third criticizes dualism - but the problem with dualism as I see it is that it distinguishes "artificial" from "natural," as if anything we do, as products of nature, could be anything but, perforce, natural. I think of it this way: beavers, famously, build dams. Humans also build dams. While there is absolutely a difference in scale between a beaver dam and the Hoover Dam, the former is considered "natural" (if sometimes annoying) while the latter is considered "artificial." There may be a useful distinction between something, like the Eiffel Tower, made by human hands and minds, and a termite mound, made by termite... mandibles or whatever, but both are equally natural -- and few humans would argue, I think, that the termite mounds are more aesthetically pleasing. I suppose we can look at Otabe's triad and see how they fit together in a way that emphasizes the naturalness of what we homo sapiens do, but on a first reading, it seemed contradictory to me. Rather than casting nature solely as a dangerous and destructive force, it helps frame it as a source of beauty, to be appreciated on the smallest of levels. It becomes a provider of colours, designs and patterns, a source of inspiration, and a force to work alongside, rather than against. Now that's something closer to my own philosophy. As author Andrew Juniper notes in his book Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence, “It… uses the uncompromising touch of mortality to focus the mind on the exquisite transient beauty to be found in all things impermanent”. Alone, natural patterns are merely pretty, but in understanding their context as transient items that highlight our own awareness of impermanence and death, they become profound. I've said this before, but it bears repeating: many philosophies distinguish between "real" and "illusion" by claiming that what is real is the eternal, while the transitory is illusionary. I was under the impression that even Buddhism takes this point of view, but I can admit that my understanding of Buddhism is itself incomplete and imperfect. Point is, though, that I turn that around: because all of the things we can detect with our senses are ultimately transitory, and the things we detect with our senses are real, I maintain that only the ephemeral is real, while the concept of "eternity" is a mental one that is, therefore, an illusion. And by "ephemeral" I include things like the observable universe, which as far as cosmologists know right now, will eventually grind to a halt. Often associated with wabi-sabi is the art of kintsugi – a method of repairing broken pottery using gold or lacquer. The process highlights, rather than conceals, the cracks, allowing them to become a part of the piece, too. When his daughter accidentally broke some of his work, Hamana said, laughing, he decided to leave the pieces outside for a few years, allowing them to be coloured and shaped by nature. When it was repaired by a local kintsugi specialist, the different colours created a contrast so subtle, so uneven, that could never have been intentionally created. I've been intrigued by Japanese culture for as long as I can remember, but my first encounter with kintsugi was in the Amazon series The Man in the High Castle, loosely based on a Philip K. Dick novel of that name (and one of the few of his works that I didn't particularly like). In the show -- I don't remember if this was part of the book; probably not -- one Japanese character uses kintsugi as an extraordinarily effective metaphor. The pure acceptance of a fleeting beauty that would garner no more than a few photos in the West is something of an inspiration. While the appreciation may be tinged with melancholy, its only lesson is to enjoy the moments as they come, without expectations. And this is a little too close to what I'm starting to call "presentism" for my tastes. The present isn't ephemeral; it's eternal, and therefore not real to me. Besides, by the time we recognize a thing as "the present," it's already the past. There's sound scientific backing for this idea, but I'll have to tackle that another time; I've already droned on long enough -- and by the time you read this, it's my birthday. I need to start drinking or I won't be able to say I drank all day on my birthday. I haven't posted music in a couple of weeks, so here's a song that reflects today's theme. It's important to note that Leonard Cohen spent some time in Buddhist meditation; perhaps that's where he picked up the idea? The birds they sang At the break of day Start again I heard them say Don't dwell on what Has passed away Or what is yet to be Yeah the wars they will Be fought again The holy dove She will be caught again Bought and sold And bought again The dove is never free Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything) That's how the light gets in I suppose I should make a deliberate tyop in keeping with the spirit of this entry and the accompanying article (and musical selection), so there it is. I'll edit this sentence out if it turns out I've made non-deliberate typos above.  |
| Since I'm finally getting around to learning a new language - however badly at this point - language articles get noticed more and thus stuck in my Blog Fodder List. This is one of them. https://theconversation.com/language-alters-our-experience-of-time-76761 Language alters our experience of time Getting this bit out of the way first: no, time is not an illusion. But just like different people might estimate a mile differently (which is why we have measuring sticks), different people perceive the passage of time differently. Or the same person perceives it differently at different times. And, to make another analogy, I've heard Europeans complain that Americans give distances in time. Like, the nearest city might be a half hour away, or a drive across the country takes three days. So at the very minimum, I'm prepared to accept that there are cultural differences in our perception of time. My new study – which I worked on with linguist Emanuel Bylund – shows that bilinguals do indeed think about time differently, depending on the language context in which they are estimating the duration of events. Again, no real surprise. Language gives us a particular way of looking at the world, and switching languages is like switching filters on a lens. The logic in Aymara appears to be this: we can’t look into the future just like we can’t see behind us. The past is already known to us, we can see it just like anything else that appears in our field of vision, in front of us. Which is the part I find really fascinating - the perception of time there is completely turned around from what we're used to. Like living in a mirror, where left is right and right is left. A similar thing that I haven't seen too much written about is the direction of written language. Most Western scripts read from left to right, like we're doing right now. Hence we tend to order things in that direction: door number 1 is on the left, door number 2 in the middle, door number 3 on the right. To number them backwards seems at least weird, like you're about to launch a rocket via countdown. But other languages, like Hebrew, read from right to left, so I imagine they'd order things the second way naturally. There are interesting historical reasons for the differences in direction, and I suspect they both have to do with the predominance of right-handed people. If you're writing with ink on parchment, you want the wet ink to be in the clear, and not smudged by your hand as you go along - so you'd be inclined to pull your right hand to the right. Whereas if you're chiseling words on stone, and you're right-handed, you want to hold the hammer in your right hand and chisel in your left. Smudging isn't an issue, but angle might be. So, basically, left-handed people got the short end of the stick - sometimes literally. None of which explains vertical scripts very well, and I don't have much knowledge about them. Anyway, to get back to what the article is saying, I think there are a lot of unconscious biases that we have, and our perception of time might very well be entangled with our perception of language. It seems that by learning a new language, you suddenly become attuned to perceptual dimensions that you weren’t aware of before. Again, if true (I don't know enough about any other language to have personal experience with this), that's really interesting. But it also shows that bilinguals are more flexible thinkers and there is evidence to suggest that mentally going back and forth between different languages on a daily basis confers advantages on the ability to learn and multi-task, and even long term benefits for mental well-being. Which relates back to one of my reasons for deciding to learn other languages at my advanced age. I mean, I almost never do anything for just one reason, and the primary reason has to do with booze (naturally), but why not make up for the brain cells lost to said booze by making my mind more flexible? |
| Today, we learn "how to spot a bogus health fad." Sadly, "you see it on the internet" is not a complete answer, nor necessarily a factual one. Sigh. That would make life a lot easier for critical thinkers. https://www.self.com/story/spot-bogus-health-claim 8 Simple Ways to Spot a Bogus Health Fad Opinion: The plural of anecdote is not "data." By Yvette d'Entremont Hey, that looks French. I think it means "Yvette d'Entremont." In 2018 the global weight-management market was valued at $212 billion, and the wellness industry was worth a staggering $4.2 trillion in 2017. I have this vision of enterprising capitalists selling junk food to us with one hand and gym memberships with the other. Good capitalism. Bad ethics. But it might explain why there's a Krispy Kreme right across from my gym. You may be wondering: In an internet landscape offering cures of suspect origins for all that may be ailing you, is it even possible to sort out what’s real from what will inevitably just become a pile of dust-gathering items in your collection of dubious supplements and accessories? Surprisingly, yes. It's called "science." Failing that, not jumping on every promise that some random influencer makes would go a long way. 1. Does it promise too much? Ever seen a product or a diet that claims it can do everything? It won’t just make you lose a few pounds, but it’s going to clear up your acne, make your nipples perkier, and earn you thousands of dollars a week working from home in your Rainbow Cat Unicorn Underoos. Now I'm going to buy stock in the company that makes Rainbow Cat Unicorn Underoos. They can't fail. This crap is age-old. The term "snake oil" comes from the products hucksters would sell from their carriages, all of which promised everything. 2. Does it blame all your health woes on a single thing? I had a friend who's a chiropractor, and she was absolutely convinced that subluxations were the cause of all disease. 3. Is the evidence confined to anecdotes? What this section leaves out is the nonequivalence of correlation and causation. Most diseases either a) eventually kill you or b) get better. If the disease was going to do (b) anyway, it doesn't matter how many vitamin pills you took. And if it was going to do (a) anyway, then you're not around to push the "cure." See also: Steve Jobs. 4. Who’s promoting it? Don’t take this as a hard-and-fast rule that something isn’t reputable if it’s being promoted on Instagram. Nevertheless, if it's being promoted on any sort of social media, I consider it immediately suspect until proven otherwise. 5. Which scientific or medical boards or bodies have evaluated it? You know those labels that let you know, give or take, “these claims haven’t been evaluated by real doctors or scientists, may contain up to 30% unicorn dander”? I'm the first to admit that science doesn't know everything. Hell, that's the entire foundation of science: "we don't know everything, but we'll find out what we can." So not everything has been tested - nor can it legitimately be. It's possible that your grandmother's herbal remedy for whatever actually works. As we all know, aspirin started out as a natural herbal (sort of) remedy. Then it comes down to "if I use this method, am I closing off other avenues of possible relief?" 6. Are you drawn to it for reasons other than its efficacy? Like, say, desperation to find a solution? I feel for people with no recourse. Having lived through the whole Laetrile debacle (feel free to Google it if you're too young or don't remember), it's clear to me that desperate people will hare around looking for desperate measures. But sometimes, as they say, the cure is worse than the disease - though I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything worse than cancer. I understand that if you're actually dying, you'll grasp at whatever straws life, or snake oil salesmen, throw your way. The problem is that these things often substitute for actual care that could actually work. 7. Is there a way to measure evidence that the product works? If something is claiming to tinker with your health, assess the study quality (if there even was a study), and don’t let yourself be the lab rat for a product that’s probably just going to be a wallet cleanse. "Wallet cleanse" is what I'm going to call all claims of "cleanses" from now on. 8. And if it seems like bullshit but you just can’t put your finger on it, ask around. I like to think I have a pretty good bullshit detector, but I could be deluding myself. We've gotten to where we put equal stock in what some Internet huckster says as we do in what doctors say, or even get swayed more by the former. Yes, doctors are people and people are fallible, but so are "alternative medicine" promoters. Me, I don't always follow a doctor's advice, but that doesn't mean I don't respect it; it just means that I think the doctor doesn't understand my basic philosophy: that there's no point in living longer if you have to give up the things that make life worth living. So, don't believe everything you hear. More importantly, don't believe everything you think. |
| Okay, here's the thing. As I noted yesterday, I wanted to go out and get completely drunk. So I did. I started at the taphouse, sampling four different beers. Then, before I went to the movie theater, I stopped by a pizza place that also has beer. I sat at the bar and looked at the draft beer list. Some of the beers seemed interesting, so I waited. And I waited. And I waited some more. I'm used to being invisible, but I was more invisible when I weighed more. Now, there's no excuse. I think I gave them a fair chance, but no one came over to offer me beer after several minutes, so I left. The movie theater was reprising the movie "Parasite." I'd heard good things about it, so I arranged to see it. I don't know if it's because I was completely wasted, or something innate to me, but I reiterate my storytelling mantra here: Incomprehensibility is not depth. So. Because I'm drunk, I'm not in any condition to go through my extensive list of blog fodder and provide biting commentary on something to do with science, math, philosophy, or popular culture. Instead, I'm just going to post a link to a favorite blog of mine, where the author discusses what might be the oldest piece of music in history. https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/14/the-oldest-song-in-the-world... Tomorrow, I'll likely be in my right mind again. Until then, this is the best I can do. As an aside for fellow Battlestar:Galactica fans, no, this isn't "All Along The Watchtower." |
| Well, here's Valentine's Day. My plan is to spend the evening with my one true love: beer. I'll be doing this at a taphouse (or maybe two), in hopes of eavesdropping on a horrible Valentine's Day couples breakup. I'm easily amused and have a penchant for schadenfreude. Anyway, this means I can't swear I'll do my usual early-morning update tomorrow. Meanwhile, I found an interesting article about some differences between Anglic and French cultures. It also seems oddly appropriate for Valentine's Day. http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181104-why-the-french-dont-show-excitement Why the French don't show excitement Not only is ‘Je suis excité’ not the appropriate way to convey excitement in French, but there seems to be no real way to express it at all. By Emily Monaco From the name alone, I'm just going to trust her observations of the differences in cultural approaches. “You Americans,” he said, “live in the faire [to do]. The avoir [to have]. In France, we live in the être [to be].” Infinitives as cultural signposts. I like it. I knew before moving that the French word ‘excité’ was verboten. It is one of the first ‘false friends’ that a student of the language becomes aware of. Most French learners can recall the day that a classmate first uttered the phrase ‘Je suis excité’ (which literally translates as ‘I am excited’) only to have their teacher hem and haw uncomfortably before explaining that the word excité doesn’t signal emotional but rather physical excitement. A better translation of the phrase Je suis excité into English would be ‘I am aroused’. See, that's exactly the kind of thing I need to know before I attempt to ply my halting French on someone from a Francophone country. Anglophones, meanwhile, blessed with both words, are free to use ‘excited’ as we please – which we (particularly Americans) do with reckless abandon. We’re excited for our weekend plans, for the summer holiday, to get home after a long day of work and relax in front of our favourite Netflix show. I'm not sure I've ever constructed the sentence "I am excited" in casual conversation. Even in English, it leaves open the possibility of a double entendre, much like "I'm coming" or "It's not hard." With the crowd I hang out with, I'm careful not to leave myself open to that sort of thing, nor to pronounce the name of the planet that orbits between Saturn and Neptune. Some jokes are just too easy; I prefer to make people work for their puns. Sadly, this means that I have actually uttered the sentence, "I'm totally psyched." And then I wince inwardly every time. “I usually say ‘Je suis heureuse’ [‘I’m happy’] or ‘J’ai hâte de’ [‘I’m looking forward to’],” one bilingual friend said. Neither quite captures the intensity of excitement, but it seems these are the best substitutes that French has to offer. In the course of learning French so far, I've encountered a few synonyms, or apparent synonyms. For example (par exemple), "student" can be translated into French as, at a minimum, étudiant or élève (with variations for gender and number). I suspect that there's a difference, subtle or not, between the two, but I haven't figured out what it is, yet. Older student / younger student, maybe, as with the English "pupil?" Anyway, point is, the first word I learned for "happy" was content (pronounced in the French way with the swallowed 'n's). The second was heureux (f. heureuse as above). Again, I don't know what the actual difference is, but it seems to me that the french "Je suis content" expresses something more similar to the English "I am content," regardless of the overenthusiastic helpful illustrations on Duolingo. Being content isn't really the same as being happy, but then, as far as I know, the French never put "pursuit of contentedness" into the founding documents of their republique. So, what I'm getting at is, I don't know why the author left that particular synonym out of her discussion. “If you’re too happy in French, we’re kind of wondering what’s wrong with you,” he said. “But in English, that’s not true.” I have a suspicion that many French spend their ample leisure time wondering what's wrong with Anglophones in general, even while contentedly selling us their tasty cheeses and delicious wines. Indeed, those who are unable to show the proper emotional detachment within French society can even be perceived as being somehow deranged... You might say that they think they're... *puts on sunglasses* in Seine. When we were first dating, my husband used to watch me buzzing around like a busy bee, making plans for the future. He, meanwhile, was able to find not excitement, but contentment, in nearly everything. There's that word - the English version, anyway. His frequent motto, whether we were drinking rosé in the sunshine or just sitting in a park, was: “on est bien, là” – we are good, here. You know, I might just have to steal that for myself, especially when I'm three beers into a bender. Like maybe tonight. |
| Today, I'm going to talk about aliens again. If these topics seem random, that's because they are, in part. https://aeon.co/ideas/proof-of-life-how-would-we-recognise-an-alien-if-we-saw-on... Proof of life: how would we recognise an alien if we saw one? I feel compelled to point out, again, that we shouldn't conflate "alien" and "intelligent alien." To recap: I use "intelligent" to refer to a species capable of building spacecraft; by this definition, humans are intelligent. I do this to forestall jokes from smartasses like me. I make the "alien" distinction because, in the popular mind, thanks to shows like Star Trek (which, again, I love), we have this image of a hugely diverse galaxy, with different intelligent aliens on myriad planets (the fact that most of these fictional aliens resemble humans in makeup/prosthetics is a combination of limited budgets and a desire for relatability to the audience). One reason, I think, that this confusion is so widespread is that there are two ways in which we could encounter extraterrestrial life: it finds us, or we find them. In the former case, it's either in the form of fossils, spores, or whatever hitchhiking on an interstellar asteroid (such as the one astronomers detected a couple of years ago, dubbed ʻOumuamua) - or, more interestingly, actual spaceship-building intelligent ETs, which, despite years of UFO sightings and their dissemination into popular culture, have never been shown to actually exist. In the latter case, it could be we find some simple life on another planet or moon in our solar system, or see indisputable evidence through some sort of telescope (another option, physically going to another solar system to find it, is so unlikely in the near future that I'm discounting it for now). I should note here that I'm not discounting the idea that at least some of the people who claim to have encountered aliens are being truthful - in a sense. While some are clearly hoaxes, and others might be, I don't deny that some people have seen something. But just because we don't know what something is doesn't mean it's aliens; that's a hell of a leap. We know less about our own minds than we do about the composition of the rest of the universe and its natural laws; and our minds have been known to create their own realities. Anyway, back to the actual article. What would convince you that aliens existed? The question came up recently at a conference on astrobiology, held at Stanford University in California. Several ideas were tossed around – unusual gases in a planet’s atmosphere, strange heat gradients on its surface. But none felt persuasive. Finally, one scientist offered the solution: a photograph. There was some laughter and a murmur of approval from the audience of researchers: yes, a photo of an alien would be convincing evidence, the holy grail of proof that we’re not alone. I'm not sure that would convince me. After all, photographs can be faked, and the technology needed to fake them is widespread and always getting cheaper. One thing that sets life apart from nonlife is its apparent design. Living things, from the simplest bacteria to the great redwoods, have vast numbers of intricate parts working together to make the organism function. Think of your hands, heart, spleen, mitochondria, cilia, neurons, toenails – all collaborating in synchrony to help you navigate, eat, think and survive. An argument can be (and repeatedly has been) made that life can be seen as an entirety, a continuum, and by some definitions of life, the entire troposphere of our planet is alive. It has "vast numbers of intricate parts," all communicating with each other in some sense; it's robust, in that it tries to keep itself alive; and it's even trying to reproduce, by producing a species that wants to visit other planets. The article goes on to explain evolution by natural selection, a decent enough summary of the process. Are there exceptions? We can’t get complex life, even something as simple as a bacterium, without natural selection. Due to the vagaries of language, this part may be a bit confusing. Biologists differentiate between two major groups of organisms: prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Prokaryotes, like bacteria, are considered simple organisms; they don't have nuclei, and while they might thrive in a colony, they're not what we think of as multicellular organisms. Eukaryotes, by definition, have nuclear cells, though they might be unicellular (amoebae, e.g.) or multicellular (us, e.g.). I mention this because I've seen several biologists make the argument that while simple (prokaryotic) life might arise fairly often, the particular combination of factors that produce eukaryotes is probably rare and, even if it does happen, doesn't necessarily lead to spaceship-builders. In other words, if we happen to find life elsewhere (say under the surface of Mars or in the world-ocean of Jupiter's moon Europa), it's very likely it will be simple. But we won't know until we find some, which brings us back to the point of the article. Previous work in astrobiology has extrapolated from what’s happened on Earth, potentially limiting our vision to certain special features, such as DNA or carbon-based life, that won’t hold on other planets. Natural selection, on the other hand, is universal. It doesn’t depend on DNA (remember, Charles Darwin knew nothing of genes) or carbon chemistry or the presence of water. It’s incredibly simple – it just requires a few ingredients – and it’s the only way to generate life. So I also want to point out, here, that while carbon-based life is what we're used to, being us, there has been speculation about other possible chemical scaffolding upon which to build some sort of DNA analogue. None of this speculation is particularly convincing to me; carbon's nearest congener (something in the same column on the Periodic Table), silicon, just doesn't have the same capacity to form the long-chain molecules that carbon does. Which is not to say that it's impossible; I just find it extremely unlikely. It's a big universe, though, and while I won't say that "anything" is possible, we just don't know. Also, natural selection doesn't "generate" life. It propagates life. We don't know how life started on Earth (though I read an extraordinarily convincing hypothesis recently), but once it did, natural selection took over and here we are, 4 billion years later. That, by the way, is more than a quarter of the age of the entire universe. As another aside, some people like to hand-wave it by saying that life might have started on another planet and migrated here. There's no compelling evidence for this and some evidence against it; and besides, all that does is kick the can down the road. Even if life began on, say, Mars, and got here through asteroid impacts or whatever, how did it start on Mars? The photo, if and when it comes, will be something entirely exotic to the naked eye. Yes, and you'll still get a lot of people denying that it's actually life. The more exotic it is, the less likely we are to recognize it. One thing remains true, though: be it LGMs in flying saucers or bacteria in Europa's ocean, finding extraterrestrial life will be a big milestone in humanity's history of exploration and discovery. |
| Today's thing is a bit different from usual: a gender-issues retrospective from a male homo sapiens. https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/identitieswhat-are-they-good-for/articles/what... What Is It Like to Be a Man? Sometimes I just feel like a bad joke. Oh, man up. Wait, that plays right into his hands. Nevermind. I figured out long ago that there is only one way for me to avoid feeling like a bad joke. No, it is not "stop being a bad joke." That is impossible. It is "OWN the bad joke. BE the bad joke." Be the ball, Danny. A woman coworker, explaining the different ways men and women move through the world, says to me, “As a man, you never think about how much space you take up.” I nod, because I agree with the point she intends to make, but the wording of the statement is so literally false—I have fretted about the physical space I occupy for most of my clumsy, in-the-way, yo-yo dieting life—that I am still thinking about this trivial exchange hours later. Yeah. Literally false. For a long time I felt like I was too big for the world - and I'm only 5'6". “Men don’t have to think about how they look,” says another coworker, also a woman, and I nod again. Then I realize, days later, that the reason the statement is still bugging me is that I am literally never not sore from the gym, because I am so concerned with looking a certain way. Also literally false. Not only is the weight issue a pressing thing for many men, but I avoid online dating specifically because most of the women on there specify 6' or taller. I can do something about my weight, and I am. Can't do anything about my height. On the other hand, I can't say I don't have physical desires if I were to look for a partner; it's just that this one seems so arbitrary. What's height got to do with anything besides blocking the people behind you in the theater? I live out my masculinity most often as a perverse avoidance of comfort: the refusal of good clothes, moisturizer, painkillers; hard physical training, pursued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of physical pain or self-imposed discipline that I owe the universe. Lest anyone think that you can generalize about "men," this should stop that shit dead in its tracks. I believe the author believes that about himself. Fine. I'm precisely the opposite: I want comfort, and I only exercise because I have to. I do try to avoid painkillers for one simple reason: how do I know if the pain is actually gone or if it's the painkillers' effect? Pain isn't weakness or a sign of being somehow lesser; it's your body telling you something is very wrong. If you push through the pain, like coaches urge, you risk further injury. If you mask the pain and then push through it, the result can be even worse. Never had any use for moisturizer, though. (An anarchist friend of mine was going to teach me, until he left town for vague but important-sounding reasons, as one’s anarchist friends are prone to do.) See, that bit is legitimately funny. If this author nourished that side of himself, he could learn to live with being a joke by telling them. When I try to nail down what masculinity is—what imperative gives rise to all this pain seeking and stoicism, this showboating asceticism and loud silence—I come back to this: Masculinity is an abstract rage to protect. Yeah... I'm calling bullshit on that. I have to admit, as an aside, that I find it hard to see the whole "gender is a social construct" thing. I mean, yes, certain aspects of it are, in my view, but they're mostly superficial things: a particular style of haircut, wearing bigger watches (if one wears a watch at all these days), a lack of makeup. Big deal. I knew a guy who kept a Barbie doll collection, and sewed little outfits for them. I never thought of him as anything other than a man (though such a hobby is, in my view, weird for anyone of any gender, I'm in no position to call anyone out on weird hobbies). Basically, if something is a social construct, the social construct can be changed. Even if it's inherent in biology, one of the hallmarks of humankind is to try to transcend one's biology. By this I don’t mean, of course, that we should give up. Men will not stop worrying about their wives, or their husbands, or their children, or their friends and coworkers and dogs, or about the little patches of civilization to which they may feel they’ve contributed. Nor will women, or the nonbinary (a category that I sometimes think includes most of us). Which, really, is what I've been trying to say all along. We think of these gender roles, these social constructs, as binary, and, as I've noted in other places, life isn't binary; it's spectrum. There is no one who exemplifies the Platonic ideal of "man" or "woman," even if such an ideal existed. Each individual is who they are, irrespective of what roles society tries to place on them, and regardless of genetics or hormones or plumbing. One of the greatest failings of modern society, I think, is this "binary" myth. "Oh, you're single and you're not out pursuing women? You must be gay." No, I'm not gay; I'm so fucking hetero that I don't even like to see dicks in my porn. No, I just don't like to do all the work involved. Which puts me outside the current Platonic ideal of "man," which requires that I be interested in the chase and then lose interest once the woman is hooked. No, thanks; not going down that road. Point is, most of us aren't either "gay" or "straight," but somewhere in between. This is even more apparent with actual physical attributes; I mentioned height above -- while you can generally look at one person and call them "tall" and another and call them "short," the full reality of human adult height is on something of a standard bell curve (also called a Poisson distribution after the mathematician who popularized it; as I'm sure you know, "poisson" means "fish," and there are plenty of fish in the sea, of all different sizes). Even if one restricts oneself to the biological aspects, chromosomes and genitalia and the like, it's not like everyone's either this or that. Most are, probably, but there's always chimerae and intersex people and those with extra chromosomes or whatever. And everyone deserves basic human dignity and rights (at least until they prove themselves unworthy of such by their actions), regardless of what pigeonhole you or society says they belong in. Anyway, that's enough of that rant for today. I suggest reading the article; it's very well-written, even if I have my issues with it. As I'm sure some people will have issues with what my white (sort of) cis male hetero ass wrote here. That's okay; I can take criticism. I am, after all, a man. |
| Anyone ever play the game with Google Translate where you put in something in English to translate to, say, Latin - and then put in the Latin to translate back to English? The results are sometimes hilarious, and often incomprehensible. Or both. For example, I put in "These are the times that try men's souls." The Latin it returned was: "Haec tempora quaerunt animas." Okay, my Latin is rustier than an old barge, but that seems about right. But then I put "Haec tempora quaerunt animas" into the source and asked for English. I got, "This is the time to destroy." Language, as I'm rediscovering while learning French, isn't usually a one-to-one correspondence of concepts. I mean, I've known this for a long time, but there's a difference between knowing and applying. Like, it's well-known that whereas in English you might say "I'm 33 years old," in French you say something like "I have 33 years." Same idea, different modes of expression, though in that particular example it's pretty easy to tell what is meant. While comparative linguistics has been interesting to me for a long time, I've usually been too lazy to do more than scratch the surface of other languages. Still, articles like this one usually catch my eye: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200116-what-happens-when-you-have-no-word-f... What happens if you have no word for 'dinosaur' English is the world’s dominant scientific language, yet it has no word for the distinctive smell of cockroaches. What happens though, if you have no words for basic scientific terms? I'm not going to do my usual copy/paste of segments; I'd pretty much have to reformat a lot of words, and I just can't be arsed. But I do have a couple of general comments. First, comparative linguistics aside, the development of an individual language is interesting in itself. Famously, English isn't shy about borrowing words from other languages, which may be one reason it's so versatile (but also one reason why it sometimes doesn't make any objective sense). In addition to simple words, like "tattoo" (from the Samoan language, apparently), we've adapted countless terms, scientific or otherwise, from ancient languages like Latin or Greek. If a concept comes along and we don't have a word for it, chances are someone will coin something with an ancient-language base; "television," for example. And then we make it our own; in the US by saying "TV," and in England by saying "telly." Second, these concepts are coming at us fast and hard. Some inventions require their own names. Something like "starship" was easy; it compounds two simple words from English itself. But then someone invented the transistor, and, more importantly, called it the "transistor" instead of something that I can't even imagine being built up from Anglo-Saxon words. Smallswitch, maybe? But that doesn't really convey all the uses of the transistor, which also relies on other concepts the precursors of the English couldn't have known, such as electricity, electrical current, conductivity, electrical resistance, amplification, and so on. German is much better at mashing words together to make new words. Point is, to get back to what the article was saying, we invented the word "dinosaur" from ancient languages, languages without that symbol-concept, but the original meaning is largely irrelevant to what we think of when we think "dinosaur." So other languages have, at least, two options: they can just borrow the word like English might, at which point you have someone speaking, I dunno, the Navajo language and you can clearly hear the word "dinosaur;" or you can, as the article suggests, come up with an entirely new word for the concept based on words your language already has. Like I said, I find the whole thing fascinating, and I sometimes wish I had the time and energy to learn even more languages to feel for myself the baffling complexity of the human capacity to assign sound-symbols to concepts. |
| I'm starting to think Cracked has improved again. It was funny, then it kinda sucked, and now I think it's often funny once more. But it's also educational. https://www.cracked.com/article_26746_5-famous-psychological-studies-that-were-h... 5 Famous Psychological Studies (That Were Hugely Overhyped) Since this has to do with science and science reporting, I have things to say about it. We cling to certain psychological studies like they're the only mental life preservers in this great big raging ocean of crazy. Of course, they are not. There is also booze. 5. Your Answer To The Trolley Problem Has No Relation To What You'd Do In Reality The infamous Trolley Problem is a popular thought experiment in Intro to Philosophy, as well as a beloved pop culture trope. It has certainly been mined for Comedy Gold by writers for Cracked and other sites. The result found almost no correlation to what participants said they would do and what they actually did. Stop the presses! People say one thing and do another? THIS IS HUGE! Okay, but seriously, though, there are practical applications to the Trolley Problem, but they don't necessarily involve individuals. Consider an outbreak of a completely hypothetical contagious virus. This completely hypothetical virus has a fatality rate of 2%, meaning 1 person in 50 who contracts it dies. Further assume that it infects 1/10th of the world population, so it kills one person in 500 overall. These are, of course, all numbers I'm extracting from my nethers, but so are the Trolley Problem numbers. Now, some scientists invent a vaccine for Hypothetical Contagious Virus, HCV. But owing to genetic differences among individuals, the HCV vaccine is itself deadly to 1 in 50,000 people. Administering this vaccine is, consequently, a Trolley Problem - assuming you could spread it to the entire human population, you're killing 150,000 people with it. But without it, 15 million people could contract HCV and die. There might be overlap between the two groups, but it's likely that some vaccinated individuals will die who wouldn't have if they'd just contracted the virus. Overall, though, you're saving 14,850,000 lives. The Trolley Problem is, at least in part, about the ethics of action vs. inaction. The above numbers really are completely hypothetical (and in no way reflective of how pandemics or vaccines actually work), but you can apply a similar calculation to, say, the invention of self-driving cars; if 30,000 people a year die in autonomous vehicle accidents, but 40,000 a year would die in human-driven vehicle accidents, is it not better, overall, to go with robot cars? Or are we just going to focus on the lives lost and the fear of the unknown, rather than the reduction in fatalities? 4. The "Bystander Effect" Isn't The Whole Story About Kitty Genovese I've known for a long time that the Bystander Effect is completely overblown (although it did create an excellent origin story for Rorschach in the Watchmen graphic novel). So at this point, "Genovese Syndrome" should be the name for when people parrot old myths to look cynical instead of bothering to check basic facts. I can be cynical with the actual truth; I don't need myths for that. 3. Power Posing Doesn't Change Anything In Your Body Your body language says a lot about how you're feeling, which is why you don't give a big presentation while slouched over like you're four hours into a Gears Of War marathon. And supposedly, a "powerful" posture can make you powerful. Yeah... the only surprise here is that someone took this shit seriously in the first place. But while the original study found a positive correlation with power posing, later experiments didn't. In 2017 alone, 11 different experiments tried to replicate the original's results, and all of them found that power posing apparently does nothing for your body. This also speaks to that other cognitive bias we have that I can never remember the name of: we tend to believe the first thing we hear on a subject, and subsequently ignore contradictory information. This is why it's so damn hard to convince people of anything, even though it's one thing the scientific method was designed to overcome. 2. No, Your Ego Doesn't Get "Depleted" Unfortunately for fans of thinking less, psychologists tried to replicate Baumeister's results and very much could not. A previous meta-analysis was also reviewed, and the results weren't pretty there, either. The theory appears to only apply if you personally have been convinced that your willpower is a finite resource. Again, a finding that fails upon attempts at replication - and again, one that wasn't nearly as widely publicized as the original hypothesis. This is my problem with science reporting, in a nutshell. 1. Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs Needed More Real Science It's the idea that there's a logical order to human need. First you fulfill your physiological needs, like sleep, water, and pizza. Safety, like not being beaten up for your pizza, comes next. Once you're safe, you can look to fulfill your need for social belonging (getting invited to pizza parties), esteem (being lauded for bringing good pizza), and finally self-actualization (building a pizza oven and inviting people over to witness the depth of your pizza skills). Dammit, Cracked! Now I'm hungry! When research into Maslow's structure came along, it showed that humans can fulfill their needs in any order, and can feel self-actualized even when their basic needs aren't being met. Yep. I'll happily eat pizza even when sleep-deprived. Being connected to others, knowing what the hell you're doing, and feeling like you have some control over your life is the best way to happiness. Well, unless someone tries to replicate the latest data and determines that it's all bunk. Drinking beer, listening to music, and being snarky on the internet is my best way to happiness. Your mileage, as always, may vary. |
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