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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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| Couple days back, I said I linked the last David Wong Cracked article in my queue. Well, I had some other articles from that source. Plus, right after I said that, you know what happened? That's right, Cracked published another one by Wong. Well, I'll get to that one eventually. For now, what with all the discussion about whether a certain malaria treatment is or isn't effective against covfefe-19 (spoiler: it's probably not), a reminder might be in order that just because someone says something is effective doesn't mean it is. Also, anecdotes aren't proof of anything. https://www.cracked.com/article_26749_5-hip-health-trends-that-science-says-are-... 5 Hip Health Trends That Science Says Are Just Trash These days, it seems like every celebrity, fitness model, and lifestyle guru wants to let you in on a revolutionary new essential oil, supplement, or sentient water that'll fix everything wrong with your body. (And lord, there is so very much wrong with it. Who trapped you in that meat prison, and for what crime?) I'd take this opportunity to rag on Paltrow's snake oil, but other people have done that so much more effectively. I'll just stick to this article. 5. CBD Oil Isn't The Medical Wonder Sellers Are Claiming Most folks' cannabis comprehension starts and ends with THC, the compound that makes food taste better and freshman philosophy sound interesting, and which turns you into the greatest Mario Kart player of all time. I'm firmly in the "legalize it" camp. And by "legalize it," I mean treating it similarly to alcohol. This is not because I'm a stoner. I've used it, and sometimes even enjoyed it, but it's not really my thing. I'm not a stoner; I'm a drunk. People don't get this. They seem to think that if I'm pushing for legalization, that means I must want to get stoned all the time. I guess the idea that I think it's okay for other people to like something I'm not a huge fan of is alien to them, which worries me about people. Right now if you're thinking any question that starts with the words, "But what about..." feel free to bottle it up inside. Maybe take a bong hit or two to relieve the stress of doing so. The problem is that most CBD in the U.S. is consumed in the form of supplements, a market that's a few roaming covered wagons away from being the next snake oil industry. Not only do these pills often contain illegal THC runoff without disclosing it, but they also tend to house dangerously random levels of CBD potency and quantities. That said, I don't care what you call it - drug, supplement, whatever - nothing is perfectly safe, not even water. For instance, I could get liver damage from simply eating grapefruit, because of some medication I take (yes, worse than what I could get from booze). I'm all for freedom, but I also think people should know the actual risks involved before getting into something. You know what kept me from doing drugs all my life? It wasn't a "don't do drugs, drugs are bad" campaign. It was a chart in the nurse's office in elementary school that listed common illegal substances, their short-term effects (positive and negative) and their long-term effects (almost entirely negative). I don't remember everything about it but I do remember reading that list (I don't think it was meant for us kids, but I was precocious) and going, "You know what? All of those substances are extremely dangerous, except marijuana." And that, kids, is why I've only ever drank booze and smoked weed. You'll note that I said I didn't do drugs, and then I said I drank booze and smoked weed. I chose my words carefully. Anyway, I'm getting off track again. Point is, I think people need to make these decisions for themselves - with the usual "responsibility" caveat. But we can't use things responsibly if we don't know the actual facts. 4. Alkaline "Smart" Water Is No Different Than Dumb Regular Water If you know someone who's really basic, they may be interested in becoming even more basic by drinking water spiked with alkaline. Millions of health-obsessed people swear by its boosted pH levels, which lower your body's acidity, give you more energy, help you lose weight, and even fight cancer. And whatever else you want it to do, because there's no proof that alkaline water makes your body amazing besides the fact that Beyonce drinks it. Whoever convinced us that bottled water, in general, was a thing we should be consuming, was a marketing genius. Right up there with whoever invented chicken wings. "Let's take the part of the chicken that usually becomes dog food and turn it into a bar snack." I hate chicken wings. But I drink bottled water. What can I say? I like the convenience of being able to take it with me. If, you know, I ever go anywhere ever again. Still, it's water. Not some pseudoscientific nonsense. Conversely, just because it does zilch to your body doesn't mean alkaline won't affect the water it's been swirled into. Experts have warned that increased pH may scrub out many of the minerals that make regular water so good for us. But with plenty of celebrity endorsements and the promise to get thin quick, alkaline water keeps getting more and more popular. So, not just bullshit, but potentially dangerous bullshit. At least chicken wings are still chicken. 3. Activated Charcoal Toothpaste Can Be Worse Than No Toothpaste Activated charcoal sounds powerful, as if it comes from a sacred tree set ablaze by ancients druids to awaken the cleansing magic stored inside. So why not slather it directly on your teeth and let its cleaning force absorb all those coffee and cigarette stains, right? That's the logic behind activated charcoal toothpaste. But like most medicinal products boasting to be all-natural and holistically healing, this black paste has little science supporting its claims. Oddly, even though I've been exposed to the study of chemistry almost my entire life, I've never been real clear on what "activated charcoal" actually is. So finally, with this, I looked it up. Turns out it's charcoal with a greater surface area  . Charcoal in general is mostly carbon, and I'm guessing - just guessing - that the greater surface area ensures more carbon binds with whatever. Carbon binds to a lot of other elements very easily; that's why there's a whole subset of chemistry featuring carbon-based molecules.Worse, not only do the toothpaste's holistic pushers often leave out unnatural, scientifically sound fluoride, but the charcoal particles can also crawl into tiny tooth crevices, leaving users with a smile like a chimney sweep. So if you don't want any health benefits whatsoever, you don't mind black and yellow teeth, and you just can't get enough of that refreshing charcoal taste, scrub away! Yeah, when I first heard about "activated charcoal toothpaste," that's literally the first thing I thought of, so I never looked into it further. Also, fluoride is just as natural (or unnatural) as carbon. Want to convince people to stop using activated charcoal as toothpaste? Spread the word that it's a "chemical." Pedants like me will point out that everything is a chemical, but no one listens to us so you're safe. I have to admit, though, that technically and pedantically, charcoal is organic. 2. Brain Supplements Simply Do Not Work If they did, we wouldn't need articles like this, now, would we? "I'm stupid, so I'm going to take this pill." Later, "This pill didn't make me smart." Then, "So maybe I shouldn't take it. Hey, maybe it did make me smart." 1. Cryotherapy Chambers Are Nothing But Really Expensive Cold Packs The logic behind the treatment is simple. First you get put into a cryo locker that looks like a cannibal's pressure cooker, then liquid nitrogen makes the chamber colder than temperatures that naturally occur on Earth. This "hyper-cooling" purportedly sends your body into survival mode, which will then increase your fitness by hyper-oxygenating the blood so you'll have a better chance at surviving this sudden Ice Age. You have got to be fucking kidding me. I spend my life in the pursuit of not being cold. This just sounds like hell to me. I don't care if it does work; it's a ton of nope. Really, my only problem with this article is that there are only five examples. I'm sure we can all think of more. |
| I want to believe that this is true, so I'm going to accept it uncritically. https://theconversation.com/youre-never-too-old-to-become-fluent-in-a-foreign-la... You’re Never Too Old to Become Fluent in a Foreign Language Oh, wait, no, accepting things uncritically is something I strive to avoid. A range of headlines – from the BBC to the Daily Mail and The Guardian – all trumpeted the depressing message that it’s impossible to become fluent in a foreign language after around age ten. If the Daily Mail said that there's a beer shortage, I would instantly doubt the existence of shortages. And of beer. All of these reports dramatically misrepresented the findings from the study, and the message they sent is flat-out wrong. On the other hand, I trust the BBC -- and yet, few outlets get science right. So to sum up so far, there was a study on second language learning, and British news and tabloid headlines blared that one cannot become fluent in another language after age 10, but they all got the science wrong. News reporters getting science wrong? Quelle surprise! For one thing, the words “fluency” or “fluent” never even appear in the original study, published in the journal Cognition. That alone should throw the reporting into suspicion. To be fluent in another language means that you can communicate with relative ease, that is, without it being a real strain on either the speaker or the listener. There are dialects of English that I have trouble decoding, especially when spoken. One time, at a flea market in Florida, I just had to stop and gawk in awe at an exchange between two booth-tenders. I'm pretty sure they were both speaking English; at least, I made out a word or two here and there that was definitely English. It was just so rapid-fire, and with weird cadences, that I couldn't get the meaning. I don't know; maybe they were brothers with their own secret language, or something. More likely, they were speaking Floridian. But to contradict the tabloids, this article goes on to say: Learners of any age can achieve a brilliant, even nativelike, command of the vocabulary of another language, including such challenging structures as idioms or proverbs. Whew. I hate to think my French studies are going to be entirely useless. The puzzling thing about older learners – something the authors of the new study also found – is that they seem to have more problems mastering some, but not all, grammatical phenomena. I certainly have problems deciphering emoji. What is new about the Cognition study is that, by the usual standards of linguistic investigations, it uses a dataset of unprecedented size. Through an internet grammar quiz shared on social media, the authors collected almost 700,000 responses, two thirds of them from people for whom English was a second language. Oh. Yeah, I'm not sure the large data set can overcome the biases here. They found that the accuracy of the responses on the grammar quiz declined sharply for learners who began studying English after the age of 17, a long way off the age of ten, which is the age most of media reports focused on. Crap. 17, 10, all that looks the same from my perspective. I thought they meant "older" as in "decrepit." But the claim that its findings suggest that after age ten you are too old to learn a foreign language fluently is one of the worst misrepresentations of a scientific outcome that I have ever seen. Which is why all science reporting needs to be scrutinized. Of course, most of us don't have the time to fact-check every article that comes our way. I certainly don't. But if something doesn't pass the bullshit sniff test, it's not okay to go repeating it like it's gospel. You can become a perfectly fluent speaker of a foreign language at any age, and small imperfections of grammar or accent often just add to the charm. I don't know about "perfectly" fluent. As for my own case, we'll see -- I haven't yet gotten to the point where I can think in French; I still have to translate back and forth to English. I'm not sure if I can ever get there. But I'm not going to let a "you can't do it at your age" stop me. In fact, I'm just contrary enough that it might be enough to make me do it out of spite. |
| Well, this is the last David Wong article from Cracked in my queue, and one I found interesting as someone who has trouble navigating social situations that don't involve buying beer. As usual, he has insights I hadn't thought of. https://www.cracked.com/blog/15-things-socially-awkward-people-need-to-know/ 15 Things Socially Awkward People Need To Know I don't know if I'm "socially awkward" because I don't get out much to find out. 1 You Don't Know Yourself Without Constant Feedback From Others It's impossible to know what impression you're making on others without gathering a bunch of data -- seeing how people react, using them as your mirror. But to do that, I'd have to be around - ugh - people. 2. The Rules Of Human Interaction Make No Sense, And You Can't Just Intuit Them It doesn't matter how smart you are. Unless you get tons of practice being around people, you'll be shit at it. The reason for this is both obvious and largely unacknowledged: The rules of human interaction are nonsense by design, to give a leg up to people who spend a lot of time socializing. Me: The only way to win is not to play. 3. Social Anxiety Can Be (Somewhat) Healed By Socializing You have to understand that other people aren't grading your ability to avoid embarrassment. They're grading you on how well you react to embarrassing situations. But that is a learned skill, and you just have to get practice. So much makes sense now. 4. Pop Culture Is A Horrible Teacher This one hurts to even think about, because I did it myself and inflicted untold damage as a result. Sitcoms granted me a great ability to snap back at people in a way that made bystanders laugh and the target hate me forever. Yeah, it turns out that a glorious, sarcastic smackdown will win an argument in a TV show, but never, ever win one in real life. That's okay. I'm much better at snappy rejoinders online, where I can think about them before burning someone with them. 5. Simply Avoiding People Isn't An Option If you are the rebellious type and decide you'll just sit this game out, well, that's up to you. But being bad at talking to people will cost you jobs, relationships, and life opportunities from now until the grave. That's a chance I'm willing to take. Not that I have any choice. 6. If You're Never Around, People Will Invent A Fake Version Of You In Their Minds ... And you probably won't like what they come up with. Another argument for avoiding people. 7. You Will Be Assigned A Social Role, Whether You Like It Or Not You, therefore, might get the role of "nerdy punching bag" or "arrogant jerk" or "luckless loser" purely because they need that in their story. Pretty sure I'm already a negative example. 8. Your Abuse Is Their Bonding Ritual They torment you as a group activity to make themselves feel closer to each other. You're just the prop in their ceremony. Again, who needs 'em? 9. Everyone Is Playing A Character At All Times The world in general will never make sense until you truly understand this: Everyone's actions are the result, not of what they want to do, but of what persona they are trying to project to the world. I would emphasize the word "trying" there. Their decisions are ultimately the result of a bitter conflict between: A) The person they are; B) The person they want to be; C) The person they think society expects them to be. This kind of harks back to that "authenticity" entry from a while ago. 10. Everything Is A Subtle Game Of Intricate Lies So these aren't lies in the sense that they're just stating incorrect information, but they are obscuring your true feelings and intentions to make interactions more comfortable for the other person. Once again, this convoluted dance is a learned skill that requires thousands of repetitions to perfect. But just to be clear: if you don't know exactly when and how to lie, you don't know how to function as a human being. It's always bugged me that people can't be straightforward about anything, but I'm not always straightforward either, so this has the ring of truth to it as well. 11. The Ability To Spot And Call Out These Lies Is An Empty, Pointless Skill I spent years expecting everyday interactions to operate according to the rules of my robot logic, and thought I was a genius for pointing out when they didn't. Instead, it just exposed my inability to pick up subtle social cues and made me unpleasant to be around. At that point, the best-case scenario is that you parlay it into a career in comedy. And that's why the internet is an unmitigated boon to people like me. I can do comedy and never have to see the audience or have them throw rotten fruit at me. 12. If You Think Someone Is Perfectly Good Or Awful, You Simply Don't Know Them You know that thing I said earlier, about how people will just invent a character for you if you're not actually there? Well you're doing the same right back to them. The overwhelming majority of what you think you know about other humans is, in fact, just details your imagination filled in upon glimpsing their shadow. In spite of, and in direct contradiction to, what I said above, I don't dislike people. But I also know that no one is purely good or evil; we all have our high and low points. I'm okay with this, too. Which leads us to... 13. "People Are Trash" Is An Immature, Naive Worldview In my case, the biggest barrier was getting so disappointed in people when they didn't live up to my expectations that I had a "one strike and you're out" standard. Every failure was a bitter, unforgivable betrayal. It turns out that knowing how to react when real people disappoint you also takes practice. I actually think most people try to do good, at least to those they care about. Some people are simply more caring than others. 14. If Your Relationship Is 100% Free Of Friction/Conflict, It Just Means You're Not Close What we discovered in the era of social media is that loose/distant friendships are more comfortable than tight ones, in the same way that a tent is easier to construct than a house. You may not even see the problem at first -- it's got walls and a roof, right? -- but you'll see it when the storm comes. Things would be so much simpler if people would just do what I want them to. 15. No One Is Perfect At This The biggest mistake the socially awkward make is in the assumption that everyone else finds it easy, that their every offhand word or joke represents perfect intention and strategy. Being good at this means understanding that very few people are great at it, and most people are just muddling through. Sometimes there is no more powerful people skill than the ability to just let shit slide. I've gone through periods where I was convinced that everyone else had their shit figured out and they were just wondering why I didn't. I learned a long time ago that this attitude is wrong and self-absorbed. Also, I have a lot of shit figured out. I'm still going to go out of my way to avoid interpersonal drama. |
| Today is one of my High Holy days. Well... truth be told, I just found out about this important day for the first time, but it immediately went on my list of important things to commemorate, right up there with the December 5 ratification of the 21st Amendment. And it's related. The 21st, repeal of Prohibition, was passed in 1933. But before then, the legal limit for beer was raised from 0.5% to 3.2% ABV , so this is a beer-specific observance. Plus, as the link above can attest (insofar as one can trust Wikipedia), this Holy Day got its start right here in Virginia.So as soon as I post this, guess what I'm going to do. Go ahead. Guess. That's right -- have a beer. This is a good time to segue gently into today's random feature article. https://theconversation.com/how-steak-became-manly-and-salads-became-feminine-12... How steak became manly and salads became feminine When was it decided that women prefer some types of food – yogurt with fruit, salads and white wine – while men are supposed to gravitate to chili, steak and bacon? And beer. Somehow, wine became a chick thing while beer became a dude thing. Fortunately, there's not much social pressure to conform to these idiotic genotypes (a word that means something else but I've claimed for this definition now), not like there is with the difference between soft, fruity mixed drinks for chicks and hard bourbon for dudes. I say fortunately, because while I talk about beer a lot in here, and I do love me some craft beer, I'm also an inveterate wine snob. And a gin snob. And a tequila snob. And a rum snob. And a whiskey snob... you get the picture (vodka I don't give a shit about, though I'll drink it). In my travels to various breweries, wineries, cideries, and distilleries, I have noticed some gender segregation, but not as much as pop culture would have you think. In truth, all booze is gender-neutral. But back to the food thing. In my new book, “American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way,” I show how the idea that women don’t want red meat and prefer salads and sweets didn’t just spring up spontaneously. Yeah, this writer is shilling a book. Again, this is a site for writers, and I don't begrudge anyone the opportunity to promote their book, especially if, in the process, I get to read a somewhat interesting article and share it. It was during this period that the notion that some foods were more appropriate for women started to emerge. Magazines and newspaper advice columns identified fish and white meat with minimal sauce, as well as new products like packaged cottage cheese, as “female foods.” And of course, there were desserts and sweets, which women, supposedly, couldn’t resist. As with everything else, it seems, marketing rules the day. The 20th century saw a proliferation of cookbooks telling women to give up their favorite foods and instead focus on pleasing their boyfriends or husbands. The central thread running through these titles was that if women failed to satisfy their husbands’ appetites, their men would stray. Look, ladies, your man's going to stray anyway. He can't resist it, any more than you can resist "desserts and sweets." ... well, at least that's what marketing has pounded into us. Even in the 21st century, echoes of cookbooks like “The Way to a Man’s Heart” resound – a sign that it will take a lot more work to get rid of the fiction that some foods are for men, while others are for women. As with most gender stereotypes, the only way to resist it is to reject the pounding of marketing, and be immune to social shaming. I eat salad when I want to. Never appreciated cottage cheese too much, but I do like yogurt, another food generally marketed to broads. And I happily drink wine, be it white, red, or rose. While there are probably some differences in nutritional needs between the sexes, in a very general sense, I have my doubts that they're as sharply divided as marketing makes them out to be. And now it's Beer Day. |
| How about some love for our cuddly, eight-legged friends? https://theconversation.com/should-i-kill-spiders-in-my-home-an-entomologist-exp... Should I kill spiders in my home? An entomologist explains why not to I know it may be hard to convince you, but let me try: Don’t kill the next spider you see in your home. Of course not! Make your partner do it. Why? Because spiders are an important part of nature and our indoor ecosystem – as well as being fellow organisms in their own right. Poison ivy is a "fellow organism" too. Argument fails. Some species even enjoy the great indoors, where they happily live out their lives and make more spiders. Usually right above your bed. And they may be providing services like eating pests – some even eat other spiders. But other spiders are fellow organisms in their own right! My colleagues and I conducted a visual survey of 50 North Carolina homes to inventory just which arthropods live under our roofs. Every single house we visited was home to spiders. Whew! Fortunately, I live in Virginia. Although they are generalist predators, apt to eat anything they can catch, spiders regularly capture nuisance pests and even disease-carrying insects – for example, mosquitoes. But mosquitoes are fellow orga- you know what, I can't keep typing this with a straight face. But if you can stomach it, it’s OK to have spiders in your home. In fact, it’s normal. And frankly, even if you don’t see them, they’ll still be there. So consider a live-and-let-live approach to the next spider you encounter. That's hard to do when you swallow dozens of them in your sleep, or when they crawl into your nose and die in your snot, or... Okay, the sleep-eating thing is false. Not sure about the nose thing. But seriously, though, I'm not an arachnophobe; I just like messing with those who are. Spiders and I have an arrangement. Outside spiders are my friends. I've had them build webs around my deck and I love watching them. Inside spiders stay out of sight, or they become outside spiders. I'd probably feel different about it if I lived in Australia, where rumor has it their chief prey is kangaroo. And when suddenly confronted with a huge fucking spider, I channel my inner little girl just like everyone else who is sane. But once I get over the initial reaction, they really are kind of cool. |
| Related to my recent post about "be yourself:" https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-inconvenient-truth-about-y... The Inconvenient Truth about Your “Authentic” Self To actually feel authentic, you might have to betray your true nature I can authentically say that I have never in my life worried about being "authentic." Likely, this is because I figured whatever I'm doing, it reflects a real aspect of my personality. By Jennifer Beer on March 5, 2020 I solemnly swear that I didn't find this article doing a Google search for "beer." Everyone wants to be authentic. You want to be true to yourself, not a slavish follower of social expectations. "Everyone?" See above. And for some people, following social expectations is their purpose in life, their goal, their raison d'être. Me, I have too hard a time figuring out what "social expectations" are to actually bother to adhere to them. For instance, all the complaining people are doing about being stuck at home, being bored. I seriously don't understand. There's so much to do! How can anyone be bored? Although most people would define authenticity as acting in accordance with your idiosyncratic set of values and qualities, research has shown that people feel most authentic when they conform to a particular set of socially approved qualities, such as being extroverted, emotionally stable, conscientious, intellectual and agreeable. This is going to be one of those articles that makes me feel like I'm an alien watching human society from the outside, isn't it? Yes. Yes, it is. Authentic people have considerable self-knowledge and are motivated to learn more about themselves. They are equally interested in understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and they are willing to honestly reflect on feedback regardless of whether it is flattering or unflattering. I never associated those qualities with "authenticity." To the extent I thought about them at all, I guess I consider them "maturity." For example, introverted people are being authentic when they are quiet at a dinner party even if social convention dictates that guests should generate conversation. I'm an introvert, and I'm far from quiet at dinner parties. Or, at least, I expect I would be -- I'm not the kind of person one invites to dinner parties, mostly because I had no idea that "social convention dictates that guests should generate conversation." I guess this is something you humans know that's been obscured to me? Instead, research finds that people report feeling most authentic when their behavior confirms to a specific pattern of qualities: namely, when they are extroverted, emotionally stable, conscientious, intellectual and agreeable. You... said... these things... up there. Research has shown that we view people as less than fully human when they fail to conform to societal conventions. Ah. Now I understand why I don't get invited to dinner parties. So, when it comes time to actually make a judgment about our own authenticity, we may use criteria that are closer to how we judge the authenticity of an object such as food. And you lost me there, too. An aside about "authenticity" when it's applied to food: I find it irrelevant. The only thing I care about with food is: does it taste good? That's really my only criterion. Is it food? Then it's authentic, whether I like it or not. I've had people rag on a certain local restaurant because it's "not real Thai food." But it's good, so... so what? If you want real Thai food, go to Thailand. Even a hamburger in Thailand is Thai food. The one exception is pizza. New York style pizza is pizza. That stuff they call "pizza" in Chicago is a casserole. I'm not saying it's bad. Just that it's not pizza. And one time, in Washington State, I was on the road and hungry, and I passed by a strip mall with two restaurants that called themselves Mexican. One of them had bright neon light beer and tequila signs, with sportsball games visible through the windows on their huge screens. The other was sparse, with one TV set to a Spanish-speaking channel. I chose the latter. Not because I care about "authentic Mexican food," but because I hate sports and light beer. So I guess that's my version of authenticity: doing what I like because I like it, not because someone else thinks I should. But sometimes, I also like to do what other people expect of me. I never claimed to be consistent. Or, hell, maybe I did, and now I'm contradicting myself. I'm okay with that. |
| How about a reading break? https://crimereads.com/your-guide-to-not-getting-murdered-in-a-quaint-english-vi... Your Guide to Not Getting Murdered in a Quaint English Village You stay away from the village fete, do you understand? It’s happened. You’ve finally taken that dream trip to England. You have seen Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and Hyde Park. You rode in a London cab and walked all over the Tower of London. Sure, one day, when we can travel again. You’ll drink a pint in the sunny courtyard of a local pub. Wait, we're still talking about England, right? Unless you end up in an English Murder Village. It’s easy enough to do. You may not know you are in a Murder Village, as they look like all other villages. So when you visit Womble Hollow or Shrimpling or Pickles-in-the-Woods or Nasty Bottom or Wombat-on-Sea or wherever you are going, you must have a plan. I'm pretty sure those are actual English place names. Anyway, I'm not quoting more because it's absolutely worth the read. Just go to the link. Trust me on this. I spent some time in a quaint English village once. The name of the village was, and I'm not kidding here, Hayfield. The house I stayed in, home to a friend I made here on WDC some years ago, was made of stone and it's older than my entire country. It's true what they say: The British think 100 miles is a long way, and Yanks think 100 years is a long time. And yes, they do use miles there. But they quote petrol prices in liters. I didn't ask how they compute mileage. Kilometerage. Efficiency. Whatever. Miles per liter? Kilometers per gallon? Furlongs per stone? Anyway, whilst I was there (goddammit, I picked up some of the lingo and it won't go away), they had the village May parade. I sat on a low stone wall drinking actual British ale (Riggwelter - which is Yorkshire dialect for a sheep that's on its back and can't right itself) and enjoyed the spectacle. As you can see, though, I wasn't murdered. Maybe next time. But first, Belgium. If I live long enough to be able to travel again, I'm definitely going there. Because beer. |
| I've been saying something like this for years. https://theoutline.com/post/7142/be-yourself-is-terrible-advice?zd=2&zi=g32iywmn... “Be yourself” is terrible advice Take a better lesson from philosophy and me, a reformed loudmouth Mostly, what I've said has been along the lines of, "Don't be yourself. Be what you want to be, and eventually that will be you." That and, "Be Batman." Some great advice I once got was “Be less yourself.” This was in 2016, a couple of months after I left the Gawker website in part because I live-tweeted a meeting during which my boss hit his head on a lamp. "Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?" “Be yourself” is the kind of empty self-help mandate uttered by such disparate artists as Audioslave and Oprah; something that that is typically (and ironically) advised before coming into contact with strangers. Coincidentally, I'm not a fan of either of those. Luckily for everyone, I started going to therapy, and it was during one of my first few sessions that my kind therapist who gives me all of my article ideas told me that the consequences that came from what I thought was “being myself” could be avoided simply by not being what I thought was “being myself,” mostly because the former self was a huge asshole. The single most constant fact of life, apart from death and taxes, is that people change. You can direct that change to improve yourself, or you can let it happen and who knows where that's going to go? The first problem with it is that it is an impossible task: a holistic self does not exist; we are made of many selves that are revealed through endless experimentation and self-examination. I didn't know I liked beer, for example, until I tried it. Until that point, I wasn't "a beer drinker." The second problem is that today’s popular notion of the self mistakes feelings and desires for self-knowledge. Heidegger thought (extremely roughly) that knowledge of one’s authentic self could be found through the consideration of our own mortality: that feeling you might get after you have a near-death experience. It is impossible to read anything attributed to Heidegger (or several other thinkers) without thinking of "Bruce's Philosophers Song" from Monty Python. Hey, if it's stuck in my head, it needs to be stuck in yours as well. Wittgenstein took a more social approach to self-discovery. Him, too. The author goes on to write some self-indulgent claptrap about having a dog. Oh my god, is this me now? Am I a horrible, treacly, sentimental dog person? Yes. Own that shit. Heavens no. You have learned nothing, grasshopper. My friend John, who graciously explained a lot of Heidegger to me in the process of writing this article so if I’m wrong about any of it please blame him, said: “Ask yourself periodically, is this who I really wanna be?” And she's still not owning her shit. So there you have it: “Be yourself” is terrible advice. Especially if you are a jerk, but probably even if you are not. Self-centered writing style aside, she makes some good points. It takes a bit of humility to recognize when you're wrong and other people are right. My own takeaway from this? Don't be so damn sure of yourself. Of that, I'm certain. |
| There was a Shyamalan movie a while back, Signs, that was all about (spoiler here) aliens whose only weakness was water. Everybody (except, apparently, Syamalan) wondered why aliens would even bother visiting a planet whose surface is mostly covered in the stuff, and where it regularly falls out of the sky. Decent movie, stupid premise. And don't get me started on what the Wicked Witch of the West must have smelled like if all it took to melt her was water. Anyway, the point is, water's kind of important for us. http://nautil.us/blog/-why-water-is-weird Why Water Is Weird Water can appear to be “fine-tuned” for life. Well, duh. Anthropic principle: if it weren't, we wouldn't be here to gawk at it. In their 2018 study, Hajime Tanaka, John Russo, and Kenji Akahane—all researchers in the Department of Fundamental Engineering at the University of Tokyo, in Japan—tried to tease apart what makes water unique among liquids. Whatever the technical reason for it, it is unique as far as we know. One weirdness that they touch on in this article: ice is less dense than water, so it floats. What the author doesn't mention is how this protects life in the water; as the ice forms a barrier, the liquid water underneath becomes more temperature-stable, keeping aquatic organisms from freezing (usually). This probably helped evolution along. The ancient Greeks thought water was one of the four “essential” elements, the others being earth, air, and fire. Homeopathy, which purports to cure illness using small doses of disease-causing substances dissolved in water, evolved out of this, Saykally said. But there are more modern magical claims about so-called “structured” or “hexagonal” water. Some “wellness” practitioners claim humans age in part because we don’t replenish our stock of structured water. Depending on water’s structure, they say, it can penetrate your cell walls more effectively and has all kinds of health benefits. Well, water does have all kinds of health benefits. As the article points out, though, "structured water" is concentrated bullshit. The ancient Greeks may have been wrong about water being an essential element, but Saykally says it’s no coincidence that water is essential for life on Earth. I wouldn't say "wrong," exactly. Just that this was the state of knowledge at the time. Aristotle was wrong a lot, too, but we still study his stuff because it helped form the foundation for modern thought. Anyway, some people speculate that other liquids might help form life on other worlds. Methane, for example. But anyone positing such a thing is going to have to explain how methane, which has rotational symmetry, can do all the fun things that water, which does not, does. I'm not saying it's impossible, of course; it's a big universe. But I don't think it's very likely. Maybe there are sentient aliens that are based on ethanol instead of water. I wonder if they get pulled over if they have too much water in their bloodstream... |
| I considered doing an April Fools' entry but, deciding there's already enough foolishness in the world (and then some), decided against it. Instead, let's look at a particular brand of fool: the conspiracy theorist. https://aeon.co/essays/the-intellectual-character-of-conspiracy-theorists Indeed, peculiar theories about all manner of things are now widespread. There are conspiracy theories about the spread of AIDS, the 1969 Moon landings, UFOs, and the assassination of JFK. This article is from 2015. I'm sure you've heard the conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19. If not, I don't suggest looking them up. Sometimes, conspiracy theories turn out to be right – Watergate really was a conspiracy – but mostly they are bunkum. And Watergate was exposed. In general, the more people there are supposedly involved in a conspiracy, the more vanishingly improbable it is to be true. A 2009 Harris Poll found that between one‑fifth and one‑quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation, astrology and the existence of witches. I assure you, witches exist. I've met many. Most of them are actually quite nice, if a little catty in larger groups, and way too fond of New Age music. The article is fairly long, but worth a read if you're at all interested in why it's so frustrating to argue with conspiracy theorists. Like most internet arguments, it skates perilously closely to epistemology: the study of how we know what we know. Thing is, I think it would be just as wrong to dismiss conspiracy "theories" out of hand as it would be to uncritically accept them. People in power, for example parts of the US government, have certainly done shady things and covered up mistakes. This, for example. It's legitimately difficult, sometimes, to separate truth from opinion, opinion from fiction, and facts from speculation.We see a lot of this on April Fools' Day in particular. The internet is replete with sites that celebrate what I like to call Comedy Christmas by posting something vaguely plausible as fact -- and some people, inevitably, fall for it. This practice, of course, preceded the internet - like this report from 1957 - but the Web has made it easier to get your AFD prank to huge numbers of people.And yeah, I've been pranked. Chances are you have too. Come on, yes, you have. The only alternative is to accept nothing as fact, and that's just as dangerous as being criminally gullible. Just as foolish, even. No, the best thing to do is to keep an open mind, but be skeptical at the same time. It's not easy, and I certainly fail at it a lot. We're all fools, but sometimes the fool has the real truth, while others are too blind to see it. The peril lies in believing you're immune to foolishness. |
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