Filed under: General Musings, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Travel, Writing stuff, YouTube
I’d sent around a YouTube link to some of my friends, showing what happen when a freight train encounters a tornado – it’s worth watching (stick with it to the end of the 2 minute clip!). But in the discussion about it on MeFi, someone posted the following item with Richard Feynman explaining just how a train stays on its tracks:
As I told a friend this morning: “I did not know that.”
And, thinking about it as I have gone through my morning routine, I keep coming back to just how clever us monkeys can be. The basics of modern railroad technology are over 200 years old. The solutions to the problems that Feynman explains in that clip are classic applications of mechanics & geometry – but they are still really quite clever, being simple & self-correcting (once properly constructed in the first place).
And yet, I did not know this. I’m reasonably smart, well educated, curious about the world around me, and with a high level of mechanical aptitude. Still, I did not know this.
Now, I don’t mean to over-think this. There is no end to the things that I don’t know. There is even a lot about the underpinnings of our current technology that I don’t have a clue about. Coming across something I don’t know about railroads should be no real surprise.
And yet . . .
This is something I explored a bit in Communion of Dreams, in the discussions about *how* intelligence or technological sophistication could manifest itself very differently in an alien race. I used one of the characters, who has studied the matter in different human cultures, as a foil for examining different strategies to achieve a given level of technology. Why? Well, for my own enjoyment, mostly. But also to prompt a reader to consider the matter from perhaps a different perspective. In fact, that is a lot of what the whole books is about. So I spent over 132,000 words trying to do it.
And Richard Feynman accomplished much the same thing with an anecdote a bit more than two minutes long.
Ah, humility.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Comics, Dinosaur Comics, General Musings, Government, Humor, Science, Violence
Well, you gotta die from something, so you might as well make it interesting. Here are the latest stats on what your odds are of dying from various non-natural causes:
The table below was prepared in response to frequent inquiries asking questions such as, “What are the odds of being killed by lightning?” or “What are the chances of dying in a plane crash?”
The odds given below are statistical averages over the whole U.S. population and do not necessarily reflect the chances of death for a particular person from a particular external cause. Any individual’s odds of dying from various external causes are affected by the activities in which they participate, where they live and drive, what kind of work they do, and other factors.
I think “Ignition or melting of nightwear” is probably my favorite. That’s some hot sex, folks.
And it is interesting to see what the real risks are for many things which people fear. 10 people died from spiders – more than snakes (7) – but still, that’s a pretty tiny number. Yet I have an immediate and irrational response to spiders. But you’re almost as likely to die from “High and low air pressure and changes in air pressure” – and who the hell fears that?
Anyway, have some fun seeing how we die – always a great topic for discussion at parties!
Jim Downey
Via Dinosaur Comics, of all places. Cross posted to UTI.
Filed under: Art, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Fireworks, General Musings, Health, Predictions, Preparedness, Publishing, Science Fiction
Well, it is for me, since yesterday was my birthday.
And it’s a bit odd, but I do feel as though something is different this time around. Usually, birthdays don’t mean that much to me. And I don’t tend to put a lot of emphasis on just numerical age – mine, or anyone else’s. Besides, 51 isn’t a significant milestone in any way – it’s not a big round number, it isn’t some threshold like 18 or 21, it isn’t even a prime number. It’s just 51.
And yet . . .
. . . something does feel different. Perhaps it is due to the fact that last Thursday I finally got the long-delayed physical exam I initially went to see my doctor for in September and the results were actually pretty good. In spite of all that I have done to myself over the years, I’m in decent physical condition. Surprise, surprise.
So maybe that’s it. Or maybe it’s because I have so much good work waiting for me to do – important work, worth doing well. Not just the conservation work, though there is a *lot* of that. But also work on the care giving book. That’s important, and will be a help to others. I’ve also been recently asked to join the board of a significant arts organization here in the state, as well as to apply for an important local government (volunteer) position – more on that when everything shakes out. There’s even a publisher who has shown some interest in Communion of Dreams, though I’ve been down that path enough times to not expect a pot of gold at the end. All of these things tend to bolster one’s mood.
So last night, as we watched a bit of the City’s fireworks display from our front porch, I felt happy. Productive. Strong. With a certain . . . resolve. I feel as though I have recovered a lot over the last year, found that parts of me have been hammer-hardened and honed properly.
It is a good feeling.
Whether it will last long, or not, time will tell. But I feel more complete, more prepared to move on and do the work before me, than I have in a very long time.
Happy New Year.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, General Musings, Publishing, Writing stuff
As I mentioned the other day in the preface to this post, I had reason to be digging around in some of my old writings. I’m still not in a position to disclose the full reason for this, but I can discuss it in general terms: I had been interviewed for a feature article for a national magazine (I am not the focus of the piece, just one aspect of it), and something I had written previously was pertinent to the background I had provided the interviewer.
Anyway, it was a thorough and rather draining interview, not unlike some of the others to which I have been party in my somewhat offbeat course through life. Nor, in fact, to some of the interviews I have conducted, when I was writing my column for the local paper. So it was that I recognized this insightful passage from a recent item at the Economist:
Mr Rauch: This ties back to your last question, in a way. I suspect a lot of bloggers may be introverts, because blogging is great if you like to sit in front of the internet all day. If not for my aversion to specialising in one subject, I probably would have been an academic historian, because I think it would have suited me to work in libraries back before there was an internet. (In a way, the internet is a library that talks back.) Reporting doesn’t come naturally to me, since I have to screw up my energy level every time I pick up the phone. So that’s something of a handicap. I’ll never be a natural journalist.
On the other hand, introverts are good questioners and attentive listeners. After a thoughtful, probing interview that I feel has touched marrow, I feel exhilaration, along with exhaustion. As if a tough hike had been rewarded with a new vista. I’m not a great hiker but I do enjoy the views.
Very apt metaphor.
Jim Downey
(Economist link via Sully.)
Filed under: General Musings, Heinlein, Humor, Robert A. Heinlein, Society, Survival
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
— Lazarus Long
I can’t believe it.
One of my favorite economic historians from my undergrad days wrote a famous treatise on human stupidity, and it took me 20 years to find out about it.
Sheesh!
Well, just in case you too missed this little gem, I offer:
THE BASIC LAWS OF HUMAN STUPIDITY
By Carlo M. Cipolla
Go. Read the whole thing. It’s not too long. And if you have a wry, cynical (maybe even sardonic?) twist to your view of the world (as I certainly do), you will laugh your proverbial ass off. Maybe even your real ass. But since most people need a bit of convincing to actually *read* things these days, here’s a taste to whet your appetite:
THE FIRST BASIC LAW
The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
At first, the statement sounds trivial, vague, and horribly ungenerous. Closer scrutiny will however reveal its realistic veracity. No matter how high are one’s estimates of human stupidity, one is repeatedly and recurrently startled by the fact that:
a) people whom one had once judged rational and intelligent turn out to be unashamedly stupid.
b) day after day, with unceasing monotony, one is harassed in one’s activities by stupid individuals who appear suddenly and unexpectedly in the most inconvenient places and at the most improbable moments.
The First Basic Law prevents me from attributing a specific numerical value to the fraction of stupid people within the total population: any numerical estimate would turn out to be an underestimate. Thus in the following pages I will denote the fraction of stupid people within a population by the symbol σ.
There, if that doesn’t get you started on the right track, there’s no hope for you: you’re one of THEM.
As a friend of mine always says: “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
Of course, he means the stupid people.
But you knew that.
Right?
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Bipolar, Depression, Gardening, General Musings, Habanero, Health, Preparedness, Survival
My special-order plants arrived yesterday. Bhut Jolokia, Fatalii, and Red Savina chile peppers (man, you gotta love a pepper with the name Fatalii). Ivory Egg and Opalka heirloom tomatoes. These will be supplemented with other peppers and tomatoes I can get locally.
So, since we’d gone several days without rain, I was finally able to get into the garden and do the tilling that has needed to be done for the last couple of years. And since it had been a couple of years since I had done it, the ground was hard, compacted, uncooperative. I basically spent six hours wrestling with the rototiller. Six hours being jarred, hands going numb, shoulders aching. But also six hours thinking.
Not serious thinking. Not most of the time. Not when I was in a life or death struggle with the machine. Mostly it was random free association, going over this or that neglected chore, replaying a conversation I’d had at a city meeting the day before. But there was also some time for real contemplation. Real introspection beyond consideration of how sore my back was.
And somewhere in there I discovered something. Strength. Not physical strength – at 50 I don’t really expect to reclaim the physical strength I had at 30. Rather, a kind of strength of personality. A sense of my own potency. A realization that this had come back to me.
Oh, it hadn’t been a complete stranger. It takes a kind of personal strength to close a beloved business, and to care for a beloved family member until their death. Instead of glimpses and flashes of the thing that kept me going the exhaustion of those years, this was more . . . whole? Unified? Tempered?
I dunno. But it was – is – there. A sense that I can do more now. That I am more capable. More secure in my abilities.
I have always felt as though this life were a thing caught just at the edge of full consciousness, in the mildly euphoric hypnogogic state as you emerge from a dream into morning. And so there is often the sense that one is only now coming to full wakefullness, full integration of your faculties. And so it is again, with this renewed sense of personal power, the upward arc of my bipolar cycle.
And soon, I’ll be planting tomatoes and peppers. That always makes me feel good.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Bruce Schneier, Emergency, Failure, General Musings, Government, Health, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Society, Survival, Terrorism, Violence
The annoying cold I mentioned the other day seems to be trying for an upgrade to bronchial infection, perhaps with delusions of becoming pneumonia. So I’m not feeling particularly creative or insightful. Maybe I used up too much outrage yesterday. Anyway, since I am a bit under the weather, let me just post an excerpt from something you ought to read. This is the closing of The Most Dangerous Person in the World?:
Security itself is an illusion. It is a perception that exists only between our ears. No army, insurance policy, hazmat team, video surveillance or explosive sniffer can protect us from our own immune system, a well-intentioned but clumsy surgeon, failing to look before crossing the street, an asteroid randomly hurtling through space or someone willing to die in order to do others harm.
In this sense, the only things that can truly make us more “secure” are not things. They are the courage to face whatever comes with dignity and intention, and the strong relationships that assure we will face the future together, and find comfort and meaning in doing so.
Imagine, then, what might happen if we simply quit listening to the scaremongers and those who profit from our paranoia. Imagine what the world could look like if we made a conscious choice to live out whatever time we have with courage, compassion, service and joy.
Terrorism is an act of the weak. But so is walking through the airport in our socks.
We can make better choices.
Go read the whole thing.
Jim Downey
(Via Bruce Schneier.)
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Connections, General Musings, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff
…which I haven’t heard of previously, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it has already been the basis of an SF short or novel: what if the source of some giant computer/internet worm (say, Conficker or similar) was just someone’s effort to create an actual AI? Alternatively, what if some embryonic AI which already exists was creating these things in order to increase its own level of ability/sentience? The latter is somewhat similar to what I did with Seth in Communion of Dreams, through I used an entirely different mechanism.
Anyway, just an idea. I get these things all the time, and just happened to be sitting in front of the computer when I did so this time.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Civil Rights, Constitution, Daily Kos, Emergency, General Musings, Government, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Terrorism, Violence, YouTube
This is what I was afraid would happen.
And it makes me, well, worried. Very worried.
Prompted by 9/11, we watched the fairly rapid curtailment of civil liberties during the Bush administration (though supported & enabled entirely too much by Democrats in Congress). The Patriot Act. The expansion of FISA. Warrantless wiretapping by the NSA. Legal opinions which effectively gave the president dictatorial powers, and which allowed for torture of terrorism suspects.
Coupled with this was a dramatic rise in rhetoric on the right, to the effect that failure to get in line -completely- with the Bush administration’s “War on Terror” was called nothing short of treason. Anyone who objected to the “temporary curtailment of civil liberties” was likely to be painted as a traitor, or worse. It was not a good time to be a civil libertarian, or a liberal, and for eight long years many felt that we were under seige. I half expected more violence or even some excuse to suspend normal civil law and elections. And I was hardly alone.
But the elections were held, and changes were made. A new president, with a very different concept of the rule of law, was elected and has taken office. Granted, it was during the worst economic crisis we’ve faced in 70 years, but a lot of us had hope for the future. Hope that we could indeed start to work together as a nation.
Of course, the losers didn’t see it that way. Oh, some did, and there has actually been a substantial increase in the popularity and public support of Obama since the election and since he took office. But the core of the right has just gotten wound tighter and tighter, to the point where the rhetoric has taken on violent overtones. It started back during the election, with Gov. Palin’s characterization of Sen. Obama as “hanging around with terrorists” and the sentiments that engendered among her audience. Since then, it has only gotten worse.
Former UN Ambassador Alan Keyes (who has run for a variety of offices under the GOP banner) via YouTube:
“Obama is a radical communist, and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois and now everybody realizes it’s true. He is going to destroy this country, and we are either going to stop him or the United States of America is going to cease to exist.”
And
“I’m not sure he’s even president of the United States, neither are many of our military people now who are now going to court to ask the question, ‘Do we have to obey a man who is not qualified under the constitution?’ We are in the midst of the greatest crisis this nation has ever seen, and if we don’t stop laughing about it and deal with it, we’re going to find ourselves in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war.”
The ‘civil war’ theme has been picked and run with elsewhere on the right. There were the Glenn Beck “War Games” scenarios recently, which played out the idea of widespread civil unrest leading to civil war. You’ve got Chuck Norris writing an insane column for a major right-wing website promoting the idea of secession. Here’s a bit of that:
For those losing hope, and others wanting to rekindle the patriotic fires of early America, I encourage you to join Fox News’ Glenn Beck, me and millions of people across the country in the live telecast, “We Surround Them,” on Friday afternoon (March 13 at 5 p.m. ET, 4 p.m. CT and 2 p.m. PST). Thousands of cell groups will be united around the country in solidarity over the concerns for our nation. You can host or attend a viewing party by going to Glenn’s website. My wife Gena and I will be hosting one from our Texas ranch, in which we’ve invited many family members, friends and law enforcement to join us. It’s our way of saying “We’re united, we’re tired of the corruption, and we’re not going to take it anymore!”
Again, Sam Houston put it well when he gave the marching orders, “We view ourselves on the eve of battle. We are nerved for the contest, and must conquer or perish. It is vain to look for present aid: None is at hand. We must now act or abandon all hope! Rally to the standard, and be no longer the scoff of mercenary tongues! Be men, be free men, that your children may bless their father’s name.”
“Cell groups”? Really?
Sheesh.
But that isn’t what worries me. Well, it does, but I’ve got bigger fish to fry here. What really worries me is that this kind of rhetoric has prompted a backlash on the left that was entirely too predictable: a desire to use the powers of government already put into play by the Bush administration to quash this perceived threat. Not everyone agrees, but just look at comments in any of these different discussions and you’ll see what I mean. There are a lot of people who are fed up with the nonsense from the right, who say “shit, man, we put up with Bush for 8 years and you’re whining after only 8 weeks of Obama??? Fine, let’s take care of this now, using the tools you gave us.”
It’s a completely understandable reaction. But it is also extremely dangerous. It is, in fact, a poisoned well, and we drink from it at grave risk to ourselves and our Republic.
Because if we use those tools – if we employ the power of the government to suppress the freedoms of our enemies – then we legitimize all that the Bush administration did. And if that happens, I’m not sure there is any turning back. And down that path lies madness: violence, martial law, suspension of the Constitution, the whole crazy nightmare. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.
Jim Downey
(Cross posted to UTI.)
Communion Of Dreams 