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My grandfather was born in 1900. He was 14 when World War I broke out and 17 when America entered the fighting. He was 18 when the Spanish flu pandemic swept the world. He was 20 when the Palmer Raids and the associated red scare broke out. He was 25 during the Scopes trial and 29 during the St. Valentines Day massacre. He was 32 when the Great Depression got into full swing and the US banking system came within days of collapsing. He was 33 when famine killed millions in Ukraine and 34 when he lost his job as an electrician for Western Union and had to spend the rest of the decade as an elevator operator. He was 39 at the start of World War II--the biggest, most destructive war in human history.

He was 45 when, in the Pacific, the US detonated two atomic bombs over Japan. On the other side of the world the full horror of the Holocaust became public and the Soviet Union swallowed Eastern Europe. He was 47 when the Cold War started. He was 49 when communists took over China and the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb. The country would live under the specter of nuclear annihilation forever after that.

He was 50 when McCarthyism took over the country--the second red scare of his lifetime. He was 57 when Sputnik was launched and 59 when famine killed upwards of 50 million people in China. He was 62 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 63 when a president was assassinated, 64 when Tonkin Gulf ignited the Vietnam War in earnest, and 65 when the Watts Riots broke out a few miles from his home. He was 68 when both a presidential candidate and the country's preeminent civil rights leader were assassinated. He was 74 when Richard Nixon resigned over Watergate. He was 78 when Three Mile Island melted down and 79 when hostages were taken in Iran. He was 80 when gasoline prices doubled and inflation hit 15%. He was 86 when Chernobyl melted down.

A few years later he died.

The point is: yes, things feel scary and chaotic, but that's always the case, and often worse - in time (previous centuries) and place (Gaza now, say.)

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hedge funds are assholes. look at this letter

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Tell all the Truth but tell it slant.

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There is a strong sense in which infinite numbers don't exist. There doesn't seem to be anything actually infinite in the real world at all. I don't know, maybe there is. But here are these infinite numbers, and whatever their ontological status is, I'm sure that you know they are not just an invention--I think "discovery" is the right word.

Discovering something that doesn't exist is pretty remarkable... I guess what we are saying is that it's the discovery of a procedure or pattern.

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If a lot can happen, everything will happen.

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If Conway had never turned his hand to designing cellular-automata worlds--if Conway had never even existed--some other mathematician might very well have hit upon exactly the Life world that Conway gets the credit for. So, as we follow the Darwinian down this path, God the Artificer turns first into God the Law*giver*, who now can be seen to merge with God the Law*finder*. God's hypothesized contribution is thereby becoming less personal--and hence more readily performable by something dogged and mindless!

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Suppose surreal numbers had been invented first and real numbers second--suppose it had gone the other way and we had all grown up learning surreal numbers. And then someone said, 'Well, yeah, but there is this special case of the numbers you can write in decimal notation and so on.' If everybody had known surreal numbers from childhood, then physicists would believe that surreal numbers were real and that the universe, the laws of physics, would be defined by surreal numbers--and they would assume that things that are true of the surreal numbers are true in quantum theory. This makes me realize how much a leap of faith it is even to believe that physics based on real numbers is real. Because there is no more reason to believe that all the things in our universe can be infinitely divisible according to real numbers than there is to believe in surreal numbers. It's just a matter of familiarity with a concept. So when people develop theories of chaos based on real numbers, there is no reason to think that this could actually be true of the real world. In the same way, it wasn't until Einstein came along that people realized that there could be curvature in space with non-Euclidean geometries or that maybe the universe is only finite.

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The day can be saved with 45 minutes of work.

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Princeton is a wonderful little spot. A quaint and ceremonious village of puny demigods on stilts.

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Geometry is the user-friendly interface of math.

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Marx is nowadays not regarded as a very great philosopher. But his ideas are still useful. And in particular he said something that applies to teaching. It was something to the effect that "the secrets to success in life are honesty and sincerity. If you can fake those, then you've got it made."

And I think that is terribly important in teaching. I would stick enthusiasm in with honesty and sincerity--enthusiasm is very important in teaching. You don't have to fake it. If you actually have it, that's the best thing. But if not, you better fake it. So you know, I've been teaching such-and-such a subject for 50 years--my god, half a century. And so it's difficult sometimes to pretend not to be a bit bored with it, when I am actually quite a lot bored with it. How do I do it? Fake it. I'm really serious that if you can fake it you've got it made.

By the way, it was Groucho Marx who said that, not Karl. Groucho has a lot of lessons to teach us. "I won't belong to any club that will have me as a member," that's another one.

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Well, "lustrum" is an English word meaning a period of 5 years.

I like thinking in different frames of time like that. "Lustrum" seems pretty good! For a long while I tended to think in 4 year chunks, since that matched up with high school and college.

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I was struck down with this awful thing and it changed my life, utterly. It was 20 seconds that aged me by 20 years. And I feel such a fool. Had I paid attention to my diet it wouldn't have happened. The road not taken was not taken at my folly. I feel old now; I never felt old before the stroke. It's a permanent intimation of mortality. Every day I think about death. With these lectures, I want to get the message out before I die; I want to get this damn stuff out. I want people to recognize the truth of it about the world. And not in 100 years' time. I want to see them recognize it.

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I have people asking me whether Einstein's brain got to be the way it is because he did so much physics. And of course I think it is the other way around. I think he did so much physics because his brain had a certain anatomy.

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They've been putting me through a battery of tests, and I feel pretty battered.

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Ha Ha Aaron Rodgers sit your "yeah im immunized" bullshitter ass down and quit sprouting nonsense.

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Oh, Buffalo and KFC - my favorite types of chicken!

For my current Atari 2600 project I may try making a digital clock using big, clunky playfield pixels. Luckily, for an old site I LOVED called Pixel Time (RIP, here's my loving fan page) I made a font that could make words even on its absurdly limited 45x45 canvas:

(I think Nick had made an All-Caps version that I cribbed from a bit.)

Heh. I think I got my start with hyper-minimal fonts on the old Etcha-a-Sketch Animator, an early digital toy that let you make animations of 12 frames of 40x30 pixels (arranged in longer sequences)

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Comet!
It makes you nice and clean!
Comet!
It's made with gasoline!
Comet!
It makes you vomit!
So let's all vomit
With Comet
Right Now!

My friend John linked to this great article on The value of owning more books than you can read ("Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love my tsundoku" - note, that page is oddly ad-heavy, consider viewing with an Ad-Blocker or in Safari's bare "Reader" mode) The upshot is, rather than being a swaggering display of "look how much I've read!" an overflowing set of bookshelves can carry a more balanced message of "look at how much I have to learn... but would like to!". The Japanese term for this reading material purchased but left unread is "tsundoku" (As the article says, that's a more sensible term than "antilibrary" which some posit.)

And you can have those legions of unread volumes without overmuch fear of being an academic poseur - in the Paris Review Umbert Eco cites Pierre Bayard's "How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read":

Good libraries hold several millions of books: even if we read a book a day, we would read only 365 a year, around 3,600 in ten years, and between the ages of ten and eighty we'll have read only 25,200.

Bayard's book goes on to explain how educated people can still have a reliable awareness of the gist of important works. (I find that view approving of summaries intuitively appealing - there are many works -- books, movies, tv series etc -- where I'd rather read the wikipedia summary of than sacrifice to take on the original content in its entirety. As long as I am suitably humble about the second hand nature of my knowledge, I'll be OK.)

All this is an interesting contrast to some of the current hip minimalism, that whole KonMari thing. I've noted that sometimes in decluttering, we are closing the door on alternate paths, repressing hopes for our future or alternative selves that have made more time to enjoy various pursuits. Thus, an appreciation of tsundoku can seem to be the antithesis of that minimalist impulse to pare down to what is truly actively enjoyed! --Though in practice a good curation might still leave the heart of those unread libraries intact, as long as it's worthy stuff that remains.

Understanding how little of the vast universe of worthy material out there we can possibly consume is one part of accepting the finitude of life. For people who turned away from intense religiosity in their youth, it can be very painful - as children so many of us were promised infinite time! (For a delicious deep pondering of that, Julian Barnes "A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters" ends with a study of how ill-equipped we are to deal with a vision of heaven roughly like our own reality, but with every whim fulfilled, and extended to infinity. Or more simply, as Susan Ertz puts it: "... millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.")

Lately I've been having some parallel coming-to-terms with my own chronological limits, the curation of my own free time that I am compelled to undertake. Even apart from my concerns of "not reading enough", I used to carve out more time for video games - both for the playing of them, and then for the programming of my own humble toys and games. When I assess where that time might be going, I see time practicing and performing with community and activist bands - a high quality activity on many levels, but not inexpensive in terms of hours. Ditto for the work I do on Porchfest websites, empowering organizers to manage these lovely weekend events where scores of musicians can connect with legions of listeners. And I take time to be with my sweetie Melissa - from just being around each other to more intimate times to taking in enjoyable streaming series and movies, that all enhances my life as well.

(Of course, one aspect of many one-on-one relationships is that whole wedding-ish vow of "forsaking all others" - this is yet another parallel to the unread books issue... humans have a distinct talent for making ourselves miserable playing "What-If" and "Mighta-Been" - that's some of why I got a tattoo saying "THIS FATE" - Amor Fati, the love of the situation actually is, not these other worlds that don't materially exist.)

Learning to love the potentials that will be forever untapped is an art unto itself! Cultivate a contentment with discontent, a certain satisfaction with an unfulfillable aspiration...

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Had we but World enough, and Time,
This coyness Lady were no crime.

This poem's open rattling in my head after this morning's ramble...

We made love with a violence and ferocity I had almost forgotten after so much sailing in the ship of the gentle blue silk sea. In that chaos of sheets and pillows, clasped in the living knot of desire, screwed into each other to the point of fainting, I felt I was twenty again, and happy to be holding in my arms this bold, swarthy woman who didn't fall apart when you got on top of her, a strong mare you could ride on without giving it a second thought, who didn't make your hands feel heavy, your voice hard, your feet gigantic, or your beard too scratchy, but someone like yourself, who could take a string of bad words in her ear and didn't need to be rocked with tender arguments or coaxed with flattery. Afterward, sleepy and happy, I rested awhile by her side, admiring the solid curve of her hips and the shudder of her snake.

This passage stuck with me from when I read it in college, but I couldn't find it in Google Books search - (I was trying to search for "horse" not "mare") and so I listened to the audiobook during holiday driving. (FWIW, the "gentle blue silk sea" is his estranged wife's extravagant bed covers, and "her snake" is a serpent tattoo on his lover Tránsito's abdomen.)

An excellent book and its retelling of the atrocities in Chile when a fascist military dictatorship overthrew the democratically elected socialist president reminded me of the fears some of my Latinx activist allies live with.

If you're a Patriots fan, then congratulations on the dynasty getting dynastier. [...] Rob Gronkowski, a Pacific Rim Jaeger piloted by a litter of golden retriever puppies, has long been one of the league's most notable personalities.

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RIP Ursula Le Guin. Loved "Lathe of Heaven" Portraits by EBB2 (Age 6 1/2)




Getting through more of "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (took a short break for another quick read, it was getting to be a slog.)

While I think I get the idea of "Regression to the Mean" and in the prevalence of chance across the performances of members of a given population, I think it might be too easy to take away unhelpful life lessons from this, to take on a defeatist "well it's all chance anyway."

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A quora right up my objective/subjective alley, What's the biggest difference between your culture and America's? I think I like the concept of degrowth, though I'm not sure how to balance it against populations' tendencies to rise.

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Man, biggest existential downer game ad ever.

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Dance like nobody's watching - psych! We were all watching. where did u learn those dope moves we're insecure now

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Inspiring ad about a deaf NFL player now in the Superbowl. At Harvard's IACS Computefest attending lectures on Markov Chains-- happy 100th birthday Markov Chains!
--via Amber's Dad

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Patriots have now beaten a team with a > .500 record! Hooray! (Superbowl is gonna rely on being bit more "Any Given Sunday" than I'd like..)
--A still from last entry's IBM Centennial video -- these were some of the final candidates for the UPC. I'd love to know more about the physical characteristics of some of these like, especially the circular ones. Also the font on that one (probably meant to be characters that are machine readable, like with checks) is intriguing. I know the normal UPC code has some cool properties so it can be read either way.

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The poet has really only two themes and they are Eros and Thanatos and if he lives long enough and thinks hard enough he becomes aware that they are interchangeable or that there is a beneficent tension between them.

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Maannamit.

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Watching Steelers whipping the Jets. It's only halftime but I'm building up a theory - any given Sunday can go your way if you have enough emotion and charge, but you're liable to get trounced the next week.
--The history of Crayolas, via Weather Sealed. Man I remember how big that "64" box looked, with built-in sharpener... I was surprised to go back to it years later and find out it was only 64 crayons and not 128.

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Tried out "Wii Fit Plus" last night. The "flap your arms to fly, lean in to steer" minigame is kind of magical/dreamy... still kind of skeptical about the game as a workout though, they don't chain exercises very well I think.

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George Lakoff, a linguist, memorably described a noun class of Dyirbal (spoken in north-eastern Australia) as including "women, fire and dangerous things"

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The world is my piñata. I don't hit it with a stick; I grab that fucker and shake it for all it's worth.

Sometimes I get candy, sometimes I get bees. But I always get something!

i say a lot of things to all the girls.
"i can't believe you wore that"
"yes, that does make you look fat"
"your mouth is a time-space anomaly"

Originally found on Kate's tumbleblog, which is an intriguing blog format I hadn't heard much about, but may influence how I think about the next rendition of this site.

(2019 UPDATE: I think that tumbleblog (now viewable on the wayback machine especially influenced how I retrofitted blockquote formatting onto all the old entries... visually differentiating a quote from my usual blather feels like the right thing to do.)

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"TAKE ME INCOMPETENTLY!" "Whatever works for you, baby."

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Mail from the CEO; some personnel reductions ahead. But it's a big company, not doing so badly; in any event I'm not in bad shape. Still...

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For a bit I was thinking, "why foreshadow layoffs with email?" I guess so that once it's done, there isn't "could happen any moment" fear.

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"Ernie is Er-range"-how my folks told him from Bert. It took me a while to fathom that the names weren't intuitive, collective unconscious

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--Boingboing linked to Deconstructing Dumbo, a self-published book taking apart the political symbol. They also linked to Sockwell's postmortem of making NY Times iPhone icons. Cool stuff!

I gotta say, I don't think my current employer has really nailed all-division team building exercises.

Yesterday at the Hynes Convention Center they asked everyone to take two of the inflated balloons that were lying about, and write their name and a problem the company has on each.

Which, well you know. It's kind of hard to be sincere with your name on it, or at least it gives one pause.

Then they had us line up on opposite sides of the wall, and walk to the other side, but you couldn't carry the balloons, you had to bounce/juggle them over.

Then, when on the other side, pick one of your balloons and pop it.

It wasn't clear what the underlying metaphor was meant to be. Up 'til the popping, it might've been "see? All our problems are mixed up, and your problem is everyone's problem". But then it was like "well you carried your problem and now the company asks you to ignore it." Or something.

And the popping was LOUD and scary. (Sort of reminds me of the old Fox News BALLOONS: Why are they so DEADLY I posted a way back) Plus the balloons were overinflated in general, so intermittent popping went on through most of the day's presentation

Sometime after lunch, they asked us to line up around the outside of the room in order of birthday-in-year, holding our remaining balloon. (Assuming you still had it, after the room crossing and random post facto popping) Then we were asked to either A. find someone to help us solve our problem B. decide to live with it. C. figure out how to solve it ourselves. Then they said there was supposed to be a ceremonial popping after ten minutes, but I think most people decided to pop after finishing A B or C, or something. And I don't know why we lined up by birthday, except maybe as a generic "talk to other people" exercise.

So I have to say by most measures (aesthetic, camaraderie-inducing, metaphoric, confidence-building, non-trauma-inducing) these balloons were not a success.

On the other hand, the schwag from the day is pretty decent, I like the hoodies they were giving out. And overall, I like where my company is going, it's just these events that make be look askance.

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Quote of the Moment

A physicist is the atoms' way of thinking about atoms.

I'm undertaking a giant decluttering effort. Thus far its been very successful, and my closets look fantastic. Of course, most of their contents are distributed liberally around the front room and bed room, but still, one battle at a time.

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Video of the Moment

--I still think "Greenok Ug" is a grand name for an alien.

Link of the Moment

--I just like the retro-future feel of this German prototype rocket from Strange Stuff--from WW2 mostly... including Pykrete, that ice/woodpulp mix I kisrael'd a few years ago that they were thinking about using to make armored boats when raw materials were scarce in WW2.

Prepublishing this Saturday night, over at Ksenia's, waiting for news about the blizzard...20 to 30 inches they say. That's a lot.

I helped Ksenia a bit in the kitchen. It was nice to be useful, and it really is one of those things I should've joined with Mo in doing, especially when I saw her having a grand old time when her brother joined in for a special meal but I have to say, my opinion that at least on a regular basis it's more trouble than its worth still stands...the shopping, the chopping, the cooking, the cleanup...the end results can be nice, and there's a certain visceral pleasure to it, but still...

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A Few Hints About Everyday American Life

• Americans never use patronymics. Many Americans are given middle names at birth, but these are not usually used in either salutations or conversations.
• Men often shake hands with other men on seeing each other, but seldom hug and kiss. Women occasionally shake hands with other women, or may embrace. Men and women shake hands, the woman usually making the first move.
• The smile is very important in America and is used in greeting both friends and strangers.
• Americans usually make appointments with other people, even with good friends. Except among close neighbors or in small towns, people seldom visit one another without a forewarning or an invitation. Also, if you receive an invitation to a home, it is best to check beforehand with the host/hostess about which members of your family are invited. Some invitations, for example, may not be intended for the children in the family (or, perhaops, not the adults!)
• When your signature is required, it normally means both your first and last names (in that order), with some degree of legibility. Further, it should be noted that in the U.S. a signature carries much importance and reflects on one's honor. The same is usually the case with a handshake by which many business arrangements are concluded.
• In bars, cafes, and small shops, normally first you eat or get your merchandise, then you pay, The reverse is often true in the former Soviet Union.
• In virtually all American cities, public buses are entered from the front, not the back.
• Do not be surprised if you see a fair number of left-handed people. American schools do not prohibit the use of the left hand for writing. And in some cities there are even special shops for left-handed people!
• Try to plan your budget very carefully, The U.S. is a highly consumer-oriented society; there is little problem with availability or diversity of goods. Also, with loands, deferred payment plans, credit cards and checking accounts widely available, it can be a temptation to spend beyond one's means and to try and catch up later.
• You are likely to find that most Americans are eager to try to understand even heavily accented or even incorectly spoken English. Use English at every possibility and do not be unduly afraid of the listener's reactions.

It seemed like a pretty decent introduction to America, written for Soviet Jews, Russian on the right-hand page, English translation on the left. This is just a sampling from that section. I liked the thing about the smiles. The "Americans usually make appointments" thing struck me as a little antisocial. Maybe we SHOULD all be like on sitcoms, just dropping in. On the other hand, who wants people dropping in if you're doing something embarassing?

I was also struck by the left-handed issue. After I read about the "special stores", I further surprised Ksenia by pointing out that there could be special left-handed scissors...she had me try that thing where you clasp your fingers, and the thumb that ends up on top is supposedly the thumb of your dominant hand, but it doesn't work for me...it feels much more natural with my left thumb on top. (Like a lot of kids, I was ambidextrous for a while.) Try out that finger clasping thing and let me know on the comments section if it works for you or not.... Quote of the Moment

"Man is the only animal that can remain on friendly terms with the victims he intends to eat until he eats them." --Samuel Butler

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Comic of the Moment

--Doctor Fun, 22 Oct 2003 ...his archive goes back over 10 years, he was one of the first big Internet cartoonists. I remember seeing his stuff thumbtacked on the walls where the "three musketeers" sysadmins in Tufts' Arena Computer Annex worked.

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Game of the Moment
Hamlet: The Text Adventure.

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Political Cheapshot of the Moment

I have all kinds of warts.

Who wants to elect a guy with that kind of personal problem?

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Passing of the Moment
RIP, Captain Kangaroo. First Mr. Rogers, then him...who's next, Big Bird? Passage of the Moment

There are the very bad chimpanzees, with their patriarchal 'demonic males,' and the very good 'gentle apes'--the bonobos, pygmy chimps whose females rule. The bonobos have a lot of recreational sex, whereas violence prevails among the demonic mails of certain larger primate species. As the Harvard notetaker puts it, 'So basically Bonobos are a species of female dominated sex freaks. Cool.'

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Health News of the Moment
Arrrrrr, eat some damn fruit, ya scurvy dog!

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Historical Loss of the Moment


R.I.P. Bill Mauldin, the artist whose
cartoons reflected the experience of
Joe Infantryman during WWII.

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Quote of the Moment

We have no justification at all for a war on Iraq. The logic of the situation beggars belief. It is manufactured by George Bush, and oil is a factor.

Don't you wish we had politicians who could talk like this? Which is going against his own party's head?

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Movie Quote of the Moment

You want a cigarette...or a blindfold?"
"No thanks. I'm afraid of the dark, and cigarettes will kill ya.

Good gawsh almighty, WHY DOES THIS MOVIE EXIST? Man, packing is such a grind. Hopefully this is the last one for a number of years. It's kind of neat to be having a fresh start, though.

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Image of the Moment
This Snapshot (click for fullsize and discussion) was taken by a passenger on the "shoebomber" flight. It's not the greatest picture, but it's still pretty amazing.
Score one for the innocents!

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Funny of the Moment

"...Bush believes he was out only for a few seconds because when he awoke, his two dogs were sitting in the same position they were when he [choked on a freakin' pretzel and] lost consciousness."

Lassie, they're not.

Tufts has one of the oddest monuments. It's called the Gravity Stone, and its inscription is as follows: Man, it's hard to think about how weird this thing is. Supposedly, back in the day a popular prank was to assist the Gravity Stone in 'levitating', leaving it to rest in a tree or anywhere up high. The story goes on to say they finally bolted or cemented the sucker down so now its floating days are over.

I did a little research. (Ok, I hit Google via Yahoo.) Roger Babson is the same guy who started Babson College. He has another stone but it's not nearly as odd. You can get a little more of its story from the Yucks Digest #22, textsearch on 'Tufts'.

Man. I love this thing. It's such a retrofuture thing... they're proposing a (quite possibly impossible) technical breakthrough that would change so much in society-- I mean, who knows what forms of travel, on Earth and otherwise, would be possible-- and this stone is looking for a reduction in airplane accidents.

I'm glad it's a part of my life.