World Physics Week?


Or just Stephen Hawking out with a new book?

I'm just bitter over World Swinburne Week...


- posted by Ryan @ 12/03/2006 12:22:00 PM 6 comments

 
Ford on Swinburne, Part .5


But as for Mr. Swinburne...Ah, that!...

I don't know whether it was Charlotte's adoration for him or whether I worked it out for myself....But he at least was a solar myth with the voice of a Greek god, beautiful and shining and kind so that when he came on the scene, drunk or sober, all was gas and gingerbread and joy-bells and jujubes....Well, he used to give me jujubes, slipping them out of his waistcoat pocket in his beautiful, long, white fingers....And now and then it would be a poem suited to my comprehension and written in his beautiful clear hand, minutely, on valentine paper with lacy edgings and Father Christmas embossed on the reverse, or pink roses....Usually, as far as I can remember, about my dog Dido...rhyming "dog" with "fog" and "bog".....I think Mr. Swinburne once came on me on Wimbledon Common, which was near my birth-place, on a misty day, immensely distressed because my dog Dido had gone into one of the ponds and would not come out....So Mr. Swinburne wrote me a series of little jingles about the adventures of that faithful hound, and used to deliver them furtively as if he were slipping me little parcels of candy....

He was like that to children--and I daresay to grown-ups. And if you think that his coming home occasionally in four-wheel cabs from which he had to be conveyed upstairs to the bath-room....if you think that that made any difference to my--or even Charlotte's--childish adoration, you are mistaken indeed....It didn't make even any difference to me that he was unduly short in stature. When the door opened before him and you looked to see a man's head appear at about the middle of the upper panel, his chin would not be much above the level of the door-handle...not much. But then it was such a glorious head that you immediately forgot.

It meant nothing to me that Mr. Swinburne had occasionally to be carried past between Charlotte and a keb--man....

--Ford Madox Ford, Portraits from Life


- posted by Ryan @ 12/02/2006 09:55:00 PM 0 comments

 
You are a geek when...


You find yourself turned on by the following sentence:

Black liquid flashed past the turbot's infrared eyes.

By Michael Stanwick in his story "Slow Life" as quoted by Bill Christensen in his article on the Robosalmon.

Joy isn't joy without the turbot with the infrared eyes...


- posted by Ryan @ 12/02/2006 03:19:00 PM 0 comments

 
Going anthropic


Paul Davies' new book The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? is putting the sexy back into the anthropic principle.

You know the anthropic principle, that principle, the one that states that the universe is good for life because life is good in this universe. The logic goes wild in these reaches of theoretic physics. The tautology is that we are here because we are able to be here. The logic goes wild in these reaches of theoretic physics! Descriptive, perhaps, if you go about describing all of the qualities of the universe but informative, not...

Andrew Jaffe says it like a psysicician in his review on PhysicsWeb (there are places for people to spit and cuss over physics? Who woulda thunkit?):

"The problem with anthropic arguments is that they are entirely devoted to distinctions without differences: choosing between theories that, by definition, have identical observational consequences; that is, the universe as we are currently able to see it. Hence, the upshot of the ongoing discussions of the anthropic principle is that we are still too ignorant to make any definitive statements."

Take that, Heidegger.

We start going off the rails a bit discussing the necessity of life arising in this "just so" universe, and Jaffe wisely reigns him in:

""Nobody would deny that atoms, stars and galaxies are fundamental features of the universe," says Davies. But he should be more careful with his use of the word "fundamental". Clearly these things are emergent properties of the universe, and it is exactly this emergence out of quarks, strings or whatever lies at the bottom that gives force to anthropic arguments at all. He goes on: "It seems clear that life (and mind and culture too) is an equally significant step on the path of cosmic evolution." Perhaps that can seem obvious to one of those living beings, with a mind, inside the only culture we know of."

These ideas are popular again nowadays (as a reader pointed out, most speciously in the ID movement), as scientists are getting better at describing the universe. Fun, fun stuff for the physicigeeks to argue over beer at the physicshaus. Perhaps it would be best left there...


- posted by Ryan @ 12/02/2006 12:48:00 PM 9 comments

 
Bored Scientist Explained


BBC (which reports at least 1 in 10 stupid science posts in circulation) has found some less than usually inspired graduate students at the University of Manchester who have formulated a formula on the effect of beer on attractiveness.

The "beer goggle" effect is comprised of such factors as:

An = number of units of alcohol consumed
S = smokiness of the room (graded from 0-10, where 0 clear air; 10 extremely smoky)
L = luminance of 'person of interest' (candelas per square metre; typically 1 pitch black; 150 as seen in normal room lighting)
Vo = Snellen visual acuity (6/6 normal; 6/12 just meets driving standard)
d = distance from 'person of interest' (metres; 0.5 to 3 metres)

All bollocksed into a formula that would make Steven Hawkings twitch. The research was graciously funded by Bausch & Lomb, no doubt hoping to cash in on the real thing... The beer goggles, I mean, not the bollocks, bollocks, bollocks and bollocks.

Not one sheep has appeared anywhere near this research.


- posted by Ryan @ 11/21/2006 06:01:00 PM 0 comments

 
LitCrits...


What are you going to do with them?

“Proposing that Jane Austen was a lesbian or Sophocles a cross-dresser,” writes the literary theorist Terry Eagleton, “is one way for those who have nothing especially stunning to say about irony or tragic fate to muscle in on the literary scene. It is rather like being praised as an eminent geographer for finding your way to the bathroom.”

Besides shoot 'em, I mean. That would be too obvious. I would suggest giving them a sheep.

"In the case of the great critic and poet Empson, Haffenden draws even closer parallels between the life and the work. Empson was a bisexual drawn to three-in-a-bed adventures. Haffenden points out that this affected his analyses of writers such as Andrew Marvell and James Joyce. Empson sees Ulysses as a disguised troilistic fantasy, with Leopold Bloom’s secret longing identified as a desire to restore his sexuality by sleeping simultaneously with Molly, his wife, and Stephen Dedalus, Joyce’s obviously autobiographical hero."

I heard once that Swinburne went to whipping parlours, and, what's more, I believe it...


- posted by Ryan @ 11/20/2006 03:27:00 PM 0 comments

 
News: Climate change affects sheep!


...or maybe not. The article doesn't say. What it does say is that certain migratory animals may be vulnerable to changing ocean temperatures (and what sheep is not more than casually interested in "sea levels, coastal erosion and more vigorous storms"). These animals (other than sheep) include:

"The North Atlantic right whale, whose main food of plankton is disturbed by shifting ocean currents.
Several bird species in the Caribbean, which may literally be blown off course during migration by more intense spring storms.
The white-beaked dolphin, which is out-competed by other dolphin species in warmer waters.
The Baikal teal, whose habitat is threatened by drought."

...and turtles, all of which, if you look some way or other, are related to the sheep.

Conservators are considering inventive ways of helping species adapt more quickly to the changes brought about by climate change:

""Migratory species need better and quicker delivery of conservation measures," said Dr Hepworth.

"We have to work more efficiently to step up programmes at national and international level.""

And what better measure for the over-heated right whale or the under-egged turtle than the glorious example of the sheep?


- posted by Ryan @ 11/20/2006 12:18:00 PM 0 comments

 
Bicameral Mind


Alas, it seems that we are traversing the path of somebody's moonbeam. Julian Jaynes seems to be asserting that consciousness arrived very late (past 1000 BC) and that previous semi-conscious states were much more like the actions I take in typing this on this keyboard. Or, rather, that actions were determined by a flood of auditory hallucinations.

All of this I could take, in a certain measure. I don't think that consciousness is an inherant function of the human brain. I'm not sure it could pre-date civilization and writing. Pre-Socratic man certainly had a different view of his mental states (hell, pre-yesterday man had a different view of his mental states), but the sudden jag into hallucination talk got me off.

We shall see if this is one for the rubbish bin.


- posted by Ryan @ 11/20/2006 11:39:00 AM 1 comments

 
To be...


From Julian Jaynes' bla-bla-bla (title too long to write here):

"Even such an unmetaphorical-sounding word as the verb "to be" was generated from a metaphor. It comes from the Sanskrit bhu, "to grow, or make grow," while the English forms "am" and "is" have evolved from the same root as the Sanskrit asmi, "to breathe." It is something of a lovely surprise that the irregular conjungation of our most nondescript verb is thus a record of a time when man had no independent word for "existence" and could only say that something "grows" or that it "breathes.""

Start mucking about with consciousness as metaphor and my bells are all lit up....


- posted by Ryan @ 11/19/2006 11:48:00 AM 0 comments

 
Sheep, Deadly Sheep


New Scientist.com from somewhere (presumably in Britain) has reported that a mysterious strain of BSE has turned up in some sheep somewhere (presumably in Britain):

"A massive research programme to find out whether BSE is circulating in British sheep has turned up its first suspicious result. But while scientists say the sheep did not have conventional BSE, they cannot rule out the possibility that it could have had a new form of mad cow disease that has adapted to sheep."

Mad sheep is more like it...

"Unlike BSE in cattle, prion diseases spread directly from sheep to sheep. So any BSE in sheep could still be circulating despite subsequent bans on animal-derived feed.

"Furthermore, sheep experimentally fed BSE develop a disease indistinguishable from ordinary scrapie, making detection very difficult. Yet the prion from such animals still behaves like BSE, and could cause the fatal human disease vCJD.

"Worse, sheep carry prions in more tissues than cattle, including the muscle that people eat, so BSE-infected sheep could cause more human disease than mad cows."

What I am certain is, is that no sheep understood the last few paragraphs, so no fear of panic and wild sheep riots. The article ends positively:

"Any such new incarnation of BSE in sheep may - or may not - have lost its ability to harm humans."

That's what you get from listening to too many effective speaking seminars on tape...


- posted by Ryan @ 11/18/2006 08:12:00 PM 0 comments

 
Criticism's Last Stand


There is a sort of place to die for critics, myself included-- as a critic, not in Valhallah, for now-- which is what you get for going too far... Or what you get for going where nobody needs ever to go.

You can criticize god, love, Jews, sex, sheep, presidents, pundits, pollsters, Tom Cruise (and he needs it), novelists, rock stars, sheep, TV presenters, the spoken word, the writen word, the word in abstract... french blinds, fur as fashion, global warming as fact or global warming as slightly more evident fact... next year's Oscar winners, next year's fall sweater collection at Benneton, sheep and sheep and sheep... and sheep.

But if you want to be un-funny, criticize humor:

"There is an old story about the taciturn cowboy and the curvaceous girl sitting in a swaying railway carriage. The cowboy sits looking down under the brim of his hat, apparently at the girl's legs. As her skirt creeps up she pulls it down over her knees. After she straightens her skirt a couple of times, the cowboy says, "Don't rip your skirt, Sweetie. My weakness is liquor, not women."

"Girls are supposed to be self-conscious and shy, and cowboys lustful and goatish. You, the audience - the reader, listener, or watcher - you put yourself in the situation of the story, you feel the narrative, seeing the girl's vain assumption, and so her error provides a spark of mental energy having no place to go but to laughter - or to a groan, a special form of laughter. Myself, I think the cowboy is lying, and I think the girl is giggling, both of them enjoying the situation."

I don't get the joke or the criticism, but I know somebody ran out of ideas for free-lance work.

My personal worst comes later (and this hits near to my heart):

"The costumes of characters often suffice to make things funny. Bertie Wooster, already dressed like a fop, in a white hat looks like a pimp or a mobster. Jeeves is funny just because he wears a valet's uniform, a cutaway coat and bowler hat - all the time."

If the author of this article had read through his research, he would know that Bertie is funny because, while he would love to look like a pimp or a mobster, he is, in fact, always dressed as he should, because Jeeves would never let him get away with it. That is the comedic situation (in fact, often, the only plot element in an entire novel). Jeeves does, it is true, wear perfect servant's dress, but that is funny only in so much as it adds stress to the fact that he is the unqualified master of the house.

When fools start to argue Wodehouse...

...I, alas, start to argue back...

BTW, sheep will be the subject of a great many of my posts in the not to distant future, opening Sheep Week on this blog. Those squeamish of sheep be warned.


- posted by Ryan @ 11/18/2006 04:18:00 PM 0 comments

 
Ford on Swinburne

If the poor dear young gentleman wants to drink, why shouldn't e?... Not that he drinks like Mr. Blank does...not to say soak....No, he gits rearing tearing boosed when e as the mind ter...n calls for pen n paper in the bath n writes n ode....E wrote two last Friday as ever was....To Mister Mazzini n against the Emperor of the French....N why whouldn't e?...That Mrs. Lizzie Rossetti....A powerful pernicketty lady she was. N would have things jest so....Why shouldn e git drunk in er box at Common Garden Oppra if he ad the mind? If so be s she ed bin faithful to er usband she might have spoken....But she must go n take n overdose'v opium....Onreasonable I call it...

Ford Madox Ford, Portraits From Life


- posted by Ryan @ 11/18/2006 03:47:00 PM 0 comments

 
Monkey Ethics


Scientific American reviews Frans de Waal's latest on the evolution of ethics:

"Our own species has been talking, volubly and passionately, for at least 50,000 years, and it's a fair guess that arguments about right and wrong were prominent in our conversation pretty much from the beginning. We started writing things down 5,000 years ago, and some of our first texts were codes of ethics. Our innumerable volumes of scripture and law, our Departments of Justice, High Courts, Low Courts, and Courts of Common Pleas are unique in the living world. But did we human beings invent our feeling for justice, or is it part of the package of primal emotions that we inherited from our ancestors? In other words: Did morality evolve?"

All of which questions the idea of just what ethics is. All social species have codes of behaviors, but we alone (because we can introspect on it and project it outwards) name it, codify it, and place it in a sphere above ourselves. Why?

My guess is that when we get a handle on the fact that we are big-brained, chatty apes who share a world with a lot of things much, much more like than unlike ourselves we'll have a better chance of getting along with it, with them, and with ourselves...


- posted by Ryan @ 11/18/2006 01:24:00 PM 0 comments

 
Milton Friedman...


...died today at 94. Okay, considered white bread by my (admittedly) psychotically laissez faire mentors at college, nevertheless he directed much of the economic policy in the United States thirty years running. So while I couldn't manage any harm before being hit over the head by an ideological two-by-four, this mild-mannered man took it to task and derailed the american welfare state, cut loose corporations from fiscal resposability, and paved the way to the Bush Plan for Land Resource Management (aka, go for it! buddy...).

So much for the "invisible hand."

Speaking of the "invisible hand", there is an assumption that is built into this logic that, to me, seems inherantly faulty, viz, the idea that the human animal is rational. Sure, any person, in any given circumstance, has the possibility of behaving or thinking rationally. That is what the mind allows. But it also allows just the opposite.

Sometimes-- especially when governments or corporations are looking long term-- the invisible hand works. In the case of Enron, the corporate elites were looking long term-- that is to say long term enough to cash out stock options. In an unstable "republic" in Central Africa regime leaders may see their-- in a real sense-- life expectancy as only a few months. We all know what sort of rational decision making that leads to...

Here, in America, my generation of students were taught Friedman's version of the "invisible hand" in their college economics courses. They grew up, caused the web and corporate accountancy bubbles and will cause more. They elected George Bush twice, no doubt expecting to ensure the safety of their own particular suburban "bubbles." Whatever it is, it's a perverse invisible hand that explodes them...

Take it for what you will, but Milton Friedman will roam this earth for quite a while yet before being allowed anywhere near the folk who have actually helped mankind...


- posted by Ryan @ 11/17/2006 05:06:00 PM 0 comments

 
Polder? What Polder!?


Again from Jarod Diamond's Collapse:

"That's why we Dutch are so aware of our environment. We've learned through our history that we're all living in the same polder, and that our survival depends upon each other's survival."

The polder refers to the Dutch land lying underneath sea level that is in constant threat of catastrophic flooding. If anything that Katrina should have shown us (and surely has not), is that we will all suffer equally from whatever shit we're strewing, so it's about time to start banging (now Democrat) heads and demand action, not just empty comittee meetings and bull-shit half-measures.

PS: Can anybody tell me (and I know nobody will) why we are spending any resources allocated on such idiot goose turds as electric cars and hydrogen fuel cells? In California, soon, somebody is going to have to account for every drop of water that goes into those bastards, and I don't know if anybody's detailed just where our electric power comes from-- but if you're lucky (though not the ecosystem surrounding it) the electricity comes from hydro-electric, otherwise-- gasp!--coal.

In California, we've about 16 trillion cars. If we just reduce the emissions of all those cars by 10-25% we will have made a long range impact that will allow emerging technologies the time to fill the gap. I know what is cool is what gets on TV, but what works is what works...


- posted by Ryan @ 11/17/2006 12:17:00 PM 0 comments