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Friday, December 25th, 2009
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7:02 pm - Perdidit spolia princeps infernorum
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"Let folly be our cloak, a veil before the eyes of the Enemy! For he is very wise, and weighs all things to a nicety in the scales of his malice. But the only measure that he knows is desire, desire for power; and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it, that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this, we shall put him out of reckoning."
-Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
"'Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'"
-Dickens, A Christmas Carol
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| Friday, December 18th, 2009
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10:17 pm - Ralph Waldo Emerson Critiques Your Fan-fiction
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| Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
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12:28 pm - Can't think of anything clever and relevant to say, but..
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| Monday, November 30th, 2009
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3:00 pm - The imitation game
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Recently I was at the Museum of Science and Industry, where they have a captured German U-boat in the basement. Like you do. Among the items retrieved from it were 2 military-grade Enigma encryption machines; the text evades what was actually done with them, but unless I miss my guess, they probably wound up in Bletchley Park, England, where they helped Alan Turing and his team figure out how to crack the latest military version of the Enigma - the civilian one, and previous iterations used by the German military, already having been solved.
A pickup truck on my street has one of those "If you can read this in English, thank a soldier" stickers. It might, with equal justice, read "If you can read this in English, thank a gay nerd with a speech impediment." I've posted about Turing before, but to me, at least, his story never grows old: the shy, retiring genius, first publishing ideas which, come to fruition, will yield a technology that changes the world beyond recognition; then, from a shed in the country, delivering a mortal blow to looming tyranny; and finally, rather than the Star Wars ending of decoration and gratitude, being treated by his country as a subhuman deviant and hounded to suicide.
Recently I read a recent re-telling of this story, David Leavitt's The Man Who Knew Too Much. There's nothing original there: the reconstruction of Turing's inner life comes largely by way of Andrew Hodges' classic Alan Turing: The Enigma, and the correct attribution of key design decisions in the first electronic stored-program computers to Turing rather than to John von Neumann is drawn from Martin Davis. I have a clear recollection of Davis giving, at a conference, an after-dinner talk on Turing's life, and the utter silence that prevailed after he recounted the grim details of Turing's death and then flipped off the overhead.
The first place that I heard the whole story still sticks with me most of all, though: Douglas Hofstadter's review of The Enigma, reprinted in Metamagical Themas. The last sentence:
Although today all evidence strongly suggests that the machine known as Alan Mathison Turing halted itself of its own free will, the ultimate reason remains an enigma to us, an undecidable question.
still seems to me one of the saddest ever committed to print. Leavitt doesn't come anywhere near these heights, but this is a decent and sympathetic short biography and I can't really fault him.
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| Tuesday, November 24th, 2009
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8:42 am - And the two into ten thousand things, and old things into new
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"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
-Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1st ed., November 24th, 1859
Happy Origin Day!
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| Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
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6:12 am - Lord Kitchener's mustache
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Ypres 1915
Alden Nowlan
The age of trumpets is passed, the banners hang
like dead crows, battered and black,
rotting into nothingness on cathedral walls.
In the crypt of St. Paul’s I had all the wrong thoughts,
wondered if there was anything left of Nelson
or Wellington, and even wished
I could pry open their tombs and look,
then was ashamed
of such morbid childishness, and almost afraid.
I know the picture is as much a forgery
as the Protocols of Zion, yet it outdistances
more plausible fictions: newsreels, regimental histories,
biographies of Earl Haig.
( It is always morning... )
Oh, I know they were mercenaries
in a war that hardly concerned us.
I know all that.
Sometimes I’m not even sure that I have a country.
But I know that they stood there at Ypres
the first time the Germans used gas,
that they were almost the only troops
in that section of the front
who did not break and run,
who held the line.
Perhaps they were too scared to run.
Perhaps they didn’t know any better
– that is possible, they were so innocent,
those farmboys and mechanics, you only have to look
at old pictures and see how they smiled.
Perhaps they were too shy
to walk out on anybody, even Death.
Perhaps their only motivation
was a stubborn disinclination.
Private McNally thinking:
You squareheaded sons of bitches,
you want this God damn trench
you’re going to have to take it away
from Billy McNally
of the South End of Saint John, New Brunswick.
And that’s ridiculous, too, and nothing on which to found a country.
Still
It makes me feel good, knowing
that in some obscure, conclusive way
they were connected with me
and me with them.
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
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4:33 pm - A happy 80th birthday to Ursula Le Guin
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"They just came to look, as if she were the Great Tower in Rodarred, or the Canyon of the Tulaevea. A phenomenon, a monument. They were awed, adoring. She snarled at them: Think your own thoughts! That's not anarchism, that's mere obscurantism. You don't think liberty and discipline are incompatible, do you? They accepted their tongue-lashing meekly as children, gratefully, as if she were some kind of All-Mother, the idol of the Big Sheltering Womb. She! She who had mined the shipyards at Seissero, and had cursed Premier Inoilte to his face in front of a crowd of seven thousand, telling him he would have cut off his own balls and had them bronzed and sold as souvenirs, if he thought there was any profit in it - she who had screeched, and sworn and kicked policemen, and spat at priests, and pissed in public on the big brass plaque in Capitol Square that said HERE WAS FOUNDED THE SOVEREIGN NATION OF A-IO ETC ETC, pssssssssss to all that! And now she was everybody's grandmama, the dear old lady, the sweet old monument, come worship at the womb."
- from "The Day Before the Revolution"
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(comment on this)
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| Wednesday, September 16th, 2009
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2:00 pm - This is the best quiz
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 | If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be W.B.R. Lickorish's An Introduction to Knot Theory. I am an introduction to mathematical Knot Theory; the theory of knots and links of simple closed curves in three-dimensional space. I consist of a selection of topics which graduate students have found to be a successful introduction to the field. Three distinct techniques are employed; Geometric Topology Manoeuvres, Combinatorics, and Algebraic Topology. Which Springer GTM would you be? The Springer GTM Test |
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, September 13th, 2009
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7:08 pm - Medium pimpin'
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| Friday, September 11th, 2009
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8:35 am - Things I have never quite understood, pop culture edition
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- What it means for a thing to be 'honky-tonk' (man, woman, girls, freeway, etc.)
- What it means for a thing to be 'à go go'
- What the literal meaning of tripping the light either fantastic or fandango is. Yes I get that metaphorically it means dancing, but what is the actual image supposed to be?
ETA. I mean, I get the general sense of "honky-tonk" - it's got a clear down-home, C&W, sort of Southern feel to it, but I don't have an effective decision procedure, you know: "This girl here: honky-tonk! That girl over there: not honky-tonk!" Maybe Mick Jagger needs to write a column or something.
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| Thursday, September 10th, 2009
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5:33 pm - Si monumentum requiris, circumspice
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| Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
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7:26 am - Chickpea dal
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Yesterday I made chickpea dal, and it came out pretty well. Here's the recipe, from hindsight:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ginger, chopped
1 tsp garlic, chopped
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 small onion, chopped
salt, pepper to taste
dash of cayenne
6-8 plum tomatoes, peeled and crushed (I used a potato masher)
1 can chickpeas
1. Heat olive oil in saucepan over medium height.
2. Add ginger, garlic, cumin, and onions, sautee for a few minutes.
3. Add tomatoes, simmer for 3-4 minutes.
4. Drain off the water from the chickpeas and stir them in.
5. Mash them (they don't need to be puree-like or anything) and cook for about 5 minutes.
5. Reduce to a simmer and cook, uncovered, for about a half hour.
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| Thursday, September 3rd, 2009
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3:47 pm - Mass action on the radio
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So I am on the radio again tonight! It's another instalment of Perpetual Notion Machine. I'm not producing this one, but I am doing the Science News Roundup section. 7PM Central, on WORT, 89.9 FM if you're in Mad Town and environs, and you can also listen online.
Also we now have a Twitter feed, @PNMradio, which is still embryonic, but I hope to make some use of during tonight's show.
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12:05 pm
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"After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as what we were, but as what we aspired to be. There has just reached us, it may be, the nobleness of some such silent behavior, not to be forgotten, not to be remembered, and we shudder to think how it fell on us cold, though in some true but tardy hour we endeavor to wipe off these scores."
-Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
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| Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
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10:09 am - Things which are good
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- ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) theengineer came to visit for the weekend. We did much cycling - at least, by my current slightly lackadaisical standards; and hit the Orton Park Festival and Ride the Drive. Yay good friends!
- cadhla's novel Rosemary and Rue is Officially Out. A Room of One's Own got it in for us over a week ago, and I read it over the past couple of days, but it is now street legal.
- my beautiful and talented lady wife, sweetmusic_27, is nominated for a Pegasus Award, for Best Performer. (So were a lot of other great people, some of whom read this space, noticeably hsifyppah and vixyish, but I hope y'all will forgive my partiality.)
- They Might Be Giants' new album Here Comes Science is out.
- in slightly older news, because I had to request it from the library, I read Karl Schroeder's fourth Virga book, The Sunless Countries
- Creation, the Paul Bettany-plays-Darwin movie - which appears to have been intelligently designed as a date movie for me and sweetmusic_27 - will be playing at the Toronto Film Festival. Which means I won't get to see it for awhile, but friends will! And presumably wider North American release will happen sometime reasonably soon. Chicago would be close enough.
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| Thursday, August 27th, 2009
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1:11 pm - HDT on depression
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"One sailor was visited in his dreams this night by the Evil Destinies, and all those powers that are hostile to human life, which constrain and oppress the minds of men, and make their path seem difficult and narrow, and beset with dangers, so that the most innocent and worthy enterprises appear insolent and a tempting of fate, and the gods go not with us."
-Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
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| Tuesday, August 25th, 2009
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6:40 am - Votre attention, s'il vous plait
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I dreamt that I was sitting in a train station, waiting for my train to pull in, when two black-uniformed Via Rail employees came to my table, and removing their hats told me that the train I was on had been in a terrible accident, and I was dead.
I said, "Oh. Well - can I get something to drink?" and they said "No, sir, you're dead."
"Oh right," I replied. "So, the train to Toronto crashed? What happened exactly?"
They exchanged glances. "No.. it was the train to New York."
I took out my ticket and showed it to them. "But my ticket was for Toronto!"
"Um. Well. I, ah. Guess you aren't dead then!" They put their hats back on and left. "Enjoy your trip, sir!"
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| Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
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9:17 pm - I take pictures of bugs(*)
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Though the wooded parts of the Arboretum are guarded by mosquitoes right now, and I didn't bring any repellent, I did go for a pleasant ramble around Curtis Prairie today. The thistle is in bloom, and attracting visitors other than myself:
( Warning: Arthropoda behind cut )
(*)In the loose sense. Neither of these are Hemiptera.
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8:35 pm - I read things
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So, I finished Julian Comstock. If you think you would enjoy a satirical post-peak-oil steampunk retelling of the life of Julian the Apostate, this is the book for you!
I also read Sean Carroll's Remarkable Creatures, a series of narrations about traveling biologists, from Wallace and Bates in the 19th century, through the Leakeys in the 20th, to Neil Shubin in the early 21st, looking - successfully - for transitional forms between fish and amphibians on Ellesmere Island. It's explicitly modeled on C.W. Ceram's Gods, Graves, and Scholars, a fun book I didn't think anybody read anymore, whose evocation of reading Old Persian high on a rock-face, or of the serious creepiness of a Mayan cenote, still sticks in my head after about 20 years.
Currently reading: Lane Robins' Kings and Assassins, the sequel to Maledicte. It is surprisingly not moving me a great deal, though I liked Maledicte quite a bit. Is it just that I read Maledicte shortly after the accident, and when I'm not pinned to a couch by a broken femur and peeing through a tube I'm more easily distracted, or at least much more capable of getting something else to read? No, I don't think so. I'll keep on and see if it picks up. I'm confident in my belief that Maledicte was actually a good book and it wasn't just the Vicodin.
Currently re-reading: Hal Duncan's Vellum. I was nudged in this direction by the magisterial smackdown Duncan recently administered to John C. Wright's homophobic conspiracy rant, but in truth, he could probably be as nasty a piece of work as Wright and I would still only have a tinge of regret at paying full price for this book (and sequel), which clearly came out of Michael Moorcock's overcoat, but despite that clear line of influence are very much their own thing. If you took the postmodern yet somehow strangely affecting lunacy of the Jerry Cornelius books, added the Sumerian myth and brain-hacking of Snow Crash, and seasoned the whole thing with a dub remix of Prometheus Bound, you would begin to get the idea. Worth a look.
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| Thursday, August 20th, 2009
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9:38 am - Things only I will ever find funny, probably, part one squillion and three
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