Sceadugenga

Mon - October 6, 2008

TEMPVS EDAX RERVM

Time, the devourer of things (Ovid)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/chronophage

Why the "of things"? Time itself is a featureless, "odorless, colorless", relative abstraction. To say that time passes, flies, expires, marches on, or keeps on slipping into the future - certainly makes the point, but the impression is of a ghostly wisp that flies past unnoticed.
In contrast, your 12-year-old face; the house you grew up in, bulldozed and built over; Uxmal's grand pyramid, a pile of rubble when Catherton came across it; the perfect roundness of the egg you just cracked - all these things have been eaten up by time, and are gone forever.

I was disappointed when I saw that the chronophage clock does not actually eat anything - its mouth opens and closes, but it's just snapping at the air. My design would have it appear to actually consume the clock dial.

Fri - May 2, 2008

Mission Accomplished for These Sailors Who Are On This Ship On Their Mission

Here is what the White House Press Secretary, Dana Perino, envisions should have taken place 5 (!) years ago:

Can anyone believe for one second that this is what was intended?

Mon - April 14, 2008

Expelled, which is, I see, the title of a movie

WE have long heard about the movie Expelled, starring Ben Stein, and how bad it is.
But some people might not know how bad it really is. So I'm linking to Expelleds website to let them know.

Thu - November 22, 2007

Trends (from the Google)

The hivemind leaves tracks in Google Trends, which shows relative search volume of given keywords.

I propose a game, called Know The Zeitgeist. Any number of players may play, probably best with 2-20 or so.

Players, in turn, spin an arrow that determines the kind of move they will make:

Move of the first kind: the player declares a keyword or keyphrase. All other players sketch a trendline that they think will match the Google trends output for the given keyword. The closest players get a point; the declaring player gets a point for every player who didn't get close.

Move of the second kind: the player declares two keywords (a "google trend fight"). All other players write one of five guesses: "1 dominates", "2 dominates", "1, then 2", "2, then 1", "too compicated to call'. The winning guess (for one point) is the best description of the two keywords for the period covered by Google Trends (2004-2007 as of today). Again, the declaring player gets a point for every wrong guess.

Move of the third kind: the player takes one keyword already used in the game, and pairs it with a new keyword to generate a move of the second kind. The declaring player gets two extra points if they do better than the first appearance of the keyword, but loses two points if they do worse.

Move of the fourth kind: the player declares a keyword. All other players decide whether the keyword is (a) flat, (b) seasonal, (c) stochastic (tied to news reports), (d) increasing (obvious upwards sweep), or (e) decreasing (...)

I will try to hold a google trends competition sometime soon. In the meantime, for a Hofstadteresque recursive trip, check this out:

This is absolutely the most interesting pattern I've seen on Google trends, with the possible exception of:

What causes that jump and subsequent sustain? Can you find another term that does that??

this is easier to explain; searches for "monthly" peak near the first of the month.

Comparing some actual month names gives something quite remarkable:

And a striking two-week phase shift can be seen here:

(numbers smaller than 14 would be contaminated with other connotations; 14th and 28th are very clearly used a lot for those days of the month).

Wed - October 17, 2007

Hoover, the talking seal

Looking through the website of W. Tecumseh Fitch (who wrote a recent article on language in Nature), I found a fascinating page of information about Hoover, the talking seal (who died in 1985).

Listening to the first recording, I thought, "Huh - so there's a guy and a seal and the guy's talking and the seal is making some voice-like noise".

Then I realized, no, it's all the seal. That catapulted me straight into the Uncanny Valley. Hoover sounds like he's saying, "Hoover! Get over here!"...probably something he heard a lot.

Apparently, pinnipeds can imitate the human voice like parrots can - but since they're mammals, studying them could shed more light on how humans make the strange sounds we do.

Thu - October 11, 2007

Arthropods from here and there

I have been remiss in posting the images of various arthropods I have encountered in my travels.
Here are a select few:

A jumping spider from Japan -- I found 4 or 5 of these in my hostel room in Yokohama. One clearly spent the night with me under the futon - he was right there when I woke up. They continually palpitate their chelicerae, perhaps that's how they smell...

A dragonfly, in Tokyo, held by the wing by my brave companion.

A huge spider in 新宿御苑(Shinjuku Gyoen), easily a 6cm legspan.

Back home, a more familiar spider was helping deal with an ant invasion...

Don't X me, Y

The title would have been my prediction for a less witty Language Log post that dealt with "Don't tase me, bro!".

As it stands, the actual post is much better. Mostly I like it because of Mark Liberman's punctilious use of IAST Sanskrit transliteration in the body.
Huh? Sanskrit? The word is saṃsāra ...

Tue - June 12, 2007

Lewis Carroll steps in for me

This is funny. Read it.
----------------
Lewis Carroll wrote:

Half of the world, or nearly so, is always in the light of the sun: as the world runs round, this hemisphere of light shifts round too, and passes over each part of it in succession.

Supposing on Tuesday, it is morning at London; in another hour it would be Tuesday morning at the west of England; if the whole world were land we might go on tracing [1] Tuesday morning, Tuesday morning all the way round, till in twenty-four hours we get to London again. But we know that at London twenty-four hours after Tuesday morning it is Wednesday morning. Where, then, in its passage round the earth, does the day change its name? Where does it lose its identity?

Practically there is no difficulty in it, because a great part of the journey is over water, and what it does out at sea no one can tell: and besides there are so many different languages that it would be hopeless to attempt to trace any one day all the year round. But is the case inconceivable that the same land and the same language should continue all round the world? I cannot see that it is: in that case either [2] there would be no distinction at all between each successive day, and so week, month, etc., so that we should have to say, "The Battle of Waterloo happened to-day, about two million hours ago," or some line would have to be fixed where the change should take place, so that the inhabitants of one house would wake and say, "Heigh-ho, [3] Tuesday morning!" and the inhabitants of the next (over the line), a few miles to the west would wake a few minutes afterwards and say, "Heigh-ho! Wednesday morning!" What hopeless confusion the people who happened to live on the line would be in, is not for me to say. There would be a quarrel every morning as to what the name of the day should be. I can imagine no third case, unless everybody was allowed to choose for themselves, which state of things would be rather worse than either of the other two.

I am aware that this idea has been started before--namely, by the unknown author of that beautiful poem beginning, "If all the world were apple pie," etc. [4] The particular result here discussed, however, does not appear to have occurred to him, as he confines himself to the difficulties in obtaining drink which would certainly ensue.

Notes
1. The best way is to imagine yourself waking round with the sun and asking the inhabitants as you go, "What morning is this?" If you suppose them living all the way around, and all speaking one language, the difficulty is obvious.

2. This is clearly an impossible case, and is only put as a hypothesis.

3. The usual exclamation at waking, generally said with a yawn.

4. "If all the world were apple pie,
And all the sea were ink
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
What should we have to drink?"

Wed - May 16, 2007

Sceadugenga

Com on wanre niht scrithan sceadugenga*, wrote the author of Beowulf... and the gruesome visions of monsters that inspired him can be found even this day. Behold, a fell fiend from the foulest fen, scouring the ground for the souls of men! Or is it just a Jerusalem cricket, neither from Jerusalem nor a cricket? This was the sight that greeted me upon my return from San Francisco to what I thought was the idyllic shire of Berkeley. Stepping lightly over the sidewalk last Sunday, in a semi-Dionysian rapture, I chanced to glimpse this *shadow-goer making its way from one patch of earth to another. I took its image in the dark (I had plenty of time to run inside, get my camera, then run back outside to where I saw it last...these guys are slow.)
...

As I followed closer, it crawled on and onward, and at last, it once more stood on the soil; and I witnessed it gathering other hideous, slithering forms unto itself. At this point I could only run in terror.

The beast could have devoured me in an instant; but I escaped my fate by swearing an oath of fealty, that I would be its messenger to the doomed throng who sleep while it stalks. All ye who slumber in innocence: Beware, take care!

...

So, it's another day, and we seem to be safe.. for now. But I see I am not alone in experiencing the Visitation: the fine magazine Cabinet has also been touched by the child of the earth. And I, for one, welcome our Stenopelmatian overlords.

Wed - April 25, 2007

Fibonacci Darts

Okay, I can't believe this isn't on the internets yet. In fact... hmm... maybe it's better that way. Maybe it's supposed to be that way. Maybe the game should spread by word of mouth. I won't let the cat out of the bag unless someone asks me.
Never mind!

Sun - April 22, 2007

On Harris and Sullivan

First off: the complete debate between Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan is here as a PDF file, and here is the original link to the debate on 'BeliefNet'.

The debate shows more than anything else the different cognitive styles of the religionist and the scientist. Sam's comments and remarks ask for precision and clarity, while Andrew is content to evoke imagery. It is never clear how much Andrew really believes in the pictures he paints and the metaphors he composes - and this is precisely the point of religious moderation. Example:

"I do believe in the empty tomb as much as I believe in the cramped manger. They go together--marks of an appearance in human history as mysterious as the divine must always be to human minds."

Is a "mark of an appearance" the same as a real event? I get the feeling that Andrew resists playing the videotape in his mind of what he must believe happened. He would rather just have his story, with its lessons and its meanings (there's nothing wrong with liking a story, but imagine a serious debate 500 years from now between an atheist and a Harry-Potterite), and not have to acknowledge what it implies about the actual events that occurred 2000 years ago to real men and women living in Palestine. But let's put a hidden camera in Jesus's tomb, along with some flood lights, and let it record... you see a body wrapped in a shroud, it stays there decomposing for a few days, and then... what? What, according to Andrew, is on the damn tape? A "mark of an appearance in human history" or a flash of light and a choir of angels? Andrew will never publicly or privately commit an answer to this question, as it forces the absurdity to the surface -- which is of course Sam's preferred tactic. Every single time Sam asks Andrew to take a stand on something miraculous, Andrew dithers.

The debate was a good example of a believer honest enough to at least engage with the strongest arguments for atheism, and it will probably be remembered as the one of most civilized, productive exchanges on this subject - but the outcome was the same as it always is.

Tue - April 17, 2007

What are all these badges for??

I captured this particular set of stuff from BoingBoing, but many webpages have something like it. This is just wrong, isn't it?
"Hmmm... which one shall I pick? The one I've already been using? Or the one with the funkier logo? Or the one with the double letter that ends in "consonant-R"? (Okay, there isn't one like that here.. but you can imagine the list going on for pages and pages more, "Add to Mokuno! \\ NewsFetch \\ My Squankstr \\ zazzIt!" etc..)"

In the golden age of computing this kind of crap won't be around. The functionality of all these sites will just happen unnoticed.

Mon - April 16, 2007

Back from Europe

....the view from my table at Airbrau, Munich airport, as I waited for my luggage to catch up with me (lunch courtesy of Lufthansa)...
(The incident was to repeat itself upon my return to NYC, but then it wasn't so bad -- in fact it's quite nice not to have to "schlep", as they say there, another bag through the subway..)

..the spire of Ulm Münster, amazingly the tallest cathedral in the world. I walked here the morning I was to speak at the "High Performance Fluorescence Imaging in the Life Sciences" conference... then I walked back. It was a brisk morning, and Ulm seems like a good little town. I suppose little Albert saw this sight more than once...

...Stephansplatz in Vienna, normally full of tourists, on my way to Café Hawelka (a dank, musty alternative to the traditional bright & snappy Vienna coffeehouse)

...a busy resident of Schloss Schönbrunn, Vienna. Her remote ancestors probably enjoyed the scraps from the Emperor's table. That's probably more than some peasants got.

Tue - March 6, 2007

Etched Brass Plate

I followed the instructions on the Steampunk Workshop and am quite pleased with the results.. I used only vinegar and salt as the etching solution, no nasty EBMUD-disallowed copper sulfate.
This image is taken from Robert Hooke's Micrographia; I plan to use it and some other of his illustrations on notebooks of mine..
(By the way, the entire free text of Micrographia, including the illustrations, can be found here.)
hooke's ant on brass plate

Sat - February 24, 2007

Sectoral Heterochromia

---this is my left eye. See the brown patch? It turns out that this striking state of affairs is called sectoral heterochromia, and Wikipedia naturally has all you need to know about it..but I see there is a need to start a new article on just the sectoral type.

..for a better illustration (as in, more aesthetically pleasing), this is actress Kate Bosworth's right eye.

Telling more than we can know

Schönborn weighs in again

Four meme

Agnosticism Meta-Thread

Anatomy of Melancholy

Fitzmas night book club

The End of Faith

What could be more ridiculous

Duplication

Mum on the Designer?

On the emptiness of "Intelligent Design" creationism