Putting my Best Face Forward

So new day, new look. I am making another posting to what was never more that a shout-into-the-well blog. But I've updated the look of the blog and added an image of myself. The loss of anonymity isn't as troubling as it used to be. About the image in my profile: It is an A.I.-generated headshot that Chat-GPT created for professional use. Here it is in a larger format:

Rather cunning, huh? But Chat-GPT has many GPTs for you to play with. One allowed me to render myself as a character in a novel or movie. So, here is what I could look like as a background character in "Casablanca"

My inner young guy in his twenties is so geeked out by this.

My Life So Far

Looking at this blog after many moons, I note that my last posting was May, 2016. No apologies, just noting. I have been posting short snipes at Jim Treacher's Substack. So I am feeling frisky these days and plan to write more about the amazingly weird times we live in.

"Next time someone says "Data Driven" you will be unable to think of anything but this." - @davidjbland pic.twitter.com/E8fZjZxKdv

— Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay) May 31, 2016

It has been a while since I have written about the "Multiverse" concept. So I better write about it now, because it may soon be as fashionable and writing about the errors of Phlogiston Theory.

As the logical conclusion of prevailing assumptions, the multiverse hypothesis has surged in begrudging popularity in recent years. But the argument feels like a cop-out to many, or at least a huge letdown. A universe shaped by chance cancellations eludes understanding, and the existence of unreachable, alien universes may be impossible to prove. “And it’s pretty unsatisfactory to use the multiverse hypothesis to explain only things we don’t understand,” said Graham Ross, an emeritus professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oxford. 

The multiverse ennui can’t last forever.

After all the hype surrounding the search for evidence of the Higgs Boson, the search for additional particles appears to have come a cropper:

When the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Laboratory in Geneva closed down for upgrades in early 2013, its collisions had failed to yield any of dozens of particles that many theorists had included in their equations for more than 30 years. The grand flop suggests that researchers may have taken a wrong turn decades ago in their understanding of how to calculate the masses of particles.

When these particles went missing, some physicists went back to the idea of what is missing in the Standard Model and have advanced an idea called "Scale Symmetry."

This little-explored idea, known as scale symmetry, constitutes a radical departure from long-standing assumptions about how elementary particles acquire their properties. But it has recently emerged as a common theme of numerous talks and papers by respected particle physicists. With their field stuck at a nasty impasse, the researchers have returned to the master equations that describe the known particles and their interactions, and are asking: What happens when you erase the terms in the equations having to do with mass and length?

Nature, at the deepest level, may not differentiate between scales. 

So, at some basic level, size doesn't matter.

What hold Scale Symmetry back from full recognition? Ghosts!

However, the theory has what most experts consider a serious flaw: It requires the existence of strange particle-like entities called “ghosts.” Ghosts either have negative energies or negative probabilities of existing — both of which wreak havoc on the equations of the quantum world.

So, when Big Bang Theory returns with new episodes this fall, don't roll your eyes. Dr. Sheldon Cooper's new field of research might be hunting ghosts.





http://www.wired.com/2014/08/multiverse/

When Worlds Collide

The book, "When Worlds Collide" was one of my favorites as a kid. It wasn't until much later in life that I saw the George Pal movie adapted from the book.

The idea of a rogue planet seemed frightening as a child, but as I grew older is seemed more and more implausible. What mechanism would cause a planet to break free of it's stellar system? Sure, in the vastness of our universe there must be some rogue planets, but surely there couldn't be many?

Well it turns out that not only have astronomers sighted a rogue planet, but that many models of our universe predict that there are twice as many rogue planets than there are main-sequence stars.  Urk.

Astronomers have discovered a potential "rogue" alien planet wandering alone just 100 light-years from Earth, suggesting that such starless worlds may be extremely common across the galaxy.
The free-floating object, called CFBDSIR2149, is likely a gas giant planet four to seven times more massive than Jupiter, scientists say in a new study unveiled today (Nov. 14). The planet cruises unbound through space relatively close to Earth (in astronomical terms; the Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light-years wide), perhaps after being booted from its own solar system.

Rogue planets are Nature's way of asking, "How's that space program coming along?"

Post Election Fury

So I know that the election is over. I have followed the advice of several conservative bloggers and taken deep, cleansing breaths.  I have walked the dogs outside in sunny fall weather and hugged my wife.

But here's my problem: I woke up this morning and nothing is settled.

Source: MorgueFile

Everything that was a pressing problem the day before the election is still a pressing problem. The economy sucks, unemployment remains persistently high, the fiscal cliff is coming in January, and this Administration has no plan to address any of these problems other than "Rinse and repeat."

Sure enough, all the bad news that was withheld before the election is coming out in a rush:

Boeing Telegraphs Layoffs in Defense, Space & Security Unit

Why US Economy May Be Headed for Another Recession

Loved ones tell me in relief that in electing Barack Obama they have "saved Social Security for their kids and grand-kids."

No, they haven't: News About Social Security Trust Fund Shortfall Only Gets Worse. Just a crazy right-wing alarmist?

This is from the Social Security Trustees:

Social Security and Medicare are the two largest federal programs, accounting for 36 percent of federal expenditures in fiscal year 2011. Both programs will experience cost growth substantially in excess of GDP growth in the coming decades due to aging of the population and, in the case of Medicare, growth in expenditures per beneficiary exceeding growth in per capita GDP. Through the mid-2030s, population aging caused by the large baby-boom generation entering retirement and lower-birth-rate generations entering employment will be the largest single factor causing costs to grow more rapidly than GDP. Thereafter, the primary factors will be population aging caused by increasing longevity and health care cost growth somewhat more rapid than GDP growth.
*****
However, the Disability Insurance (DI) program satisfies neither the long-range test nor the short-range test. DI costs have exceeded non-interest income since 2005, and the Trustees project trust fund exhaustion in 2016, two years earlier than projected last year. The DI program faces the most immediate financing shortfall of any of the separate trust funds; thus lawmakers need to act soon to avoid reduced payments to DI beneficiaries four years from now.

I would go on, but I must cook dinner now.

Cheat Codes

Almost everyone who was born after the Ford Administration knows what "cheat codes" are. But for my fellow boomers I'll explain that cheat codes are (generally undocumented) special inputs to video games that allow the player to gain an advantage. They usually consist of pressing controller keys in a very exact sequence. They reward the game player with a variety of goodies: special powers and strength for their game avatar, or in "shooter" games, new and more powerful weapons or unlimited amunition.

You can search the internet for game walkthroughs and cheat codes. Whenever a new game comes out, dedicated players try out different obscure combinations of a game controllers keys, trying to find the combination that will give them an advantage in the game.

Game creators are aware of this interest and will make sure that cheat codes are "accidentally" leaked to their most loyal fans. These loyal fans then pass this along to their friends. There is even a market for books detailing the cheat codes of various video games.

My favorite nephew passed this tweet along to me this morning:

I was knocked back on my heels by this bit off tossed-off wisdom.

Proverbs do encode shortcuts to wisdom gathered through hard experience. Proverbs don't substitute for actually thinking the problem through.

Note the many proverbs that seem to contradict each other: "Many hands make light work," vs. "Too many cooks spoil the soup." or : "All things come to him who waits," vs. "Strike while the iron is hot."

But I do love the word image of the tweet, "I think proverbs may actually be cheat codes."

I love the idea that these nuggets of wisdom give us access to advantages put into our lives by the designer; and that if I take advantage of this wisdom I will find myself boosted with new strength, longer life, and unlimited spiritual amunition.

Heh.

Ischemic Attack!

The word is out on the digital street that I was in the E.R. last night, standing in for George Clooney. That's not entirely accurate.

Last Tuesday I felt a tingling sensation in my right leg, as though my leg were asleep. After a couple of hours the feeling passed. Thursday the sensation returned and covered the entire right side of my body. Friday night I checked my blood pressure and it was high. So Mrs. Islander drove me down to the Island Emergency Room.

Checking into the ER when you don't have a broken limb or gaping wound seems a bit false, as though you are malingering. At those prices, though, it's no joke. I could feel the money flying out of my wallet.

Because the issues involved are your own health and life, yet you spend so much time alone in a strange room, time spent in the ER swings from boring to fascinating. Lying in a bed, connected to different monitors, I couldn't get up and walk around, so I had to devise my own entertainment.

The monitors to which the nurses hooked me up are set to sound an alarm if the patient's bpm drop below 50. I have a normally low resting heart rate (49 beats per minute). After responding to the third alarm, the nurse reset the monitor alarm to 45 bpm.

I laid back, relaxed, and slowed my breathing, timing it to my heartbeats. I dropped my heart rate to 44 bpm and triggered the alarm again.

Good times, good times.

I was given a diagnosis of TIA Transient Ischemic Attack (mini-stroke). A CT scan could see no lesions (brain damage), so I'm doing well so far. (No snide remarks from my siblings--I have doctor's proof of no brain damage. Do you?)

Monday morning I report into my own doctor's office and get an ultrasound of my neck and schedule an MRI.

I'll post more as events warrant. You are free to go about your daily lives.

Avatar (No, not that one)

I keep trying out avatars for web use. This was generated by the Mad Men website.

Outgeeked

This Christmastide we had as guests my wife's sister and her husband, Jim. As guys do, we sniffed around a couple of topics to see if we were from the same tribe.

He mentioned that he liked classic Sci-Fi, and I asked him to name a couple of favorite authors. (Think of that scene in The Commitments: "Who are your influences?"

Jim allowed that he used to be a big Piers Anthony fan. I asked him if he liked my favorite Anthony novel, Omnivore.

Without a word he rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a tattoo of the fungal carnivore.

I was completely outgeeked.

Dept. of Duh

ABC News: Shoe Style Linked to Foot Pain

Why I'm Rereading: Island in the Sea of Time

I have known several people in my life who never re-read a book. Once they have closed the cover on the last page, they are onto the next thing--book, task, whatever. I also know of people that have a favorite re-read. My friend Alex would re-read Dune every summer. It kind of defined summer to read it, I guess. My former boss Bill would re-read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever every couple of years.

I am a person that rereads. I do so for several reasons. First of all, I reread for pure pleasure, re-experiencing the best of what I have read. Secondly, I re-read because books don't change, but I have changed since the last time I read a book. Thirdly, I re-read becuase The book was so challenging the first time that I want to get more from it on subsequent readings.

I am currently re-reading S.M. Stirling's alternate-history Island in the Sea of Time, which I first read back in the late 1990s.

Why?

I recently finished Sword of the Lady, the 6th book in his "Emberverse" series which is loosely connected to the "Island" series and I wanted to refresh my memory of the first events in the series before I arrive at the conclusion, "High King in Montival," next year.

My Sweety recently read the book at the urging of my Daughter and enjoyed it very much. (She's not much of an SF reader.)

And I have changed in the last 15 years. I have spent several years studying Japanese sword (Kenjutsu) and I am ranked Shodan-ni in Seiki-ryu Kentutsu/Jodo. So now reading the weapon-work of Captain Marion Alston is accompanied by better-informed mental images of what she is doing.

What would Milton Friedman do?

There are a lot of people exercised over the fear of government intervention into the US economy and I am one of them.

So why did I support (writing to my congresspeople) the TARP I bailout?

Thankfully, Kevin Williamson answers that question for me:

There are those conservatives who ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” There are those who ask, “What would Ronald Reagan do?” There are even a few who ask, “What would Russell Kirk do, other than pour himself a scotch and shake his head sadly before writing another 1,000 pages?” I ask myself, “What would Milton Friedman do?”

Milton Friedman would have supported a bank bailout.

Or it seems he would have, given that a bank bailout is more or less what he prescribed for the last great financial crisis, the one leading up to the Great Depression, which he dwells upon at some length in his Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. The vulgarized version of Friedman: The Federal Reserve helped turn a routine if severe recession into the Great Depression by tightening the supply of money and credit. But as economists as different as Paul Krugman and Tyler Cowen have pointed out, the more accurate version is this: The Fed helped cause the Great Depression by allowing the supply of money and credit to tighten. The distinction is important. How did they allow it? By declining to bail out the failing banks...

Free-marketeers tend to think of our orientation not only as an economic position but also as a virtue. (It is.) But there is a danger in letting that belief congeal into dogma and, in consequence, allowing abstractions to obscure realities. It is true that the root evil here was government intervention in the economy: The Fed’s over-loose money after Dot-Bomb and 9/11, combined with tax incentives and the market-distorting actions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, helped create the housing bubble; various government policies then helped turn that bubble into a global disaster. The subprime meltdown was not a failure of what is so often mischaracterized as “unbridled capitalism.” It was as much a failure of regulatory excess as of Scrooge McDuck, literally-rolling-in-it excess.

But it is not necessarily wise to start practicing austerities at the moment of crisis. Those who opposed the bailouts were, I think, seeking to restore the virtues of the free market — at precisely the wrong time. It is as though we had been diagnosed with lung cancer and responded merely by swearing off cigarettes. What about radiation therapy? What, are you crazy? Radiation gives you cancer! And people get sick in hospitals! ....

I suspect that many of us who opposed the bailouts did so based on unjustified optimism. Surely, we thought, the citizens of this commercial republic will have learned their lesson and will hasten to enact reforms that are consistent with their experience and liberal values. Those of us who believed that must somehow have missed the contemporaneous ascent of Barack Obama, whose election as president does not suggest that the nation is ready for a heaping helping of Adam Smith. Professor Cowen demands:

If you are a libertarian, is not our current course more favorable for liberty than would have been a repeat of 1929–1931? If not, I would be curious to hear your counterfactual version of how matters would have proceeded, without the financial bailouts. Is it that you think the regional banks would have raised the financing to pick up the entire bag and keep the banking system afloat? Or is it that natural market forces would have somehow avoided a wrenching surprise deflation? Or do you think the authorities for some reason would have not nationalized the major banks? . . . If we had not done the bailouts we did, we would, within a few months’ or weeks’ time, have received a much worse and costlier bailout run by Congress and Nancy Pelosi. How does that sound?

Sounds like hell on earth, professor.

The Religious urge for Multiverse

The Constant Reader may remember that I have problems with the current craze for resolving every ambiguity of physics with the concept of "multiverse."

Now, Lee Smolin, a founding member and research physicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada, has challenged other physicists to work out the implications of a single universe:

Smolin explains how theories describing a myriad of possible universes, with less or more dimensions and different kinds of particles and forces, have become increasingly popular in the last few years. However, through his work with the Brazilian philosopher Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Smolin believes that, despite there being good reasons for the conclusion that we live in a timeless multiverse, those theories, and the concomitant assumption that time is not a fundamental concept, are "profoundly mistaken".

Smolin points out why a timeless multiverse means that our laws of physics are no longer determinable from experiment and how the connection between fundamental laws, which are unique and applicable universally from first principles, and effective laws, which hold based on what we can actually observe, becomes unclear.

Smolin suggests a new set of principles that he hopes will begin a fresh adventure in science where we have to reconceive the notion of law to apply to a single universe that happens just once. These principles begin with the assertion that there is only one universe; that all that is real is real in a moment, as part of a succession of moments; and that everything that is real in a moment is a process of change leading to the next or future moments. As he explains, "If there is just one universe, there is no reason for a separation into laws and initial conditions, as we want a law to explain just one history of the one universe."

If we embrace the idea that there is only one universe and that time is a fundamental property of nature, then this opens up the possibility that the laws of physics evolve with time. As Smolin writes, "The notion of transcending our time-bound experiences in order to discover truths that hold timelessly is an unrealizable fantasy. When science succeeds, we do nothing of the sort; what we physicists really do is discover laws that hold in the universe we experience
within time. This, I would claim, should be enough; anything beyond that is more
a religious urge for transcendence than science."

And it is this final sentence that looses the arrow: "...anything beyond that is more a religious urge for transcendence than science."

Precisely!

"Shut up," He explained.

Lanny Davis: Hey, we'll only have show trials for people with the temerity to fight back!

He reminds me of the little boy caught fighting by his mother, "It all started when Timmy hit me back!"

Randism

The wonderfully named Scott Galupo writes that conservatives should get over their fascination with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

Best line:

"Indeed, Miss Rand's writings are catnip for those who seek to deflect any and all blame for the current economic crisis away from the private sector. Like the airtight religious belief system that it essentially is, Randian capitalism can never stumble or fail — it can only be betrayed."

Heh.

I first read The Fountainhead, then Atlas Shrugged when I was in my late 20s with a wife and two children to support. I found them an odd mix of stilted didactic text mixed with heaving-bosom "woman's fiction." I was entertained by how she walked her characters through their set pieces, but not swept up by thier wooden speechifying.

I guess you have to read Rand while in your teens to really be ruined by her books.

A Rogue Agency

Just sent:

The Honorable Rick Larsen

Sir;

I am very troubled about the statements by the House Speaker, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi, about whether or not the CIA mislead her during briefings about enhanced interrogation techniques. The issue is much deeper and more dangerous than any particular interrogation techniques by agents of the CIA, it is a claim that the CIA has slipped from the reigns of congressional oversight, that we have that most frightening of spectres: a rogue secret intelligence agency.

These claims must be investigated to clear either the CIA or Speaker Pelosi. Secret agencies are a regrettable necessity, so we allow them to operate only under the oversight of our elected representatives. I ask you to call for an investigation of these claims, and to join with other representatives in calling for this investigation.

I will watch in the next few months to see that the American people and their freedoms and safety are guarded.

Big Trek Theory

I can't remember which musician in Nirvana said it, but the quote went  something like: "How do you know that you have made it in the music business? When Al Yankovic writes a parody of one of your songs."

So the meta-narrative validates the narrative.

The new Star Trek reboot seems to be taking off, but I wonder: how is it going to be handled on Big Bang Theory? Ripe grounds for nerd contraversy!

Five Reasons the GOP Will Rebound

Over at CNN, John Feehery lists five reasons that the GOP will rebound. Numbers one and two of these reasons have been pretty well discussed, but three through five are (to me) fresher:

1. The party in power tends to overreach.


2. People want checks on power.


3. Crisis breeds renewal.


4. Talent senses opportunity.


5. The Republican Party is now the de facto Libertarian Party.

I think a lot of people on the left don't get number five and don't see how it is linked to number one.

Gripes

Todd posted this:


see more Funny Graphs

This makes me rant a bit about remembering when the A&E channel stood for "Arts & Entertainment." I remember getting basic cable and really enjoying a presentation of The Mikado in which the Lord High Executioner's song had an encore wherein he listed all of the modern annoyances that would call for his sword's work (people that talked loudly on cell phones in public places, etc..).

Or when MTV was about music...or when Discovery was about science...or...

Back in the 1990s, one of the big arguments against funding of PBS was that these new cable channels would provide diversity of programming and fill the econiche of public TV.

How I wish it were true. The only channel that has kept true to that kind of charter is CSPAN.