Slickensided kettlebottoms

are a coal mine hazard. Coal mining is more complicated than it looks. Floors can heave too, though this is slower than having the cast of a carboniferous tree fall on you.

I love the word slickensided, and can't remember where I heard of it before. I didn't know what it meant then.

Interceeding

Watching a young mother corralling an energetic toddler at service this morning brought Romans 8:26 to mind: "In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; ... the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words". Who can concentrate on worship when "Mommy, mommy!"? but we have an intercessor.

China preparations

I read that the largest military command center in the world.

That's not encouraging--or on the other hand, perhaps it is after all. I hoped to get an idea of bloat by looking at the number of Chinese high naval officers divided by the number of ships, as a function of time, but apparently those numbers aren't easy to obtain (and therefore may be dubious). On the third hand, if you've got a facility, its denizens may want to justify their existence.

Piranesi

by Susanna Clarke. AVI recommended Piranesi. It sounded interesting, and our library system, with about 40 copies, had 51 holds. I got a call from the library about 3 days later -- the book must circulate quickly.

Long ago I read a short story about an infinite library full of books of random letters--probably Borges', but I don't recall the name, just the myth. The protagonist, called Piranesi (he's sure it isn't his name), lives in a statue-bedecked infinite house, with room after room, the bottom of the three stories washed by the sea.

Fortunately for the reader there's some meaning and discovery in the story, and struggles with memory and against madness.

As AVI notes, there are plenty of references to other writers, most of which I probably missed. I had to look up who Piranesi was, for exaample, and I didn't recognize most of the sculptures.

If you've a taste for mythic writing (like the infinite library story), or the patience for it while the mystery is solved, read it.

I'll probably never re-read it.

UPDATE: I probably should have waited a few hours before reviewing a work aimed at myth. There are a couple of other things: Although it was only touched on at the end, the other world seems to be a world of archetypes, but we only live as instances of ourselves; what happens if we try to live among the archetypes? (The Place of the Lion?) And of course, how much of us is our memory?

Hardball

and spitball too.

It's an old game--require a cut in an agency's budget, and they respond by curtailing the most popular services (close Yellowstone rather than Great Sand Dunes), to inflict maximum pain on the people to whom the executive is supposed to answer.

I'm hearing a few things already--whether true or not needs the 24-hour rule--that might be the result of sloppy directives from Trump or might be revenge from agency heads.

Interesting times.

Breaking

Drachinifel's youtube channel is popular in our household--about warships up to the end of WW-II (avoiding the still-secret stuff involved in modern ships). You learn how the ships were built, used, and lost -- and many single-ship episodes ended, as the ship outlived it usefulness, with "sent to the breakers."

"Breaking" -- how does that work; how did that work back before iron ships? Luckily there's a little history. "In the days of the "wooden walls," a ship condemned to destruction was often burned or even carefully "lost" in some convenient spot. To-day the shipbreaking industry is run on scientific lines, and nothing is wasted." (It makes me itchy when people misuse "scientific" like that...)

"Even naval ships were sometimes treated in that way and to the present day small vessels and barges which have no sale value will often be carefully “lost” in some out-of-the-way corner. Harbour masters and conservancy authorities are careful to check this practice wherever possible; but even the Port of London Authority, responsible for the best-controlled port, in the world, often has trouble in stopping it."

Looking for happiness

BBC has a story on a man's "searching for secret to happiness".

"Anyone that is fixated on making you feel happy all the time is selling you snake oil" ... "If I could pick one thing that made the greatest difference - after I had been stabilised with treatment - it was, and always will be, work." But not just workaholic type work...

Nobody will tell you what a brave, talented person you are for doing the work of real happiness. But you will feel it in the reactions of people you love, the gratitude of waking up without a sense of dread, the awareness of beauty around you. And knowing you will keep your commitments, and live as a person who doesn't just talk about caring for people but does their best to live that talk.

He quotes Raymond Carver's tombstone inscription, the ideas of which should sound very familiar to many of us (funny how Wikipedia ignores the religious (even if not explicitly christian) aspects of his life):

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Bread

The supermarket or Joy Of Cooking baguettes never quite seemed as good as those in Geneva (or New Orleans) or the pricy bakery--and sometimes even the pricy bakery's wasn't quite right either. Searching around easily found other recipes, including one which explained that a slower rise/proofing developed the flavor better, and suggested half a day proofing in the fridge.

My experiment wasn't entirely satisfactory (room temperature is a bit low in winter), but the flavor does seem to be better.

I'm trying to imagine

what the rest of the teaching time was about the day Jesus told His disciples about His temptation in the wilderness.

Taylor Product?

We learned, so long ago we've probably forgotten when, about the Taylor Series. \begin{equation} f(x) = f(x_0) + (1/2)(x-x_0) f^{'}(x_0) + (1/6)(x-x_0)^2 f^{''}(x_0) + ... \end{equation} If the derivatives are large, this might not converge very quickly (if at all). If the function $f$ is reasonably well behaved, and positive, we can try looking at products instead. Never mind the complex logarithms for now. \begin{eqnarray} f(x) = e^{log(f(x))} \\ g(x) \equiv log(f(x)) \\ g(x) = g(x_0) + (x-x_0)g^{'}(x_0) + (1/2)(x-x_0)^2 g^{''}(x_0) + \dots \\ f(x) = f(x_0) e^{(x-x_0)g^{'}(x_0)} e^{(1/2)(x-x_0)^2 g^{''}(x_0)} \dots \end{eqnarray} Will this converge any faster? For a distance use the difference between the approximation so far and the true value, divided by the true value. Pick a couple of simple examples: $f(x)= e^{x}$ and $f(x) = x^2$. The first one converges much faster with a "Taylor Product" \begin{eqnarray} f(x) = e^x \\ g(x) = x \\ g(x) = x_0 + (x-x_0) 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 \dots \\ f(x) = f(x_0) e^{(x-x_0)} \times 1 \times 1 \dots \end{eqnarray} The "distances" for the approximations are \begin{eqnarray} (f(x)-f(x_0))/f(x) = 1 - e^{x-x0} \\ (f(x)-f(x_0) e^{(x-x_0)})/f(x) = 0 \\ 0 \\ \dots \end{eqnarray} The second function example is, of course, much easier to approximate with a Taylor Series; you only need three terms for it to be exact. \begin{equation} f(x) = x_0^2 + (x-x_0)\times 2x_0 + (1/2) (x-x_0)^2 \times 2 = x^2 \end{equation} But never mind that; let's use the "Taylor Product" anyway. Here $g(x) = 2\log(x)$ If we let $x=x_0+1/2$, and let $x_0 = 1$

order	g deriv	$g^{(n)}$ at $x_0=1$	scale term	f cumulative
		at $x_0=1$		error frac
0	$2\log(x)$	0	1	.555
1	$2/x$	2	2.718	-.208
2	$-2/x^2$	-2	.7788	.059
3	$4/x^3$	4	1.0869	-.023
4	$-12/x^4$	-12	.9692	.009
...	...	...	...	...

Suppose instead that $x=x_0 + 1/2$ but $x_0 = 1000$. It probably won't surprise you to see that it converges faster, using the given distance measure. \hline

order	g deriv	$g^{(n)}$ at $x_0=1$	scale term	f cumulative
		at $x_0=1$		error frac
0	$2\log(x)$	0	1000000	.001
1	$2/x$	.002	1.0010005	-2.5 E-7
2	$-2/x^2$	-.000002	.999999	8.3 E-11
3	$4/x^3$	$4\times 10^{-9}$	1.00000	-3.1 E-14
...	...	...	...	...

I don't know what this is actually called, and search engines turned up reams of irrelevancies. On a related note, MathJax in Blogger doesn't understand tabular mode.

Happy

I follow Sippican Cottage who recently posted on "the happiest songs," with a sampling. The first thing that came to my mind was Apollo 100's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, and not just because of the title. I thought it a happy song (OK, instrumental) long before I knew the name. (True. Not sure why, maybe no DJ's to explain.) I've wondered if one could time a fireworks display to it...

Anyhow, what are your suggestions?

JFK files

So the JFK files will finally be completely visible. Some years ago I wondered why several different administrations kept part of the proceedings secret, even after everybody was dead and no careers could be ruined. I came up with a possible reason.

Given who Oswald was, and what kind of life he'd led, the obvious suspicion is that the Soviets had directed him. Maybe they did, maybe not -- it would be hard to prove, especially this late. But what should have been the US reaction if they had? Would we risk nuclear war for revenge (and some kind of retaliation would certainly have been on everybody's mind)?

The discussions of how much injury we'd be willing to take without pulling the trigger would be useful information for modern enemies, and I can see multiple presidents saying "Let's not talk about this," and keeping any historical conversations under wraps.

I wonder if I was right.

Feiffer

I remember mostly liking Jules Feiffer when I was adolescent. His "Marriage Manual" seemed, to an "outsider," cynical enough to be realistic.

But older me found him "OK in small doses," and his thoughts on marriage missing the points. His dancer might dance for hope, but in the end there never seemed to be any.

I read a collection of his work that covered several years, and some years were downright bitter. Every now and then he hit the nail exactly, and for those times I'll be grateful.

Do as we say, not as we do

Coneflower seed heads feed some birds during the winter, so we cut and stacked them. Cut stalks of various of the annuals in the garden are used as bee nests over the winter too, so they're lying loose also. We have some firewood stacked by the house, and several bushes of one type or another, on a pretty small lot. Though we no longer have any trees, neighbors do.

If we lived in the Altadena area, our house would have gone up in no time.

True, tornadoes are a more frequent threat around here...

Not quite the desired result

A CPAP helps you breathe by providing "continuous positive airway pressure" to help keep the airway open. Without it, if you're lying on your back (and sometimes if you aren't), your tongue and soft palate may relax too much and block breathing, resulting in sleep apnea.

With it, you can feel the air forcing in when you breathe, and exhaling. Well, you can feel those anytime, but it's more pronounced with the machine. Being aware of your breathing is one technique for Buddhist mindfulness meditation: which isn't quite what the doctor ordered. Un-mindfulness so you can get to sleep is the point.

I guess one just has to get used to it, at a time of day when it doesn't matter if you sleep or not: no pressure. So to speak. (That seems to be helping.)

BTW, the valve at the mask may deteriorate over time. Even if it seems to move when you blow on it, at night it might just offer to stay mostly closed on you, making you feel like your machine is trying to blow you up like a balloon. Replacement isn't pricy, and helps a lot.

Interplanetary infection

Some years ago I wondered if Mars could be infected from Earth and then revisited the question, with the likely answer being "no." Another group decided to investigate life traveling to Venus instead.

That's "downhill," so you don't need as much energy to launch the bits of bacteria-laden rock, so the odds of it being sterilized in the blast are minutely smaller. OTOH, Venus isn't exactly the easiest place to live. Maybe some extremophile bacteria could survive, if there was something to "eat." Some bacteria survive here by oxiding using sulfur, but something had to produce the available sulfur in the first place. (geological chemistry? I don't know the mechanism) A huge amount of what's around us is shaped by life: O2 in the atmosphere, for instance.

Venusian microscopic life doesn't seem impossible--high up. Given what we know now. Maybe something will change the picture later...

Across the street

The weather will reach a seemingly tropical 44F today, and be mostly sunny. The workmen are wearing heavy jackets and gloves. The old roof is coming off, including some decrepit 4x8's, and new one is going on. 17-January. Tomorrow night it's supposed to hit -3F.

It's a ranch-style duplex, so they needn't climb high. I wonder if there's a discount for the off season.

UPDATE: They only did part of the roof, so I guess they were working on storm damage.

A few quotes

from the past day's reading:

"Genius ought'n to be eccentric!" he cried in some excitement. "Genius ought to be centric. It ought to be in the core of the cosmos, not on the revolving edges."

or this, about Augustine, and millions of the rest of us

an idleness which was fatal to his virtue

LA thoughts

The fires are far from the places we used to live, before we left in '63. The closest I've been since then was at meetings at UCLA, which may be threatened in the next few days. (I was offered a post there once, with a raise--but when I looked at cost-of-living it would have been a disastrous pay cut.)

I remember very little of the town. Most of what I know about it has come through pop culture, which is why Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" keeps coming to mind when I hear reports mentioning Santa Monica.

The contrast of that song is a bit jarring; "have some fun" vs evacuations and loss. But looking over the lyrics it seems as though part of the "fun" is the (lesser) contrast between the revelers and the busy or sleeping mundanes. I wonder if they'd have as much fun if the revels were a community dance, with everybody participating, instead of just a select few at night while everybody else sleeps.

That's a rabbit trail; coming back to the main track:

What can we do to make houses more resistent to fires? Metal roofs would help (it was something like a factor of 5 more expensive than asphalt shingles when we checked; it may be less now. Still it represented an investment of something like 1/3 the nominal value of the house.) Window frames that don't melt in the heat. Siding that doesn't allow embers to get stuck in cracks, and resists burning.

And the painful parts: trees away from the house (no shade), bushes away from the house (gardening and flowers), and so on.

I suppose if we want to build in flood plains we have to build for floods, and if we want to build in chaparral that burns regularly we need to build to resist burning.

Fixing that will take a while, though. In the meantime, they'll have to build more of the same, assuming they can get permits (never a foregone conclusion in California).

Walking back down the highway

after your car ran out, carrying a gallon of electricity...

Suppose you bring back a half a gallon of gasoline: enough to take you 10 miles, maybe? How big a battery would you have to carry to power an electric car to go 10 miles? (10 miles/400 miles range) * (1200 pounds) = 30 pounds of battery. Maybe a little less, as not requiring all the infrastructure of the car's battery. Say 20 pounds, or maybe 10kg for the non-Imperialists out there. Maybe push the weight back up a bit for the charging interface.

Not impossible, especially if the makers designed it as a backpack, but not fun.

Lure of magic

Andy Crouch writes about modern magic, and the side effect of instant gratification on development. Some things demand time and discipline to develop.

Tangentially, some fantasy pays at least lip service to the notion that magic takes lots of preparation effort, and that once you've shot your bolt you have to figure something else out if it didn't work. A story about a magician spending hours prepping and practicing would be pretty boring, though. (Did it trace to Jack Vance?)

And while these stages of life are singular and essential, magic is equally disastrous at other formative moments. A friend of mine found himself seated on an airplane departing Los Angeles next to a couple en route to their honeymoon in Hawaii. He observed with growing horror as the newly-married young woman opened up TikTok on her phone, began scrolling and swiping through videos, and did not stop, even for a bathroom break let alone a word to her husband, until the plane landed five hours later. One can only wonder how the rest of the honeymoon unfolded. Even and especially when we face the defining seasons of our lives, the temptation to use magic to evade their demands as well as their gifts can be—as every one of us knows one way or another—overwhelming.

UPDATE:

Grim has a couple of essays about magic and alchemy (the essay I linked uses the word "magic", which isn't quite right), and about magic and chivalry and virtue.

Waiting

We had a sermon on waiting the other week. Simeon got to see Jesus, but only as a baby. The rest everybody had to wait for. We still have to wait for the completion of the salvation. Joshua had to wait -- several times, not just at Jericho. Often the waiting is for things we can't do ourselves, though sometimes it seems that maybe we could expedite matters a trifle, if only ...

Just keep going, just keep praying, just keep doing the apparently ordinary stuff in front of you, just keep hoping ... and waiting. Patience isn't one of my front line virtues, which makes perseverance a little weak too -- and God seems to value perseverance.

Since so many of the things we hope for aren't things we can assist with very much (e.g. A isn't open to listening to advice from you), maybe the waiting is God's way of giving us a role that we can handle. "Hold until relieved," perhaps. We can't see what good our waiting does; maybe we will one day.