Syria

Given that the Syrian war is mostly unfriendlies fighting each other, why would we get involved?

I would have easily believed that the strike was a result of "policy momentum,(*)" with nobody thinking carefully about strategic interests. We've seen that show before. I could believe that we browbeat the British into joining the team. But the French? What made them join up?

After a bit of reflection, I think I get it. Poison gas and bio-weapons are the poor man's nukes. Somebody was getting a bit too liberal with their use, and several countries thought that should be discouraged. That both we and the French have a strategic interest in.

And I gather that we telegraphed the heck out of the attack, and didn't blow up all that much. Shot over the bow.

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(*) We found and supported some "moderates" who turned out to be anything but, and it seemed that our moral support for one side continued out of habit.

Fringes of the storm

Snow we don't mind so much--but freezing rain isn't so welcome. We took a birthday visit to the Stoughton Opera House (first time--nice place) to see the UW Russian Folk Orchestra. They were fun and the conductor is a good showman. They mixed in a Scott Joplin rag and some non-folk pieces--the Sabre Dance really needs some percussion and they didn't have it at this venue.

The prima balalaika was plucked at the apex of the triangle--they pluck the larger ones and the domra farther down on the body. I asked if anybody ever bowed the balalaika--the apex looked narrow enough that you could do it despite the instrument's flat string layout--but apparently nobody does.

I took it very slow coming back in the van--windy (*)sleet and snow over sleet, and no snowplows in sight. This morning everything was re-cased in sleet, and we had to be at church early for rehearsals--traveling slowly again.(**) I don't know that this is a day of rest, but it is in many ways a slow day.

We've light snow all this day, and supposedly into tonight too.

The track of the worst of the storm missed us. Maybe that's where all the snowplows went.

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(* )A disconsolate-looking robin has stayed as close to our house as it dares, flitting only far enough to put a little distance between us and then circling back. (I saw no nest.)

(**) I am His and He is Mine (1876) has the rather clunky line "Heav’n and earth may fade and flee, Firstborn light in gloom decline". That's a clumsy but not inapt way of describing the red-shifting of the Universe's first light.

Children at the museum

There were three youngsters at the Field Museum with us the other day. Funny how what interests adults doesn't always interest the younger folk. I thought everybody would get a kick out of the mummy exhibit. Not all. I thought the notion of a simple little barnacle gnawing a hole through stone would fascinate. If so, they hid it well. And I wanted to spend a little (lot) of browsing time with the Qing Ming Festival scroll.

Still, we had a good time.

I'll have to find the scroll online.

Missing the point?

There's a business just off East Washington Street called Earthview Yoga.

Choose to do together

"Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together." (I saw this on Facebook, but it turns out to be a real quotation anyway (Barney Frank).(*) ) Except that there’s a little difference between kids negotiating a 7-player pickup game of softball, and government. Remember what it is?

Back in the late 1980s, before going into the military, I worked for a furniture dealer in Cincinnati, which supplied high-end furnishings throughout the tri-state area. Mostly I worked in the warehouse, but occasionally I was asked to take a delivery truck and run one of the orders out to a customer site. On one of these runs, I had to drive deep into the Kentucky hills, far from the main highways, and as luck would have it, the truck broke down. Remember, in those days, before cell phones, being stranded was a much greater inconvenience that it is today. I had to flag down a passing vehicle, and it was two hours before an old, decrepit pickup truck stopped for me. Getting in the cab, I noticed the driver bore every resemblance to a mountain man: overalls, long beard, floppy hat, the works. But he was friendly, and offered to drive me into the next town to find a telephone.

We drove along the narrow road for some time before the driver said, “Why don’t you reach underneath your seat and get that jug?” Uh-oh, moonshine, I thought, but I did as he asked. Yep, a clear glass jug, maybe half a gallon or so, with a pale yellow liquid filling it. “Now, how’s about you open it up?” he said. I pulled out the cork, and immediately my eyes filled with tears, and I think my eyebrows started to ignite. “Now,” the driver said, “how’s about you take a swig?”

“Oh, I’m much obliged,” I stuttered, “but you know, I’m still officially on the job, so I can’t take a drink –“ The next thing I saw was the gun, pointed at my head. The driver said, “Now, I asked, how’s about you take a drink?”

“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, and I did. I think I’d rather have been shot in the head! I gasped, I gagged, I did my best to stop heaving, I was in a cold sweat. “Smooth!” I said.

“Well, that’s real nice,” said the driver, handing me the gun. Now, how’s about you hold the gun to my head so I can take a drink?”(**)

If you take the "things we choose to do together" quota at full value, it sounds very familiar: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” Kind of by definition…

"We don’t mean it that way!"

Maybe not, but for some reason that’s the way it generally works out. There's always a good reason to oversee those voluntary associations. They can't be trusted, you know--people use them as a cover for badthink. Only when everyone has pure thoughts™ will everyone do good things and we finally achieve our Utopia.

"You know what we mean--we don’t do it the way he did!"

Fortunately, though with some notable exceptions (e.g. Antifa), that's sort of true—we're not seeing many squadristi. But the squadristi are only needed until you get hold of the levers that let you hire and fire and prosecute. When you can get someone fired for this week’s badthink, why bother with inconvenient thugs?

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(*) News on Facebook is marginally more reliable than the Onion's, and vastly less amusing.

(**) Shamelessly cribbed from somebody called "Old RPM Daddy." I read a different version back in the 70's.

Fasting

I grew up thinking that fasting was going without any food, though maybe with a little water, for however long the fast might be. Even when I learned better, it was still a little startling to read that penances of year-long fasts were sometimes assigned.(*)

The Orthodox fasting rules are quite rigorous--even stricter than those of vegans.(**) To try to keep those would require coordination with other folks who also eat here. There's an old rule about accepting hospitality that says that if someone who doesn't know you are fasting offers you food, Jesus' rule about not letting people know about fasting holds, and you should accept. So, if you don't tell anybody, and someone fixes breakfast for you... I suspect that's a bit like lifting weights until you "think you're tired."

I get dizzy and fuzzy after too long without food--and both my travel and my job demand focus. And other dietary constraints apply.

Excuses, excuses.

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From a site on fasting for non-monastics: "Priests, of course, do not have breakfast before serving the Liturgy, and maybe that is why some of our sermons are not as good as they could be."

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(*) From the Canons of Theodore "If a man commits adultery, he is to fast 7 years, 3 days each week on bread and water" Also "If any man steals things of value, if he is a layman, he is to fast 5 years; if a subdeacon, 6 years; if a deacon, 7 years; if a masspriest, 10 years; if a bishop, 12 years." This seems to make Tetzel's wares a little more attractive. (The Canons weren't in use anymore by then, though.)

(**) Is it holiness or forgiveness that vegans seek?

Mediterranean flood

"Once upon a time there was a massive flood across the Mediterranean Sea, an in-pouring of water so huge that it excavated a canyon five kilometres deep and 20 kilometres long, and created a waterfall with a 1.5 kilometre drop."

This was about 5.3 million years ago.

Did this change in Atlantic currents have effects on the climate? I figure that if it refilled in 2 years as the article says, the volume of water moving would have been about 1/2 of the circumpolar current, so this could have been significant, especially if it drained from one direction more than another--Coriolis effect should send some north water down and out into the Atlantic. I'm not sure what effect this would have, though. These days the north-south current there is warm, not cold.

It is way too early to have any bearing on Ice Ages (2.6 million years ago).

Easter

We sang this morning of Jesus' tearing the bars away.

But the bars are far more terrible than any iron rods for isolation--they are bars of dust and dissolution, bars of forgetfulness and loss, bars to turn glory into nothing.

You can imagine someone standing at a tomb and calling back the departed, but imagination fails at the challenge to raise yourself from nothing. That needs someone who can create from nothing--and this is an even bigger task.

Francis

David Warren had a good question: if Scalfari persistently misrepresents Francis, why does Francis keep talking with him?

Maybe they're really good friends, or maybe Francis tries to agree with Scalfari as much as he can. Or maybe Francis likes showing off how sophisticated he can be. Or maybe he fumbles his words like a couple of recent presidents we've had.

We all adjust our conversation to our companions. Well, almost all of us. "Know thy audience" is frequently heard around here.

I'm not sure where to look for an accurate appraisal. Most big media outlets are both hostile and bone ignorant, and the Vatican sometimes speaks with many voices. Maybe the Bee had a scoop.

Fortunately I'm not in a position to say what hell is like.(*) We were admonished that heaven is not something we're able to imagine, and probably hell is likewise not imaginable. C.S. Lewis experimented with some annihilation-ist like stories: talking beasts who fail the judgment in The Last Battle revert to animal, and hell in The Great Divorce is persons' shrinking themselves down into nothing. Different reference points may observe different things. Whatever it may be like, we have it on better authority than Francis' that the place/state is real and not part of our originally planned destiny. I'd avoid close investigation. That didn't stop me from writing my own story...

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(*) We had to read Huis Clos in French class. My experience tells me that Sartre is dead wrong.

Following a quote

I was reading The Victorian Age in Literature, by G. K. Chesterton, and for a change was surprised by a quote that wasn't Chesterton's, but seemed addressed to modern culture. I suppose it was, since there are direct connections from that era to this.

I'd never heard of William Watsony. The part Chesterton quoted is highlighted. Today we call this "authenticity."

I have not paid the world
The evil and the insolent courtesy
Of offering it my baseness for a gift.

And unto such as think all Art is cold,
All music unimpassioned, if it breathe
An ardour not of Eros' lips, and glow
With fire not caught from Aphrodite's breast,

Be it enough to say, that in Man's life
Is room for great emotions unbegot
Of dalliance and embracement, unbegot
Ev'n of the purer nuptials of the soul ;

And one not pale of blood, to human touch
Not tardily responsive, yet may know
A deeper transport and a mightier thrill
Than comes of commerce with mortality.

Just for fun

Have a look at the Bunimovich stadium. Trajectories become relatively random quickly. The animation is fun, and there's a static image about halfway down the page that shows what's going on.

Authenticity in China.. and money

This Aeon article claims that Chinese ideas about original and copy differ substantially from Western notions--that if something is made in the spirit of the first creation, and I gather (perhaps wrongly) with the same materials and tools, it effectively is a new original. It sounds nice and plausible, and it looks like there is a history of this attitude. I don't have the scholarship to confirm or deny, but I think I can claim that the rule Byung-Chul Han proposes isn't universal. (In the process I got sidetracked.)

It certainly didn't apply to paper money -at least not from the point of view of the Emperor, who prescribed execution for copying it (although in eras when the money was badly depreciated and deprecated, the penalty might only be a fine). And if the provenance is culturally important--this belonged to Duke Zhou--I'm not persuaded that a buyer would be as satisfied if the piece were more recent. (The artifact would no doubt still be valuable, if Han is right.)

Read the Aeon article--and the one about paper money is interesting too:

A most original solution to the counterfeiting problem occurred in Sung times after a large shipment of counterfeit money had been seized. During the discussion as to what should be done with the counterfeiters, one court official stated that the current policy of beheading the criminals and destroying their money was a mistake. He proposed instead the following: “If you put the official imperial stamp on the counterfeited paper, it will be just as good as genuine paper. If you punish these men only by tattooing them, and circulate these notes, it is exactly as if you saved each day 300,000 copper cash together with fifty lives.” It is said that the proposition was adopted.

and

I have concluded, therefore, that the representation of only nine coins, or 90 cash per string was deliberate. But how can 900 cash be the same as 1000 cash? The explanation, I believe, lies in the fact that during the Hung-wu reign 900 cash passed for 1000; just as 770 cash represented a string in Sung dynasty times and 800 during the Chin dynasty. In other words the government’s financial arm, the Board of Revenue, must have set the relation of cash coin to the value of a string by decree. Thus the official value of cash in the marketplace would vary from time to time.

why?

When emperor Shin Tsung of the Posterior Chou ascended the throne in 915AD, he was in great need of funds. He seized over 3350 monasteries and then gave orders to melt all Buddhist bronze images found there so that they could be turned into cash. The emperor declared that Buddha himself would raise no objection, having in his lifetime given up so much for mankind. The shortage of money also caused the emperor to send a fleet of junks to Korea to trade silk for copper with which to mint cash coins.

Passion Fruit

or

Well Read, Good and Faithful Servant

I hoped that was what He said, but apparently it wasn't exactly like that.

That's inconvenient.

Oskar Gröning

He died age 94 before he could begin serving his sentence for his role in Auschwitz. He was a bookkeeper. He was sentenced in 2015 to being an accessory to murder of 300,000 Jews, and, his appeals having failed, was about to be imprisoned when he died.

Wikipedia has his story. One might ask why the authorities waited so long to try him. He was charged based on his own testimony--he couldn't stand Holocaust deniers, and told of where he had been and what he had seen. He considered himself relatively innocent--he had never been more than a bookkeeper, and had tried to leave.

Read his story. He's an interesting mix of self-deception and integrity.

Flu

The word is that this year's immunization was only 10% effective. I must be in the 90%. The flu is ended, but a malady lingers on.

Harmonizing?

LSD is 'harmonizing' for the brain — and can change your personality for years, studies find".

???

The study found that taking LSD is “harmonizing” because it helps connect different parts of your brain in new ways while “reorganizing” it. The effects were temporary, but Newsweek reports that it’s a positive sign for people with some psychological conditions.

Wait, I thought they just said "for years." There's more...

And some in the tech industry have started to take LSD in small amounts to increase their productivity.

...

“I had an epic time," he told Rolling Stone after one day at work. “I was making a lot of sales, talking to a lot of people, finding solutions to their technical problems.”

Actually, that might explain some things happening in software recently...

But onward--the actual paper is Connectome-harmonic decomposition of human brain activity reveals dynamical repertoire re-organization under LSD The first thing that jumps to mind is "what in the world is connectome-harmonic decomposition?"

I'm glad you asked. Basically it is just a harmonic analysis of brain surface electrical patterns. Despite what they claim in the text, I don't see that the various harmonic patters bear necessary resemblance to conectivity--they appear to just be the spherical harmonics mapped onto a brain instead of a sphere. (And the text bears that out--this models the surface only. Other tools are supposed to address inner workings--I think.) The other examples plotted do not all fill me with confidence: e.g. the "mammal-skin"-shaped plates were supposed to show something significant? Hint: in a real mammal one boundary condition on the skin is that it wraps around.

This quote jumped out at me:

Taken together, these results suggest that the visual, somato-motor, and limbic, as well as the default mode network, are well predicted by individual connectome harmonics of a narrow frequency range, whereas the higher cognitive networks rely on a broader frequency range of connectome harmonics distributed over the spatial spectrum.

Or in English: the network activity for several brain functions can be predicted using only a few frequencies and harmonic patterns. That's a lot stronger than I think they can claim. Their measurement of network activity may involve only a few frequencies, but that's not the same as network activity as a whole.

One well known problem with using spherical harmonic decomposition of a pattern is that measurement uncertainties (and any sorts of gaps in the measurement coverage) make the higher frequency harmonics pretty meaningless. Been there, done that, got nothing.

So, maybe there's something to look at, but I'd be very careful about drawing conclusions.

Oh, yes, where did that "harmonizing" come in? The only use of the word in the paper is in the name of an ethics committee.

My guess is that it either comes from the vivid imagination of the science reporter, or a translation problem in talking with the Spanish researchers.

Octopus

I've had a plate of the small ones a few times. They're OK, but quite a long way from being my go-to dish. My sense was similar to this Slate writer's: "Here is food." Except he likes them better.

That article is interesting--he reports on a claim that the famous escape artist Inky didn't actually escape. And some of the other things you've heard...

In spite of their purported brilliance, the study found that octopuses did not learn to do the task any better over time. (They’re slow learners in other contexts, too.) And what about the classic research from the early 1990s, which suggested an octopus could learn to choose a colored ball just by watching other octopuses? That behavior, which helped make the octopus an “honorary vertebrate” for the purposes of British law, isn’t so extraordinary, even for invertebrates. Bumblebees, for example, can learn to choose between green and orange flowers after watching other bumblebees. Yet no one ever calls the bee “the genius of the garden.”

I guess it’s easy to write off bumblebees, since they seem so much the same. The octopus, on the other hand, delights us with its special talents and funny personality. We hear Inky was “a curious boy,” that Otto was prone to getting bored, that Ozy was a whiz with jars, that Paul would sometimes share his thoughts on soccer games. But this focus on the octopus’s temperament and character might also be a canard. While research published in the early 1990s found some hints that octopuses might have personalities, their patterns of behavior didn’t even seem to hold across the two weeks of the study. A more recent paper, out in 2010, suggested an octopus doesn’t have an overarching disposition. (There is better, formal evidence for personality in cuttlefish and squid.)

Ahh, reproducibility... Hank was a fun cartoon character, though.

Judgementalism

AVI posted recently some thoughts about judgmentalism. I mulled over responses, and then realized that (as usual) Chesterton said it better.

"Modern theory, as a whole, is rather encouraging egoism. But we need not be alarmed about that. Modern practice, being exactly like ancient practice, is still heartily discouraging it. The man with the strong magnetic personality is still the man whom those who know him best desire most warmly to kick out of the club. The man in a really acute stage of self-realisation is a no more pleasing object in the club than in the pub."

There's a natural revulsion against the mere man who presumes to know my thoughts and judge my actions. Especially when the touchstone du jour puts the thumb on the scales.

Unexpected side effects

Most of the driveways in our neighborhood are asphalt, in various states of maintenance. Ours was in pretty bad shape when we sprang for a concrete replacement a few years ago. It made shoveling the driveway much easier, though sometimes a tad more slippery than the rough asphalt had been.

I just looked out the window to see several kids from nearby drawing on the driveway with chalk. We've no objections, of course, but I wondered why ours would be popular, since we don't have kids that age at home anymore.

Concrete makes a better canvas for chalk art. I'd go out and look at what they drew, but the flu has me down.