Sunday, July 13, 2025

February is a long long month

Bony fingers sifting through the habits of a life
Splitting needs from hungers as a clean dissecting knife
  Invoking an accounting of my ways.

Golden-blooming hours mid dead days that wasted sun
Myriad intentions; thousand starts; but pittance done
  Presuming on a bank account of days.

Museless hours have hid his gold – please vend another year!
Snoozing time is over; oil is low; the groom is near.
  With wick that sputters, wait for what he says.

Friday, July 11, 2025

Humor

I wonder how far that's true.

AVI has written a good deal on humor not aging well, and that may be related--the jester is putting together something temporary. That could get hard on you (as the title Treadmill to Oblivion suggests).

I generally do pretty well adding light humor to a conversation, and provide my share of Dad jokes, but if you corner me and say "Tell a joke" the headlights glare in this poor deer's eyes.

And I've found that after the conversation, no matter how many bon mots flew, I rarely remember any of them. They were things of the moment: yes, apples of gold in pictures of silver, but maybe more like unkeepable manna than actual gold.

I hesitate to draw conclusions from this: some people have written enduring humor. But a lot of times humor doesn't keep well, or translate well. In good conversation it doesn't have to, because for the moment it's alive. I wonder how much of our humor is taking these evanescent butterflies and tying windup motors to them to make them show up when I want them to.

Tuesday, July 08, 2025

Watch an elephant disappear

So there "is no Epstein list". Ah.

I don't remember who pointed me at the link--perhaps AVI--but the author brought up an aspect I hadn't considered, which seems convincing. Presuming that Epstein was cooperating/coordinating with other intelligence agencies(*), the lists could have included people those other agencies were working with and didn't want to give up on yet. We do rely on sharing information with other country's agencies, and if e.g. France says "Ne divulguez pas ces informations si vous vous attendez à ce que nous coopérions avec vous" or something like that, I think we'd consider cooperation with France as a national security issue. A little bit of bare-face lying is merely a small political price. And it doesn't matter what political party is involved. Everybody will hide the lists.

And, of course, the other country's real objections might be trivial, but if they dig in their heels to protect somebody, what are you going to do?

I wish I remembered the author's name: credit where due.

(*) I don't think blackmail was key; helpful people who keep your image clean seems more likely. If he'd been blackmailing people word would have gotten around and he'd have been out of business. Just provide fresh-looking pliable girls at the island and the opportunity for conversations with famous people and let the real agents work.

Saturday, July 05, 2025

Time dimensions

My sisters took exception to my statement that the story about the claim that physics simplified if time was really three dimensions playing roles at different scales was all over the news. I guess we read different news.

Anyhow, I felt well enough to tackle the paper today, and well, ...

He sort-of motivates this framework, and gives a pretty generic description of it in Section 2. I was hankering to see where the different scales kicked in. I'm still waiting.

In Section 3.1 he pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Likewise in 3.2. And... He never shows how he derives anything.

But: "The theoretical predictions and numerical calculations presented in this paper are fully described within the text"

Maybe the rest of the text is somewhere else? He cites some of his own work Charge as a Topological Property in Three-Dimensional Time which goes into a bit more detail, but I still don't follow how the different time scales emerge, nor how you can have the specified symmetry if they do have different scales. Nor how he gets 1/3 of a charge for quarks but whole numbers for leptons.

Maybe he explains how they have different "symmetry orders" in another paper he cites. I will not hold my breath.

Two time dimensions apparently are plausible possibilities in string theory, except that they don't work very well there. I did a little of my own noodling on possibilities, which I'll try to post--no string theory required.

Friday, July 04, 2025

Fireworks and family

When I was young and in California, Mom wasn't fond of fireworks or cap guns, and I didn't have the budget to buy them anyhow. Dad didn't seem to mind them, but he went along. I found out later he was a decent shot--he'd been in the Pacific in the war and the Naval Reserve afterwards, so he'd had training.

Things changed. When the civil war got closer and closer to Monrovia, and the booms were light artillery and the cracks in the distance weren't firecrackers, it got on both of their nerves after a while. You never knew when Taylor's men would make a breakthrough, or if government troops would go freelancing.

The US evacuated its citizens (with just a suitcase each), and they came back to the States for a while. (And couldn't leave to go to work in Ivory Coast until they paid the evacuation costs, but the gov't couldn't figure out what the costs actually were for months.)

But neither of them enjoyed fireworks displays after that.

I do, but this year I think I'll rest; maybe watch the neighbor's instead. Not a lot of energy back yet.

Manipulating bird song

We've probably all heard the novelty Christmas songs with dogs barking or cats meowing the notes; and if we're old enough probably remember Marvin Suggs and his Muppaphone.

A bark can approximate a note in the scale, and if it isn't quite there you can tune it to fit, and with enough samples you could program your synthesizer to bark out whatever tune you cared to. All you need to worry about is the note, duration, and volume, and a good synthesizer will know how to deal with key velocity. You have an alphabet; you can plug in whatever sounds you want.

But what about birdsong? What would you need to take into account if you wanted to compose music using recorded bird chirps, cheeps, chips, warbles, etc?

Bird chirps run faster than human-sung notes. In the time it takes me to sing "la" the bird runs through a trill and a chirp to top it off, even shifting back and forth between notes. Maybe it crescendos, rises and falls. The warbling won't be the same frequency from one species to another.

Matching one "note" to the next isn't like picking letters from an alphabet, but matching textures, speeds, even which sets of notes were used in what isn't a chord. It's more like picking characters from a Chinese typewriter.

You could get around that by slowing the bird calls way down, trimming out a clean part, and "autotuning." It would probably sound interesting, and maybe even good, but I doubt it would sound much like the birdsong it came from.

Maybe the Chinese typewriter is the way to go. To get started, suppose we limit ourselves to 2 octaves of the primary note: 24 primary notes. No warble or warble at a set frequency (we can fiddle with the sound to fit one of our set values): say 8. The secondary note: probably a choice of 8, but some will sound nice together with different ones. Rise and fall shape: 5. Hmm. So far that's 7680 different sounds in the sound bank, with 4 descriptors. I hate to think how many calls you'd have to listen through to settle on that number.

Of course you can take different parts of a single call to represent different ... I can't call it a note, because it's more than just the note ... complexes. Still, even without more descriptors, that's a lot of time somebody (you) has to invest to sort out the complexes, before you start playing.

OK, start simple. Sort out a single type of sound you want to work with (warble type, flat "rise and fall", secondary note difference from the primary). That'll be maybe several weeks of work to get 24 notes (getting a feel for the territory takes a while), and then you program your synthesizer and try it out.

I'd bet that it wouldn't sound quite clean right out of the gate--that attack will be hard to make smooth; and probably some things I didn't think of will jump out at the musician who tries to play it for the first time.

Maybe start even simpler: take some bird chirps, split them into sections, and find the primary frequency for each--if there is one. If there isn't, trying to shoehorn them into notes may not be the way to go. You might have fun trying to assemble your own bird calls, though.

Would it be good enough to be an instrument in its own right, or merely a novelty?

No clue.

Thursday, July 03, 2025

I suppose it is, at that

"Buy used: $49.95"

Not brand new, anyway.

Wednesday, July 02, 2025

I've gotten spoiled

The default printer paper and copier paper is good heavyweight stuff, and the fonts have been massaged for maximum readability on screen or print. Copies are crisp, and even single-spaced type is easy to read.

I got a binder of my parents' letters, mostly from '64-'66 (one from '54). Some are handwritten; some were typed on various typewriters. Most were on thin paper, others on airmail letter forms. Bleeding was a bit of an issue. Some were carbon copies. Remember those? Blurry lettering. And the typewriter spacing put lines just a hair too close together--the blogger composition screen is much easier to read. I guess maximizing the number of words per page was key. From the looks of one of the typewriter fonts, that's the only excuse I have for it.

I'd forgotten. That's what I grew up with, and didn't think anything of it then.

Sunday, June 29, 2025

Somebody gets it

About fear of heights: the void reaches out for you, and your muscles rehearse every possible way you could fall.

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Communications in wartime

From an interrogation of Commander Nishino about the battle of Surigao Strait. His ship (the Shigure) was in the Second Squadron, and was the only survivor of that encounter with American forces. Apparently the overall commanders weren't talking to each other very clearly, and even after Kurita had been chased off and their overall time-table screwed up, everybody was instructed to go on as planned. Second Squadron got there four hours early and went in, and got mauled. Second Squadron's flagship blew up and Nishino couldn't figure out who was supposed to be in charge. Eventually he figured everybody was done for and headed out--the Shigure was just a destroyer.

On the way out he spotted Admiral Shima's force advancing in. From the interrogation:

A. About 0350 I sighted Admiral SHIMA's force advancing northward, while we were repairing the rudder.

Q. Did you communicate with Admiral SHIMA's force to tell him what damage had occurred?

A. I signaled to Admiral SHIMA by blinker because the telephone was broken.

Q. What did you tell Admiral SHIMA?

A. I signalled to the approaching force requesting them to identify themselves, as I was not sure but that they might be American surface units. The answer received was "I am the NACHI". I answered "I am the SHIGURE, I have rudder difficulties." There was no communication after this message.

Q. Why did you not inform Admiral SHIMA of the course of the battle?

A. At 1200 hours of the 25th I sent the following dispatch to Admirals TOYODA and KURITA, "The Third or 'C' Force has been annihilated, location of enemy unknown, please send me your instructions. I have trouble with my rudder, my wireless, my radar, and my gyro, and I received one hit." The reason I did not communicate directly with Admiral SHIMA and inform him of the situation was that I had no connection with him and was not under his command.

Q. Under such circumstances as you mention, was that the usual procedure? Was it not Japanese practice to exchange useful information between separate forces?

A. I assumed that SHIMA knew conditions of the battle and that he would get his instructions from his Commanding Officer, Admiral KURITA or from TOYODA.

Q. How did you assume he had learned of the battle in the entrance to the Gulf?

A. In my opinion Admiral SHIMA would know the situation by sighting the burning ships FUSO and MOGAMI, and by seeing me on a retiring course.

Q. That being the case, it was not considered necessary to give any other further information?

A. Yes, that is correct.

Q. Why was it necessary to wait until 1200 to send the message to KURITA and TOYODA?

A. Because my wireless was not functioning, and secondly I was busy with the air attack.

Q. At what time approximately did you complete repairs to your wireless?

A. I used my auxiliary wireless set, the "TM" set. This set had been in commission all the time. I probably could have used it earlier to send the message. When I sent the message I relayed it through Admiral SHIMA because of the short range of the TM set. Its range is about 150 miles.

Drone weapon market

Trent Telenko's latest thread about drones and snipers suggested a million drones minimum would be required for training our own forces. The numbers don't seem crazy. We train snipers with optics and rifles now while the next battlefields will be using drones for both spotting and shooting.

The first thing that came to my mind was "How many will fall off the back of a truck?" A few years ago AP did some research on how many weapons the US military, and came up with 1900 over 10 years (2010's). 190/year doesn't sound too terrible. FWIW, the AP article is pretty crappy: it only gave numbers for a single burglary (6 M4's and 10 pistols). I'd bet that quite a few of those counted were explosives, e.g. grenades, which are a bit hard to track after use.

I suspect that the presence of a gigantic market for civilian arms depresses the market for stolen military ones in this country. Of course, if our military were as corrupt as Mexico's, economies of scale might enter. But aside from homemade automatic weapons like the Glocks modified with the switch, I hear more about truly automatic weapons (instead of "newspaper automatics") from instances in Europe. Maybe that's some kind of sampling bias in favor of the dramatic, or maybe stricter rules for civilian weapons make military ones a larger share of the market. (And there've been some serious civil wars on that landmass with plenty of room for tools to go missing and no big oceans to cross to get them to market.)

At any rate, I suspect the Mexican cartels will get a lot of their military-use drones from their military, and our local gangsters buy from them or from China, and not bother with US military stuff.

Monday, June 23, 2025

Valse Triste

I loved Fantasia, and when Allegro Non Troppo came out we made sure to go see it.

Unfortunately...

Most of the episodes left a sour taste or felt too "message-y". However, one stuck with me as matching the music to the animation and theme very well: Sibelius' Valse Triste. Well, yes, it is sad; that's in the title.

L'apres-midi d'un faun got a little tiresome, but its interpretation of a faun's "after noon" was good.

Is a movie worthwhile if all you get out of it is one memorable scene?

Saturday, June 21, 2025

Iran

IIRC the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were involved in a lot of sections of the economy. I suspect that it won't be as easy as we hope for the Iranians to chuck the mullahs--a lot of Iranians are invested in the way things are.

I'm not keen on our default system of allowing a president to start a war without Congress, though I understand there can be a need for speed. In this case, there've been hostilities for years without official declarations, with a bit of plausible deniability. There's never been doubt about their ultimate goal, though. I wonder how the powers-that-be classify that kind of war-without-declaration. Words matter less than actions, and they figure that going head to head with armies isn't going to work, but having puppets lob stuff at us saves their forces. It still seems like war.

I'm guessing dirty bomb at some point. That was probably in the cards anyhow.

Hair closer to home

After my surgery, I noted the thick lumpy scar on my neck and decided I didn't want to try to run a razor blade over that, so I invested in a new electric shaver(*). It hasn't been as necessary as I expected: my beard isn't growing on my neck anyway, thanks to the radiation.

(*) It's a chore to find a corded electric these days. It's nice to have the option able run the shaver off the wall when the batteries eventually wear out.

Friday, June 20, 2025

Hair

A skull from China has been tentatively identified as Denisovan thanks to DNA and protein fragments. So, given the skull, they have a reconstructed face.

Hairy.

Humans grow head hair continuously (modulo a spot of baldness: In this world of toil and sin, your head grows bald but not your chin. Burma-Shave). If you don't keep your hair clean you're apt to get vermin, and if you don't keep it trimmed it is apt to get in the way. How do you do those things without tools? Gnaw on it? And perhaps Gary Larson (Far Side) could do justice to stone scissors, but I can't. Lay the hair across one rock and drag another back and forth until the hairs are ground in two?

Perhaps it was curly like sub-Saharan African hair. It can grow quite a bit longer that way without getting in the way (hair tends to break after a while). That doesn't explain why would it grow as fast as it does, though it's another option for the reconstruction people to consider.

I don't think we started growing straight hair like mad until we'd already developed tools for dealing with it. Some suggest singeing or flint scrapers (ouch, ouch). And you can groom with mud, which would help keep the vermin down, and maybe do a bit of automatic hair breaking (effectively trimming) when the mud cracked.

Jove

Sippican Cottage found a scientist who coined a very useful phrase describing air forces (and some of the space force partisans): "Jupiter Complex."

"the ease with which they could keep erring mankind in order by threatening them (as if they were Jove himself) with atomic thunderbolts."

The same sort of dream plagued WW-2 ("The bombers will always get through" -- except they didn't, and they generally couldn't hit the broadside of a factory within a half a mile.), and I hear people touting the "rods from god" as though that would solve everything. Or that bunkerbusters will solve the last problems in Iran, to be up-to-the-minute about it.

Read it

Pronouns

There's been a time or two when it would have been nice to know pronouns for someone. When you've never met the collaborator and the name is unfamiliar and their language isn't English -- you can chase the odds when you talk about them and say "he", but you'll be (I was) wrong sometimes.

A few years back I attended a conference, and the name badges had a "my pronouns are" section. I wasn't the only one who didn't bother filling it out. In practice, as you can imagine, they were irrelevant. When you're talking to someone, you address them by name or by "you" or just by looking at them when you speak. And nobody bothered to ask what my pronouns were.

Face to face, it's slightly insulting -- perhaps designed to be so -- to demand that a man tell what his pronoun is. "Am I so un-masculine that you can't tell?" I imagine it's just as much or more so for a woman.

Dad-bod, male pattern baldness, 5-oclock shadow -- you figure it out.