Fall chores

Painters make it look easy.

In theory, it is. But how much of this thickness of paint is just enough, how far is far enough, and when the sun is glaring in your eyes, where'd you leave off?

1942: Crux of War by Jonathan Parshall

A few years ago when Drachinifel visited U505, Jonathan Parshall also dropped by to visit him, and we wound up talking with him more than Drach – mostly about kids. We'd already read his Shattered Sword (about Midway), and told him we were looking forward to his next book.

1942: Crux of War was worth reading. He broke the year down by month, and in each month went over what was happening in each theater (including the economic). He gives the big picture of the war during that pivotal year.

Turns out there was a lot I didn't know, and I'd not seen how it all laid out together before, and how the parts tied together.

Some alternate history buffs have suggested "What if the Germans chose X instead of Y" -- it's a popular pastime. Parshall points out several such instances, and fills in the parts that show "oh, that wouldn't really have worked either." By the time Manstein was in position to almost relieve Paulus at Stalingrad, the 6th army wasn't capable of breaking out to meet him anyway. Some seemingly crazy decisions were born of necessities you don't see unless you look at the big picture. And some were just crazy – almost anything Hitler had a hand in, for instance.

If you have any interest in WW-II, read it.

---

China doesn't make many appearances, but Parshall says their contribution in tying down Japanese armies was significant, even if they had little or nothing in the way of victories of their own. The British in southern Asia were unbelievably incompetent. And somehow I'd never realized that the Germans were reading American naval codes.

Alternate history

I've got a premise for a story I won't have time to research. Suppose the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows had included a youngster with measles.

The settlement was probably going to be abandoned no matter what -- the Vikings didn't have firearm advantages. But if measles had spread over the trade routes in North America 500 years before Columbus, the great die-off would have happened earlier, and by the time France and England got involved the populations would have built back up. This time, there wouldn't have been such a big die-off, and the settlers who followed the explorers would have found a much more crowded coastline. No room, no room.

What then?

If you have the budget, why not

Epic System is famous for several things, most happily the way they decorate their buildings. They're completing two more: "Azland, loosely inspired by “The Chronicles of Narnia,” and Elvendell, inspired by “The Lord of the Rings.”" ... "Two more buildings, Rogue Planet, based on “Star Wars,” and Dragonfell, reminiscent of Game of Thrones, are scheduled to open in spring 2028." (I'm not sure the latter theme is auspicious.)

Buildings across Epic’s campus share a similar footprint, with distinctive staircases, conference rooms and office space for about 300 to 400 employees, often working on the same team. But their interiors, from digitally printed carpets to walls covered in fantastical vinyl designs, give each building — and sometimes each floor — its own identity.

...

Much of the variation between buildings comes from the decorations, with most having the same general layout of offices and conference rooms. Recent advances in digital printing have made it easier to produce customized carpet patterns and vinyl wall coverings, including carpet designs featuring pictures of ponds and lion faces.

“The price is the same, so why not get the fun one if you have the choice?” Schumacher said.

Ambassadors

Back in the day the Womens Missionary Union organized a group for boys called "Royal Ambassadors", recalling 2 Corinthians 5:19-20 "ambassadors for Christ".(*)

"Royal" is nice and encouraging for the youth, but I wonder if "Loyal Ambassadors" for Christ are what the world needs more of. I know I haven't always reflected Christ well and fear I have sometimes passed along my own attitudes instead of the "word of reconcilliation".

(*) By popular demand they then organized a "Girl's Auxilliary: GA" group, which after a while turned into "Girls in Action: GA".

UPDATE: For those not familiar with the WMU, they were founded almost 140 years ago to educate (esp children) about Christian missions. Their influence has been large--McBride exaggerated a bit, but not all that much.

Patterns and language

When you read "blue" do you think of the sky, or ocean, or copper sulfate, or maybe a little of all at once? The word's just a word, a few letters, a sound, but you use that abstraction to bring to mind all these things, from colored chalk to the spectrum to the rainbow to the refringence in a bubble.

Anecdotal Evidence introduced Nemerov and his Figures of Thought (also see this and I like The Spy ). In that "Figures of Thought" he describes discovery of patterns in disparate things as a "dry delight."

"Dry"? Those spirals he wrote of, like blue hues, inhabit much in the world that we sense. Like "blue", the word "spiral" evokes something from our senses. But it also evokes something from our minds, like "care" or "depth" do.

If you do not know the name, the language, you can still see the commonality when looking at something as obvious as the color blue or a spiral, but you'll miss things less obvious things like the commonality between a pendulum and a wave in the water.

Heinlein exaggerated, but just as you can't fully appreciate Chinese poetry without knowing the Chinese language, or fully understand some paintings without knowing the symbols the artist used, you won't fully appreciate the poems of the world without knowing the language of the world.

Life is short, and I don't have time for all I find to do. I'll never learn Chinese. I'll just have to worry along with translations.

Something doesn't quite add up

When checking for comments for this blog, I noticed that posts were racking up a lot of page views. Curious as to why, I went to Stats, and then to More About This Blog, and then looked at Top Referring URLs. It says I have a large number of links, or at least "the previous site visited" (not sure if those can be distinguished) from the American Osteopathic College of Radiology. Just for completeness I checked, and my intuition was correct -- they have no link.

We wonders.

FWIW, blogger sometimes seems to count page views from spiders, which makes the blog seem more popular than it really is. The above oddity is probably more algorithmic goofiness, unless osteopathic radiologist training provokes a special love for my flavor of eclecticism. Maybe spiders have gotten smart, and pretend to originate from a pool of fake addresses, to get by the anti-spider algorithms.

Crosses

"And He was saying to them all, 'If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me.'"

He didn't say make a cross for yourself; you'd have one.

It occurred to me a few days ago that Jesus' cross represented suffering for others' sins. So, I suspect, do ours.

It's partly suffering from others' actions, partly pain at seeing others' ruin and pain, and partly the tension between trying to show love and trying to show truth.

Songs and memories

AVI posted a song I haven't heard in ages: Winchester Cathedral. I now see why the guy's voice sounded strange.

I remember where I first heard that – a 6'th grade classroom in Carbondale. For some reason the class had a phonograph, and we (I gather, nobody ever asked me) were allowed to pick a song during some break time or another, selecting from a box by the window. The only two that ever played that I recall were Winchester Cathedral and Georgy Girl. Oddly, Georgy's B-side (Last Thing On My Mind) didn't show up.

The school was directly across the street from where we lived that year. That made it easy to transport the artifacts back and forth for a class demonstration about Liberia. I recall bits and pieces: the teacher tried to encourage reading by having all her students log the number of books and pages they read. Did Lord of the Rings count as one book or three? I found a small sad iron in the rafters of our basement – no idea how it got there. I got malaria partway through junior high, and missed the practical exam for shop class, so I only half finished the shop project. (Drafting came first – you probably would never guess I took the class.)

I tried the experiment of quickly drawing a capital Gamma in all the boxes of a T/F exam and then adding the appropriate final stroke as I figured out the answer. It turns out that doesn't speed things up; the overhead of moving your hand dominates the time.

And a vice principal stalking grimly down to confront a friend and I for playing craps, and then wandering off quietly when he saw we were playing a math dice game. (numbers and symbols – in a minute generate as many unique numbers as you can from the roll).

And one student who looked just like a guy I knew from Liberia.

Bits and pieces… no narrative suitable for a memoir.

Nobel winner

A congratulations to Professor Halzen for his inspiration and leadership in creating the IceCube experiment!

He's a really knowledgeable and sharp man -- knows everybody in the field, it seems, and keeps track of all that's going on.

When I first heard of the plan to bury phototubes in ice, back when they were first testing the idea (AMANDA), I thought it wouldn't work. I was wrong; he was right.

FWIW, the IceCube web site is straining under the unexpected load: one collaborator said "they should really inform the sys-admins of a given experiment a few days before".

Also, the BBC story mentions about neutrinos that "The Sun produces vast numbers of them: every second, billions pass harmlessly through an area the size of your fingernail." That's perfectly true. However, they interact much more frequently when they are higher energy--and the high energy neutrinos are the ones IceCube looks for.

Flower photography

My wife wanted to visit a local flower farm she had just read about. It turned out we shared an unexpected connection with the lady on duty that day -- helping at the same school.

Career choice

I've heard that you should "follow your passion." A counter-example: Some people enjoy the job of prophet, denouncing the evils of their time (and especially of their enemies). Experience suggests that those who enjoy decrying others' sins are precisely those who shouldn't have the job.

Idolatry

Notes on substack

Bill Watterson’s 1990 Commencement Speech

For those who haven't read it: MIT archived a copy of the speech he gave at his alma mater, Kenyon College.

If you wondered at why he was so vehemently against capitalizing on the strip -- after all, Walt Kelly and Charles Schultz did a fair bit of it themselves -- the devil was in the details. It meant changing authorship, goals for the strip, and even how he operated. And the meaning of it. I gather that Kelly and Schultz had more control over their work.

And apparently Jef Mallett says that Frazz is not a grown-up Calvin, despite the personality similarities.

If the wait is boring

You've played the game "Find all the words using just the letters in the given word." E.g. STOP gives POTS, TO, SOP, etc, etc.

OK. On top of that, take that list and make the most compact crossword you can using all and only those words.