Iranian agents

For decades I have heard dark warnings that Iran has sleeper cells in the USA waiting for the word to do something.(*) I guess now we find out how many are ready. Or perhaps, how many are prepared to act before they discover whether their erstwhile paymasters are still in business.

(*) Not with hard evidence, just with "It's obvious that they would." And it is obvious that they'd want to try, but I'm not expert on how supply, command, and control would work on a decades-long insertion. It's probably way cheaper to fund existing networks than to create your own; though you lose the "control" part.

Blame the ELF's

While doing research for a story, I ran across more detailed information about Project ELF (alternative link) than the news ever carried. Part of the technology is apparently still secret, but it looks like they were trying to use granite bedrock as part of the antenna. It wasted a lot of power, but it worked. At these frequencies (76Hz) people's claims of hearing a "hum" seem plausible. I don't know about claims of harm -- I generally discount those unless there's a clear physical model to connect them -- but this was curious:

On the other hand, faculty and researchers at the Michigan Technological University (MTU) School of Forestry and Wood Products have found that the Project ELF’s antenna grid makes the trees grow faster. MTU foresters have been studying the effects ever since the system became operational ten years ago.

The forester's final report says "subtle EM effect to the cambial and stemwood growth of some tree species but not to any other parameter". They claimed a relationship between "diameter growth and magnetic flux density" for aspen and red maple, and "annual height growth and magnetic flux density" for red pine.

That looked like an increase when the field was O(2-3mG), dropping off to "normal" for higher exposures. My first guess when seeing something that only effects a few species is a "look-elsewhere effect", but there's enough similarity that maybe it's worth looking at in more detail. I wonder what the conductivity of the sap is in the different species.

Squirrel!

Yes, I know there can be confounding factors, like distance from a cleared area (they look at that) or herbicides

Sapir-Whorf and groups

AVI's recent post on Sapir-Whorf brought a few things to mind.

I took a course in linguistics as an undergrad. Our teacher assured us that there were no primitive languages. You could talk philosophy in any language. If you had to make up and define new words, that was always possible. I gather he didn't care for Sapir-Whorf, weak or strong.

I didn't attempt to prove him wrong – that's too many languages to learn. It seemed plausible, people being people everywhere. You can't talk about nuclear physics without words for nucleus, but you can explain what those are, just as you can teach the relevant math. To an adult, anyway.

But. Poverty of language makes it harder to communicate some things. If you have leisure, that doesn't matter, but when you don't have time to define nuances that aren't part of a common language heritage, you've got problems.

That matters a lot for slogans, which we often use as a shorthand for thought.

Step back from individual words and think of phrases, or words that have changed meanings. If a culture has succeeded in framing a dispute in terms that admit only a handful of options, you can theoretically describe an alternative, but in practice it's not easy.

Though some people make it look easy. Maybe the most famous framing situation is the one when Pharisees and Saducees tried to get Jesus to take a side in a political quarrel about the legitimacy of Roman oppression – should they pay taxes to the Romans or not? Answer "Yes," and the average folks give up on Jesus, "No" and the Romans will kill him. Jesus was able to rephrase the problem in two sentences (and change the course of Western Civilization). You or I would have been struggling to be nuanced and wind up looking spineless, and disgusting everybody.

The language includes things taken for granted (denotation or connation), most of which most of us never think through. Who has the time to think through what we mean by "liberty" when the the kids need supper? We quote "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" but those invisible assumptions mean that John Adams would be startled at how we interpret the phrase. (Liberty: is it intrinsic, something granted, or something achieved? An addict is effectively a slave no matter what the law says. "Slave to one's appetites" is a real condition.)

Orwell went with a strong version of Sapir-Whorf: without appropriate words there are no concepts. But if you expand what you mean by language to include the cultural associations of words and phrases, and think in terms of average behavior, a weaker version seems to be true for populations – subject to the caveats that languages and associations(*) can be made to change, and one on one dialog can go anywhere the participants have the endurance for.

Insofar as slogans rule us, weak Sapir-Whorf seems true.

(*) E.g. Uncle Tom's Cabin changed the image and mental associations of "slave owner."

Ojibwe Singers

by Michael D. McNally : Hymns, Grief, and a Native Culture in Motion

It's about Ojibwe hymn singers, who usually show up at wakes and funerals to sing Christian hymns in Ojibwe. Never heard of that before? Me either.

This is from 2000, so things may have changed. Most of the singers were older, and it wasn't clear then if youth would aspire to joining the singers, who held a position of respect in the community by their willingness to be there for others in this ritual. I know none of these people, though people I know might know somebody who knows.

Ancient Ojibwe traditions in music have the drum as a central (and spiritual) component. Songs typically have few words with much repetition and vocalisms, many are sacred, and many come from dreams. Catholic and Epicopalian missionaries judged that providing Christian hymns to them in their own language was essential for discipleship. They and gifted converts did their best. Some concepts don't have easy analogs in the other language – even "spirit" isn't simple, since the closest analog in Ojibwe seems to have a primary meaning of "mystery."

From the book:

The way the holy prophets went
The road that leads from banishment
The King's highway of holiness
I'll go, for all His paths are peace

Re-translated back into English from Ojibwe:

The way they were going, those who were wise
The little path that leads straight there
I, too, will go off on it
On the little path that is greatly pitied/blessed

The religious situation on the reservations is complicated: some are adamantly pagan/animist, some are Catholic, some Episcopalian, some various other denominations (Baptist, Pentacostal, etc), and some, to judge from the gang activity, have invested their faith in drugs and guns. Many looked on the hymns as impositions by the whites when they were introduced, and still do over a century later.

But in the meantime singing Ojibwe hymns a capella has become a tradition of its own, most especially among "those who pray" but recognized by the rest as well. So much so, indeed that the author cites:

When one Ojibwe man heard hymns at a ceremony honoring a new drum, for instance, he whispered his opinion that such "Christian" music was disrespectful to the drum. For this man, hymn singing stood in opposition to the other music of Ojibwe tradition in that hymns do not involve a drum. The irony of this particular interchange is also instructive. The drum in question was being initiated or welcomed into the community by entrusting it to the safekeeping and discretionary use of the White Earth singers.

The hymns are often sung very differently, though often the original European tune can be discerned, with much more stress on the individual syllables than either the tune or the lyrics as such. They are sung (not "performed") in a ritual, almost liturgical way, with a clear starting and ending hymn but much variation of songs and silences in between.

The author seemed most interested in the things that made the hymn singing specifically Ojibwe and traditional, and seemed to overlook a different aspect: the hymns are a way of saying two things at once: "This is our tribe's" and "We are also part of a bigger tribe."

The author (and apparently others) found no evidence that there was any intent to subvert the meaning of the hymns in any sort of anti-colonial push. Of course the mere fact that they were in Ojibwe during the era when the government was trying to suppress the language might have been a bit of push-back.

If the subject and its history sound interesting, by all means read it, but be prepared: it is painful to read. Not just the history part – plowing through sociological jargon was not fun at all. (Can you possibly say this in five words instead of a hundred words referencing two different other sociologists?) But his personal experiences and observations made it worth it for me.

And yes, one of the White Earth singers was non-native, but he lived like them and next to them, learned the language, and met the standards of hospitality and respect.

Microclimates

Close to the house is warmer, partly from shelter, partly from heat leakage and partly from sunlight reflecting off the south-facing side of the house. Thus, a crocus in February.

Happiness

AVI has a post about those unkillable "world happiness reports."

Self-reporting is both necessary and biasing--does your culture deprecate boasting about happiness or professing unhappiness?

And, of course, do we agree on what happiness consists in? To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.

Everybody recognizes all these problems, except of course the reporters turning the press release into a story.

I regard myself as fairly phlegmatic (especially when I have a head cold, but never mind that for now). I'm rarely ecstatic. I'm rarely depressed. How does a survey compare that with someone with bigger highs and lows?

I gather that these kinds of disposition are largely hereditary. I can easily imagine a survey giving radically different results on different temperaments. Suppose one ethnicity trends more choleric in one small country and a different one more phlegmatic in another... Yeah. Double whammy--the countries would have different average reactions to the survey and a different culture too, because of the differences.

My usual association with the word "contentment" is rest, but busy-ness can be contented too. Even driving, of which I am not excessively fond (I'd rather just be there without the intervening concentration and staving off chaos), can have a contented feeling when all is going well. And arriving can have a contentment, even happiness, of its own. It depends on what the journey's for.

Qui bono

Reports about the arrest of the prince formerly known as Andrew said he was suspected of misconduct in office, nothing to do with underage women. It always made sense that there was some financial or government interests behind Epstein's operation, not just supplying ladies to prominent men. (If so, I'd guess he supplied catamites too, though I haven't heard anything about that yet.) And making connections, cementing a reputation as deal-broker?

According the the BBC, he gave Epstein confidential trade reports from his visits to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Vietnam. That could be very useful to investors, or negotiators. I wonder if details about who got the info wound up in the files. I'd guess that there's nothing actually actionable, and Andrew will skate. And after 15,16 years the purchasers might not even be in power anymore.

Warning signs

For the past few years my wife has been looking at the thermostat and asking, "Who turned this up?" and turning it back down.

The rest of us stoutly denied touching the instrument, but there it was, set for 72 instead of 69.

It looks like nobody was lying. Last night the thing decided that spontaneously shifting its setting wasn't good enough and what it really needed to do to get a little attention was to leave the control circuit open permanently.

That was at 2AM. It has departed the wall to live in an HVAC repairman's barrel of junk, and my wallet is lighter. But at least the house is warm again--it was 17 outside and blustery.

Musing on the Muses

Song and dance and epic poetry and comic poetry all have their place, and according to myth their Muse.

Every now and then the moment requires something different.

Sometimes one longs to invoke Hesychia, the muse(*) of silence and tranquility.

(*)I gave her a promotion.

One flesh

I wrote several years ago complaining about Augustine's take on sex: he only had a concubine, not a wife, and thus probably lacked full appreciation of the matter. Wanting privacy isn't the same as shame.

Another aspect came to mind today. Genesis said and Jesus emphasized that "the two become one flesh." I'm a bit protective of my flesh, and I don't want my internal organs exposed to the day and the inspection of outsiders. (Surgery is a big deal!) It interferes with the mutual operations of the organs, and leaves the self in an inharmonious state, not an organic whole. If two are one flesh, an outsider likewise leaves their "one flesh" in an inharmonious condition, not a unified whole.

I've heard it claimed that a couple is "one flesh" in their children, which is no doubt true in some sense, but not, I think, the main meaning. Paul wasn't writing about having children with prostitutes.

Dogs and puppies

The story of Jesus and the Syrian woman is one of those rather jarring anecdotes and parables that leave you wondering "What gives?" Jesus calls her a dog?

I was told that the translation is traditional, but poor -- there are two words for dog and this is the one "kynarion" that means puppy, as opposed to "kyon" (as used in Revelation 22:15) that means "dog" in a perjorative sense. The Mark passage reads a little differently with that translation:

it is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the puppies. But she answered and said to Him, "Yes, Lord, but even the puppies under the table feed on the children's crumbs"

You get the picture, right? Kids feeding the pet dog under the table? It's a lot less harsh.

I gather (same source) that some preachers want to imagine that Jesus learned a valuable lesson about racism from the woman's faith, i.e. Gentiles are just as good as Jews.

Well, there's an extended story that Mark tells earlier, from Mark 4:35-5:43. Jesus tells His disciples to head to the other side of the lake. A storm scares them half to death and nigh sinks the boat. On the other side they meet a demon-possessed pagan, whom Jesus exorcises and sends home with the mission to tell everyone about what God did for him. AFAIK, this is the first apostle whom Jesus commissioned. Jesus cared enough about this (pagan) man and his subsequent mission that travel, scaring His (jewish) disciples silly, the fate of a herd of pigs, and even the temporary death of Jairus' (jewish) daughter were secondary.

That sounds like He had very different priorities than I would have, but they're certainly not bigoted.

Connections

Some mathematician with a sense of humor decided to borrow a bit from the study of graphs to illustrate how significant Erdos has been in modern math. You are "connected" to Erdos if you have co-authored a paper with him, or with someone who has co-authored, or with … and so on. Erdos himself has number 0, someone who wrote a paper with him has number 1, someone who wrote a paper with someone who wrote a paper with him has 2, and so on. I have Erdos number 4 – not because I'm a good mathematician (far from it) but because I was part of a physics experiment in which some theorists (who I actually never met) had co-authored a paper with some mathematicians who had number 2. The connection between me and Erdos is tenuous enough to make the matter completely silly.

It's the "6 degrees of separation" thing, just applied to a particular man.

Just for fun, can we extend this to Epstein? He's number 0, and just for fun assign 0 to Maxwell too.

But what do we mean by connection? Having spent time with him or in his parties, or having had professional dealings with him? Maybe both? His guards or his chef would have "Null" for social connections and "1" for professional. Trump and Clinton have a "1" for social connections; dunno about professional ones. In fact, never mind the professional connections, it's boring.

Do I need to say that I'm not going to be in the lists? I don't run in "connected" circles. But pretty much everybody in the House and Senate is either a 1 or 2: knew him or knew someone who did. The people who know/work with them in turn are 2's or 3's in social connections. The next ring out will be the state legislators and such.

So if you know a state legislator (a former one was in a Bible class with me), you might have an Epstein number of 5 or so. Of course that's attenuated enough to be pretty meaningless too.

Me? Well, theorists like Hawking (a "1"; Epstein seems to have liked to hang out with scientists) tended to hang out with theorists, but the top guys do meet sometimes, so I'm probably at least a 5, maybe a 4. I don't feel particularly tainted by such a distant association.

Pick a figure or two you don't like. How connected are you to them?

It seems trivial to say that the "well-connected" will be have more connections to each other than to the rest of us, but the rest of us group into clusters too. I had one set of connections at the university, and a different set at church. At separations of less than about 3, there was pretty much no overlap.

Some of those clusters map onto tribes, and some of the tribes are hostile, but even so there are still connections. If your church is helping some of the poor, members will be establishing relationships with them (I hope), and have less separation from the underclasses than, say, members of the math department will have with them.

Connections can be curious. How is O'Hare airport connected to Al Capone? If you don't know…

UPDATE: Closer than I thought! Lisa Randall spent some time in the CDF control room. IIRC the accelerator was down and so we talked a bit about what I was reading to pass the time: Augustine's Confessions. This was before 2008, so I doubt that there would have been any.

Love and Death

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

love ... without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you

The prayer isn't gospel, of course, but since God is love, if we don't have love we, that far, do not fully have God in our life. Which is like not having life in our life.

We kid ourselves about love a lot, of course, thinking we're better at it than we really are, and mistaking sexual attraction and inoffensive habits for the deeper thing.

How much of what I did today was infused with "willing the good of another"? Was all the rest "wood, hay, and stubble"?

Hands-on science demonstrations

The elementary school science night is coming up next month, and I'm debating what to demonstrate this year. Part of the point of it is getting the kids up close and personal with the equipment (or the rocks, or the crafts, or the snakes in the case of the snake show people), so the demonstations have to be short – no big lecture hall demonstrations, all hands-on or hands-close.

I have the usual lasers and lenses, diffraction gratings and polarizing filters, and this year I can do a double-slit demonstration too. And I can do some electrostatics demonstrations this year, not just the usual magnetic field demos.

A kids' favorite is the Newton's cradle with 1 pound steel balls. It is a bit too battered to be a nice momentum/energy demo (it doesn't keep clacking back and forth for very long), but with bits of paper in the middle there's a nice connection to meteors. Unfortunately the fishing line breaks a lot on that one and the younger kids want to make the balls flail around, so it needs extra supervision.

This year I got a cheap geiger counter, and wonder if some simple demonstrations of radioactivity are in order. Pro: they may not see this again until college, if then. Con: some people freak out easily and fear is contagious. But then people seem OK with the snake demo crowd, so maybe that's OK.

Since I'm alone at the table I have to supervise all the demonstration gear and do the spiel for the current demo at the same time. That's another limit on what I can do.

I've a uranium glass plate that makes the counter sing, but not much else. I could open up a smoke detector (I'm not such a fool as to try to get the source out of the well, though), but I'd probably get in trouble for that unless I posted it. The counter's not sensitive enough to pick up potassium chloride pills, much less bananas. The old thorium lantern mantles haven't been made for years. Any inexpensive suggestions? I can order some uranium ore, but I've already got uranium in the plate.

What would you have gone for? This is indoors, so nothing explosive or flammable, and the age range is 4 to 11 years or so.

A daughter generally does rocks and minerals at a different table. A rocket club shows some of their rockets but doesn't launch anything. A pity. Outdoors we could tether a rocket to wrap around a bar, or try a pinwheel.

News

Some of the social media, and sometimes the news, reminds me of Kipling: If ye find that the bullock can toss you, or the heavy-browed Sambhur can gore; Ye need not stop work to inform us. We knew it ten seasons before.

Sports events

If I'm playing in the game,(*) I'm excited about it. If a family member or friend is playing, I'll watch and stay interested. If I don't know a soul, I have trouble caring.

I'm just not part of our harmless ritual of belonging: fans rooting for their team.

I've been like that all my life. It's probably a deficit of character somehow. It's not at though I spend the time with more productive pursuits -- I manage to waste time other, generally less social, ways.

It certainly cuts down on the small-talk possibilities.

(*) My knees say playing baseball is much less likely than it used to be, and once I was out of school and away from PE, it was improbable even then.

UPDATE: For anyone looking back on this years from now, wondering what brought the subject up, the Super Bowl was a few days ago and the Winter Olympics is still on.

Different takes

Tonight we were talking over Luke 13:6-9, the parable of the fig tree being given one extra year. I'd thought of it as a warning that (contra the prosperity gospel), having lots of material and even apparent spiritual goods might be a sign that this was your last chance. Someone else looked at the context ("but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish") and suggested that the vineyard-keeper was the one repenting from not having done his job taking care of the fig tree.

First order pleasures

All I know of Scrooge McDuck is that he had nephews and he loved to dive and swim in a vault of money.

Never mind petty details about the density and viscosity of cash. He wants to swim in it because other people value it -- not because of its beauty or sensual pleasure. Gold can be pretty, but piles of it aren't terribly aesthetic, though perhaps Smaug might see it so.

Which makes the pleasure rather second-order; not that it is pleasant in itself but it's pleasant because of what other people think about it. You don't enjoy it directly.

One first-order pleasure is admiring the beauty of the refracting crystals in the snow as your headlights shine on them as you drive. Not that I want to swim in the snow, but it makes me happier to look at it, no matter what Vogue says about this year's flake styles.

That's not to say that "first order" is better. Some pleasures are greater when shared, and you can have joy in the pleasure someone you love takes in a gift -- child with a new puppy?

But ... Arm candy or a friend? Caviar or red beans and rice? Up until the xrays burned out my taste buds, I could truthfully claim that no restaurant made the latter dish as well as my mother did, or my wife, or even me.

Living by the calendar

I read an essay by someone who deprecated life "lived by the calendar" as mechanical and dead. I looked at our calendar. It's more a matter of living by the promises we made.

Distinguishing different types of concerts

Are the "nose-bleed seats" in the Sherpa-guided upper-upper balcony, or down in front by the wall of speakers?

Romans 7 and zombies

A few years back I puzzled a bit about the popularity of zombie stories, and puzzled again.. I was thinking then in terms of fear of dissolution of social bonds and expectations, but ...

The zombie is a live body but dead mind and spirit. It looks alive, but isn't really.

Suppose one has a live body and live mind but dead spirit?

What could kill the spirit, though? Christians will probably see where I'm going with this; think of yourself in a world of living dead, with the fear that you are one of them yourself -- or can be one. Or were one.

"Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works." — Robert Farrar Capon

"Apocolypse" means "unveiling", so the zombie apocolypse means the revealing of a world of living dead.

Spiritual Disciplines

"You fight the way you train"

What spiritual challenges and temptations do you expect to face? Not the easy ones, the weaknesses you don't like to think about.

How do you want to respond to them?

How can you train for that response?

I'm not thinking about plotting out dialog. Jesus deprecated that. Explaining the hope that is in you isn't what I'm talking about either.

When I remember some of the things I have faced and try to come up with exercises to train my reactions to try to do better next time, two things come quickly to mind. Some of those old stories about what saints did don't sound quite so outlandish, and "Lead us not into temptation". I can only do so much.

Fast Breaking News

often reminds me of Twain's story of The Admiral in Roughing It.

Strangely dim

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of Earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace."

The Beatific Vision -- seeing God as we've never seen Him before -- is almost by definition greater than anything we see in the world.

And yet I think the wording of the hymn isn't quite right. I think the better we see God, the better we see Him in everything else as well. "Strangely dim" -- but only relatively so.

Privateers

Grim's sense is that privateers could work better than the more bureaucratic armed forces. He has far more experience with the bureaucratic armed forces than I, but I worry about a few details.

To whom do the privateers owe primary allegiance? Their organization or the country for whom they are fighting? With just a smidgeon of corruption and media connivance (you tell me if that exists in this country) it wouldn't be hard for a cartel to get approval and funding to attack their rivals.

Even with an organization with less disreputable initial aims than a cartel, mission creep can turn it into a public menace.

Going further, what would privateering look like in an era of drones? Drones can be carried and controlled in a truck as easily as in a boat--probably more so. Inconvenient prosecutors or judges might have to hide. Organizations do go rogue sometimes.

And as the cited Sal Mercogliano video notes, it isn't as though the US has a small navy anymore: 2nd largest in the world (Sal says 1st, but that's the Chinese). Recent events show that bureaucracies don't have to slow it down that much.

The law might have one useful side effect--it could force Congress to decide what sort of relationship we have with hostile non-state armed organizations. Is it a war, or something else--and when do we know we've won?

Cold

Below about 5F is biting cold. Up near freezing, with the air loaded with moisture, is hammering cold.

AI and religion

First Things has an article suggesting that AI may increase people's interest in religion, as they find themselves more purposeless.

“If automation hollows out jobs, what will people do all day that feels meaningful?”

Simple, he responded: They will do what humans have done since time immemorial, which is look to faith for answers and a sense of purpose.

I'm not persuaded that AI will be as disruptive as advertised. Much of the potential danger assumes that people will decide to rely on it and put it in control of things. But people have agency, and sometimes they even learn from mistakes.

But for the moment assume that it will be seriously disruptive. It's plausible that people, in turmoil and loss, will look to religion.

But which religion? Last century saw the rise of horrifyingly destructive cults--two of which demanded bloody world war to put down, and a third which demanded human sacrifices on a scale never seen before and is still active.

Not the optometrist's waiting room

Hold your breath

Divisions

I wasn't familiar with how the Sri Lanka Tamil vs Sinhal rivalry developed. The author blames a few politicians, and points to parallels ancient (Nike riots) and modern.

Apart from the law

We were discussing Romans 7 this morning, and ran across "I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead."

I would have written the last as "apart from the Law sin is paralyzed," but it turns out God didn't invite me to write a letter to the Romans, so take my preferences for what they're worth.

Anyhow, Paul uses death in several different ways here, requiring careful reading, hence some of the discussion.

One image that covers some of the description for me is that of a little child, too young to understand the rules, but not too young not to want to break them once found. Parents will know what I'm talking about.

Scott Adams will be missed

By some.

I regret not taking the time to explore an observation I made years ago at UW, and tried to measure where Dilbert cartoons could be found and what fraction they were of displayed cartoons on doors and bullitin boards.

From time to time I had reason to stroll through some of the engineering buildings, or chemistry or match, and now and then the business school. Fifteen/twenty years ago Dilbert was all over the place in physics (I had some) and computing and engineering, but not at the business school. Other cartoons appeared there, so it wasn't a department dictum on decorum.

I wish I'd checked on life sciences and arts and language too.

Since Dilbert so often skewered pointy-haired bosses and HR, it's no surprise that the strip wouldn't pop up on grad student doors so much in those regions. (Not that HR has many grad students – the relative number of grad students would skew total counts to the hard science departments.)

From the speed with which the strip was dropped I suspect there was great relief in the relevant management and HR corporate quarters at the excuse for revenge.

I read in one of his books, as an aside, his explanation for a positive thinking approach – that good luck came to those who claimed it would come. It seemed a kind of magical thinking for someone who professed to be quite rational.

He announced that he was taking Pascal's Wager when he no longer had anything to lose. That doesn't seem quite cricket, but I suspect God will take him anyway – perhaps to his surprise.

And perhaps he'll learn what might have been.

Lewis has Aslan tell Lucy that nobody is ever told what might have happened. In one sense that's true. We're linear people, and absorbing the branching tree of life's possibilities is more than we were made to understand. But I wonder if being confronted with who we could have been is part of Judgment Day.

Measuring happiness

AVI posted on a new series from the Free Press about happiness by a researcher of the field.

What does a happiness score mean? We wonders, aye, we wonders.

As a boy many years ago, when looking for excuses not to go to church, I noticed that I could pretty much give myself a stomach-ache by concentrating on sensations inside my body. Try it yourself. Do you have a shoulder that does not ache? Concentrate on the sensations from the other one (e.g. my left). Some of the sensations are neutral, few are downright pleasurable, and every now and then there's something slightly unpleasant. Study your shoulder long enough, and those unpleasant-to-painful sensations will start to dominate your attention. Presto!

I suspect that happiness is similar; excessive introspection can skew what we find.

Of course real indigestion made the self-invoked variety look silly, but one of the graces in life is that memory of agony isn't as intense as the agony itself. I've had kidney stones, which recalibrated my pain scale. Sort of. I remember how I acted with the pain, but the pain itself is long gone.

On a smaller scale, I spent most of yesterday in bed (when I actually did want to go to church) and still feel bad today, but since I don't still feel yesterday's pain I can only tell I'm doing better by noticing what I can do.

So I don't have a scale, or have only a sliding scale, to measure pain or pleasure, and since usually pain weighs higher, that pushes me in the "unhappy" direction.

In another way of thinking about it, imagine driving to meet to the family. The road is clean, traffic is smooth, the kids are happily playing roadside bingo, the car sounds fine; am I happy? Maybe not as much as when we reach the grandparents'. Nevertheless, why would I not be in the meantime? And when we reach the goal, I'll be eight or nine hours tired and not feeling 100% too--that won't make the arrival "not count" for happiness, I hope.

Some cultures deprecate complaining or standing out--part of your identity is your community. That seems to have several implications on happiness, and complications on how you measure it. If I've a tootheache but my family's celebration is going wonderfully, how do I rank that? If I'm encouraged not to talk about what's bothering me, will I tell your survey things that I don't think about?

Do you try to take an average of people in a specific situation in two different cultures, and then try to rescale the distribution of one to match the other, and then apply that re-scaling to other situations? If that makes the distributions in other cases match too, then you may have some way of measuring happiness using self-surveys, but it seems fraught with methodological and statistical mines.

I've long had a fairly melancholic disposition. In any situation I think of the problems. When I travel I try to figure a way to get back home if things go sideways. As Ogden Nash wrote of his wife I think of mine: "In your absences I glimpse fire and floods and trolls and imps." And I'm very aware of my own failings. But I don't think of myself as unhappy.

After typing those words, I noticed that the new pain in my foot is quite a bit higher than earlier this evening, now well into "sleep-interrupter" level. I wasn't expecting to do a practical test so soon. So far I still think of myself overall as pretty happy, though a bit grumpy at the moment.

Hot potato

"Notwithstanding the above restriction, -REDACTED- may not purchase physical commodities or sell physical commondities unless acquired as a result of ownership of securities or other instruments. This restriction does not prevent the Fund from engaging in transactions involving futures contracts and options thereon or investing in securities that are secured by physical commodities."

Just so they don't hold onto those futures contracts too long, I guess.

Locality

AVI posted a link to a Steve Hsu podcast (sadly without the slides) about using AI as a kind of "idea generator" linking concepts in physics together -- untrustworthy, but sometimes says something worthwhile. He wasted time on some of the ideas, and found another useful -- and published a paper on the result.

By using AI, he means using several different AI systems, and then cross checking them. If they converge, there might be something useful there. Or not.

Anyhow, the useful idea was based on one of his own papers which showed that a non-linear version of Schrodinger's Equation was going to be "non-local" too: namely that regions that are distant from each other would be correlated/entangled instantaneously -- before light could travel between them. (To be clear, he works with the field equations, since that's simpler for his plan.)

That sounded curious. Quantum mechanics does seem to be linear--at energies below those where general relativistic effects would matter. We don't know what happens when GR and QM have to play together, but non-linearities seem likely to me (admittedly not an expert in that particular field).

The paper discusses non-linear models that involve powers of the wave function. Recalling that the wave functions are going to be linear in the sense that if A is a solution and so is B, A+B is too. If the wave function enters the equation as, for example a linear term plus a square, that square term will couple near and far components automatically. E.g. if "n" represents the near part and "f" the far-away part, (n+f)^2 will have terms like n*f and f*n, connecting near and far from the get-go.

That's the simplest way to put a non-linearity in, but it doesn't seem the most likely, if only because it will automatically ruin locality. Physically, you'd expect something more like a "back-reaction" non-linearity, where the energy of the wave pushes on the vacuum, which "pushes back." For example, an electric charge in space results in an electric field in which there's a non-zero probability of pair-producing (temporarily/virtually) an electron and a positron, which briefly interact with the original charge. Hawking showed that this can be non-trivial for gravity and black holes.

That would give a non-linearity restricted to the effects local to the history of the wavefunction. If one electron has been sitting here and another on Alpha Centauri, if they haven't been there long enough for light to reach from one to the other, the local volume that light can have reached and returned would represent, in my naive model, the volume of the wave function that could contribute a non-linear effect to the electron "here." The Alpha Centauri's contribution is nil until enough time has passed. (And of course, at such a distance the effect is utterly trivial, but it's the principle of the thing.

Now you will ask if I will "put my money where my mouth is" and write an equation for an example. Let me get back to you on that. You'd think in the simplest case one could add in a term like $\alpha \int_{t_0}^0 \int dA \psi(\vec{x}, t-t_0)$ where $A$ is the shell about the given point at radius $c(t-t_0)$, $\alpha$ is some small constant, and $t_0$ is the creation time of the wave function. But I can see that's likely to be bit messy, especially with inserting a "creation time" boundary condition.

I'll play around with it a bit and see what happens.

UPDATE. That integral should include a $f(t-t_0)$ inside that I left off (brain freeze), representing the falloff (e.g. something like $1/r^2$) of effect with distance. $\alpha \int_{t_0}^0 \int dA f (t-t0) \psi(\vec{x}, t-t_0)$

Knit together

"For just as we have many members in one body and all the members do not have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another."

Eph 5:23-27 says that the church will be presented to Christ holy and blameless. And how is this constituted? "hearts knit together in love".

That language might sound familiar: "you knit me together in my mother's womb"

When something breaks (infection, cancer) in my body it doesn't feel like I'm so wonderfully made; I notice the problems. But I am. And we don't always notice that the church is "fearfully and wonderfully made", but it is. We've a role in trying to keep it so.

Comparing

"because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse."

From Motse's "Will of Heaven":

Moreover I know Heaven loves men dearly not without reason. Heaven ordered the sun, the moon, and the stars to enlighten and guide them. Heaven ordained the four seasons, Spring, Autumn, Winter, and Summer, to regulate them. Heaven sent down snow, frost, rain, and dew to grow the five grains and flax and silk that so the people could use and enjoy them. Heaven established the hills and rivers, ravines and valleys, and arranged many things to minister to man's good or bring him evil. He appointed the dukes and lords to reward the virtuous and punish the wicked, and to gather metal and wood, birds and beasts, and to engage in cultivating the five grains and flax and silk to provide for the people's food and clothing. This has been taking from antiquity to the present. Suppose there is a man who is deeply fond of his son and has used his energy to the limit to work for his benefit. But when the son grows up he returns no love to the father. The gentlemen of the world will all call him unmagnanimous and miserable. Now Heaven loves the whole world universally. Everything is prepared for the good of man. The work of Heaven extends to even the smallest things that are enjoyed by man. Such benefits may indeed be said to be substantial, yet there is no service in return. And they do not even know this to be unmagnanimous. This is why I say the gentlemen of the world understand only trifles but not things of importance.

More Motse

Following up on the earlier post

An easier-to-read site

From section I, a call for the rule of universal love:

Suppose everybody in the world loves universally, loving others as one's self. Will there yet be any unfilial individual? When every one regards his father, elder brother, and emperor as himself, whereto can he direct any unfilial feeling? Will there still be any unaffectionate individual? When every one regards his younger brother, son, and minister as himself, whereto can he direct any disaffection? Therefore there will not be any unfilial feeling or disaffection. Will there then be any thieves and robbers? When every one regards other families as his own family, who will steal? When every one regards other persons as his own person, who will rob? Therefore there will not be any thieves or robbers. Will there be mutual disturbance among the houses of the ministers and invasion among the states of the feudal lords? When every one regards the houses of others as one's own, who will be disturbing? When every one regards the states of others as one's own, who will invade? Therefore there will be neither disturbances among the houses of the ministers nor invasion among the states of the feudal lords.

And from section III, a claim that the sage-kings expressed universal love:

Nevertheless. the gentlemen in the empire think that, though it would be an excellent thing if love can be universalized, it is something quite impracticable. It is like carrying Mt. Tai and leaping over the Ji River. Mozi said: The illustration is a faulty one. Of course to be able to carry Mt. Tai and leap over the Ji River would be an extreme feat of strength. Such has never been performed from antiquity to the present time. But universal love and mutual aid are quite different from this. And the ancient sage-kings did practise it. How do we know they did?

When Yu was working to bring the Deluge under control, he dug the West River and the Youdou River in the west in order to let off the water from the Qu, Sun, and Huang Rivers. In the north he built a dam across the Yuan and Gu Rivers in order to fill the Houzhidi (a basin) and the Huzhi River. Mt. Dizhu was made use of as a water divide, and a tunnel was dug through Mt. Lungmen. All these were done to benefit the peoples west of the (Yellow) River and various barbarian tribes, Yan, Dai, Hu, Ho, of the north. In the east he drained the great Plain and built dykes along the Mengzhu River. The watercourse was divided into nine canals in order to regulate the water in the east and in order to benefit the people of the District of Ji. In the south he completed the Yangtze, Han, Huai, and Ru Rivers. These ran eastward and emptied themselves into the Five Lakes. This was done in order to benefit the peoples of Jing, Qi, Gan, Yue, and the barbarians of the south. All these are the deeds of Yu. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

When King Wen was ruling the Western land, he shone forth like the sun and the moon all over the four quarters as well as in the Western land. He did not allow the big state to oppress the small state, he did not allow the multitude to oppress the singlehanded, he did not allow the influential and strong to take away the grain and live stock from the farmers. Heaven visited him with blessing. And, therefore, the old and childless had the wherewithal to spend their old age, the solitary and brotherless had the opportunity to join in the social life of men, and the orphans had the support for their growth. This was what King Wen had accomplished. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

When King Wu was about to do service to Mt. Tai it was recorded thus: "Blessed is Mt. Tai. Duke of Zhou by a long descent is about to perform his duty. As I have obtained the approval of Heaven, the magnanimous arise to save the people of Shang Xia as well as the barbarians (from the tyranny of Emperor Zhou). Though (Emperor Zhou) has many near relatives, they cannot compare with the magnanimous. If there is sin anywhere, I am solely responsible." This relates the deeds of King Wu. We can, then, universalize love in conduct.

And again from section III, examples of things that are nominally harder to do. One may harbor doubts about the wisdom of these kings...

Is it because it is hard and impracticable? There are instances of even much harder tasks done. Formerly, Lord Ling of the state of Jing liked slender waists. In his time people in the state of Jing ate not more than once a day. They could not stand up without support, and could not walk without leaning against the wall. Now, limited diet is quite hard to endure, and yet it was endured. While Lord Ling encouraged it, his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Lord Goujian of the state of Yue admired courage and taught it to his ministers and soldiers three years. Fearing that their knowledge had not yet made them efficient he let a fire be set on the boat, and beat the drum to signal advance. The soldiers at the head of the rank were even pushed down. Those who perished in the flames and in water were numberless. Even then they would not retreat without signal. The soldiers of Yue would be quite terrified (ordinarily). To be burnt alive is a hard task, and yet it was accomplished. When the Lord of Yue encouraged it, his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Lord Wen of the state of Jin liked coarse clothing. And so in his time the people of Jin wore suits of plain cloth, jackets of sheep skin, hats of spun silk, and big rough shoes. Thus attired, they would go in and see the Lord and come out and walk in the court. To dress up in coarse clothing is hard to do, yet it has been done. When Lord Wen encouraged it his people could be changed within a generation to conform to their superior.

Now to endure limited diet, to be burnt alive, and to wear coarse clothing are the hardest things in the world, yet when the superiors encouraged them the people could be changed within a generation. Why was this so? It was due to the desire to conform to the superior.

Now, as to universal love and mutual aid, they are beneficial and easy beyond a doubt. It seems to me that the only trouble is that there is no superior who encourages it. If there is a superior who encourages it, promoting it with rewards and commendations, threatening its reverse with punishments, I feel people will tend toward universal love and mutual aid like fire tending upward and water downwards - it will be unpreventable in the world.

So a realm of universal love is achieved from the top down, by conforming the inferiors by "Identification with the Superior."

About fifty years ago I decided to read Mencius, who was one of the great influences in Chinese thought. I wearied of the book well before finishing, but got through the section in which he excoriates Mozi's "universal love" ideas. He complained about propriety (insuffiicent filial piety) and hierarchy (You have to have hierarchy!). I don't remember a complaint that this just wouldn't work.

I think the 20'th century shows us that top-down proclaiming everybody to be comrades doesn't work very well.

Forging on: This sounds fairly timely. Economy of Expenditures

When a sage rules a state the benefits of the state will be increased twice. When he governs the empire, those of the empire will be doubled. This increase is not by appropriating land from without. But by cutting out the useless expenditures it is accomplished. In issuing an order, taking up an enterprise, or employing the people and expending wealth, the sage never does anything without some useful purpose.

…

What, then, is difficult to increase? To increase the population is difficult. In ancient times, the sage-kings said: "No man of twenty should dare to be without a family; no girl of fifteen should dare to be without a master." Such were the laws of the sage-kings. Now that the sage-kings have passed away, the people have become loose.

…

In those ancient days, at the beginning of the race, when there were no palaces or houses, people lived in caves dug at the side of hills and mounds. The sage-kings felt quite concerned, thinking that the caves might keep off the wind and cold in winter, but that in summer it would be wet below and steaming above which might hurt the health of the people. So palaces and houses were built and found useful. Now, what is the standard in building palaces and houses? Mozi said: Just so that on the side it can keep off the wind and the cold, on top it can keep off the snow, frost, rain, and dew, within it is clean enough for sacrificial purposes, and that the partition in the palace is high enough to separate the men from the women. What causes extra expenditure but does not add any benefit to the people, the sage-kings will not undertake.

I'm not sure how popular some of these ideas would be today.

How about the supernatural?

Mozi said: The way to find out whether anything exists or not is to depend on the testimony of the ears and eyes of the multitude. If some have heard it or some have seen it then we have to say it exists. If no one has heard it and no one has seen it then we have to say it does not exist. So, then, why not go to some village or some district and inquire? If from antiquity to the present, and since the beginning of man, there are men who have seen the bodies of ghosts and spirits and heard their voice, how can we say that they do not exist?

…

Not only does the record in this book prove it to be so. Formerly the Lord Zhuang of Qi (794-731 B.C.) had two ministers, Wang Liguo and Zhong Lijiao, who were engaged in a lawsuit. For three years no judgment could be reached. The Lord of Qi thought of putting both of them to death, but was afraid to slay the innocent; he thought of acquitting both of them but was afraid to let loose the guilty. So he let them provide a lamb and take oath on the altar of Qi. The two men agreed to take the oath of blood. The throat of the lamb was cut and its blood sprinkled on the altar. The case of Wang Liguo was read all through. But before half of the case of Zhong Lijiao was read, the lamb arose and butted at him, broke his leg and prostrated him on it. At the time those people who were present all saw it and those far away heard of it. It was recorded in the Spring and Autumn of Qi. The feudal lords circulated the news around and remarked: "So speedy and severe is the punishment from spirits and ghosts to him that takes an oath in insincerity!" Judging from the record in this book, how can we doubt that spirits and ghosts exist?

Therefore Mozi said: One may not act disrespectfully even in woods, valleys, or solitary caves where there is no man. Spirits and ghosts are watching everywhere.

…

Those who deny the existence of spirits, saying "Ghosts and spirits just do not exist", are opposing the interest of the sage-kings. Opposing the interest of the sage-kings is not the way of the superior man.

Holy ground

In Exodus 3 God told Moses to take off his sandals because he was standing on holy ground. The dirty and artificial wasn't to touch the holy ground. But Moses was required to.

Over in Ezekiel we read of the care required to keep the holy separate from the people -- and in Leviticus rules about how even the priests have to take care. But the original call was to come and stand on the holy ground; I suppose in order to be part of the holy, the set-apart.

That isn't just a New Testament thing. Even in Leviticus: "Be holy, for I am holy." Cast off the dirt and come to the holy ground to become holy.

Of course it isn't always easy, and we need Someone to clean us and bring us there.

Motse

We've all heard of Confucius. One of his competitors was Motse. Legend has it that many of the books from his school were burned, and a bunch of the scholars too.

I'm not sure I'll finish the work linked above. His style is maddening; repetitious and forever citing dubious details of the putative wonderful reigns of the first emperors. The first thing that looked different from the rest was this--but (spoiler) it isn't.

Motse said: The interest of the wise (ruler) lies in carrying out what makes for order among the people and avoiding what makes for confusion.

But what is it that makes for order among the people?

When the administration of the ruler answers to the desires of the people there will be order, otherwise there will be confusion.

How do we know it is so?

When the administration of the ruler answers to the desires of the subjects, it manifests an understanding of the approvals and disapprovals of the people. When there is such an understanding, the good will be discovered and rewarded and the bad will be discovered and punished, and the country will surely have order. When the administration of the ruler does not answer to the desires of the subjects, it shows a lack of understanding of the approvals and disapprovals of the subjects. When there is no such understanding then the good will not be discovered and rewarded and the bad will not be discovered and punished, such a government will surely put the country into disorder. Therefore when rewards and punishments do not answer to the desires of the people, the matter has to be carefully looked into.

But how can the desires of the people (being so many and various) be met?

Therefore Motse said: It can only be done only by adopting the principle of Identification with the Superior in government.

Nope. We don't have an ancient Chinese democrat here. "Identification with the Superior" means that the hierarchy takes its standards from the top. The desires of the people should be shaped into conformity with the rules of clan patriarch, with the feudal lords, and so on up the chain.

Whoever discovers a benefactor of the clan shall report it; whoever discovers a malefactor to the clan shall report it. Whoever reports the benefactor of the clan upon seeing one is equivalent to benefiting the clan himself. Knowing him the superior will reward him, hearing of him the group will praise him.

And then the feudal lord says the same about the state, and the emperor about the empire. "Now that the empire is orderly, the emperor will further organize the purposes in the empire and identify them with the Will of Heaven."

Quite a bit of the advice so far boils down to "You're supposed to be keeping the state orderly and prosperous for everybody." and "Don't appoint your relatives and sycophants; appoint the capable and honest." and "Make sure everybody knows to do what their superiors tell them to." and "Don't go in for excessive luxury."

I haven't gotten to the parts about designing fortifications yet. Apparently the Motse school was famously good at that.

Venezuela ignorance

I don't think I know yet what's going on with Maduro. The reason I've heard for the strike is that Maduro is simultaneously head of an organized crime syndicate and illegitimate dictator of Venezuela, and that in his capacity as the former we've captured him and removed his from the latter position.

The attacks on the drug boats (is anybody still thinking they're fishing boats?) were, in this view, attacks on a non-state hostile actor. I gather that there's actually a fair bit of analysis on the subject of war against non-state actors, but I'm nowhere near expert enough to comment on that aspect.

An alternative interpretation, not based on official pronouncement ("Believe nothing until it has been officially denied"), is that Venezuela's ties with Iran are the key. I've run across rumors that Venezuela has been transporting people and munitions into the US on Iran's behalf. The "transport" part of that is plausible whether Maduro is a drug lord or an Iran ally; the "on Iran's behalf" isn't proven.

But if that was the reason, why not say so? The usual claim is "that compromises sources," but unless the sources were very high up in Iran I'd think this and the nuke facility strikes would be enough for them to try to clean house anyway.

I don't understand what the indictment is for. If Maduro is subject to US laws (e.g. possession of machine guns), then by symmetry I am subject to British law regarding what type of knife I'm allowed to have and to Saudi law for expressing my judgment that Muhammad was a false prophet.

Just no. Let's not admit that kind of precedent.

I really really do not want us to be responsible for running Venezuela. Probably a fair bit of house-cleaning is going to be required to get the presumed gangsters/Iranian partisans out of the positions they've been stuffed in--but I don't think we're the best people to winkle them out.

I wonder how brittle our PowersThatBe think the regime is?

Vanya Da Dua

One of my sisters gave me this memoir for Christmas. Erik d'Azevedo was abouit 6 years old when his family went to Liberia in the late 50's for his father's anthropological research. It is profusely illustrated with black and white photos, mostly of places and people I never saw, but looking very familiar.

His family lived up-country in a village in a compound owned by the Chief. I lived (at first) in a school campus (500 students) about 30 minutes from the capitol (not that far, but the roads were poor). He made friends easiy, and remembers details to a degree I can't come close to.

There are a few glitches: termite queens are 3-4 inches long, not 3-4 feet. But you won't care.

The title was a name given to Erik after the people heard his stories about America. It was the name of a folk hero of the Gola, who was as famous for his tall tales as his deeds. Bridges that can stand the weight of many cars? You're joking with us.

He started as an object of fear, and then of fascination. The friend he called Bobby suffered injustices Erik couldn't do anything about, and many of their friends were thieves. His sister was almost of marriagable age by village standards. Her story would have been an interesting addition.

The obligations of the children impressed him--they had roles from young ages. Some of the tribal rules seemed reasonable, and some crazy.

The supernatural played (and still does) a huge role in village life, and he had some close calls when his curiosity about the secret societies' doings got him in trouble.

Read it. Yes, the formatting is sub-par and an editor should have caught a duplicate story. Don't worry.