The Gardener

Jesus told the parable of the gardener: “But the gardener answered, ‘Leave it alone sir, for this year too; until I dig around it and put in fertilizer, and if it bears fruit …’ “

I’ve heard it used to explain God’s patience with us, and that’s certainly part of it. But it also warns against inferring things from prosperity. Maybe if everything’s coming up roses for you, it isn’t because God’s so happy with you, it’s because the gardener is giving you one last chance.

Rome

There seems to have been a little teapot tempest about how much men (compared to women) think about ancient Rome(*). I haven't bothered to investigate (life is short and I've been busy with non-Rome related things) but in order to make up your quota here is a video on the 1'st Punic War, which includes some surprising strategic implications of the economics of their warships, and a series from A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry starting here on the subject of the Middle Roman Republic. Yes, I learned a lot, though as usual I will promptly forget all the names.

---

(*) I almost wrote "how much men think about ancient Rome compared to women," which wouldn't quite be the same thing. Word order matters in English--not quite like Latin. Oops, there goes the Ancient Rome bit again...

Models and meaning

I was in a little discussion at Grim's Hall about mathematical models of the physical world, and asserted that in a good model, aspects of the mathematics related to aspects of the physical world.

For the honor of truth, I must admit that in quantum mechanics, the physical meaning of the wave function is a bit hard to pin down. If it were easy, there wouldn't be so much disagreement among very smart characters. Follow the link for discussion.

I'm not fond of "shut up and calculate", and I hanker for a clearer theory (although quantum mechanics works extremely well), but possibly the world is a bit stranger than my mind. If an electron slung out of Alpha Centauri interacts with an apparatus in Earth orbit designed to react differently if the electron's spin is + or -, is that apparatus part of the boundary conditions for the electron's wave function and if so, what does that mean for it's state however many years ago when it was created?

Were those really part of the shipment?

The Customs Department of the Liberia Revenue Authority has seized and transferred three boxes of confiscated narcotics drugs and 13 pieces of guns to the appropriate government entities.

Those look like home-made shotgun-shell-shooting pistols. The contents of the plastic bags in the right side of the picture seem fibrous--marijuana or khat? But those pistols: it looks likes there's a cottage industry churning them out. I wonder what the trigger mechanism looks like. I also wonder if those are the pistols that LRA found in the shipment, or something LRA already had on hand. If I had the money to smuggle lots of drugs, I'd smuggle some better weapons along with them.

UPDATE: not-homemade, Grim identified them. Still, they look like substitutes.

Confessional

An ELCA priest confessed his infidelity to a fellow priest, who promptly told his bishop, who called the fellow's wife. I do not know the details well enough to know if there were any loopholes in the definitions or procedures that would authorize those reactions, but on the face of it they seem deeply improper.

The original priest betrayed his promise to his wife (the story says they are reconciling). If the story is true the second priest, and the bishop, betrayed their duties to the whole church--who will ever trust them, or possibly any priest, to hear a confession again?

Devil in the details, milk jug edition

For those gardeners who make their own manure tea, the obvious thing to decant your 5-gallon pails into is old plastic milk jugs. They're free and easy to store, pour from, and cap off.

But.

Look closely at the jug. Is it made from two peices of plastic sealed together? Remember, your garage will get hot and the pressure inside the jug will rise. If there's a weakness in the seams anywhere, the liquid will find it. Half the jugs sprang leaks. This isn't a dry ice bomb class failure, fortunately. But it is a mess.

I'm trying some old injection-molded round gallon jugs--no seams.

FWIW, for homeschool science class I'd made a couple of robust screens of different mesh sizes to illustrate sorting by "particle size" in soil. They've been kicking around unused for a while, until I needed something for making the "tea."

neutrino interactions

I saw article claiming that low energy neutrinos (low is a relative term here--these are nuclear energy level neutrinos) could have large interaction rates in a magnetized plasma. I have to--rather grumpily--admit that I'm having a bit of trouble following the paper and won't have an immediate critique ready. X is true therefore we can assume Y--wait, what? And the coupling constant is proportional to 1/B?

Neutrinos at low energy are tough to spot. I tried to figure a way to use a cold crystal and detect phonons from neutrinos collectively scattering from the array of nuclei (instead of from a single nucleus), but it would have been extremely wavelength specific and since the neutrino wavelength wouldn't match the atomic spacing (it would only be commensurate) the result would have been pretty muddy at best, and likely not much more sensitive than the detectors we already have. Oh well.

Weapon efficiency

In terms of energy delivered to Japanese cities as a fraction of the energy put into the devices, the atomic bombs were about a few percent efficient. True, there was lots of energy available in the uranium, but it was hard to purify the isotope they needed. (It's easier now.) For the energy in the device to go bang there, you have to pour even more energy into it here--true for chemical explosives as well.

Monarchs

When monarch butterflies leave Wisconsin, they fly to a valley they have never seen before in Mexico. They were born in the USA. There seems to be some kind of hereditary memory involved. I've no idea how this works.

I wonder how long it takes for such a hereditary memory to develop.

I suspect that in the past four years the butterflies have learned that wherever you see this sign, someone with white fluff on a long stick is going to snare you, grab you, and poke a sticker on your wing, and then all the other butterflies will laugh at you.

They have been extremely skittish this year.

UPDATE: But seriously: "When applied as directed, the tags do not interfere with flight or otherwise harm the butterflies." But if mates are looking for symmetrical wings, the tagged ones (the not-so skittish ones) may not mate as often.

Lanchester's Law

I learn something new every day. I wasn't familiar with Lanchester's Law: the relative capability of two forces attriting each other during combat goes as the difference of the squares of their numbers. With, of course, some caveats--it doesn't take mechanized systems into account (machine guns, artillary, gas, disease, etc).

Sometimes it works. Sometimes--"Attempts have been made to apply Lanchester's laws to conflicts ... with chimpanzees and fire ants. The chimpanzee application was relatively successful; the fire ant application did not confirm that the square law applied."

The quality of the forces matters and is included--though how this gets "measured" isn't obvious.

"The Helmbold Parameters provide quick, concise, exact numerical indices, soundly based on historical data, for comparing battles with respect to their bitterness and the degree to which side had the advantage." One of the results of that approach is an estimate of the "defender's advantage", which "While the defender's advantage varies widely from one battle to the next, on average it has been practically constant since 1600AD" I wonder if that date is because earlier data is less trustworthy. The Helmbold source isn't in the UW library.

Of course there are cases where the square isn't the best model. Mechanization, terrain, etc, etc.

It's easy to guess how seductive a simple model could be. But your mileage will vary.

Great antiquity

It's straightforward to try to evoke antiquity in a story--describe the ruins of something majestic. Ruin and decay are pretty straightforward--the trick is getting across the majesty. You can throw canned phrases at the problem, like Lovecraft at his worst (which was all too often), but try to do better.

The subject of Bombadil came up at the table (wrt movies), and what use he was to the story. I hadn't known where Bombadil came from--AVI notes that Tolkien was good at revising and repurposing.

Bombadil may be the clearest example. Suppose you think that the oldest thing in the universe isn't majesty but joy. That's not the way most of us think, though there's warrant for thinking so. How do you convey that sense of joy so old and strong that the moment's circumstances don't dent it? Tolkien tried hard--maybe the text was more compelling for him than for us. (Some things I've written have turned out that way.)

I'm glad Jackson didn't try to put Bombadil in--I don't think he'd have caught the sense at all. (Not to mention time constraints.)

"I'm not myself"

In a writer's group meeting tonight, one member shared a journal entry she made during chemo. The key for her was the sense that "I'm not myself." I'll not share details of the situation or her interpretation; that's for her to do. But the sentence says something important. I've been there a few times. (luckily not right now)

When the body won't work right and the mind won't work the way it used to and the emotions are random or out of control, it seems to hammer home just how contingent we are. I might not have existed at all, and I might be very different than I am (or seem to be). "Nice mind you have there. Are you sure you'll get to keep it?" "This must be somebody else; I don't react this way."

The "First Things" for me in the morning is "me waking up", aka "Everywhere I go, there I am." If the fundamental pillar of my world--me--is shaky, my whole universe is.

Some change we're made for, and prompted about, and sometimes supported in--puberty, for example. We're not doing well with the support part lately, but that's another story. But when you can't seem to even think anymore--it's easy to say that the fundamental pillar of your world ought to be God, but it turns out to be hard to make that happen. Your habits are against you. Maybe sometimes we need a shakeup.

Of course in another sense I'm already not myself. There's human nature as designed and human nature as found, and restoration to "factory defaults" is hard and costly. Fortunately most of the cost is borne by someone else.

GOAT

I suppose the obscured headline on the magazine in the rack was supposed to read "Greatest of All Time". Those who know me can predict that I would take it as "Latest of All Time."

I hate the breathless narrators who puff up this critical event or that as something that "changed history forever." (or "changed his life forever")

Ok. Name three monarchs from the Indus Valley civilization. Just the names; I don't need to know what their great accomplishments were.

Yeah. Forever turns out to be a pretty long time, and even whole civilizations that are only 5 thousand years old can vanish from memory. Western Civ will leave a lot more relics than the Harappans did, but given enough time it could fade. True, we leave lots of writing around, but how many civilizations have cared to try to understand the history of other people's ancestors? Yep, Western Civ. With no Western Civ, who will care?

Half the time I've seen "Greatest of All Time" the writer's scope was pretty limited--"one of the best known recently" would have been more accurate. Most of the rest of the time the comparison is tricky: was Euler a greater mathematician than Erdos? (How would I know--they went after different problems in different eras and they're both way out of my league?)

A pier collapsed at UW-Madison Union Terrace

I've never seen it that crowded. I'm not a big "crowd" fan--the only time I've been on that thing school was out and the pier was empty. I was curious what the view was like. No risk of losing a cell phone that long ago--long enough ago that the pier was wood. And none of those kids was even born yet.

UPDATE: FWIW the pier was scheduled to be removed the next day. I wonder if the students knew that and were either a) taking one last stand on it or b) trying to help with dismantling.

"Ignorance is bliss"

After prayer meeting this morning I brought up the question about why would God need to test us. Doesn't He already know what's in our hearts? Is it because I have to know it? Maybe because testing makes it real, not just potential.

Drone wars

Why Drones Have Not Revolutionized War is a useful read. The authors conclude that drones don't "level the field" that much--the already powerful have the technology and training to leverage the tools better in attack and defense.

On the other hand... Some of the drone attacks on Russia have seemed to push the limits of how far drones can travel, and I've read speculation that some of the drones are launched and controlled from inside Russia. I'm not sure active drone control is a safe thing to do inside Russia, but fire and forget might work.

Damage to factories in the homeland, power lines, fuel depots, bridges--they can be as useful to your adversary as damage to your tanks, though the effect takes a little longer to percolate to the battlefield. They need to be able to supply their infiltrators, and provide training and up-to-date ways to counter your countermeasures.

Some countries would seem more vulnerable to this sort of attack than others: most obviously those with open borders and large foreign populations. Dispersed production is more resilient and harder to defend while centralized production, though you can concentrate your defenses, has more catastrophic consequences when attacks get through (as they will). I don't see how just-in-time systems could stand up to damage well.

Prigozhin

I never quite figured out what he thought he was doing, or what would lead him to trust Putin. None of the scenarios people were tossing about seemed to make sense. If it was he aboard the plane, I thought he was supposed to stay in Belarus? It's probably safest to assume that nothing he or Putin said was true.

It would make things nice and lively if the air defense system was supposed to let the plane go through, but somebody had, in the drone vs countermeasures race, figured out how to spoof the system to make it think the plane was a drone. (fast drone, if so) I doubt that many Ukrainians are crying about the results. I'd read that Ukraine had figured out how to make an empty field seem like a drone-controlling station, inducing the Russians to waste a few missiles. Sort of like the doorless microwave in a field the Serbians used against us to the same end.

“There’s a Bene Gesserit saying,” she said. “You have sayings for everything!” he protested. “You’ll like this one,” she said. “It goes: ‘Do not count a human dead until you’ve seen his body. And even then you can make a mistake.”

Whether ghost or in the flesh, he's unlikely to show up on my doorstep, so my confusion doesn't seem to matter much. I'm fortunate to be far enough away.

War Crimes Court

"First time voters overwhelming back a war crimes court" in Liberia.

Advocates of a court have long argued that justice for war crimes is essential if Liberians are to regain trust in government.

“If a war crimes court comes to Liberia, nobody will steal our country money,” said Amie Y. Wilson, 20, in Joe Bar, Paynesville.

and

“Justice is good for Liberia’s future because, during the war, some people just decided to hold guns to be firing people. They were killing innocent people so I believe that when they bring the court in this country it will be better for us,” said Oretha Kangomah, 18

My take on it from 13 years ago is that this is eye-wateringly naive.

For many years opponents of a court argued that a court would reignite fighting. That fear was cited by some older generations of Liberians interviewed by FPA/NN over the years. But many first-time voters surveyed said a court was needed to deter future warlords.

The warlords are still there. So are the weapons. Their command infrastructure will have deteriorated over the years, but I'll bet the warlords are making sure their loyal retainers stay bought. Sure, you can offload the actual trial somewhere else, as was done with Charles Taylor, but the US isn't going to send troops to arrest warlords. Actually, I can think of some people in DC stupid enough to try...

Human justice isn't going to prevail here. Maybe in another dozen years you could get away with something like a war crimes court, when it is largely moot. Right now I don't sense that they're as stable as they think they are.

hope

AVI’s post touching on how much early and middle life matters compared to the end got me wondering about hope.

National Geographic, writing about an Inuit group, described a young man who had killed a polar bear by himself. This is a great accomplishment, one of the greatest available in the culture. Shortly thereafter he killed himself. The journal suggested, based on I know not what personal evidence, that this was in part because he had nothing more to look forward to, that everything in life after this was going to be anticlimax.

It seems a waste of time to try to define hope in some non-circular way–I’ll take it as understood. The object and ground of hope vary.

If your hope is in personal accomplishment, as defined in your culture, what remains for you if your pinnacle is in your youth? You can rest on your laurels, but not hope. Or suppose some impediment prevents accomplishment forever. You need a different target of hope–easy to say, not easy to manage.

My career in physics is over, as far as I can foresee. I cannot hope that what I have helped do will endure, for in large part the results we found are already superseded by more complete studies. I’m hardly alone in this–the same is true for police or soldiers or doctors. Whatever you have done, there will be new crimes, reenergized enemies, fresh diseases. Somebody else has to deal with those. You can hope that they will cope, but that depends on them. You can hope you’ve prepared your children for what lies ahead, but that too depends on them.

There’s hope that depends on my accomplishments, and hope that depends on others’.

There seems also to be another hope–a hope in the graces for the next day. “Graces” because I don’t, or only partly, earn them. It’s a more humble hope–that even if there is nothing I can do or say, I can still enjoy a new day. It’s a humble trust that what I do and trust in will be met with grace. Both my parents died of dementia, which doesn’t augur well for my future, but both seemed to rejoice as best they could in each new day they had, whatever the pains that came with it might be.

We don’t do much without hope. Discouraging reasonable hope in children is a crime. Some hopes are unreasonable–the third son of the peasant is not going to marry a princess–but we tell stories about them anyway, maybe because sometimes their hope shouldn’t be unreasonable. (I don’t remember nearly as many stories about the simpleton marrying the princess, but they’re there too. Wicked hopes are to be defeated, of course.)

unexpected effect

I've had general anesthesia surgery twice before. All I remember of tonsilectomy is a sore throat so bad I did not even want any of the promised ice cream. The shoulder surgery was merely and clearly painful and awkward.

But the torso has many active parts. Is the discomfort from the sutures, from bruising from the inflation they used, from muscle complaining about the alien mesh it has to meld with, or something significant in one of the other organs?

I didn't expect the confusion.