"Where Does The Time Go"

The quote is from, of course, "Uncle John's Band", by the Grateful Dead.

Worked Saturday after 3 weekends off, was dragging at work this morning. I get a couple more things done, I think I will try to dispense with working weekends altogether.

My new computer came in, finally got everything transferred over to it, including my Outlook Express e-mail and contacts and my Firefox favorites. System is way fast, most noticable is ripping CDs, 20-25x. It has 3 groups of 4 LED's that you can set to different colors, or to strobe, etc. Apparently the Dell XPS 720 I got is their top of the line gaming computer, and the gamers like this stuff??? I got it because it was the only system Dell sold with 10000 RPM WD Raptor drives. So I have two of those in a 300GB RAID 0 (striped) array, and another 600GB of 7200 RPM drives for content storage. Seems pretty jammin'.

I have spent hours playing with Google Earth in Sky mode. I seems you can only do lookup on extragalactic objects by Messier #, NGC #, common name (Andromeda Galaxy, maybe a dozen or so), and the first dozen or so of radio source names (Perseus A). I've been putting in Abell clusters of galaxies. Sometimes, when it flies into a rich cluster and suddenly dozens of beautiful galaxies come into focus, it's like, holy shit, that's so cool. Finally, surfing the galaxies like the Silver Surfer. I will start checking out if there's a better way to import stuff (more clusters, radio sources, x-ray sources) before I do much more. Also noticed that Wikipedia has only maybe 6-7 articles on clusters of galaxies. That also would be something to pass the time. So maybe I can add being a dilettante astronomer to being a dilettante musician and a dillettante software developer for retirement.

Speaking of which, last Wednesday at the LBJ, only 3 guitarists showed up, and only 3 singers, until about 10:15. So I was playing and singing a bunch, got close to running out of material. Next morning, those songs were really running through my mind strongly. The last two Sundays, 2-4: band practice. Patrick is drumming well, we've got King William singing too!

Listening-wise, "Once" soundtrack is very listenable. Also got some more Ray Charles and Django Reinhardt. The Mike Bloomfield "If you love these blues, play'em as you please" is very interesting. I also have the new Joni Mitchell, the new Prince, and a new Suzanne Vega, after a couple of listens not making much of an impression.

Biked last weekend for probably the last time this year, 31 miles in 2h24m, 1 stop.

Two new birds in the backyard:

• a downy woodpecker;
• 3 dark-eyed juncos (I think, still have to check the bird book).

I looked at bird baths for the winter, they look like a pain. Vaguely thinking about ways to keep a bird bath going over the winter ...

Too Much

-- as in the Dave Matthews song. I think I am suffering from some existential / consumerism indigestion.

So, as background, I have recently replaced:

• My 24 year old 27" console TV with a 52" Sharp Aquos LC52D64U. Under 3" thick, it worked out great, my son was in for his birthday 2 weeks ago and he and his buds hung it for me.
• My 15 year old Sony tuner for a Sony 5300 tuner with 5 HDMI inputs, plus old stuff like phono. Nice piece of gear, but 3x $ I was expecting to spend. But, I do keep things a long time.
• My April 99 Dell 2x500Mhz home computer with a 4x2.4Ghz Dell workstation, due in this week.

Then a few weekends ago visited my friend David in Columbus OH -- of the 4000 bottle wine cellar, the gourmet cooking, the 1Ghz ethernet home computing setup (plus 2.1 terabytes of RAID disks for his 100000 pictures -- he is a wonderful photographer and a photoshop wizard) and the house wired for cable AND satellite. 48 years old, he and his wife have no children and are consumers' consumers.

Then the next weekend had lunch with an old high school friend of mine in Louisville who is 3rd generation president of the family company. He has done a great job with it, diversifying and training his son to take over for him. He and his wife, empty nesters like us, recently moved into a huge, beautiful house across the street from Cherokee Park.

So, it's just been nagging at me. I was brought up lower middle class in a family of 7 kids, I just don't think I'm cut out to be nouveau rich. It just doesn't feel right. Goddamned catholic upbringing, you never get to enjoy anything.

Still, you look at our resource/carbon footprint, and despite the prius and recycling and keeping things for 10s of years, my footprint is still 1000x a third worlder's. And, my wife astutely pointed out, if you add in our 4 grown kids, our total footprint is much larger than our childless friends in Columbus.

Looked at vacation lake homes in Tennessee last weekend. Saw some nice stuff. The 2nd house will definitely help our footprint!

Well, I guess I'll just hope for Real Good Tech to fix all this up.

Haven't biked for 2 weeks. Biking will be over soon.

Meanwhile, I've gotten to drinking probably 1-5 oz alcohol per day, probably averaging around 3. I am my own science fair project, what fun! I think that once I got over averaging 2 oz/day, I could no longer drink enough water to rehydrate myself. So I think I am permanently dehydrated. The back of my throat/postnasal region is always scratchy -- but a few drinks in the evening and I won't notice it! My legs want to cramp all the time too. I sleep more and exercise and read less.

So, I'm going to have to consciously cut back to weekends and Wednesdays (LBJ), see if that helps the dehydration. Seems like I want to be addicted to something. I quit smoking so colds wouldn't last so long, the one I caught in Quebec still lasted 2 weeks, I thought, I should go back to smoking.

Plus, I think the alcohol is depressing me, to where the christians and other dumbasses who have always been there are getting me down more than they should. I guess we'll see.

Delusionary Thinking

Not sure what got into me yesterday, biked 43 miles to Spring Station on the other side of Midway, 3h 18 minutes, 2 stops. Quads were talking to me at the end, but I wasn't dying like a couple of weeks ago. I think it's because it wasn't near as humid, although it was near 90 when I got back at ~12:15, and I came back on Parker's Mill, which had a lot of shade -- when I was dying I was on Delaney Ferry, which has very little shade -- and, there were some clouds.

Re the ingenuity and persistence of squirrels (last post), my oldest daughter sends this LOL video.

Music-wise, a couple of weeks ago, I found out that I could get an annual couples pass to The Woodsongs Old-time Radio Hour, which is recorded most Mondays at the Kentucky Theater downtown, for $95. Individual shows are $10 a head, seemed like a good entertainment value. Last week we saw Chris Hillman, original bass player of The Byrds, and Herb Pederson, playing mandolin and guitar, very laid back, very enjoyable. This week was 2 cajun bands, Ann Savoy, and The Red Stick Ramblers. Great Texas swing overtones, you can't go wrong with 2 fiddlers, and some really high energy rockabilly stuff. In the encore they had the setup of the Django Reinhardt Quintet (3 guitars, bass and violin) -- plus a drummer. This is a great entertainment value. The shows are archived here, you can watch them whenever you want. The host Michael Jonathan is kind of a dork, but you have to respect what he's accomplished, they get some really good, varied talent into Lexington.

Saturday we went to the Art House cinemas and saw "Once". Very interesting. It was basically a long form (~90 minute) music video. Filmed on a shoestring in Dublin -- bystanders are looking at the cameramen throughout the movie, and at one point some kids on bicycles are following them gawking. But, it was charming, it worked. My youngest daughter was with us, at one point she said "The songs aren't bad." My reply was, "Since the whole movie is about them writing and recording the songs, it would really suck if the songs were lousy." I could only find the soundtrack at amazon (no iTunes or eMusic), so it is of course on order, which I think was pretty much the point of the movie.

Lexington Blues Jam last week went OK. The end got a little rough. Some bad vocal harmony on "The Weight", and then the main guitarist and the bass player, both of whom I think probably should have played a little more and drank a little less, were clashing both in their playing, and I think in their neurotransmitters.

This week I might wind up mostly singing, with a guitar as a prop. I was cutting carrots longitudinally for grilling yesterday and cut the crap out of the tip of the ring finger on my left hand. That's a serious guitar finger -- I'll have to play leads with 2 fingers like Django Reinhardt, he had 2 of is fingers damaged in a fire. I think chords might be right out tho. We'll see, I guess.

So, re the title: I guess that the thing that is scaring me overall is that there are so many forms of delusional thinking that seem to be socially accepted, or even encouraged, in the US now. Just a few examples:

• an omnipotent, omnipresent, etc being, aka God, exists;
• we don't die when we die, i.e., there is life after death;
• the world is 6000 years old;
• driving a big SUV keeps me safer in a wreck (it doesn't).

I had some more telling ones a while ago, but they seem to have senior-momented themselves away :-(

I was thinking about the Creation Museum and it's exhibit of Noah's Ark. It's so pathethic, crying is probably more appropriate than laughing. For instance:

• Were there jaguars (south america) on the ark? How did they get there?
• Were there dire wolves (australia) on the ark?
• Were there polar bears (arctic) on the ark? Were they grumpy from being so warm?
• Were there penguins (antarctic) on the ark?
• How did they keep track of the ~350,000 species of beetles without a computer?

Sigh.

But, I think that we need to distinguish between delusions and emergent, higher-order mental entities, which share some characteristics of cognitive illusions, as explored recently by Hofstadter in "I am a Strange Loop", blogged here. So referring to a "soul" or a "self" is not delusionary -- as long as you don't think that either is immortal, or can exist without some kind of physical substrate. This was first mused on early in this blog here

On another piece of follow-up, re the jehovah "wanted" poster, I went and looked in Exodus for documentation of the actual involvement of this jehovah character in the murder of an entire generation of Egyptian children over a political squabble (the Feast of the Murdered Children, aka Passover). The evidence is inarguable, his own voice convicts him:

Exodus ch 12 v 12

For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

Exodus ch 12 v 29,30

And it came to pass, that at midnight the LORD smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle.

And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead.

"For there was not a house where there was not one dead." Holy crap, what a monster. Guilty, guilty, guilty. It really is a good thing that he doesn't exist, it would be quite a job for us to track down the genocidal maniac and bring him to justice ...

Reductio ad Hitlerum

I am officially a sissy, biked only 26.7 miles this morning in 2h6m, 1 stop, through downtown Versailles. But, mowed the back grass and raked the 1st 20 pounds of the estimated 150 pounds of acorns that the 30 foot tall red oak in our front yard will drop this fall. I left about 10 pounds of them in the back corner of our yard as an offering to the squirrels, maybe they will eat less from the bird feeders.

My wife for our 32nd wedding anniversary got me a squirrel-proof bird feeder. It has 2 shells, with 6 aligned openings cut in them. The outer shell is on springs, and anything as big as a squirrel will cause the outer shell to drop such that the holes are closed. We'll see how that does. I have great respect for the ingenuity and persistence of squirrels.

Musicwise, LBJ (Lexington Blues Jam, I have decided sounds better than the Old Fart's Jam) went well Wednesday. Lindsay and Eric were on the road with Harmonica Red, Richard was the designated guitarist, and the wonderful Sheri McGee was the drummer. I think Sheri is the best of the drummers who plays there, she is great to watch and I realized, whenever we have gotten a really great "Who Do You Love" jam going, Sheri has been drumming. She changes tempo and mixes it up, really fun to play with. My songs went well, got to play twice, no bass. We had 6 people from Exstream out, I am going to try to get the LBJEA (Lexington Blues Jam Exstream Auxiliary) going, O'Neils is by far the nicest place we have played, I'd like to keep it a while.

Music-aquisition wise, I am listening to:

• Chick Corea and Bela Fleck, "The Enchantment", very listenable jazz piano and banjo, 3 stars.
• Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks, "Beatin' the Heat" -- his 1st studio album since the '70s, with Ricki Lee Jones, Elvis Costello, Bette Midler, and Tom Waits sitting in on tracks. 3 stars, with maybe a few 4 star tracks.
• The Kinks, "Preservation Act 2". Act 1 got 4 stars, this one I don't think so. Plus some annoying Announcements that will get 2 stars so they don't go on the iPod.

Speaking of which, for the 2nd time my iPod froze, listening to it outside while grilling (carrots, red peppers, portabello, tuna). Plugged it into the sync station, it's still froze. I guess I'll try to google up what to do to it.

So, I was thinking about, why would 61% of people not vote for an atheist? I think it winds up being a "Reductio ad Hitlerum" instinct. Theists intuitively think that atheists, without an imaginary superfriend keeping an eye on them, are amoral with no respect for human life, like Hitler -- who actually was a devout Roman Catholic, which was probably why the vatican was silent about Nazi atrocities. Instead of imaginary superfriends and old obsolete books, atheists have logical ethics. The golden rule and the silver rule ("Don't do unto others what you wouldn't want done unto you") are pretty obvious to anyone who wants to live in human society ...

Antitheism Followup

The Lexington Herald-Leader had an article saying that 25% of those surveyed would not vote for Romney based on his Mormonism -- yay!

Of course, the same article stated that 61% of those surveyed would not vote for an atheist -- the highest of any "religious" group :-(

Mormons Attack!

No biking today, a stationary front / line of rain from New Mexico to New England -- except for a 100 mile gap centered on Lexington, KY. We did finally get some drizzle, but we are still in severe drought. I walked the dog instead of biking, about half the yards look like science fair projects in "Natural Selection of Drought-Resistant Weeds".

This will be a special post, dedicated to one of everyone's favorite topics, antitheism.

So around a month ago, we went to the wedding of an old friend's daughter. She was only around 20, still had a year to go in college, we'd never heard of the boy, we're kind of wondering, what's up?

So, at the ceremony, there's two god dudes, one with official god dude clothes (robe and stole, a Lutheran I think), and one in a suit. They're kind of tag-teaming the ceremony, I'd never seen that before. Then the suit guy says "by the power invested in me as an elder in the church of jesus christ of the latter day saints, I pronounce you man and wife". Uh-oh, Mormons!!!

I work with a mormon or 2, as individuals I have no problem with them, they don't partitularly present as being any more delusional than your average religious person, but, in groups, they really creep me out.

Like the two old guys on the groom's side -- you start wondering how many teenage slave wives they have back in Utah. Mormonism is a young and virulent strain of christianity -- I think in general, the younger the religion, the more virulent the strain. The downwards trends in church-going in, what, pretty much the whole civilized world except for the bible-belt of the USA, indicate that the mind can learn to immunize itself from viruses -- but, Mormonism is I think a new antibiotic-resistant strain. It is very well engineered, with directions on how to live many parts of your life that religions normally stay out of. And, it has the normal (for virulent young religions) harsh treatment of apostasy -- I think your family is expected to pretty much disown you.

After being told by a gorgeous young woman now she had been heavily involved in the bride's conversion, and how wonderful it was, and how she was leaving on her mission soon, we beat a hasty retreat. I talked to the father later (the Lutheran), he said that he considered Mormonism a cult because the Mormons had told him that they believe in current-day prophets ("latter day saints") who are receiving orders directly from god, and if one of these guys tells you to machine-gun children, you do it. Pretty scary.

Then, like 3 days later, I'm having lunch at Arby's and two 15-16 year old boys ride up on bikes, come in, get food, sit down at the table next to me, and ask me if I have heard of the church of jesus christ of the latter day saints. Grrr -- "I'm trying to eat". "Do you work around here?" "No." Grrr.

Sending children out to prosteletyze to strangers is Wrong, and a mark of religious fanaticism. If that ever happens again, I'm going to go on and go for the mind-fuck. "Your parents were well intentioned, but they have infected you with an extremely virulent mind virus. Just remember: when you turn 18, you can tell your parents that you still love them, and you forgive them for infecting you, but you don't want your brain infested by such a parasite anymore."

Yesterday want to the memorial service for my old friend / WRA slaphead, in a babtist church. Very moving, got to sing "Morning has Broken", I had no idea it was a hymn, not too offensive. As the thing went on, and her siblings all talked about how she was now watching them, and how they would be reunited in heaven, I am feeling increasingly alienated from the people there. I understand, it's an accepted part of our culture, but, it still seems delusional to me. Dead is dead. We live on in memories, our works and our genes.

But, I found myself asking myself, "Does believing that an emotional bond is going to last for all eternity (how long is that, anyway) increase the strength of the emotional bond?" I suspect the answer to that question may be Yes.

All antitheism, all the time. My boss last weekend took his #2 son (engineering major at Ga Tech) and #3 son (computer science major at Purdue) and some of his Purdue classmates to our Kentucky pride and joy, the Creationism (anti-)Museum. The word he kept coming back to to describe it was "scary" -- very professionally done, full of children being told by their parents about how things were before/after The Fall of Adam and Noah's Ark; the parking lot packed; and Kentucky State Troopers providing traffic and security services -- that doesn't seem right. Ooh, I'm going to post something about that to the KASES forum, and maybe see if I can get the Kentucky ACLU interested -- using tax dollars for a religious program.

Finally, antitheism item #4. I got to thinking about a "Wanted Dead or Alive" poster for Jehovah, aka Yahweh, God, God the Father, Allah, Adonai. For Murder and Mass Infanticide, with the quote from Exodus where he orders the execution of every first-born child in Egypt (the Passover, or the Feast of the Murdered Children) and some other places where Jehovah personally orders the death of children. So, googling "wanted poster template" located this site, and googling "michelangelo god" gave me some nice pictures to choose from, and here's the preliminary result.

Not bad, but I wanted a little more detail than this. Still, it's a start. Now, need to enlist a small army of skater alternakids to put it up everywhere ;->

Old Farts' Blues Jam

The Old Farts' Blues Jam has moved to O'Neils Irish Pub in Idlehour Shopping Center on Richmond Road, Wednesday from 5-9. Happy hour is 4-7. I got there about 6:40, got to play a ton, maybe 5 singing 4, then a short break, then played bass for around 5, then played guitar for a few more and sang a couple more. Very roomy stage, nice dance floor, you could really hear well. If we can keep this one as long as we did Lynagh's, we'll be doing great.

Evolution in Action

Found the 3rd dead bird of the summer in the area by the main bird feeder. It joins another sparrow and a robin as suspected avicide vicims of the blackbirds. We seem to be up to around a dozen blackbirds, and that many sparrows. Still a pair of cardinals, and the chickadees, and lots of mourning doves. Haven't seen any bluejays lately (strong-beaked by the blackbirds?), and the goldfinchs seem to be pretty much gone as well. But, have been seeing a lot of the hummingbirds -- I think at least 2 males, since one keeps driving the other off. Just a while ago I saw the 1st ever red-winged blackbird at the bird bath. Also noticed a chipmonk jump 2 feet straight up to get a drink in the bird bath.

Also this morning, saw a blue heron in the creek that runs alongside Paul's Mill Road, south of Troy KY in southern Woodford county. That creek is 90% dry, even the places where one of the horse farms dammed it. Drought here is definitely severe.

Biked 30 miles in 2h34m this morning, thought I was going to die. I got started at 9:08, I was 10 miles from home on Delaney Ferry Rd and walked the bike up the end of a hill, and was going to call someone to come get me, I was totally hurting. Cramping in my left hip and lower stomach, both calves hurting, not a cloud in the sky. I think I made a mistake , I ate ~1 hour before I left, pecan swirl danish, I will go back to not eating before I bike. But, I took about a 10 minute break and then struggled home. I got home totally overheated and sweat-soaked, I spread a dirty towel on the floor and passed out on it for an hour before I showered.

My youngest daughter, who I am proud to say is now a 3rd grade teacher, was over for supper last night. I was telling her I had worked up "Lay Lady Lay" on the pedal steel, she had never heard the song! (I got called out for insisting that we had to immediately rectify that situation -- "I thought you liked to tell us youngsters to not obsess on old music"). So, downloaded Bob Dylan "Nashville Skyline", 1969. What a great album, what nice songs, including the wonderfully raw (unrehearsed?) duet with Johnny Cash on "Girl from the North Country".

Speaking of pedal steel, I think I have found where the current best pedal steels are coming from: ZumSteel. Looks like you can get a custom-made, top-of-the-line ZumSteel for around $4500. If my left thumb gets worse to where I really have trouble playing guitar, I think I will go for one of these. I was afraid that I would really have trouble figuring out how to play a real pedal steel, but John Hughey of Time Jumpers, and the immortal Buddy Emmons both have extensive training materials out, so I think I can transition from my 6 string open E instument to a real one.

Interestingly, I think I read it at the steel guitar forum that the pedal steel guitar player population is totally aging -- average age in Nashville around 60??? Maybe it's another one of those hard things (requires practice) that the "Guitar Hero" generation doesn't have the time/patience/discipline/whatever to acquire. That book on music I reviewed recently ("This is Your Brain on Music") I think said that to become an expert on anything takes ~10000 hours (2 hrs a day for 10 years?). That seems like a lot ...

I also have a mental note to get a new flute this year, and see how the bad thumbs do with that. Looks like I can get one for around $350.

Listening to "Speak for Yourself", by Imogen Heap, who was Frou Frou. Nice chick pop, 3 stars.

Phew

Seems to have cooled off here. Grilled out this evening, cooked salmon on one of the cedar planks my youngest got me for my birthday. Had 2 pieces from a half salmon that wouldn't fit on the plank that I cooked directly on the grill like normal (fresh squeezed lemon juice and dill -- but Kroger was out of fresh dill, I had to use dried dill weed!). The normal was good as usual, some brown on the outside, and you could taste some black -- the good stuff. The salmon off the plank literally melted in your mouth and tasted wonderful -- both were excellent, damn cooking is fun!

Currently listening Spacehog's first, "Resident Alien", which went gold in 1995. WRFL played "In The Meantime" the other morning, I called the DJ to ask what that wonderfully catchy tune I had not heard in years was, went and got the album thereafter. They had 2 more albums before they broke up, and the lead singer married Liv Tyler, not sure I will check them out -- but nice that it's measurable how much more there is to exhaust Spacehog.

Went in to work for 5 hours today, I've been refactoring since 8/2, need to get something done ... Was thinking about working Monday (Labor Day), think I will not. My wife is getting off of 3rd shift -- and going to Cincinatti tomorrow with one of her girlfriends. But, I have ribeyes to cook tomorrow, and a chicken for Monday. Damn, cooking is fun!

Technology Review last month had a very upbeat article from their environmental columnist, re, aquaculture in the oceans has great potential to produce totally mass quantities of food (sushi!). This could overcome "the tragedy of the commons" (blogged here) that threatens the fish harvests of the world's oceans.

Last time I visited my older brother in Maine, he was telling me that Maine lobster harvests are at all time highs, and show no problem in increasing. The main food of Maine lobsters is ... lobster bait, from the lobster traps. The traps are constructed such that small lobsters get in and out without problem. Some larger, but undersized, lobsters will get caught in the traps, but they are thrown back by the lobstermen. So Maine lobsters are an example of successful aquaculture. Hopefully many more will follow.

Took a break to put the ribeyes on to marinate overnight. Someone told me you should never marinade for more than 30 minutes -- yeah, right. Last month I grilled for 30 (the cookout that got busted), cooked 20 ribeyes that had marinated overnight. My grill fit the 1st 16, set it on high, put them all on, opened after 3 minutes, "show me fire" -- and fire there was. I ate one of them, the 1st bite I put in my mouth melted there, "ohmigod" I said. Damn, cooking is fun!

My last post, I was so proud of "proprioceptive illusion" -- I thought I had made the concept up, I am so cool -- but then, google it, there are numbers of proprioceptive illusions being researched. I am such a loser -- old and slow :-(

A couple of months ago, I was reading in one of the local weekly newspapers ("Southsider" I think) about someone in Lexington publishing a science fiction digest. I read it, and saw the guy's name, and thought "Wait a minute -- he works at Exstream!". And sure enough, Jason Sizemore, the editor of Apex Digest, was a buildmaster at Exstream. Apparently he had also worked at RenLar in the past. He quit last month to do the magazine full-time. He gave me a sample issue, the quality of the stories was very good. As you would expect, some simplistic stuff ("no one ever expects the spanish inquisition"), but mostly enjoyable. Their big mainstream author for the issue was Kevin J. Anderson, of the Dune sequels and the interminable "seven suns" series I am trapped into reading. This guy is such a hack, the intro to the story said he produces 750K words of literature a year -- I believe it, and I am sure that it all aspires to the same high level of triteness. The guy needs to just focus on writing bodice-rippers, or Anne Rice vampire novels ...

Aside from that tho, Apex Digest was very readable, and had a continued story that made me go on and buy a subscription -- 4 issues/year, $20.

After a month off from heat/vacation, biked last Sunday with the wife, 20.5 miles in 1h50m, 1 stop. Walked the dog this morning, will bike Monday.

Proprioceptive Illusion

The Lexington Herald-Leader ran a story last Thursday or Friday on an article in Nature in which an out-of-body experience was induced in test subjects by showing them images of themselves on VR goggles and touching the subject's back with a stick. The subjects reported they felt that their consciousness was in the image they were looking at. Out-of-body experiences had previously been induced by electrodes in the brain.

We have known about optical illusions for years. More recently we have added cognitive illusions (see for example "Inevitable Illusions", Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, blogged here); and moral illusions (see "The Blank Slate", Stephen Pinker, blogged here).

I think we can now characterize the "out-of-body experience" as a proprioceptive illusion (not sure if that is the correct adjectival form of the noun proprioception, our sense of where our body is) -- and not as evidence for the existence of a soul separate from the body, as is often done.

BTW, last blog I mentioned playing at the last Old Farts' Jam at Lynagh's. I meant to meantion that one of our young developers who hangs out at Lynagh's regularly sent an e-mail to most of development trying to get people out for my final performance there. Attendees showing up, 0. :-(

Played last night (softly) at Coffee Island, in the former sight of The Kentucky Arcade, my son's erstwhile favorite video game hangout. It was fun, very laid back.

Next week, we start up at O'Neil's Irish Pub, Wednesdays from 5-9. Nice place, nice stage, medium sized dance floor. Haven't decided yet how early I want to try and get out there.

Reading the latest Year's Best. Just read a great story by Benjamin Rosenbaum, "The House Beyond Your Sky". Per his web site, it's up for Hugo. Great computational cosmology, great stuff, one to keep an eye on.

A Trip to the Great North

So, we vacated to Canada, le Provence de Quebec to be exact, from 8/12 to 8/19. Flew from Louisville to Montreal on Sunday, stayed there until Thursday. Mostly did tourist foo, Botanical Garden very nice, the Olympic stadium tower. Ate lots of good french food -- sweetbreads and a rack of lamb rubbed in rosemary the 1st night, magnifique. Thursday our oldest daughter flew in from NYC and we took the train to Quebec City (3 hours), stayed there until Saturday, took the train back, then flew home Monday after our Sunday flight was cancelled (thanks United). Quebec City we didn't like as well, pretty much solid tourists, with the big historical point of interest that they seemed obsessed with being the loss of the city to the British in 1759.

So our summer vacation to the north to escape the heat was successful again. I think it may have gotten to 80 1 day in Montreal, and Quebec didn't get over 75, while it was close to 100 down here. So of course, we got rained on in Quebec Friday evening when the temperature was around 60 and I caught a cold, that I am just now about completely over. Hoisted on my own petard.

On the way to Montreal, I finished "This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession", by Daniel J. Levitin. He is a former record producer/engineer who is now a researcher at McGill U (in Montreal!) into the cognitive science of music. An OK book, good analysis of the components and evolutionary basis of music, lots of fun factiods (FFTKAT) re why the music of some modern pop artists such as The Beatles, Steely Dan, and Joni Mitchell are so appealing. The web site for the book has song samples and other stuff. One interesting thing that I will research further was his statement that starting times of sounds/notes are discernable by the brain at the level of a few milliseconds. Everything I have seen prior to this has said that the lowest level of time that the brain/consciousness can process is 50 milliseconds / 20 hertz (movies run at 24 frames/second) -- so an interval an order of magnitude below that is definitely worth investigating.

This is the third book on music/mind I have read, much better than the other two, but still, I was glad when this book was over -- not really that much new there. 3 stars.

After that read "Thirteen" by Richard K. Morgan, his 5th novel. Aside from some pacing problems in its 550 pages, a very good read. But, very depressing. Morgan is a Scot. The novel is set in ~2105. The northeast states and the west coast have split from the US in the mid 21st century, leaving the rest as a country known popularly as Jesusland. It's main characteristics are its poor education system, legislated morality, and its willingness to do dirty jobs for cheap, and its suspension of the rule of law, habeus corpus, etc. The truth hurts, don't it? 4 stars.

I never watch The Daily Show any more. It's just not funny any more, the idiocy has gone on far too long. And even with the Bushies in increasingly severe disarray, the democrats seem to remain clueless. Sigh ...

After that I read the new William Gibson, "Spook Country", very good, very much in the vein of "Pattern Recognition", which I thought was his best book since "Neuromancer" in 1984, 4 stars.

Last Wednesday was the last blues jam at Lynagh's, they were ready for a change after 15 months of the Old Farts Blues Jam. Many guitarists there, they were kind of rushing people through, my 3 went OK, considering I still had the damn cold. I'm supposed to be taking the pedal steel to some coffee place for some low volume acoustic type stuff this Wednesday, we'll see how that goes.

My old friend Slaphead, aka Diana Probus, whose blog I linked to recently, died yesterday morning, apparently of complications/side effects of chemotherapy. Her blog went silent June 16, and one of her online friends was kind enough to give me the news. She was 50.

The End of Hippiedom

So got back from my walk, it is so damn muggy. I forgot to take a hat and the sun came out half way through, probably have a red nose tomorrow, hopefully not a red scalp. I took my shirt off. Not too many people out, hopefully no young children were traumatized by The Great White Whale ("Big as a mountain and white as the show, it's Moby Dick!"). I still tan on my trunk, but the 1st thing that happens after exposure to sun is that the hair on my chest all turns bright shiny white. I don't seem to tan at all from the knees down, I think from my 12 years of refereeing soccer and having a soccer tan from wearing knee socks.

So got home, needed to cool off before showering so I did another post (2 in 1 day!), somehow got my Blogger cookies/state screwed up by changing a setting, lost the post. Grrr. I've cooled off enough to shower now, but will try to recreate this while it's still fresh in my mind.

Anyway, there are some of my raps that I have been forgetting for years to add to this blog. Some have made it, like My Greatest Blasphemies, others haven't. So I had a good idea to help me remember these. Whenever I think of one, I e-mail it to myself at my home account, where I blog from. I have for years used the inbox of my e-mail as my todo list, both at work and at home. An e-mail that requires action, a response, or more thought stays in the inbox until it is processed (or it times out), at which point it is filed in an appropriate folder or deleted/archived. Crazy that I just thought to send e-mails to myself when I need to remember to do something. But, ain't having an exocortex great!

During most of my Cambridge/Boston years 1968-1974 I was a hippie. In high school, I had a friend, who was generally regarded as our token beatnik, who turned me on to Herman Hesse, "Steppenwolf", "Siddhartha", "The Bead Game" and other similar literature, and to Mississippi Delta blues. He also wanted to turn me on to smoking pot, but in the stupefying naivete of my youth ("the weenie factor" -- I graduated high school just before I turned 17), I didn't realize this until years later. He later was a Louisville blues singer for years.

I started playing music in around 1965. When I got to MIT in the fall of 1968, I had a great collection of psychedelic music and my heros were Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and The Grateful Dead. It took a very short time for the hippie contingent of my living group and me to realize we were kindred spirits. So I lived various aspects of the hippie lifestyle until I moved back to Jeffersonville in 1974 (but city hippie rather than country hippie).

So my contention is that Woodstock, in the summer of 1969, was the beginning of the end of the hippie movement. My bass player at the time went, I was working as a welder at JeffBoat to make money for college, I didn't go.

Woodstock was three days of great music, great drugs, and great fellowship, with lots of free love going around -- and Nothing Happened. Back then, we really thought that we could Change Things, in potentially magical ways. So with all the great vibes of Woodstock, Something should have happened:

• the mother ship should have landed and taken on some passengers, or
• a group mind should have formed, or
• superpowers like telepathy and levitation should have manifested.

But, aside from the usual births, deaths, and dancing, Nothing Happened. And this was the beginning of the end of hippiedom.

I think that the one lasting legacy of the hippie movement was the birth of the environmental movement. Hippies were its parents.

Rainy Day, Dream Away

Looks like I am rained out from biking again -- it just started raining pretty steady, around 9am. Checked the radar, it should last 30-60 minutes. So I'll go for a walk when it's done. Meanwhile, might as well blog.

I wasn't going to bike far anyway, maybe 30 miles. We're back to low 90s and humid as hell. We were at a party last night, sitting on a deck at 10:30pm and sweat is rolling off me.

Actual title of this entry was going to be "The Birds and the Bees". Main point re the birds is, they fight all the time, as long as they are within 1 size class of the other bird. So robins, cardinals, and mockingbirds get territorial on each other, both within and without of their species, but ignore sparrows. Blackbirds will gang up and try to drive a crow away. And when there's a hawk around, both crows and blackbirds will put 1-3 sentries keeping tabs on the hawk. They will also mess with it when it's in flight.

I enjoy watching my bird bath and 3 bird feeders. Here's some anecdotes / natural science.

• Of the birds that use the main bird feeder, the pecking order is: blackbirds, bluejays, cardinals. Doves eat but don't seem to get involved. We also have a lovely pair of chickadees that the other birds seem to ignore. They fly almost like hummingbirds.
• I had thought robins didn't use the feeder (worm eaters), but there was one eating there yesterday.
• The main feeder and bath are between an aristocrat pear and a crabapple tree near the house. I cut most of a branch on the crabapple that the squirrels (3) were using for fast access to the main bird feeder. Our hummingbird feeder (none this year or last) hangs from it and the vibration of the squirrels' passing sloshes the liquid out of the hummingbird feeder. After I cut it, I noticed a chipmunk (chipmunks climb trees!) going up the pear over to the crabapple, all around the crabapple, back to the pear -- I had destroyed his access to the bird feeder. So then he climbs the pole the feeder's on -- the squirrels do this and then just swarm over the lip of 6 x 12 inch base of the feeder -- and leaps backwards along the long dimension of the base; attempts to grab the edge; fails and falls to the ground (5 feet). Then back up the pole again, another leap in the direction 180 degrees from the first, with the same result. Then back up the pole, reach the edge in the shorter direction directly, without leaping, and easily pulls itself over. So why did it try twice leaping 6 inches before reaching 3? Almost like its route searching algorithm was random, which I wouldn't think was the case ...
• The birds don't mess with the the squirrels on the feeder. I thought maybe rodents got a pass, but a bluejay got territorial with the chipmunk when it was in the tree, so it's probably the size thing.
• Cardinals seem to be fairly timid, but I did see a female cardinal dominating a bluejay briefly. I also saw a male cardinal fly up and side with a female when a bluejay was dominating the female.
• The bluejays and chickadees fly to the feeder, get a piece of food, and fly back to a branch to eat it. The doves, blackbirds, cardinals, and robins eat at the feeder.
• The goldfinches currently have the thistle seed feeder to themselves. I guess that shows the advantage of have an unusual food be part of the definition of your ecological niche.

BTW, I am adding another blog link: that of an old friend/WRA of mine. She was affectionately known as "slaphead" when she worked for me ~15 years ago because she was such a smartass you wanted to slap her upside the head -- my kind of person.

Politically Incorrect?

Subtitle, sometimes I just can't tell anymore.

Anyway, I'm coming home from Lynagh's (Wednesday jam is every other week now, this is the off week, but I seem compelled to go nonetheless -- old fart's jam has been replaced by the internationally renowned guitarist, the inimitable Ben Lacy). I'm stopped at the corner of Huguelet and Limestone, coming out of the UK campus. I particularly noticed tonight what I notice whenever I'm stopped there: the pedestrian (don't)walk traffic signals talk continuously (walk now, don't walk, but maybe much more???). I had presumed that this was for the visually impaired. But, if there are no visually impaired around, this amounts to:

1. noise pollution;
2. a waste of the energy to generate the sound (love the earth, at least sound is much cheaper than light);
3. a waste of information (I have always wondered, if you put your turn signal on when no one is behind you, does it really blink?).

So here's the politically incorrect part -- or maybe this is just a good idea. How about if all the manufacturers of visually-impaired people's canes and seeing-eye-dog harnesses started implanting an RFID chip in their product that says, "Anonymous blind person approaching". Then the damned traffic signal could shut the fuck up unless its vocal services were actually useful.

This of course raises privacy and security issues. A predator (or government) who enjoyed preying on the visually impaired could build a locator that would find victims. 'Course, the cane and/or dog might have already given them away.

Speaking of the mark of the beast, I have for the last 5-10 years been saying that as soon as I can get my cell phone / PDA / PC implanted behind my left ear, I'm going for it. But, these devices need an absolute physical on/off switch so you can go dark if you need to.

Hmmm, probably can't work. The RAM would probably need at least a trickle of bio-electricity to keep functioning, and that would certainly be traceable. Oh well ... who needs privacy anyway? The MySpace generation sure doesn't worry about it. I think it was the Wired article 2 months ago on Go Naked that said something to the effect that the MySpace generation would never trust anyone who wasn't willing to bare their innermost secrets on their page.

Still driving home from Lynaghs, on S. Broadway, I have in the left lane motorcyclists. 1st 2, serious "Outlaws KY" colors and serious tats, scary motorcycle dudes. A group of motorcycles has been the wolf pack of the automotive world ever since Marlon Brando and "The Wild One".

Next a big guy with good tats and a big biker woman riding behind him.

Next a big guy with no tats or colors and big not-so-biker woman riding behind him.

Next a big woman driving herself.

I thought that was the end of it, I thought, man, how the biker gangs have fallen, that group looked like it was nearing the end of its life cycle. But then, after 3-4 cars, another 4 bikers, basically average joes, average tats, standard tee-shirts. So the "Outlaws KY" will lead the way but now basically ride with anyone? Some kind of sociobiology going on here, I have no idea what.

It's The Only Thing That's Fair

So I have over the years proposed a solution to a social problem that has generally been met with a response of total dismissal. I'm kind of curious as to why this idea just seems to bounce off of peoples minds.

The problem is, to foster gender equality:

1. What surname should a woman take when she marries?
2. How should the children be named?

The answer to part 1 is easy. Assuming the husband's name is obviously patriarchal, so the woman should keep her own surname.

So then how do you name the kids? The hypenated name thing obviously is bad tech and doesn't work -- just in the 3rd generation you'd have 7 hyphens in your last name. So my universally rejected proposal is, have the male offspring take the father's last name and the female offspring take the mother's last name. So you kind of have male and female lines. Males born without a known father would take the mother's surname, as they do now. Genderly challenged would be allowed to choose when they turn 18, maybe?

You might say, well, that puts children in the same family with different last names. Yes, it does, but that is not uncommon now when people are on their 2nd and 3rd marriages.

So my daughters would all be Grieve's or Sohan's, looking back as far as I know in their grandmothers. It would actually give a purpose to genealogy, which I generally find to be pretty much uninteresting.

So why is this idea so universally dismissed? It's The Only Thing That's Fair.

No biking today, roads were wet, took a nice long walk instead.

Reelin' and Rockin' -- or is that Rockin' and Reelin'

Whew, just got back back from Lynagh's. My wife (mother?) is working 3rd shift (now) so I get to stay out as late as I want, woo-hoo. 1st 3 songs went fine, then later sang backup for 3 different people, then did 3 more. "Who do you love" is so great to play, if you have anyone decent up there with you, you can vary the dynamics and tonality and get a Grateful Dead thing going that really rocks.

The real reason for this post:

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSKUA54703320070725

This is truly shocking to me. WWN is an american institution. I bought my friend David a subscription to it at Renlar, it was great, it would come in Friday afternoon, we would read about exploding pigs, opera-singing pigs, flying pigs (the best issues always featured a pig) -- and decide, enough work for the week, it's Friday, let's get the hell out of here. I can't believe it's gone.

But, we did quit subscribing after 3 years because we realized they were recycling all the stories that we had read 3 years earlier ...

Biked 37.9 miles in 2h54m, 1 stop last Saturday. Temperature in the low 80's, man does that make a difference. Going to High Bridge Park this weekend, 40 miles.

Had a great cookout / going away party last Sunday with Ben Lacy playing. Gained major street cred when the cops showed up at 9:51 re a complaint on the loud music ?!?!?

Didn't have a drink Monday or Tuesday, didn't particularly notice any withdrawal symptoms, so I don't think I'm an alcoholic. I'm wondering tho, are there lab tests that can be run that say, yes, you are an alcoholic?

Naprosyn continues to gnaw at my belly but it does help the osteo-arthritis in my left thumb.

Quel Dumbass

Well, I was so proud of my folk ontologies, I sent it to my hero Charlie Stross, then a couple of days ago ran across folksonomy, like taxonomy -- web 2.0 pundits already all over my Original Idea. I am such a Loser, sigh :-(.

Biked 37 miles Saturday morning, 2h55m, 1 stop. I would say heat index was at least 10 degrees cooler than the week before, much easier.

Currently listening to Man Man "The Man in a Blue Turban with a Face" (2004). This will also gain the coveted Unclassifiable rating that "Six Demon Bag" received. Deliciously odd music.

My wife and I saw and enjoyed "La Vie on Rose", the Edith Piaf movie. So then spent my 30 emusic downloads for the month downloading Edith Piaf. Interesting, the bio on eMusic is more complete than the one on Wikipedia. Annoyingly, once again, I now have 30 songs from the 30s to the 60s whose dates are 2005 and 2006. So now must locate a good discography and correct all the dates. No, I'm not obcom, but I do feel it helps in the understanding and the classification of the music to accurately know when it was from.

Politically Incorrect

A new tag!

The tagging exercise definitely made me aware of the meta-levels of the blog, its themes, what it distills out to. I realized today just a while ago that political incorrectness is definitely a theme that deserves to be tagged. That last sentence reminds me of the most recent post in Charles Stross' blog, re, how long would take you to build up the context of something even more abstract and 21th century than that last sentence to explain it to, say, someone from the 17th century like Isaac Newton.

Anyway, my friend David sent me this link to Pamela Anderson and PETA's campaign against KFC: http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/.

I replied to him with recollections from my childhood:

Like most people of my generation (mid-50's) in the midwest/south, I grew up with ties to a farm. When I was, say 8-13 years old, I would spend a week or two on my maternal grandparents 150 acres just west of Lagrange, KY (now $.5M homes). I would do farm chores: tend chickens and cattle, and help Pop maintain fences and barns. Also fish in the ponds, wade in the creek, build obstacle courses in the hayloft, and otherwise goof-off. My impressions from those years:

1. Chickens are dumb as bricks; have no personalities; and deserve to be eaten (I have no clue where PETA gets their allegation that chickens are as smart as cats or dogs ?!?!?).
2. Likewise for cows.

One of those things, when theory departs from experience and practice in the real world, bullshit quotient has a way of going up, up, up -- not surprising in the least.

Other recent e-mails:

• My baby sister sends a typically dumbass christian site, LOL in her opinion.
• My friend Patricks sends the address for signing up for the Bob Parks newsletter from the University of Maryland, apparently a skeptic/rational scientist.
• Patrick also sends a way-cool post-modern game of some sort.

Currently listening to The Time Jumpers 2 disc live CD "Jumpin' Time". 11 piece Texas Swing band composed of Nashville studio musicians, unbelievable pedal steel guitar player John Hughey. This will be mostly 4 stars.

And The Winner Is ...

Science Fiction, tagged in 54/106 blog posts. A close second was Music, with 49 references. A sizeable drop to a tie for 3rd/4th: antitheism and cognitive science with 34. Rounding out the top 5: evolution with 29.

So as was doing the tagging, I was reminded of the project I had my boys working on in 2000, as the .com bubble was bursting and we had no paying projects: an intelligent online diary. It would parse your entries into "thoughts" and create a knowledge base of them. A product called I thought "Thought-Tracker" was doing some of it, googling it now gives hits to something that looks completely different, an open-source project more web-based. One of those guys wound up later getting a job at BBN based on references to natural language processing (NLP) in his resume which were from his work on this project. The same guy was responsible for the entry UI, and thinks he is totally fucking hilarious when he gives me a demonstration of Personal Information Management Program (PIMP).

Anyway, thoughts on what I would like blogger to be able to do re tagging:

• Music was way ahead until I finished tagging the real old entries. So a graph of # of tag references per time period would be interesting. It would let one know how their interests had changed over the life of the blog?
• Seemed like certain topics came in clusters. It would be nice to be able to generate correlation coefficients for all pairs of tags and report on those that are indeed correlated.
• It would be nice if it would auto-tag all proper nouns.
• And, upon 1st reference to a proper noun, say Charles Stross, it could google for it and present a list of links, such that all references use that link, say to Charles' web site.
• Or, it could always check wikipedia (or your profile-specified choice) for the proper noun and make the default link.
• Maybe have two levels of tags, abstract (what I entered) and concrete (for the proper nouns)?

Biked 31 miles today in 2h40m, 2 breaks, from 9:40a to 12:20. Walked yesterday morning from 9:30a to 10:30. Temperature was only mid-80's both times, but I guess it was the humidity making it brutally muggy.

HuhHuhHuhHuh ...

Quoting my friend Patrick, who sent me this totally semiotically ambiguous piece of (I think) antitheism.

Last weekend we had a cousins' reunion in Louisvile, 18/20 of us (my mother's side of the family) represented. My baby sister, who reads this blog, mentioned how mean I sound sometimes, when in person, I am of course a sweetie-pie. Well, I still think celebrating the deaths' of conservative reactionary assholes is not inappropriate. I probably wouldn't do it in person tho. I am sure their families love them despite their inhumanity.

Meanwhile, in response to an e-mail I received re the last post, I believe we can begin to formulate "The Dumbass's Rules of Internet Etiquette":

1. Drinking and online shopping is a Bad Idea.
2. Drinking and blogging, on the other hand, is A-OK!

The Les Paul came Saturday (we were in Louisville, Fedex left it on the front porch ?!?!?), and is absolutely beautiful -- I've decided to name it "Black Beauty" -- antique black with gold trim and all the hardware gold -- way too pimp to take out in public.

Here's a picture (and you can Click toZoom).

It's been a real bummer for the last month or so tho. I'm getting arthritis in all the big toe/thumb joints (started ~ 1 year ago), and my left thumb has been killing me lately -- both joints swollen and hurting, playing guitar ascerbates. Getting into a doctor soon. I'm hoping it's gout (too much rich food and drinking), they have drugs for that. Meanwhile, I've decided I will take this opportunity to learn to finally play slide decently -- you don't use your left thumb there. In the past, I've tried to play slide for 2-3 minutes and sucked so bad I've given up. I've played slide a few times lately, stuck with it, getting better. Lots of sustain on the tube screamer helps. I was playing last weekend with my 14 YO nephew who's just started, but who I think has the touch to be a good guitarist -- he plays with fuzz all the time. Rule of thumb for beginners (including me on slide): fuzz-tone good.

I played downtown yesterday (4th of July) with G.Busy for 3 songs. My playing sucked, from lack of practice due to the fucking thumb. But singing and band-leading were OK, and of course I had fun.

New music:

1. Amy Winehouse, "Back to Black" -- from my youngest daughter, who didn't like Joss Stone, but likes this. This comes across as a totally late 60's motown record. So, with Joss Stone and Jamie Lidell, another Brit making totally kick-ass retro R&B music. 4 stars.
2. The Kinks, "Preservation Act I" -- playing now, goddamn Ray Davies could write songs. I think that I am going to be forced to give this 4 stars, despite the degree of stiltedness that comes from this being a concept album.

Finished reading "River of Gods" by Ian McDonald. Subtitle "August 15, 2047 - Happy Birthday, India". 4 stars, but -- it kept bugging me, this novel is basically "Neuromancer" on steroids, in India 2047. AI's trying to free themselves, with Krishna Cops instead of the Turing Police. Plus, it violated my heuristic of 100 pages per narrative thread -- 600 pages for 9 narrative threads. But, they started merging with maybe 200 pages to go, so not horrible, but it left some threads hanging at the end. Still, a real page turner, very enjoyable.

Biked 25 miles in 2 hours last Sunday, no cool birds.