Music

The music seems to be taking over. I'm practicing pretty much every day now. My playing and singing continue to improve. I'm supposed to play downtown with Patty Butcher on July 4th, 4-6. Woo-haa!

My youngest daughter came out to the Wednesday night jam, now at Lynagh's Pub, and did one of her songs, "Saturday", and Jefferson Airplane "Somebody to Love". I was very unsure how the 2nd would come out, but I focused on the chucka-chucka rhythm guitar and the drummer Steve did a great job and it came out very nice. I somehow pooched the easy harmony on the chorus, oh well, I'll get it right next time. Everyone loved having Christie up there, definitely a nice addition to the normally all male ensemble. It was her first time playing with a band, she really enjoyed it. Hard not to, there is really an infectious fun playing with a decent band.

But, with the music, I'm reading, exercising and blogging less. Seems like playing in a blues/rock band is really not the best hobby for the twilight years, but what the hell, it's lots of fun. I had gotten up to about 35 miles biking, that last 2 weeks I only did 26 and 28.4. Somehow don't feel like killing myself anymore.

Got another new album from a Brit I really like, the first from Corinne Bailey Rae, eponymous, 4 stars. Not a bad tune on it -- seems like anytime a song is a little dull, suddenly a totally tasty rif or chord change shows up. Anymore I have to listen to a lot of new music 3-4 times before I can get a feel for if I will like it. This one, the first listen, I was going, holy shit, I am really going to like all of these after I get them burned in. Kind of like Norah Jones, but goes bluesy where Norah Jones would go country.

Read the third book in Charles Stross' Merchant Princes series, "The Clan Corporate". Seems to be one of those mid-series books where a change in direction was needed and pretty much everything goes to shit. 3 stars.

Also ready the 4th Orson Scott Card Ender/Bean book "Shadow of the Giant". A good read, I guess. How much longer is Card going to mine this?

I have been posting to the Kentucky Association of Science Educators (and Skeptics) occasionally. The guys seem like nice, mild mannered teachers, who I am trying to stir up to get mad and kick ass vs the ID fundamentalist dumbasses, without much luck. I'm sure they're thinking, who is this asshole? Here's my post there re Ann Coulters apparently excrable book "Godless":

Re ID vs evolution, there is no sense, logic, rhyme, or reason to be dealt with here.

Occasionally when talking to the religious, I try to do a quick survey to find out what they do and don't believe. It generally doesn't go far. The bottom line is, it's not about thinking. It's about running the jebus program, and having your "thinking" spoon-fed to you. My (raised atheist) children often commented that when talking to religious friends , if the topic turned to things outside their religious beliefs, their analytic minds (these were MSTC magnets at Lexington Dunbar) would just shut down and refuse to go there.

It is no wonder, that people whose level of fear, insecurity, loneliness, etc. are such that they need to run a strong religious program to get through the day, are readily influenced by the strident neocon demagogues.

Organized religion is probably the strongest mental program (memeplex) that the human mind has developed. The neocons, in their seemingly limitless cynicism, have become expert at hitting the limbic brain buttons, many of which are reinforced by religion: fear; desire for security (the 50's illusion version); and tribalism, in mindless patriotism, flag-worship, and gay-bashing.

Anymore I try not to think about it. But, sometimes there seems to be a level of naivete in these discussions, as if we were dealing with fellow rational beings of good will. We are not. The neocons most cherished value is to win at any cost. Who really knows how many of them are christian rapturists who can hardly wait for the world to end and jebus to return? As I said when I tried to orchestrate an intelligent discussion of evolution in the HL letters to the editor, as long as we don't realize the rules of the game (none), we are going to continue to get our asses kicked.

Where are the brain implants and mandatory software upgrades when we need them? Until then, we are facing a totally uphill struggle ...

Death to Jehovah

Doing some barroom philosophizing last night, I got onto Jehovah. I blogged before Richard Dawkins' characterization of Jehovah as "one of the most evil characters in all of fiction". I was expanding on that theme. Jehovah was a wholescale murderer of children. He didn't evacuate the children before trashing Sodom and Gomorrah; at one point he ordered the heads smashed of children born of the rape of Hebrew women by another tribe? Worst is the Feast of Passover, celebrated by Jews every year, where Jehovah ordered the deaths of an entire generation of children over a political squabble. I have proposed in the past renaming Passover to "the Feast of the Murdered Children".

My final conclusion was that we're lucky that Jehovah doesn't exist, because if he did, it would be our duty as moral beings to try to figure out how to track the sumbitch down and kill him. That didn't go over very well (duh). But, it's true.

Finally read the 2004 "Year's Best Science Fiction", edited by Gardner Dozois. Somehow I missed it when it came out. It started out with some great stories, particularly one about some nasty post-humans living in a totally trashed and toxic world that they are fine with because they can eat anything, regrow limbs, etc -- then they find a dog. But, some of the stories towards the end were kind of weak. Still, an annual must-read.

I seem to go through spells of music drought vs plenty. Definitely in a plenty period now. 164 songs in my unrated folder in iTunes. I'm thinking, surely all these can't be 3 stars (but I think that's where they will wind up):

• Andrew Bird "& the Mysterious Production of Eggs" -- maybe 4 stars, very nice;
• Flaming Lips "At War with the Mystics" -- unbelievable, a cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that works;
• Massive Attack "Collected" -- overlaps with "Mezzanine";
• "Four Brothers Soundtrack" -- good Motown;
• The Killers "Hot Fuss";
• Dr. John "In the Right Place" -- his breakout 1973 album, I bought after seeing him do "Such a Night" in "The Last Waltz". BTW, I can't seem to google the lyrics for that song;
• Donald Fagen "Morph the Cat" -- mostly not as sickly sweet as his 2 earlier solo albums;
• Les Nubians "One Step Forward" -- not as good as their 1st;
• "Les Nubians Presents: Echos - Chapter One: Nubian Voyager". Lots of poetry set to music (does that make it rap?), some of it is kind of interesting. Definitely conceptual tho;
• Modest Mouse "The Moon and Antarctica" -- only glimpses of what became the 4 star "Good News for People who Like Bad News".

I have also been buying more singles of songs I want to work up, mostly old blues and rock: "Who Do You Love", "I'm Ready".

I did get the album from last week's iTunes free song: "Multiply", by Jamie Lidell -- apparently a Brit techno guy who decided to make a Motown R&B album. Some really nice tunes, I think most of this will get 4 stars.

This past Wednesday at the High Life Lounge Blues Jam, I sang a couple and did OK, but my playing sucked. I need do less working up songs and more practicing my lead licks.

High point of my reborn music "career" was on 5/10/6. There is a woman named Patty Butcher who has apparently been singing blues in Lexington for 20 years. She is really good, great voice and fantastic stage presence. She was 1st there 4/26/6 and I wound up playing rhythm guitar on the 3-4 numbers she did. She offered me a solo and I took a good one, nice expression. So on 5/10/6, she asked for me for her numbers, I sang some harmony, played some good rhythm and leads. As I was leaving that night, her manager/boyfriend/fiancee/SO told me she had a lot of gigs coming up and asked me for my phone number in case they needed me to play any of them!!! Woo-haa, I doubt anything will come of it, but, great to be asked.

2 Books

I know, boring title, not too snappy -- but it is in Prince-speak, at least. I'm listening to "Kiss" as I write. I printed out the lyrics, so now I am committed to working it up ... OK, picked up the classical, it's in E. And the most excellent Wendy solo is an E9 with a G and then an F# played on top. OK, on to the books.

Finished "The Resurrected Man"(2005), by Sean Williams (Australian), a couple of weeks ago. There was a sophomoric quality to the writing that just wasn't working. I think that appendices of Acronyms and Foreign Slang are red flags. The way the suspense was held and the mystery's resolution both were not just up to paar. Where's Greg Egan (or Richard K. Morgan) when you need them? 3 stars.

Finished "A History of the Mind: Evolution and the Birth of Consciousness"(1999), by Nicholas Humphrey, a few days ago. I have read some of his stuff before, very well-written and insightful. He's somewhat of a protege of Dennett, hopefully that won't hold him back too much. A very nice read, written in the style of a natural philosopher, 228 pages. Some references to Oliver Sacks, skin vision, blindsight, and phantom limbs, otherwise straightforward reasoning from 1st principles. The basic contention is that consciousness arises from sensation, which is modal, not from perception, which is modeless -- medium neutral representation of concepts. The characteristics of sensation are (review p 192):

1. they belong to the subject;
2. they are tied to a particular site in the body;
3. they are modality specific (pain is pain; smell is smell);
4. they are present tense;
5. they are self-characterizing in all these respects.

He contends that from an amoeba up, sensations are processed to produce reactions. Then, once there's enough of a brain, rather than just being simple feedback, the sensations are mirrored in a body image in the brain. There's a very unintuitive argument that, based on this feedback, sensations are a form of subjective mental activity. This feedback loop becomes disconnected from the sensations to form mental images and the mental narrative "I" (our inner voice), which are two of the main pieces that our consciousness are made of. The time delay involved also produces the "conscious present", (time 50-200 milliseconds?), in which we convince ourselves that we are conscious.

He introduces the terminology that this process produces "sentiments" that we process through the activity of sensing, "sentition". "I feel, therefore I am."

Two things I was disappointed he did not get into, that would seem to be germane to his arguments:

• Sensory deprivation experiments. I would have thought there was a lot of info on this. If we are what we feel, what happpens when we don't feel anything?
• Synestheasia. We read "Mind of a Mnemomist: A Little Book about a Vast Memory", by A.R. Luria (1960?) in a psychology class I took in college. The subject of the book's total recall seemed to be based on his having synestheasia, where all the senses are mixed, sights are smelt and felt, etc. Again, if we are what we feel, this would surely seem relevant (I 1st wrote "feel relevant").

I just decided, as above, to put year published in my book references. It do make a difference. One annoyance I have with iTunes is that they put the dates of when something is put on iTunes as the date of the music, rather than when it was created. I downloaded "Fresh Cream (remastered)" and "Disraeli Gears (remastered)" a couple of weekends ago and they came down with a date of 1998. Easy to fix, discographies google easily and give the proper years (1966 and 1967), but still, annoying.

Re Letters to the Editor, I sent an e-mail of encouragement to a professor at Lindsey Wilson College, a babtist school here in KY, re an article he had published in "Free Inquiry" on teaching evolution to babtists. He invited me to join the Kentucky Association of Science Educators/Skeptics forum, which I did. After the letter was printed, along with another rational letter on an Intelligent Design debate, someone posted to the forum, how nice is was to have letters that didn't require a reply. I responded:

Au contraire, I think my letter espousing neo-Darwinism does demand a response. It ignores Lynn Margulis' endosymbiotic theory, that eukaryotic cells, the basis of all more complex life, came about from the symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells (paste from Wikipedia). It doesn't mention prions, which seem to have figured out how to turn other proteins into prions without DNA based replication. It greatly oversimplified a complex and dynamic field of research -- tsk, tsk.

Somebody posted back, "What a wonderful world it would be if those were the arguments turning up on the letters-to-the-editor page."

I posted:

That is my idea exactly. I had figured I would pay attention to the letters for the next week or so and see what bible quotations would be thrown out as counter arguments, and give me a chance to reply with some more science. Wouldn't it indeed be better if instead there was a reply like the one below. Come on, can I get a shill?

But, no shills forthcoming. Too bad, we're fighting the republicans here, who have perfected "win at any cost". Surely an orchestrated intelligent discussion in the letters-to-the-editor would be preferable to the normal bible-quoting dumbasses?

Odometer Reading

It was a shocker, the Herald-Leader ran my letter pretty much as is, including the cheap shot at our guvnur. Only one dumbass reply. It might be because they ran it on Sunday, where they have a full page of letters.

Biked the last two weeks. It's a pain to reset the odometer on the bike, so I need to record the start point for the year: 657 miles. I thought I had done more than that last year, I guess not.

I biked with my wife the last two weeks. Our oldest daughter sent her a mountain bike she wasn't using, it really has trouble keeping up with my 13 pound road bike. 1st week, did 16 miles in 1h40m, this week 16.5 miles in 1h35m. Under 10 mph, I normally average 12-13. Need to get her a road bike.

Wednesday night jams at the Good Times Lounge have been going really well. Lindsay Olive didn't play last week (nor did the other unbelievable guitarist, David Ponder). I brought my amp to replace Lindsay's, so had to stay until 11:30 to get my amp back. Didn't get to sleep until 1:30, seriously dragging Thursday.

I got drafted to sing lead when they had a group up with no singer: "Little Red Rooster", "Move It On Over", and "Stormy Monday". I changed the line in "Stormy Monday":

Sunday I’ll go to church, and I fall on my knees and pray

to:

Sunday I don't go to church. There ain't no god, why should I pray?

Doing my part for atheism. I do have trouble singing theistic lyrics tho.

A country guy showed, did an upbeat Merle Haggard and "Folsom Prison Blues", but also did "Good-hearted Woman" and "Can't You See" and I sang the harmony -- both great harmony parts. I still prefer 1st harmony to singing lead -- but, I'm afraid I'm becoming a real blues singer, I can growl with the best of them. George Carlin says, no one white should sing or play the blues, too bad. I decided 6 months ago that I would take the playing as an emotional outlet, so I'm putting a lot of emotion into my singing and playing, I think it's working.

Reading stacks seriously backed up, spending too much time practicing guitar. I think of a song that would work at the jam, google the lyrics, print it out, take it downstairs and work the song out, write the key on the lyrics sheet. Up to about 20 sheets now, I'm smelling a band ;->

Letter to the Editor redux

Well, I swore off letters to the editor (in this very blog) after they butchered the one I sent them, but I'm trying again. Too good an opportunity to try to poke a stick in the eye of our fucking dumbass (and a bad dumbass, not a good one) governor.

Letter to the Editor:

I enjoyed the article "Genetic code isn't perfect, after all" in the April 6 "Frontiers" section. It reminded me of the excellent book "Genome", by Matt Ridley, that I read a couple of years ago. Both touch on the fact that the genome itself is composed of genes and even smaller DNA sequences that reproduce with imperfect replication under environmental pressure, i.e., undergo evolution. The article and the book both show the beauty and, more importantly, the explanatory power of evolutionary biology. All that is required to create the chaotic complexity of the genome, or of all of life on earth, or of the human mind, is imperfect replication under pressure to survive (and billions of years).

This is why it is so saddening and discouraging when our governor proclaims that intelligent design (ID), which has no scientific beauty and absolutely no explanatory power, is a "self-evident truth". No one with any scientific training would ever utter such words. In science, everything is a theory -- but there are good theories and bad theories, and all theories are constantly tested by observation and experiment.

Evolution is one of the best and greatest theories of science -- generally placed in the top four, with relativity, standard particle theory, and quantum mechanics -- while ID is one of the worst, ignored by 99.9% of scientists.

I guess, though, that we can at least be thankful that our governor no longer practices medicine.

It's All Out There

One thing I have been trying to remember to do for the last year or so is the following: anytime I am wondering about anything or don't know the answer to something, google it. It's amazing to me how I still sometimes go days or weeks, thinking "I wonder ..." about something -- then I remember to google it and the answer's there. Only one failure that I can think of: trying to find out the percentage of Indian computer science grad school graduates who return to India vs stay in the US.

Had a great google moment the other night. Somebody told me I should play "Hard Times", by Ray Charles, at the blues jam. So, I was listening to it on my iTunes and was going to play along on the classical guitar and found the guitar was way out of tune. So googled "e note", fifth entry, under "e note guitar", was this site. Sure enough, click the note for each string and it plays. Being the luddite I am, I saved the MP3 files to my desktop. So now I can just click and tune! Ain't technology great!

Blah, blah, blah

What more can I say? Just finished "Code Reading" by Diomidis Spinellis. This book got good reviews, somewhat disappointing. Probably a good review for a young developer. I was reading it as one of my Q1 goals, I'm going to see if I can not get "Read and present a development book" the next quarter. I think about work too much as it is, and reading a development book for the last 3 weeks definitely didn't help.

I got a new position at the start of the year, and it has been working out well. For 5 years I was VP of Software Development. I started with development, QA, information development (tech writers), and IT, had 25 reports at the peak, got down to just having development, which grew to 17 direct and 3 indirect reports. I am now Executive Software Architect -- an official loose cannon, no one reporting to me. I am back in the code 70-80% of the time, doing the systems rationalizer thing, refactoring, modularizing and cleaning up dependencies. But, the code seems to really have an affinity for my brain -- likes to get in there and take over.

Got a new guitar amp -- a Fender Blues Jr. Took 2 tries, 1st one came in with inoperative reverb, 2nd one works great. Very nice sound, and 1/3 the weight of my Super Reverb, have amp will travel.

But, American Legion Monday Blues Jam is defunct, the volume was interfering with the bingo upstairs -- no joke, damn philistines. Lindsey Olive and some other guys put together a Wednesday jam at the former Lynagh's on Woodland, now "The Good Time Lounge" I think. I went to the 1st one last week, a ton of people, only got to play a couple of songs. Skipped this week, my wife works 2nd shift on Thursday, so Wednesday night is a slightly virtual Friday (she works so much you have to take what you can get). I'll go back this week tho, try to make some contacts for people to play with.

I was going to mention re Dennett's "Breaking the Spell" that he trots out the "brights" name for non-religious people. This came out in the secular humanist movement about a year ago, a term for rational, secular thinkers without the negative connotations of atheist. "Brights" totally doesn't work for me. I tell people that I am proud to be a flaming atheist, and I will continue to do so.

Still haven't decided how to move ahead after basically concluding that the human mind, language, and music have all evolved by sexual selection. Not sure where to go now. I have been thinking for retirement I would look for an open source AI project to work on. I should get in touch with the young guy who worked for me who was doing some interesting natural language stuff. I think my point is, I think I may have learned as much as there is to learn about mind at the high levels, may as well just start trying to build one.

My wife and I hadn't seen any movies for a while, so we binged a little. First saw "The Constant Gardener", a little to british; then "Flightplan", what a totally contrived plot; then "Redeye", the other airplane movie, worked better than Flightplan and came in at 75 minutes (movies are less disappointing when they're short). Saw "Syriana", re, US foreign policy sucks, a little dry and slow but well done, then "Lord of War", re, US foreign policy sucks. The movie we liked best was "Four Brothers" -- unpretentious, the guys came across as brothers, and a great sound track.

The Blog and Winding Road

So, no entries in February. Mostly due to wanting to finish the serious book I started on the way home from our most excellent vacation the week of Valentine's Day to Grand Case, St. Martin, FWI. We stayed once again at the Grand Case Beach Club. It is so cool that my wife and I both really like St. Martin. From the beach club it's a 2 block walk to Boulevard of Grand Case, billed as "The Gourmet Capital of the Caribbean" -- 8-9 blocks of restaurants (mostly French), little shops, with a few houses (one complete with chicken coops). You cannot get a bad meal there. If you get tapped out from paying $100-150 for dinner at the French places, you can eat at the LoLo -- six little outdoor restaurants where they are grilling ribs, chicken, fish, lobster and serving sides bought from home: slaw, potato salad, baked squash, red beans & rice, spaghetti, salad, conch chowder. The last one we ate at, a big pile of ribs with all the sides was $7. The same with a chicken leg/thigh was $6. Rum and coke for $2.50.

The last time we were there, I couldn't figure out why most places would take cash dollars for euros. I think I get it now. It's a French island, so the official currency has to be euros, but it looks like the unofficial currency is dollars. About 1/3 of the tourists there are French, I asked if that didn't piss them off -- no, I was told, they change their euros for dollars.

My wife got to water-ski twice -- "Incredible" was the driver's comment. She also found a "professional" ski rope handle, wide enough for her to put her head through -- oh boy, more tricks. We saw Pierre, who drove her two years ago. He had his own business now, the "Leisure Master", renting boats, cruises, diving, etc.

We also took the ferry to Anguilla -- didn't like it much, it had that poor, British island feel about it. Our cab driver gave us a tour of one of the five star hotels there (Cuisinart), pretty posh I guess. But, my wife and I discussed a few times, how many of the people we know wouldn't enjoy Grand Case -- too many rough edges, not enough like Disneyland. But, to us, it's a real place. All the French wastrels hanging around reinforce it, the French invented wastreling.

We also took the big catamaran over to St. Barts, walked around Gustavia a bit, taxi-toured the island. Very chi-chi, I guess, if you want to go the Caribbean to shop at Tiffany's. It's still St. Martin for us. Talking to the captain of the catamaran, who had sailed it over from France (24 days, 3 with storms, his 13th Atlantic crossing), about favoring reality over american hyperreality -- "I don't need to go to Paris, I went there in Las Vegas". He said he thought that sailing across the ocean was about the most freedom you could find now -- nobody else's programs to follow.

Interesting, the boat trip was 2 hours each way over fairly open sea. 3 of the passengers (all French but us and 1 other) were badly seasick the whole way there. That evening I was getting some landsickness -- uh-oh. But, I would close my eyes, picture the boat on rough seas and then sailing into perfectly calm seas -- and the landsickness would go away. Oooh, mind over matter! Maybe I can try another cruise after all, test my new superpower when we get back.

We also went to Ile Pinel, swimming distance from Cul-de-Sac in the northeast corner of St. Martin. 40 yards off the beach, water waist deep. Nice trails, you can pretty much hike the whole island.

Reading on the trip:

• "The Cobweb", by Neal Stephenson and J. Frederic George. Originally published under the pseudonym Stephen Bury in 1996. Weird read, given current events, about Iraqi grad students implementing the Iraqi biological weapons in the US midwest around the gulf war. Stephenson's dialogue is as snappy as ever, very enjoyable, 4 stars. Next out from them: "Interface" -- I have "Interface", by Stephen Bury, on my to-read shelf, woo-ha! My friend David gave it to me 7-8 years ago, I guess it's time to read it.
• "Polaris", by Jack McDevitt. A good mystery, not his normal astro-archeology, a nice read, but I figured out the ending 2/3 of the way through. 3 stars.
• "Blind Waves", by Steven Gould. I missed this somehow, had to buy used. A good vacation read, not quite as charming as "Jumper" and his others, 3 stars.
• "The Translator", by John Crowley. Very nice, about an expatriate Russian poet and the female college student who translates some of his poetry, set in the early '60s. Crowley's hidden worlds, worlds within worlds, are there nicely. Very interesting, per the book you can never translate a poem. Too many idioms, double meanings, puns get lost. What you are doing is creating a new poem based on the original -- if you are lucky. My wife ran out of books to read, she has been reading it and enjoying it as well. 4 stars.
• Finally, my serious book (so I wouldn't run out of reading on the trip home): "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon", Daniel Dennett's latest. Dennett used to be annoying by putting on his Professional Philosopher's hat and spending lots of words explaining why he is right and all his philosopher colleagues are wrong. In this one, he is annoying by addressing an imaginary religous reader and challenging them to question the assumptions of their faith -- yeah, right. It takes a very memetic approach to the subject, traces the development of the modern religious packages from early folk religions, and talks about various aspects of the religion memeplex, such as belief in belief, and the "you can't discuss this stuff, particularly if you're not religious" meme. All in all, somewhat disappointing. He comments positively on "Religion Explained" by Boyer that I have on my to-read shelf, I'll have to get around to that one. 3 stars.

Went to the wedding of a young coworker yesterday. Scripture reading talked about a braid of three strands being stronger than a braid of 1 or 2. I must have zoned out and missed some stuff, I was thinking "Whoa, what's up, who's the 3rd person, kinky stuff up?", then figured out the 3rd strand was god. Then at the end the minister says, "Jerry McGuire was wrong when he said 'you complete me' -- god completes you both." Seriously annoying shit. I really enjoyed the talk of the minister at my son's wedding (on the Radisson Niagara Falls package -- we were lucky to get to attend). I guess my son and his wife picked the non-religious ceremony. The minister (from Ghana, great James Earl Jones voice) talked for 10 minutes about the problems of maintaining a lifetime relationship, practical things about support, love, sharing hopes and dreams. It was very inspiring and uplifting -- and no trying to figure out how to shoehorn god in there somewhere. "The love of a man and a wife is like the love of jebus for his church" -- what the fuck is that supposed to mean?

I've really been enjoying the Astronomy Picture of the Day site I blogged earlier. There are so many great pictures out there of stuff we only had blurry images of when I was an astrophysicist 30 years. Google images is crazy, I looked for NGC 1275, one of my favorite galaxies, and got 203 hits. Really cool pictures, there's a spiral in the middle of that mess!

Haven't listened to much new music lately. I have a half dozen or so e-mails in my inbox (my todo list) with recommendations, have to start checking some out.

Impulse bought a Fender Blues Junior amp from music123.com (free shipping and a free guitar stand, who could resist) to help further my musical "career" at the Legion -- woo-haa. Really nice sound, but had to send it back, the reverb was totally inoperative. I didn't even know it had reverb, but still, for $400, you want all the features working. Hopefully it won't take too long to get the replacement.

Memory

I was thinking about the folk wisdom that we somewhere remember everything, and that we can recall it all under hypnosis. Seems to me to be definitely an old wive's tale. Short term memory is in the front of the brain, long term memories are formed in the back. It's well known that trauma can prevent the transfer from short to long term memory -- hence accident victims commonly don't remember much about their accidents. It also seems like we can't be remembering repetitive stuff, like the details of getting in the shower every morning, or, even worse, the activity of someone on an assembly line. Seems like the brain would reject the duplicate memory, or overlay or reinforce the preexisting one.

Finished my 5th library book (turned in 2 days overdue), Frederik Pohl's "The Boy Who Would Live Forever". It's a return to his Gateway/HeeChee stories, very meandering (new characters introduced over halfway through). I kind of like the meandering stuff, more realistic and life-like. I remember Bruce Sterling's "Schismatrix" was one of the 1st books that struck me that way.

Frederik Pohl has been producing nice works of sci-fi for decades now. I remember his novel "Jem" as being one of the most cynical novels I ever read.

My wife worked both days last weekend so I caught up on my comic book movies. Watched "Fantastic Four" and "Batman Begins". Both well done, #13 and #8 in box office last year (ain't the web great) so they will probably be back. Still, best comic book movies to date have been X-Men 2 and Spiderman 2 (and maybe Superman 2 -- hmm, maybe a pattern?)

Finally seem to have digested all the music I got late last year, ready for more. Downloaded "More Shine" by Si*Se, who was a iTunes free song. Listenable world beat (actually fairly western), 3 stars.

Cooking a pot of 15 bean soup, time to stir. Have to miss the blues jam tomorrow night for a business dinner. Only got to play around 1/2 hour last week. My chops are definitely getting better, the speed of both my hands is improving.

Pretty Pictures

My baby sister sent me the link to NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day. The pictures are beautiful, some great Hubble shots. So far I have downloaded 3 and made them my wallpaper. My wife commented on how pretty the shot of M101, the Sombrero Galaxy, was -- this has always been a favorite of mine. When I was a kid, "The Outer Limits" used to show pictures of galaxies behind their credits, I'm sure M101 was one of them.

Looking at M101, you see the beautiful diffuse halo of stars. It's so amazing to see this mist and realize every spec is a star. I was thinking, those would be nice places to live, placid (no supernovas or spiral waves passing through), with a beautiful view of the galactic disk. Then I realized, these are all Population II stars -- formed from the initial primordial hydrogen and helium. So, no metals, no life as we know it. Life-bearing planets are most likely confined to Population I stars in spiral arms. These stars and their planetary disks include the material from supernovae, which is everything heavier than around nitrogen. "We are made of stars" -- the iron in our blood is only formed in supernovae. So, no life if it's too peaceful -- it seems only fitting.

Finished the 4th library book, Nancy Kress "Crucible". This was the sequel to "Crossfire", which I think I somewhat panned. This one, I just wanted it to be over.

Before that, read the 3rd of Walter Jon William's "Dread Empire's Fall" series, "Conventions of War". Hopefully this trilogy is done. Readable, but, why?

I have now been 4 times to play at the Monday Night Blues Jam Session at -- the American Legion. It's really fun -- ""Blueberry Hill" in G -- got it; "Knock on Wood" in D -- got it. The last 2 times, I got to play most of the lead guitar. I have improved greatly, still a long way to go. Still, it really resonates to do this. I remember that I was a professional musician -- I keep it sparse and simple, I will do more as my chops come back. There has normally been 6-10 musicians (drums, bass, keyboard, 3-4 guitarists), and maybe 10 people there. This past Monday, there were a couple dozen specators, and there was a good harp player who I've seen around Lexington before; a great black keyboardist / lead singer; and an outlaw guitarist / Johnny Cash type who was wild. Nobody knew any of the chords to the 2 songs he did (but we figured them out). My wife went and we danced to one when I was sitting out. She enjoyed it OK but it's a smoking place (woo-haa), and her eyes were burning. Still, I got to play the better part of an hour and a half.

Another milestone Monday: there was a guitarist there whom I was better than! Up to that, the other guitarists had seriously more chops than me. Dave Brown Sr (dad of my son's business partner), who got me to come, is an excellent player, and there's a guy Lindsay Olive who is unbelievable -- totally fluid. He has mostly played bass the last 2 weeks.

So, it's been really fun. The songs we play I don't know well, I come home and practice the chords. I'm playing 3-5 times a week, both my hands are getting a lot stronger.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe: Jebus Says It's OK To Bite Your Enemy's Face Off

Wanted to see "King Kong" or "Memoirs of a Geisha", but no 7:30-8:30 playtimes. So, we went to see "Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe". I read the books around 30 years ago, OK but certainly not Tolkien. Anyway, at 2h12m, the movie went by fairly quickly given that it was relatively boring. Lately, I seem to have a problem with fantasy when it is entirely of an arbitrary nature -- like "what are they going to pull out of their ass next?" I think you have to stay very close to the archetypes for a fantasy to work. I think, tho, even worse, is when it is fantasy with a subtext, particularly when the subtext is christianity.

It is well known that C.S.Lewis was a christian apologist, and that Aslan is indeed supposed to be a jebus figure. *** SPOILER ALERT *** But, in a fantasy context, what a load of crap. The movie is full of Greco-roman mythological creatures, all of which christianity seriously suppressed. My favorite was the ending tho, where Aslan (off-camera of course) bites the face off of the White Witch. Which gospel is that in?

It was amazing tho. No show times for King Kong, and this thing was playing on 2 screens, and the theater was full -- of dumbass christians, sent by their preachers to enjoy the christian values of this "wonderful" movie. Fucking shit, these morons will apparently believe anything that anybody tells or even suggests to them. They started out the movie laughing aloud at not particularly funny stuff, and ended it with "Wasn't that just wonderful?", "Oh yes, wonderful.". Grrr. I'd say a mind is a terrible thing to waste, but I think that sometimes, when you raise people to believe instead of think, that not much in the way of a mind ever develops.

My friend David sent me this link to some great atheist t-shirts. I have to pick out a few and start wearing them to the Fayette Mall on Sunday.

Been on a science fiction binge since finishing "Meta-Math!". Read a collection of short stories by John Crowley, "Novelties & Souvenirs". These are nice stories, an extended time travel one "The Great Work of Time" is very nice. Crowley writes very well, i.e., almost serious literature. His early novels "Engine Summer", "Beasts", "The Deep", and "Little, Big" are most excellent. He hits the archetypes hard -- a very nice recursive turn in that they tend to be fairy tales where at some point the characters begin to realize that they're in a fairy tale. His newer novels, "Aegypt" and "Daemonomania" are very well written, but don't have the charm of his earlier stuff.

Then hit my excellent local library where I have not been in months. Interesting, "No Cell Phone" signs up. Picked up 5 sci-fi novels. First read one of Octavia Butler's early short novels that I seem to have missed somehow, "Survivor". Very nice read. I really liked how her first 5 or so novels had 2-4 intertwining themes, but done in a way such that you can read them all standalone. Her 3 Xenogenesis novels were very good, and her newer stuff is also very readable.

Then read Greg Bear's latest, "Dead Lines". So, as previously blogged, after having one character experience god in "Darwin's Children", now we have a life-after-death novel. I was wondering, is he just getting old -- checked, he's 2 months younger than I am -- so he's definitely getting old. Well, he has a new one out, "Quantico", we'll see if it has creeping supernaturalism in it as well.

Just finished yesterday "Reflex", by Steven Gould". This is the sequel to his 1st novel "Jumper", which I loved. It reminded me of a book I would have loved when I was 12-15 and 1st reading escapist literature heavily. Plus, the main character's superpower, teleportation, is reminiscent of Gully Foyle in "The Stars My Destination" (still no apparent progress on Russell Crowe playing Gully Foyle). Anyway, "Reflex" is a totally pleasant read, I was sorry when it was over. Gould's other novels, "Wildside" and "Helm" are also great reads, they do the same thing, somehow make me feel like I'm a teenager again.

Made a fire in the fireplace yesterday, 1st time in probably 15 years. Only 4 seasoned small logs, kept it going around 2.5 hours. Tending a fire is great stuff, I love the smell and the feel of it. When I'm biking and I smell woodsmoke, it really slaps my mind -- million year old circuits kicking in.

It's like walking in the dark. I have gotten to really enjoy that in the summer, it really wakes up your senses and your old, old brain -- you're back to being a primate who knew that there were lots of things in the dark that wouldn't mind eating you, better be alert. Like the time I was hiking in the Saguaro National Monument east of Tucson and Mr. Rattlesnake rattled "hello" from 18 inches away -- I was definitely more awake and alive for the next hour of the hike.

Time for lunch, then see if I can get a load of firewood delivered. High in the 50's today, but we should have some more cold weather before the winter's over, I am looking forward to more of the fire thing.

Theories are Compression Algorithms

Finished reading "Meta Math!" by Gregory Chaitin. A short (151 p plus appendices) and easy read. Basically, it's about the philosophy of math, following Godel and Turing. The main point is: all theories are about compressing information. A theory that has to detail all its results is not much of a theory. Similarly, DNA is a compression of an organism, axioms are a compression of the theorems you can prove from them.

Lots of interesting examples of this, always shown as input, processor, output:

• encoded message -> Decoder -> original message (per Shannon and information theory)
• scientific theory -> Calculations -> experimental data (the scientific method)
• program -> Computer -> output (AIT, Algebraic Information Theory)
• DNA -> Embryogenesis/Development -> organism (molecular biology)
• axioms -> Deductions -> theorems (FAS, Formal Axiomatic System)
• TOE (Theory of Everything) -> Calculations -> universe (physics)
• ideas -> Mind of God -> the world (Liebniz)

A lot of his stuff he ideas he traces back to Leibniz (who we enjoyed so much in Stephenson's Quicksilver novels) in the late 17th century. Also very interesting, a semi-proposal to do away with real numbers??? Basically, real numbers (the continuum) are transcendental (not algebraic, the solution of a polynomial equation), uncomputable, random and unnameable with probability 1. Plus they give physics fits and lead to attempts to get around the difficulties such as string theory.

Also interesting discussion of randomness, per Borel. You cannot formally define maximum randomness! Any definition limits the randomness of what you define, making it not maximally random?!?!?

Numerous references to Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science". Interesting that he supports the concept of mathematics as an empirical science. The intractablilty of the real numbers indicates, you just have to get out there and explore?!?!?

The subtitle of the book is "The Quest for Omega". Chaitin's main claim to fame is that he defined the Omega number: the probability that a program of n bits will halt.

For xmas, got a 10 million candle power spotlight from my father-in-law, the king of over-the-top gifts. 91 years old and still with 95%+ of his wits about him. Also got from my oldest daughter "Ratatat", eponymous, kind of ambient trancy stuff, 2 stars, and Bloc Party, "Silent Alarm", nice peppy alterna-rock, 3 stars.

I am moving ahead in moving more 3 star songs to 2 stars. When I first got iTunes, I was thinking about how many better query front-ends I had written than its smart playlists. The star classification system is chafing me too. Maybe hack iTunes, or write my own music librarian?

Movie-wise, watched "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", fun; "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", more enjoyable than I expected; and "The Island", also more fun than I expected. In "The Island", tho, as with lots of pop culture, bad science is a little troubling. *** Spoiler Alert *** That clones could start to recall their original's memory has precedent in sci-fi, and what the heck, it's just entertainment, right? But, that they could not grow clones for organs and have the organs be healthy without allowing the clones to develop consciousness -- it's one of those things that could lead people to subconsciously oppose cloning -- for no good reason (not that there may not be good reasons).

The Greg Egan short story collections (last blog) had a few stories expressing his fear and mistrust of wishful, spiritualist thinking. Entertainment is good, but, for how many people is this what actually forms their opinions? Back to, need to make everybody smarter. Well, I have read, I don't remember where, that IQs are going up -- although I have seen far more stories on the ignorance of current high school graduates and college students. Still, the metacortex (ala Stross) seems to be growing individually and collectively, I think we may get there.

Short Stories

After Charles Stross's "Toast", read two short story collections by Greg Egan, "Axiomatic" and "Lumiinous". The short story is a great format for sci fi, an author can explore an odd idea without wasting too much of his or the reader's time. Egan has some great stories. His physics and computer science are top notch. He seems to have gone dark tho. Per his website, he hasn't written a story since 2002. He has become active in Australian immigration rights and apparently hard physics. Maybe he's moved on past sci fi -- too bad for us readers, but, best wishes?

Re short stories, listening to "Alien Lanes" by Guided By Voices. I got this from a coworker who is I believe the world's expert on garage bands. GBV is from Dayton, OH and recently broke up. The album has 28 tracks, timings from 0:18 to 2:56. 7 of the tracks are under a minute, another 15 are under 2 minutes. Short attention span music?

Other CDs I got from this guy are:

• "Decoration Day", Drive By Truckers. Southern Rock (now a genre in my iTunes), decent, lead singer's voice not the strongest.
• "1965", Afghan Whigs. Decent tunes.
• "Emergency & I", The Dismemberment Plan. ditto.
• "Mack Avenue Skullgame", Big Chief. A movie soundtrack without a movie. Nice funky grooves. I don't have a Funky genre, I need to think about adding one.

Also got "Apologies To Queen Mary", Wolf Parade, from a young coworker. Nicely odd.

All of these are 3 stars. I am getting too much 3 star music. I may delete my 1 star, move the little in 2 star down to 1 star, and start splitting the 3 stars into 3 and 2. Apparently I have missed my true calling -- to be a librarian. I offered to organize the vast quantities of pharmacy materials my wife has. I recently reorged my browser bookmarks, came up with a new system I like. I do the same on an ongoing basis with my iTunes. So much information, how to keep track of it all. Google model, just search for it, doesn't work so well for music?

Hello, Hello

is the title of an album by Poe, 3 stars. In the chick pop category, I recently downloaded Frou Frou "Details", after hearing a track in "Garden State" (OK movie by the way). I thought it was Dido. Very nice tunes, very nice textures in the electronic backgrounds, 3 stars.

My 95 tracks of Fats Waller came in, most enjoyable. The 4 disk set came from Proper Records, and came with a very nice booklet, on the history of Fats and the sessions that the tracks came from.

Also got from a young coworker Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, eponymous. Very interesting, Radiohead plus David Byrne plus Velvet Underground? Makes me wish I had a 3.5 star rating in iTunes.

Read a short story collection by Charles Stross, "Toast". Very tasty, cute short stories. I remember reading the first one, "Antibodies" before. It contains that essential short story device, the last line kicker. It reminded me of when in college I wrote a literature paper on "Chun the Unavoidable" from Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth". Great last line kicker, I remember the professor hated it big time.

Following up on the theme that "Love makes the world go round", I also completed my Jared Diamond collection with "Why is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality". A lot of this is covered in "The Third Chimpanzee", but still a fun (and short, 146 pages) read. The explanatory power of evolution screams at you when you read something like this. I particularly liked the analysis of hidden ovulation in humans. There are two contradictory explanations:

1. Confuse fatherhood to prevent infanticide; a new dominant male or mate won't necessarily kill a female's children if he is not sure they not his.
2. Keep the father around to provide.

By looking at the evolutionary tree of the 68 primate species (11 monogamous, 23 harems, 34 promiscuous), Diamond is able to deduce that the common ancestor (9 million years ago) of humans (serially monogamous, with some harems), gorillas (harems) and chimps (promiscuous) used the harem model; that concealed ovulation evolved from this as part of the "confuse fatherhood to prevent infanticide" strategy, from which monogamy evolved to implement the "keep the father around" strategy.

Also an interesting chapter on male nursing. Seems that the hardware is pretty much there, and care of children by both human parents is shared enough that he thinks it may be an idea whose time is coming! Diamond's books are always a pleasure to read, very easy to understand, and always with a nice touch of humor.

I think, tho, that my evolutionary biology / cognitive science reading seems to have hit a wall. I guess it's time for "and now for something completely different" ...

Evolution

Finished "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals" by Charles Darwin, 1872. Most of the middle of the book is fairly dull, going through the emotions by group and talking about which facial muscles are involved. One of Darwin's big points was the universality of facial expressions in showing emotions -- innate, not acquired behavior. But, Darwin's methodology was to write letters to people in the various parts of the British Empire and other countries and ask them, "Do the locals express surprise by opening their eyes wide, lifting their eyebrows, and opening their mouth?" -- anecdotal natural science, not much up to today's standards. Apparently Margaret Mead and the cultural relativists had a 20-30 year period where they had everyone convinced of the opposite. The pendulum is now swinging back to Darwin.

Sometime I will have to compare Darwin's list of emotions with those in "The Cognitive Structure of Emotion" by Ortony, Clore and Collins. Interesting too, not all expressions correspond to emotions, but rather to mental/emotional state -- say for instance, an expression of slyness, or rapt attention. Darwin also discussed:

• Nodding your head yes and shaking your head no -- not particularly universal.
• Shrugging -- fairly universal.
• Shyness and modesty -- traits, not expressions.
• Blushing -- universal, and unique to humans, always a function of other people.

Pauk Ekman, who is a "universality" guy and the maker of the 3rd edition of "Expression", also talked about "display rules" -- which do vary by culture and thus are acquired. These define to what extent it is acceptable in a culture to let your emotions show. In an interesting study, Japanese by themselves display the same emotions as others, put an observer in with them and they supress the display. Also interesting, some cultures clearly show one or more of the standard emotions, but don't have a concept or word for them -- Tahitians have no word for sadness, when they display the symptoms they describe it as sickness.

I have realized that I think that my generally very good catholic high school education included little if anything on evolution, and I took no biology in college. I did not know that Darwin in "Origin of the Species" defined two types of natural selection:

1. Species selection (now also called ecological selection), the selection force that the ecosystem puts on a species to find an ecological niche;
2. Sexual selection, the somewhat arbitrary selection criteria that males/females of a given species decide imply breeding fitness in the opposite sex.

So, from "Expression" re music, and "The Symbolic Species" re language and our big brains, traits that were sexually selected may have been the more important of the two in making the human race what it is today. Of course, the other advantages that came with big brains, tool-making, etc, definitely had lots of other survivability value.

Still, it's like "All You Need is Love", "Love is Like Oxygen", ... The dance between men and women may be the primary factor that drove the development of the human race and its culture and civilization. I feel like, if I were (much) younger, this might have been a major epiphany, a real moment of satori. Now, it's just like, "No, no, say it ain't so."

Oh well, maybe the women won't decide to do away with us after all, in honor of our mutual development of the race.

Retro

What a retro weekend! 100 pages into Darwin's "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals". Way retro, 1st edition was 1872, lots of "the distinguished gentleman" type verbage, and, what a shocker: Darwin was a Lamarkian. He believed in inheritance of acquired traits. The father of evolution knew nothing about genetics -- he had Mendel's book on his shelf but never read it!

But, Darwin rocks. I have blogged before about books on music and the mind and how clueless they are, and that music doesn't seem evolutionary to me, and, how can it have such deep hooks in us. Then, on p 92 of "Expression":

"whether we believe, as I maintain, that the habit of uttering musical sounds was first developed as a means of courtship, in the early progenitors of man, and thus became associated with the strongest emotions of which they were capable -- namely, ardent love, rivalry, and triumph."

So, there you have it. Music is another peacock's tail like language, developed, probably by males, to woo females (only male birds sing -- altho I have had female cardinals in my yard doing something that sounded suspiciously like singing).

More fun facts from "Expression" when I finish it.

On to the retro music. 1st weekend acquisition, Os Mutantes, "Everything is Possible! The Greatest Hits of Os Mutantes". The song "Baby(1971)" was on the Luaka Bop "10th Anniversary: Zero Accidents on the Job" that my oldest daughter gave me a few years ago, and I really liked it, 4 stars. I had looked for more of their stuff and hadn't found it, but iTunes had this one now. Downloaded without listening -- then found, with Gilberto Gil (current Brazilian Minister of Culture and Open Culture prophet), they were mainstays of the Brazilian Tropicalia movement from '68-72 (my college years) -- so it's like mambo, samba and other Brazilian forms with fuzz tones and Sgt. Pepper, way bizarre. The lead singer, Rita Lee, has been recording for 30 years, she was apparently on MTV a couple of years ago.

Listened also to some Gilberto Gil, downloaded only one track, "Pai e mãe", which sounded like Jobim. Antonio Carlos Jobim, the father of bossa nova, has been a favorite of mine since high school (Jobim was probably part of the Brazilian music establishment that Os Mutantes were rebelling against). I have on vinyl a Jobim album whose first song is "Águas De Março (Waters Of March)" in Portuguese and whose last song is the same song in English. I played it for my daughters years ago and they were fascinated by it. The lyrics are a list of nouns: "A rock, a stick, a stone, ..." -- they decided they liked the Portuguese better. On CD I have a Verve Jazz Masters CD by Jobim which has Waters of March.

Early 70's apparently weren't retro enough. A few weeks ago while waiting in a rental car in Newark airport for a colleague's later flight to get in, on an NPR type station, I heard a song from my childhood, "Would You Like to Take a Walk" -- I remember it from a Warner Bros Merry Melody cartoon, sung by a Big Bad Wolf type. So, decided to find it on the web -- and of course suceeded, everything is there. Actually found the same recording I heard, by Annette Hanshaw, born 1901, record and radio vocalist from 1926 to 1936, when she decided to retire. So, have a CD with 25 of her recordings coming from Amazon. Interesting, read 2-3 online bios, all pretty much agree with the above dates except for vh1.com, which had her starting recording at age 15 and retiring at age 24 -- they had her age wrong by 10 years. Could not find anyway on their site to let them know of their error.

Looked her up on wikipedia. What a great reference:

Annette Hanshaw (October 18, 1901 - March 13, 1985) was one of the first great female jazz singers. In the late 1920's she ranked among Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith and the Boswell Sisters. In 1936, she retired from singing and never attempted a comeback. The singer Helen Kane is said to have based her look on Hanshaw. Noteable is her influence in the Hyperreality theory of Jean Baudrillard. Since Kane based her look on Hanshaw, she purported to be the reality of the hyperreality character of Betty Boop.

Just what we need, another post-modern french philosopher, vying with the others to see how far they can get their head up their ass!

And while I was at Amazon, put a 4 CD boxed set of Fats Waller, 95 tracks, in my shopping cart. I was introduced to Fats by the keyboard player of the 1st band I played in in Cambridge. Possibly the greatest stride piano player ever, and made some unbelievably happy music -- maybe I just think so because it reminds me of those Merry Melody cartoons of my childhood.

Then, following the reference from the movie "Ray", downloaded "The Complete Capitol Recordings of Art Tatum" -- 29 tracks for $22, surely a bargain.

I was starting to feel bad about being too lazy to put links to all the above in here. But, google will find you many references to all of the above, sure beats a single link. If everyone gets as lazy as me, tho, will it hose google's search relevance algorighm?

Almost Real-Time

No Amazing Insights to share, but, I did finish a sci-fi novel, so here we go.

Read Robert Reed's "The Well of Stars", sequel to "Marrow". OK space opera, not really much in the way of edge. It clearly has another one coming. Again, I think they need to let you know when you're getting into an extended read. Of course, I sympathize, these guys have families to support. I had high hopes for Reed, based on his Year's Best stories, nothing of his has been great tho.

Music-wise, after complaining about the latest Fiona Apple being too carabet-ish, I have upgraded the last track, "Waltz (Better Than Fine)", to 4 stars -- and it's like cabaret central. Still, a highly memetic (catchy) tune.

The week after I downloaded the Fiona and the new Franz Ferdinand, the top two downloads from iTunes were ... the new Franz Ferdinand and the Fiona Apple. I am such a loser.

Downloaded "Z", by My Morning Jacket, a Louisville band, on the recommendation of a coworker. The tunes were over the acceptable catchiness threshold, 3 stars.

Weblog

In keeping with the original use of blogs, here are some sites I have enjoyed lately. Most are bookmarked in my Wackos folder:

• The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- WWFSMD?
• Landover Baptist Church -- these guys clearly have way too much time on their hands. I particularly like Hellhouse.
• Overheard in New York -- from my graphic designer daughter who's lived there 3 years. As she said, it's hard to stop reading it once you start.
• Ruthless Reviews -- also from my oldest daughter. Joe Bob Briggs lives (except he's gay)!

Biodiversity

Species of birds I have observed in/from my yard, in descending frequency:

1. Robin
2. Blackbird
3. Mourning Dove
4. Starling
5. Cardinal
6. House Sparrow
7. Swift
8. Mockingbird
9. Bluejay
10. Pigeon (Rock Dove)
11. House Finch
12. Goldfinch
13. Crow
14. Hummingbird
15. Chickadee
16. Red-winged Blackbird
17. Cowbird
18. Turkey Buzzard
19. Canadian Goose
20. Red-tailed Hawk
21. Mallard Duck
22. House Wren
23. Downy Woodpecker
24. Flicker
25. Great Horned Owl

Wild species of mammal I have observed in my yard in the last 5 years:

1. Squirrel
2. Rabbit
3. Chipmunk
4. Bat

Other wild birds I have seen in Lexington:

1. Meadowlark
2. Killdeer
3. Thrush
4. Bluebird
5. Nighthawk
6. Dark-eyed Junco
7. Peregrine Falcon
8. Screech Owl
9. Barn Swallow
10. Red-headed Woodpecker
11. Blue Heron
12. Northern Oriole
13. Kingbird

Other wild mammals I have seen in Lexington:

1. Groundhog
2. Opossum
3. Muskrat

I thought I would leave this list and check it in 20 years. But, last month's Scientific American said, most US bird species not endangered. Interesting tho, the birds seem to be awfully successful. And, at my current house where we have lived 15 years, I don't remember seeing a single reptile or amphibian (and no fish). Surprising I have not seen more mammals. I've seen coyotes from the interstate in Ohio, and a fox in Louisville around Beargrass Creek a couple of years ago. I guess the domestic mammals, the cats and dogs, are just too damn successful.

A few years ago I started to make an effort to recognize bird songs. I found it surprisingly hard, given that I'm musical. I did finally get to where I can recognize most of the birds listed above. Mockingbirds are the best.

Didn't bike Sunday, high 40's, overcast, breezy, I loafed. Prior week did 38 miles, Waizenberger Mill and Midway.

Read Richard K Morgan's 4th novel, "Woken Furies". Back to the edgy anti-hero for the 3rd time. Very good read, but for the 1st time he ended with a standard sci-fi deus-ex-machina scientific-relevation-that-will-change-everything. I don't think it destabilizes his world tho.

Also read, after I ran out of reading material (cleared my home magazine stack!) flying home from Minneapolis (pretty skyline), the 3rd novel in the Ender's Shadow series, "Shadow Puppets". Orson Scott Card writes very well, but, I am increasingly convinced that prequels and parallel offerings like this are not a worthwhile use of the paper, or my CPU cycles. I finally went and saw Star Wars Episode III in the theater (yes, it was still playing). 4 stars, my ass -- basically on the 10 point suck scale, Episode I was a 15, Episode II was a 10, this one was a 5 -- a great improvement I guess. With prequels, it's like, OK, check, got that over with. The Dune prequels (I shudder to admit I have read 5 and have only 1 to go) are even worse.

Got some good new music lately. New Franz Ferdinand "You Could Have It So Much Better" has tunes about as catchy as their 1st -- 3 stars. The new Fiona Apple "Extraordinary Machine" is very listenable, but a little to cabaret-ish -- 3 stars. Also got 1st D'Nell album, "1st Magic". Track 3 was the iTunes free download a few weeks ago, very catchy, I went for the whole thing. Reminds me of The Mighty Bop. Very nice dance tracks, London husband/wife sampler/vocalist duo, 3 stars.

Oh, it's official. The transmission on my wife's '96 Exploder with 230K miles is starting to go out. She drives 28 miles to work, I drive 1.5, so we switched cars 3 weeks ago. She was seriously obsessing on the magic car, getting >~= 53 mpg on her commute, not slowing down for curves (acceleration is the enemy of mpg), etc. I still get to drive the magic car on weekends (sigh). I can't believe I'm driving a fucking SUV, I hate the things.

The Human Brain is a Peacock's Tail

Finally finished "The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain" by Terrance W. Deacon. Kind of odd, after slogging through the soporific middle 40%, you emerge into discussions of sexual selection, kinds of minds, minds in silicon, much easier reading. So, let's net it out -- I like these, I think I did one for "Guns, Germs, and Steel".

Meat-eating => Pregnant females need men for meat & men are gone hunting => difficulties in ascertaining fatherhood of offspring => symbolic representation of social relationships (marriage) => language & big brains => "I do".

So the big brains that have helped create all of human culture evolved in a sexual selection arms race, with the men coming up with better ways to say "Baby, you so fine, you da only one for me." and women coming up with better ways to say "You so full o' shit. I bet you say that to all the girls."

Lots of really interesting stuff in the book. Three levels of mental representation:

1. Iconic -- the mental representation is a picture of the physical object.
2. Indexical -- the mental representation is a sign (word, name) for the physical object.
3. Symbolic -- signs, words, names cross reference each other, recursively.

These levels are heirarchical, with humans being the only animal that has the third level, symbolic thinking. Other animals have the first two only.

Other interesting points:

• Language needs big brains to help it think big thoughts, i.e., parse long sentences with recursive grammatical structure. Imaging and damage brain studies show simple word recognition in a small localized area around the raw sound handling area, word association in a ripple around that, complex sentence parsing in a ripple around that covering 2/3 of the left side of the brain.
• Language and socialization go together. People with Williams syndrome (2 bad genes) have a normal prefrontal cortex but are underdeveloped in the middle cortex. They have IQs of 70 but are hyperverbal, with huge vocabularies, and hypersocial. Interesting, Williams syndrome people have broad grins and an elfish look (think Puck).
• The left brain is the language word processor, the right brain is the language prosody (tone of voice, emotional content) processor.
• The symbolic facilities that led to language began with an increase in meat eating around 2 million years ago and have probably evolved steadily since. No magic "language event".
• Initial language was of course crude. Ritual was the medium by which language was practiced and disseminated.
• Brains grow through Darwinian selection. Neurons send out far more axons than eventually survive to become nerve channels. When enough axons survive to interconnect two parts of the brain, a permanent nerve channel is left. The prefrontal cortex (forward of the ears) sends lots of neurons into the midbrain to steal the function of the larynx and tongue for speech.
• Minds grow the same way, as in memetic selection.
• Discussion of human larynx lowering for vowel production, and the totally different mechanism by which birds sing: no larynx, instead a syrinx in the chest cavity, part of the evolutionary changes to support breathing while flapping wings to fly.
• There was a seal named Hoover in the New England Aquarium who could talk.

Kind of interesting, we are symbolic beings. We want to see ourselves and everything around us as symbols -- the origin of pantheism and the urge to religion? And, through manipulating symbols, we can do "what-if" thinking and projections of future events, including the event that no other animal has any knowledge of -- our death.

Music-wise, The New Pornographers "Twin Cinemas" winds up at 3 stars. Ditto for the latest Death Cab for Cutie "Plans". Both lacking any really catchy tunes. Got "Now Here is Nowhere" by The Secret Machines from a coworker, fairly listenable, 3 stars. Also Van Morrison "What is Wrong with this Picture?" -- Van the Man lives, the only thing in my iTunes classified as Blues.

Was in NYC on business last week, got in early enough Sunday to go on a techno boat cruise on the Hudson with my oldest daughter. We had a nice time. The boat cruised from 41th st to the Statue of Liberty and back. I have never been that close to Lady Liberty before, I really liked that. It is such a striking statue, and it's hard to imagine how it must have affected the 1890's immigrants (my great-great grandparents) after 2 months on a boat.

The music was really enjoyable, highly conceptual (i.e., almost music), here's the acts we saw:

• THE DUB TRIO -- Guitar, bass, drums, no vocals, the guitar player never met an effects pedal he didn't like.
• NISENNENMONDAI Guitar, bass, drums, Japanese chick pop ala Buffalo Daughter, guitar and bass playing very abstract repetitive stuff while the 4'8" drummer totaly wailed.
• TYONDAI BRAXTON (of BATTLES) Guy who sat cross-legged on the floor, played a little guitar and sang weirdly, sampled it, replayed the sample and sang and played over it, recursively.
• PREFUSE 73 -- my daughter gave me their CD for my birthday. Main instrument was a powerbook, main DJ played a rhythm box, plus a bass and 2 drummers with full kits. Very enjoyable, the 2 drummers really created a wall of sound.

I made it to the very end before one of the young guys who was kind of hitting on my daughter called me "sir" (the bastard). The crowd was mostly younger than my 26 year old daughter. I wore dark clothes, I looked like one of the security guards (my daughter demoted me from sugar daddy to bodyguard when I made a couple of business calls while we were waiting in line to board).

No biking today, radar shows Rita on its way, but it seems to be keeping to the west of us. Biked last week with my friend Patrick, he pooped out after 5 miles, we wound up doing 15. It was pleasant to have someone to talk to. Two weeks before, went through Clifton on the Ky river, 46 miles, hills nastier than I remembered, had to stand up twice.

Yesterday morning had a flicker (woodpecker, slightly larger than a bluejay, black collar under neck, speckled breast, orange-red bar on the back of the head) in the locust tree in our front yard. Saw a downy woodpecker across the street, and the hummingbird and chickadees are still in the back yard. This morning walking, saw another downy woodpecker and a red-tailed hawk swooped by just overhead and in front of me. Right after that, heard a bunch of bluejays converging nearby, probably going for the hawk. Whenever there's a hawk, the crows, bluejays or blackbirds always stake it out and keep an eye on it.

Work in Progress

Figured I'd better blog before I finished the current book I'm reading, it may be a while. "The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain" is very interesting but taking a while. Good points so far:

1. In general a repudiation of Chomsky's Universal Grammar. The idea is that languages, being memetic software, could evolve must faster than the brain. Their target: children's brains.
2. Interesting discussion of why no animals have even simple languages -- not a complexity issue, rather an issue of lack of symbolic processing capabilities.
3. Animal signing systems, including humans, are a parallel system, not an early version of language. Think about human non-language signing: laughter, sobs, snorts, shrugs, growls, and of course, my favorite, the (female) scream -- an on switch for the adrenaline of every male in hearing distance. I have meaning for years to read Darwin's "The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals". OK, it's on order now.

Biked to High Bridge today, 40.6 miles, 3h10m. Collapsed and slept for 2 hours afterwards. I really need to start biking during the week.

Pouring rain here. Katerina hitting New Orleans. 4th strongest hurricane on record, wasn't even a tropical storm as it approached Florida. A couple of weeks ago an MIT researcher published an article on global warmings' increasing the intensity of tropical storms. I've been preaching this for years -- of course, I got it from John Barnes' "Mother of Storms", published in 1995.

Music-wise, had all my daughters point me at Kings of Convenience "Riot on an Empty Street". Norwegian pop, woo-hoo. The folky stuff reminds me of Belle & Sebastian, but not quite as sappy. The jazzier stuff is pretty good, track 5 "Know-How" is very catchy, my middle daughter's favorite.

Downloaded lastest New Pornographers, "Twin Cinemas", listening to it now.

Movie-wise, was pointed at "Kung-Fu Hustle" by an old friend, I've watched 3 times. The movie is hilarious.

I was loaned a copy of "Standing in the Shadows of Motown", about the Funk Brothers, the studio musicians behind the songs of the Motown golden age. Very enjoyable, great music of course.

Another Day ...

, another green, blue and electric yellow dollar (Firesign Theater, "Waiting for the Electrician or Someone Like Him", 1968). No biking last weekend, my wife and I went to a wedding of a traitor (employee quiting to go to law school for IP law) in Louisville, then to The Jazz Factory, then spent the night at The Galt House, where we spent our wedding night before getting out of town for the honeymoon. Nice jazz trio, young black guy on tenor sax, old white guys on drums and Hammond B3 organ. The organist, Mo somebody, 4 pages of google and I can't find him, was great. You can do practically anything with a Hammond. Sunday morning, walked up 4th St to the library at York, amazing how downtown Louisville has changed. When I was in high school at St X 64-68, I came through downtown Louisville a lot. Weird ghosts of the past.
Like the 1st time we did a college tour, maybe in 92, and came out of MIT at 77 Mass Ave and crossed to the student center. The 100s of times I did that as a student, I never saw the future and pictured doing it with my wife and 4 kids. And, I remember thinking, urge to clone -- the college years are a time in life when you seriously collapse your possibility space. There I was with my 4 very bright children, and I was thinking, "This one could be the astrophysicist. This one could be the musician. This one could be -- no, no, evil, evil." The evil thoughts passed, my children have of course made their own futures.
Just finished "Accelerando", by Charles Stross. Finally, the novel I have been waiting for from him. His fantastic short stories are merged together and make a consistent narrative. A compelling, funny and scary posthuman future, with great logical twists. I laughed out loud numerous times. And great neologisms -- I particularly like a suicide who "autodarwinated" himself.
Music-wise, downloaded a couple of albums by Citizen Cope, eponymous and "The Clarence Greenwood Recordings", 3 stars. His "Sun Gonna Rise" was an iTunes free song, way catchy, went for the albums. Funny, a couple of days later, I hear "Sun Gonna Rise" in a car commercial -- maybe a little too catchy. Also got the latest Jack Johnson, "In Between Dreams", very listenable, 3 stars.
Last night, downloaded the latest Bjork, "The Music from Drawing Restraint 9". It appears to be the sound track to an indy movie set in post-WW2 Japan. It is a work of genius, 4 stars, 5 for the haunting 1st track, a letter to General MacArthur. Kudos to Ms. Gutmunsdottir, this is a hell of a creative work.
Charles Stross has really cheered me up this week. I needed it, last week started out with our fearless leader Dumbass Bush endorsing the teaching of Intelligent Design -- "people should be exposed to both theories" -- except one is science and the other is fairy tales. Grrr. Richard Dawkins had a good article in Free Inquiry on the nature of science: it is "mining the unknown". A theory without holes would get no research dollars, scientists love the holes, their life's work is filling in the holes. Non-scientists say "your theory has holes, it must be wrong, so ours must be right" -- even tho theirs is a fairy tale. Who the fuck designed the intelligent designers? It's a god-damned infinite regress -- not that they would know what that was.
Dawkins' article mentioned how once he said how unbelievable the Cambian Explosion was -- to his eternal regret, as now he is quoted as a proponent of Intelligent Design based on his teasing statement. I have wondered about the Cambian Explosion, all currently known phylum, and others now gone, emerging 550 million years ago. Recent article, some simple bilaterally symmetric species dating to 580 million years ago now found. Knowledge advances.
Last week I also woke up one night at 4:00a, from a dream where I was in airport security, got into a hassle, and started shouting: "It's all a lie! It's another bush administration lie! You're no safer than you were before all this crap! The FAA says so! It's just another lie!". I woke up as I was being shipped to Gitmo.
I loved Bush's statement, to the effect "In my business, I have to keep repeating things, ... to catapult the propaganda." The Republicans have astutely learned to exploit the well-known unfortunate human cognitive defect, that hearing anything often enough causes us to give that thing credence -- "I heard that somewhere ...". But, some polls are saying that the public is starting to give the current admistration lower and lower ratings on trust. Maybe the sheep are waking up. Interesting to see if Rove will skate on outing the CIA agent.
Lying and playing the fear card. When did Americans become such cowards, that playing to their fears allows you to lead them around by the nose? Conservatism is basically a ideology of fear of the future -- or rather, of the present. Yearning for the good old days that never existed. I've already ranted on this, 11/3/2004.
I like the Ben Franklin quote: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security". There is no security, the supernova shockwave that blows away the atmosphere could strike with pretty much no warning. Wake up, Amurica!
Interesting Prius moment: next to one of my young coworkers at a red light, rolled down the window, put the car in neutral, pushed the gas pedal up and down to rev the engine -- nothing, the gas motor was off. A rite of the teenage years gone.
Time to go watch the rest of "The Daily Show".

Cut and Paste Culture

Biked only from 9 to 11 yesterday morning, 28 miles, a little faster than usual -- which I would say indicates that I am normally dragging the 3rd hour when I bike 3 hrs. Got back before the heat got too brutal. High tomorrow is supposed to be 98. No biking last weekend, rain from here to Owensboro.

Finished Dan Simmons' "Olympos" yesterday. He writes so well. I think I read in the preface to Lattimer's translation of "The Iliad" (or in TOOCITBOTBM) that the stock descriptions of the characters in Homer were normally used to fill out the line of iambic pentameter. Hence, "the fleet-footed mankiller Achilles" or "Hera of the white arms". Simmons is all over that.

Re our title, "Ilium/Olympos" does wind up being, "consciousness is a quantum standing wave" (glad that the cyborgs in the story raspberry that), so all fictional creation creates alternative universes. So, feel free to reuse other characters! Wired had an article on cut and paste culture, sampling, etc. But, if it's all just memes breeding in our heads, I find it much more appealing when a new life form is created, rather than a chimera of other pieces. Like in Simmons "Hyperion", the Shrike, who Simmons created earlier in a short story, became a new thing -- yes, I'm sure derived from many other things, but still representing a new synthesis.

Maybe it's the volume of culture currently being emitted that forces and encourages cut & paste. Seems like that puts us in a positive feedback loop -- sampling the samplers.

I guess it's like the "build vs. buy" decision in developing software. It's been supplemented by a 3rd option, google for the code you need -- more a flavor of "build" than "buy"? Still, commercial software isn't culture. It is creativity targeted to meet a business need / use cases.

So, maybe the cut & paste stuff is culture, but I think that it ain't art, except in the cases where someone comes up with a whole new way to do it. I think that's what my oldest daughter the artist would say anyway.

This makes me think of a short story by Bruce Sterling where AI does everything and all humans are artists. Cut & paste certainly makes that future easier. I remember my kids taking great pains to make up playlists of songs for various occasions, making sure they had just the right songs in just the right order for the desired mood. Same thing for photo albums or collages. Definitely a lot of creativity going on there, but not something I would ever think of doing -- I set my iTunes smart playlists on Shuffle so I can play "name that tune". And, it totally escapes me why anyone would agonize over making sure they have exactly the right ring tones on their cell phone. Definitely a generational thing, the dumbass (me) is definitely an old man, Dorian Gray musical interests aside ;->

Increasingly Random Communication

No biking last weekend, whaling in my sister's most excellent pool in Ft. Wayne with 10 or so of my 16 nieces/nephews (on my side of the family. Only 9 on my wife's side, losers!). Nothing more relaxing than getting to be a kid.

Biked 37 miles yesterday, dying on the way home. I think less overcast than 2 weeks ago, maybe more humidity.

Saw in Technology Review that Philip Morrison died. They had a link to http://www.memoriesofmorrison.org asking for Stories and Tales, I e-mailed my somewhat stupid recollections of Dr. Morrison. Got a thanks from the guy who posted it, I'm glad to be part of the group mind I guess.

Got a somewhat right-wing fwd from a friend of mine, a fellow guitarist, who has shown me The Way of Tommy Emmanuel (blogged earlier). It was a conservative's "bill of rights"?!?!? I responded in detail:

I don't know. I am pretty much one of those liberal types. (Fiscally republican, of course, but I'm not sure what that means since the current administration is running up the national debt to where a democrat would blush.)

So, I'm OK with 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9. (basically repudiations of Momism and a world without corners)

On 4 and 5 (no right to eat or healthcare), the countries that have, as far as I know, for the last 10 years or more had the highest rating for quality of living have been the socialist scandanavian states -- and that with extremely limited sunlight! I would be happier if I knew that, in the richest country in the world, everyone was fed -- and I would think that most people would be. And, I don't know if you have had it with your stepkids, but with my three oldest kids, they have all gone through a 1-3 year period where they could not get health insurance. If you haven't had it, take my word for it, it is nerve-wracking.

10, I agree, English competency should be a requirement for citizenship. But, "go back ..." is a little over the top.

11 (One nation under god), I am a devoted atheist. Interesting tho, we took a family visit to Washington DC, and I was totally struck by the inscription on the Jefferson memorial (I memorized it): "I have sworn upon the altar of god undying hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." Unfortunate that Jefferson was too much a man of his times to realize that theism is one of, if not the greatest of, the tyrannies over the mind of man.

Wait a minute, maybe not, I googled the above quotation to check it and came up with this: http://www.nobeliefs.com/jefferson.htm.

Anyway, I find the advances that religious fundamentalists have made recently (opposing the teaching of evolution, stem cell research, and reproductive rights) extremely disturbing.

Be careful what you send me, my older brother, who was a career navy officer and is a conservative, sends me stuff sometimes, I have taken to sending him back online ACLU petitions and membership applications (I've been a proud card-carrying member since 2000) ;->

The Jefferson page has some great stuff. I knew old Tom was cool. But, increasingly random communication, I seem to express myself in agonizing detail at the drop of a hat now. At least my writing is not completely unreadable.

Got to start Charles Stross' fantasy novels ala Zelazny Amber over the weekend. Read "The Family Trade" Saturday, and went straight onto "The Hidden Family" Sunday. 300p each (Neal Stephenson gives us 900 p per installment???), definite page turners, looking fwd to more. Still, Stross' short stories made me think he would have lots to say about what being post-human could mean. This has interesting parallel worlds (medieval and victorian, altho overall I don't like the parallel history stuff much), getting their asses kicked by a 21th century american woman (go girl!), but still, it starts out with the medieval setting, and, like in "Singularity Sky", I was disappointed, look to the future, look to the future, not the past, it's dead.

Interesting, I can't remember the novel (maybe Vernor Vinge's "Deepness in the Sky"), where one of the premises is that AI is one of The Great Failed Ideas of mankind. I guess that's the question, Cybernetic Singularity in 40 years or not?

My immediate fiction and non-fiction queues are overflowing, around 10" each. I am due for a non-fiction, but, the hell with it, I'm going to violate my reading algorithm, on to the new Dan Simmons, woo-haa!

The Hit Parade and David Orr

I've always called it The Hit Parade. I mentioned last blog that I hear music all the time. About 20 years ago, I was out eating Chinese with some colleagues after a meeting of the Louisville DECUS chapter (of which I was chairman for 2-3 years at the behest of my friend David Orr -- more below) and mentioned this. One of my former DEC coworkers, who was normal to a fault, said he seriously believed that this was evidence of schizophrenia or some other other mental defect. David Orr then did a typical David Orr'ism. For the next few weeks, he asked everyone he talked to if they heard music. The results of his natural scientific survey was, if the person had been musical and played an instrument, they reported hearing music all or most of the time. Non-musical people did not. Case closed.

David Orr I met through DECUS in the early 80's. He was running a small computer reseller. He had taught philosophy at U of L for a while. He was 10 years older than me. He and his wife and daughter lived in great old 3-story house in the Cherokee Triangle in Louisville where pretty much every wall, including on the staircase landings, was covered with bookshelves filled with books. Either he or his wife's father had been a bookie, and there was a family tradition: when sitting around bullshitting, they would get out the "bet book" -- where you would enter your predictions, with or without monetary value attached. He administered a trust fund, Weng & Associates, which was charged with promoting the arts in Kentucky. At one point, Weng & Associates had a coloring contest, of a Chinese dragon or buddha, I think mostly because he wanted to see what my 4 kids would do with it. We visited with family once and all swam in the pool in his backyard ("whaling about" he called it), the kids remembered it for years.

David would basically ask everyone he met: what really interests you and gets you excited? Why aren't you doing it? He got me thinking and talking about Astrophysics after years of not doing so.

He was also a SF affeciando. I remember at one DECUS convention in maybe '84, he gave me a copy of "Neuromancer" and said, you've got to read this -- which I did over the next few hours. David's news input model was even more restricted than mine. He neither watched TV news, listened to radio news, nor read the newspaper. He believed in the oral tradition -- if something was really important, someone would tell him.

Anyway, he died in the early 90's (I think -- a bug/feature of my memory model, forget the past, live in the present, focus on the future, is that I can't remember when anyone dies). He was walking down a street in San Francisco and keeled over, massive heart attack. His memorial service had every author, poet, etc, in Kentucky there (Weng gave them all money at some time -- but we was great at inspriring people regardless.) I haven't thought about him much in recent years (again, my memory model), but he was one of the few great friends of my life, and when I do think of him, I miss him. I can't believe he died before the net (although we did sethost ourselves around the world on DEC machines in the late '70s), he would have totally loved the net.

On the topic of music, I am currently being blackmailed by 2 coworkers who found this link to me playing in Salamander -- so I may as well out myself. It was a decent band, Richard was very talented, he moved to LA, got a PhD in music, now does very abstract electronica. The biggest problem with Salander was that the bass player would get a little too wasted sometimes and pull. Nothing's worse in a rock band than the lack of a totally solid rhythm section (bass and drums). Before that I played in Blue-Eyed Boy Mr. Death -- bass, drums, 2 guitars, Hammond organ with a Leslie (damn I love that sound).

Leg cramp

Owww. Last weekend biked 38 miles, 3 hours. Today had some new roads in western Woodford county, did 43.5 miles, 3.5 hours. I was out from 9:20 to 12:45, attempting to beat the heat (93 today), and it wasn't too bad. Still haven't showered (attempting to cool down), napping in the recliner, woke up to a call from my wife visiting our son and his wife in southern California, got a huge cramp along my entire left inner thigh. Ouch.

Last summer the official temperature in Lexington never hit 90. So far this summer, 5-10 days over 90, no rain for a week and none expected for 2 more.

Which brings me to the 3rd Jared Diamond book, "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed". Starts out somewhat depressing, with accounts of the collapse of 6 civilizations (3 chapters on Vikings re the collapse of their Greenland colony after 400 years. He actually refers to "The Vikings" movie, a favorite of mine since childhood!), followed by current trouble spots. Per Diamond, a mixture of 10 environmental failures involved in all of them.

Interesting side note, the Viking colonies in Vinland (Newfoundland) only lasted 10 years because the Vikings usual method of dealing with new or different peoples was to start out by killing a few of them. After they did that in North America, the Native Americans basically drove them out. Go Native Americans!

Book ends on a hopeful note tho. Other interesting points:

• Big oil currently goes out of its way to be eco-friendly. Cleanups such as the one required after the Exxon Valdez are too expensive and bad for business.
• Home Depot and Lowe's both push wood products from suppliers certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which requires that the logging be done only at replenishable rates, etc.
• Mining is the nastiest. Very low profit margins and generally inability for consumers to trace products back to producers.
• Fishing in the wild also nasty, "the tragedy of the commons" leading most fishermen to overfish, cause "if I don't do it, somebody else will". But, Marine Stewardship Council has a certification process like with the logging and is getting some traction.
• Penultimate chapter has a list of one-liners used to justify inaction on environmental issues, with retorts. The thing that grabs you is that this is clearly a case of "an ounce of prevention", cleanups cost billions, maybe as people realize what they are leaving their children, the tendency towards "rape and pillage" approaches which don't balance the economic equation will decline.

Still, the thing I found most interesting is that corporations have responded to pressure from consumers and their employees to become more environmently friendly. Something for me to look at, particularly after retirement, is to figure out what I can do personally to help save the planet, in addition to just buying a Prius.

Speaking of which, driving my wife on country roads that I bike where you don't get much above 40 mph, got 65 mpg for 30 miles, a new record! (don't obsess, don't obsess).

"If I don't do it, somebody else will." I found "The Last Waltz" by Martin Scorsese and The Band on DVD at Kroger for $10. I have seen it referred to as The Best Rock Movie Ever Made, it surely does have great music. And, a high point is Dr. John doing "Such a Night", which had the great lyrics: You came in With my best friend Jim. And now I'm tryin To steal you away from him. But if I don't do it ... It reminds me of "No guts, no glory", which I have always used to exhort others into questionable behavior. "If I don't ..." seems like an exhortation to one's self to do something they know they shouldn't.

Music-wise, "Funeral" by The Arcade Fire has definitely gone to 4 stars, track 2 to 5. Got the new Coldplay, "X & Y", after repeated listens still not doing much for me.

Friday night, went to High on Rose. Had noone to go with (:-<), some of my youngest's crowd were there. Ben Lacy sat down and talked during his break, went from Steely Dan to Michael McDonald (backup singer) to the Doobie Brothers. Came home and downloaded 4 Steely Dan albums. I had forgotten how much I liked their 1st, "Can't Buy a Thrill", and "The Royal Scam" as well.

I have all of Steely Dan on vinyl, I have been meaning to try to come up a scheme for getting my vinyl to digital. Any ideas? My iTunes is now at 3900 tracks, 11 days, woo-hoo!

Bad news, High on Rose is being sold. The Japanese woman who was responsible for their wonderfully eclectic menu and her husband are going to sell condiments. The Wasabi Vinagarette sounded good. They want $380K for the building and the works. If it were 10 years from now, I would think about it. I lunched with the guy who brought me to Lexington to work in 1980 a couple of weeks ago, he retires in 1.5 years, he has moved to Champion's and taken up golf. I just can't see myself doing that. I can see myself with a little club with all kinds of music and eclectic (but tasty) food. I could move my library there, see if I could spread some memes as well. Well, we'll see about that in 10 years I guess.

Movie-wise, watched "The Aviator", a testament to the ability of ob-com people to get shit done! Well, that probably wasn't the intended message, but it should be. Last weekend my wife worked 2nd shift both days, so I treated myself to "Electra" (2 stars) and "Blade Trinity" (2 stars -- note, I believe I may have seen every vampire movie ever made). I noticed in "Electra", she was portrayed as ob-com, and one of her symtoms was counting -- steps as she walked was an example. I have counted my whole life, including steps, I am not OCD (nor autistic nor Asperger's) but I am GOOD AT MATH. I don't know, it struck me as part of the plot by the non-mathematical to discrimate against the mathematical. I had a nice visit with my younger brother yesterday, his 2 kids are very bright, 12 and 13, and they were describing to me doing their math homework and having to write out verbal descriptions of their problems. Ach, I'd forgotten about that, it was part of KERA, I had assumed it was gone by now, what a load of crap! Math is not about words, it's about numbers. We're sorry not everybody gets it, but, it is more PC bullshit, deny the gifted their abilities, so everyone can feel special.

Neal Stephenson has a great op-ed piece touching on some of this in the NY Times, someone fwded me the link. (Damn, it's pay-per-view now.) It's funny, but it's also really, really scary.

Oh, we watched "The Incredibles" during my visit yesterday. Very enjoyable, and also touches on this same theme.

I went and saw my dad last Saturday. The last time I'd seen him was in February, he was surprisingly good, didn't repeat himself for 1.5 hours, had some potentially new thoughts. Saturday, he was totally gone. "Nixon can never hold office again." "Dad, tricky dick's been dead 5 years." "Well, he can never come back." "From the dead?" And that was a high point.

It's weird, he'll talk about his wife, the schoolteacher, and his 4 sons and 3 daughters, as if I weren't one of them, maybe he just didn't recognize me or forgot my minor role in the story.

He did talk about the importance of having a living will; how most people refuse to believe they are going to die; how he was ready, had his paperwork all done, had his plot next to his wife ready to go. Not particularly maudlin, just kind of proud that he had figured out what most people didn't and had everything all set.

Oh well. He would occasionally hum and sing a bit. I had a flash of myself in 25 years (Dad's age). My personality would be completely gone, but I would have at last discovered my superpower and become a superhero. I would be "The Human Jukebox" -- name a tune, I sing it for you. I would estimate I have ~10,000 songs in my head, and one of them (or a jingle, or a melody acquired somewhere else) is always playing. I wonder where in my brain that would show up on a CAT/PET scan?. I asked one of my kids to get me a brain scanner for their next gift-giving occasion, seems like it'd be fun to play with ;->

Enough. Time for a shower (phew).

Rolling In It

Played the natural scientist the other day. Question is, why do dogs love so to roll in stinky stuff? Answer, what do they mostly like to roll in? Dead stuff and crap. Dogs are pack animals, and creatures of their noses. So, a dog is away from the pack, finds something good, i.e., a dead animal to eat or the spoor of a live animal to hunt, how does it let the pack know? I don't think dogs have a bee dance. So, they roll in it and get all stinky, when they return to the pack it will definitely know something is up.

Just finished reading "Superluminal" by Tony Daniel. It's a sequel to "Metaplanetary", with apparently one or more books to go. I think I prefer when a book is n of m that they let you know. It's an interesting world, but maybe has too many threads going.

Movie-wise, watched "Finding Neverland" -- sweet movie, a real tear-jerker.

BTW, wound up going 7 days without a drink. Didn't notice much difference.

Biking last weekend was 37.25 miles, 3 hours. Lillard's Ferry Rd seems to run along the Kentucky River, but on such a steep palisade that you can't see the river. Had to walk the bike up the hill that went down to a creek near its junction with the Kentucky. Going down the hill, per my odometer, hit 37.5 mph -- a new record!

Thursday night, drove the magic car to Danville and back. Got 53.5 mpg going and 55.5 mpg coming back. 28 miles, 1/2 gallon of gas each way. My wife drives it 4-5 times a week and fills her exploder up twice a week. I'm trying to talk her into trying the magic car, she says I enjoy the magic car so much she doesn't want to drive it. She will give in to the temptation eventually, I guess.