“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has
its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe
when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of
the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries
merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never
lose a holy curiosity.”–Albert Einstein
Minor Improvements
Anyone recall the 2000 Census “long forms”? Nightmares for respondents and for Census workers, too, I should imagine.
There’s some small improvement in the Census questionnaire that is to begin being mailed out March 1. Only 10 questions, apparently. Download a pdf the Census Bureau has available for review here.
The only question I found really offensive was the question on race. Somehow, I suspect that if I checked “Some other race” and wrote in “Human” that I’d receive a visit asking for clarification… *heh* The phone number question? It’s not as though getting my phone number from a reverse directory is impossible, although in 2000 it would have been a problem (since we didn’t get “real” street addresses on my street until 2005 or so, IIRC).
“Reasoning” from The Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Fright
The warmistas seem to begin with “It’s all George Bush’s fault” and end with the heat death of the universe.
Oh, yeh. Makes sense. When heard by folks who’ve stabbed their own frontal lobes with a screwdriver enough times.
Just sayin’.
Continue reading ““Reasoning” from The Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Fright”
Random “heh”
About 15 or 16 years ago, I attended a concert by a wonderful choral group from a moderately large high school, directed by a former classmate of mine. It was my first exposure to the group, and I was amused to see they called themselves, “A Capella” for two reasons:
While the director obviously meant the term to mean “unaccompanied voices” (yes, I checked and that was what had originally been intended, and, indeed, the group had been a voices only group for its first few years), most of their performance was of music accompanied by their director or a student playing piano. And…
“Capella” refers to either a female goat or a first-magnitude star in the constellation Auriga, NOT a cappella (“in the manner of the Roman chapel”) singing. The second “p” really does make a difference for anyone who’s literate.
But nowadays, meaning takes the back seat in nearly every interaction, while feeling has attained ascendancy in all, it seems. Distinctions in meaning are dismissed as “just semantics” or “silly syntax/grammar/orthography rules” (assuming “syntax” and “orthography” are in the vocabulary of the illiterate boob objecting to clear communication).
But back to my lil vignette. I approached my former classmate after the concert and offered my sincere congratulations on having built so fine a musical performance group in a public school system. I also noted the interesting name. Appalled director much? *heh* Name was changed to protect the innocent singers.
Locusts-Day; You Get the Picture
Well, here it is first thing Saturday a.m. and locusts have already eaten the day. I may be back tomorrow, if the locusts don’t eat me too.
Twilight Zone Stuff
Today, I finally got my desk cleaned off. Well, almost. Four times today I’ve had my keyboard drawer cleaned off down to the keyboard and mouse.
Four times.
It’s not cleaned off now.
I swear–seriously!–my desk abhors a vacuum. Clean it off? “Stuff” creeps out from some space in some interstice between universes and plops itself on my desk. Really. Today, I found some pictures–just sitting out in the open on my desk–that I HAVE NOT SEEN FOR 12 YEARS. Pictures of me that I had been SURE I’d thrown out (because, like every picture I ever had taken for a yearbook–these as a teacher–they were ugly as sin, that is, looked exactly like me. *heh*). My Wonder Woman asked me to give her one of them, because she’d never seen them before (and has the typical perceptual problem of Good Women: she is unable to see just how ugly I am :-)).
Cue Rod Serling.
Schrödinger’s Cat And Public Policy
Schrödinger’s cat is a famous thought experiment summed up this way,
A cat is placed in a box, together with a radioactive atom. If the atom decays, and the geiger-counter detects an alpha particle, the hammer hits a flask of prussic acid (HCN), killing the cat. The paradox lies in the clever coupling of quantum and classical domains. Before the observer opens the box, the cat’s fate is tied to the wave function of the atom, which is itself in a superposition of decayed and undecayed states. Thus, said Schroedinger, the cat must itself be in a superposition of dead and alive states before the observer opens the box, “observes” the cat, and “collapses” it’s wave function.
Of course, the problem with thought experiments like this when used to analogize scientific issues is obvious. Let me pop the bubble around this one: how long is the cat in a “superposition of dead and alive states” while closed in this sealed box?
Just long enough for its air to run out so that it suffocates.
Geniuses just don’t seem to think these things out. Einstein discussed Schrödinger’s hypothetical cat with the guy for at least 15 years without ever noting this simple problem with the thought experiment, as far as I can tell. That’s just one of many reasons why I don’t trust the smart people in government to decide what’s best for me. They just don’t seem to look at (or care about) any of the options outside their own paradigm.
Besides, they might just be the kind of person who doesn’t like cats and will put ’em in boxes to suffocate to death.
Christian Worship Music: An Aside
While I was reading, Thoughts on Worship Music, from the resources at Christ Church, Moscow Idaho, I thought about the time a pastor objected to a particular song on the basis that it was “melancholy”. Now, this was either an idiosyncratic reaction to the song itself, which was an upbeat, joyous expression of personal religious experience or a highly unusual use of the word, “melancholy”. Since he went on to elaborate that it was a “downer” I believe it was the former, since the common usage of “melancholy” indicates
“–a gloomy state of mind, esp. when habitual or prolonged; depression.”
or when used as an adjective, as he used it,
“-causing melancholy or sadness; saddening: a melancholy occasion.”
NO ONE (and I mean a BIG zero with the rim kicked off) else I have asked about this song has EVER agreed that it, is “saddening”, gloomy or depressing.
That leaves a much, much less common usage of the word to mean,
“-soberly thoughtful; pensive.”
Ah, perhaps he did mean it in this manner and objected because it led people to be thoughtful, contemplative. Knowing both his sermonizing and his temperament, it’d not surprise me that he’d not want people actually THINKING about what was going on…
*heh*
Back to more of the thoughtful (and thought-povoking) articles at Christ Church.
FWIW–not suchabigdeal
Folks over at the Win7 Forums are making a big deal out of the Windows Experience Index. My Win7 Pro box that’s cobbled together from a base of a 3-year-old HP Media Center PC is a kinda low-middle-of-the-road PC. Not so much a powerhouse (although by changing out the memory and primary hard drive, it could be a lot hotter), but Good Enough for most purposes, including running several VMs on top of the host Win7 OS.
FWIW,
I don’t know what the deal is with the Aero score. 1GB of discrete video RAM on the nVidia vidcard; Aero never bobbles or hesitates; smooth as silk. Something arcane I don’t care about. Son&Heir’s monster Asus gaming notebook scores higher on gaming, memory and hard drive marks but about the same on Aero scoring, so I’m not at all sure that the Aero score matters at all to my own experience.
Especially since I do much of my computing in Linux Mint in a VM. *heh*
More Kind Than Deserved
Dennis Prager, in excessively kind and gentle fashion, takes Charles Johnson, of Little Green Nutballs (which I will not link) to the woodshed (kindly, gently) with, An Open Letter to Charles Johnson.
For those of y’all who may have missed the blogospheric kerfuffle, Charles Johnson once ran Little Green Footballs (still not linking it), which, once upon a time, long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, used to be a place where he fought against the evils he today defends. No, not just defends; virulently, slanderously–in many folks’ opinions–attacks those with whom he once allied himself.
Prager reiterates Johnson’s list of “justifications” for his switch and rebuts them all. Here’s #9, a typical example,
9. Anti-Islamic bigotry that goes far beyond simply criticizing radical Islam, into support for fascism, violence, and genocide (see: Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, etc.). [Johnson]
I saw Pamela Geller’s site (The New York Times Magazine article about you cited it — Atlas Shrugs — and mentioned nothing remotely approaching your charges against her or her site) and I’ve interviewed Robert Spencer. Your charges against them only cheapen the words “fascism,” violence” and “genocide.” [Prager]
As I said, Prager takes Johnson to the woodshed most convincingly (read it for yourself) and, IMO, all too gently, especially given the fact that I have read the positions and assertions of all the parties Johnson condemns and have a good idea of their place in “the right”. Johnson’s place? IMO, Little Green Nutballs is juuuust the place for him… until someone can get commitment papers in order, for his own good. Then, of course, if a physical etiology for his psychological issues can be diagnosed, perhaps medical treatment could return him to sanity.
Of course, if there’s no one in his family who cares enough about him to begin commitment proceedings, he’ll likely spend the rest of his life frothing at the mouth and baying at the moon.