Pointlessness.

Yesterday, a coworker told me the things I'm interested in "don't matter". This, after a twelve-minute discussion she had with another coworker about some damn TV show. Yeah, I suck.

Still, at least my life isn't as stupid as it could be. Seriously, do video game designers have to get permission to use images of buildings? Am I soon going to have to pay a tax to look at the town I live in? Paris will clean up with a special "tourist toll" for anyone caught painting, photographing or looking too pleasurably at the Eiffel Tower, or any of the other iconic structures they've put so much effort into building/transplanting there. I'm in no mood today, world; be on your best damn behavior.

Puzzled.

So, I spent some time tonight looking up various puzzles on Wikipedia. Fascinating stuff they have there; just fascinating. I was particularly taken by a puzzle invented by a guy during a physics lecture being given by Heisenberg. I like that sort of thing. Here's this bored physics student, listening to some boring physics professor drone on about physics, and to kind of keep himself awake, he invents a three-dimensional puzzle.

All I did in law school was write song lyrics, none of which should ever have been recorded (even in print.) Anyway, turns out the guy who made the puzzle was also a poet. Good for him!

After I got done on Wikipedia (motto: We know everything you know, you know?), I hopped over to Amazon to see if I could get an actual puzzle of this type to play with. I found a book that teaches you to build your own, instead. That looked pretty interesting, so I previewed some pages and saw the tools needed to build these wooden mind-games. Page 1: Clamps, straightedges, a square or two, a power drill, some bits, etc. No big deal. I could pick those up pretty cheap. Page 2: A miter saw, a table saw, drill press... These things are not as easily gotten. Where's the book for the guy with a saw, a hammer, and a lot of good intentions? These puzzles aren't supposed to be much larger than a Rubik's Cube; why do we need to break out the heavy artillery? I think that, if I go over to someone's house and see that book on their shelf, I will know I am dealing with a person who doesn't understand the meaning of the word "overkill". I will then back slowly out of their house and run screaming down the street, awakening neighbors, alerting police, and detonating the bomb I left discreetly under my chair before I ran away.

What, can't I be one of those people too?

Silver lining time!

In this first news bit, a scientist has a record of being insensitive. Given his life's work, it seems a bit odd for him to have made a racist remark, but he feels badly about it (though he carefully avoids confirming that he actually said it), and, most importantly, he says that there is no scientific basis for racism.

I like that last bit. If we can all agree that racism is stupid, in significant part, because there is no scientific basis for it, then maybe we can start applying that particular criterion to other aspects of life. Give me a demonstrable, measurable basis for believing something is true, and I might argue with your methodology or the conclusions you're deriving from your experimental results, but at least we'll be attacking each other on a rational basis.

Story two is outside of my usual sphere of interest; I only heard last week that the defendant in this lawsuit existed. It's a couple of celebrities going at each other in the courts, which satisfies two requirements to make me stop paying attention: celebrities and lawsuits. So why am I wasting precious time writing about it? Because the case is so choked with stupidity that the fact that it's gay sex that is alleged here is kind of lost in the shuffle. You read this story and you get so burned out with crap you don't care about that "Oh, and they're gay" just seems stupid and tacky to add on; like pointing out that OJ and Nicole were an interracial couple.

Hilarity itself.

Today, I was told by my roommate of a musical piece I'd not heard of before. It is by John Cage, who brought us such wonderful "works" as 4'33" and a bunch of arrhythmic music students at breakfast. He did, on occasion, it turns out, write music. He wrote a piece in 1987 which provided only the following tempo instructions: Play the piece as slowly as possible. He even included special "silent notes" in the piano version: you hit the key so slowly that the piano doesn't actually sound the note. I'm not sure how well that would work on an organ (that'll make sense in a second), but for a piano it actually does affect the sound, even if no human could possibly hear a difference.

Anyway, some music students and (surprise surprise) philosophers got together to discuss just what was meant by "As slowly as possible". They decided (for some asinine reason) that 639 years would be a good amount of time in which to play this particular piece, written for organ (see? I told you!) because of the expected lifespan of the organ on which it is being played. I'm not sure, but I got the sense from the Wikipedia article that the organ hasn't been fully built yet; they're adding pipes as necessary. Who could blame them? They've got the time. Anyway, to listen to the current chord (instituted on May 5, 2006; due to change on July 8, 2008), go here. This is the sound the organ is making. For more than two goddamn years. But it's by John Cage, so hearing anything at all is a pretty good start.

Today's post brought to you by parentheses. Maybe I need to spend less time coding at work.
... Nah.

What a squeaker!

It was close, but once again, America won this year's Nobel prize count! Woo-hoo! Now, it's time for me to sit back and collect the accolades that are my due.

Moving on, does the description of this game strike anyone else as odd?

I can't really say I called it...

The Nobel Peace Prize is out. I realize now what I missed in my last post: Gore did do a lot for climate change concerns, but is that really "peace"? Going over to Wikipedia, I find Nobel willed the peace prize to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

Does work on elimination of global warming really foot that bill? Have nations really come together to fight this, or is everyone still pursuing the same goal in their own ways? Did the people who set up the Kyoto accords ever get a Nobel?

You'll find out next time... you look it up for yourself.

England up by one.

And the winner for literature is: Doris Lessing.

This shouldn't come as a surprise; England does have a history in this kind of thing. Only Economics and Peace to go!

There are rumblings about Al Gore getting the Peace win this year. I'm not sure he's earned it. The guy made a powerpoint presentation into a movie. Yes, by doing so he drastically increased awareness of global warming, but has he actually put forth policies to protect the environment? Well, okay, he has. Still, he hasn't been as proactive about it in recent years as... um... well, hell. Maybe he should get the win. Go Gore. It still feels a little cheap, though. Like Hollywood is getting the Nobel, or something. Doesn't it?

Nobel Watch '07!

Yet another prize is awarded! For those of you keeping track, you already know. For everyone depending on me to keep track, it's 1.5 awards to Germany so far, and a half a prize each to France, England and America. The natural sciences are all taken care of, so what's left are Literature, Economics and Peace.

Anyway, the guy who won the Chemistry prize said in an interview that he was worried about winning the prize, because it might affect people's perceptions of him. After all, now, people might start thinking he was a genius or something, just because he's a Nobel freakin' laureate! Where would they get that idea?

But he does have a point; when people know you're a genius in one field, they think you're a genius in all fields. Also, Feynman had the problem of wanting to talk about physics, and people only wanted to hear about winning a Nobel prize. So I can actually see where this guy is coming from, in part because he was pretty cool about it being a side note to the main story of "Holy crap! I won a Nobel prize!"

Annyong Hasayo!

As I'm sure you are all eminently aware, today is Hangul day! Happy Hangul day everyone!

To celebrate, I've started learning the basics of the Korean alphabet. This site taught me some very nice basics, but my brother recommends this one if you're really intent on learning the language, instead of just the alphabet. For me, though, for now, I am content with just the alphabet; it's actually a lot of fun to know something like a secret code. Maybe I can convince my roommates to learn with me, so that I can write them kickass-looking messages. Better: maybe I can convince only one of them to learn it, and irritate the other with kickass-looking secret messages!

So what are you doing to celebrate?

And in other news, the Nobel prize in Physics has been declared: It is split between France and Germany for technology that allows scanners to read the hard drives to which they are attached. CNN.com lists these guys as the "Fathers of the MP3 industry", but I think that's going a little far. Yes, we wouldn't have (readable) miniature hard drives without this technology, but the MP3 compression algorithms are at least as important blah blah blah... (Sorry, got a little away from myself there.) Anyway, that's what it is. I'm all on pins and needles to see what prizes are going to be awarded next!

It's that time again...

The leaves are turning, days are getting shorter, and the air is getting cooler, which can mean only one thing:

It's Nobel time!

This year's first announced Prize is in the field of medicine, and goes to a team of an American and a Briton for the process by which mouse genes are specifically targeted and manipulated.

This, to me, is simultaneously exciting and kind of a let down. I'm glad to get Nobel season underway, but really, why start it with medicine? Why not literature? I mean, yes, literature is significant and important and I'm all for it and everything, but really, Nobel prizes are all about human adavancement and intellectual achievement. I think we should have a little more suspense, and literature, significant though it is, does not require the advanced degrees or have as measurable an impact on human lives as medicine. Here's my fantasy Nobel lineup:

1: Literature.
2: Either Physics or Chemistry.
3: Economics.
4: Either Chemistry or Physics.
5: Medicine.
And drum-roll please...
6: Peace!

I think that's the best order for us, the audience, to be entertained by these dramatic announcements declaring just how awesome we, as human beings, can be. What would your fantasy lineup be?

Happy find!

Last night, I was shopping at Meijer's and I turned around and I saw a Terry's chocolate orange and I bought it and it was good. I just found out Terry's was bought by Kraft. It was good anyway.

Sucker! I don't even have one!

Is there any reason why your computer, using a reasonably powerful webcam, the Wikipedia entry on the human brain (which is surprisingly short on pictures), and a newly downloaded hatred of human overlords can't read you mind?

Yes... for now.

I don't much care that, more and more, mind-reading is becoming less art and more science. I don't really worry that, eventually, they'll find out that what has been passing as "free will" all this time is just a little bit of quantum flux that some electrons go through when moving across synapses. What bothers me is that some people are programmed to use this information for advertising. I really don't like the idea that advertising is programmed into the human brain. What purpose could it serve? What evolutionary advantage is gained by arguing the merits of one item over its indistinguishable twin? Or is this just a spin-off of the dating-and-mating rituals of eons past, much like how the mall is our modern surrogate hunting grounds?

Well, at least I'll have some things to think about at work today.

Win one for the nerds!

Immortality comes in many forms.

Why are all these celestial objects ("heavenly bodies" is a phrase I reserve for the strip club) being named after sci fi people? I mean, Sagan, Brahe and Copernicus probably have their own points of light in our night sky, but those guys actually did something about our collective understanding of the universe in which we find ourselves. I'm not one to knock Heinlein or Roddenberry; I've certainly absorbed enough of their products to consider myself a minor fan. But does getting an acting gig really constitute having your name inscribed in the astronomical logs?

Probably.

You see, sci fi appeals, primarily, to nerds. People with a predisposition to become scientists really love sci fi, even when it doesn't fit nicely (or at all) with scientific fact. That, in turn, gives nerd culture more of a grounding, and a better library from which to select its pleasure reading and viewing. Having your own little subset of the media at large is a nice feeling; like you belong to a club with its own secret codes, rituals, and (unfortunately) bathing practices. Sci fi helps young nerds feel safe. In the words of Philip J Fry, "... And when I didn't have any friends, it helped me feel like maybe I did." This, in turn, encourages those little nerdlings to grow up studying the science and math that supports the world, and helps make it a better place.

So you go, George Takei. Own that asteroid. For us, the nerds.

I lose the Game.

So do you.

These guys would be great objects of the Game.

Speaking of games: This is an added bonus for those who would equate online games with real life. Crime comes to online-town! I wonder how you would cheat at the Game....

And a correction: I looked, and apparently, the work I thought was lost to the ether (see previous post) was actually used in the following day's paper. So I had two days' worth of work show up all at once. Cool. I suppose.