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Evolutionarily Spectacular Times
By the way, not that I want to argue politics, but certain disemvowelular statements on another thread remind me of what's addressed in this essay, important to us in this dirty election season:
THE UNPOLITICAL ANIMAL
by LOUIS MENAND
How political science understands voters.
Issue of 2004-08-30
Posted 2004-08-23
[The New Yorker]
"Skepticism about the competence of the masses to govern themselves is as old as mass self-government.... [The] political scientist Philip Converse, in an article on 'The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,' published in 1964... claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system."
"He named these people 'ideologues,' by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of 'what goes with what'—of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like 'liberal' and 'conservative,' but Converse thought that they basically don't know what they’re talking about, and that their beliefs are characterized by what he termed a lack of 'constraint': they can't see how one opinion... logically ought to rule out other opinions..."
On a Math subthread, I wrote a paper yesterday [#39 of the year] on "Semiprime Smith Numbers and Some Conjectures." Just as I am now published [try Googling] on "Emirpimes" [semiprime spelled backwards], this paper analyzes Htims Emirpimes [Semiprime Smith spelled backwards]. Then today I wrote a paper [#40] on Xaoh, which are Hoax Numbers which, when reversed, become different Hoax Numbers. Someone before had commented on what goofy names mathematcians give to things, and I'm endeavoring to make things goofier. Being in the Land of Disney, after all...
And, to complete a thought on the 500-comment thread [Auden, btw] consider "The Fall of the House of Usher" as a story where the setting is a character.
Favorite bumper sticker of the day: Change how you see, not how you look.
Just thought I'd share.
(And p.s. I sent that file, but I'm not sure you got it--what is it about me that entices spam filters so?)
Just so everyone knows, I have read every single book they recommended. It was a large task, but I managed to finish every single one, AND have a baby this weekend.
And yes, I was the one who had the baby. It wasn't my wife. It was me. The hard work fell upon me. She just laid there and pushed.
Anyone here going to the Toronto Film Festival? Let's hook up! I'll ditch my wife and new baby and we'll go watch artsy flicks!
500 comments? Wow.
Since the kind people here helped Randall with recommended reading, I was wondering if y'all could help me out and point me in the right direction.
I am currently researching some areas for my novel and need help finding basic texts and/or websites on warfare/tactics. Also some good sites or texts that would be a good introduction to physics as it relates to space travel.
Google is wonderful, but when faced with pages upon pages of things to choose from, a part of my brain goes "eep!" and faints.
I've started reading New Scientist.com, but would be happy to add more book marks and books.
Any suggestions?
"A girl and her tractor" reminded me of the "Men Plow, Women Weave" exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum; I think at least one of those pictures was part of the exhibit. Sorry, the exhibit ended in May, but some of the description is still online:
"The Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibition, Men Plow; Women Weave centers on the 46 prints of plowing and weaving created in the Kangxi imperial workshops, and various Chinese art objects that demonstrate the lasting influence of these themes. The rice farming and silk production motifs celebrated in the Kangxi imperial prints are also apparent in later examples of Chinese embroidery, porcelain, paintings, and lacquer on display in the exhibition. These themes also appear in an eighteenth century English engraving book, and twentieth Century posters from China."
Neat thing for folks interested in China who may be in the Boston area in the future (hint hint), though: a real Qing Dynasty Chinese house you can walk through.
Sara E.: Sun Tzu's The Art of War is of course the classic book on warfare, and gives good epigram.
And yes, I was the one who had the baby. It wasn't my wife. It was me. The hard work fell upon me. She just laid there and pushed.
Anyone around here ever heard of couvade syndrome? Apparently in some cases men can literally "feel pregnant," complete with cravings, weight gain and mood swings.
And yes, I was the one who had the baby. It wasn't my wife. It was me. The hard work fell upon me. She just laid there and pushed.
Anyone around here ever heard of couvade syndrome? Apparently in some cases men can literally "feel pregnant," complete with cravings, weight gain and mood swings.
Randall P - any suggestions on what to watch at the film festival? [and if you're in Toronto, you probably know that the busking festival is on this weekend, by the St. Lawrence Market]
Sorry for inflating thread count. Stop. Will change name M. Stewart. Stop. Bad connection. Stop.
---
Also some good sites or texts that would be a good introduction to physics as it relates to space travel.
If you don't mind (some) math, try John Anderson's Introduction to Flight. We use it as the text for the sophomore Intro to Flight class. There are meaty and well-researched sections on history of flight/space travel in addition to good quantitative and qualitative explanations of how stuff works. I'm TAing the course again this semester, so I may come across more good books shortly. Stay tuned and feel free to email.
There's a lot to see at the festival this year. If you want a really complete list of what might be good, go to David Poland's website The Hot Button (http://www.thehotbutton.com). I, personally, would love to see Bad Education, I (Heart) Huckabees, The Motorcycle Diaries, Gunner Palace, Sideways, and Undertow, which is a film by a man named David Gordon Green. He did one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen, which was called All the Real Girls (and for those of you who haven't seen it, I highly recommend it).
And being the vaguely boring pervert that I am, I would love to see Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs, which is about a couple that has sex and goes to concerts (yes, that's the plot). However, the controversy has to do with the fact that this is one of the first mainstream films where the actors REALLY have sex (or at least the first where it's quite obvious and they acknowledge it). In my mind, there's not enough real sex in movies nowadays. The bad part about this film is that everybody and their best friend is going to want to see it.
That's why I don't look at porn. I've just been waiting for a mainstream movie that is almost like porn.
Ok, I've been waiting to get onto an open thread early enough to ask this question. Why am I not supposed to say "Sci Fi?" A while ago I started using "skiffy" around my younger (18-29) SF fan friends, and they either had no idea what I was talking about or thought I was being strange. I told them that it was considered a better way to say it in the established SF community, but then couldn't explain why.
So please regale me with tales of the history of the SF community and terminology! Thank you.
Jill Smith, if you turn up here, please advise about the population of wolf spiders on the East Coast (DC?). We have lots of them in Hawai'i, but I've never heard of them inhabiting temperate climates (ok, Washington isn't temperate in August; I used to live in Annandale). Was this guy unusual?
Leah Miller:
Definitions of Science Fiction
Be patient while it loads. It's also a mini-encyclopedia of Themes and Subgenres in Science Fiction.
For the origins of "sci fi" you might google the word's inventor: Forrest J. "Forry" Ackerman.
As to Base 26 (last time we looked at Base 36), where Math meets Silly words:
"Keith (1999) considered the set of letters obtained by writing to base 26 with digits 0=A, 1=B, ..., 25=Z, so that
pi = D.DRSQLOLYRTRODNLHNQTG...
Then the sequence of the first Webster-sanctioned n-letter words in this expression is given by o, lo, rod, trod, steel, oxygen, subplot, .... Additional 6-letter words are: prinky, Libyan, and thingy. The positions of the starting letter of the first n-letter words are 6, 5, 11, 10, 6570, 11582, 115042, ...."
excerpted from the rather poetic:
Eric W. Weisstein. "Pi Wordplay."
From MathWorld--A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiWordplay.html
[which is how he prefers the citation to be given]
Randall--It's by no means the only nor the first film where actors actually have sex. Two recent ones are the French film Baise-Moi (Coralie and Virginie Despentes, 2000) (quite trashy, but kind of fun, though it's too much like porn to be real art and too arty to be good porn), and the upcoming Vincent Gallo film The Brown Bunny, about which I'll withhold judgment till I see it. There's also Intimacy (Patrice Chèreau, 2001), with Kerry Fox (Shallow Grave), which I haven't seen, and the quite dull Romance (Catherine Breillat, 1999)--a bored schoolteacher with a dull boyfriend engages in edgy hijinx with Italian stallion Rocco Siffredi and others. Don't bother to bring your raincoat to this one.
All these films, whatever their flaws, are serious attempts to deal with strongly sexual material.
Supposedly Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland actually did it in the love scene in Don't Look Now, but that may be apocryphal. I think we'll see lots more of this in the near future as art and porn tenderly reach out to touch each other.
Sara E: Good, hands-on book on (small-unit) combat: Chris McNab and Will Fowler, The Encyclopedia Of Combat Techniques. Covers only infantry and related arms - but has close combat, firearms, support weapons (mortars, artillery and close air support), demolitions, sniping, fighting in "extreme terrain" (mountain and arctic), urban combat, anti-armor techniques, hostage rescue, and more, all in a very hands-on manner, with lots of real-world examples - so well worth the $21 + shipping it'll cost from amazon.com, in my opinion.
Andy Perrin: Oh, yes, the couvade. First I heard of it was in Intro Anthropology, undergraduate, where the particular teacher I had (male) covered it extensively. I even recall that there are tribes in which it is the norm.
I also seem to recall that I learned of it within a year or two of seeing Billy Crystal in Joan Rivers' anti-masterpiece Rabbit Test (probably two; the movie was released in 1978, my first year of failing to complete a full year at, um, the school I didn't finish at, and I didn't get to the other school until summer 1980 or so).
I didn't get to experience it firsthand in either of my children's deliveries, but that's probably because I was too busy having my normal cravings, weight gain, and mood swings :-)
Sara E wrote:
I am currently researching some areas for my novel and need help finding basic texts and/or websites on warfare/tactics.
I second the recommendation of The Art of War.... but what else to read? Hmmmmm.
Some suggestions (may not be germane to the areas you're thinking of, but they're all I can think of at the moment)
Also some good sites or texts that would be a good introduction to physics as it relates to space travel.
What Andy Perrin said, above....
The word on "sci fi":
The term was coined by Forrest J Ackerman in the early fifties, as a riff on "hi-fi". It got widely applied to the kinds of 1950s science fiction flicks (think The Blob) that many devotees of written SF resented being associated with. As a result, for decades, SF insiders have earnestly insisted that our beloved genre is called science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction, or spec fic, or any number of other things, but never, ever sci-fi. Visitors to SF conventions or club meetings who inadvertantly speak the forbidden term are roundly shamed.
Meanwhile, in the world of actual booksellers, libraries, and readers, people frequently call it "sci-fi" and mean absolutely nothing bad by it. People speak enthusiastically about the latest "sci-fi" book they read by John Crowley or Ursula K. Le Guin. For them, it just means science fiction, nothing more.
As you might have guessed from the above, the whole thing is tied up with the SF world's decades-long cultural cringe, our sense of being kept below the salt by the gatekeepers of art and literature. In recent years, there's been move toward deliberately mispronouncing "sci fi" as "skiffy" and using the mispronounced term to refer to the SF works that the speaker considers to be the modern-day equivalent of The Blob. Personally, I think it's all extremely tiresome, in-groupy in the most annoying and unuseful way. Mind you, I will argue very strongly in favor of in-groupishness in many contexts, but all this "sci-fi"/"skiffy" thing does is underline how defensive we feel, how rude we are to well-meaning newcomers, and how much we delight in being deliberately obscure. It's time to get over it, embrace the term, and get on with life.
John Keegan's The Face of Battle is well-thought-of as a book about what being inside a battle is actually like.
Linkmeister - she wasn't particularly unusual. When I wrote my blog post about nature's incursions on our house, I Googled up "'Wolf Spider' Maryland" and came up with a bunch of hits. The page describing the spider and her habits that I linked to in the original post came from the Virginia Cooperative Extension (we live just miles from the VA border).
John Keegan's The Face of Battle is well-thought-of as a book about what being inside a battle is actually like.
I've read several of Keegan's books (though, oddly, not that one), and they're all pretty good. I don't have enough independent knowledge of the subject to know how accurate they really are, but they're engaging reading and fairly comprehensive.
Linkmeister: Is that Annandale in Sydney? That's where I live, and we do have plenty of wolf spiders, and huntsmen which are similar in appearance.
Goodness gracious me, you guys are prolific. A few thoughts and comments arising from the past x-hundred posts, plus a couple of unrelated questions of my own.
Xopher: I borrowed On the Psychology of Military Incompetence from my local library the other day, and finished it by the following evening. I found Dixon's writing style very easy and engaging, with just the right amount of waspish humour to leaven an erudite treatment of a serious subject. Thanks for the recommendation.
Sara E.: Air, space, sea, or land warfare? For contemporary equipment, the federation of american scientists (fas.org) has a great deal of info on weaponry, plus some training/tactics stuff (although this is better hidden; google is your friend).
As a propellorhead, the best single book on air combat is Bob Shaw's Fighter Combat: Tactics and Maneuvering, which will give you all you need to know for fighter tactics within an atmosphere (and to a lesser extent, a gravity well).
A good website for air combat is the Finnish Air Force's Fighter Tactics Academy (http://www.sci.fi/~fta/index.htm), although their website can make it hard to find the information.
For aerial strategy, John Warden's The Air Campaign is online at http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/warden/warden-all.htm . This is much touted as the doctrinal inspiration for Desert Storm, but it is to be read with a slightly jaundiced eye - he is a proponent of the 'airpower defeats all!' school of thought.
Also, try the various websites of the various military academies, training facilities, war colleges and the like (try a google restricted to .mil domains). They often have a surprising amount of stuff freely available on the web.
These are all fairly in-depth and detailed resources; if this is not what you're looking for, let me know.
Finally, my two questions:
Was the halo as an artistic signifier of divinity of Christian origin? I was in the Louvre a while back, and saw a 3rd-4th century AD mosaic of what I thought were two saints with haloes. It turned out they were in fact Neptune and Venus. As Christian art was already producing be-haloed icons and the like at the time, were they influenced by an older Roman tradition, or vice versa?
And the question the second:
I managed to get a copy of our beloved hostess's Making Book at the (wonderful) Fantasy Bookcentre here in London, I was interested to see that in the magisterial essay 'on copyediting', the comment was made that proofreader's and copyeditor's marks were distinct. What is the difference? Here in the UK, the British Standard (BS 5261-2) would suggest that proofreader's marks are simply a subset of copyeditor's marks. Is this simply British perversity, or can someone enlighten me?
Ta,
-Jakob
Sara E. -
Let me throw in "The Defense of Duffer's Drift", by Ernest Dunlop Swinton. How to not get your platoon killed in the early days of the age of smokeless powder, available in many editions and on the web.
It's intended for beginners, so it might be especially helpful.
Yet more recommendations for Sara E on warfare references:
Anything by James Dunnigan (who often writes with various co-authors) is a good beginner's guide to the practice of warfare in today's world. I find his writing style to be quite enjoyable, casual while still being thorough. He breaks up complex subjects into easily digestible pieces.
Some books of his that I've read and enjoyed:
How to Make War: A comprehensive guide to warmaking, broken out into easily digestible sections and subsections. For example, there are sections on air, sea, and land warfare, and the land section discusses infantry, armor, artillery, etc. Important non-combat aspects such as communications, intelligence, and logistics are also discussed. This book is updated periodically; my copy is several years old, but Amazon lists a recent fourth edition.
Shooting Blanks: This was published in the mid-90s, and discussed the many types of mistakes that have been made in running a nation's military, planning wars, and fighting them. There is a more recent book called Getting It Right: American Military Reforms After Vietnam and into the 21st Century which I haven't read, but would probably make a good follow-up.
A Quick and Dirty Guide to War: Briefings on Present and Potential Wars This seems to be out of print now, but several editions were published in the 80s and 90s. The book looked at the regions of the world (Europe, Americas, Middle East, etc.) and discussed the historical background for warfares in each, the conflicts that were going on at the time, and the potential for future flare-ups.
There are also several books of his published more recently that I haven't read, but I'll recommend them anyway. Just do an author search at your favorite bookseller or library.
"Andy Perrin: Oh, yes, the couvade. First I heard of it was in Intro Anthropology, undergraduate, where the particular teacher I had (male) covered it extensively. I even recall that there are tribes in which it is the norm."
I've read that in Russia (Smolensk) they had a practice where, during labor, the father would lie on a shelf above the mother, with a string tied around his peepee. Whenever the mother had a pang, the midwife would give the string a good tug.
I suppose it would have been far too dangerous to have the wife do the tugging herself.
Well, one book I just finished and highly recommend is Gale Christianson's 1995 bio: Edwin Hubble, Mariner of the Nebula. Not only is it a first rate take on Hubble's considerable accomplishments at Mount Wilson, but it also reveals what a vain, egocentric and surprisingly crass social climber he was (to say nothing of his fanatic wife). Indeed, if you set aside his technical accomplishments, Hubble comes across as about the worst kind of Depression-era Republican stereotype you can think of (except thankfully that he wasn't an isolationist).
The word on "sci fi": (and what follows)
Bravo. And I will now hastily reexamine my own practices...my only slight reservation is that I think the SciFi channel, as a purveyer of trashy monster movies, is aptly named if the pejorative use is preserved; but that wouldn't give them a chance to reform without changing their name, and in any case is just a tiny pet peeve of mine...
Xopher: I borrowed On the Psychology of Military Incompetence from my local library the other day, and finished it by the following evening. I found Dixon's writing style very easy and engaging, with just the right amount of waspish humour to leaven an erudite treatment of a serious subject. Thanks for the recommendation.
Uhhh, not me, I don't think. xeger, maybe?
Xopher said :my only slight reservation is that I think the SciFi channel, as a purveyer of trashy monster movies, is aptly named if the pejorative use is preserved
But....But... They play MST3K don't they? I love MST3K! Our next DVD splurge will probably be on MST3K episodes.
(panicked look)
Does this mean MST3K is trashy and bad? I mean, besides in the obvious way?
(And Patrick spells Forry's name correctly, where JVP doesn't, I notice -- this just an excuse to yank JVP's chain so he'll spend a great deal of time figuring out the difference...)
At the 1992 World Science Fiction Convention, the local paper came out with a big article titled "Please Don't Call It Sci-Fi." You could tell the reporters had gotten an earful from the convention's press relations office. Just below the headline, they ran a picture of an attractive woman looking at a bank of televisions, under a huge sign advertising the launch of the SCI-FI CHANNEL.
JVP, as far as I'm concerned, Menand is arguing from a whopper of a false premise. I might -- might -- on my more cynical days be willing to accept the argument that being informed on the issues is a necessary precondition for being competent to vote. But coherent political philosophies are highly overrated, and possibly even a handicap.
Tom & Patrick,
Forry Ackerman, a.k.a. "4e Ackerman" has indeed explained to me that his middle name is akin to that of Harry S Truman. He is also Dr. Acula, and has other pseudonyms, many listed among the roughly 20,000 human names annotated on my web pages. I honestly don't know how many book titles I've listed, surely in excess of one per author.
When he coined "sci-fi" (also known as "sci fi") there was nothing pejorative. Forry loves movies, and makes no judgments as to what other consider trashiness or cheese.
The gap between Science Fiction and Sci Fi, to many people, is deeper than the gap between Science Fiction and Fantasy. This is due to the willful ignorance of Hollywood, which sometime hires consultant who know Science and Science Fiction, and then intentionally ignores them, as happened in "The Core" for instance, or in rejecting much of the advice of Jaron Lanier in "Minority Report."
Peter Jackson has shown the right way for Fantasy to be filmed. Does that mean a split between Fantasy and Fan Fi?
If you google "Emirpimes" (a simple enough concept that I've taught it to about 65 Intermediate Algebra students yesterday) you'll find that Making Light scooped the two great encyclopedists of Mathematics, Dr. Eric Weisstein, and Dr. N.J.A. Sloane. What I write in Math is sometimes strange and silly, but if it passes peer review, then I am not alone in how I think. "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
Excerpt from what I mentioned in an earlier post, on a sequence which is NP hard to compute:
Semiprime Keith Numbers
by
Jonathan Vos Post
25 Aug 2004
A record: the largest known Semiprime Keith Number is
36899277593852609997403
= 50143690321 x 735870801643
We do not know if there are or are not an infinite number of Keith Numbers. But these are the first few Semiprime Keith Numbers, up through the 84th Keith Number, which approaches 10^26:
Keith(1, 10, 15, 17, 19, 23, 26, 36, 34, 39, 42, 55, 68, 76, 78, ...). I conjecture that, if there are an infinite number of Keith Numbers, then there is an infinite subset of Semiprime Keith Numbers.
Michelle: Do they still show MST3K? Point in their favor, then.
But most of what they show on, say, a Saturday afternoon would have been ripped to shreds by the MST3K gang. And they show it as if it were entertaining. Which it probably is, to someone. Just not me.
Sara E., I'm not sure what type/era of warfare you're most interested in, but books I've find helpful include:
Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (focuses on Western warfare), ed. Geoffrey Parker
I haven't finished this one, but it came very, very recommended, and I'm liking it a lot so far for pre-modern:
Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army, Donald W. Engels
And just for kicks, this one's fun:
Battling the Elements: Weather and Terrain in the Conduct of War, Harold A. Winters w/ Gerald E. Galloway, Jr., William J. Reynolds, & David W. Rhyne
(Caveat: I'm not a military/historian; I just read this stuff for fun/writing-research.)
Also, I've always been puzzled by the "with" designation when listing authors. Like, books that have two full? coathurs plus with withs, e.g. by John Doe and Jane Schmoe, with James Flunky--is this another layer of hierarchy beyond name-order in coauthors? Are there more sublayers? (I'm still waiting for books to show up with subsubtitles.)
*shuts up before she reveals greater incoherence, and takes notes on all the suggestions*
Yes, Forrest J Ackerman claims many things.
And then there's "wi fi", or wireless fiction, a genre of fiction about wireless computer networking, pioneered by Cory Doctorow.
As time went on, the term wound up being associated with snazzy but implausible marketing scenarios (think AT&T's "You Will" ads, or Apple's Knowledge Navigator), leading genre aficianados to sneer at the term, which they derisively pronounce "whuffie".
Avram's post above is deeply evil, because it's just about plausible. Well done.
An update on my disaster cloud:
1. The same repair guy came today and put a different clamp on the hose that decoupled. No charge, and I'm on the third load of wash.
2. The manual-manual de/install didn't work, so now they want me to install via Add Printer. I'm gonna take a nap first.
Sara E, you might also try:
Strategy by B H Liddell Hart and
the old classic
On War by Von Clausewitz
anything by John Keegan
Thirteen Days by Bobby Kennedy (on war averted, just barely)
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Avram
Actually, someone's written a novel that is only available as cell phone text messages.
http://www.textually.org/textually/archives/004878.htm
The problem with modernity is that it parodies itself so much faster than I can parody it.
It Sounds Like Sci-Fi But It's Not Department:
Scientists Report First Observation Of An 'Atomic Air Force'
The first sighting of atoms flying in formation has been reported by physicists at the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU-Boulder) in the Aug. 13 issue of Physical Review Letters.* While the Air Force and geese prefer a classic “V,” the strontium atoms—choreographed in this experiment with precision laser pulses and ultracold temperatures—were recorded flying in the shape of a cube....
It Sounds Like Dyslexia But It's Not Department:
Semiprime, Xaoh, and Andrew Hoax Numbers
by
Jonathan Vos Post
24 August 2004
Abstract:
The intersection of the known integer sequences "Hoax Numbers" and "Semiprimes" is nonempty, and conjectured to be infinite. Numerous (conjectured to be infinite) Hoax Numbers become different Hoax numbers when reversed: we call these "Xaoh." Numerous (conjectured to be infinite) Andrew Hoax Numbers become different Hoax numbers when the reverse of all prime factors are multiplied together (which is not necessarily the product of primes, until refactored).
** end abstract ***
Really, Google "Hoax Numbers" and "Jopke Numbers" and "Smith Numbers" ...
"Smith Numbers" are of course the number of Smiths on the planet. Smiths are currently seeking to achieve the very achievable x > infinity equation where x=Smiths on-planet. (Otherwise known as the Smith-Borg effect.) I personally have contributed to the Smith-Borg effect by marrying a Smith.
Off-planet Smiths are x=?
This equation was, of course, pioneered by the great, if partially imaginary by virtue of his uber-Smith name, John Smith. John is my husband (and in that capacity a very real person). I am married to John (just in case the connective reference was not observed), and have coauthored numerous papers with him. We will be writing a book and taking over the Universe, known and unknown, shortly.
[/JVP chain-yanking]
Those of us not actually named Smith can help by learning metalworking. Many arrests for "forgery" are actually efforts by the anti-Smith faction to suppress this essential activity.
The patron Goddess of Smiths is Brigid; in her Saint form, she's also the patron Saint of blacksmiths (but there are five others) - but not tinsmiths, oddly enough.
And while looking for that I find that there's actually a patron Saint of bi- and multi-racial people, Martin of Porres. And of bicyclists, La Madonna di Ghisalo.
Really, google for "patron saint smith" and see what you get.
[/piling on, though all in good fun]
'And then there's "wi fi", or wireless fiction'
Early examples of which were published in "Thrilling Ether Stories" and "Modern Boy Wireless Wonder Stories" and even "Racy Hotspot Tales."
Hat off to the new Smith.
[/trying to pun, knowing that Xopher's got me beat there every day of the week and twice on Sunday]
Let's see...
Sara E. - I'll echo the recommendation of Sun Tzu's Art of War as a great book on warfare, though it deals far more with concepts and theory than practice. Likewise with Tai Kung's Six Secret Teachings. While we're talking about Chinese military classics, I'd like to recommend One Hundred Unorthodow Strategies. It's vastly more specific than the other works and cites examples, which is good. Its forty-second "Unorthodow Strategy" is, in fact, called "The Orthodox," which is just fun.
From a western (European) context and a book that's tremendously detailed, with examples, is Archer Jones' The Art of War in the Western World. I highly recommend it. But it only covers the changes in warfare up until Vietnam, so depending on how you go it might not be too helpful to you.
Oh, and though I've heard the history behind the SF/Sci Fi/skiffy thing dozens of times before, I still don't get it. More to the point: I don't see what's bad about "The Blob." I love movies like that.
Sara E, people have alreay recommended Sun Tzu (as Christopher Davis said above, "gives good epigram" and can be applied to just about anything from love to war), Keegan, Tuchman, and Liddell Hart. Let me toss in Victor Davis Hanson, especially _Carnage and Culture_, but also _Ripples of Battle_ and _The Soul of Battle_. You can get the Sun Tzu online at blackmask dot com (search by title, since spellings of the name vary).
Someone who apparently works on the technology side on cube-shaped spacecraft wrote:
Hat off to the new Smith.
[/trying to pun, knowing that Xopher's got me beat there every day of the week and twice on Sunday]
I bow, hatton hand.
Re: the "atoms flying in formation" article
So, if the atoms fly around in cube-shaped clusters, is this evidence that God is playing dice with the universe?
Stefan Jones writes (quoting Avram):
'And then there's "wi fi", or wireless fiction'
Early examples of which were published in "Thrilling Ether Stories" and "Modern Boy Wireless Wonder Stories" and even "Racy Hotspot Tales."
You could be merely ancestor-grabbing, the way advocates of a new genre invariably do in attempting to increase respectability.
But consider this and this. A conversation in a bookstore, surrounded by these kinds of books, triggered the creation of the Heterodyne Boys.
Given the intertwined destinies of radio magazines and SF publishing, maybe Avram is on to something!
I can't resist mentioning Jeff Duntemann's Drive-By Wi-Fi Guide, the first of his many books in which Jeff (two of whose SF stories were Hugo-nominated) has become a brand name.
Randall, if you read all the books recommended here, can you tell us which ones you most enjoyed?
Xopher,
We are cable free, so I don't know what the Sci Fi channel shows on a regular basis, but I know I've seen it when I've been over at my parent's.
So you could be right that they have now removed MST3K from their schedule, shame on them, as I have no current knowledge of when and where MST3K runs.
Sarah E -
I'm somewhat surprised that no one else has yet mentioned Donald Engel's, Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army. He uses the science of logistics to sort through the historical accounts of Alexander's exploits and make judgements about the reality of them. In the course of this exercise, you learn an enormous amount about what is and isn't possible for armies dependent on human and animal transport. This is also a good book for anyone writing a quest story.
We're quite proud of The Blob around these parts. Have a yearly Blob festival and everything.
However, the SciFi Channel's unpardonable sin is cancelling Farscape. The fact that they're bringing it back for a mini-series this fall does not make up for it, since I already cancelled our subscription. Now I have to find someone who'll tape the danged thing for me.
I'll add Martin van Creveld to the military-authors list, particularly TECHNOLOGY AND WAR and SUPPLYING WAR.
Geoffrey Parker's THE MILITARY REVOLUTION, which is a discussion of how "Western" mil-tech became dominant by about 1800.
Edward Luttwak's THE GRAND STRATEGY OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (very useful if you're doing a space opera with a you-know-what in it) and ...OF THE SOVIET UNION (same, if you're doing a post-MacLeod space opera). Luttwak's COUP D'ETAT is highly valuable if there's . . . you get the idea.
An obscure but very interesting book, which you might be able to find at a library, is SMALL UNIT TACTICS, a US Army publication that gives detailed accounts of five small-scale battles in WWII. Warfare on the squad/company level isn't usually covered very well in general histories. (For those who are that interested, it's still in print, and can be gotten from the GPO for $12 or so.)
And now we segue smoothly to MST3K . . .
As far as I can tell, Le Canal Sciffe hasn't shown MST for at least a year; before that, it was running in an early-Saturday-morning slot.
The show didn't start there, of course. It was originally a local show up here in Minneapolis, on goofy local independent Ch. 23. (23 has since changed hands, and is No Fun Any More.) After one season, it was picked up by one of the two cable comedy channels that launched simultaneously; ironically, it was on the one our cable system didn't carry, so we had a show produced locally that wasn't locally viewable. Then the channels merged into the current Comedy Central, and we got our own back. (I note that I am in possession of MST3K Fan Club Membership Card #259.)
MST stayed there for five or six seasons before moving to SFC. The main difference in programming (aside from cast and format changes) was that SFC, being, you know, a sci-fi channel, had them stop running the fifties Rebellious Teen and Psycho Beatnik pictures, in favor of more Ed Wood, who hardly needed the treatment.
Backing up a bit, SFC had an interesting first year or so, when they didn't have any "original" programming and weren't Your Direct-To-Video Movie Specialists. They had a late-night "Retro-TV" segment, with stuff like X Minus One (which had started on radio) and Tales of Tomorrow, and aired sorta-rarities like "Isaac Asimov's Probe," which, while not having the most felicitous title one might ask for, was a halfway interesting attempt to do a science-mystery-adventure show that had something approximating science in it. It suffered mainly from having a girl sidekick who was supposedly a kick-ass investigator but was actually the same empty vessel for explanations as per usual. (If our beloved wossname ever really makes it to the big time, this will be an Oscar category.)
Eventually, SFC decided that anybody who wanted to watch interesting old stuff could buy home videos, and what we really needed were movies about giant fauna devouring people the producer offered five bucks a day and a boxed lunch to be iguana bait. And, of course, the sequels to these pictures, because it is inherent in making "Hellbudgies over East Lynne" that one must make "Hellbudgies over East Lynne II: The Chirping."
I sometimes think "Six Feet Under" originated when someone said, "The stuff we're seeing is doo-doo. A show about dead people would be more interesting."
Austrian filmmaker travels to rural Midwest, asks questions, tosses a great honking big wad of fat on the sociopolitical fire:
http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/08/26/movies/26hear.html
Most folks'll never lose a toe,
but then again some folks'll . . .
That NY Times article starts: "It's called shooting fish in a barrel." Indeed. It is easy to get people to look like fools; however, exactly how they make themselves look foolish does depend on their natural tendencies. From the sound of it, this Horvath fellow didn't have to look hard to find folly.
Whee! I have quite the list going now! Thank you all very much. Have gone out and gotten "The Art of War" and will start it today.
As for the rest, I have a feeling the local library and I will quickly become good friends once again. Which isn't a bad thing.
Again, thanks everyone. This helps so much.
If anyone ever needs recommendations on children's books or texts on teaching reading and writing to elementary school aged children, I'll be able to return the favor! (Or for that matter, advice on how to choose a kindergarten. That I taught for five out of the 12 years I was a teacher.)
On the military front, a good book on the experience of battle itself (and the experience of it as seen from the home front) is Paul Fussell's "Wartime". His classic "The Great War and Modern Memory" shouldn't be missed, either.
The most unvarnished account of 20th-century combat I'm aware of is E.B. Sledge's "With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa". But it's so intense that it has to be taken in small, difficult doses. How people take the real thing is another subject altogether.
Oh yeah, Wartime is terrific.
Jill Smith, well, shows what I know about arachnid habitat. I've always thought the wolf spider was a local product. Thanks.
Jonathan Shaw, no. Annandale, Virginia. Suburb of Washington DC, about ten miles out.
Mayakda, you appear to have a non-active edress in your info. Email me at mjlayman@erols.com and we'll discuss taping The Peacemaker Wars.
If we can go back to making love, not war, for a moment: I've seen I am Curious (Yellow) (and previously read the script-with-stills book, without which the print I saw would not have been particularly intelligible). Older participants may remember this one -- IIRC, the year when U.S. Customs tried to block it from entering the country was 1968. It is entirely serious in intent (even where it's playing film-within-a-film games) and has a fair amount of non-simulated sex; the sex isn't the core of the movie but it's one of the things the two principals do. Swedish films had a ripe reputation in the 1960's; I don't know how many others were frank as a part of the story rather than as simple pornography.
It also occurs to me that the political content may not have helped the film with U.S. Customs -- that was back when people though Vietnam was winnable, and supporting non-violence would not have been appreciated -- but probably weighed in its favor in court, judging by what I remember of the chunks of the decision that were published in the book.
CHip - Isn't it a bit odd how these two threads seemed to intertwine? I guess the link between sex and violence is further rooted in our brains than I thought.
Hey Robert, I know of the films you mentioned, but they seemed to be more about shocking the audience or dulling the senses regarding sex. I'm interested in 9 Songs, because supposedly it tells the story of a whole relationship through sex. And Michael Winterbottom is a great filmmaker.
I also read somewhere that Jack Nicholson and Jessica Lange were actually doing it on the table in The Postman Always Rings Twice.
To continue a thread I took notes on in the other open thread: The building of bookcases. Will be building a big one soon, but the current task is to paint one I already own. Any tips on good paint for bookcases?
And to add to the simple-to-build knowledge, the current one in my home office is made from MDF/Medium Density Fiberboard, purchased from Home Depot. We made the mistake of being cheap and buying longer lengths to cut. Do not do this, it is evil to saw. However, it has survived four years with a four-plus foot span, stuffed with computer manuals showing NO SAGGING!!
But it is pink and the room it lives in is now purple. Paint tips please! Thanks.
Most of my best suggestions on military books have already been taken -- but here are some additional ones that you might find useful or interesting.
Once you get past all the writing about strategy and tactics, you need to read about logistics. Martin Van Creveld has already been mentioned, I believe, but I would like to specifically recommend his Supplying War : Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton as an excellent historical survey of military logistics. Gus Pagonis' Moving Mountains is much less forbidding, but you have to deal with Pagonis' own rather substanial ego.
Vietnam is still a current issue (especially lately). I have a particular soft spot for Bernard Fall's Steet Without Joy, and Hell in a Very Small Place as the best studies about the French Indochina war and insurgent warfare in general. And there is always People's War, People's Army by Vo Nguyen Giap. From the American side I would suggest Neil Sheehan's A Bright Shining Lie, Frances FitzGerald's Fire in the Lake, and Michale Herr's Dispatches.
I haven't seen "This Ain't No Heartland," but it is my understanding that there are fools everywhere, and that many of them are available for filming, so I am not surprised that the filmmaker found some.
Logistics? :blinks: Hmmm, hadn't thought of that. (Which is why I'll have to read up on it after I get through the other suggestions.)
Painting book shelves: I say go for the simple and traditional solution. Strip the paint, sand, prime, paint the color you want. There are some good non-toxic paint strippers out there, but I have no clue as to where I put their names and I didn't keep the containers for them.
The last time I was in Home Depot I checked out the Trading Spaces books on decorating and such and they seemed to have some decent tips. And they work with MDF and fiberboard on that show all the time, so they should know how to paint the stuff.
Installing via Add Printer didn't work, and the reply email to that was to do what they told me in the first email. I'm getting pretty close to returning the machine.
This turned up via Metafilter yesterday:
How to write a best selling fantasy novel.
...Seems appropriate here, though I won't be surprised to discover that it's been a topic in the past.
By the way "Insanity Set Mappings onto DSM-IV" is a plausible-sounding topic for a mathematical paper. (You think authors are crazy? Check out mathematicians.) (from the insane authors thread over half a year back)
As a budding mathematician, that kind of title sounds way too sane to be a serious title for a mathematical paper.
But then again, you probably could apply cohomological methods to the specific problem of finding all plausible mappings from a list of insanities to DSM-IV. We only need to prove that for any map from a specific set to DSM-IV, we can deduce another map from any set including this set to DSM-IV. We probably ened more sanity conditions as well. Given that, we can define simplicial cohomology sufficiently well.
Any tips on good paint for bookcases?
Last set I painted I just used the same semi-gloss I used to paint the room the bookshelves went it. You can put a coat of clear coat if you're using a light color and you care (I didn't, but I've used clear coat for other projects. It's a latex clear coat, and I think my Lowe's had it in the "crafty" area of the paint section.)
Another thing I did, was to leave some the bookshelves unpainted, and to sponge paint flowers on the surfaces that would be visible when the shelves were full. This had the advantage of not having to wait for the paint to dry very long before books could be put on the shelves. (I also did the same thing with a bookshelf I painted white.)
Michelle
MaryR -
As a general rule, paint on bookcases -- for most values of paint which can be applied without a kiln -- isn't a good idea, becuase it will scuff, stick to the books, and so forth.
If you simply *must* brush on paint, thorough cleaning (citrus cleanser is great for degreasing) then roughing up with fine sandpaper and applying a modern, non-toxic 'playroom paint' -- coloured waterbased urethanes -- and letting it cure hard (3 days) will do ok.
Interior latex paint has the wear resistance of chalk and should be avoided.
Alternatives to paint include iron-on laminate (tough, impermeable, easy, range of colours) and just not painting the thing in the first place; since you've already got it painted, though, that's not going to be an option.
(Side note -- MDF outgases nasty formaldehyde compounds. Filling a room with MDF bookcases is something I would disrecommend.)
There's always Tremclad -- sticks to anything, and tough enough that I've used it on gas pipe clothes rods with no scuffing problems, an epoxy paint, which should be applied outside but which will neither scuff nor stick to the books. Polyester table top binary mixtures are plenty tough enough (and frequently really shiny) but you need to do something about the pink, and they don't generally come coloured.
Sarah S: the novel only available as cell phone msgs is a direct equivalent of DAY EAST RECEIVED aka INFORMED SOURCES by Willard Bain, originally published as single sheets distributed in the Haight-Ashbury in the late 60s by the Communications Company (Chester Anderson and others). But the inventors probably didn't know of the prior approach.
In response to something waaaaayy up the thread, my favorite bumper-sticker of late:
Yes, it's my truck.
No, you can't use it to move.
Tom--
That's fascinating.
There's nothing new under the sun.
Though, the Haight-Ashbury project did center on hard copy, while the cell phone novel is entirely and intentionally evanescent....That seems, somehow, important--like a pop culture version of the sand paintings that are made in order to blow away.
MaryR--
I decoupaged a set of bookshelves with the horrible Norton Shakespeare when the publisher sent me 2 free copies. Kept one, used the other to paper the shelves. Heretical, I'm sure, but somehow cathartic.
Scraps Of Prehistoric Fabric Provide A View Of Ancient Life
Photo: "This fabric, found at Etowah Mound, in Georgia, is part of a much larger textile made from either nettle or milkweed fibers. Researchers think it may have been part of a mantle, and are investigating whether or not it was dyed. Photo courtesy Kathryn Jakes."
Michi:
"But then again, you probably could apply cohomological methods to the specific problem of finding all plausible mappings from a list of insanities to DSM-IV." The last time I had a long social conversation with a psychiatrist (over whether Math Disorder is properly diagnosed), she castigated DSM as out of touch with the real world, suggesting that this encyclopedia of insanities was itself insane. This suggests your kind of analysis, or maybe Godel-numbering of DSM syndromes.
Real Sex in Science Fiction Movies: This has not been brought up to date, but:
X-Rated Sci-Fi/Fantasy Videos
[at over 600 Kilobytes, takes a while to load, or shoot its load as the case may be]
Military Books: I'm looking for my copy, without which I'm not recalling the title, of a book where battles are dissected with frequent pauses to ask the reader which option said reader would choose if a general (flank to left, right, retreat?) and then show which actually happened. I've been co-authoring a paper for over a year about greatest military intelligence mistakes of all time, analyzed mathematically.
Last calculation completed last night:
[as supplement to]:
"Semiprime Kynea Numbers"
by
Jonathan Vos Post
ABSTRACT:
We find a sequence of semiprime values of Kynea
Numbers, with indices
4, 7, 10, 11, 14, 22, 36, 38, 39, 44, 45, 48, 49,
60... Previous researches have emphasized Kynea
Primes. I conjecture that there are an infinite
number of Kynea Semiprimes.
*** end abstract ***
the calculation, given that:
Kynea(k) = 4^k+2^{k+1}-1 = (2^k+1)^2-2.
Kynea(150):
2 037035 976334 486086 268445 688409 378161 051468
396520 431636 048060 211470 953238 662326 978948
890623
= 2 044468 501555 860291 320687 x
996364 568485 296798 890910 384430 845218 955460
701071 430238 670261 206129
Factorization complete in 0d 0h 30m 41s
ECM: 128851169 modular multiplications
Prime checking: 171398 modular multiplications
Number of divisors: 4
Sum of divisors: 2 037035 976334 486086 268446 684773
946646 348267 287430 816066 893279 166933 698778
594121 509501 417440
Euler's Totient: 2 037035 976334 486086 268444 692044
809675 754669 505610 047205 202841 256008 207698
730532 448396 363808
Moebius: 1
Sum of squares: a^2 + b^2 + c^2 + d^2
a = 947 354704 798476 595079 924574 086032 934837
280661
b = 930 301371 424865 421662 607368 404965 091004
260695
c = 453 813425 983573 604712 260264 869883 785136
184121
d = 261 051282 993865 986099 383613 108502 733297
698494
[note how long numbers are broken up with spaces to avoid jamming Making Light readers' browsers, as I once accidently did before]
[my PC is now trying to crack Kynea(170)]
Re outgassing & MDF/fibreboard, etc.
A long, long time ago when that stuff was very new, I was sent to do a sorting job in the cupboard under the stairs at school, where they'd just installed a bunch of shelves in the fancy-shmancy new construction material.
Not very long after that, I was really sick & headachey & laid up for the rest of the day (if not the next, can't remember).
I still have full recall of that smell, and how it penetrated & permeated everything for a while - not unlike a later experience with dissecting a rat over several weeks ...
Xopher: Indeed, 'twas Steve Taylor and Dan Blum. No offence intended to anyone by misapportionment of thanks, it's just that... well, a mind like a thingy... you know... with the holes and whaddjamacallit...
JVP: Gödel-numbering of DSM-IV just cracked me up. Completely. You made my day (otherwise characterised by a dull headache, and a desperate run at getting my advisor to, you know, actually advise me in face of my pending master's thesis defense next week) -- thanks!
Is there a definition somewhere on semiprime Kynea numbers (and for that matter semiprime Keith numbers)?
Apologies to Teresa and readers for 2nd post so soon, but I neglected to link to a coherent answer to the thread on Science Fiction vs. Sci-Fi:
Panel of 60 top scientists rate films. #1 will surprise some. They also rate fiction authors and other categories, and provide definitions. Apparently a special Science Fiction issue.
The world's best scientists nominate their favourite authors
by
Tim Radford, Simon Rogers and Adam Rutherford
Thursday August 26, 2004
The Guardian
"Magic equals science, and science of the future equals magic": Phillip K Dick
"1 Isaac Asimov
As predictable as the human race eventually being enslaved by robots, Asimov, the founding father of modern science fiction, tops the poll. Despite an astonishingly prolific career, he has never been regarded highly for his prose. 'Asimov was not a stylish writer in the way that say, Philip K Dick was, but he was very rigorous scientifically, and thoughtful about how he projects scientific ideas into the future,' says Philip Ball, a writer of popular science books...."
[nitpickers please note middle initial of Dick, a la Ackerman and Truman]
Why is NOTHING stinky sticking to Bush? Talk about Teflon.... No wonder he's in the oil business, the dirt just rolls off him...
Latest uncovered bit of Bush BS....
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=675299&mesg_id=675299
Official Bush National Guard picture, with Bush wearing a ribbon for a medal he wasn't entitled to wear....
==============================
Jettison Gag Order George....
==============================
[In response to the Military books thread earlier]
Sara E:
By all means, read a book on military logistics. There is a quote (which I cannot attribute right now, shame on me) that says "Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics".
In the real world (and in better wargames), battles and even wars can be won and lost with logistical planning (or lack thereof). If you can't manage to keep your troops supplied with food, ammunition, replacement parts, etc., they will eventually lose to a force that can maintain those supplies.
Emphasizing the importance of logistics is a tactical operation (sometimes called "deep strike") that directly targets the opponent's logistical chain. These attacks can, when properly employed, decimate an enemy's logistical resources and communications and cut the front-line troops from critical resources, reducing or even neutralizing their combat effectiveness.
We now return you to your reguilarly scheduled thread...
Avram wrote:
As time went on, the term wound up being associated with snazzy but implausible marketing scenarios (think AT&T's "You Will" ads, or Apple's Knowledge Navigator), leading genre aficianados to sneer at the term, which they derisively pronounce "whuffie".
... which was a shame, since "wuffie" had previously been used as an affectionate nickname for Whitfield Duffie, a well known and loved household hero...
RandallP - I'd probably be willing to see any of those, provided that they fall on a reasonable day :)
Sideways, I'm profoundly impressed by sensible old technology, with gears and cogs that tends to Just Work - or if it fails, fails due to obvious things, like a spanner in the works. It's so much easier when you can just machine a piece, slap it in, and things start right back up again. None of this "is the chip okay" or "maybe you should reload" crap.
In response to a post up near the top:
I heartily second the Peabody-Essex Museum recommendation. Take either the Rockport or Newburyport train from North Station (in Boston, orange or green line T stop) and get off at Salem. The PEM is within walking distance, and the Chinese house is fascinating. You can almost see the ghosts of all the generations of ancestors who lived there.
Plus, they have a painting by my great, great, great grandfather in their collection, which is pretty cool.
The Peabody Essex museum's unique items include an ivory [ALL ivory...] writing desk, a bed which is wheel-rim shaped (my father, who worked as a cabinet maker for much of his life, was -very- impressed by it), and one of three full-sized Hawaiian religious idols still known to be in existence--all except two out of the thousands that had been in Hawaii and remained there, were destroyed in process of Christianization. The one at the Peabody Museum got there due to ties between Salem, Massachusetts. Among other things, native of the Salem area was married to a member of the Hawaiian royal family.
Bus today, there was this guy, white tshirt, large black lettering -- "From a distance", quoth the tshirt.
Below that, in yellow lettering, "you're face looked much better."
Didn't tell him not to make any bets with boxes of rocks.
"... which was a shame, since 'wuffie' had previously been used as an affectionate nickname for Whitfield Duffie, a well known and loved household hero..."
And whose name is Whitfield Diffie, unless the one I've met was a spoof address.
Perhaps 'Duffie' is the (south) Welsh version of the name.
Paula: "The one at the Peabody Museum got there due to ties between Salem, Massachusetts. Among other things, native of the Salem area was married to a member of the Hawaiian royal family."
That sounds like the setup for a Lovecraftian story.
Salem-based sailor travels in the mysterious Pacific, marries a native princess, brings her home, along with some eldritch carvings of otherworldly beings.
Paula, NBC today had video of a couple being arrested for being at a Bush rally with anti-Bush t-shirts (looked like they made them themselves -- BUSH in black with the red no-circle over it). The police were very apologetic, but they'd been ordered by the Secret Service to arrest the couple. Their tickets had been revoked (once the t-shirts were seen) and therefore they were trespassing. I can't believe Bush is stupid enough to do this. The ACLU is taking the case for the couple.
Hey, I can actually add something...
Sir Basil Liddell Hart's book Strategy is both a good early examination of the possibilities in high-tech mobile warfare and of historical significance itself. It was one of the crucial inspirations for the German strategists who developed the Blitzkrieg. Wikipedia has a good entry on Liddell Hart.
Which of the cyberpunk authors pointed at "the street has its own uses for things" as the essence of the genre? In any event, Michael Lewis' Moneyball is in that sense very cyberpunk, and highly relevant reading on modern strategy in an unusual context. It's about how a money-strapped baseball team put better statistics and better analysis to work in building a competitive lineup, and suggests the kind of edge that wise use of information can give by example. I'm very much uninterested in baseball, but found it fascinating.
I didn't realize "Diffie" really was his [last] name at first, given the propensity that there has been sometimes at MIT for handing out oddball names, he was introduded to me as "Diffie" by a a different member of MIT's Class of 1965 at the 1990 Alumni Weekend and I was thinking "Diff. E," not realizing that there are people with the [last] name of "Diffie."
Ooops. I did not graduate from college in 1965. Diffie did, and the person who introduced me to Diffie, was from the same class.
Geez, Paula, and I was about to say how well preserved you are--or maybe unchanged would be nearer the truth. I was gonna tell you to toss all your rings in the fire...
Whit is a fun guy, and an occasional customer at Other Change. I got to send him to Rob and Avedon as nice folks, and they've gotten on well for years since.
Maybe my real secret power is to introduce odd people to each other....
Michi:
Thank you for the mathematicoaesthetic reaction. For both Keith Numbers and Kynea numbers, my interest this week is in finding the intersection between those integer sequences and the semiprimes, which are the set of integer which are the product of exactly two (not necessarily distinct) primes. Keith Numbers, Smith Numbers, Kynea Numbers, all defined and referenced on the amazing Dr. Eric Weisstein's mathworld.com, the greatest of all math domains, and then also on N.J.A. Sloane's Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, the most compendious interactive work of its kind. Both are priceless.
Semiprime Kynea Numbers
by
Jonathan Vos Post
Version 2.0 of 27 Aug 2004
ABSTRACT:
Kynea Numbers are of the form 4^k + 2^(k+1) – 1
= (2^k + 1)^2 -2. We find a sequence of semiprime values of
Kynea Numbers, with indices 4, 7, 10, 11, 14, 22, 36,
38, 39, 44, 45, 48, 49, 60, 72, 74, 75, 89, 92, 96,
99, 105, 110, 111, 113, 116, 131, 138, 143, 150...
Previous researches have emphasized Kynea Primes. I
conjecture an infinite number of Kynea Semiprimes.
Also this week:
"Iterated Sum of Squares of Prime Factors"
by
Jonathan Vos Post
Version 2.0 of 26 Aug 2004
ABSTRACT:
We define the function on natural numbers SPF2, Sum of
Squares of Prime Factors, and find complexity in the
behaviors that emerge when this function is
recursively iterated. This leads to novel conjectures.
*** end abstract ***
Is anyone with a PC faster than my AMD K6 interested in programming this and seeing
how long the trajectories can be, before hitting a prime and then swooping up to infinity on doubled powers of that prime, and if there are
other cycles besides 16 mapping to itself? Of course. I'd credit you in the paper when I submit it for publication.
More on how I connect to Math at:
http://magicdragon.com/math.html
I just mailed "The Sacred and Profane Ikon of Our Lady of the Paradox" to the newly revived Amazing Stories. In Hollywood, I'd pitch it as "Girl with a Pearl Ear Ring meets Timeline." And I mailed the signed permission form for Basic Books to publish a pair of letters about poetry and Physics between me and Richard Feynman in his Collected Letters, April 2005. But then I got distracted picking my 15-year-old college Junior son from the busstop on his way home from campus when I saw someone fling open his SUV's door and have it ripped away by a passing car. So I drove to the metrorail stop instead. Absent-minded professor...
The APS's "What's New" page is worth reading for physics news, anti-pseudoscience, and the latest governmental scientific idiocies. In the latter regard, this item caught my attention:
SPACE STATION: WILL U.S. ASTRONAUTS HAVE TO FLY TOURIST-CLASS? The Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 makes it illegal to pay Russia to take US astronauts to the ISS. Astronauts have been getting free Soyuz rides since the shuttle grounding, but that deal ends in 2006. After that, Russia says they need the seats for paying passengers (WN 26 Apr 02) . I called Ada Parvenu, who handles billionaire relations for NASA. "We’re being shut out of the ISS," I shouted, "after investing $35B." "Calm down" she soothed, "it’s actually a terrific deal. It cost $500M to fly a shuttle to the ISS. Russia takes tourists there in a Soyuz for $20M. So we’ll call astronauts ‘tourists’." I was yelling now, "the law won’t let us pay Russia for tourists either." "We’ve thought about that," she said calmly, "we’re recruiting billionaires to be astronauts. They’ll be able to pay for their own tickets."
I hope that's a joke.
Will someone please get Mr. Vos Post a blog of his own?
Comments on Open thread 27: