Bear Math

This article at Quanta highlights a possible way that math can save a person in danger of being attacked by a bear.

I found it intriguing but I don't ever intend to give it a try.

Um, Really?

Despite its penchant for privacy invasion and time-wasting, I have found Facebook to be a valuable tool since the pandemic began, allowing a streaming platform for our church's services and a means of keeping in touch with our people. As well as being a kind of substitute newsletter for folks to see what's going on.

However, every now and again Facebook feels a need to remind us that it is stupid. Recently small ads have begun appearing on the right-hand side of the page when one checks one's newsfeed. These ads are, like most of the ads the platform runs, dumb. A rough estimate suggests more than four-fifths of them are bogus, designed to lure a reader primarily through thumbnail photos of attractive and mostly undressed women who have nothing to do with what is supposedly being advertised.

As it does with the ads that clutter its feed, Facebook offers us the chance to hide these ads too. And as it does with the other ads, you are given a list of choices about why you want to hide the ad in question. I always choose "Irrelevant" as my response, since "fake cash grab and pack of lies" is not one of the options. For some reason, the order of the responses changes around, so that rather than be in the same place according to alphabetical or some other order my preferred choice migrates. Perhaps FB designers think that I will not see it and I will choose one of the other answers, which will probably give the algorithm data to use in pushing an entirely different sets of ads on me. This is stupid.

After I have clicked on "irrelevant," a second dialog box opens up that asks me if I would like to learn more about this advertiser. Yes, I certainly would like to see other advertising from a source that I have labeled irrelevant. Whoops! No, I wouldn't. And the question is stupid.

If Mrs. Gump was right, stupid is as stupid does. Which is why Facebook is, despite its utility in certain areas, stupid.

What Didn't Happen?

At the informative site Back ReAction, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains why quantum mechanics is weird. Anyone who's read a little bit about it knows there's plenty of weirdness to go around, but Dr. Hossenfelder is addressing a particular feature of the theory by use of an experiment called "the bomb experiment."

You can read the post or watch her YouTube video for a full explanation of the experiment, but the upshot of it is that, because of quantum mechanics and its quirky nature, the bomb experiment can explain not only the events that did take place, but also the ones that didn't. And that's not the way experiments usually run.

Terminal Velocity

This animation shows how long a ball would take to drop a kilometer on different bodies in the Solar System. As one might expect, the ball falls fastest in the sun's gravity. But that would hardly be your only problem if you're falling towards the sun.

Collection

 -- A story at the University of Georgia's website offers advice on how college freshmen may avoid the dread "freshman 15" or other number signifying the weight gain that often happens in the first few months away from home. Unsurprisingly, the story suggests that decreased activity and increased food intake contributes to the gain, which is usually more in the neighborhood of eight pounds rather than 15. So in other words, if I had stopped eating pepperoni pizza turnovers from the food truck at 11:30 PM, reduced the portion of my calorie count provided by grains -- specifically barley, hops and various combinations thereof -- and done more than sit on my tuckus I would not have gained weight. I hope that a degree was not required to puzzle out this information.

-- When music videos began to be played more and more regularly, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman quickly established their on-camera personae as the serious guys hard at work while Mick Jagger and guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood pranced and lurched through their rock-star pose repertoire. Watts' professionalism probably contributed to the band not imploding during one of the dozen or so feuds Jagger and Richards conducted during its 58-year history. He was the first Stone to reach 80 (Wyman is 84 but retired in 1993). Even more admirably, Watts remained married to his wife Shirley from October 1964 until his death this week at 80.

-- Jupiter's moon Ganymede is apparently a weird place, boasting a size greater than the planet Mercury and features common to even much larger worlds than that. Here's hoping Elon Musk gets curious about it.

Time Travelers

In another edition of one of my favorite types of photography postings Neatorama shows the work of Magdalena Vissagio and her transformation of sculpture, paintings and old photographs to modern images. It's pretty interesting to see what Abe Lincoln looks like with a smile on his face. And Frederick Douglass shows even more don't-mess-with-me dignity than in his usual black-and-white image. Although Nero looks like a party animal instead of the psychotic murderous dictator that he was.

Aflight

The discovery of PlutoTV has allowed me to consume media other than current podcasts and such, which are filled with stuff that is nothing I want to watch right now.

Among the offerings are reruns of the 1990s NBC sitcom Wings, set in a regional airport in Nantucket. I'd enjoyed this show when it aired, but my career diversion to seminary took me away from television for a big chunk of its run. David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee created it and set it in the same world as their other output Cheers and later, Frasier. It never flew quite as high (heh) but lasted seven respectable seasons and brings the laughs pretty well. It was one of the first vehicles for Tony Shaloub, later known as Adrian Monk in the series of that name.

It's very much a product of its era with the setup/punchline format and issues resolved inside one episode. But it does make moves towards the kinds of longer arcs that more modern shows have and character development over time. It's also a showcase for 90s fashions of blocky blazers for women and unstructured shirts and floppy ties for men, especially on co-lead Steven Weber. I'd forgotten that it was an enjoyable little niche show, even if it never broke out like the trio's other work.

And Crystal Bernard was just about as cute as could be, but I am sure that had nothing to do with the show's appeal.

JB, POTUS

The Democratic presidential candidate with the initials JB was probably not the first choice for the ticket for a lot of party members. But the candidate with the most popular support held views that the majority of the country didn't much care for, and he threatened the party leadership by supporting policies that would likely keep them out of power in the legislature as well as within the party structure. So they took advantage of a split between other candidates that more overtly promoted these unpopular views and were able to frame JB as a kind of sensible consensus candidate.

His absence from the Washington mix during the previous term helped keep him above some of the worst excesses connected to that environment. His long experience in government in both elective and appointive office gave him an air of competence and calm that contrasted with the other parties' candidates. Against promises of radical change, intensified nativism and threats to the established order that would lead who knows where if enacted, JB made it clear that any changes would be carefully thought out and made in a professional, reasoned manner. The kind of upheaval argued for by others was not for him.

Once elected, though, it became clear that JB was not really a "different Democrat" from the other candidates for his party's nomination. He made support for the policies they had sought a big part his own agenda, and expressed sympathy for views he had seemed to disclaim on the campaign trail. He was warned that this kind of action would not help stave off challenges from the other party and might even embolden their more radical elements to work that much harder for the White House. By not standing against these more radical members of his own party and their support for increasingly unpopular views, JB risked potential civil unrest and worse but he was clearly not capable of standing against their energy and persuasion -- whatever else he had been during his long governmental career, he was no leader anymore.

Even his pledge to serve just one term and campaign hard for his Vice-President to succeed him proved inadequate, and so James Buchanan watched Abraham Lincoln win the election of 1860 as the country he had so inexpertly led for four years from disaster to disaster finally fell apart into open conflict.

Of course I was talking about James Buchanan. Who did you think I meant?

Sometimes...

The great philosophers might not have made a good cooking show, but the end result does offer some proof for a song first released by Dave Edmunds and made more popular by Huey Lewis, "Bad is Bad." So there's that.

No Goldilocks Moment

Writing the kind of post that really sums up what we're watching in Afghanistan would take a staff of researchers, time and a check made out to me. I have none of those, so my quick hit is this: The proper amount of time to stay in Afghanistan was either very short or quite long, with no in-between.

The initial goal was to eject the Taliban from power and take away the safe haven they gave to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. It happened pretty quickly, using a number of Afghan warlords as allies and with groundwork being laid over some time before attacks finally started. The very short time would have been to then get out and let the warlords have their way. Afghanistan would be slightly less of a hellhole and it would be one run by someone other than the Taliban. If the Taliban came back and wanted another go, then they could be smacked around some more. If that remained our goal, we stayed too long.

The other goal came to be creating a healthy nation in Afghanistan that could organically resist Taliban power and advance its people from the 8th century to maybe the 18th or 19th.  In the cities, perhaps all the way to the 1950s. For that goal, we didn't stay nearly long enough. Two of the key elements for a healthy nation are a respect for the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of democratically elected power. Without both of these, people rely on old-fashioned tribal structures rife with corruption that are trusted by no one: This judge will never respect my claim because it's being made against one of his extended clan members -- so I'll take matters into my own hands.

Between the British East India Company and the Raj period, England more or less occupied and directed India for the better part of 200 years. It never had the goal of building a nation for the benefit of its people, but those core values -- the rule of law and peaceful transfer of power -- gradually came to be built into the way the Indian people thought about running their own government. English people were not better than Indian people. English culture was not better than Indian culture. The Raj, especially in its early years, was brutal, imperialist and more than a little racist, although it was a lot safer to be an upperclass Indian widow after 1829.

But those English busybodies brought with them the idea that if everyone, even the king, obeys the law, then everyone, not just the king, can have a shot at getting rich. The English stayed long enough for the Indian people to learn and like that idea enough to try it for themselves. With the 1991 election of Narasimha Rao, they decided to ditch even the socialism imposed by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv. Although India's commitment to democracy seems to waver sometimes, especially in some remote regions, it's been able to maintain both of those key features.

The U.S. was not in Afghanistan nearly long enough to help those key features become a part of the Afghan culture and fabric. Since the effort was intentional and since the U.S. had no desire to rule the Afghans it might not have taken ten generations, but it was definitely going to take more than one. The short-sightedness of former President Trump and President Biden, who both wanted everyone out of Afghanistan now if not sooner, made disaster inevitable. Biden's statement of not wanting to hand the Afghan war to a fifth president demonstrates the false understanding of what could have continued to work in the country had we desired to continue to build it. More U.S. troops die in training and in accidents than in combat; combat deaths in Afghanistan were down below one every two weeks. Soldiers were more likely to die on U.S. soil than Afghan soil.

Our choices were fairly clear: Pure national interest, which means kicking the Taliban's ass, leaving and then kicking it again if they ask us to. Or nation building and humanitarian concerns, which means committing to thinking beyond one's own four-year term and what polls say. We tried to split the difference -- which, King Solomon would have pointed out, doesn't work when dealing with children and other living things.

Corny...But Awesome

I would have posted something about this yesterday when it happened but I was so surprised Rob Manfred got something right I have spent the last 24 hours in a coma collapsed on my keyboard.

Building an actual "Field of Dreams" in Iowa in the cornfield 30 years after the movie of that name came out? Use the White Sox and Yankees as the combatants, as in the ghostly game in the movie? Have it introduced by the movie's lead, Kevin Costner?

I'm almost as stunned to type it as I was to see it.

And if anyone knows how to clean reversed keyboard letters off human foreheads I'd appreciate a little help...

The Thrill of Victory

One of the things that not having cable lets me do is surf clips from events that I might want to see on my own time, which I have found to be the best way to watch the Olympics. Medal celebrations, superb sportsmanship, displays of character and honor -- these are all great to watch. I think I've mentioned elsewhere that moments like that, in which athletes realize their dream, be it victory or just competing on this stage, are among the reasons the corrupt and hypocritical games leadership groups disgust me.

It allows me to skip the people whose protest gestures seem less about drawing attention to their causes and more about drawing attention to them. Although it's nice when some of the loudest voices skip themselves for you by falling well below expectations or missing a medal altogether.

As a final thought, I am a firm believer that medal counts mean nothing about a nation's actual merits. The United States won more medals than totalitarian China, as well as more golds, but had those standings been reversed this is still a better place to live.

On the other hand, "United States Olympians: Sending Commies home in second place since Lake Placid 1980" has a nice ring to it.

I'm Out

I started to review a book that I'd read a few weeks ago about an FBI Special Agent who specialized in tracking serial killers. He has a kind of sixth sense that allows him to track people's essences, which appear to him as splashes of color left on things that they touched. From these splashes he can identify a person if he encounters them again and he can trail them like a regular tracker might, only using the sense he calls his "shine" ("Ahem" - Stephen King) to do so instead of physical clues. It also lets him sense if a victim is still alive, or when they are killed.

In order to cover what would almost certainly be inadmissible evidence in court, the character has a friend help cover for him and he acts out the finding the same kind of physical clues that an ordinary tracker might. The friend and co-worker is the only one who knows his secret.

As I said, I started to review it, but decided against it. While the author left out the cheap sadism of the victim's-eye-accounts of their torments and deaths he more or less sneaked it back in through the ESP bond of the "shine." Aside from the supernatural (or maybe it was supposed to be a form of synesthesia, although that doesn't work like that and I don't remember anyway) color business, it was just another dead girl novel and I've been getting tired of those.

I'd love to hear someone interview the author of one of these books -- or the director of one of these movies -- and ask if we were supposed to enjoy the victim's assault more, or her murder? They'd probably say those segments were there to increase the tension, or clearly outline the evil, or some other such. They weren't there to be enjoyed. Which would, if I were the interviewer, prompt an immediate follow-up: Then why did you spend so much time with them?

Surprise!

According to this story in Quanta by Steve Nadis, mathematicians investigating large-scale set classification problems have been able to prove something they have suspected for some time. According to a recent paper by Italian mathematician Gianluca Paolini and Israeli mathematician Saharon Shelah, it seems that torsion-free abelian groups are indeed hard to classify.

Did not see that coming.

Nature Red in Tooth and Claw

This page has, among other interesting items of information, a map detailing which animal is most likely to be your cause of death should you happen to be one of those unfortunate persons upon whom nature takes its revenge.

As an Okie, if I die because of an animal attack, it is more likely to be from being struck or bitten by a large mammal than anything else. Given the state's large livestock industry and ranching culture, this seems unremarkable. Slightly more mystifying is that if you are killed by an animal in Missouri or Illinois, it is more likely that you were bitten or crushed by a large reptile -- and in fact these are the only two states where that can be said. Florida, where you might think that situation would exist, owes more human life loss to being bitten or stung by non-venomous insects or arthropods. Perhaps the folk of the midwest are so surprised to encounter a large reptile that they fall victim to it, while Floridians are well aware of these creatures' deadly natures.

Of course, all of these figures refer to non-human animals. Include the number of deaths caused by ye olde H. sapiens sapiens and we shoot to the top of the list almost everywhere.

Drawn Out

Artist Shannon Lee takes a look at some animated cartoon animals and gives an idea of what they might look like as cartoon humans. He even adds a couple of real animals in the same format. I found Rajah the tiger (#4) and Peg and Lady (#1) to be the most interesting drawings, although Timon (#8) and Pumba (#2) are pretty good too.

So It Begins...

Even while readers of Berke Breathed's online edition of his Bloom County comic strip followed the quest to return Hobbes the tiger to his proper home, the Calvin and Hobbes reprint showed us the first meeting between Calvin and his nemesis, the babysitter Rosalyn. Round one, unfortunately, went to Rosalyn...but they would meet again.