Monthly Archives: December 2019
So. 2019. Another crazy year. I’ve set this post to publish at 6:00 PM my time, which is 00:00 Universal time. By the time you read this, the new year has begun, at least at one spot on Earth. Within 24 hours of posting, it’ll be 2020 for everyone (on the Gregorian calendar, anyway).
It’s not just the end of the year — most see it as the end of a decade, the twenty-teens. The more pedantic say that decades actually run from 1 to 10, so 2001–2010 was the previous decade, and, sorry to rain, but we’re still in the 2011–2020 decade.
But what the hell, odometer parties are a lot more fun!
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6 Comments | tags: 2019, 2020, New Year's Eve, skydiving | posted in Life
How real is Sherlock Holmes, and what is the nature of his reality? On the one hand, Holmes is a fictional character from writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but on the other there is a Canon of 56 short stories and four novels defining that character. It’s hard to deny at least some reality to something so well defined.
Others have extended the concept of Holmes far beyond the original in books, movies, TV shows, and more. The original texts are in the public domain, so there is considerable freedom to explore the idea of a crime-solving duo comprised of a brainy detective plus a faithful sidekick.
As a result Holmes has a well-defined center and very fuzzy boundaries!
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20 Comments | tags: A Christmas Carol, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dr. Greg House, House M.D., John Watson, Lord Peter Wimsey, ontological anti-realism, ontology, reality, Rex Stout, Sherlock Holmes | posted in Books, Mystery Monday
Venus emerging from the sea.
I’ve been thinking about emergence. That things emerge seems clear, but a question involves the precise nature of exactly what emerges. The more I think about it, the more I think it may amount to word slicing. Things do emerge. Whether or not we call them truly “new” seems definitional.
There is a common distinction made between weak and strong emergence (alternately epistemological and ontological emergence, respectively). Some reject the distinction, and I find myself leaning that way. I think — at least under physicalism — there really is only weak (epistemological) emergence.
But I also think it amounts to strong (ontological) emergence.
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106 Comments | tags: determinism, emergence, ontological anti-realism, ontology, pi, real numbers, reductionism | posted in Philosophy
The Solstice has passed, but Christmas Day is tomorrow, and New Year’s Eve lies just ahead. Another year behind, and 2020 awaits. May it be a good one for you and yours!
My small annual gift, here’s a little Christmas Music for you:
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8 Comments | tags: Alison Krauss, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Steve Martin, The Piano Guys, The Wexford Carol, Yo-Yo Ma | posted in Life
The Winter Solstice was at 04:19 GMT on December 22. For me, in Minnesota, it happened at 10:19 PM CST last night. And today, the first official day of winter, it’s sunny and currently 41° (F) out.
At least we got snow for Christmas. We don’t always.
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4 Comments | tags: Constance Wu, Dimension 404, Hulu, Megan Mullally, science fiction TV, Solstice, Will & Grace, winter, Winter Solstice | posted in Life
I finished Fall: or, Dodge in Hell, the latest novel from Neal Stephenson, and I’m conflicted between parts I found fascinating and thoughtful and parts I found tedious and unsatisfying. This division almost exactly follows the division of the story itself into real and virtual worlds. I liked the former, but the latter not so much.
Unfortunately, at least the last third of the book involves a Medieval fantasy quest that takes place in the virtual reality. The early parts of the story in the VR are fairly interesting, but the quest really left me cold, and I found myself skimming pages.
I give it a positive rating, but it’s my least-liked Stephenson novel.
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14 Comments | tags: Fall; or Dodge in Hell, fantasy, hard SF, Neal Stephenson, science fiction, science fiction books, SF, SF Books, soft SF | posted in Books, Sci-Fi Saturday
Today’s earlier post got into only the beginnings of abacus operation — mainly how to add numbers. To demonstrate how they have more utility than just adding and subtracting, this Sideband tackles a multiplication problem.
This also illustrates a property of abacus operation that doesn’t arise with addition. With pen and paper, we multiply right-to-left to make carrying easier. Because of the way an abacus works, multiplication has to work left-to-right.
The process is simple enough, but has lots of steps!
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3 Comments | tags: abacus, multiplication, speed of light | posted in Sideband
Ye Olden Tools of Yore
I’ve been meaning to write an Abacus post for years. I used one in my first job, back in high school, and they’ve appealed to me ever since. Many years ago I learned there were people who had no idea how an abacus worked. Until then I hadn’t internalized that it wasn’t common knowledge (maybe a consequence of learning something at an early age).
Recently, browsing through old Scientific American issues before recycling them, I read about slide rules, another calculating tool I’ve used, although, in this case, mainly for fun. My dad gave me his old slide rule from when he considered, and briefly pursued, being an architect.
So killing two birds with one stone…
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17 Comments | tags: abacus, slide rule | posted in Life, Math
Two things that get me out of bed every day and keep me going through a world I often find brutish, mean, and stupid, are my sense of curiosity and my sense of wonder. It’s another Yin-Yang thing: the Yin of the world’s crap balanced by the Yang of so many neat things to discover and explore.
Those neat things exist on all scales, from the vast to the tiny. (The crap, on the other hand, tends to come in human-sized, in fact in human-shaped, packages.) From quarks to galaxies, the universe is an interesting place.
For today’s Wednesday Wow, I bring you some smaller wonders…
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15 Comments | tags: coffee cup lid, pasta, small wonders | posted in Wednesday Wow
The ideas of free will, causality, and determinism, often factor into discussions about religion, morality, society, consciousness, or life in general. The first and last of these ideas seem at odds; if the world is strictly determined, there can be no free will.
But we are confronted with the appearance of free will — choices we make appear to affect the future. Even choosing not to make choices seems to affect our future. If reality is just a ride on fixed rails, then all that choosing must be a trick our brains play.
These questions are central to lives, but answers have remained elusive, in part from differing views of what the key ideas even mean.
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21 Comments | tags: causal determinism, causal system, causality, determinism, deterministic, free will, physical determinism, physical system, physicalism, quantum physics | posted in Opinion, Philosophy
Logos con carne 