About Wyrd Smythe
The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.
I’ll get to the delightful alien eyes later, but I want to start this Sci-Fi Saturday post with a different delight: A Trick of Light, a novel by Stan Lee. Yeah, that Stan Lee. Along with Kat Rosenfield. And no, there are no pictures, comic or otherwise.
What is there is a fast, breezy, comic-book-like story about a guy and a gal and some interesting stuff that happens to them. I read the whole thing in one long afternoon, night, and into the AM, because it was hard to put down. “Just one more chapter” grew to reading the whole thing. It was a lot of fun.
There is also an interesting but somewhat less delightful book (a trilogy, actually) to tell you about. I have some definite mixed feeling about the author and his books.
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9 Comments | tags: A Trick of Light, Electric Dreams (TV series), Jack L. Chalker, Kat Rosenfield, Philip K. Dick, science fiction, science fiction books, science fiction TV, Stan Lee, Well World | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday
One of the great philosophical conundrums involves the origin of numbers and mathematics. I first learned of it as Platonic vs Aristotelian views, but these days it’s generally called Platonism vs Nominalism. I usually think of it as the question of whether numbers are invented or discovered.
Whatever it’s called, there is something transcendental about numbers and math. It’s hard not to discover (or invent) the natural numbers. Even from a theory standpoint, the natural numbers are very simply defined. Yet they directly invoke infinity — which doesn’t exist in the physical world.
There is also the “unreasonable effectiveness” of numbers in describing our world.
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8 Comments | tags: math theory, mathematics, natural numbers, nominalism, numbers, Plato, Platonic, Platonism, rational numbers, real numbers, Theory of Mathematics | posted in Math, Philosophy
Well, I did my civic duty and privilege as a democratic citizen.
And it was a pretty easy vote in two regards.
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12 Comments | tags: Amy Klobuchar, election 2020, election day, I voted, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Twitler, vote | posted in Politics
I cracked up when I saw the headline: Why your brain is not a computer. I kept on grinning while reading it because it makes some of the same points I’ve tried to make here. It’s nice to know other people see these things, too; it’s not just me.
Because, to quote an old gag line, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs… perhaps you’ve misunderstood the situation.” The prevailing attitude seems to be that brains are just machines that we’ll figure out, no big deal. So, it’s certainly (and ever) possible my skepticism represents my misunderstanding of the situation.
But if so, I’m apparently not the only one…
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41 Comments | tags: algorithm, brain, brain mind problem, computationalism, consciousness, human brain, human consciousness, human mind, Matthew Cobb, mind, Theory of Consciousness | posted in Philosophy, Science
The last Sideband discussed two algorithms for producing digit strings in any number base (or radix) for integer and fractional numeric values. There are some minor points I didn’t have room to explore in that post, hence this follow-up post. I’ll warn you now: I am going to get down in the mathematical weeds a bit.
If you had any interest in expressing numbers in different bases, or wondered how other bases do fractions, the first post covered that. This post discusses some details I want to document.
The big one concerns numeric precision and accuracy.
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3 Comments | tags: base 10, base 2, binary, binary digits, decimal, fractions, number bases | posted in Math, Sideband
Fractional base basis.
I suspect very few people care about expressing fractional digits in any base other than good old base ten. Truthfully, it’s likely not that many people care about expressing factional digits in good old base ten. But if you’re in the tiny handful of those with an interest in such things — and don’t already know all about it — read on.
Recently I needed to figure out how to express binary fractions of decimal numbers. For example, 3.14159 in binary. And I needed the real thing — true binary fractions — not a fake that uses integers and a virtual decimal point.
The funny thing is: I think I’ve done this before.
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4 Comments | tags: base 10, base 2, binary, binary digits, decimal, fractions, number bases | posted in Math, Sideband
One of the older notes on my idea board is a tiny Post-It™ with just a single word written on it: recrudescence. Wiktionary defines it as: “The condition or state being recrudescent; the condition of something (often undesirable) breaking out again or re-emerging after temporary abatement or suppression.”
It is primarily a medical term referring to a disease reoccurring; the second Wiktionary definition is: “The acute recurrence of a disease, or its symptoms, after a period of improvement.”
But when I encountered the word several years ago, it struck me as a very good word for this “post-factual” era: the Dark Ages rises again.
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10 Comments | tags: Bentley, Electric Dreams (TV series), Martin Freeman, Philip K. Dick, recrudescence, recrudescent, Russian Doll (TV series), Sherlock (TV series), Sherlock Holmes | posted in Life, Politics, Rant, Society
The internet has always been a place of raging controversy, from the profound to the trivial. I’m not the first to observe that people, at least in our culture, tend to divide fairly equally over many issues. Be it about important issues (like guns or abortion), or about the trivial (like computer games or actors), we rarely agree on anything.
It starts when someone says something, and people react. Then more people react to the people reacting (and new people get on board with reacting to what the first person said, starting new waves of reaction). More and more people react to reactions, and the epidemic spreads.
This mind virus was about hurting books, so lots of people had opinions.
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13 Comments | tags: Alex Christofi, book harm, book love, book lust, book murder, bookmark, page dogear | posted in Books
For those who value character and honesty, politics has become increasingly depressing. To put it mildly. There never really was any hope the enthralled and craven Republican members of Congress would defy their cult leader. It’s a pity the Democrats didn’t play their hand better, but at least we got the asterisk in the history book.
And then we get kicked in the nuts by Iowa in what, make no mistake, was a stunning case of incompetence and stupidity. This was an unforced double (or triple) error I’ll rant about more when I learn more details.
One thing is clear: This is going to be a very strange — and no doubt very ugly — 2020 political season.
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54 Comments | tags: Amy Klobuchar, Anyone But Trump, Bernie Sanders, democracy, Democratic Party, democratic society, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg | posted in Politics, Society
I don’t know if YouTube’s algorithm handed me the Intel drones video due to all the aviation videos I’ve been watching or due to the Kilauea volcano videos done using drones (which led to other using-drone videos — it’s amazing how the drone thing mushroomed).
Point is, the drones video probably isn’t synchronous with my recent interest in aviation — more a direct consequence. But I’ve followed Tom Scott’s channel for years, so his entry into this Wednesday Wow post definitely is a case of synchronicity.
It’s also an airshow I’d really like to see!
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4 Comments | tags: aircraft, airplanes, drone aircraft, fireworks, flight, flying | posted in Wednesday Wow
Logos con carne 