2014 — 25 August: Monday
I've just been listening to an amusing programme about plain English1 featuring too much Stephen Fry and not enough Charlotte Green.
Inevitably...
... the Bank Holiday weather forecast proves accurate as the rain rains with gusto. No walk today.
Meanwhile, as I listened to a reading from the latest biography of Philip Larkin, I've also been hoovering up the latest batch of BBC 6Music Sunday stuff that I always enjoy, and reading an over-formal "interview" with the author (William Deresiewicz) of that enticing new book "Excellent Sheep" — dealing with his view of the inadequacy of the education processes that have been churning out the US equivalent of Oxbridge graduates on this side of the pond. A dull job, but someone has to do it.
How sweet...
... do things need to be?
The Obamas hate him, he says, because they don't want to fight the industry. "They've got a lot of enemies. I'm not mad at them. I actually kind of like them." On paper, Lustig is absolutely livid. "In America we have this thing, it's
called the Declaration of Independence. We are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It doesn't say a damned f***ing thing about the pursuit of pleasure." But he has seen how it worked with tobacco. It took a long time,
he says, but industries can't poison people en masse for ever.
"We have to do something about it, or there will be no healthcare. In fact, there will be no society. Are you ready for that? That's what's gonna happen. It's just not OK. There will be no money left for anything else."
I've long thought...
... our chum BoJo should stick to occasional appearances on "Have I Got News For You" where he can be regularly lampooned.
That strikes me as preferable to such a "minor" law change.
I've been bugged...
... since I read this rather silly piece on 12 untranslatable words last week by one of the words on the list. I was sure I had indeed met it, but when had I previously mentioned "Waldeseinsamkeit"? Five years ago to the day, it seems.
However, the so-far-unanswered question that's still bugging me is "how come my Copernic desktop search let me down?" [Pause] And how come now it's finding the earlier occurrence? It didn't when I last went in search of the word last week.
Why I'm not...
... a mathematician, a logician, or a philosopher is clearly revealed by the way my brain goes into meltdown while contemplating the paradox of the Trojan Fly:
Achilles travels at 8 mph but the tortoise manages only 1 mph. So Achilles has given it a start. At the point where Achilles catches the tortoise he draws level with a fly which proceeds to fly back and forth between them at 20mph.
(So far, so good.)
After another hour Achilles is 7 miles ahead of the tortoise, but where is the fly?
I'm not about to engage with Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis at my time of life :-)
Well, the 'answer' is (apparently) "anywhere, and facing in any/either direction". I spotted this paradox on page 200 of Michael Clarks' 2002 book "Paradoxes from A to Z" (though, for some paradoxical reason, the designer of the cover artwork preferred an all lowercase version of the title and the author's name). Clark (I assume) lifted it from the original version published in 1971 in Mathematics Magazine by AK Austin of Sheffield. And the late Wesley C Salmon revisited it in 1975 in "Space, Time, and Motion". When I went a'looking for that book on Amazon, I found a scornful reviewer who seemed to be pooh-poohing (I think that's the technical term) all previous 'thinkers' for not having analysed such problems with the Smooth Infinitesimal Analysis I mention (but had never heard of).
Having glanced at an 11-page "Introduction to SIA" by one John L Bell I quickly decided that a better use of my time might be to burn the implements of my craft and begin life anew as a trainer of performing elephants. After first making my evening meal, of course.
Despite their age...
... I enjoyed both these pieces by Charles Stross on "gotchas" for the users of writing tools and ever-changing file formats in our evolving digital times.
And a bacterial...
... "gotcha" on a more global scale, quite some time ago. I first read about it in Sci Am and then asked Mrs Google to tell me where I might find out more:
Evidence left at the crime scene is abundant and global: Fossil remains show that sometime around 252 million years ago, about 90 percent of all species on Earth were suddenly wiped out — by far the largest of this planet's five
known mass extinctions. But pinpointing the culprit has been difficult, and controversial...
The researchers' case builds upon three independent sets of evidence. First, geochemical evidence shows an exponential (or even faster) increase of carbon dioxide in the oceans at the time of the so-called end-Permian extinction.
Second, genetic evidence shows a change in Methanosarcina at that time, allowing it to become a major producer of methane from an accumulation of organic carbon in the water. Finally, sediments show a sudden increase in the
amount of nickel deposited at exactly this time.
As the MIT researcher Dan Rothman says "Microbes run this world. We just live in it". Sounds (slightly) more plausible than "turtles all the way down"...