Whatever Pops into my Head

Whee! Ouch! - Blecch - Domestic Terror Takes a Blow
Sacrifice - Supreme Endeavors
Fame - Boom! II (the Sequel)
Moo! - Like maybe speed bumps?!? - Spin
Boom! - Vent - Brothers and Others - Time Travel
Art Consciousness - The Anti-Spam - Dust

Aside from the drivel below, my head is empty. This should not surprise anyone who knows me.

Careful What You Ask For...

Hopefully the next one will be smarter...

Bye, bye Mrs. Swee-ee-tie-Pie!
Drove my van to the gas station but gas was too high,
And the White House boys were drinking whiskey and rye,
Singing "This'll be the day Iraq dies,
This'll be the day Iraq dies."

The War on Terror Comes to the Southland

SAN DIEGO (Morenus Press) - The war on terror came closer to home yesterday when members of a newly-discovered cell of the infamous Black Widow brigade were killed in a series of night-time raids over the last few days by security forces of the Morenus Principality. Daniel Morenus, Chief of Security for this small coastal principality, stated that as many as sixteen cell members had been detected and killed. "We went in with people that were skilled at night-time operations. We think most of [the Black Widows] never even knew what hit them." Bodies of eight of the dead terrorists were displayed to the news media; blood stained the concrete around them and the widely feared red hourglass tattoo of the Black Widows was clearly visible on some of their torsos. He said that exact combat numbers were uncertain. "We're not in the business of counting bodies. We're concerned with rooting out these dangerous individuals so that they cannot take innocent lives."

Click image to enlarge Bodies of eight of the slain Black Widow terrorists. [MP]

Tolerance Urged

Reaction to the slayings was generally favorable among the local population, though some voiced the fear that they might be branded terrorists simply because of their appearance. "I have black skin, but I'm certainly not a terrorist, and I wouldn't want some yahoo deciding to shoot me in the name of the war on terror", stated Ebony Morenus (not a blood relation of Daniel Morenus). "I'm as patriotic as the next guy, but I hope that those of us who are law-abiding won't be targeted just because of our ethnicity." Security Chief Morenus insisted that the military actions, carried out just before midnight Friday and Saturday, were justified and would not extend beyond the tightly woven terror group. "The Black Widows have a long history of targeting civilians, even children. They're very good at concealment and clandestine operations. We had to take them out before they could harm innocent civilians. Of course we're not going to target law-abiding citizens."

Click image to enlarge Ebony Morenus [MP file photo]

More Could Be At Large

The Security Chief conceded that it was not known if the cell had been wiped out. "At this point we're still trying to assess whether there's still Widow activity out there. We'll be doing reconnaissance in force and surgical strikes as necessary until we feel our civilian population is safe. We really don't know yet how much of an impact we've had on the Widows. We could have wiped out an entire cell, or this could just be the tip of the iceberg." He vowed that operations would continue until "peace and security have been restored to the area."

Click image to enlarge Daniel Morenus addresses reporters after Saturday's raid. [MP]

A Statistic

• About 27 million Soviet citizens died in World War II.
• Of them, about 15.6 million were civilians, 11.4 million were soldiers.
• By comparison, total US losses, all military, ran to 405,400. The British lost 306,000 soldiers and 60,600 civilians.
• 75 percent of all soldiers who died in World War II were Soviets. More than 25 percent of them have never been identified.

Reprinted without permission from the June 11, 1997 issue of The Christian Science Monitor.

To MAKE, to DO

I explored these pages, and was awestruck! Some of the things these people do, most people just read about in cyberpunk novels or see in improbable sci-fi flicks. These people embody the German verb machen meaning to make or do.

They show that the Power and the Glory may be found in a welding torch.

• Survival Research Laboratories were probably the inspiration for the junkyard recluses in William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive.
• Junkyard Wars, a show where two teams of people have ten hours to create a working, generally powerful device from the gleanings of a scrap yard.
• The New England Rubbish Deconstruction Society truly embodies the light side of the force.
• Geo, one of the members of N.E.R.D.S. His site (one of the best of the lot) has a tremendous array of further links to vortices of creativity.

My Fifteen Minutes

I "discovered" this number using a program written by a gentleman named Yves Gallot (by virtue of which he is deservedly the co-discoverer), which can be used to evaluate huge quantities of numbers of the form k * b^n + 1 and similar expressions, for different values of b and ranges of k and n. I am presently participating in the search for Proth primes, which are prime numbers of the form k * 2^n + 1, and to that end I am examining numbers of the form 179 * 2^n + 1, for 70000 <= n <= 100000. This is the first large prime number I have stumbled upon in my yearlong quest for mathematical obscurity.

I'm afraid I still don't understand all the math behind the primality testing involved, although I have learned a lot in the last couple of months and I am even starting to make some observations about the properties of numbers of this form (which have likely already been made by other mathematicians, but I won't let that stop me).

I'm having fun, and take some personal pride in the discovery, but I am also humbled by the degree to which so many modern mathematical endeavors are the product of the coordination of vast numbers of people rather than the brilliant efforts of a lone mathematician.

• More information on Proth Primes

• More information on prime numbers in general

The Glowing Path

Congratulations on your five recent nuclear tests. Welcome to the world's least-loved fraternity, the Nuclear Family. In your enclosed membership kit, please find:

• The well-earned hatred of your immediate neighbors, for destabilizing the region and demonstrating that you wish to be able to eradicate them instantly.

• The distrust of the existing nuclear powers, who aren't that fond of being in the group themselves.

• The deserved scorn of the international community for reversing a world-wide trend toward nuclear disarmament and potentially starting an Asian arms race.

On the plus side, you have made great strides in dispelling an unfortunate stereotype. The Indian people have long been unjustly depicted (particularly on American television) as wise, gentle, and philosophical. You have clearly proven that you are just as capable as Americans of blind nationalism and reckless endangerment of the future of humanity.

Love, Dan

So Americans are incapable of independent thought?

SO WHAT??!!?! Because some talking head swears off hamburger means the whole United States is going to follow suit??? If so, why the Hell is that Oprah's fault??!?

My advice the cattle ranchers: get a life and stop whining.
My advice to the rest of the country: turn off the TV and do something worthwhile.

You can be recycled into something useful!!!

• The Japanese and Norwegian Whaling Industries. They rank somewhere between anthrax and Streptococcus on my list. (I don't think we should be licensing aboriginal "harvests" either. They're far too convenient an excuse for the people that want to try to legitimize their current illegal whaling activities.)
• The Norwegian and Canadian Seal Industries. Here's why.
• The Mitsubishi Corporation's Wood Products Division. Here's why.
• Rush Limbaugh. Here's why, in his own words. See items 6, 8, 16, 24. Have to admit, it's hard to argue with 11, 15, 34, 35.

Spin

Something that occurred to me recently as I was reading the liner notes for my new CD from "Sneaker Pimps" (a trip-hop band of some worth), was that music is becoming recombinant. Perhaps the best known example is the guitar riff from David Bowie's "Under Pressure" being lifted into somebody's rap song ("White Lines"?). Anyhow, the part of the liner notes that caught my eye was:

SAMPLES

"6 Underground" embodies portions of "Golden Girl" (John Barry) ...
"Spin Spin Sugar" contains samples from Luciano Berio's "Visage" taken from the album "Electronic Music"...
"How Do" special voice contribution by Britt Eckland...
"Waterbaby" contains a sample from David Sylvian's recording of "Let The Happiness In"...

I suppose this may already have happened, and for the life of me I can't decide whether I like the possibility or not.

Boom!

News Item: The Soviet Military/KGB is alleged to have lost track of about 100 suitcase-sized nuclear bombs. Russia denies everything.

Dear Russian Military,

Wow! I am so totally unimpressed by your ability to keep track of nuclear weapons! So you managed to lose track of over 100 nuclear bombs, each a one-kiloton device disguised as a suitcase and capable of being detonated by a single person in thirty minutes.

Love, Dan

Let's be fair about this. Maybe if you'd been PAID some time in the last few months (years?) you'd be more motivated to keep an eye on things. But what person in his right mind relinquishes control of a nuclear device that could be set off in his own damned city?!? I can only assume that somebody wanted to earn a few extra bucks and sold the puppies on the black market. Wait a minute, now try to think of an organization who:

• has to buy nuclear weapons on the black market

• you'd actually want to trust with a nuclear weapon

Assuming the world community doesn't find and liquidate the people who now control these weapons, how much of a chance do you suppose Lebanon or Israel has of making into the 21st century without unwillingly acquiring the world's largest collection of blown glass?

This is sort of like the lottery in reverse: "OK, of all the cities in the world, 100 lucky finalists will have a chance to make history as pawns in a nuclear terrorist confrontation! New York city, come on down! And you thought blowing out the basement in the World Trade Center was exciting!"

The kidnap has occurred. I will be very interested to see the ransom note.

Trivial Things That Annoy Me

If you want to hear about something worth getting worked up about, go here. This stuff is totally low-rent, but it still bugs the Hell out of me.

• Cigarette smoke. Especially in restaraunts. Urgh!
• People who interrupt me to correct my grammar. I want a conversation, not an English lesson, damnit!!!
• People who don't know how to use quotation marks. This seems to include every single blasted sign painter born since 1960.
• People who tailgate other cars instead of passing them.
• Published matter that confuses "it's" and "its", "your" and "you're", "their" and "they're", etc.
• People who put on the brakes in the middle of the freeway with nothing in front of them because they just realized they're going 66 miles per hour and the limit is 65.
• People who can't pronounce "etcetera."
• Rush Limbaugh. He really is a big fat idiot. But he's also trivial.
• Big trucks with halogen headlamps which shine right into my eyes when I'm driving.
• The use of "violence"/"silence" as a rhyming pair in songs. I don't know why this bugs me...
  • Depeche Mode: "Leave in Silence"
  • Depeche Mode: "Shake the Disease" (Hmm... 3 strikes and you're out, boys!)
  • Pop Will Eat Itself: "Ich Bin Ein Auslander"
  • The Cranberries: "Zombie" (Annoying!)
  • King Missile: "Metanoia" (But they can get away with it 'cause they have really cool lyrics the rest of the time. Besides, I think they were actually lampooning this very trait.)
  • The Verve: "Bittersweet Symphony"
  • Tears for Fears: "Deja Vu and the Sins of Science"
  • Tears for Fears: "Tears Roll Down" (What is this?!?)

I told you it was stupid trivial stuff.

AAIIIIEEEE!!!!! Links!! No! No! NO! NO!! NO!!!!

First off, try my brother's homepage. Lots of content, including some info on Pocahontas (a distant ancestor of ours).

This man is a @!$* genius!

Meet Virtual Val, a woman I might classify as "volcanically creative." This page cannot easily be categorized, but is well worth visiting.

This guy puts out an amazing amount of funny and creative content. Visit the Brunching Shuttlecock.

Thoughts on Time Travel

I think time travel only makes sense from the standpoint of parallel realities--i.e., a multiverse where infinite numbers of parallel universes exist, in which each variation of various events is played out infinitely. This makes for an unimaginably rapid explosion of parallel existences since the only way I can see for the scheme to work is if there is a branch point for every quantum event which has more than one possible outcome.

The reasoning that started this train of thought is as follows. Suppose that you travel to the past. Trying to avoid changing history is virtually impossible, assuming that the earth is a chaotic system. Even a miniscule change in conditions at a very localized area should propagate to affect world wide conditions within a few years (the butterfly theory). The tricky part is, if you went very far back into the past, I would think you would fairly quickly destroy the vast chain of coincidences leading to your birth. In a single-thread universe, I would expect any changes in the past to be instantly and transparently incorporated into your being as they occurred. Thus, you would never notice the changes, as your memories would change with events. (This contradicts the "Back to the Future" view of time travel, where Michael J. Fox watches in horror as members of his family start to fade out of a photograph he has in his pocket.)

Actually, the "Back to the Future" approach is also used in a Ray Bradbury story whose name I forget, where a man transported back in time to hunt a Tyrannosaurus Rex (which was going to die of natural causes moments later) accidentally steps off the levitation platform and squashes a beetle. When they return, history has changed subtly, and the organizer of the tour recognizes the changes and blows away the bumbling hunter. I disagree with this story because I don't think the organizer would have realized there were changes. Also, I think the mere fact that two hominids were breathing in a subtropical forest would be sufficient to change history in a few million years. Which leads to an amusing exercise in ethics. If you travel in time, and make changes which alter history in ways which will not be apparent until well after your native time, is this unfair to inhabitants of the future (potential people who will now not be born, etc.)?

My brother responded:

Of course it's fair! You do the same thing right now all the time! Besides, people who wouldn't be born, robbed, etc. would be balanced by other people who would be. I don't think there would be an ethical problem with an innocent alteration of the present, either. The tourguide would be found guilty of first-degree murder under the laws of most countries, from the US to the PRC. His assessment of the two candidates was a political opinion, and his reaction was a brutal vigilante murder. Realistically, I imagine that the average alternate 20th Century would be less bloody than the real one.

BTW, IMHO the changing photographs in "Back to the Future" do what is necessary for clarity and drama, namely, they create a visual metaphor. Everyone gets it, it's visually dramatic, and it allows the characters to express their horror. Equally importantly, it allows them to realize what is going on, which is required for the plot. Similar thing with using a computer in the movies, of course. In the fight between dull technical accuracy and compelling drama, compelling drama wins, unless the inaccuracy would prevent most people from enjoying the movie. If the plot rests on one or two major scientific implausibilities, well, most sci-fi does.

Seen Slacker lately? At the beginning when the guy walks out of the bus station, hails a cab, and starts rambling to the disinterested cabbie about just this topic? He says that at that time there was a parallel universe in which instead of taking the cab he went to play pinball, and then a beautiful blond picked him up, they went back to her house. The cabbie's existance in this parallel universe is different too since he would not be in the cab rambling on. Thousands of parallel universes were at that moment splintering off as each instance of him made a decision, blah blah blah. (He then says he had a dream where he was reading a book, "Like how many dreams do you have where you read?").

As far as the Back To The Future idea of time travel, well movies were never factual. I sat through all 5 Planet Of The Apes during my impressionable years and came to the conclusion that it was impossible for Ceasar to have been the son of Cornealius and Zera (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes) who travelled back to Earth in the reconstructed space ship that Bright Eyes (Charlton Heston in the original Planet of The Apes) arrived in. He leads the ape revolt and subjugates the humans, and begins the civilization which in 3000 years is the place that Heston went. He (Ceasar) can't be an ancestor of his parents! It would've never occured to me if I hadn't watched all 5 back-to-back.

Food for thought.

Incidentally, recent experiments where an atom has been observed seeming to exist in two places at once due to a quantum paradox may make this view of things untenable--I would have expected the atom only to show up in one place in this universe, and in the other place in other universes.

On a lighter note, there is a strategy boardgame called "Time Agent" where each player represents one of about six or eight different time-travelling races, each trying to change the outcome of certain key events in an effort to alter history for their own ends. The game incorporates the cause and effect of various events throughout its fanciful galactic history.

In fact, you end the game by altering several different paths of causality such that time travel has no longer been invented, thus making your changes permanent.

A Scientific Experiment

I've heard a theory, and I want to harness the vast power of the Web to test it. I just need you to take a very short survey. I won't risk tainting the results by explaining the theory just yet. Once I get a statistically significant sample I'll publish the results here.

Please help further our knowledge of the human condition by taking the survey. Your country thanks you.

The Anti-Spam

I've been getting an awful lot of chain letters, warnings about evil email viruses, letters urging me to participate in various long-concluded Internet votes, etc., and I have decided as a public service to post a few guidelines for when it is appropriate to forward these sorts of things to everyone you know. If you don't want to read the whole thing then the simple answer is NEVER!

Old stuff from my home page

I have moved some of the not-quite-fresh stuff from my homepage to the attic.

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