Water droplets suspended in the air congregate on the surface of a newly towel-dried body. Taking a shower in a humid environment without using the bathroom fan is asking for sticky clothes or bedsheets, whichever you might be slipping into after the clean. Getting into bed fully clothed, like the main character of my favorite book, is another option. It's not a fair comparison, though, since he never showered.
It surprises me that earth hasn't yet been destroyed by a singular, human-caused event. Given the world's unfathomably large population, I expected by now at least one basement laboratory experimenter would have inadvertently combined certain elements in such a way as to spell our immediate demise. That we're all still here underscores just how important a factor earth's volume and mass is in the equation governing planet longevity.
The limited range that is characteristic of all the isolated pockets of destruction in our past can also be found in aspects of modern living, albeit not as so concretely a measure of physical distance. Despite this age of connectivity, for the most part we're only as affected by happenings in other parts of the world as we want to be. I can even zoom in and say that if there were a crisis unfurling itself a couple houses down the street I wouldn't necessarily be aware of it.
Humans leave small footprints in history. Our spheres of influence are never so large that an observer standing on one would mistake it as flat.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Moving Sidewalks For Standing Still
I don't expect the housekeeper will partially, much less fully, appreciate the three bottles of micro-brew I left in the fridge. Knowing this makes leaving them behind a greater disappointment. It wasn't supposed to end like this. Evidently, I overestimated my ability to drink a six pack in 4 days' time. I did briefly consider downing all three just prior to the airport taxi, thereby transforming the flight into an amusement park ride, but alcohol so early in the day is not something I can do.
How fitting to leave bottles of Rising Moon, the seasonal offering of Blue Moon, in a Huntsville hotel, a city that harbors the most extensive public display of the US space program.
Housekeepers probably have a love/hate relationship with the 'do not disturb' door knob sign. The first couple days it's used, they're probably thankful for the chores that they're excused from doing, but if it's always used, they may dread what they might find after the guest has left.
A sign at the baggage claim said something about checking for broken feet and wheels. Of course, it was in reference to luggage, but I enjoyed how weak language associations could be catalysts for the conjuring of absurd, out-of-place imagery. Specifically, imagery of fractured feet wrapped in gauze and of people rolling around on straight legs instead of walking.
How fitting to leave bottles of Rising Moon, the seasonal offering of Blue Moon, in a Huntsville hotel, a city that harbors the most extensive public display of the US space program.
Housekeepers probably have a love/hate relationship with the 'do not disturb' door knob sign. The first couple days it's used, they're probably thankful for the chores that they're excused from doing, but if it's always used, they may dread what they might find after the guest has left.
A sign at the baggage claim said something about checking for broken feet and wheels. Of course, it was in reference to luggage, but I enjoyed how weak language associations could be catalysts for the conjuring of absurd, out-of-place imagery. Specifically, imagery of fractured feet wrapped in gauze and of people rolling around on straight legs instead of walking.
Monday, March 15, 2010
No Chairlifts On 2-D Slopes
Several months ago on the radio there was an interview with a scholarly-type fellow regarding the origin of laughter in pre-humans. Sorry about the series of words ending with the phoneme /o/ in the previous sentence; one of the twins from the prior post still lingers.
The interviewee theorized that the earliest instances of what would evolve into modern-day laughter resulted from the following scenario: one among a group of our ancestors recognized a perceived threat as a false alarm. Naturally, this discussion motivated me to draw a line on a piece of paper.
Here we have my guess of what a person's Susceptibility To Being Dominated (STBD) is over a span of time encompassing a moment of perceived threat. To clarify, while a person's susceptibility is partly a function of things outside their state of mind, such as their surrounding environment, this plot only represents that portion of susceptibility which depends on the sensitivity of their threat detection, something they control directly. All other variables, i.e. surrounding environment, are assumed to remain constant. Additional assumption: a person's STBD is inversely related 1:1 to the sensitivity of their threat detection.
The leftmost horizontal portion represents a person's STBD under normal or average conditions. Where on the y-axis this line meets differs from person to person, but should remain flat for everyone. Moving right along in time, the line dips suddenly when a threat is perceived, rises sharply when that threat is recognized as a false alarm, and finally commences a graceful exponential decay back to normal. Notably, a person is more susceptible to attack immediately after recognizing a perceived threat as a false alarm than they were before perceiving the threat.
What's exciting about this plot is that, though it was drawn with respect to a physiological process, similarly shaped plots can be found in electronics, where the y-axis may represent voltage across a circuit element, or in control systems modeling, where the sharply unstable transient portion is followed by an exponential decay to steady-state (in a stable system).
The interviewee theorized that the earliest instances of what would evolve into modern-day laughter resulted from the following scenario: one among a group of our ancestors recognized a perceived threat as a false alarm. Naturally, this discussion motivated me to draw a line on a piece of paper.
Here we have my guess of what a person's Susceptibility To Being Dominated (STBD) is over a span of time encompassing a moment of perceived threat. To clarify, while a person's susceptibility is partly a function of things outside their state of mind, such as their surrounding environment, this plot only represents that portion of susceptibility which depends on the sensitivity of their threat detection, something they control directly. All other variables, i.e. surrounding environment, are assumed to remain constant. Additional assumption: a person's STBD is inversely related 1:1 to the sensitivity of their threat detection.
The leftmost horizontal portion represents a person's STBD under normal or average conditions. Where on the y-axis this line meets differs from person to person, but should remain flat for everyone. Moving right along in time, the line dips suddenly when a threat is perceived, rises sharply when that threat is recognized as a false alarm, and finally commences a graceful exponential decay back to normal. Notably, a person is more susceptible to attack immediately after recognizing a perceived threat as a false alarm than they were before perceiving the threat.
What's exciting about this plot is that, though it was drawn with respect to a physiological process, similarly shaped plots can be found in electronics, where the y-axis may represent voltage across a circuit element, or in control systems modeling, where the sharply unstable transient portion is followed by an exponential decay to steady-state (in a stable system).
Monday, March 8, 2010
An Economist's Bedtime Story
1. People tend towards talking about things in absolute terms because doing otherwise requires more energy-consuming real estate in the brain.
2. Some people live according to a fortress of rules that they build for themselves.
Combining 1 + 2 can yield resolute resolve across a myriad of topics, currency chief among them, such as this scrooge-tainted mandate:
Restrict money coming in from particular revenue streams to being spent only on related expenses. For example, from tomato sales at the local Farmer's Market, buy materials for a greenhouse expansion. But the relation between revenue stream and expense need not be so direct. The relation could be as weak as hinging on a word's multiple definitions: from the cash collected mowing neighbors' lawns, you buy an eighth of grass.
I think I probably stumbled across this idea through the strategy I strive for when playing warfish. I like to allocate to a particular continent bonus armies obtained as a consequence of occupying that entire continent. Publicly sharing warfish strategy doesn't concern me because my opponents should know this could all be misinformation.
Alas, it's not long before the mischievous twins, Dirty & Rhyme, conspire to spoil the good fun with a twisted one: use money earned donating sperm to purchase fucking time with a prostitute. Afterwards, lay there with yarbles destitute.
Or two, one less than too few: set aside funds coming in from payments of child support to press charges in court against the man who made you a victim of chikan, the one who softened you by pretending to be on the girls gone wild film crew.
2. Some people live according to a fortress of rules that they build for themselves.
Combining 1 + 2 can yield resolute resolve across a myriad of topics, currency chief among them, such as this scrooge-tainted mandate:
Restrict money coming in from particular revenue streams to being spent only on related expenses. For example, from tomato sales at the local Farmer's Market, buy materials for a greenhouse expansion. But the relation between revenue stream and expense need not be so direct. The relation could be as weak as hinging on a word's multiple definitions: from the cash collected mowing neighbors' lawns, you buy an eighth of grass.
I think I probably stumbled across this idea through the strategy I strive for when playing warfish. I like to allocate to a particular continent bonus armies obtained as a consequence of occupying that entire continent. Publicly sharing warfish strategy doesn't concern me because my opponents should know this could all be misinformation.
Alas, it's not long before the mischievous twins, Dirty & Rhyme, conspire to spoil the good fun with a twisted one: use money earned donating sperm to purchase fucking time with a prostitute. Afterwards, lay there with yarbles destitute.
Or two, one less than too few: set aside funds coming in from payments of child support to press charges in court against the man who made you a victim of chikan, the one who softened you by pretending to be on the girls gone wild film crew.
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