Of Hagfish and Twitter

One of my granddaughter Leya's hobbies is making slime. Yes, slime. It's quite the "in" toy nowadays, and you'll pay top dollar for it at your local toy store; Leya, however, has developed an endlessly-adjustable formula for mixing play slime at home using various combinations of ingredients and fragrances. Slime is fun. Who knew?

Thus it was that this interesting article in The Atlantic Monthly caught my eye recently: No One Is Prepared for Hagfish Slime.

Yes, it seems that the humble and unfortunately-named hagfish, along with its numerous other unique and interesting features, uses slime as a defensive weapon.

When threatened, the hagfish exudes small amounts of slime (about a teaspoonful) from pores in its skin, and that small amount of slime can expand in volume up to 10,000 times ... clogging the eyes, mouths, and gills of attacking predators. The picture below shows the aftermath of a highway accident in Oregon in which a truck carrying a load of hagfish (for export to South Korean restaurants, where they are considered a delicacy) overturned and covered the road - and the pictured car - in slime generated by the truckload of panicked fish.

I think this is a very interesting capability, although perhaps not as unique as one might think. Consider such predatory creatures as donaldtrumpus egoisticus maximus and rogerstoneius dirtytricksibus, both of which respond to the least attack with bursts of slime from their overdeveloped Twitter glands. Indeed, there are many subspecies of homo sapiens* that have the same reflexive reaction to ideas they don't like.

Speaking of that sort of slime, let us not forget that uncontrolled and thoughtless social media was foretold in the Bible: Chapter 11 of Genesis, verses 1-9, tells the story of the construction of the tower of Babel; with verse 3 addressing the issue of building material ...

And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime** had they for mortar.

And to this day, slime remains the mortar that connects many of the thoughts of the ignorant.

All in all, I think I prefer Leya's slime which, while yucky, is harmless and made for fun.

Have a good day. Keep away from the online slime.

More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* In case you weren't aware, the Latin "homo sapiens" translates as "wise man;" surely a laughable misnomer among much of the population.

** The King James Version of the Bible from which I drew this quote uses the word "slime," while the New Revised Standard Version uses the word "bitumen." While "bitumen" may be a more accurate translation of the original word for the cement the builders used, I believe "slime" works better as a contextual metaphor.

Thinking About the Next New Element

While researching the daily compilation of famous birthdays and historical events I publish on my Facebook page, I learned that on this date in 1939 a French physicist named Marguerite Perey discovered the element Francium, the last naturally-occurring element to be discovered. Every subsequently-discovered element has been identified using particle accelerators and nuclear reactions to add protons to elements that already exist.

I'm thinking about this in two ways.

First, Francium was discovered by a woman. At a time when we're pushing to get more women into STEM* careers, it's worth remembering that women have always been making their mark in science ... indeed, Mme Perey was a student of the great Marie Curie, the discoverer of the element Radium and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences (physics and chemistry).

Second, the name Francium was derived from the name of the country in which it was identified (France, of course). I'm not sure what the formal process is for determining the names of new elements, but I imagine that had it been discovered in present-day America, it would have been named Trumpium ... because who knows more about chemistry and physics** than Donald Trump? And who is better about putting his name on things in big letters?***

Which leads me to another thought ... what might be the properties of a new element named in honor of Donald Trump? Would it be completely inert or have wildly unpredictable properties? Would it be a dense solid or a gas whose properties are difficult to pin down? What color would it be?^† It would surely not exist in nature, but would arise from the breakdown of other, more stable elements; indeed, it would probably work as a powerful catalyst for the destruction of more useful compounds.

Any other ideas? It's elementary, after all.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

** And everything else, too ... just ask him.

*** Well, until they become a national embarrassment, like the Trump Shutdown. 

† I'm not going for the obvious comment.

How Will Future Historians Know Us?

As long-time readers of this blog know, I enjoy writing (and receiving) letters. Indeed, a number of you who have responded to my periodic offer of a hand-written letter have now become more-or-less regular correspondents whose letters I treasure.

Personal letters and diaries are some of the most valuable sources available to historians trying to document the march of time and events. There was a time, not so long ago, when almost everyone left a written trail of some sort, whether as letters, diaries, or journals. This was especially true of many of those who were the movers and shakers of history ... you may recall that the late George H. W. Bush was a prolific letter-writer, as were many other presidents. Our Presidential Libraries contain boxes of letters and memos, many hand-written or bearing written notes and asides, and those documents allow historians to piece together the development of our nation's history.

Unfortunately, not too many people write letters ... or much else ... any more. Cursive writing is seldom taught in schools, and recent generations have grown up in an era of e-mail, text messaging punctuated with emojis, and tweets that reduce complex ideas to 140- or 280-character bursts of capital letters and punctuation. My mother wrote boxes of letters to me when I was in college and stationed overseas, and I wrote boxes of letters back ... all of which I found in her things when she passed away. Someday, my great-grandchildren will have all those letters as a way of knowing why Bilbo was the way he was.

I got to thinking about all this again today when I read this opinion piece in the New York Times - All Text and No Subtext - discussing Mr Trump's reliance on Twitter for even the most consequential of presidential communications ... like announcing the precipitous withdrawal of US forces from Syria.

Administrations past left voluminous documentation of the discussion and debate that led up to major events and programs, allowing their successors to go back, review the documentary record, and - one hopes - avoid making the same mistakes others had made. One wonders what will be contained in the Donald J. Trump presidential library ... if, indeed, he leaves enough worthwhile material behind to establish one.

Although I love to write letters, I don't do it as often as I used to. I got an incentive this year when my oldest granddaughter went off to college and her father (my oldest son) was deployed for six months to an undisclosed location ... I tried (with moderate success) to write to them regularly. Nevertheless, as a retired guy I have more time available but more things I want to do, and so I find myself spread thinly among my many interests. I recently invested in a box of note cards as a way of trying to keep myself writing while forcing me to keep it a bit shorter.

Nevertheless, I plan to keep writing ... here, as long letters to friends and family, perhaps even as an occasional journal. If you want me to write to you, e-mail me your snail mail address and I'll do it, as long as you promise to write back. E-mails, tweets, and text messages don't count, especially if they consist of more than 35% exclamation points and capital letters.

Let's leave a tangible memory of ourselves behind.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

P.S. - I wrote about this general topic back in 2009 ... you can read that post here.

B.

Thoughts About Security Clearances

The latest buffoonery coming out of the Trump White House is one that few people fully understand: Donald Trump's petulant stripping of security clearances from former intelligence and security officials who have criticized him ... including taking them from those who actually no longer have security clearances.

Because of the excessive spin and bloviation on this topic, I thought I'd share a few observations with you based on my career as a military intelligence officer and as a civilian contractor supporting the Air Force after my retirement from active duty.

First of all, former senior members of the intelligence and security communities - particularly those who were career officials rather than political appointees - represent a wealth of knowledge and experience on which their successors can draw. Maintaining their clearances allows them to be tapped (often on short notice) for advice or historical perspectives on planned actions. Here's a personal story: after I retired from the Air Force in 1996 I worked as a contractor on the Air Staff, where one of my early tasks was to develop a planning framework for cyber security for the Air Force. I spent months working on the project, and when it was far enough along, my Air Force customer wanted it presented to a "greybeard* panel" (more colorfully known as a "murder board") of former senior intelligence officials. The board consisted of a half-dozen retired intelligence generals and admirals, including two former directors of the National Security Agency. I presented my proposals to them and answered very detailed and probing questions for a long and agonizing day, at the end of which they endorsed many of my ideas, shot down others, and made a number of excellent suggestions for improvements. They were able to do this because they had the professional knowledge and experience and the retained clearances that allowed them to continue to contribute to the nation's defense. Trump apologists seem to believe that a high-level clearance can be granted on the fly for brief periods of time if necessary. This reflects an abysmal misunderstanding of how classified material is protected and how access to it is granted.

The White House has accused former intelligence and security officials of "monetizing" their clearances - of using them to make huge salaries in the commercial world. Well, consider this: it's very expensive to get a security clearance. It involves months of investigations, interviews, and parsing of virtually every aspect of the candidate's life, and a careful consideration of the risks and benefits of granting access to classified information. A company that wants to bid on a classified contract needs people with clearances, and - understandably - prefers to hire people who already have them, rather than hiring new people and paying the government tens of thousands of dollars to conduct new clearance investigations. The government, for its part, wants to hire people who are ready to go, without the need to wait for clearance investigations and adjudications to be completed. I'd have thought an administration that's as intensely pro-business as this one would love to save companies money by recognizing the savings represented by hiring people who've already been cleared.

Third, the idea that criticism of Donald Trump and his policies has something to do with the possession of a security clearance is ridiculous. No one needs a top secret clearance or other special accesses to see the damage this administration is doing to the nation. Mr Trump is not at all concerned about security clearances per se ... he's simply concerned that the stature and experience of these persons gives authority to their criticisms, and yanking clearances is a petulant and convenient way to hit back at them when he can't argue on merit.

That's my take on this. I expect that those who worship at the festooned altar of Donald Trump won't accept this view, but I'm past caring about it. I no longer have a clearance, but I don't need one to recognize ignorance and poor leadership.

Have a good day. More thoughts later.

Bilbo

* I suppose if there had been any women on it, it would have been a "greybeard and bluehair panel."

History Written in Poop

From the Department of Really Fascinating Stuff comes this article: Reconstructing Lost Worlds with Poop.

For those of you who won't bother to read the article, I'll just tell you that it recounts the efforts of scientists to understand the flora and fauna of the distant past based on the analysis of ... uh ... poop*. Yes, scientists are studying the composition of ancient droppings to determine what various animals ate and how their diets contributed to the spread (or extinction) of various plants and other animals. This is not a new effort: you can read other stories about the wonders to be found in the analysis of poop in this article from the Smithsonian Magazine, and this Scientific American article, which looks both at the biology and the physics of defecation.

I find this fascinating, and it also leads me to wonder how future scientists will reconstruct our world, given that we tend to process most of our poop away. Most of the poop we'll leave behind will be of a type useful only to social historians studying our political campaigns. Except for things like poop trains.

Don't thank me ... it's all part of my work to bring you the straight sh ... uh ... poop.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* The science is called "scatology," and the dinner-table quality word for the poop is "coprolites."

Legal Translation

As part of my continuing quest to share interesting stuff with you, I thought I'd riff on this recent article from Atlas Obscura: Istanbul Closes the Books on Its Public Scribes.

The Readers' Digest version of the article is this: the Turkish court system uses an archaic and complicated form of the Ottoman Turkish language for its deliberations and rulings. Because many people were illiterate, few were fluent in the legal dialect, and lawyers were (and remain) expensive, there arose a class of people known as public scribes (arzuhalci, in Turkish) who would, for a modest fee, assist people in drafting petitions and preparing other legal documents. The public scribes are still in business, although they are dying out, being relentlessly opposed by the lawyers from whom they siphon paying customers.

There's more to the story - and it's all fascinating - but what strikes me is how much it reflects our relationship to the law in this country.

The public scribes in Turkey help translate the language of the law, which is so archaic and convoluted that ordinary people can't understand it, into something they can understand. The same situation exists here in America, where we have a priesthood of hundreds of thousands of high-priced lawyers (for those who can afford them) and overworked, underpaid public defenders (for everyone else) whose sole function is to represent people facing laws written in a legalistic Sanskrit they cannot understand.

A friend of mine who's a lawyer once told me that our legal language had grown so convoluted because it needed to be - every twisted word and phrase of it was the way it was because it had been litigated over decades to the point where everyone understood exactly what it meant.

By "everyone" I'm sure he meant "every lawyer," because much of it doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Perhaps we need public scribes instead. They'd certainly be cheaper.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Noise Pollution

There are lots of different types of pollution that foul our poor old world, not only the obvious ones that the current leadership of the Environmental Protection Administration wants to ignore in the interest of protecting businesses. Light pollution is one, although most people other than astronomers don't recognize or care about it ... who needs to see the stars at night, after all?

Another important type of pollution is noise pollution - the ceaseless din that surrounds us every day.  Traffic noise, aircraft noise, painfully loud rock music, Faux News, Donald Trump ... loud, discordant noise envelops us every day, everywhere. One example of the daily decibel assault is addressed in this interesting recent article: Why Restaurants Became So Loud — and How to Fight Back.

One of our favorite local restaurants has great food, excellent service, and reasonable (for NoVa) prices*. We love going there except for one thing: you can't hear yourself think. There three primary reasons for the tremendous noise level, and the Vox article addresses all of them:

Open, industrial-like space, which can make it seem like you're sitting inside a drum.

Minimalist decor, which removes the sorts of things - like curtains, carpeting, tablecloths, and plush cushions - that used to dampen the noise in older restaurants, but which are incompatible with the current trend toward informality.

Lots of people, which is the curse of wanting to go to a place to which lots of people want to go.

Oh, and there's one more reason that restaurants are noisy - we Americans are loud. Not much we can do about this one.

What can you do to protect yourself from restaurant noise? The article suggests four things you can try:

Dine Early: Most of us prefer a later dinner, but there are fewer people, which means less noise,  before 7 o’clock.

Ask for a Quiet Table: If you’re seated in a spot that's particularly loud, ask to move to a quieter location. If you make a reservation, ask to be assigned a table in a quiet area.

Ask Your Server to Turn Down the Music: If it's too loud for you, it's probably too loud for other diners, too, but nobody has said anything. Ask your server, or a manager, if necessary, to turn it down.

Complain: If enough customers complain, the managers may understand that they’re doing something wrong. Lodge a respectful complaint with a manager before you leave the restaurant, or note the noise level in an online review.

That helps with restaurants. Unfortunately, it doesn't help with the thunderous din coming from Faux News, Donald Trump, or Congress. I'm afraid you're on your own there.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* In case you're in the area, I'm talking about Mike's American Grill in Springfield. I also love their motto - "Be Nice or Get Out."

Assessing the Odds

So, here's something interesting I found online a few days ago - click to embiggen it or, if that doesn't work, click here to see the original ...

It's a chart from a UK Accident Claims Advice website that gives your general odds of suffering a fatal injury in various situations. There are a few interesting points that arise from a brief look at the various categories of fatal situations.

For instance, you have a 1 in 358 chance of being killed by firearms in the United States, but only a 1 in 1,018,182 chance in the UK. The odds of death by self-inflicted gunshot are 1 in 399.

Other interesting odds include:

Your chance of being killed by "Unintentional Poisoning by Exposure to Noxious Substances*" is 1 in 96. 

The odds of death by "Accidental Strangulation in Bed" are 1 in 5,730 ... probably less if you choose your partners carefully.

And, your chances of death from a dog bite are 1 in 16,448, while death from bites by a different animal** are 1 in 3,839,216. 

Not listed under the "Self-Harming" category is death by choking on bizarre pronouncements made by the White House Press Office.

Be careful out there ... it's a dangerous world, and I need all of you.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo 

* Fox News is not listed as one of the "noxious substances" to which one can be fatally exposed, but perhaps it should be.

** The type of animal is not specified, so there is conceivably a statistically measurable chance of death from an alpaca bite. Stay away from them.

Thunderclap Headaches

About five years ago in this space, I wrote about the official announcement of the world's hottest pepper - the Carolina Reaper, with a heat index of up to 2.2 million Scoville units (for comparison purposes, a good old jalapeno pepper checks in at between 5,000 and 15,000 Scoville units).

This is, as we say, a seriously hot pepper.

Well, Dear Readers, the Carolina Reaper is back in the news in this article, which reports that a man in Cooperstown, New York, was hospitalized with a debilitating "thunderclap headache" after eating one of the brutally hot chilis in a contest*. A thunderclap headache is so called because it strikes with the force of a thunderbolt, often without warning. It can be caused by any number of triggers that drive the body to a sudden reaction ... like chowing down on a pepper so hot that people who handle them usually wear protective gloves.

According to this summary from the Mayo Clinic, other signs and symptoms of thunderclap headaches include fever, seizures, and an altered mental state**. One might argue that you need to be in an altered mental state just to consider eating a thermonuclear chili pepper, but I guess it takes all sorts of people to make up this sad old world.

So, Dear Readers, if you feel a thunderclap headache coming on, run quickly to the nearest emergency room (if you have unwisely ingested a Carolina Reaper) or to your local polling place (if you have voted unwisely in a past election).

Who needs headaches, after all?

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Reminds me of the old joke that asks what a redneck's last words are ... "Hey, y'all, watch this!"

** Which can be brought on either by excessive belief and trust in a manifestly unqualified and erratic president, or by excessive fretting over ignorant and unbalanced tweetstorms.

The Tools You Need

Last week's issue of the Washington Post's "Local Living" section had an interesting article titled "10 Tools Every Homeowner Should Own - and 3 They Shouldn't." Naturally, I had to compare my oddly diverse collection of tools and add my own commentary ...

According to the article, the ten tools everyone should own are:

1. A Claw Hammer. This is handy for killing big spiders that intrude on your workspace. It also needs to be addressed in any reform of our health care system, because according to the Consumer Products Safety Commission, the most common tool-related injury is striking one’s own fingers with a hammer. I can attest to this.

2. A Manual Screwdriver Set. If you didn't get that spider with the claw hammer, you can impale it with a large screwdriver. Screwdrivers also have many other uses, such as stand-ins for crowbars, can openers, and awls.

3. A Cordless Drill. This is truly one of the world's great devices, the inventor of which deserves canonization. Except when you don't push the little button that governs direction of rotation, and the screw you were trying to insert flies across the room to land in an inaccessible place.

4. A Level. A useful tool for hanging pictures that will be exactly level until your guests arrive, at which time they will petulantly go crooked.

5. Needle-Nosed Pliers. There's no better tool for delivering a world-class blood blister in a highly-visible place.

6. Tongue-and-Groove Pliers. These are wonderful for replacing several tools at once, and are heavy enough to use as a defensive weapon.

7. An Allen Wrench Set. If you shop at Ikea, you don't need this. You already have at least a thousand Allen wrenches that came with your Swedish-named furniture.

8. A Putty Knife. In addition to everything else, it's useful for extending your reach into the inaccessible place your cordless drill threw that screw.

9. A Staple Gun. These are really cool, until a pair of good ol' boys end up in the emergency room after shooting each other with them while imitating an old West high-noon scenario.

10. A Digital Tape Measure. A digital tape measure? Okay, it's a neat toy, but for thousands of years, carpenters have been writing their measurements down on the piece of wood they're getting ready to cut, without the aid of a tape measure with a digital memory. I'll stick with my trusty old regular tape measure, of which I have three, none of which I can ever find when I need them.

 And the three tools you shouldn't own are:

1. A Table Saw.

2. A Circular Saw.

3. A Hacksaw.

You'll note that the common factor among these three tools is that they will quickly and efficiently remove parts of your body if you're not careful. And most of us aren't.

So, Dear Readers, what is your tool you wouldn't be without? Leave a comment to guide your fellow amateur handymen.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that my daughter, her husband, and I built her chicken coop with a claw hammer, two cordless drills, and a circular saw. And a first-aid kit.

B.

Witch-Proof Windows

I find all sorts of amazing things online. Some of them are amazing because I can't believe anyone would believe such a load of bovine excrement*, and others are amazing because ... well ... they just are.

In the second category comes this interesting article I found the other day - The Witch-Proof Windows of Vermont.

It seems that an architectural oddity of many old Vermont farmhouses is a crooked window tucked up under the eaves at a crazy angle, as in this example -

What on earth is the purpose of such a window, evidently known locally as a "witch window?" According to an architectural historian cited in the article, legend says that the angled window makes it difficult for witches to fly in on their broomsticks. Ooookaaaayyyy ...

Another rationale mentioned in the article is that the angled windows are "coffin windows," which supposedly make it easier to move a body in a coffin from the second floor without having to navigate a narrow or crooked staircase ... one just slides it out through the window and down the roof. Hmmm ... I would have thought it would be easier just to carry the body downstairs and put it in the coffin outside, but then, I have limited experience with moving bodies**.

Or if the purpose of the crooked window is to keep out unwanted evil spirits, why not install crooked doors to ward off door-to-door salesmen, religious flacks, and political pollsters?

I would have thought the most logical explanation was that the windows were installed by the lowest bidder.

So, Dear Readers, have you ever seen or heard of a Vermont "witch window," or have you lived in a house that had one? What do you think is the best explanation for having a window like that in your house? Leave a comment.

Have a good day. Use screens to keep flying things out of your windows, crooked or not. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* Pretty much anything tweeted by Donald Trump or generated by the NRA, for example.

** Although the events of the last year or two have caused me to consider making a detailed study of the issue.

American History Expressed in Presidential Lives

Earlier this week we celebrated Presidents' Day, the holiday formed from the consolidation of the former holidays of Washington's Birthday (on February 22nd) and Lincoln's Birthday (on February 12th) into a single day* to honor those who have served as the nation's chief executive.

Each president has his (there haven't been any hers yet) own story, and the history of the United States has been shaped by the personalities and actions of those who have occupied the nation's highest office. But there's another interesting way to view the intersection of presidential lives and American history ...

This interesting article by Philip Bump appeared in the Presidents' Day issue of The Washington Post - All of American History Fits in the Life Span of Only Three Presidents. This diagram, which I adapted from the article, makes the point:

The United States was founded in 1789, when Martin van Buren (our eighth president) was seven years old. 

William Howard Taft (our 27th president) was born in 1859, when van Buren was 77 and the United States was 70.

George H. W. Bush (Bush 41) was born in 1924, when Taft was 65 and the United States was 135. Mr Bush, of course, is still alive.

Thus, the lifespans of these three presidents cover all of the history of the nation.

I find this fascinating, as it helps to humanize our history and put it in a context we don't often consider. With any luck, we will look back many years from now at the Trump era as an unfortunate one-term (or less) diversion from a line of generally well-meaning and responsible occupants of the White House.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when we look at our latest collection of Great Moments in Editing and Signage.

Bilbo

* Yes, this is an oversimplification. Read the History.com article to which I linked for the full story.

Imagining What's in the Void

A few weeks ago, there was an item in the news that got Egyptologists and horror movie fans all fired up: scientists using a technique called "muon radiography" announced that they'd discovered a "giant void" inside the Great Pyramid of Giza ...

What could it be? Might it be another glorious treasure trove like the tomb of Tutankhamun? Does it hold the construction secrets left by the aliens that taught the Egyptians how to build pyramids?

It's an interesting mystery, and it probably won't be resolved any time soon, because the Egyptians are reluctant to do any more potentially-destructive excavating inside the pyramid. For the time being, we'll just have to live with the tantalizing knowledge that the truth is out there, buried under millions of tons of stone.

Of course, there's been plenty of speculation on what might be found there ...

- Hillary Clinton's 30,000 missing e-mails; 

- Former president Obama's "real" birth certificate; 

- The secret photos that prove Donald Trump's inauguration crowd on the Mall was vast beyond all measure;

- Construction records that show how the Egyptians built a pyramid that has stood for 4,000 years, and will help make the Big, Beautiful Wall™ on the Mexican border even bigger and more beautiful; 

- The GOP's plan for ensuring health care for all Americans; and,

- Donald Trump's tax returns.

How about you, Dear Readers? What do you think we'll find in the mysterious void in the Great Pyramid? Leave a comment and let the rest of us know what you think.

Have a good day. If you still need to do any Thanksgiving grocery shopping, do it now - the crowds will only get worse later today and into tomorrow.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo 

The Pittsburgh Potty

Having been gone from my home town for many years, and advancing in age, I've succumbed to the usual pangs of nostalgia for the good old days. Of course, the good old days weren't always as good as we like to remember ... as a consummate nerd, I was well and thoroughly bullied back in elementary and high school, but time tends to sand off the edges of the bad memories, and I've since reconnected with many of the old high school crowd (although not the bullies).

But aside from all that, there's an element of Pittsburgh nostalgia that came back when I read this article - What the Heck Is a 'Pittsburgh Potty' and Why Is It in Your Basement?

A "Pittsburgh Potty" is an ordinary toilet, but one that sits in an unusual place - usually right out in the open in the basement of older homes in the Steel City.

Considering that the toilet is usually employed in the service of functions that call for privacy, why does a Pittsburgh Potty sit in the open?

I'd never thought much about it, but the article has an interesting discussion of the history of the eponymous potty, and offers two competing theories. One relates it to the needs of the miners and steelworkers of the Pittsburgh region who would come home from work utterly filthy and enter their homes through basement doors or "mud rooms" where they could clean off the worst of the mess before going into the living areas. The other, which may be the more accurate, suggests that the toilets were placed in basements in order to keep frequent sewage backups at the lowest and easiest-cleaned level of the home.

Regardless of the real reason, I doubt that the old Pittsburgh Potty would be accepted in the wildly overpriced McMansions that we see here in NoVa.

Just plumbing the depths of history for you to start the new week.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Apropos of Nothing

I'd never given it much thought, but it turns out that development of the concept of nothing, or of a number representing nothing (zero), is considered to have been one of the most important events in human history, as discussed in an interesting article I read recently in VintageNews.com. Indeed, nothing is an absolutely vital concept, and yet it was rejected by religious leaders in medieval Europe as being evil, and a symbol of Satan.

I'm sure there's a televangelist out there somewhere who could explain why zero remains a symbol of evil in today's world, but there's more evidence of its importance in understanding current politics. Consider just a few of the many uses of nothing ...

It allows us to document the legislative achievements of Congress;

It lets us comprehend the ethical standards of the Trump administration;

It lets us explain strategic planning at the highest levels of the Trump administration;

And the availability of zero allows us to depict the size of the national debt ... as long as you pile up enough of them to the left of the decimal.

Where would we be without nothing?

Perhaps in rural Puerto Rico.

Have a good and mathematically sound day, safe in the knowledge that you have nothing to fall back on.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Golden Sewer

Long ago, when I was a lowly Second Lieutenant in the Air Force stationed at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, Louisiana, one of my numerous* additional duties was "Wing Silver Recovery Monitor." It involved collecting and securing the exposed radar film from the wing's training missions, and delivering it once a week or so to the local DRMO (Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office) so that it could be processed to recover the silver it contained as a result of the developing process. This was a not-overly-onerous duty that had the benefit of getting me out of the office for an hour or two, although I was never particularly convinced that the amount of film I turned in (a few pounds at a time) contained enough recoverable silver to reimburse me for the gas I needed to drive to the DRMO**.

I hadn't thought about my days in silver recovery for a long time, at least until I ran across this recent story: How $1.8 Million in Gold Flowed Through Switzerland's Sewers.

Wow!

According to the story, an estimated 95 pounds of gold worth nearly two million dollars laces Switzerland’s waste water from the refineries that process about 70 percent of the world’s gold. The discovery was made by environmental scientists monitoring levels of trace element contamination in sewage sludge*** at various locations in Switzerland. Here's the bottom line:

"While the scientists advise that, for the most part, it’s not economically worthwhile to recycle many of the trace elements found, the region of Ticino is a different, gilded ballgame. This area is home to several gold refineries and, at certain sites, the scientists write, 'concentrations of gold in sewage sludge are sufficiently high for recovery to be potentially worthwhile.'"

Somehow, I can't see a bunch of grizzled old sourdoughs leading pack mules into the Swiss Alps to pan for gold in sewage sludge. And I'm not sure I'd like to have the additional duty of Gold Recovery Officer in any of those locations.

At least in Switzerland, it could be a pretty shi ... uh ... unpleasant job.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* When you're a Second Lieutenant ... and particularly when you're the junior Second Lieutenant ... you can count on drawing every additional duty no one else wants. Which is most of them.

** Ha, ha - fooled you! I didn't get reimbursed, anyhow.

*** This is another reason why it's better to be a linguist than an environmental chemist.

How Would We Talk to Aliens?

One of the recurring themes of science fiction stories is the idea of the "first contact" - what happens the first time we come face-to-face with a species from another world. There are generally two ways such stories develop: either the aliens are friendly and want to get along with us, or the aliens are hostile and want to get rid of us so that they can take over the earth and wipe out or enslave the population. The first type of movie tends to be more cerebral, and is exemplified by films like "Arrival," while the second is more dramatic, and is exemplified by classic stories like "The War of the Worlds."

As a linguist, I'm interested in the idea of first contact and the question it raises: when we first meet an alien race from another world, how will we communicate with them? This article from the Real Clear Science blog poses that question and offers some thoughts.

First of all, communication will hardly be possible unless it's face-to-face, or at least closer than planet-to-planet. Considering that transmissions moving at the speed of light would take between 4 and 24 minutes (depending on the relative positions of the planets) to travel to Mars, any communication over that distance will be pretty disjointed and choppy ... and that's just to Mars. It would take about 200 years for a round-trip communication to the nearest earth-like planet, assuming an instant reply. Even considering the novelty, it would be a boring conversation conducted over generations.

Consider also that effective communication requires a shared basis of understanding. Here's a simple example: when I say "dog," you get a picture of a particular animal, along with the cultural and psychological elements we connect with dogs and our relationship with them. The aliens might have a similar relationship with an animal called a beffel*, creating a shared basis for communication on the topic of inter-species relationships. But what if the aliens don't keep pets? What if they believe it's blasphemous to have a master-pet relationship with another living creature? What if they actually worship the beffel, are horrified that we would keep an equivalent creature in a subservient position and launch a religious war to protect their god figure?

Here on Earth we have thousands of languages, most of which are mutually incomprehensible. Can we assume our alien race has one language, without the complications of dialect, slang, and the other factors that complicate mutual understanding?

Many scientists have suggested that communication with aliens might be based on mathematical principles, which we assume are universal. We base much of our language and thought on the concept of base ten ... useful because we have ten fingers and ten toes. But what if our aliens have, say, seven fingers and hooves instead of toes ... how might this alter their view of mathematical principles and relationships and complicate our understanding of that view?

But more important than all of this is a single simple question: how will we effectively communicate with an alien race when we can't even communicate effectively with each other? Republicans and Democrats have the same ultimate vision of America as an economically vibrant, secure nation of unlimited freedom under a benevolent government ... but profoundly different visions of how that can be achieved. The great monotheistic religions insist on their primacy and exclusivity - you will never reach heaven unless you accept Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, or unless you absolutely believe that there is no god but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. If you believe otherwise, there is simply no point in communicating with you ... this is why the Donald Trumps of the world want to keep Muslims out of the United States, and why non-Muslims are forbidden to enter the Islamic holy city of Mecca.

If we can't talk to each other, how will we talk to aliens? Sooner or later we may have to answer that question, and the answer won't be easy.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow, when we share more Great Moments in Editing and Signage.

Bilbo


* The "beffel" was a domestic pet kept by an alien race in a series of novels by Harry Turtledove.

License Plates Smarter Than Drivers

From the Department of What'll They Think of Next comes the latest high-tech idea: smart license plates.

I call your attention to this recent article from CNET: Dumb License Plates Are About to Get Smart. A new digital license plate called Reviver attaches to your car like any other traditional, convict-made metal license plate, but uses Wi-Fi connectivity and a connection to your car's power system to act like an electronic tablet and display registration (and other) data. The Reviver plate offers a number of possible advantages:

You could instantly update your registration without waiting for your state Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to cash your check and mail you stickers to paste on the plate ... a signal from the DMV would remotely update the expiration month. This could also give the option for renewing registration month-to-month, for those who are trying to sell a car and don't want the hassle of trying to get their state to reimburse unused months of registration fees.

You could, theoretically, change the background design of your plate at will, using a menu of options similar to the list of plate designs already offered by most states. This would allow you to support your cause du jour without having to order new plates with the desired design.

If you got tired of your vanity plate message, you could apply online to change it and, once the new message was approved, you could download it and update your plate immediately.

The plate could link to your bank account and pay for parking by connecting to the payment system at parking garages.

Your plate could receive and project Amber alerts and other public service messages (although I'm not sure I'd want this without the ability to public service messages I didn't want or support).

It could streamline the management of large vehicle fleets.

And it could substantially reduce the risk of theft and fraud by ensuring that the plate wouldn't work if it was stolen and mounted on a different vehicle.

There would, of course, also be disadvantages:

The up-front cost of the smart license plate could be prohibitively high when compared to the cost of a traditional metal plate, at least when it was first issued and installed, although it might prove cheaper in the long run. Who would bear the cost?

Your state DMV could decide to generate additional revenue by pushing advertisements to your plate.

Like all Wi-Fi-enabled devices, it would be vulnerable to hackers who could change the plate number or use the connection to interfere with other electronic elements of the vehicle.

And finally, what happens if your car suffers a dead battery or an electrical system failure ... how do you prove to the suspicious cop or tow truck operator that it's really your car?

I think a Reviver-type automated license plate is coming ... it's a natural outgrowth of the available technology and the interconnectivity provided by the Internet of Things. My personal jury is still out on whether or not it's a good idea, but as nobody has asked my opinion, I guess I'll just accept it when it comes ... especially if it comes with an option to send messages to other drivers like, "Back off!" or "Turn down your $#%! high beams!".

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

The Most Popular Slang Term of 1951

As you well know, Dear Readers, I love language in all its forms, with a particular interest in semantics (the meaning of words) and semiotics* (the study of signs and symbols as a significant part of communication).

This is why an online collection from - of all things - the Good Housekeeping website caught my eye not long ago: The Most Popular Slang the Year You Were Born.

The list begins in 1926 with "gold-dig(ger)" (referring to a woman who is interested in a man only for his money) and continues on through 81 separate screens** to "sick" in 2006. I suppose nobody has yet documented the most popular slang terms for 2007 to the present.

I was born in 1951***, when the most popular slang term was, sadly and probably appropriately, given my high school reputation, nerd. It could have been studmuffin, had I been born in 1986.

Sigh.

What was the slang term for your year? Leave a comment and share it with the rest of us. We promise not to laugh. Well, I do, anyhow.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* One of my favorite posts was "Don't Dig Here!", which looked at the challenge of conveying meaningful information via signs and symbols about dangerous locations to civilizations in the unimaginally distant future.

** AAAUUUGGGHHH!!! There's apparently no way to go directly to the year you want without going through each one in order.

*** Shortly after the sun cooled and the dinosaurs disappeared.

Number, Please

One of the stock scenes in movies about espionage and suspense during World War II and the Cold War (the first one) comes when the steely-eyed Gestapo agent or hostile policeman demands to "see your papers," and waits with outstretched hand while the hapless victim scrambles to provide his or her identification.

In the United States, of course, we don't have "papers" - a single national form of identification like most of the rest of the world does - no national ID, no internal passport, or whatever. The closest thing we have is a driver's license, and even those aren't necessarily accepted outside one's own home state.

But we do have Social Security Numbers.

It's virtually impossible nowadays to get credit, rent cars or apartments, go to school, or just about anything else without producing a valid Social Security Account Number (or SSAN). It's the key to your entire financial history and - along with your date of birth - is the information most prized by identity thieves and scammers. So widespread is the use of the SSAN, and so often have databases containing them been compromised, that they have become laughable - if not downright dangerous - as a form of unique and supposedly secure identification.

But what's the alternative? In an interesting and comprehensive Washington Post article, consumer technology reporter Hayley Tsukayama discussed the various alternatives that have been proposed as forms of unique identification and why each was found wanting. Biometrics (fingerprints, retinal scans, facial recognition, etc), blockchains, and a new national ID number have all been proposed, but each has faced opposition on the basis of security or privacy concerns.

Which leaves us with the original question: what's an appropriate, secure form of ID in a high-tech and supremely invasive world?

Nobody asked me, but I have a suggestion that makes use of a uniquely American trait: our love of firearms.

Why not kill a few birds with a single high-caliber stone by reinterpreting the Second Amendment to require every American to purchase and maintain a gun, and then use a combination of the manufacturer and the serial number of the personal firearm as the official ID? Instead of the traditional and badly compromised nine-digit SSAN (XXX-XX-XXXX), the average American would have an ID like "GlockABC1234," "SmithandWesson98047Z9X," or "Beretta54937Y." They might be difficult to remember at first, but that's a small price to pay for reinforcing the quintessential all-American love of guns.

I think this suggestion has a lot going for it: it honors the traditional American worship of firearms; expands the scope of the Second Amendment*; boosts the economy by greatly increasing the sale of firearms and ammunition; and produces an endless supply of possible ID numbers because of the differing numbering systems used by various manufacturers. In addition, because many Americans own large numbers of guns, the compromise of one ID number would not be a disaster because the individual could simply switch to another from his personal armory; those slackers who fail to maintain multiple guns could just buy a new one and start over. On the downside, I can see the more suspicious members of the pro-gun community objecting on the basis that this might make it easier for the government's Jackbooted Thugs™to swoop down in their black helicopters and confiscate everyone's guns ... after all, President Obama did that, right? Oh ... wait ... never mind.

That's my idea for improving national identification standards - what's yours? Leave a comment and be a ... big shot ... by offering a better idea if you have one.

Have a good day. Fire at will. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* After all, the Supreme Court expanded its intent from the arming of a citizen's militia (itself a reflection of a traditional American opposition to a standing army that might suppress citizens' rights) to a guarantee of the right of weapon ownership for personal protection (see District of Columbia v Heller, 554 US 570).