The Intelligence Conjecture

An economist named Jonathan Gruber got his name in the news because he called the American people “stupid.” Come on, Gruber, even if your fellow citizens are stupid, isn’t it stupid to say so in front of cameras and microphones?

A while back I had to call the police to my house. (Nothing major – just dumbassery committed by college-age kids who should know better.) The officer and I talked and he took notes and then our conversation took a tangent and we were discussing people in general. At one point the officer said this: “People are dumb, and they’re getting dumber every day.” Cops deal with people all day long, so if anyone knows whether people are getting dumber, a cop should know.

I turned on the TV and a quiz show was in progress. A contestant was asked to define an astronomical object named Miranda. It was multiple choice; he had to choose the correct answer from four possible answers. After a few seconds of indecision, the contestant stated: “I’m not a smarty astronomist, so I’ll use my lifeline.”

Smarty astronomist?

I have my own theory about intelligence. The amount of intelligence in the world is nearly a constant. That means, average IQ multiplied by the number of people is a number that doesn’t change or changes only a little. So as the population goes up, the average IQ goes down, because there is less intelligence to go around. Inversely, in earlier times when the population was smaller, the average IQ was higher.

Think about it. Modern humans don’t know how ancient Egyptians built the pyramids. Oh, we’ve worked out methods of handling stone blocks that the ancients might have used. In theory, we could build a pyramid today. But do you really think modern Egyptians could build a duplicate of, say, the Great Pyramid of Cheops, using copper tools and without machinery made of anything besides wood?

There are countless other examples of ancient ingenuity, such as the cities of Machu Picchu in Peru and Tiwanaku in Bolivia. Their stonework is so incredible that some people have proposed that they were built, not by human hands, but by the advanced technology of visiting space aliens. I have no doubt those cities were built by humans – just smarter humans than are around today.

Why has every civilization on Earth collapsed at some point? It’s because a civilization is founded by smart people. Then the population grows and grows until eventually the people of that civilization simply grow themselves into stupidity. They become too stupid to keep their civilization going and it collapses. It’s probably what happened to Atlantis.

We don’t have to go back to ancient times for evidence. If you’re a senior citizen, think back to your childhood. Weren’t people smarter back then? Sure they were. Heck, we went to the Moon in 1969! The flippin’ Moon! And the engineers who designed the rockets back then made their calculations on slide rules – pieces of wood (or plastic or metal) with numbers and markings printed on them. The most powerful computer of that era had only a small fraction of the computing power that is in your mobile phone. And we went to the Moon! Now it’s almost 2015. Have we been to the Moon lately? No. Not since 1972. We have no way to get to the Moon. It’s almost as if … we forgot how.

Thousands of years from now, America will be a myth, a legend. And when humans finally return to the Moon and discover the pitted and bleached skeletons of their ancestors’ landers and rovers, they will marvel that humans made it to the Moon in such a primitive time as the twentieth century. Doubtless some people will insist that we present-day humans must have had help. Help from – what else – an advanced race of space aliens. But no, we didn’t have help. We used slide rules and our brains, and they were enough because we were smart.

Christmas Day 2014

Another Christmas Day is done. And what did I accomplish?

I slept late, just because I could. I didn’t get out of bed until after 8 AM. I shuffled to the bathroom and peed last night’s special Christmas Eve blend of Sauvignon Blanc and 80-proof vodka. While doing that, I observed my face in the medicine cabinet mirror. My hair looked like a crazy man’s hair. Maybe I am a crazy man. If I am, would I know it?

I shuffled to the living room and grabbed the cord on the window blind and pulled the blind open. I could see blue skies in the west. Sunny day. That’s a nice change; it’s been cold and rainy for the past 3 or 4 days.

I turned on my computer and while it booted up I scanned the TV channels. Regular morning programming seemed to be all that was available. Meh. I read email and then surfed the news for a long time. There is so much interesting stuff on the Web. After a while I decided to fix breakfast: fried eggs and pork sausage links, a tasty combination of high cholesterol and a sage-flavored fat-bomb. To which I say: “Yum!”

Then I watched 1992’s My Cousin Vinny. I saw it years ago and felt like watching it again. It was the movie that brought Marisa Tomei international visibility playing Mona Lisa Vito, Vinny’s (Joe Pesci) fiancée. I really like the movie, but it still seems to me that Tomei, who was 28 at the time, was too much younger than Pesci, who was 49, for them to realistically be a couple. It turns out the role of Mona was planned for Lorraine Bracco, who was 38, but she turned it down. Trivia: The American Bar Association's publication, the ABA Journal, ranked the film #3 on its list of the "25 Greatest Legal Movies.”

After that, I watched The Interview. In case you’ve been on Mars for the past month, that’s the movie at the center of the Sony Pictures hacking. It’s the movie that garnered threats of world annihilation if Sony should release it. There are plenty of reviews on the Web so I won’t write another here, except to say that one reviewer described it as “scabrous, puerile and scatalogical.” In other words, uproariously funny if you’re a 14 year old American male. Although it didn’t make me laugh, I confess I almost smiled several times. If you like the Seth Rogen/Evan Goldberg brand of comedy, you’ll think this film is hilarious.

After that, I walked down the street to my friend Butch’s home. He asked if I preferred to come inside or go for a walk. I chose the healthy option and we walked a couple miles around the ‘hood, and our conversation went like this: “Remember what that used to be? … Yeah, that used to be … ” followed  by the appropriate noun – the post office, the barber shop, the bank, the drug store, etc. Eventually we arrived back at Butch’s house.

Butch has a small Christmas tree sitting on a table in the corner of the living room. I’d be willing to bet serious money that if he didn’t have a wife, there wouldn’t be a tree. Having a woman in the house can have that domesticating effect on a man. I scoff at his tiny tree, and he scoffs at my never having a tree. I tell him he’s wrong; my tree is in my head and I can see it just by closing my eyes, and though his tree is nice, the tree in my imagination is much prettier and much less work. So I’m happy with it.

After some time, a carload or two of his family arrived so it seemed like a good time to make my exit. I snagged a couple of his wife’s homemade cookies on the way out and walked back to my house. When I turned on the TV, I saw that some kind of musical Christmas special was on. It was called A Hollywood Christmas at the Grove and the next band up was going to be Pentatonix. I happen to like Pentatonix, but in small doses. I mean, a cappella music gets old quick, but they do it quite well. Trivia: music is older than language. Bone flutes have been dated 40,000 to 80,000 years old, and experts assume that people were singing (or at least humming) before they began making flutes. In Judaism, the Torah was set to music as a way to remember it before it was written down.

And so my day ended like this: TV reruns and this blog post. Which I will now publish to the Web. It’s the only thing I’ve accomplished today. At least, it’s the only thing I can point to; the only tiny scratch I’ve made on the Universe today. It’s my Kilroy was here, my Mr. Chad, my Foo was here. I blog, therefore I exist.

And now it’s midnight. I’ll watch some Pentatonix on YouTube followed by Modern Family reruns until bedtime. Goodnight, all.

Must Be the Christmas Season

Something about the Christmas season makes people crazy. And sometimes it makes them mean. Which is why I prefer to avoid people at Christmas.

For example, I know better than to go to the stores or malls during Christmas season, but today I wanted a pizza. So, knowing better, I drove to Walmart to buy one of their deli pizzas. As I turned into the parking lot, there was a white car stopped at a stop sign in a lane to my left, a lane I intended to enter. Behind the white car was a black SUV. I turned left into the lane the white car was in, but then I had to stop because the black SUV was blocking part of the lane and I couldn’t proceed.

The driver of the white car was a white woman with a passel of young kids. The woman jumped out of her car and came over to mine, screaming her words at me. “Didn’t you see the stop sign?! I almost hit you! You drove right through it! What is wrong with you!” Then she jumped back into her car. I looked back at her car, wondering what she was talking about, as I had not encountered any stop sign. I’ve driven that route into the parking lot a hundred times and there has never been a stop sign on my lane. The furious woman had the stop sign, not me. Her kids looked my way, frowns of disapproval on their faces.

The woman drove off and the black SUV pulled up beside me and stopped. The driver was a middle-aged black woman. She looked at me and said, “You see how some people are? But don’t let her take your glory.” And she drove away.

If that first woman had had a gun, she might have shot me, she was that angry. All because she thought I had driven through a stop sign that existed only in her head.

But I think the second woman’s advice was sound – for this Christmas season, and all times of the year. Never let the other person take your glory.

Santa

In one week it will be Christmas Eve. Maybe that’s the reason I began thinking about that children’s Christmas song, “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.” Thinking especially of these lyrics:

He sees you when you're sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness sake!

He sees kids when they’re sleeping? That sounds a little creepy. And he knows if every kid on the planet has been bad or good, so he must be watching all the time. Monitoring us. Is Santa … God? It would explain a lot. Like, how can he visit so many kids in one night? He’s God – He just stops time. And, how does he get into homes with no chimney? He has the power to pass through walls. And, how can he have flying reindeer? Easy to do if you’re God.

Anyhow, I googled “Is Santa Claus God” and found that I’m not the first to ponder this topic. In fact, one person had composed this helpful chart.

That settles it. You no longer have to wonder about God. He wears a red suit with a big, black belt around his waist and black boots on His feet, He rides in a sleigh pulled by supernatural beings disguised as reindeer, and He delivers toys to good children every year on his Son’s birthday. And Heaven? Obviously, it’s at the North Pole.

It all makes sense now. Happy Holidays!

Science

I saw this headline:

Feeling young at heart wards off death, scientists find

The headline was followed by these sentences:

Researchers at University College London found that those who felt younger than their actual age were 41 per cent less likely to have died in the follow up period.

And

Scientists have proven that people with a youthful spring in their step and an unswerving optimism about the future seem able to cheat death.

I see this kind of thing (“scientists have proven …”) on the Internet all the time, and I am going to write about it because it touches on one of my pet peeves: journalists who don’t understand science but write about science.

I’m fairly sure that the researchers at University College London made no statement to the effect that feeling youthful helps a person live longer. If they did make such a statement, they should be sent back to school to study science.

The gist of the article was that researchers followed more than 6,000 people for eight years monitoring their happiness levels and health, and they found that happy people tend to live longer than unhappy people. In the field of epidemiology (the science that studies causes and effects in health and disease processes) this kind of study is called an observational study.

I’m sure many people have wondered if happier people live longer than less happy people. Framing this question scientifically, we’d like to know:

• Is there an association between happiness and life expectancy?
• If there is an association, does happiness help us live longer or is something else happening?
• How does happiness help us live longer?

An observational study usually begins by collecting data. In this study, the data is the happiness and health of 6,000 people. Collecting data allows us to observe associations that develop over time. After collecting and carefully analyzing this data, the researchers reported that they observed a correlation in the data which can be stated: happiness is associated with longer life. Let  me stress that at this point, nothing has been proven.

When we see an association between two variables (let’s call them A and B) we might assume that A causes B. But perhaps B causes A. Or, perhaps both A and B are caused by a third variable, which we’ll call C. In this case, C would be what is called a confounding variable.

After running an observational study and finding an association, the next step is to form a hypothesis – a possible explanation. The hypothesis must be testable. To test the hypothesis, we conduct experiments and collect data from the experiments; this process is called a clinical study. Then we analyze the data and reach a conclusion. Not until all this is done do we have anything remotely like “proof.” Even then, nothing is considered proven until other researchers repeat our experiments and reach the same conclusions.

It may seem reasonable that feeling happy could make us live longer, but perhaps having better health is the confounding variable that makes people happy and helps them live longer. Or perhaps having more wealth is the confounding variable that makes people happy and, by allowing them to eat healthier foods and have access to better health care, helps them live longer. The researchers acknowledged their study had not proven anything when they stated “The mechanisms underlying these associations merit further investigation.”

So folks, when you read a headline that says, for example, “Eating an egg a day is associated with diabetes,” just remember: words like associated with or correlated with mean that you are reading about an observational study, and observational studies are not proof of anything! To repeat: such studies only allow us to form a hypothesis, which must be tested by a clinical study, and the results of the clinical study must be reproducible. An observational study is the beginning of the road, not the end. Don’t let sensational health headlines worry you. Read carefully and apply at least a little skepticism.

Does every journalist get every story one hundred percent correct? Unlikely. Don’t be the person who thinks, “I read it on the Internet so it must be true!” It may be better to think, “I read it on the Internet so some of it may be true.”

Fishing

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life. One of the most unusual was tuna fishing on a pole-and-line boat in the Pacific. Since we were a pole-and-line boat, the first thing we did while we were trying to find a school of tuna was catch baitfish. These are small fish that tuna like to eat.

We had guys on the boat who placed hooks on the fishing lines, guys who baited hooks, and guys who held poles with baited lines in the water and hauled in the tuna they caught. I started at the bottom of the ladder as a junior hooker and quickly worked my way up to senior hooker. Then I was transferred to junior hook baiter. From there I worked my way up to master baiter.

Didn’t see that coming, didja? The 13-year-old kid inside me lives!

Thanksgiving Eve

A cold rain fell all last night and all of today. A little colder and it would be snow, but the temperature is 38°F. The windows are fogged and streaked with condensation. Forecasters say the rain may turn to snow tonight and last until daylight tomorrow morning.

The gray sky’s feeble light is obscured by awnings, leaving the room dim and gloomy, but that doesn’t bother me. A sheet of clear plastic taped over the window air-conditioner crackles as wayward breezes outside push and pull on it, making the plastic sheet puff out and then retreat back, as if the a/c unit was a breathing thing.

I have the thermostat turned down so that the boiler doesn’t run. Today, I get my heat from a kerosene stove. It sits silently nearby, casting warmth and a comforting glow into the gloom. It’s the next best thing to having a fire in a fireplace. Heat and firelight; ancient things but still very comforting on a cold day or a cold night. To our primitive ancestors, a fire could mean survival. Maybe that’s why it still feels so comforting to us. It’s wired into our brains now: fire means you won’t freeze to death, fire means the big cats won’t eat you tonight. Once in a while the stove gurgles as a bubble of air is pulled into its fuel tank. It does that now, as I type these words.

A Linda Ronstadt CD is playing. (Remember CDs? Before iTunes, before Spotify, there was a time when you could hold music in your hand.) This CD is one I bought in the ‘70s called Living In The USA. It has some very pretty melodies and some toe-tappers, too: Back in the USA (Chuck Berry), Alison (Elvis Costello), White Rhythm and Blues (J. D. Souther), and the tune that is playing right now – Mohammed’s Radio (Warren Zefron). (Don’t ask what the lyrics mean; Mohammed’s Radio means something different to every person who hears it.)

The song ends and I hear a train whistle blow. It’s distant, maybe a mile or two away. Just barely, I hear the rumble of steel wheels on steel track. Then another series of whistles and it’s gone. Silence.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, an American holiday to celebrate American obesity by stuffing our faces with turkey and ham and sweet potatoes and green beans and cranberry sauce and biscuits and pumpkin pie and … oh, you get the idea. I think too often, we forget about the reasons we should be thankful. It’s too easy to focus our attention on things that are less than ideal, while everyday blessings, like just having clean water to drink, are taken entirely too much for granted. I have food in the fridge, for which I am thankful. I have clean, running water at the turn of a tap, for which I am thankful. I haven’t decided if I will eat anything at all tomorrow. Maybe I’ll spend a day meditating on all those things for which I’m thankful.

And I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving, my friends.

Football Watching Day

Today was an exceptional fall day. Cloudless, blue sky to the horizon in every direction; temperature 62°, warm sun, light breeze. There might be prettier days in Heaven, but here on Earth you’d be hard-pressed to find a nicer day than today. In short, it was a perfect day for lounging in front of the TV and watching football while munching on pizza, popcorn, and salted nuts. So I did.

It seems like all my neighbors were wasting their day mowing grass. I wanted to say to them, “People, what are you doing? This isn’t a grass-mowing day, this is a football-watching day.” I watched the Redskins/Titans game. The ‘Skins won today; it was their first win in 5 games. Now it’s 4:30 and I should probably go for a walk. I hear walking is healthy. I’m skeptical, but now that the game is over, what else is there to do? The pizza is gone, the popcorn is finished, and the salted nuts are seriously damaged. A little voice in my head tells me walk it off. Ok, ok, I’m going.

(Time passes…)

I went to a nearby park beside the river that flows past my small city. I communed with Nature. I took photos. I had the park to myself and it was very peaceful. Now I’m back in time to watch the Cowboys/Giants game.

Photos (click any photo to enlarge):

Ice Cream

Ice cream. Who doesn’t love it?

I’ve never snorted cocaine, nor injected heroin, but if they’re more addicting than Cookies ‘n Cream ice cream, then I’m staying far, far away from both of them.

You’ve seen those 3-pint tubs of ice cream in grocery store freezers? Or as I sometimes call them late at night, single-serving tubs. They work like this:

Day 1. I buy a tub of ice cream and take it home. I eat a nominal “serving” (as defined on the side of the tub). I think, That can’t be a serving, and I eat another.
Day 2.  I eat three servings. Before getting into bed, I remove the tub from the freezer, and I get a spoon, and I nibble at and scrape away the lumpy surface of the ice cream so that it’s smooth as a billiard table. This amounts to at least one more serving, but I don’t count it because I’m just “neatening up” the ice cream.
Day 3.  I no longer bother with the pretense of servings. I attack the tub with a spoon until the ice cream is gone.

Cookies ‘n cream should be on the Schedule One drug list, and the stores that stock it should be guarded by the DEA.

That is why I rarely buy ice cream. I can handle it fine as long as it stays inside its tub in the store’s freezer.

Another thing: on the store’s freezer aisle, I was surprised to see all the 3-pint tubs. The last time I bought ice cream, it was sold in half-gallon cartons. When did everyone switch from half-gallon cartons to 3-pint tubs?  And why do single-pint tubs cost twice as much as 3-pint tubs?  (Store: “We have to charge extra for the convenience of the smaller container.” Me: “What?”) Incidentally, the half-gallon cartons did not last any longer than the 3-pint tubs.

You can measure the passage of time in America by the shrinkage of cans and cartons. Sixteen ounce cans went to 15 ounces, then 14.5 ounces. Six ounce cans of tuna went to 5 ounces, then to 4.5 ounces. A roll of toilet paper shrank to a half-roll, then went back to a full roll, which the manufacturers like to call a double-roll, but we all know it isn’t really a double roll – it’s just a roll. Though admittedly, a so-called double-roll is double the size of a half-roll. Maybe that’s what they mean. “You’re getting double the amount you would be getting if we sold you half as much as we’re selling you.” You can’t deny the logic.

I’ve wandered off the topic of this post, “Ice Cream,” and there’s only one thing to be done about it. It’s time to go to the freezer and see if the Cookies ‘n Cream is as tasty as it was yesterday. I’m really not an ice cream addict. Really, I’m not. I can stop eating it whenever I want to.

At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

[p.s.: This is Day 3. As foretold in the Prophecies, the tub is empty. My stomach is happy.]

Fall Again

It’s that time of year again in central Virginia. When I got up at 6 AM, the temperature was 49°. At 10 AM, it’s 60°. The sky is blue, the sun is bright, and trees are turning their fall colors. Brown leaves are gathering in street gutters and on sidewalks. Soon they’ll be in my yard, thanks to the neighbor’s willow oak.

The high temperature is forecast to be 78° today and 75° tomorrow. Then highs will drop to the mid-60s with nighttime lows in the high-40s. That’s ideal; no heat needed, no cooling needed. Some people leave a bedroom window partly open at night and sleep under a blanket.

In fact, I enjoy sleeping with a window cracked open, especially in summer. I like the smell of fresh air, of mist in the air, of falling rain. I like grasshopper songs, distant rumbles of thunder and locomotive air-horns on passing trains. I feel connected to the world.

On the last October day, my neighborhood throws a Halloween party in the park across the street. It started as a neighborhood party, a safe place  for local kids to go and have something to do. There’s a haunted house, a bounce house, a costume contest. There’s a tent where a young lady will tell you your fortune. And so forth, but you get the idea. There are free snacks and drinks, like pop corn, soft drinks, and apple cider. And, of course, lots of music. Naturally, people from all over the city began showing up, and it became a city party. Now people come from neighboring cities as well, which they’re asked not to do, because it’s just a neighborhood park, but people (and monsters and princesses) are going to do what they want to do, and that is to be around other costumed people on Halloween. The park now gets a quite a crowd of people of all ages on Halloween, from small kids to grandparents. This year’s party will be on a Friday evening. If the weather is good, I predict a large crowd and a good many monsters and princesses – even a few Britney Spears.

 

Gretchen of the Swiss Alps?  >>

 

Reunion, the After Part

(Second of two parts: part one was Reunion, the Before Part.)

It wasn’t bad. The reunion, I mean. Oh, there were a lot of geezers there. At times I felt like I was in a bad movie. “What the hell am I doing here with all these old people?” But all in all, I enjoyed it, I think. I sat at a table with my best high school buddies, and I enjoyed connecting with them again. There was food and drink. There was music. God, was there music. The decibel level equaled a 747 on its takeoff roll. My ears are still ringing. Some guys showed up dressed like Jake Blues and his brother Elwood, and they performed a Blues Brothers act; they sang and danced, and they were not bad at all. There was a roll call of our fallen classmates: 24 out of a class of 116.

There was dancing. The best dancer by far was a slender gal named Elaine. It was fun to watch her dance. She was good and everyone could see she loved to dance. She had moves a teenager would envy. More than once, I almost asked her to dance with me, but really it was just more fun to watch her dance. We talked a little bit and discovered that in school we had lived on the same street. She had lived down the street in the next block. Her house is long gone now, having been converted into a parking lot for a church across the street.

It’s almost midnight. I’ll pour a nightcap and watch some Modern Family, then hit the rack. Sleep well, dear readers.

Reunion, the Before Part

I was planning to mow the grass in my yard on Saturday afternoon. Really, I was. But then something happened.

It all began with my decision to cook a pork roast Friday night. I bought two 2-pound roasts Friday. Friday night I put them into my slow cooker. I poured cider vinegar over them, patted them with salt and pepper, and poured more vinegar over them. I put the lid on the cooker, set it to Low, and went to bed.

When I awoke Saturday morning, the house was filled with the aroma of pork BBQ. Mmmm. I got up and took the roasts out of the cooker and put them on a platter. Using forks, I pulled the meat apart. I reserved two cups of juice from the cooker and discarded the rest. I put the meat back into the cooker. I mixed brown sugar and crushed red pepper flakes into the juice and poured it over the meat, and put the lid on the cooker.

The next step was to make white, Alabama-style BBQ sauce. I needed some vinegar, which I was almost out of, so I thought, “No problem, I’ll drive to the Martins store and get vinegar.” There were several other things I wanted to buy there, anyway.

In Martins, I immediately ran into Homer, a friend I hadn’t seen in three or four years. So naturally, I wanted to chat with him and catch up with what he and his wife, Sara, had been up to. That conversation delayed me for a few crucial minutes, just long enough to prevent me from making a quick escape from the store. If it weren’t for stopping to talk to Homer, I probably wouldn’t have run into Douglas.

But a couple minutes after I left Homer, I was walking down an aisle when who did I see walking toward me – it was Douglas. I hadn’t seen Doug in five or six years. He and his wife, Cynthia, were in town for their high school reunion. Doug and I had been best friends in school; I think we met in the third grade, and we were pals until we graduated high school and went our separate ways. So, of course, that means his high school reunion was also my high school reunion.

I hadn’t planned on going to my high school reunion. I have to confess something here, which may frighten some of my readers. It was my 50th high school reunion. Yes, I admit it, folks; I’m a geezer. I hang my head in shame. I’ve tried to live right and eat the right foods and not smoke (at least, not since I was 38) and what good did it do me because here I am, anyway: a geezer. I’m a young geezer – it’s that age where younger (but still middle-aged) people will be friends until they learn my age, and then they can’t get away fast enough.

I haven’t attended any of my class reunions. Most of the people in my senior class were people that I knew by face only. They were only classmates. We didn’t have any other connection. We didn’t talk to each other. Kids at my high school were kind of cliquish. I didn’t belong to any cliques, nor did I have any desire to pretend to be on some rung of a social ladder. I just lived for the day high school would be over.

Doug and Cynthia asked me to have lunch with them at Panera Bread, which was next to the hotel where they were staying. So I did, and that’s where I ran into another high school friend named Wayne, and his wife Carol. They were in town to attend the reunion. I knew they would browbeat me into going to the reunion, and they did, all of them; they browbeat me and browbeat me, until I said, “What can I say to stop this browbeating?” And it was, “Tell us you’re coming to the reunion.” So here I am, ready to go. The reunion starts in 50 minutes. I have to open my senior class yearbook (yeah, I still have it) and spend a few minutes looking at faces and names. It’s a given that I won’t recognize anyone’s face. I’d feel bad if I didn’t remember their names, either.

But I’ll go and make the best of it. There may be something interesting I can blog about afterward. It will probably involve me dropping a plate of food into my lap or spilling a glass of rum and Coke down the front of my shirt. Oy.

Not So Fast, Summer

It’s a pleasant day in central Virginia. At 3 PM the temperature is 76°F (24.4°C) and the humidity is low: only 34%. I have a front window open and a back door open, and the gentle breeze feels good. I’m feeling expansive, which can only mean, dear readers, that the time has come once again for me to impart some of my fantastic wisdom into your puny brains. No, wait. That isn’t right. I meant to say, it’s time to impart some of my puny wisdom into your vast intellects. Nah. That doesn’t sound right either. Let’s just get on with it.

Today is the last official day of summer for 2014 for the northern hemisphere (last day of winter for the southern hemisphere). In the northern hemisphere, the autumnal equinox will occur today (Monday) at 10:29 PM EDT (Eastern Daylight Time). Alternately, I could say the equinox will occur on Tuesday, September 23, at 02:29 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Yes, folks, it will be both Monday and Tuesday at the same time – just not in the same place.

What is an equinox, anyway? It is a point in the earth’s orbit around the sun at which every place on the earth experiences equal parts daytime and nighttime. This happens twice for each trip around the sun. It happens in March and again in September. The date and time of the equinox is calculated by astronomers, and in their calculations they assume the earth is a perfect sphere. But it isn’t. It’s slightly bigger at the equator than at the poles. And different places on the earth’s surface are at different elevations above sea level. These factors mean that the autumnal equinox will occur at slightly different times for different places. (If you live exactly on the equator, then you’ll receive exactly 12 hours of daylight every day of the year.)

So, of course, I began to question when the autumnal equinox will occur for my city. For the answer, I went to the U.S. Naval Observatory website. It has a handy calculator for determining time of day for sunrise and sunset almost anywhere on the earth. The calculator produced a calendar for 2014, and a quick review of September showed that the 25th had 12 hours and 2 minutes of daylight in my city (more day than night), while the 26th had 11 hours and 59 minutes of daylight (less day than night). Clearly, the local equinox must occur sometime during one of those days: either the 25th or the 26th.

For you, dear readers, tomorrow may be the first day of fall. For me, tomorrow – and the day after – will belong to summer. I will await them, watermelon martini in hand, refusing to acknowledge the waning of the light.

Playing the Spacedrum

The hang (pronounced “hung”) is a percussion instrument made by PANArt in Bern, Switzerland. The Spacedrum is a brand of handpan made by the French company Metal Sounds. In this video, Yuki Koshimoto plays the Spacedrum. Yuki has a channel on YouTube where you can listen to more of her music.

If you liked listening to the Spacedrum, here’s a longer tune. In this video, the camera follows Hang Massive duo Danny Cudd and Markus Johansson. The music is played on two hanghang (plural of hang). The song is OMAT ODAT (acronym for One Moment At a Time, One Day At a Time) from their CD As It Is.

The Farmer’s Will

My amigo CyberDave sent me this puzzler:

This is what they call HORSE SENSE:
A farmer died leaving his 17 horses to his three sons.
When his sons opened up the Will it read:
My eldest son should get 1/2 (half) of total horses;
My middle son should be given 1/3rd (one-third) of the total horses;
My youngest son should be given 1/9th (one-ninth) of the total horses.
As it's impossible to divide 17 into half or 17 by 3 or 17 by 9,
the three sons started to fight with each other.
So, they decided to go to a farmer friend who they considered quite smart,
to see if he could work it out for them.
The farmer friend read the Will patiently, after giving due thought,
he brought one of his own horses over and added it to the 17.
That increased the total to 18 horses.
Now, he divided the horses according to their fathers Will.
Half of 18 = 9. So he gave the eldest son 9 horses.
1/3rd of 18 = 6. So he gave the middle son 6 horses.
1/9th of 18 = 2. So he gave the youngest son 2 horses.
Now add up how many horses they have:
Eldest son  9
Middle son  6
Youngest son  2
TOTAL IS 17
Now this leaves one horse over, so the farmer friend takes his horse back to his farm.
Problem Solved!

I’m sure the intended reaction is “Huh?” But it’s pretty easy to explain this puzzler.

There are two problems with the Will. First, this distribution leads to fractional horses. And second, the fractions (1/2, 1/3, 1/9) do not add up to One. Even if you could do the division, there would be left-over horse.

Let’s restate the fractions using their lowest common denominator (54). According to the Will, the oldest son receives 27/54 (half) of the horses; the middle son receives 18/54 (a third) of the horses; the youngest son receives 6/54 (a ninth) of the horses. These add up to 51/54, leaving 3/54 of the horses not going to anyone. How much is 3/54 of 17 horses? It is 0.944444444 - in other words, just about one horse.

Let’s compare what the sons “should” have received from the Will versus what they actually did receive.

	Should have received	Actually received
Oldest	8.5	9
Middle	5.66666666666 …	6
Youngest	1.88888888888 …	2
Total	16.0555555555 …	17

The part about the other farmer bringing his horse over and then taking it back is just a smokescreen. It covers up the fact that all the numbers have to be rounded up to get to 17.

If you still don’t see the trickery, let’s suppose we aren’t distributing 17 horses but rather 17 dollars.

Then, the oldest son gets $8.50, the middle son gets $5.67, and the youngest gets $1.89, and everyone is happy. Of course, these amounts add up to $16.06 and not $17, but the Will doesn’t say the sons are to receive 17 of anything. The Will says only that each son will receive a certain fraction of 17. The additional (and unstated in the Will) constraint that we impose on the distribution is that the amounts have to be whole numbers because we don’t want to chop up a horse. By choosing to round the numbers up, the sons altogether receive almost one more horse than they were left by the Will. As we’re talking about horses, that rounding up seems logical (and humane).

Laniakea

If you read the news, and I’m sure you do, you doubtless have read about Laniakea. But in case you missed that particular news item, let me briefly recap. Laniakea is a Hawaiian word that is roughly translated as “spacious heaven,” and it is the new name for the local supercluster.

Now you may ask, what is the local supercluster? Or for that matter, what is a supercluster, local or otherwise?

My explanation starts with the sun. Our sun is a member of the Milky Way Galaxy, along with about 100 to 400 billion other suns. (We call them stars, of course, and our sun is a star.) The sun travels through space, but it doesn’t travel alone. We have all the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy traveling with us.

Just as stars form groups called galaxies, galaxies form groups, too. Our Milky Way is a member of a group of galaxies we call the Local Group, which includes all the galaxies within 5 million light years of the Milky Way. In addition to the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies (yes, there are small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way), the Local Group includes the Andromeda Galaxy and its satellite galaxies, the Triangulum Galaxy, and dozens of other galaxies. The Local Group contains more than 54 galaxies. The exact number of galaxies is not certain, as from time to time a new one is found.

The Local Group is part of a larger collection of galaxies called the Virgo Cluster, which contains at least 1300 galaxies and possibly as many as 2000 galaxies. As large as it is, the Virgo Cluster is only one galaxy cluster in a much larger group called the Virgo Supercluster. The Virgo Supercluster is, or was, our local supercluster and was thought to be 110 million light years in diameter.

Now a team of astronomers have published a new way of defining galaxies and they tell us that the Milky Way Galaxy is a part of a new supercluster called the Laniakea Supercluster. They tell us that Laniakea is about 520 million light years in diameter. (Furthermore, Laniakea seems to be gravitationally bound to an even larger assembly of galaxies called the Shapley Concentration, but that’s another story.)

These are awfully big distances and therefore difficult to grasp. To put all this vast scale into a more understandable perspective, I want to shrink the Milky Way Galaxy down to the size of our sun. To do the calculations I am going to use scientific notation. Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers by using powers of 10. For instance, 100 is written 1.0e+2, 1000 is written 1.0e+3, 5,000,000 is written 5.0e+6. Fractions have a negative exponent: 0.01 is written 1.0e-2, 0.001 is written 1.0e-3, 0.000005 is written 5.0e-6. And so on.

The Milky Way’s diameter is estimated to be 100,000 to 120,000 LY (light years). Let us choose to use the average which is 110,000 LY or 1.1e+5 LY. Using the metric system, the Milky Way’s diameter in meters is 1.1e+5 LY x 9.46e+15 meters/LY = 1.04e+21 meters. (If we weren’t using scientific notation we would have to write down the distance using this number: 1,040,000,000,000,000,000,000 and you can see how awkward that becomes.)

Our sun has a diameter of 1,391,684 kilometers (1.392e+9 meters). Therefore the ratio of the sun's diameter to the Milky Way's diameter is (1.392e+9)/(1.04e+21) = 1.338e-12. Just by looking at that number we know that the sun’s diameter is about a millionth of a millionth (a trillionth) of the diameter of its parent galaxy. If Laniakea were shrunk so that the Milky Way Galaxy was the size of our sun, the sun would be shrunk by the same factor, so we can calculate its new diameter:

Sun’s new diameter = 1.392e+9 meters x 1.338e-12 = 1.86e-3 meters = 1.86 millimeters

A US dime is 1.35 millimeters thick. If the Milky Way Galaxy was the size of our sun, our sun would then have a diameter slightly more than the thickness of a dime. We can perform a similar calculation on our home planet, which has an average diameter of 12,742 km – slightly more at the equator, slightly less at the poles.

Earth’s new diameter =  1.2742e+7 x 1.338e-12 = 1.705e-5 meters = 17 microns

The diameter of a strand of human hair can range from from 17 to 181 microns. So Earth’s new diameter would be the same as the finest (meaning thinnest) human hair.

I’ve already stated that the Laniakea Supercluster has a diameter of about 520 million light years. If it were shrunk so that our Milky Way Galaxy was the size of our sun, how big would Laniakea then be? First, let’s convert its length from light years to meters.

Laniakea’s diameter = 5.2e+8 LY x 9.46e+15 meters/LY = 4.9192e+24 meters

Laniakea’s new diameter =4.9192e+24 x 1.338e-12 = 6.5818896e+12 meters

How big is this? How can we visualize it? The planet Saturn is 9.537 times as far from the sun as is planet Earth, which amounts to 1.427e+12 meters. The diameter of its orbit around the sun would be twice that, or 2.854e+12 meters. The diameter of the newly shrunken Laniakea Supercluster would be more than twice the current (non-shrunken) diameter of Saturn’s orbit around the sun.

So here’s the summation:

If we shrink space so that Laniakea has a diameter twice as large as Saturn’s orbit about the sun, then our Milky Way galaxy will have the diameter of the sun, the sun’s diameter will be about the thickness of a dime, and the Earth’s diameter will equal the thinnest human hair. And if you are a human who is 6 feet (1.83 meters) tall, how tall would you be in our shrunken supercluster? You’d be 2.45e-12 meters tall. What else is that small? Not much. In fact, it would take a thousand of you, lined up head to toe, to equal the length of the smallest virus humans have studied. Our local supercluster is a pretty big thing, compared to us humans, compared to our home planet, compared to our home star, and even compared to our home galaxy. And the part of the Universe we can observe holds at least a million superclusters.

Naked Photos

I read today that a lot of celebrity nude photos have been stolen from Apple’s iCloud service and then uploaded to a website, somewhere. These include photos of Rihanna, Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and Hope Solo. Jackpot!

No, no, no! What I meant to say was, “For shame!” To steal someone’s private, naked photos and make them public; how low can you go? I have just two things to say about this situation: one, it’s a disgrace, and two, exactly where can these photos be found?

It makes me wonder, just how safe are my own naked photos? Should I worry about shadowy people on the Internet downloading naked photos of moi?  Even now, sweaty people I don’t even know might be gleefully ogling my naked body.

Just kidding! There are no naked pictures of VirtualWayne on the Internet or anywhere else. If there were, and if people downloaded them and saw them, they would immediately want to claw their eyeballs out in an attempt to un-see them. But it would be in vain. There are some images you just can’t get out of your head. Like that bad automobile accident I saw on the way to the beach, or that cattle car derailment my parents dragged me to when I was six just so they could take pictures, a naked VirtualWayne photograph is one of those things that – well, let’s just say it ain’t pretty and leave it there.

Now please excuse me; I have to go and see how many people have downloaded my latest sex tape. You know – the one I made with what’s-her-name – the actress who was in that movie that was so popular. What was its name? Oh yeah, “Naked Porn.”

I’m kidding! I have no sex tapes. But I do predict this blog post will get a lot of views. After all, it uses the word “naked” eleven times including in the title, plus the words “sex tape” and “porn.” That’s got to get it ranked pretty high by all the search engines. Think of the number of people on the Internet searching for naked photos right now, and think how many of them are going to end up here at my blog! And now think of the disappointment! It’s going to be massive. Serves ‘em right for looking for naked photos to begin with. To all of them I say, “Made you look!”

August Winding Down

I lay on top of the sheets in my underwear. It was 3 PM on this summer day near the end of August. The day was hot and so the window beside my bed was open. In my house there is only me, and so I get to decide when to turn on the a/c, and therefore often – okay, always – the a/c is not turned on until the house is much too hot. But I like having the windows open. I like feeling the breeze coming through, I like smelling fresh air, I like hearing the sounds outside; I feel connected to the world. When I turn on the a/c, and I close the windows, then I feel like I’m shut away inside a box. With the windows closed and the a/c on, I’m more comfortable physically but less comfortable mentally. So I keep the a/c off and the windows open for as long as I can stand the heat.

Through the open window I hear a strange noise in the distance, kind of a loud crack. It was not the sound of an automobile colliding with another automobile. I once lived in a 3rd floor apartment beside a bad intersection where there were a lot of accidents. While I lived there I heard cars hitting cars, cars hitting pickup trucks, cars hitting motorcycles. This noise that came through my bedroom window was something else, but it had that flavor of something smacking something. It was not a good sound.

Then I heard another sound. This new sound was so weak that it could have been my imagination. The sound was so weakened by distance that when it reached me it must have been just a few molecules of air jiggling my eardrum. But it sounded like a distant human voice saying, “call 911.” I imagined the rest of the sentence: “Do you want me to call 911?”

I rolled to a seated position on the edge of the bed and put my glasses on. I trudged to the front room and looked out. Traffic had stopped on Westover Avenue and automobile passengers were leaning out their windows and looking down the street ahead of them. I trudged back to my bedroom and pulled on shorts and a tee-shirt. I put on socks and shoes. Time to investigate.

By the time I left my house there was already a cop at the corner directing traffic away from the accident. I walked to the corner and looked up Westover; another police car was at the next intersection, its blue emergency beacons flashing away. I walked down the street to the accident. Police were talking to a young black woman. She had been driving a red scooter. It appeared she drove through a stop sign and into the side of a car. The front of her scooter was smashed, but she looked perfectly okay.

I continued on my way until I circumnavigated the block. On the way I stopped to talk to a woman sitting on her front porch. Of course I knew both her and her husband who, she said, was inside lying on the bed. After ten minutes I felt like I was perspiring sufficiently to embarrass myself with growing wet spots on my clothes, so I continued on to my house. Once inside my house I got out of my sweat-soaked clothes as quickly as I could and hung them up to dry. I wasted no time turning on the a/c. Screw the smell of fresh air. It was time to burn some kilowatts.

ISS

Warm night air. Bare feet on concrete sidewalk. I scan the western sky expectantly. At first, nothing. Then I see the International Space Station sailing slowly out of the west, a point of light rising above the willow oak across the street – a bright star, not the brightest but brighter than most – moving slowly and steadily across the sky toward the northeast. Moving, but not going lower, not going toward the horizon, but rather going into the northeast sky, fading, dimming. I glance away as a mini-van turns the corner and passes. One headlight is out. It’s Elisabeth. (Last night she moved from her rented house into a nearby apartment. Why has she returned to her former abode?) Look back at the northeastern sky; the moving star has vanished.

This is the third time I’ve seen the space station. I recall the first time I saw it: a shuttle was chasing it across the sky then, ferrying passengers to, or from, the station. On that night there were two bright, moving points of light that instantly winked out as shuttle and station flew into Earth’s shadow.

There’s nothing remarkable about seeing the space station fly overhead. And yet it is something that has never occurred in the 4.5 billion years of Earth’s history. A species on Earth has learned how to climb above the atmosphere and circle Earth in the vacuum of space every 90 minutes.

Baby steps. How long from Columbus’s voyage to the beginning of a new country? To be around in a hundred or so years: that should be an interesting time.

Spaghetti

I fixed shrimp-basil spaghetti for dinner last night. I totally winged the recipe but it turned out pretty darn good if I say so myself. If you want to try it, I put the recipe (such that it is) on Google here. The recipe requires a certain amount of “winging” on the part of anyone who follows it. But it’s one of those recipes that is almost impossible to mess up.

Today I decided to fix spaghetti with meat sauce, and so I put a pound of ground beef into my slow cooker. I have one of those 6 inch by 10 inch rectangular-shaped cookers. I’ve had it for years and I no longer have the user guide. It has 5 heat settings, none of which are “Off”. I assume the settings are Low, Medium, High, Super-High, and Burn-Baby-Burn.

My intent was to brown the meat then add store-bought pasta sauce and simmer it for a while. Using a spatula, I cut the lump of ground beef into small pieces and spread them out over the bottom of the cooker. It takes the cooker a while to get going, as one might surmise from it’s name: slow cooker. So I walked to the computer and sat down and almost immediately got distracted, and I kind of forgot about the ground beef in the slow cooker. After a while – a good while – I remembered the slow-cooking meat, and went to the kitchen and looked into the cooker. I saw that I now had a 6 inch by 10 inch hamburger patty. I spent the next 5 or 10 minutes cutting it up into smaller and smaller and smaller pieces until I had converted the large patty into what could pass for browned ground beef if you didn’t examine it too closely. (I admit I did consider dividing the large patty into small square patties and pretend I was eating at Wendy’s, but in the end the original plan prevailed.)

I poured pasta sauce into the cooker and stirred the sauce and meat to blend them, and put the lid on the cooker. When it gets to boiling I’ll turn the heat down to medium and let it simmer for an hour. I don’t really know why I’m letting it simmer for an hour. Like many things in life, it just seems like the right thing to do.

Late Night Shenanigans

I was in bed trying to sleep when I heard a police siren. It sounded close. I looked out the window and saw a car in my neighbor’s back yard and a police car stopped in the alley behind my house. The siren was blaring, because that’s what sirens do: they blare. I glimpsed a man dash away from the car with an officer in foot pursuit. In a minute the officer came back, inspected the just-abandoned car, and called a tow truck. The tow truck driver was a young woman wearing short-shorts. She had much nicer legs than your average tow truck driver. She drove the car onto the rollback tow truck and chained it down, and off it went to wherever bad cars go. I wondered briefly what the car chase was about. After all, fleeing a police car seems the tiniest bit of over-reaction to getting a speeding ticket, so I assumed the driver’s misconduct was something more serious. Perhaps he had just robbed a convenience store, stolen a car, and fled with the loot. Whatever. I returned to bed. Another exciting day at the hacienda had come to a close.

Luck

I had a long and winding dream last night, as I often do. I won’t try to recount it all, but there was one small part that I will write about. I dreamed my brother went to North Carolina to buy a car. In the dream, he said he went to a town called Luck. So of course I Googled it and as it happens, there really is a town called Luck in Madison County, North Carolina. Well, it’s less a town than what one might call a fork in the road, but it’s on Google Maps, and it has an entry in Wikipedia, and I reckon those two facts alone make it semi-officially a town.

Luck is on the eastern side of North Carolina highway 209, about 20 miles northwest of Asheville. On the western side of 209 is part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

On a satellite photo, Luck appears to consist of two houses and a derelict gas station. (Click the image to view on Panoramio.) But I have no doubt that up and down state highway 209 and county road 1163 (the fork in the road), one would find a scattering of homes whose occupants count themselves a part of the Luck community.

Oh … about the car that my brother bought in Luck. It looked just like an Amphicar, the car from the ‘60s that you could drive on land and water. (Check out this page.) President Lyndon Johnson had an Amphicar, and he liked to frighten guests by driving them down a hill on his property and straight into a lake, all the while shouting that his brakes had failed. Lyndon could be quite the joker.

But my brother’s car only looked like an Amphicar. In the dream it was a brand called Phaedra which, as far as I know, is a brand that does not exist outside of my head. The Phaedra had an insignia on its front that looked like a golden, backward pilcrow. In case you’ve forgotten, a pilcrow (¶) is a typographical paragraph mark. In the Middle Ages, before the paragraph was invented, a pilcrow was used to indicate a change in the writer’s train of thought.

Anyway, that was one little piece of my dream. You wouldn’t like most of my dreams. They’re quite tedious. Much like this blog post.

Battery Goes Bang

Seems like it’s always something. A couple of days ago it rained especially hard, so I went upstairs and peeked under the eave to see if the roof was leaking. You see, I had a new roof installed three years ago, and it leaked. The roofer who installed it refused to come back and fix the leak. So I paid another roofer to fix the leak, and I thought it was fixed. But when I looked under the eave I saw it was leaking again in the very same place it had leaked before. Oy.

Just last month my Jeep developed a problem. It would start but it wouldn’t keep running. I guessed (correctly) that the problem was the Idle Air Controller (IAC). I borrowed a set of hex keys (Allen wrenches – the brand name Allen was stamped into them) from my friend Butch and removed the IAC. I cleaned it and re-installed it, but that didn’t help. So I trekked around to the AutoZone store for a new IAC. I trekked back home, installed it, and it fixed the problem. That was three weeks ago.

This morning I went to my garage, got into my Jeep, put the key into the ignition, and turned the key to start the engine. BANG!!! Blue smoke poured from under the hood. I got out, raised the hood, and saw the problem immediately. The battery had exploded. You don’t have to be a mechanic to know a battery shouldn’t look like this. (I disconnected the battery cables before I took the picture – the explosion didn’t blow them off, in case you were wondering.)

What a mess. Battery acid was all over the front of the engine and dripping onto the cement floor of the garage. I used a box of baking soda – all I had – dissolved into a gallon of water to neutralize the acid. This time I asked Butch to drive me to AutoZone for a new battery. I was not about to lug an automobile battery back to my house. I got the battery, installed it, and the Jeep started right up. I have transportation once more. It’s a good feeling.

Blooming Lagerstroemia

Today is Sunday. I woke up late: 7:30 AM. The sun was already up too high but I went for a walk anyway. On every street bloomed Lagerstroemia (named after the Swedish merchant Magnus von Lagerström), commonly known as crape myrtle or crepe myrtle. There are around 50 varieties of crape myrtle. There is the bright red Dynamite Crape Myrtle, the deep pink Pink Velour Crape and the purple Twilight Crape Myrtle (which has bark that changes color). Some have white blossoms. So it can be said that when you’ve seen one crape myrtle, you definitely have not seen them all.

The neighborhood would be a poorer place without them.

Arthur

Arthur grazed the Heights this morning, as you can see from the WunderMap below. See the little red “pin” just left of the yellow-green blob? That’s me. But the rain stayed away, and the only wind was gentle puffs of air that came through the open window beside my bed.

I must have awakened around 5 or 5:30. I didn’t look at the clock, but it was pre-dawn, and the daylight peeking through the Venetian blinds was gray. The air coming through the open window beside my bed was cool in a refreshing way. I don’t usually run the a/c during the night, and sometimes the house warms up a bit because the exterior walls are still warm from the day’s sunshine, and so the cool air coming through the window felt good. I lay on top of the sheets. The gray dawn lingered for a long time, it seemed, and the cool breezes though the window lingered, and it was very pleasant, and I didn’t want to get up. But I finally did – get up, that is – around 7:30.

By noon the air is 79° and the day is sunny. It’s the fourth of July, of course. I was studying the Declaration of Independence and noticed a bit of punctuation that everyone has apparently overlooked. It’s a period. In England, I believe it’s called a full stop. What I found was that this bit of punctuation – this period, lost until now – totally changes the meaning of the document. When he wrote the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson was trying to express his admiration for England’s King George III and how nice it was to be a British subject. You see, Jefferson was quite the Loyalist. But unfortunately, due to that lost bit of punctuation, the colonists thought he was calling for a War of Revolution. Before Jefferson knew what was happening, events had unfolded way out of control and, well, the rest is history. America became an independent nation because of that lost period. (You may not believe me but remember, you’re reading it on the Internet so it has to be true. I couldn’t write it if it wasn’t so.)

Happy Fourth of July!

Windows 8

My first post on this blog, written on November 9, 2008, was a short review of Microsoft’s then-new Windows Vista operating system. I liked Vista and used it until my computer died a few weeks ago. So it’s appropriate that I say a few words about my newest OS: Windows 8.1. But I thought rather than write another “I love Windows 8” or “I hate Windows 8” article, I would write a “I just got Windows 8 – now what?” article.

What it is

There are three versions of Windows 8. They are: Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and Windows 8.1 Update. Soon (rumored to be released in July) there will be one more version: Windows 8.1 Update 2. Despite the similar names there are enough differences that a program written for Windows 8.1 may not run, or even install, on Windows 8, so you should definitely get the latest version. I will use the term “Windows 8” to refer to all versions of Windows 8. The term “Windows 8 apps” means apps designed to run on Windows 8, not on the Desktop. The terms Metro apps, Modern apps, and Windows 8 apps mean the same thing: an app designed to be launched from the Windows 8 Start screen and run in full screen mode, not on the Windows Desktop.

The Windows 8 Start screen has large tiles which can display current information: a weather app might display the current temperature and weather conditions on its tile, while a sports news app might display current scores of important games played that day.

On a touch display, you touch a tile to launch its application. On a non-touch display you use your mouse to click on a tile. Windows 8 applications run full screen. You can have more than one application open and running but only one application will be shown on the monitor. Initially there was no way to terminate (exit) a Windows 8 application; it was up to the operating system to decide when to do that. But Microsoft has changed that.

How to get to the Desktop

It’s clear that the Windows 8 Start screen with its tiles is designed to be used on tablets and phones. Let’s assume that you have a keyboard and mouse and therefore you want to use the familiar Windows Desktop and you want to install your old applications on the Desktop.  If you are at the Start screen, click on a tile labeled “Desktop” to get there. Or put your mouse cursor in the lower left corner of the screen and click the Windows icon that appears (where the Start button used to be). That will open the Desktop.

How to resize icons

The application icons on the Desktop may be too big or too small. To resize them, click anywhere on the Desktop (to give it focus) and then hold down the Control key (Ctrl) while turning the scroll wheel on the mouse. You can make the icons larger or smaller.

How to open Control Panel

You can open Control Panel from the Start screen or the Desktop. Easiest way: Go to Desktop, right-click the Windows icon (bottom left corner) and in the popup menu click on Control Panel.

First things first

The first thing to do with a new Windows computer is to run Windows Update and get all the latest security patches and new features. This may take a while to complete. After it has completed, run it again. Some updates only become available after other updates have been installed, so run Windows Update until it says there are no more updates to install.

As I said previously, a program written for Windows 8.1 may not run, or even install, on Windows 8. So get the updates.

Anti-Virus

Your computer may come to you without an anti-virus program. Or perhaps it has a free trial of an anti-virus that you don’t want to use. Here is one option:

Go to Control Panel. Click “Programs and Features” and uninstall the bundled anti-virus. Then in Control Panel, click Windows Defender and make sure it is on. Windows Defender on Windows 8 is not the old Windows Defender. For Windows 8 it is essentially the same thing as Microsoft Security Essentials, which protected my Vista machine for several years. While you’re in Control Panel, click Windows Firewall and make sure it is on.

Browser

If you prefer a browser other than Internet Explorer, this would be a good time to get one. Other popular browsers are:

• Firefox
• Chrome
• Safari
• Opera

DoNotTrackMe

Unless you want to be tracked across the web by almost every website that advertises, your next stop should be Abine (abine.com). They have a product called DoNotTrackMe which blocks most Internet tracking beacons. They can also mask your email address for you, so that websites that want your email addy don’t have to know your real email address, and yet you can still receive their emails (until you don’t want to). Anti-tracking and email masking are free. Abine offers other services for a premium.

Start Button

Windows 8 Desktop mode is similar to Windows 7. The major difference is that the Windows icon (where you would expect a Start button) takes you to the Start screen and its large tiles. There are other differences, but not having a Start button is the crippler.

I installed Pokki (from pokki.com). It’s a free download. It gives you back your Start button and more. If you search for “Windows 8 start button” you will find several similar apps with different features. Some are free and some require a small fee. I like Pokki – I think it’s better than the Windows start button. MS says the Start button will be added back in some future update. Until then, use Pokki or one of the similar apps.

Utilities

Next you’ll probably want to install Adobe Reader so that you can read PDF files. (There are other PDF readers available if you search for them.) After that, you’ll want to install Adobe Flash Player (well, you may not want to, but a lot of websites still use Flash). In both cases, beware of “optional offers” unless you really want to have other software installed along with what you went there to get. Look out for checkboxes followed by words like “Yes, install the free … etc, etc” and uncheck them.

If you watch movies on your computer you may want to get the VideoLAN VLC media player. Windows 8 can play some video files, but not all. I first installed a codec pack and was less than happy with the resulting video quality. VLC media player works well and has all its own codecs and splitters self-contained.

If you use Skype you’ll probably want to get Skype for Desktop, even if Skype for Windows 8 is already installed.

Applications

If you don’t have Microsoft Office you can install the excellent and free OpenOffice from Apache. It can open Office documents as well as documents from the discontinued Microsoft Works.

If you want to dabble in graphic art, or take it to a professional level, without spending a dime, then GIMP for Windows is for you. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free, powerful image editing tool, with many plug-ins and tools available, and with much online support through documentation, forums, FAQs, and so on.

You should definitely use Backup software. For backup, I use a program that I wrote, but there are many others on the ‘Net and I’m sure there are some that are both good and free.

If you want to create web pages, NetObjects has an app for that. It’s called NetObjects Fusion Essentials and it’s free. Or you can pay for one of their more-capable versions.

If you want to learn programming, Microsoft’s Visual Studio Express 2013 is a good place to start. You can use it to write C++, C#, and Visual Basic programs. It’s free. Be sure to get the version named “Express” as they also sell “professional” versions.

Miscellaneous

Programs you use frequently may have shortcuts on the Desktop. I open Control Panel’s Sound applet frequently to change where the audio goes: computer speakers or TV. So I put a shortcut to the Sound applet on my Desktop. To do that, right-click on the file and drag it to the Desktop. Drop it and choose Create Shortcuts Here.

Or pin it to the taskbar. For example, to pin Snipping Tool, first run it. Put your cursor in the upper or lower right corner of the Desktop so that the Charms bar appears and click the Search icon. Type “snip” into the search textbox and Windows will suggest several possibilities. Click on Snipping Tool. The Snipping Tool appears and at that point you can right-click its icon on the taskbar and select “Pin this program to taskbar.” Alternatively, if you installed Pokki, you can add it to Pokki’s list of favorites.

What Windows 8 doesn’t have

Windows Vista and Windows 7 came with Windows Media Center. Windows 8 does not. To install Media Center onto Windows 8.1, you must first purchase Windows 8.1 Pro Pack for $99.99. Then you can purchase Windows Media Center for $9.99. That’s a lot of 9s.

Summer 2014 Begins

It’s June 21, the longest day of this year, the day of summer solstice for 2014 here in the northern hemisphere (winter solstice down under). Summer solstice is considered the first day of summer, although we’ve already seen plenty of hot days in central Virginia.

My last blog post was written May 21: one month ago. I won’t say nothing has happened in the past 31 days. It’s just that nothing worth telling the world about has happened. On the other hand, that’s never stopped me from writing before.

First, the faucet on my kitchen sink developed a drip. It’s a modern faucet so it doesn’t have an easy-to-replace faucet washer. You see, if it had a washer, fixing it would be a breeze, and we can’t have that. It has some kind of valve for which no one carries parts, so I may have to replace the entire faucet assembly: hot water, cold water, and sprayer. It’s ten years old and that seems to be par for a faucet lifetime these days. But fixing the faucet – plunking down $200 for a new one, turning off the water, crawling under the sink with a basin wrench in one hand and a flashlight in the other – is on hold until the drip becomes just a little more annoying.

Then there was the approach of hot weather and my Jeep needed a dose of a/c refrigerant. Although it’s a simple operation and I’ve done it a number of times, this year something went wrong. I had a brain fart. Or a senior moment. Whatever. I won’t bore you with details. Suffice to say that when you try to recharge an automobile air conditioner and said air conditioner is not running, bad things can happen. In my particular case, the bad thing was an entire 12 ounce can of R134a with Stop Leak venting inside my garage. I can vouch that atomized Stop Leak does not have a pretty smell. But lesson learned; I bought another can of refrigerant and was able to get the a/c system to emit cold air once more.

Then my Jeep developed an issue with its idle speed. When I took my foot off the gas, the engine would slow too much, to the point it sometimes stalled. If it didn’t stall, it would bounce back to a normal idle speed. I decided the likely cause was a dirty Idle Air Control (IAC) motor. The IAC is attached to the throttle body by two screws; removing it was straightforward. It was indeed dirty. The pintle (the part that regulates engine air flow at idle) was sooted up. I cleaned it using throttle body cleaner and a toothbrush until the pintle was shiny. Then I reattached the IAC to the engine. I started the engine, and found it had a different problem: the engine wouldn’t idle at all. The only way to keep it running was to keep the gas pedal partly depressed.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I decided that the IAC was probably bad, and if the parts store had a replacement for less than 50 bucks I would buy it. Maybe it would fix the problem, and maybe it wouldn’t. But if it did, it would save me the hassle of taking the Jeep to a dealership and waiting hours to have it repaired. So I walked to the parts store. And as I walked beside busy Boulevard, I reflected on how unpleasant it is to not have transportation available in the form of a personal vehicle. I passed by a turtle on the roadside that had been squashed flat. “Yeah, pardner,” I said to the flattened turtle, “that’s what happens when you move too slowly in a world of automobiles. It’s no place to be on foot.”

The parts store had a replacement IAC in stock and it was about 30 bucks. I bought it and trudged back home and installed it on the Jeep’s engine. It worked. The idle problem is history. Woo-hoo.

Then came the next problem: my computer died. I turned it on one morning, and the fans ran, but nothing else happened: no splash screen appeared on the monitor, and there was no attempt to boot up. I thought possibly the power supply was bad, so I checked all the voltages. All were nominal. I checked the internal drives by cabling them to another computer. I concluded that repairing the computer would cost nearly as much as buying a new machine, and I’d end up with a six-year-old Windows Vista computer. So I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new machine. I placed the order and it’s on the way (says FedEx). It departed Nashville, Tennessee, at 3:07 this morning. I hope those FedEx boys are careful with it, and don’t drop it, nor toss it around too much. I hope the shipping container is marked “This End Up” and “Handle With Care” and “Consignee Will Kick Your Ass If You Break This Computer.”

And sometime along the way during the last 31 days (and maybe a few more) I gathered all of my dad’s letters that he wrote from the South Pacific to his new bride back in Virginia during the Second World War, and I typed them up, and I put them on the Internet where they will live forever. They’re mostly “mushy” love letters, but there is the letter in which he wrote of seeing American fighter planes (P-38 Lightnings) shoot down a Japanese Zero which then crashed near him. There’s the letter he wrote right after recovering from malaria (just a postscript, really, that read, “P.S. I was in the hospital for a while but now I’m out.”) There is the letter he wrote after seeing his buddies killed by friendly fire. (All the letters were read by army censors, and if the censors didn’t like something, they cut it from the letter.) One day I may read the letters again and try to decide if there are any that might be of interest to the general public, and maybe I’ll post links to those letters.

This post is long enough. I have to save something for July. ;-)

Happy

The following video is a tribute to Pharrel Williams’s song Happy. It was made by Iranian fans in Tehran using an iPhone 5s. Of course, being happy and dressing like normal people promptly got the three women and three men arrested by Iran’s religious police, who claimed the video was “vulgar” and hurt “public chastity.” But now the six have been released, perhaps in part because of publicity on social media. Take a look at what can get you in trouble in Tehran. (Sure, when I was a kid, some older adults may have complained that rock music was vulgar and would lead to the downfall of America, Western civilization, and so on, but no one went to jail for dancing to it.)

May Day

This May Day began with sunshine, but at 2 PM the sky is heavily overcast. Through a nearby open window I hear a bird chirping. Another bird, probably a crow, screeches and caws as though a neighborhood cat is after its baby. For too many people, my street is a shortcut to the mall; automobiles rumble past my house, spewing noxious fumes. The air is damp and smells of rain. It has rained every day this week. But April showers, it is said, bring May flowers, so it’s all good.

Today is May 1. May Day, the first day of May, has long been celebrated by many cultures in the Northern Hemisphere: it is related to the Celtic festival of Beltane, the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night, and the Roman festival of Flora. In pre-Christian Europe, May 1 was considered to be the first day of summer. In some countries, Socialists and Communists celebrate May Day as International Workers’ Day, a day which began in the United States to commemorate the Haymarket affair in Chicago that occurred on May 4, 1886.

In America, we used to celebrate May Day by doing things like giving May baskets and crowning a May Queen. I said “used to”; nowadays we’re too cool to do those kinds of things. We’ve evolved. Now we’re sophisticated; we’re grown-up; we’ve put away childish things.

There are still places in the world that celebrate May Day with fireworks and canelazo and colorful processions and even a bit of reverence. But to experience that, we cool people must now board a jet to a distant land where we might recall the value in shared ritual and know that there are people who remember how to play.

Thinking About the Universe

Sometimes I think about the Universe. It’s hard for me to conceive of the Universe having a beginning, but it did. There was a time when our Universe and its billions of galaxies did not exist. Then suddenly, seemingly from nowhere, it sprang into existence. That happened 13.82 billion years ago. We call that event the Big Bang. The Big Bang is the best theory we have come up with to explain what we see when we peer into space.

We think of space as “empty space”. Of course, space contains galaxies and dust and radiation, but if you take all of that away, what’s left? Empty space. Except, space is something. Meaning, space is not nothing. It is definitely something.

When we point our telescopes at other galaxies, we can see they are moving away from us. The farther a galaxy is from us, the faster it is traveling away from us. This doesn’t mean there is something special about our place in the Universe. The fact is, this truth holds for every galaxy. If you could travel to any place in the Universe, you would see all the other parts of the Universe moving away from you.

You might think all these galaxies have some outward velocity, that they’re traveling though space like pieces of shrapnel traveling outward from a bomb. But you would be wrong.

What is happening is this: the space between galaxies is expanding. Space itself is expanding. Galaxies are embedded in space, and as space expands it carries the galaxies away from each other. It’s like a loaf of raisin bread in the oven. As the loaf rises and expands, the raisins move away from each other. They’re not traveling through the loaf of bread. They’re staying put; it’s the loaf that is expanding and carrying the raisins farther apart.

If space were literally and truly nothing, how could it expand?

Our Universe, apart from the matter and energy (and dark matter and dark energy) it contains, is made of something we call spacetime. Space and time are the components of spacetime. That is why an object’s velocity through space affects the passage of time for that object. Space and time are woven together. If you tug on one you affect both.

The Big Bang created the Universe. But the Big Bang wasn’t something that happened somewhere in space. Before the Big Bang happened, space didn’t exist. The Big Bang created space. And it created Time. It created spacetime.

Suppose you had the power to remove everything from the Universe. You remove the stars, you remove the dust and gas, you remove light and x-rays and gamma-rays. You remove the dark matter and energy. You remove everything, until finally there is nothing left but empty space. And finally, you remove the empty space. Now, what do you have?

You have the situation that existed before the Big Bang. I call it the Void. The Void can’t be pure nothingness, because if nothing at all existed – not matter, not energy, not potential energy, not even some kind of mathematical framework to hang the laws of physics on – if nothing at all existed, then there would be nothing to cause the Big Bang.

If we had a time machine, we could travel back 13.82 billion years to a time when there was no Universe. We’d have to be in a very special time machine that could exist without occupying any space at all, because there was no space to occupy then. There would be no up or down or this way or that way, because those terms describe 3-dimensional space, of which there wasn’t any. Yet. But something happened. We don’t know how it happened, but we see the flotsam and jetsam it left behind. We see stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters, black holes, neutron stars, magnetars, blazars, quasars, and other wonders. We see billions of galaxies. We see a Universe that might be infinite. In fact, there may very well be an infinite number of Universes, each sealed off from all the others, each a part of a vaster Multiverse.

Physicists have theories about how the Universe began and how it may end. In fact, with last year’s discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN, physicists tell us the Universe may well be unstable and that it could collapse into an alternate reality at any time – a reality in which we won’t exist. It may do this, they say, because the vacuum energy is too high. We’re back to thinking about empty space. Empty space is not nothing, it is something, and it is filled with energy. Like water running downhill, the Universe wants to be at a lower vacuum energy than it is now, but it finds itself “blocked” like a river that is dammed in a valley. The Universe is in an “energy valley” and one day it might find a way out. If it does, it will blink out of existence and create a new Universe – a new Big Bang – with a lower vacuum energy.

It’s a lot to think about. Physicists are pretty smart, and they’ve got some really nice tools these days, so maybe they’re right about this. Still, I think they have as much of a shot at understanding the Universe as the ants in my yard have of understanding the plumbing in my house. The more answers we find, the more questions we have. If a Creator exists, it’s a cinch that He’s a lot more clever than us. For sure, the ultimate answers to “Life, the Universe, and Everything” won’t be found in a book.