Things

I had envisioned writing this months ago. I would arrive in England, unpack my boxes, re-discover what books I had decided to ship across an ocean, and write about what they mean. These are the books I could not live without (or could not fit into my storage boxes) - that meant so much to me I would pay serious money and cause myself serious mental anxiety to have with me.

It turns out they caused me even more mental anxiety when that box simply did not arrive in England! I had my few cosmology textbooks and a few books I put in my luggage, but not the bulk of my favorite books and DVDs. Apparently I did not need them enough to get over my calling-businesses-on-the-phone anxiety (yes, I have anxiety issues, and that makes me anxious...) so I just hoped they would show up and planned to buy them all again until miraculously, a few days before Christmas, they were returned to my mom's house. (Custom's thought I owed duty fees but never bothered to send me a bill. Asshats.)

All of this strongly reinforces what I already knew, and what made moving out of a house I lived in for 6 years so hard, which is that I love my things. A book is not just a book but the experience I had reading it, over and over for my favorite books. I like to look at my things and have special places to put them. Even in the game Skyrim, I love how I can display my books on a bookshelf, armor on a mannequin, and special weapons I no longer use on a weapon rack. Sometimes I try to arrange the books by theme, because what matters is not that I have a bunch of things, but that I have a place for the things I care about, even when they are fantasy things in a fantasy world.

So what about my real books? (And DVDs while I'm at it.) It will surprise no one that I have very special copies of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, and even The Children of Hurin, two of which I brought in my luggage and the other two I packed, leaving the rest of my Tolkien books (you bet there are lots!) to storage. I'm actually glad The Hobbit was in the lost box because that means it is here now and I am reading it to my nephew. The DVDs were mostly movies that I don't have pirated copies of, but especially all 3 LOTR extended edition DVDs. Other fantasy books I brought or packed are the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman and all 7 Harry Potter books, plus The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I probably debated whether to pack Dune (all 6) or HP, deciding that HP belonged in England. To round out the fantasy genre I also packed Legend. (I will accept no criticism. It is awesome.)

Next I packed The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts, a book on Guided Meditations by Stephen Levine, and The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, because, you know, deep thoughts and stuff. Then there's an awesome old book of the collected writings of John Steinbeck which contains my favorite, East of Eden. Deep thoughts in that one too. DVDs in this theme include I Heart Huckabees and a Joseph Campbell compilation, Sukhavati (I guess the Power of Myth was too big for the box). I will have to either find place in my luggage or download these in preparation for my next existential crises. I also packed The Matrix set of DVDs, which arguably goes here in the Deep Thoughts section, but that will take another blog post of explaining (and room in my luggage). I miss having my things!

The rest is a less meaningful hodgepodge of useful (Julia Child's French cookbook, Chocolate Desserts, French for Reading, Spanish phrase book, and a Guide to Madrid), not yet read (The World of Dreams (a collection of essays), volume one of Sandman by Neil Gaiman, and The House of Seven Gables), and awesome (Kung Fu Panda 2, Avatar: The Last Airbender volume 1, and Planet Earth). Maybe it's not as interesting as I thought it would be to learn that I like fantasy and metaphysics (and cartoons featuring martial arts). Sorry for boring you! But I do believe that the things people value tell a story about who they are.

I will have to figure out what I can fit on the trip back. Obviously I don't need these things. I can live without them. But I want my flat in England to be my home, "where the rooms are a collection of our lives," and for that I need my things.

Life

On the Friday after Thanksgiving my niece Autumn Rayne was born. I think she has my eyebrows, or at least my default cynical expression.

But maybe I am just looking for things that aren't there.

There are a million things I could wax philosophical about at this point. Life! There is a new person in the world! Although she is currently spending her time sleeping, peeing, and sucking, she will be rapidly learning new things in the near future... smiling! holding things! What wonders the world will bring!

There are a million things I could ruminate about, including how frustrating it is to be 5 time zones away, but I keep thinking about death. When I waxed philosophical about (mostly metaphorical) death it was to stress that without death there would be no life, because there would be no change. But that doesn't seem to work the other way around... it is not useful nor wise to think about life in terms of death. Life is the upswing, the start, the beginning of growth. Life speaks for itself, but death cannot. Life needs no explanation because life is.

Just a few days ago Autumn was safe inside her mother's womb. Things won't be so easy from now on. She will have to confront a steady stream of things-she-can't-do, one by one, and turn them into things-she-can-do. She will have 4 older brothers, 2 crazy aunts, and every toy and piece of clothing she will get for the next 10 years will be pink. What if she doesn't like pink? Let's just hope that she does!

New life means endless uncertainty. (Some good and some bad.) There is no limit to what she could do or be and we are free to speculate that it will all be awesome. And why not?

Welcome to your life, Autumn.

Midnight Thoughts

Every once in a while, I look at the clock when it's midnight. I then remember the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (what a great title!) and invariably get the song Skylark by KD Lang in my head. Sometimes I even sing it. (The full version, complete with sax solo. (yes I hum the sax solo...))

This just happened and I thought I'd share even though it isn't very deep. But it's interesting how things remind you of things that remind you of things.... thoughts fit into patterns and stay there where they are comfortable. I feel comfortable remembering Midnight and singing Skylark.

And in your lonely flight
Haven't you heard the music in the night,
Wonderful music,
Faint as a will o' the wisp, crazy as a loon,
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon.

Oh, skylark, I don't know if you can find these things
But my heart is riding on your wings.
So if you see them anywhere
Won't you lead me there?

Cosmic Noise

The popcorn noise on old TVs is caused by leftover radiation from when the Universe was very young, emitted only a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang.

This one might take a bit of explaining, but for that I will simply direct you to NASA's excellent "Universe 101" site, set up for the WMAP satellite that precisely measured the cosmic background radiation. In the image above, the TV noise is represented by actual data from WMAP.

Thanks again to Kara for the image and Science for the cool fact about the Universe!

"Live" Blogging the 2nd Presidential Debate

Starting around 8pm UTC (3pm EST) the 2nd presidential debate will be streaming LIVE from my laptop!  I will be following closely and keeping you updated on any notable things that happen (which, judging from the first debate, includes staying awake). Occasionally I may pause the LIVE feed to collect my thoughts. (It's cool, I can just say, "Rockabama, Mo Ro, calm down for a sec okay?" and they will wait for me.)

Join me and watch the PBS Newshour feed here (but don't click too soon or you will break space-time!)

8:15pm HMRT (Her Majesty's Royal Time): Just about to get this thing started. Keep re-freshing the page to get updates, and it's probably a good idea to load the video in a different window so you won't lose your spot when you refresh.

....and we're LIVE! I'm so glad this is on at a reasonable hour over here!

8:20pm HMRT (1:15 video time): Both of you sit down already!

8:25pm HMRT( 5:44 video): Super-young kid asks about college. When did they get so young?

Anyway, I will note that Romney said he will create jobs, Obama said how he will create them.

8:30pm HMRT (11:20 video): BOOOOO drilling and fracking! boooooo!! how do people think Obama is far-left?

17:16 video:  FIGHT FIGHT! awww.....

I wish somebody would fact check this "yes you did!", "no I didn't!" nonsense. (they won't.)

8:46pm HMRT (26:40 video): that's right, the middle class has been struggling much longer than the last 4 years and it certainly isn't because of higher taxes! Middle-income wages have stopped growing.

30:30 video: Hahaha "sketchy deal", Obama you are bad at making jokes right now!

36-38: love all of Obama's response on equal pay for women!

9:02 HMRT (38:46 video): Romney got "binders full of women"? My, that is colorful language. I wonder if anything will come of that remark or if the story's even true.

BTW making sure to recruit and hire qualified women as part of diverse hiring practices is indeed important, but doesn't really address equal pay. I hope Romney paid the women in those binders on the same scale he paid the men.

"Women have lost 580,000 jobs. That's the net of what happened in the last 4 years."

Wow, that factually incorrect number is big, Mr. Romney! Turns out it's more like 93,000. Also, I like to point to this graph when people talk about "net jobs" as an example of how taking an integral often washes out important information.

P.S. J. Ro, slow down, the guys are on pause right now waiting for me to type and link to things! We are only on minute 40!

9:09 HMRT (40:40 video): Also I like how Romney's argument seems to be: "The best answer is to have a strong economy so employers have money to throw around and will hire women! Let's face it, in a weak economy who would take that risk?"

46:40: Bored. Here's the image I just linked to. Also topical to what they're talking about.

.... nevermind, it's not a static image, but in looking for it I found something more awesome. Go here and view the source code (Ctrl-U). :-)

9:25 HMRT (54:30): Still bored. Romney still doesn't understand integrals.

On a side note, I filled in my absentee ballot today! It was nice doing it in front of a computer so I could look up the down-ballot candidates for Board of Education etc. and know something at all about who they are, even though I saw a couple horrible websites.

9:33pm HMRT (1:03:00): Immigration Fact-check point goes to Romney. (Also gets in a good jab! He wasn't the standard-bearer 4 years ago, chuckle!)

1:05:20: Definitely almost fought again! Calm down!

9:39 HMRT (1:08:00 video): I hate it when they don't answer the question.

 1:13:38: Oh shit, Obama is getting stern with Romney.

1:14:29: Point to the moderator on instant fact-checking! Though Romney has a point as well that Obama didn't say with certainty that it was terrorism for a while after that.

We all know how much I care about being certain here...

9:50 HMRT (1:19:38 video): Ugghhh... did Romney just say that the solution to gun violence is... marriage?  OUTLAW DIVORCE RIGHT NOW!!

Ugh. It's the culture of violence, because the parents aren't married.

1:21:19: Another point for the moderator. 1:22:00: +2.

1:24:09: Ugh Obama sit down.

10pm HMRT (1:27:30): Actually, Romney, maybe de-regulation actually led to the economy tanking? Maybe just a little bit?? Anybody remember credit default swaps?

1:31:48: Invest in science research! Yea! Rockabama!

1:36:20: Obama brings up the 47%. I might have had something to say about all that.


And that's it! Everybody remember to vote!

The Universe Is Awesome

There are more stars in the observable Universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth.

Thanks to Kara for the image and Science for the cool fact about the Universe!

This is to be the first in a series. If you can think of other one-sentence reasons why the Universe Is Awesome, let me know!

Those Poor People

Romney's off-camera remarks to his supporters have generated quite a buzz on the interwebs. In brief, the remarks I'm concerned with are when he describes the 47% of people that pay no federal income tax, “who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.”

I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

~ Mitt Romney, candidate for President of the USA

Now, there are many things to be said, and many rationalizations that will be made. I happen to think these are extremely revealing remarks, and I've decided, for my own entertainment as much as anything, to lay it out in a dialogue. Roughly, I will deal first with the politically, then culturally, then economically motivated reactions of hypothetical conservatives.

Politically Disappointed Interlocuter: "How horrible for the campaign! How could he so blatantly air these politically unsavory hard truths?! What a huge error in this political game!"

Abandoned Certainty: Yes, this is quite a blunder politically, but more important is that you seem to agree with Romney. What I find significant is not that Romney said something crazy and fringe, but that many other people share the sentiment. He was speaking to his supporters, people he knew would agree with him. To them, the gaffe is just that it sounds bad.

PDI: "It's a bad political move, but not a big deal. Others have said the same before; Democrats are going to blow this out of proportion, and aren't being fair to Romney."

AC: That's right, remember when the Wall Street Journal referred to them as lucky duckies? The people at the bottom who pay no taxes are so lucky! So maybe this isn't new, but it's still as appalling. And the point I'm concerned about is not that Romney said he won't try to get their votes, but why he thinks he won't get them, which is that he'll "never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." What concerns me is that so many people agree.

Somewhat-Exaggeratingly Culturally Insensitive Interlocuter: "I for one think Romney's right! It's those poor people who are making it harder for the rest of us by having nothing, and making us bail them out all the time. We can't just let them die -"

AC: Though I bet some would! Remember that moment in the Republican primary debates where Wolf Blitzer asks Ron Paul who should pay for someone with no health insurance that shows up at the emergency room? Wolf asks if we should let him die, and the crowd cheers and someone screams "Yea!"

SECII: "Okay, but I'm not that insensitive. Don't interrupt!"

AC: I apologize. Continue.

SECII: "We can't just let them die, so they are taking our hard earned money and sitting on their asses for thanks! Or worse, using our money to buy drugs and alcohol!"

AC: Two things. First, you seem to think that 47% of Americans are on welfare or pay no taxes at all, which would be astonishing if it were true, but it's not. Over half of those 47% pay some form of payroll tax, and the breakdown of those 47% is quite interesting. Yes, the number is quite high, but Romney seems to equate it all with a culture of entitlement - people walking around with their hands out asking the government - asking you the taxpayer - for money, because they "believe they are victims." He seems to think half the country are complete degenerates.

SECII: "But what about those that really don't pay any taxes at all, those on welfare; Romney was right about them, even if he didn't say it "elegantly." They do want handouts. I never asked for handouts. I built it!!"

AC: That brings me to my second point, which is the complete devaluing of the self-worth of the poor. The main message behind "I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives" is that they are not like us; we have responsibility and those people don't; not just that they're different but that they're not worthy of the benefits they get. Even some of the poor share those beliefs. They know people who work the system to get welfare disability checks. But it's "those poor people, not us. We take personal responsibility for our lives, except we just can't get a break."

SECII: "You see! Those poor people work the system!"

AC: Sure, some people do, but the perception is that they all do, and Romney seems to think 47% of Americans do. Look, there is some merit to the un-exaggerated version of the above argument. Yes, it would be better if people could work, and if they didn't use what little they have to buy drugs and alcohol. If it were so simple, and yet they still insist on living in poverty, it must be their fault; but of course it isn't simple. Nothing about poverty is simple.

And this is where, uncomfortably, race comes into the discussion, because blacks have long been stereotyped in this country as lazy and stupid. Romney and the GOP's shameful (and repeated) lie that Obama removed the welfare work requirement was criticized by some as racist, not because most of the people on welfare are black (overwhelmingly, most are white), but because it fits with the stereotype that black people on welfare don't want to work. Incidentally, though race and poverty are intertwined and thorny issues, I don't think Romney's remarks were racist - which just means he disparages those poor people, of all colors, equally.

Well-Intentioned Interlocuter: "Look, what Romney really meant was: 'Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.' If we stop giving those poor people fish, they would become productive members of society, and they wouldn't be poor. It's all about incentives. They need to help themselves."

AC: This argument is sound, WII, even reasonable... except for the fact that we aren't teaching them to fish either. The worst schools are in the poorest neighborhoods, the high school drop-out rate is astonishing, 10th-graders read at a 2nd grade level, etc. The poor in this country are without both fish and the means to acquire fish... and so they starve. It takes fish to make more fish, and the top 1% of fish-holders are controlling more and more of it - some even waving it in our faces going "haha, you can't have it!"

(At this point I can't help but bring religious conservatism into the picture, which has aligned itself with the political conservatism of "stop giving people fish," because as I recall, Jesus had no problem giving people fish. Lots of it.)

Ahem, moving on, I certainly hope most conservatives are of the WII variety, i.e. only disagreeing on how the problem of poverty can be solved. But, I don't agree that this is all that Romney meant. To say that those poor people have no personal responsibility, no care for their lives, is to believe that they can't be taught to fish no matter what we do because they think they are entitled to fish. Government fish. Your fish.

WII: "That's right, and the Democrats just want to keep throwing my fish at those people! It's not my fault the economy is in the crapper and the social safety net has holes; I work hard for my fish."

AC: Presumably your net has no holes! You know, to catch fish! :-D

WII: ...... *cough* ......

AC: Well.... I understand where you're coming from, and assuming you aren't a hedge-fund manager, I don't think you should give up any more of your fish either. I think the best way is to raise taxes on capital gains so people like Romney don't have a lower effective tax rate (13.9%) than their secretaries. But, as I said before, I think Romney is saying something far worse. I think his comments express a complete disdain for the poor, and that makes me sad.


Regardless of political opinions, I think we need to stop thinking about poverty as those poor people and start thinking about how to help those poor people.

Creation

Look what I did! I made soup!

This is one of those things that just happened at the store. I saw the kale and decided to make chickpea-kale-chorizo soup. Then that gave me an excuse to get bread and cheese and open a bottle of wine! It took a while but turned out delicious. Also, FYI, goat cheese in England is called "goat's cheese." Tomato tomato. (If you're like me, you got a kick out of reading those both the same way! Haha!)

I could just put a picture up and call it a blog post, but that would be lazy, and worse, un-philosophical. This is the perfect opportunity to talk about Creation. By this I mean the act, not the end result, and certainly not The Universe. Why do we love to create things? Even those of us who aren't artists or poets enjoy turning raw ingredients into something more. For me, most of the time it's writing, but I think all of us have some creative outlet (or wish we did). Whether it's cooking, sewing, making cocktails, photography, refurbishing furniture, or writing a really beautiful piece of code... sometimes in our hobbies and sometimes in our work, humans love creation.

Part of it is standing back when it's done and going "There is This that I have made, look all Ye upon it in its Glory." And then eating it, as the case may be. But I find that the act of creation itself is really what it's all about. Once you make something (not for eating or listening to, let's say), it is nice to look at and fulfilling to have made it, but there is always the urge to create something new. The process of creating is somehow different and desirable. You are focused on a task, but also open to inspiration. It can be hard work, or tedious, or frustrating, but the effort makes it even more rewarding. You don't know exactly how it will turn out. You relish the uncertainty!

Before I get tooooo metaphysical here, I will wrap up this blog Creation with a quote that doesn't seem to go along with anything unless you've read His Dark Materials and recognize that Dust is (are) particles of consciousness and also that I just wanted somewhere to put it because I like it:

like the light on water when it makes small ripples, at sunset, and the light comes off in bright flakes, we call it that, but it is a make-like.

- Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass

Through our own Creation we touch Creation (this time I mean The Universe), and another way to say that is Eternity, and I guess I think that quote fits because it reminds me of when Joseph Campbell talks about "flashes on the surface of the waters of eternity". It's like that, but that is a make-like.

No I'm Not Excited

No, I'm not excited. I guess I'm supposed to be excited. Everyone asks me if I'm excited. It seems like the normal thing to be in this situation. And when I answer "not really" or "I guess so" or "hell no I'm terrified," I can tell they are disappointed. I've let them down by not being excited. They can't share my excitement if I don't have any. All I have to offer them is anxiety, worry, and fear. These are not fun emotions to share. So most of the time I don't. "I'm sure it will be fine." Then they can tell me how awesome it will be and how they are excited for me. I'm glad they're excited.

What they don't know is that everything bad is going to happen all at once. None of the 10,000 logistics of transferring my life will work out. I will be horrible at my new job. I will be far away from everything I know and everyone I care about. Not just lonely. Alone. So no, not excited.

I'm aware that none of that is true. But it doesn't matter. That's what I feel, at least some of the time, when I'm not otherwise distracted by life. I could remind myself that fear is the mind killer, that uncertainty is awesome (and it sucks), that change is a part of life, etc., and these are all true, but first I need to let myself be. Everything bad is going to happen all at once. Major sad times. :'(

A lot of people seem to think major sad times are bad. They read books on how to live a happy life. They find religion. They try to cheer up their sad friends or give them religion. They hate to cry. Crying means they can't handle things like adults. They are adults. They want tombstones that read: "Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt." They think the meaning of life is to be happy.

I feel sad a lot more than most people. My brain jumps to the worst case scenario. I worry all the time, even without Important Life-Changing Events going on. I've been depressed and I will be again. I cry. This is not to say that I think major sad times are good. But after struggling with them for a long time, I've found that I need to give myself the space to be sad, to cry when I need to (and blog about it, apparently). The feelings won't go away just because I would rather not feel them.

I would rather feel excited. It is a fun emotion to have. Everything awesome is going to happen all the time! It's just as false, but much more satisfying, and people can be happy for you instead of sad for you. Even though I'm okay with my own sadness, I would rather not make others sad on my behalf. I'm not even sure I want to post all this, even having waited a few days after writing to think about it... I mean, everyone would know that I'm sad! My secret would be out! But (if you're reading) I will post it, because what's the point of having a blog without awkward personal sharing on the internet...

There are a lot more things I could say on the topic, but I will leave you with another philosophical easter-egg video of Alan Watts. How do we escape suffering? Go into it completely, for "there is nothing so much the very essence of suffering as the fear of suffering."

Everything Flows

As some of you may know, my thesis advisor was in a Hungarian rock band called Panta Rhei. If you haven't already, go sample some of their music on his website! (I can attest that he is still capable of rocking out, and he looks about the same as he did 30 years ago.) In addition, which I found out recently, Panta Rhei is both the name of a boat in Switzerland and Greek for "everything flows", an aphorism attributed to Heraclitus. So, my advisor's Hungarian band that plays progressive rock and adaptations of Grieg also has a philosophical name! Can't get better.

The idea behind Panta Rhei is often expressed as: "You can't cross the same river twice." This is meant to be paradoxical. Assuming you haven't heard this before and don't know the "solution," you might say, "Of course I can! See, there is a river. I can cross the bridge and come back. I can cross the same river as many times as I like! Naa naaa naaaa!!"

First of all, you would be very annoying. There's no need to use that tone.

But more importantly, what "river" are you talking about having crossed? That long body of flowing water called The Mississippi, for example? But that is just a name. You aren't crossing a name - an abstraction of nature into an idea called "river" - you are crossing the long body of flowing water itself. That is the first insight.

The second insight is that the thing we call "river" is in constant flux as the water flows along, so it can never be the same river. You can't cross the same river twice because the river is always changing. In some sense you are also always changing, as the cells in your body constantly replicate and die, as your brain activity responds to your thoughts about rivers, and so on. Not just people and rivers, but everything is in constant flux. Everything flows.

A further insight is that this is a result of Time. Everything flows because everything exists in time, and in our Universe time always moves forward. If there were no time, then nothing would change. In physics, this idea is expressed in terms of entropy, which is a measure of the amount of disorder in a system. Smooth, flat, homogeneous, boring things have low entropy. It is a fundamental law that entropy always increases with time - smooth things become rough (or cosmologically, smooth density fields grow into galaxy clusters, planets, and people) - and this is often expressed as the destruction of order, as in this cute TED talk by physicist Andreas Albrecht. Watch it right now!

Philosophical Easter Egg

Today I found an Easter egg on the internet! (No, not the chocolate or candy-filled kind. That would be hard to download.) What I mean is, I found totally unlooked-for hidden treasure of a philosophical nature!

I was reading a science blog that mentioned science writing and linked to a writing blog that mentioned a writing epiphany had while watching OMG Alan Watts Philosophical Discourses on YouTube I Love You!!

Here it is: Part 7 - Recollection

(seriously I love you)

So have you watched it yet? I'm not gonna lay it all out for you, but it deals with the fundamental nature of existence and taxi cabs. Watch it. Watch all of them.

Transitory

Today Venus will transit the Sun (i.e. pass in front of it for our viewing pleasure). There are a lot of things that could be said about this event and it is certainly a great opportunity for astronomical public outreach. Locally we will have a bunch of telescopes for public viewing, starting with talks by both Nobel Laureates and scientists who actually study transiting planets.

But the Deep Thought I have been struck by is how a lot of the attention is focused on how this is the "Last Transit of Venus any of us will see in our lifetimes" (as the announcement e-mail of our own outreach event states). Where was all the hubbub during the 2004 transit? Obviously that wasn't as cool. Venus must always be transiting the Sun if there's another event in 8 years. But now, it's the Last Chance. If you don't see it now you won't have another chance because you will be dead!

I think this is an example of a common phenomenon. Things that happen all the time are boring. Things that happen rarely are much more interesting. Things that will only happen one more time before you die are even more awesome and I don't think it's because of a morbid fascination with our own mortality, but rather a life-affirming fascination with our own mortality.

Transitory events remind us of our own transitory-ness and that Hey, we better start paying attention to things while we still can! The universe is a fascinating place in which Cool Things Happen instead of a boring place in which nothing changes! Sweet!

So I hope you enjoy it along with all the other things happening in this transitory event called Life.

I just want to feel everything

When I need to sing, I listen to Fiona Apple. By now I have mostly memorized her first two albums (3rd was less impressive) - not only is she awesome, but she sings in my range and with such emotion, and when I need to sing, it is usually related to emotions. So I was excited to hear her new song, Every Single Night, which is particularly awesome and which prompted me to get tickets to her show (and I never go to shows). I like the sparsity of the instrumentation, the accents of percussion, and the sudden fullness of vocals when she sings "brain" in the chorus. This was a new Fiona Apple and I was very excited.

And then I read the lyrics! It turns out that this song expresses much of my life. From worrying way too much about what other people are thinking, to not being able to go to sleep unless I can distract myself from the constant barrage of my thoughts, to "I just want to feel everything."

In the song, this is first expressed in terms of a curse or a burden. "The pain comes in" and "I can't fit the feelings in. Every single night's alight with my brain." Then, "my breast's gonna bust open... I just made a meal for us both to choke on. Every single night's a fight with my brain." Opening yourself up to the multitude of feelings, the immensity, is a difficult and painful process. Most of the time when I realize what I'm doing (worrying) I wish it would stop, but it doesn't. So I fight with my brain and continue to worry, and try to go to sleep.

But after a while, "maybe I'd relax; let my breast just bust open. My heart's made of parts of all that surround me... Every single night's alright..." This acceptance of the abundance of feeling occurs much less often than the worrying. Even though I identify with the concept of opening the heart (chakra) and feeling everything, it is not a sustainable state of being. You can't experience the "pure being ball thing" all the time, and so you get swept back into the drama of human suffering - or what I like to call being alive.  So it is fitting that what the phrase "I just want to feel everything" reminds me of is when the souls in the Golden Compass trilogy finally die:

They... held out their arms as if they were embracing the whole universe; and then, as if they were made of mist or smoke, they simply drifted away, becoming part of the earth and the dew and the night breeze.

- Phillip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass (emphasis mine)

What I wouldn't give to embrace the whole universe. If that only happens when you die, then that is my version of heaven. I just want to feel everything!

Elvish is Easy

The hardest part of writing something in Elvish is figuring out what to say.

Once you've done that, everything else just follows naturally. First, you have to see if there is a reasonable translation. (Remember, it's Elvish, there are no words for spaceship.) Obviously Sindarin is the specific language to go with, as it is the primary language of the elves in Middle-Earth (most of the high elves having gone over the sea into the West) - but if you are going to be particularly poetical or if you want to translate a wizard's spell, Quenya might be worth the effort. Either way, simply look up your words in an online dictionary (Sindarin or Quenya (pdf)) and write them down for later. This is your starting point, but if you simply string these words together you would sound like a crass dwarf. Elvish is anything but crass.

The next step is to consult this guidebook to figure out how to pluralize your nouns, conjugate your verbs, and especially how each word might be changed based on what other word is before or after, known as lenition or soft mutation. This is all really quite simple. If you want to say "friends", change the "o" in mellon to "y" and there you have it: mellyn nin, "my friends". You don't have to change the "e" to "i" because it occurs in the first syllable. If you want to say something about Ents, both "o"'s in Onod get mutated, the first to "e" and the second to "y" to get Enyd (but sometimes the first "o" is not mutated, so you will just have to know when it is right to do it). However, if you are talking about the Ents as a people, instead of just two or more Ents, you don't pluralize any vowels but instead add -rim to get Onodrim. Similarly Amon for "hill" gets changed to Emyn for "hills" as in the Emyn Muil. You get the point. Quite easy.

Now if you want to say "my friends" in the middle of the sentence instead of the beginning - such as in the King's Letter: e aníra ennas suilannad mhellyn în, "he wishes there to greet his friends" - you must add a soft mutation to change the "m" to "mh" (or usually "v", of which "mh" is a nasal variant). Most other consonants are lenited when preceded by a vowel, such as the article i meaning "the": "the friend" becomes i vellon.* Also, p, t, and c become b, d, and g while b and d become v and dh (which is voiced th), and g drops altogether as in Galadriel's opening words in the FOTR movie: a han noston ned 'wilith, "and I can smell it in the air", where the word for "air" is gwilith. This is all very straightforward. Now your set of Sindarin words may bear only a vague resemblance to the initial Sindarin words you had from the dictionary. But you probably shouldn't have tried to mutate your nouns before dealing with the verbs.

* Of course "the friends" becomes i mellyn since the plural article in triggers the nasal mutation which changes in to i before an "m", since of course "m" is already nasal, whereas in + gelaidh becomes i ngelaidh ("the trees"). Obviously.

First figure out what kind of verb you have, whether it is a derived verb (called A-stem because they end in "a"), or the more complex basic verb (I-stem because their present tense ends in "i" though they usually have no suffix), and of course notice whether your A-stem verb has a mixed conjugation or whether it is irregular. As you can see, it should be quite obvious which type of verb you have. Then simply follow the rules and conjugate to your heart's content, paying attention to the pronoun you require. So for example, the present tense of nosta- above is identical to the word itself: nosta, "smell", but to say "I smell" you add the ending -n, which changes the "a" to "o": han noston, "I smell it". This should all go without saying.

I will of course assume that you have all read the pronunciation guide in the back of The Silmarillion and have not been butchering the language by saying mae govannen as "may" instead of the correct "mai". That means it will be quite easy to take your Sindarin sentence and transliterate to one of the runic alphabets, such as the blocky Cirth preferred for stone work, and by the dwarves, or the more elegant Tengwar such as appears on the One Ring. The tengwar are created by combining telcor (stems) and lúvar (bows) based on where the sound is spoken in the mouth and whether it is voiced or voiceless (see figure). Then of course there are additional letters, which can be written both normally or upside-down, but that should pose no difficulty.

Double letters (such as "nn" in govannen) aren't written twice but are instead denoted by adding a special symbol under the letter, and nasalized letters have a symbol over the top. The vowel sounds also have their symbols placed on top (or under) the consonant preceding (Quenya) or following (Sindarin) the vowel. When there is no available consonant carrier, a special short or long carrier is used, based on whether the vowel sound should be short or long. This is all so logical that you have probably derived it from first principles already, but I mention it here for clarity.

Now all you need to do is download some true type fonts for tengwar, of which there are many. If you are going to put your Elvish phrase into your Ph.D. thesis, for example, it will also help to have a LaTeX package that will place your choice of font neatly into your pdf, and all you have to do is type out the Quenya names for all of the letters and symbols that go into your words.

There you have it. Was that so hard?

The Face of Racism

The killing of Trayvon Martin has been on my mind all week. Monday I read the stories and listened to the 911 calls in shock and horror. How has his killer not yet been charged? How has such a thing happened? He was only a child in a hoodie wielding a bag of skittles, which has contributed to there being a national outcry over the incident. How many times has a similar thing happened to a grown man that we have not heard about?

The sad thing is, it is all too easy to understand. As many blog posts have explained, this is the cost of being a young black man in America today. Some people have questioned whether this is about race, perhaps because the killer was latino... but white people are not the only ones capable of racism. We as a people need to be aware that this is the face of racism in America today, both individually and on a systemic level: it is less often about outright discrimination and more often about subtle unconscious biases that are never examined.

George Zimmerman didn't think to himself, "I hate black people so I am going to kill this boy," though those crimes still happen; he saw a person he identified as suspicious, was angry that "These assholes always get away," and took it on himself to.... well, to commit violent murder! I am at my limit of trying to understand how people can do these things and convince themselves they were in the right; how people can blame the killing on a hoodie; how the police can "correct" a witness, take a killer at his word, and hold themselves blameless. I can no longer find it fascinating to try to understand their intentions. It is easy to understand. This is the face of racism, operating on a subconscious level, and we as a people need to grow up and deal with it.

What that requires is a lot of personal responsibility, even for those of us reading about this killing with disgust. We cannot respond by pointing the finger somewhere else: at the police; at those racists in Florida; at the culture of white privilege; at ignorance. We first have to look into ourselves and critically examine the attitudes that we have about groups of people different than us. We have to make a conscious effort to analyze our emotional reactions. We need to call out our friends and family when they make racially-charged remarks (or other stereotyping behavior).

In writing this I remembered Barack Obama's famous speech on race during his 2008 campaign and am listening to him now, as he talks about his own grandmother expressing racist attitudes and discusses the history of slavery. If we do not take Trayvon Martin's killing as an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and about the context of race in America then we have failed in our responsibility as human beings, as thinking and feeling creatures, as spiritual people, as rational individuals. We are the face of racism.

Immensity

Merry looked out in wonder upon this strange country, of which he had heard many tales upon their long road. It was a skyless world, in which his eye, through dim gulfs of shadowy air, saw only ever-mounting slopes, great walls of stone behind great walls, and frowning precipices wreathed with mist. He sat for a moment half dreaming, listening to the noise of the water, the whisper of dark trees, the crack of stone, and the vast waiting silence that brooded behind all sound. He loved mountains, or he had loved the thought of them marching on the edge of stories brought from far away; but now he was borne down by the insupportable weight of Middle-earth. He longed to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.

- J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Return of the King," p. 64

This is why I will always be reading and re-reading Tolkien. I may put LOTR away for a few months or more, but when I'm ready, I will find my bookmark and read something beautiful. I must have read this paragraph 10 times before, but this time it was new and powerful. I want to go to a mountain and listen to the whisper of dark trees! I want to listen to the vast waiting silence that broods behind all sound! And especially, I want to return from the mountains to shut out the immensity in a quiet room by a fire.

Experiences of awe such as Tolkien describes can be overwhelming; one can lose oneself in the vastness. At first this feeling can be exciting: sit on a mountain, or gaze at the stars, and you become small in relation to your experience, but at the same time you become part of the immensity itself. "Formless! Boundless!" (to roughly quote the Tao Te Ching...) You lose you to become the experience. This can be thrilling, but it can also be frightening. After all, we are used to thinking of ourselves as ourselves and not the entire universe. When Middle-earth gets too huge we look for a safe place to be ourselves again.

It takes courage to lose yourself in immensity. The deep ocean, the high mountain, the crowded city center, the vast waiting silence that broods behind all sound... Most of us don't have the time (or the will) to experience vast strangeness, like Merry on an epic journey he could not anticipate, finding himself bereft of his friends. We don't often willingly put ourselves into a situation where nothing is familiar, without guarantee of security or a safe way home again. Those who do are praised as heroes. But although we may think of a hero as an Aragorn figure with a destiny for greatness, clarity of purpose, strength and kindness and a long stride, most heroes (and most of us) are more like the hobbits, who dream of eggs and bacon and a seat by the fire, and for whom Middle-earth is best experienced through stories brought from far away; but the immensity is there for us all, waiting for us to enter.

Uncertainty Sucks. Happy Leap Day!

I'm taking this leap day opportunity to 1) fit in a post in February, and 2) veer from my usual Abandon Certainty mantra. It turns out that uncertainty sucks!

In some sense it is a luxury to abandon certainty, in terms of opening yourself up to the wonders of being alive, without assuming that you know the answers, and embracing change over stability. But there is little wonder in the uncertainty of not knowing where or whether you will be employed, when that next paycheck will come in, whether you will have enough food to feed your kids, and similar issues that too many people worry about every day. Perhaps the difference is in whether you are actively abandoning certainty or whether uncertainty has been thrust upon you.

Over the years I have interpreted this in terms of both Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and the Hindu Chakras. Before one can take an existential leap (pun intended!) into the unknown, one must first deal with the basic needs of nutrition, health, personal safety, etc. This is similar in spirit to the chakra hierarchy, where the three basal chakras dealing with survival, pleasure, and willpower must be opened before the heart chakra, which deals with openness and love. So perhaps the uncertainty that sucks is about basic needs which, if not met, become a barrier to experiencing the uncertainty that is awesome.

As this current and prolonged period of uncertainty about my future continues (seriously, this is a painfully slow metaphorical death), I am finding it quite hard to experience anything awesome about uncertainty. It sucks and I hate it and it is causing stress, anxiety, and depression. I'm losing sight of where I am and where I'm going as if my life is guided by some existential uncertainty principle. My existential wave function had better collapse soon. Is the existential cat metaphorically alive or dead??

OK, OK, enough with the quantum physics analogies. Happy leap day everybody. Today is a day to remember that the Earth takes 365.25 days to travel around the Sun. Enjoy the fact that this is yet another day where you can eat, sleep, and breathe, and worry about everything else another day.

Theory vs. Observation

In astronomy there are theorists and observers. Theorists do scary things like path integrals and observers do tedious things like data reduction, and somehow the field has managed to inch forward over the centuries to advance our knowledge of the universe. At one point astronomers were often both, but these days that is rare.

This year, Cosmology on the Beach was populated by many non-astronomers and certainly many theorists, so that might be why the question, "You said ellipticals don't have disks; does that mean they don't have star formation?" was not too out of place. The theorist lecturer answered, basically, yes, and then went on to muse on why there is this difference between spirals and elliptical galaxies. It occurred to me that an observational astronomer might have went into some detail about what different galaxy surveys have found, examples of observed star formation in ellipticals, and the properties of both. By glossing over details and giving the simple answer (yes), the theorist's answer was perhaps less true than my hypothetical observer's answer. The real world is more complicated. But instead of detailed examples and caveats, the theorist's attempt to answer "why" was perhaps more meaningful.

Thus I am writing this instead of listening to discussion which has now moved on to the subject of inflation theories (both less true and less meaningful). I wonder if the statement: "Observers are concerned with what is true; theorists are concerned with what is meaningful" is either true or meaningful. Observers (and experimentalists) collect facts about the universe. Theorists try to put these facts together into a coherent whole and derive new facts. Obviously both would argue that they care about both what is true and what is meaningful, and they would be correct, but not in a meaningful way. ;-)

Most theories end up being falsified by observations, so I think it is easy to accept the first half; but what about meaning? Can meaning even exist without truth? I would say yes, but it is not obvious. I think meaning is really found in connections, processes, and dependencies, whereas facts are static. Facts are independent of other facts. Regular readers may not be surprised that I prefer change over stability and processes over products, and perhaps that is why I'm not an observer.

I think it's not much of a stretch to say that truth is stable, final, while meaning connects truths to each other and to people. Observations themselves lack meaning unless they say something about theories... so for example, observations of N stars and their positions, brightnesses, colors, etc. don't say anything meaningful about the universe until they are connected with a theory of star formation. On the other hand, observers collect beautiful truths that stand on their own while theorists only ever make models and attempt to describe reality with math. Observers touch reality itself, while theorists play around with representations of reality. Perhaps that's why I'm not a theorist either....

How much of this "theory vs. observation" divide is a result of personality differences, and how much is a result of the need to specialize? Theorists and Observers are both important and needed, and although both admit that the other has their uses, both have put themselves into a box of one or the other. Both make jokes at the others' expense: theorists aren't connected to the real world and observers fit lines through scatter plots. Sometimes I laugh at these and sometimes I find myself bothered by them. Can't we all just get along? Of course, whenever a joke is directed at me I can say "no, not an observer!" or "not a theorist!" And then I say "phenomenologist" and vanish in a puff of smoke.

But then I find myself in a puff of smoke! And I'm not even sure I can use the word "phenomenologist" legitimately. I simulate things and analyze the simulations, so I don't do scary integrals and I don't do tedious data reduction. I'm probably close enough to a theorist to be grouped with them, since basically my computer calculates the integrals for me. It turns out a lot of science can happen from inside puffs of smoke.

Death

I decided to pull out some Tarot cards today, and the first card was Death.

Don't worry, it's just a metaphor. And a pretty accurate one too. A lot of things are changing right now and a period of my life is ending. I'm in the middle of figuring out what the next stage of my life is going to be like. And before anything new can happen, the old has to become old. It has to die. Only with death can there be birth; only with birth can there be death.

Death is not an evil thing, nor always bad, but it is often scary, and sometimes painful. We become comfortable in the life we have and start to fear that it won't always be so comfortable, that at some point something will be different. Fear of death is fear of change, for death is the first step to change. I mostly mean metaphorical death here, as in ending, leaving, or being destroyed, but physical death too. Physical death is the ultimate change from which there is no changing back (in so far as anything can really be changed back). But we forget we have already gone through such a transition: birth. We come into this world and we go out, there is no escaping this truth, for the nature of life is change. Creation and destruction are the two sides of that change and merely different ways of describing a single event.

I was at a funeral recently and as I listened to the pastor, I became convinced that the nature of religion is to address in some way the fear of death. And in my opinion, most do this the completely wrong way, which is to get rid of death entirely. When you die you go to heaven. Death is not real, you won't really die, the people you love won't die, everything will be perfect in the light of God. "Others have to say 'goodbye', we get to say, 'see you later'." To me that means no growth can occur, no moving forward but always looking back - eternal stagnation and sameness - the absence of change and so the absence of life. The absence of life indeed - the very thing that was feared - but also the absence of death. What is left? No, I would rather say goodbye. I would rather be able to feel loss and sadness and pain. How can one grieve if there is nothing to grieve? How can I rejoice in the new if I never let go of the old?

I don't mean to be too hard on the idea of heaven, though. I don't mind if people believe in what gives them comfort, and I don't mind interpreting heaven as a metaphor even though people take it literally. ;-) But I will continue to say goodbye. And hello! (FYI that means to babies, in this analogy.)

One of my favorite movies is The Fountain and its major theme happens to be death. As the husband struggles to cure his dying wife, he spends less time with her. By trying to have her forever, he loses her now. And the wife instead becomes fascinated with the story of the Mayan creator god, who plants the tree of life from his own dying body: "Death as an act of creation." "Death is the road to awe." (One could say, the road to "awesome!" But one wouldn't.) And in the picture on the Tarot card, the dead one is placed in the fetal position in the womb of the earth. The snake sheds its skin to permit new growth. Or, to put it a little grossly, phallic and wombic imagery come together to create new life. (They make baby imagery.)

Having said all that, I'm not looking forward to my own metaphorical death at all! But I have to remind myself that Fear won't help anything... and then I have to eat some chocolate and calm down.

P.S. Almost forgot to mention another thing about The Fountain. I remember thinking the credits looked a bit like cosmological structure formation, but I didn't take it quite this far. Pretty awesome.