There's likely a simple, though maybe not easy, answer that I've just plain missed. One of the things I've wondered about is what could be called the bootstrap problem. How can crude tools be used to make less crude tools?

That is, you start with sticks and stones, and you eventually end up with precision machined parts accurate to tolerances that may be too small to see. It can be done. That much is plain since humanity did it. But although it's been proven possible, it seems counter-intuitive. It requires crude things to make finer things, repeatedly.

A devastated, but once advanced, civilization should in theory be able to recover faster than it built itself up the first time - if it permits itself that rebuilding. What's needed to do this? A good many things are only "obvious" after the fact. By the time a civilization understands something well enough to bring it to perfection, that civilization has likely discovered something else that even though imperfect is so much better that the first thing is rendered obsolete. But the knowledge of earlier technologies isn't useless - if nothing else, it'd be useful to rebuild fast and skip all the fiddling around between advances.

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Current Mood: pensive

There are a few cartoons that stand out as memorable to me. These I remember though I haven't seen them in years. Some I saw in newspapers, and a couple I saw in the yearly supplements to an encyclopedia. Here are descriptions of a few:

From a 1950s supplement: A kid stands with crutches and watches other kids running and playing as he wonders, "Why didn't my parents get me the Salk vaccine?" (I think it said Salk, but it might have just said polio.)

From a 1950s or maybe 1960s supplement: A personified world, a man whose head is the globe, looks at smallish rocket in the first panel, "The missile." He, a bit unnerved, looks a bigger rocket in the next panel, "The missile to stop the missile." He looks, now worried, at an even larger rocket in the next panel, "The missile to stop the missile to stop the missile." I no longer recall how many panels there were, but in the next to last panel, the personified world has fallen backwards and is sitting, staring up at a huge rocket, "ad infinitum" or such. The last panel has a technician in a lab coat running into a hanger-like building, arms extended, shouting "It's coming back!"

One of the few Peanuts cartoons I remember, from the late 1970s: Charlie Brown panics at it starting to snow, until someone explains that it is just snow. He had thought it was fallout.

From a newspaper in the 1980s: A lone house is labelled "Europe" in the first panel. In the second panel a figure, the USSR, pushes a large nuclear bomb up to one side of the house. In the next panel a USA (Uncle Sam?) figure pushes a similar nuclear bomb up to the other side of the house. In the final panel, a personified Europe is out of the house and yelling "Warmonger!" towards the U.S.

From a newspaper in the 1980s: Uncle Sam is walking away, possibly brushing his hands together, having just hit Libya. Two well-dressed gentleman, representing France and Italy, watch. One says to the other "That Sam, such a ruffian!" Meanwhile both have documents in their pockets, "Secret deals to let terrorists go."

From a campus newspaper, I think: Some scrap haulers are about to remove a junk pile when they're interrupted by a well-dressed fellow, "Stop! That's the Art in Public Places project. The junk heap is over there." And he points to something that doesn't look quite as bad as the alleged art.

On the wall outside a physics professor's office door: A scene of protesters with signs denouncing animal research. The caption reads, "Thanks to animal research, they'll be able to protest an average of 21.4 years longer." I might have the number wrong, but I think I have it close.

Current Mood: contemplative

Or, "Hey kid, that joke's old enough to vote now."

For a little while now there's been a bit going around about how this picture of Saturn's satellite Mimas resembles an item in a certain movie. This is amusing, but not for the reason that those posting it of late might claim.

The big crater, Herschel, on Mimas has been known about since 1980 or so. Cassini is not the first spacecraft to image Mimas. Voyager 1 got a picture and that has appeared a time or two.

With the Voyager 1 image which is a bit sharper rather than fuzzy, it's easier to distinguish the reality of a cratered moon.

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Cosmic Radio Show - The Chromatics

Last night I was listening to another CD in the Spike Jones box set I bought this past Saturday. There was a tune I heard on the Dr. Demento show, but had forgotten the title. This tune, Black Bottom has no vocal but it does have a joke of sorts in it. The joke depends on knowing one way that a record can fail or be damaged. There is a point where a bit of the music repeats several times fairly quickly, and then there is a *thump* like someone hitting something, and then the tune proceeds. When that was recorded the joke worked because everyone knew what it was.

People of a certain age (I don't know the limit on that) will get joke immediately upon hearing it. I suspect that some people now might never have encountered that problem and might not have picked up on it from cultural references and wonder what that was all about. If that's not the case right now, I expect it will be in not all that long a time.

I've read a few older (well, they're older than I am) books, which I generally find more informative than many recent books. But sometimes an assumption is made that "everyone knows that" which throws me as I, several decades later, have no idea what is really meant since I'm missing that critical "common knowledge."

Another example is a bit in some old movies. One bit that I recall seeing was someone hearing a shot, except it wasn't a shot. It was a light bulb breaking. Today, that doesn't make much sense. Sure, if you broke a bulb it would make a noise. But you wouldn't mistake it for a shot. The technology changed is what happened. For some time now, light bulbs have been filled with gas. With the pressure about the same inside the bulb as outside, if they break, they just break. Those early bulbs weren't gas-filled but held vacuum. When they broke, the atmospheric pressure pressing in caused a sharp implosion. That implosion is as good as an explosion as far as the kind of sound it made.

Those sort of things makes me wonder what I'm missing or not getting because of the "everyone knows that" assumption not working. I also wonder what that is taken for granted now will seem oddly unexplained in the future.

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Current Mood: curious

I've been rereading Hypnosis by George Estabrooks which mentions how some things are done because of belief. One example is the classic demonstration of the hypnotic subject's body going rigid enough to seem like a board when held up only a pair of chairs, one chair at the head and shoulders and the other at the feet. If the hypnotist asides to someone "Of course it's possible, anyone can do it" then it will work since the hypnotic subject has overheard that it's possible and what the hypnotist says is true - or at least close enough. But if the hypnotist tells someone near him "It's all nonsense, nobody can do it. The stage demos are rigged up like a magic act" then the subject won't be able to do it. The only difference in the hypnotic subject is the matter of belief. In one case, "anyone can do it" and so therefore can he. In the other, nobody can do it so neither can he.

Another bit Estabrooks mentions is that to get a desired change, the most effective means is to act as if it has already occurred. It's not a matter of going to change, but a matter of having already changed. Things just are the desired way. This same idea shows up in visualization techniques that don't label themselves hypnosis. They say to picture the end result and focus on that. It doesn't matter what it's called, it's the power of belief being harnessed. It is a quite powerful tool, if you have it. Belief in oneself, self-confidence, is good at least up to a point. Misapplied, it gets overbearing.

That and a recent conversation suggested something to me. I do not intend to belittle anyone or claim that what they believe is wrong. I just have a possible explanation for something that I find interesting:

Imagine it's a long, long time back, prehistoric times. Suppose you've realized how powerful self-confidence is and want to help your friend(s) (family, tribe, whatever). But you hit the problem of self-doubt. "Oh, I could never do that." That's a hard barrier to get past. You probably beat yourself senseless trying to get rid of that barrier. Then it hits you like a feather. Specifically, like Dumbo's "magic feather." You can invent a lucky charm, a talisman. Your friend doesn't have to believe in himself, he can believe in the trinket and will then act as if it worked. It's all placebo effect and you can't explain that bit of "magic" without destroying it unless your friend is really ready to believe in himself. If you have a few like this, then even those who are in on it, if you dare tell them and trust them to stay quiet, have to go with the act. If they don't, the others might get suspicious and soon the whole works is ruined.

There are still problems. The trinket doesn't really work, and your friend will still run into problems. Making more talismans only works for so long, and what if it gets lost or damaged, or maybe stolen?

It's time to invent something that can't be lost and has a built-in explanation for not always working. You invent an imaginary friend. Maybe it's a general "energy" or maybe it's a collection of powerful beings, or maybe just one powerful being. This thing, this Great Omniscient Deity, will help your friend. But not always. "See, it.. well, he - it makes talking about it easier - while he's powerful, he also is all-knowing and will sometimes not help, or maybe not help in the way desired. It's not that there's anything wrong with you or him, it's that he can see the big picture." Now your friend can believe in this Great Omniscient Deity and get by, and even when things aren't going right, well, maybes it's the Grand Plan that it shouldn't work out. That's what you say.

This is a powerful idea. It's a useful idea. People no longer need to believe in themselves, they can believe in the Great Omniscient Deity that will help them. Since he can do anything, they can do anything. Oh crap, they will try to do anything, even if it's not really a good idea. Gotta fix that. To much ability without any responsibility. Let's see...

"Oh, yeah." you might say, "I spoke...er.. I had a vision... from the Great Omniscient Deity. He says 'Don't do anything to anyone unless you'd like them to do the same to you.'" A moral code, or the beginnings of one. Someone asks "And if we don't?" and more has to be invented. You could come up with karma, or reincarnation, or some sort of unverifiable reward program to keep it all going. If it really gets out of hand, you could even add a punishment rather than a reward to the mix. Maybe even invent a story about how there is a Tempter trying to mess things up.

"Why aren't we rewarded now? Why can't he make it all right now and be done with it?" You can't tell them that the reward is their own confidence - it'd ruin the effect, just like explaining the lucky charm. Aha! The big picture thing again. You say, "He works in mysterious ways" and things like that.

Good things get credited to the Great Omniscient Deity. Bad things, well, there's that mysterious plan. It's for the best, somehow, right? This grows. It grows until you can't stop it even if you want to. Anyone who realizes what's going on, well... they'd better watch themselves. People don't want to stop believing in the Great Omniscient Deity. That would mean far too much responsibility. No more "The Tempter tricked me into doing it!" Sometimes things in life would be *horrors* purely random.

Maybe others in other places hit on the same idea you did. Or maybe the people you told go and tell others and the stories change a bit with each telling. After a while it becomes "My Great Omniscient Deity is the real one, not yours! Your story is wrong!" "No, yours is wrong! Great Omniscient Deity is on my side!" and then, well, just look around. By this time you're long gone from the scene. You meant well. You just wanted to help your friends see that, yes, they could venture over that next hill. Yes, they would survive this storm, or this winter. Yes, they would find something to eat if they just kept looking. It wasn't supposed to drift into this mess.

And that's the idea. That religion might have started as a psychological crutch. There's no problem with using a crutch - it's a useful tool and lets you do more if you need it. But it shouldn't be used to beat others over the head. Did all this start because of some prehistoric psychiatrist, or a string of them through history?

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Current Mood: contemplative

On this day in 1942, a group working in Chicago and led by Enrico Fermi started the first man-made sustained nuclear chain reaction, and also stopped it. This controlled reaction did not itself release significant power. It did however show that controlled nuclear chain reactions were possible and that parts of the Manhattan Project could proceed. The title of this post was the code message sent to indicate the successful operation.

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Current Mood: grateful

This isn't a history of the automobile as such but a history of those I recall. There are mostly likely omissions. It might also be dull to everyone except possibly PharWarner.

( As we glide on our motor trip... )

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang running through my mind

In no particular order, a non-exhaustive list:

Cocoanut Grove fire
Triangle fire
Chicago, Peshtigo, etc.
Chelyabinsk (Mayak)
Three Mile Island
Chernobyl
Jamestown
Shuttle Challenger
Shuttle Columbia
Windscale
Bhopal
World Trade Center, Sept. 11
Oklahoma City
Minamata
Sultana
Titanic
Edmund Fitzgerald
Texas City ship explosion
Boston molasses flood
Halifax explosion
Port Chicago explosion
Thresher
Aloha flight 243
Pan Am 103 - Lockerbie
Tylenol poisonings
Influenza
Tambora

...and plenty others as well.

And life goes on.

Current Mood: contemplative

Terms that had to replace the original.

A couple nights ago on IRC, KinkyTurtle mentioned a few of these. Not all terms have completely changed (for example, mail) but the gist is there. I've been trying to add to the list...

Term                  Old term       Reason
--------------------  ------------   -------------------------
World War One         Great War      WWII
Hardcover book        book           paperback
Snailmail             mail           e-mail

AM radio              radio          FM
Manual transmission   transmission   automatic transmission
Manual typewriter     typewriter     electric typewriter

Black and White TV    TV             color TV
Conventional weapons  weapons        nuclear weapons, chemical?

So, what's missing from the list?

Current Mood: curious