Beer Powered Bicycle

RECORD REVIEW

My roommate got the new Bloody Hollies album today. In case it's not totally obvious, the Bloody Hollies are like my favorite band in a long time. On this new album, they go whole hog with the delta blues thing, thoroughly mixing slide guitar and harmonica into their trademark guitar rock. Yeah, they had the slide-guitar delta-blues thing going on in their last album, but now it is pushed fully to the front.

Their insistence that the delta blues belongs in their rock fully carries over into their lyrics. Here's the twist though--while the elements of their lyrics that are meant to do the whole delta blues thing are a little too clever, forced and trite, the Bloody Hollies have always had shallow, unsophisticated lyrics. However, the Bloody Hollies make forced, unsophisticated lyrics cool.

Here are the lyrics from my favorite song of theirs, Raised by Wolves, in entirety:

Take the money that you're picking from the trees,
And all the boys that just keep falling to their knees.
And everyone's got something to hide.
Things are whiter than the whitest lies.
So, tell the sellers and the buyers and the sinners and the liars not to burn,
And tell them not get out of line and keep up until their turn.

Keep them coming don't you ever stop,
And keep your sights set straight up to the top.
All the boys in the band know your name,
And they dedicate the song just the same.
So tell your mother and your father and your sister what you're running from honey,
And tell the boys in the choir not to sing if they ain't in it for the money.

Don't let 'em hide things and pull the wool over the your eyes.
Don't let 'em hide things and pull the wool over the your eyes.
Don't let 'em hide things.

At home they got you on the run,
Even though they take you as their own.
Here's the thing that makes you sick,
Don't breathe the smoke from the burning bricks.
Tell the people not to laugh because they are the next ones on your list,
And they're gonna find out when you show them all the dirty little tricks.

Don't let 'em hide things and pull the wool over the your eyes.
Don't let 'em hide things and pull the wool over the your eyes.
Don't let 'em hide things.

Here they come.

You better think of everything you've done.
You don't start shaking till you're on the run,
And here's the thing that makes you sick,
And I wonder, I wonder how it ticks.
Well tell your mother and your father and your sister what you're running from.
Because the tree still grows in the backyard baby where you're from.

Okay, not very sophisticated. Got it? If you want sophisticated lyrics, go read about how utter change births a terrible beauty. But these are rock lyrics, and damn good ones at that. When you put the 4-4 drum beat under them, and you're packed into a hot crowd with a cold beer in your hand, the intent and passion of these lyrics emerge.

So the new album does more of this, only with yet more of the whole blues thing. And here's what I came in here to say. This record pulls it off. When a group of white guys who went to college at the same time as me tries their hardest to play the blues, it is usually a suspect proposition.

It's hard for some young white guys to pull it off without sounding like cultural opportunists. The aspect of it that kills most such attempts seems to be that often, these groups of white guys are trying to show you how much they love the blues, and to acknowledge their musical antecedents.

But rock isn't a fucking history lesson. The Bloody Hollies do it because they love the blues and they love the rock. They are not trying to show you that they love the blues, or that they love the rock. They are playing the rock with the blues parts pushed into the foreground, naked in the spotlight, because that is one of their favorite actors.

Even if I'm all wrong, even if these guys are a hoax, the effect is true. The record rocks, and it rolls, and it is convincing. This is music not for the sake of filling a niche or trying to be cool. The music on this record is more like a cockroach or Frankenstein's monster: alive, pumping blood, inevitable, breathing, pulsing, regardless of the environment.

The Bloody Hollies made this record because they could not have not made it. And that's what makes it so goddamned good. If any other guitary punk band did a half-blues record, I would likely be embarassed by the product. It just smacks of that cultural fetishism I rage so contentiously against. But these guys get the stamp of approval (the BPB stamp of approval!) because their hearts are so obviously pure. They cut this record because it was the best fucking rock-n-roll record they could make, and yes, it is better than any other record I know of out there right now.

OOH SNAP!

I was just playing with my "Google News" page. When you go to Google, you can click on the word "news" which takes you to a page full of news articles. If you are futzing around and wasting time, like me, you will find that you can customize your news page. Of course, the first thing I did was get rid of all the sports-related articles.

But not only can you delete sections (where the sections include sports, world, entertainment, and cetera...) you can also create a section for yourself. If you create a section for yourself, Google will use the words you supply as the title for your section header, and will also use those words as a keyword search to choose articles to populate that section.

So your Google news page could have a section (as mine does) named "Drug company" that features squibs from recent articles mentioning a drug company. I also made a section for myself named "President Bush." I'm interested in this pair of words as we have not had a legally elected president in six years, while we do have a guy named Bush working hard to ruin the United States government. So I like articles that contain both those words.

I was surprised by the number of diverse, well-written and interesting articles I get under my third Google news section that I created. I created a section named "Indicted republicans."

I see that Mark Paschall--the elected Republican treasurer of Jefferson County, Colorado--was indicted on felony charges of soliciting a kickback. I see that the Republican governor of Kentucky, Ernie Fletcher, was indicted in 2006 for conspiracy, official misconduct, and political discrimination. Google reminds me of Scooter Libby. I see that a John Colyandro--of Texans for a Republican Majority--has been indicted for money laundering. David Satterfield is a neoconservative appointee of the White House, and he has been indicted for leaking classified information.

I think Google news is teh fun! lol!!!zzz readin' the newz roxorz11!!!zzzones!!!!

Oh yeah, we can just add those to the following list (sorry about the sigma signs. Dunno what's up with that):

∑ GOP Sen. George Allen—while campaigning in 2006--used the obscure racial slur "macaca" to introduce a man of Indian descent to an all-white rally.

∑ Sen. Conrad Burns (R Montana) was a top recipient of campaign contributions from Jack Abramoff. Senator Burns is also known for confronting members of a wildfire-fighting team and accused them of doing a bad job.

∑ Bob Ney pleaded guilty to corruption in 2006 in the Abramoff scandal.

∑ In 2006 Republican Rep. John Sweeney lost his seat in New York several days after reports that he had physically abused his wife.

∑ Republican Rep. Mark Foley resigned on Sept. 29, 2006 after being confronted with sexually explicit computer messages he had written to teenage pages.

∑ Rep. Don Sherwood (R-Pennsylvania) admitted to a long-term affair with a much younger woman.

∑ Curt Weldon (R-Pennsylvania) is embroiled in a corruption investigation.

∑ Tom DeLay is guilty of treasonous exposure of a CIA agent by White House officials.

∑ Jack Abramoff, a GOP lobbyist and major Bush fundraiser, and Michael Scanlon, a former aide to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), received around $82 million from several Indian tribes, while offering access to lawmakers. For instance, Texas' Tigua tribe, which wanted its closed El Paso casino reopened, gave millions to the pair and $33,000 to Rep. Robert Ney (R-Ohio) in hopes of favorable legislation

∑ A Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, passed classified United States documents about Iran to Israel, which would be espionage or could constitute the mishandling of classified documents.

∑ A high-ranking State Department official, Donald Keyser, was arrested and charged in September with making a secret trip to Taiwan and was observed by the FBI passing documents to Taiwanese intelligence agents in Washington-area meetings.

∑ Darleen Druyun put together a 2003 deal in which the Air Force contracted with Boeing to lease a fleet of planes for $23 billion (an inflated price). Druyun promptly left her job as government procurement official and joined Boeing. In November 2003, Boeing fired both Druyun and CFO Michael Sears. In April 2004, Druyun pled guilty to a conspiracy charge in the case. In November 2004, Sears copped to a conflict-of-interest charge, and company CEO Phil Condit resigned.

∑ Jim Ellis, John Colyandro and Warren RoBold—were charged in September 2004 with crimes including money laundering and unlawful acceptance of corporate contributions.

∑ Chuck McGee--Director of the New Hampshire Republican party—and Allen Raymond—of GOP Marketplace both plead guilty in 2004 to a felony charge of annoying and harassing democratic voters by clogging the phones of the Democratic Party with continuous calls. The campaign director of Bush/ Cheney 2004--James Tobin--was also indicted in this case.

∑ In 2003, Thomas Scully directed the Medicare actuary Richard Foster to deceive congress by concealing the true cost of a 2003 Medicare bill. The $550 billion bill was presented to congress, under Scully's influence, as likely to cost $400 billion--while Scully knew of the true costs. The government has recommended that Scully return half of his 2003 salary in retribution for knowingly deceiving the lawmakers.

∑ Armstrong Williams received $240,000 from the Department of Education under direction from the Bush White House, to promote No Child Left Behind.

∑ John Ashcroft transferred $110,000 from his 2000 presidential campaign to his 2000 Senate campaign, in violation of federal law limiting such a transfer to $10,000. Not only is John Ashcroft involved in this federal crime, his campaign treasurer, Garrett Lott was fined more than $30,000 by the Federal Election Committee.

∑ While The Code of Federal Regulations says government employees should not participate in matters in which they have a personal financial interest, Karl Rove holds hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in companies such as Intel with whom he has had on-record meetings as said companies pursue favorable government approvals or acts. While widely considered a grave conflict of interest happening in the White House, Alberto Gonzales has not referred such cases to the Justice Department (the routine and appropriate treatment for such indiscretions.)

∑ A federal justice must, "disqualify himself from any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned." Antonin Scalia, SCOTUS, often goes hunting with Dick Cheney. Scalia did not recuse himself from the Cheney energy task force hearings. Similarly, in 2002, Scalia was part of a Mississippi redistricting ruling favorable to GOP Rep. Chip Pickering. Scalia hunts with Chip's dad, the Justice Charles Pickering. In 2001, Scalia went pheasant hunting with Kansas Gov. Bill Graves when that state had cases pending before the Supreme Court.

∑ In a radio interview, Dick Cheney acknowledged that the U.S. has been using waterboarding techniques in interrogations of suspected terrorists. When asked whether it is appropriate to torture another human, Cheney said, "It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president 'for torture.' We don't torture."

∑ George W. Bush, committed the punishable offense of not fulfilling his National Guard duty.

∑ In July 2003, administration officials disclosed the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act it is illegal to disclose the name of an undercover agent.

∑ A Pentagon internal inquiry found a lack of oversight at Abu Ghraib, while independent inquiries have linked the events to the administration's desire to use aggressive interrogation methods globally. Notoriously, Gonzales has advocated an approach which "renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions." More recently, Gonzales issued qualified support for the Geneva Conventions in January 2005 Senate testimony after being nominated for attorney general. Army reservist Charles Graner was convicted in January 2005 for abusing prisoners, while a few other soldiers await trial.

∑ Rep. Richard Pombo (CA-11) failed to pay required taxes on a trip abroad that was sponsored by a business group that fights against environmental issues.

∑ U.S. Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-5, and her husband went to Ecuador with two other congress-people and their spouses to the tune of $64,000 in government money. She claimed to do this to address immigration issues. Ecuadorians in her home district in Danbury point out that she has never met with Ecuadorian immigrants.

∑ House Speaker Dennis Hastert on Tuesday sat down with ethics investigators trying to pin down when he and his staff learned about ex-Rep. Mark Foley’s come-ons to former male pages and what they did to stop it. Rep. Tom Reynolds of New York, the House GOP campaign chairman warned House Speaker Dennis Hastert Foley in the spring before Foley's scandal broke. Hastert has said he doesn’t recall the conversation. Two of Hastert's top aides -- chief of staff Scott Palmer and chief counsel Ted Van Der Meid -- had been warned about Foley's unimpeded pursuit of male pages long before Sept. 28.

BELMONT STYLE

I had a conversation with my roommate. He said that his mom does sudoku puzzles, but that she is very good at them. This, perhaps, implies that for her they are no longer puzzles but instead just a diversion, something to fill the time.

After I started doing sudoku puzzles a while back, I figured them out, and then they became, for me, just a diversion.

One day, I must have been really bored, because I made up new rules for my sudoku puzzles. The new rules are designed to make the puzzles harder, to make them into a challenge. So, just in case there is anyone out there like me, or Penny (Antonio's mom), who wants to breath some new life into their sudoku puzzles, here I will present my rules that make the puzzles harder.

My rules come in different sets, and to make any given sudoku puzzle harder, you should choose a rule set and stick to it. To help you identify and refer to which rule set you are working with, I have named each rule set. The names will appear as all-caps headlines above each set of rules below.

And one last comment. For any given rule set, the ultimate goal of sudoku does not change. A correctly filled-in puzzle will still look the same if you play according to any one of these rule sets, as if you play traditionally. So here are the rule sets, with my favorite first:

BELMONT STYLE

To play sudoku in the Belmont Style, you must first fill in all the 1s. After that, you must fill in all the 2s. While you are playing any given number, you must make sure you fill in ALL instances of that number before you move on. After you fill in all the 1s and 2s, then you fill in all the 3s. Then all the 4s. And so on. You move upwards through the numbers. By the time you get to filling in the 9s, you will find that you are just filling in some blank spaces.

Doing sudoku Belmont Style is particularly satisfying because the first numbers you do are VERY hard. Either 1, or 2, or 3, and usually all of them will take some real thinking to fill in. But after that, the puzzle gets easier and easier to finish. I really like Belmont Style.

TAYLOR STYLE

Consider Taylor Style to be one step easier than Belmont Style. Some days, and for some puzzles, Belmont Style is too hard. In Taylor Style, you get to do any given number when you want, but once you decide to fill in a number, then you must fill in ALL instances of that number.

So you may look at your puzzle and see lots of 3s and lots of 8s. If you are working under Taylor Style, you may then choose to fill in all of the 3s, or 8s. Once all the, say, 3s are filled in, you must move on to another number and fill in all instances of that number.

Taylor Style is significantly easier than Belmont Style. But it can still be fun.

INCIDENTAL DETAIL
Once you are using one of these Sudoku styles, you may earn your bragging rights by writing the name of the style in the margin of the book next to the puzzle. If you come look at my old sudoku books, you will see, often, that "Belmont" is written by a puzzle. That means I did the whole puzzle in Belmont style.

Obviously, if you see "Taylor" written by one of my old puzzles, I did that whole puzzle in Taylor style.

There are more styles to learn. Read on.

CODEX STYLE
To do a puzzle Codex Style, you must do the upper left-hand square first. Then you progress left. For each blank square, you must fill in that number before you are allowed to move on.

After filling in the top row, you do a "carriage return", and you start filling in the second row. You do the space on the left end of the second row, and then you do the next space to the right. Once that space is filled, you do the next one to the right.

That is, to word a Sudoku puzzle in Codex Style, you must fill in each space in the order that would prescribed if you were "reading" the spaces from a book. You start at the top and go left-to-right and each time you fill a row, you bump down to the next row.

Codex Style is cool because--while it is MUCH harder than Belmont Style--once you get going it gets easier and easier and by the time you are finishing, you are flying through it. Codex Style is so hard, I actually dis-recommend you from trying it. But if you really want a sudoku challenge, and Belmont Style, or Taylor Style, or Yamhill Style just aren't working for you, then do your puzzle in Codex Style. It's very, very hard for the first few spaces. I really does require you to do some real thinking. You must keep many different things afloat in your brainspace and do some real thinking.

YAMHILL STYLE
Yamhill Style is like cheating at solitaire. You begin a puzzle under Belmont Style, but as soon as you are stuck, you do a whole slew of other numbers. Once you've done all the numbers you can do quickly, you switch back to Belmont Style and pick up where you left off. Typically, in Yamhill Style, you will be doing Belmont Style, get stuck, and shoot off and fill in about five or six numbers that are totally unrelated but obvious to you. Then you switch back to Belmont Style. However, once you do that, you can no longer write "Belmont" in the margin. Then you must write "Yamhill" in the margin.

There is no shame in that, however. Especially if you only let yoruself do a flury of obvious numbers once, Yamhill Style is still much harder than traditionall sudoku style.

VF STARK
This style was originally called Stark Style, until I realized it wasn't really a unique set of rules restricting how you play sudoku. Rather, it is a strategy that allows you to go very fast. (VF stands for "very fast.") The point of VF Stark is to take a puzzle that would typically be pretty easy to you, and to do the puzzle as fast as you possibly can.

Do not use VF Stark on puzzles that medium-hard to you. It's just not designed for that. VF Stark is designed to take puzzles that are trivially easy for you and make them interesting again. Here's how it works: You start with 1s, and you--quickly as possible--fill in all the 1s that are obvious, without stopping to think about conditional relationships.

Once you have filled in all those 1s, you switch to 2s. Mind you, the whole point of VF Stark is that you do not try to put your finger on a space and think about what other possible conditions in other spaces forces this space to be one way or another. You do VF Stark on puzzles that would normally be way too easy for you.

So once you are on 2s, you fill in all the 2s that are immediately obvious to you. Once those are done, you move on to the 3s.

Once all the immediately obvious 3s are filled in, you move on to the 4s. You see where this is going.

Once all the 9s are filled in, then, you move on to the 1s. Now, more of the 1s will be immediately obvious. (because you've filled in a bunch of other number in the meantime.) Fill in all the 1s you can now fill in, and move on to the 2s. Fill in all the 2s you can now fill in and move on up through the numbers.

Mind you, the whole point of VF Stark is for you to go fast.

I am including VF Stark here because once you internalize it, it is actually a very good strategy for solving Sudoku puzzles very fast.

And, last but not least:

MORRISON
To do a Sudoku puzzle in Morrison Style, you start with the number 9, and you fill in all of the 9s. Once you are done with all of the 9s, then you fill in all of the 8s. After you have solved every 8, you move onto figuring out the 7s. You see the pattern... You continute this on down to the 1s. Doing a Sudoku puzzle in Morrison Style is much like doing one in Belmont Style, only you are going in reverse order.

Thank you for reading about these rule sets. Write the style name that you use in the margin beside each Sudoku puzzle when you use those rules. I love Belmont Style. I think it makes for a really interesting game. But Taylor Style is my cop-out when I am tired or in a bad mood. So my filled Sudoku books have "Belmont" or "Taylor" written in the margin next to most of the puzzles.

I hope you can enjoy these ideas.

Things worked out a certain way, and I was finally able to get the Honeywagon the maintainence she needed. I am very sad to be away from her these couple of days, but when I see her again, it will be with a new timing belt and a full tune-up, and a complete system flush of both coolant and transmission fluid.

My poor mechanics. They hate me. When I first brought in the Accord way back in 2004, they cried and cried. They said, "we'll never make any money if you people keep finding such excellent cars as this one!"

I said, "So, why did you choose to go into the Japanese car mechanic biz?"

They said, "Because you'd be insane to buy anything other than a Japanese car... They all suck. Only Japanese cars are even worth thinking about."

No, but seriously, the first time they checked out the Accord, they told me that it had been treated like a souffle, and that I could easily put 200,000 miles on it myself. Of course, I'm a big jackass and I wrecked it.

(Oh, and several different mechanics who I have gone to while I was car shopping have all said, "If you want a car that will last forever without needing repairs all the time, get something Japanese.")

After wrecking the Accord, I bought the Odyssey. I had a nagging feeling it was a really good car, but I knew it needed some expensive (to me) routine maintanence. It has 180,000 miles on it so, understanably, it's brakes were shot, and the timing belt was shot, and a few other things.

Us graduate students do not actually ooze money from our pores. So for the past five months, I have been babying my Honda gently, hoping it would just hang in there until I could treat her to a new timing belt. Finally, now, she is in the shop. My mechanics think I'm a little touched in the ol' guvner, but they smile and pat me on the arm and take my money.

After having seen the Odyssey, these mechanics assure me that it--if I behave well--could go past the 300,000 mile mark. (My goal is to pass 500,000, but that might be a dreamy and unrealistic, so I will only mention it in parentheses.)

In a way, I'm lucky I crashed the Accord. Because when I had it, my brother and mother and I formed the quarter-million mile club (I don't know if my mom knows that Caleb and I formed the club and included her in it.) The 1/4 million mile club is happy to include any Honda owner who plans to put 250,000 miles on their Honda. By crashing the wet-behind-the-ears 116,000 mile Accord, I put myself in a position to buy the more seasoned 181,000 Odyssey, perhaps setting me up to get my quarter million sooner.

Obviously, I'm sad and I miss my Honda. The whole point of this post, though, is to mention that I am considering trying to go see Caleb and mom (and Kate and the rest of the old family) sometime between March 13 and May 5. So if any bpb readers know of great places to stay along the Portland to Asheville route, let me know. I'm totally ready to do the trip somewhere in that time. The only thing holding me back is the cost of gas, and the fact that I am still a graduate student who does not ooze money. But I would like to see my mom and brother and sister and dad, and all the little half-siblings and my niece and two nephews.

THIS IS MY FRIDAY

I was doing something unusually indulgent, like drinking a glass of wine and watching Arrested Development for hours, while eating miniature dark chocolate candy bars and doing sudoku puzzles, and I found myself feeling a little bit self-concious about my time wasting. I thought who am I to waste all this time when I have a thesis to write, and a book I'm working on, and a couple of other irons in the fire? And then I said to myself, "It's okay, this is my Friday."

At that moment I was struck by the fact that, being as how it actually is Friday, that phrase seems to include a rather odd word-choice, the word, "my." Why not just say, "It's okay, this is Friday," or better yet, "It's okay, it's Friday"?

And I realized that, "this is my Friday" is the service-industry siboleth. It comes in different versions. Someone might be telling a story, and in order to make it clear why they had Wednesday free, they will say, "Tuesday is my Friday."

I believe this phrase comes from people who work at business that tend to be open during the weekend. This phrase comes up when you wait tables at a restaurant, or clerk at a clothing store, or--perhaps--staff a public library. People who have, or have had, shit jobs all know what this means. Note, I am not labeling all such jobs "shit jobs." It's just that those jobs which I do label shit jobs tend to be of the "this is my Friday" variety. Mind you, I know this from a long history of shit jobs: bookstore clerk, photocopy place, overnight cook in a Greek diner, dishwasher.*

I wonder if there are people out there for whom "this is my Friday" doesn't make any sense? I would assume, say, Jenna Bush and Hugh Grant--to name two random people--have no clue what the phrase means. But I don't know.

Anyway, aside from the fact that I now teach on Sundays, and that I usually work all day every day all weekend, I am now at a point in my life where Friday is my Friday.

*Dishwasher does not fit easily in the category of shit jobs. Dishwasher is to shit jobs what pink flamingos are to tacky, only more so.

RANDOM

I think that two of the interesting questions in the world are whether or not anything can be random, and whether or not there can be intstantaneous action at a distance. (It turns out the two concepts are linked, but that's not the topic of this post.) I had an idea in college, but I never mentioned it to anyone. But my recent commitment to go on record with any idea I have compels me to write it down now.

It is a commonly held belief that any given individual radioactive particle will decay at a random time. That is, that you will not be able to predict when it decays. However, radioactive particles taken as a mass produce predictable decay patterns.

From this supposition you can infer that if you could measure the decay times of a each particle in a mass of radioactive particles, you would get a string of random numbers. But if you plotted the series of integers (1,2,3,...,n) at each of these times, they would fall on an exponentially rising graph.

Here's an example. A scientist places, say, 10 radioactive particles in a measuring device, and measure the time at which each decay event happens. Individual particles decay at each of the following times:

Time (minutes)
0
0.568252178
0.947837575
1.281719489
1.52708142
1.95868298
2.114487972

To verify that this is giving exponential decay, the scientist plots the cumalative number of decay events over time, and gets the following graph:


Just so you don't beat yourself up about it, take it from me, those points are on a the natural logarithm function. (I know, it's not the exponential function, but it gets you to the same result in the end. I'm just to lazy to go back and re-create the numbers with an exponential function.) I ended up choosing a series of points that are not spread out enough to make it visually obvious that they are exponentially related, but trust me, the are.

So, the challenge of the people who believe in the randomness of the phenomenon is that you could not find a mathematical pattern that describes those points.

If you like a puzzle, copy that list and paste it into your favorite spreadsheet, and--before reading the rest of this post--try to figure out what, if anything, generated those points.

Here's the theory I thought up in college. What if that series of points is generated by a complicated set of mathematical conditions, conditions that reflect something happening in nature, but leads to a list of numbers that is seemingly random? Is it not possible to imagine that the list would defy attempts to explain it, leading humans to claim that they just came at random times?

I think my explanation is the more parsimonious one. It posits that nature is behaving in something more closely approximating a deterministic fashion, and that we people simply haven't been sufficiently clever to figure it out. As such, the apparent randomness that leads us to claim some things can be random, is an illusion.

The points in the list are actually the roots (approximately) of:
y=ln(x)-sin(10x)

There is some appeal to the idea that decay events could be described by a combination of an exponential function and a trigonometric function. (I know, I used a logarithmic function in place of an exponential function in this example, but the gist of my comments would be the same had I done it with an exponential function.) As decay is the inevitible progress of an unstable, high-energy state to a more stable, low-energy state, it is not unreasonable that an exponential term would be involved. And, due to the wave-particle duality of subatomic particles, it's not unreasonable that a trigonometric function would be involved.

The wave-like properties--call it W--of some component of the system could cause some critical value to oscillate according to the sine function. And there could be some critical energy threshold--call it D--that is decreasing according to an exponential function. Every time that W crosses D, a particle is emitted. It might be more plausible if we suggest that every time W crosses D in the downward direction, i.e., gets below D, a particle is emitted. That wouldn't change my argument at all.

This is not a discussion of a theory of radioactive decay. That was just a hypothetical I made up to illustrate a different point. The point I am hoping to illustrate is that our lack of evidence for a deterministic cause to some natural phenomenon should not necessarily be construed as evidence that the phenomenon is random. There may be causes that are as yet opaque to us.

Interestingly, notice that in my example I called upon a "hidden variable" to explain the behavior of the particles. The value that I called D might be a hidden variable. It is easier to imagine applying my idea with reference to hidden variables than without. But I am not taking a definite stance on that. There's a connection here to the concept of action-at-a-distance. If some local event is instantaneously linked to some distant event, we might need to call upon hidden variables to explain that entanglement.

The two events linked instantaneously, yet at a distance, could share in a hidden variable that served as the root "cause" of the events, or the common ancestor of the events. This allows things to be instananteously linked without suggesting that we can transmit information faster than the speed of light. Because this wouldn't allow us to imagine an event that we can control such that our control is manifest in the distant event.

Not to go way to crazy here, but what if--and this is pure hypothetical supposition, just for fun--what if radioactive decay of a particle were instantaneously linked with the, say, appearance of some kind of particle elsewhere in the universe? Let's pretend they are, and that we can observe this reliably. Every time a particle decays in Dr. Smith's lab, a particle appears in Dr. Jone's lab. Is information being transmitted faster than the speed of light (i.e., instantaneously)? Yes, if Dr. Jones could synthesize his particles on demand, and Dr. Smith observed radiation events coinciding with that. But if Dr. Jones can't perform the synthesis--if for him the appearance of the particles seems to be random, then no, information can not be transmitted with this entangled system.

Consider the explanation of the above version of entanglement that does NOT involve the ability to transmit information faster than the speed of light. Two events always happen at the exact same time, even though there are located in different places. This seems like an instantaneous relationship over a distance. There is an appealing and intuitive way to think about them. I am not suggesting that this is an accurate explanation of such entangled events, but rather I am suggesting you use it as a handy simplification that is easy to understand. Simply think of the two events as sharing a joint cause, distant in the past, that has propagated over space.

Decay, at time t=0.445424 min, of this radioactive particle was "caused" by--say, a collision between two particles 5 miles away, 10 minutes ago. Dr. Jones sees a particle appear in his lab at t=0.445424 min. Dr. Jone's lab is exactly ten miles from Dr. Smith's lab, and the appearance of the particle in Dr. Jone's lab was "caused" by that same collision.

How did that "cause" propagate? Well, through a hidden variable! (See, aren't they fun? They can explain anything.) Once we allow for the existence of hidden variables, we can employ them to do all sorts of things.

Shoot, if hidden variables are this flexible, then they could be used to create a framework for discussing gravity. Seriously, here, I am not proposing to be suggesting a hypthetical mechanism by which gravity works. I am just pointing out that if we let ourselves pretend that hidden variables can exist, and things can be instantaneously linked, without violating the proposition that information can't be transmitted faster than the speed of light, and we throw in a gravitational singularity at or around the big bang--and it helps if we adhere to a deterministic model of the universe--then we could talk about gravity as the relationship between matter such that (forgive this incredible sophmoronism) each particle of matter in the universe is linked to each other by a thread of "gravity" that passes through the gravitational singularity at the big bang, and perhaps has the singularity exactly at its midpoint.

Then we just need to ask, what is a "thread of gravity"? Well, it's a hidden variable.

I don't know. I'm just thinking out loud. Here's one interesting challenge. I originally thought up my idea because I figured if we were going to believe that something random could happen in the universe, then we better rule out all deterministic possibilities first. Our belief in randomness is better justified if there simply isn't any imaginable cause of a phenomenon. (with an important side note: strict determinism is not mutually exclusive of the existence of randomness.) However, if we are calling on a gravitational singularity for the source of our known universe, then we need to come up with an explanation for whatever originally introduced and differentiation in the the homogeneous mass what was our nascent universe.

Not to go too Russian doll on you here, but you could just speculate that even though everythign in our known universe was descended from a gravitational singularity, there still could have been unknowable things, other gravitational singularities or universes or matter or whatever you want to call them (call them hidden variables). But if that's the case, then what caused the non-homogeneity of whatever impinged on our nascent, homogeneous universe? And you see where this goes. What was the cause, if not randomness, of the universe not being homogeneous?

Well, that's why I think one of the interesting questions is whether anything can be random.

MY FAVORITE WORD RIGHT NOW

I was walking down the street the other day, and some dude was gabbing to his friend about a discrepancy in their numbers. My absent mind got to doing its thing, and I came to wonder if the 'dis-' in that word means 'without', and--by implication--if 'crepancy' means something like agreement or accord.

I don't know if it was that five-and-a-half years of public university that my dad bought me, or all the books my mom read me when I was a child, but usually I can come up with a plausible root word for an English word derived from Greek or Latin, and I can usually come up with some other contemporary English words derived from the same root just to help get my head around the meaning of it. "Discredit"? Well, you got "dis-", and then there is "credit." Credit has something to do with assigning value to something in an abstract, non-inherent way, right? So, there's "credence" and "incredible", both probably from the same root.

I was trying to apply this logic to "discrepancy" and coming up blank. Wow, what a word! It sounds so obviously Latin, but once you parse off that "dis-" you're not left with much: "-crepancy", which possible becomes "crepant", "crepere", "crepatare?" Now I'm reaching.

I'm a Webster's 2nd boy, myself. So I looked it up.

I think it's neat that the dictionary does give "discrepant" as a word. But let's focus on discrepancy.

dis-crep'an-cy, n., [OFr. discrepance; L. discrepantia, discordance, disagreement, from discrepare, to sound differently.]

Okay, that's pretty cool. With discord and sound being mentioned, it seems to have something to do with what you hear, in its original meaning. But I was surprised that the dictionary didn't split off that "dis-" prefix, and give a comment on what I presume to be the root, something along the lines of "crepare." So, naturally, I went and looked up that string.

Sure enough, "crepance" is in the dictionary. You will never guess what it means. A crepance is a wound in a horse's leg.

Okay, now I'm going nuts. How can a wound have anything to do with two sets of numbers not lining up? Well, let's look at that crepance definition a little more closely:

cre'-pance n. [L. crepare to crack, burst.] a wound in a horse's leg, caused by interfering.

Now, that's interesting. I could reconcile a "crack" or a "burst" with a discrepancy somehow. But that wounded horse's leg throws me for a loop. I figure maybe I can find something like "crepare" in the dictionary that might shed more light on the whole subject.

I found the following:

crep'i-tant a. [L. crepitans (-antis), ppr. of crepitare, to rattle.] rattling; crackling.

crep'i-tate, v.i.; [L. crepitatus, pp. of crepitare, to rattle, freq. of crepare, to creak, burst.] to crackle; to make small, sharp, and repeated crackling sounds.

Now this makes things get real interesting. I'm not going in alphabetical order, but the dictionary also contains the following:

crepe n. [Fr. crepe, from L. crispa, curled, crisp.] 1. A thin, wrinkled cloth of silk, rayon, cotton, wool, etc.; crape. 2. a piece of black crepe worn as a sign of morning. 3. Thin paper crinkled like crepe.

crep-i-tac'u-lum, n; [L., a rattle, from crepitare, freq. of crepare, to creak.] in zoology, a rattle-like organ, as of the rattlesnake.

crep-i-ta'tion, n. 1. a crackling. 2. in medicine, (a) the grating of fractured bones when moved; (b) an abnormal rattling sound detected in the lungs [] usually indicating a diseased condition.

If you pause, while ascending the creaky stairs, and clutch the crepe curtain, because the death-rattle of the aging dowager reminds you of the venomous strike of the poisonous snake, you are, aparently, surrounded by crepitation.

But, lest we digress, what does it all have to do with discrepancy? Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged, Second Abridged, doesn't do much more than what I've already shared with you to address that question. So we must piece it together ourselves, dear reader. If crepitate means some kind of crackling, rattling sound--like the sound associated with broken bones--and discrepancy means, in a way familiar to you and I--an apparent contradiction in what two different sources of information signify, then discrepant could well describe any pair of sounds that signify different things.

Keeping it as close to the original meaning as I can, we can imagine a maladroit geiger-counter being used alongside a reliable one. The two instruments would be discrepant. Let's do one better. If a clerk in an airport told you that your plane was boarding at gate C-1 while the overhead speaker crackled out the news that the same flight were boarding at gate D-9, that would be discrepant. Perhaps most simply, if the gentleman selling you the horse claims that the beast is in full health, while the horse's leg cracks like a machine-gun under the evident cast, there is certainly a discrepancy.

I am not a linguist, nor a scholar of dead Romance languages. So, I could be all wrong. But this is the stuff I like to think about.

OH, DEAR

Well, there has been a rather embarassing error of management here at Beer Powered Bicycle. I changed some detail of my account settings and made it so that comments were not being published, but rather waiting for me to approve them. Only I didn't realize that, so I had not gone to the comment-approving-page in over a month, so none of your comments have appeared until tonight. Beer Powered Bicycle humbly regrets the error. And numerous others.

Ben, I have a challenge for your regular expression comment. I will leave it as a comment in that post.

Kitties Love Boxes has not been updated recently because I got very lazy, and I saw a shiny thing outside somewhere, and went running after it. Kitties Love Boxes regrets the error. I will hopefully update that site soon.

IT WAS A SHITTY DAY, AND HERE'S THE QUIZ

This problem has actually been fucking me over for almost three years now, and I finally fucking solved it. So, in case any of my readers like a puzzle, here it is. Consider that you have a file that looks something like:

___________________________________________________________________________
|#NEXUS                                                                   |
|                                                                         |
|[MacClade 4.0 registered to Zachary Hyde]                                |
|BEGIN DATA;                                                              |
|     DIMENSIONS  NTAX=8 NCHAR=21;                                        |
|     FORMAT DATATYPE=DNA  MISSING=? GAP=- ;OPTIONS  MSTAXA=UNCERTAIN ;   |
|                                                                         |
|MATRIX                                                                   |
|[                                                                        |
|(hundreds more lines of random data...                                   |
|                                                                         |

Why does the following Perl expression not discover the fifth line of your file?

if ($nexbyline[$checkline] =~ /DIMENSIONS\.*NTAX\s*=\s*(\d+)/i) {



I have a peanut-butter cup and a cold can of beer for any reader who can honestly figure this one out without referring to any outside sources.

WE CAN SPEAK OF AN OBJECT AS A BLESSED THINGY

Some of you may remember my post from 5/3/04 about poetry in spam. Well, I have found poetry in another unlikely place. I have been writing a computer program to automatically edit DNA files, and I was faced with figuring out how to pass arguments into a subroutine by reference. So I looked up references in Programming Perl, 2nd Ed, by Wall, et al. (1996 O'Reilly) and on page 247 I found the following gem:

An object is simply a special kind of thingy that happens to know which class it's associated with.
Constructors know how to create that association.
They do this by taking an ordinary thingy and turning it into an object
(which remains a thingy even while it's also being an object.)
The operator that a constructor uses to do this is called bless,
so we can speak of an object as a blessed thingy.

Now, for the rest of my life, if any ever, ever asks me, "What is that object?"
I will simply say, "Oh, it's a blessed thingy."