02009 New Year's Resolution #18: Cogito Ergo Possum, But Accept That I Probably Won't

A longtime friend (who also recently said something that made me think that "longtime friend" is sometimes more politic than "old friend") recently reminded me of an idea that has been amusing me (in a low simmer sort of way) for the last couple of years: Cogito ergo possum.

I'm sure my dear readers are all familiar with Descartes' famous assertion: Cogito ergo sum. (I think; therefore I am.) Likewise, I'm sure that most of you are familiar with Watty Piper's The Little Engine Who Could, who famously asserted, "I think I can."

By mixing the two together, I came up with the following hybrid: Cogito ergo possum. [Note: I'm not fluent in Latin and I am not a qualified translator. But I managed to cobble this together, and I don't think it's ineptly worded.] The resulting phrase translates to: "I think; therefore I can."

Searching the internet, I quickly learned that I was not the first to devise the phrase. In fact, it has been cleverly and humorously translated as "I think; therefore I play dead." (Which I think is genius!) Turns out that Cogito ergo possum is also apparently the motto of Walt Kelly's Pogo.

(I haven't yet taken the time to seek evidence of this in the volumes of Pogo strips that are on the bookcase next to our front door. But I intend to. If I can find said evidence, I'll probably post a scan of the appropriate frame. Walt Kelly was a genius and it seems to me that if I can play some small part in spreading his gospel, that would be a noble act.)

Anyway, Cogito ergo possum is sort of a reasonable credo for my interior mental life. It suggests a kind of belief in the power of thought: If one can think it, then doing it becomes a mere matter of will overcoming sloth. If you accept this idea and embrace it, there comes a certain confidence in your capacity for achieving something important. That's a nice idea. Frankly, it's sort of intoxicating in its ego-boosting capacity.

The problem with me is that while I possess this knowledge and am confident in my own thought processes, I am extremely bad about actually translating the thought into action. That is, my sloth generally overcomes my will.

So I have lots of bright ideas kicking around in my head. But rarely do I make any real effort at turning them into anything tangible. My habit has long been to jealously guard my bright ideas and to keep them secret. This is a bad habit! But until very recently I had not really recognised what a bad habit it is.

This has something to do with intellectual property rights, which I am a big fan of. I like the idea that inventors should be able to profit from their inventions. I believe that theft of intellectual property is every bit as wrong as theft of physical property. However, I must admit that I am unlikely to ever get around to dealing with most of my bright ideas. If I won't see them to fruition, and if I also keep them all as secrets, not only do I not benefit from them but neither does anyone else. That's where the bad habit comes in.

If, for example, I am not ever going to perform the world's first meaningful time travel experiment (and surely I am not), is there some good reason why I shouldn't at least toss the experiment's design out there in case it might inspire someone else to actually perform the experiment? Of course not! There's really no benefit to myself or to anyone else or to society at large if I keep the experiment's design a secret. But if I set it free, there's some slight chance that someone less slothful than myself might take up the baton and run with it. Where's the harm in that?

So, having achieved this new wisdom, I hereby make my eighteenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to not be so senselessly protective of my bright ideas.

I will be less apt to keep them from public scrutiny, finally acknowledging that there is more value in the potential of inspiring others than there is in the smugness of knowing that I possess some special idea that could result in something really cool if only I would get around to acting on it.

I suppose this resolution is at least as much about honestly assessing my own sloth as it is about honestly assessing the brilliance of my best thoughts. Anyway, as with Cogito ergo possum, it generally turns out that my brightest ideas are not uniquely mine. Usually, someone else has already had the same thoughts (or similar enough to qualify). In such cases especially, there is a very compelling reason to add a reinforcing voice to the chorus rather than to keep it under my hat.

02009 New Year's Resolution #17: Support the Arts

I suppose in some sense, one could argue (if one were so inclined) that my photography constitutes a sort of ongoing art project. I would not.

Likewise, I suppose my monthly documenting of my hair's growth could be described as a sort of art project. I would not describe it so.

One might (as a stretch) claim that my t-shirt designs from last summer (none of which sold, sadly enough) could be considered a sort of an art project. Again, I would make no such claim.

Instead, I would assert that I haven't really made any efforts in terms of starting an art project in a very, very long time. This is sad, as I used to think I might try to make a profession of art. Pessimism, lack of self-confidence, laziness, the need to pay the bills...all of these things ended up putting the goal of producing something artistic on the back burner.

I intend to finally get around to changing that, at least a little. Presenting my seventeenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to undertake some sort of new art project.

I'll now describe my current dream project. [Note: I very much doubt that this is what I'll end up starting. Something tells me that it's more likely to be something much less involved, less ambitious, more modest. Perhaps a series of oil pastel or charcoal drawings.]

I would call this current dream project "The Domicile Project". I would like to either build or repurpose an old library card catalog. In it, I would catalog everything in our house, filing it all in alphabetical order, cross-referencing everything by country of origin, name, description, color, ingredients, etc. Each card would include the appropriate "home" location for the item described. So, by necessity, I would come up with a system which assigned a code to each shelf, each drawer, each cabinet, each room, etc. And that code would act as my personal Dewey Decimal System.

Each card would include a printed photograph of the item in question, but the description would be written by hand. Each card would have on its back a place for from and to addresses, and a rectangle for a postage stamp. Visitors to the installation (assuming someone would be willing to exhibit the project) would be encouraged to browse through the catalog and would further be encouraged to find a favorite card and take it with them as a souvenir, and also to take one to send as a postcard to a friend or loved one. The original hand written cards that had been removed would periodically be replaced by computer-printed facsimile cards (without the postcard formatting on the back). The facsimile cards would be somehow clearly marked as copies, with a watermark or a cancellation line through the face or perhaps a hole in the middle. Visitors would be discouraged from taking these, and encouraged instead to try to find a suitable original, until all such originals had been distributed.

And in case you're wondering, I am not obsessively well-organized. To some degree, I think just the opposite is true: that I am obsessively disorganized — at least as regards my personal stuff. But something about the potential for this exercise appeals very deeply to me. Perhaps it's a connection with the outmoded furniture. (I have recently come to understand that card catalogs are largely a thing of the past and that there's a whole generation of folks who don't know what they are.) Perhaps it's the alphabetization aspect. (While I am not organizationally minded, I am profoundly entranced by the invention of alphabetical order and its application.) Perhaps it's the idea of freezing a moment in time. (At some point, the cataloging would be complete. I expect that the final day of cataloging would necessarily involve going through the kitchen to document the perishables.)

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A general note on the nature of my New Year's Resolutions: In case this was unclear, and in case anyone was wondering, I think it's worth mentioning that I do not necessarily intend to perform all of my 02009 New Year's Resolutions during the calendar year of 02009. Instead, I intend to give myself one year from whatever date I make each resolution. If I end up making my last Resolution on December 31st, it would be unfair to expect it to be completed by midnight that night.

02009 New Year's Resolutions #15 and #16: Write Nicely and Write Nicely

My handwriting is terrible. I know this. I have known it for a very long time. IN FACT, I USUALLY WRITE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IN AN EFFORT TO INCREASE LEGIBILITY. But as anyone who knows about typography will happily tell you, legibility is actually increased by not using ALL CAPS. This is because with ALL CAPS the words tend not to have a very distinctive shape. Lowercase letters have tall parts and short parts and parts that dip below the baseline, which tends to give words distinctive shapes. I almost never use cursive. So rarely, in fact that it feels completely unnatural.

Here's my fifteenth New Year's Resolution of 02009:

I resolve to try to improve my handwriting.

I am increasingly impressed with decent handwriting. This is particularly true of lovely cursive. My mother's handwriting is terrific. And the lady who writes out the appointment cards at my doctor's office has really beautiful cursive. Beth's handwriting is vastly better than my own, and I am a bit jealous. So I'm going to try to improve my handwriting over the course of the next year. Beth tells me that this won't work. She thinks my handwriting is fixed, beyond my control. We shall see. I don't hold out much hope for success, but I choose to go into this with uncharacteristic optimism.

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My sixteenth New Year's Resolution of 02009 is somewhat related, at least inasmuch as it will provide me with an opportunity to work on my handwriting:

I resolve to start writing letters again.

Long ago, I used to write letters. Pretty regularly, in fact. I wrote these great rambling things, sometimes 20 pages or more, to dear friends — to people who then meant the world to me and, frankly, all these years later, still do. Somewhere along the way, I simply stopped doing such. I miss it (and I have gotten a report from one such friend that she misses my letters, which is encouraging). Although the simple truth is that it's been so long that I'm not altogether sure what really went into a lot of those letters, so it's entirely possible that my new letters will be entirely different in both tone and content from what my old letters were. So what?!?

Honestly, given that we're all in such a rush and all so overburdened with "responsibilities" nowadays, isn't it the thought that counts? And what better expression of thought than taking/making the time to commit words to paper, with a specifically targeted audience of one (with no expectation/intention of having anyone else ever read those words, and with no capacity to cut-and-paste the contents to be repurposed into some other document), using a time-consuming and hand-cramping technique?

There's something very intimate and personal about sitting down and writing a letter longhand that is just not matched by typing an e-mail. I miss that. And while I greatly appreciate a good e-mail from an old friend, I do also miss receiving actual letters in the mail. I think sending letters tends to encourage getting letters. So while the blame is wholly mine for discontinuing my own writing of letters, I think it's also fair to say that I am somewhat to blame for the fact that somewhere along the line I also stopped receiving letters.

I'm going to try to break the cycle, at least a little. I'm not setting any real goals for myself. I don't necessarily intend to resume letter-writing correspondence with everyone who I used to write to. I'm not aiming to write, for example, twelve letters in the next twelve months. I'm just aiming to start.

If I manage two real letters in the next year [personal letters (not business), hand-written (not typed), on sheets of paper (not crammed into the confines of a birthday card or holiday card)], I believe that will be more than I have accomplished in the last several years combined. The last real letter I can recall writing was probably in 01998, to an old friend, who (as a result of that letter) figured out before I did that Beth and I should end up as more than just friends.

Note: Do not infer from my mentioning of "two real letters" that I intend to write two and call it a day. I don't. I really want to make letter writing a habit, as it once was. But I do at least have in mind my first two intended recipients. So I'm ready to get going. All I need now is the spark of inspiration, and some time to get rolling.

A Neologism (and a half), After Much Rambling Buildup

Surely there are people who spend their time trying to devise neologisms (new words or expressions). I suspect that there is a whole subculture of these linguistic hobbyists. I think it's fair to say that the most blatant (and for a time, the most famous (and possibly the most prolific)) of these neologists in recent memory was Rich Hall. His "sniglets" (words that don't appear in the dictionary but should) were featured for a time on Saturday Night Live and he published a few volumes of them, which I believe were bestsellers.

[Note: Hall was a cast member of Saturday Night Live during at least one of what I think of as "The Forgotten Years". In recent years, when I have sporadically caught reruns of SNL on E!, I don't believe I have ever seen one of the episodes from this era rerun. These were actually my favorite SNL years (probably more than for any other reason because they're the years when I started watching, and they therefore have a real nostalgic value for me). Besides Rich Hall, the cast of this era included Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Brad Hall, Eddie Murphy (although I don't think Hall and Murphy actually shared a season), Tim Kazurinsky, Gary Kroeger, Mary Gross, Martin Short, Harry Shearer, Christopher Guest, and Billy Crystal. Some of these people went on to stellar careers, some faded from the public eye. All were great in their own way, and it's a shame that those SNL episodes don't seem to be in syndication.]

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I've been trying to think on a 10,000 year scale instead of thinking in terms of decades or centuries. This is daunting. Especially if you also think in terms of trying to leave some sort of literary legacy. Which I do. ("Odd," you might say, given that I have never published a novel nor is there any real reason to believe that I will ever manage to do so. I won't dispute that it's odd. I also will freely admit that I have no such grandiose aspirations for what I post on my blog. It's easy to spew out lots of words if you are not trying to write for the ages.)

When I took my first real stab at writing a novel, I was not seriously thinking in 10,000 year terms. But I was thinking much more vaguely in terms of literary "immortality". And to some degree, this really acted as a hindrance to me, though perhaps not in the sense that you would expect. I wasn't frozen with fear at the prospect of trying to write something great. Instead, I was stymied by the certainty (certainty!) that much of what we deal with in our daily lives is (in the longish term) mere ephemera.

What will last?

"Telephone" will be an obsolete term soon. "Internet" will probably be obsolete even sooner. Already there's a generation of people for whom "Walkman" is meaningless, I'm sure. It's been superseded by "iPod" or "MP3 player", both of which will be virtually forgotten within 50 years. I'm pretty confident in saying that. Heck, even "computer" may fairly quickly become an archaic term, as what we think of as a computer becomes obsolete, replaced by some sort of I-don't-know-what. When faced with this knowledge, and motivated by the desire to write something timeless, what's an author to do?

In my case, the answer is challenging, and limiting: try your best to avoid including references to those things that you're sure will soon be memories, soon thereafter be quaint curiosities, and soon thereafter be lost to the realm of human experience. Limiting, indeed! If the phone is off limits, surely e-mail is too. IM and text messaging -- meaningless and (to me in my novelistic aspirational mindset) useless! What's an LP? What's an album? What in the world does vinyl have to do with music?

Anyway, the more I try to think on a 10,000 year scale, the more convinced I become that the idea of literary immortality is an unattainable goal. Here's what else I've concluded about the exercise: 1) Your best shot at literary longevity is inextricably linked with accepting anonymity. 2) The shorter your contribution (assuming it's really good), the longer it is likely to last.

So, if you want to leave a lasting literary legacy, your best bet is to accept that it will not be associated with your name for very long, and to make it as snappy as possible. Aphorisms, proverbs, and neologisms are really the way to go, if "immortality" is your goal.

Neologisms are actually probably the worst of these three forms, for the simple reason that the others can be translated to other languages with ease and (assuming they're really effective) they won't lose any value in the translation.

So, after there's no longer any such thing as a "penny" and after Ben Franklin is completely forgotten, "a penny saved is a penny earned" can still have meaning to any culture (and in any language) that has grasped the concept and adapted the saying to its particular vernacular. "Penny" is just a variable, easily replaced by "dollar" "yen", "peso", or "yumyum". "Save" and "earn" are simple concepts, easily translatable into almost any language. Assuming it still has cultural value, "a penny saved is a penny earned" can easily be imagined as having the potential to outlast the English language.

Neologisms are a trickier business. A neologism is only a neologism for a short time. If it catches on (a big if, always), it soon ceases to be a neologism and instead simply becomes a word. Words are really tied to the language in which they originate, with rare exceptions. ("OK" has somehow become fairly universal.) Generally speaking, if the language dies, so does the word. This doesn't even take into account the natural evolution of language that dictates the constant, gradual alteration in meaning that occurs to many (if not most or all) words. If you originate a new word with a particular meaning today and in 50 years the word is still used, but with a somewhat different connotation (or worse, a somewhat different denotation), can you still take credit for it? How about in 300 years, when your original definition is so far removed from the current one that there isn't even any readily obvious connection between what it was and what it has become?

I mentioned Rich Hall earlier. Turns out he was apparently Matt Groening's inspiration for the character of Moe Szyslak. Mentioning Matt Groening is a handy tool for tying neologisms to literary legacies. (I am, of course, using a very broad definition of "literary", here.) If we were placing bets, my money would be on "d'oh" as Groening's lasting literary legacy. I'm guessing that people will widely respect and appreciate (perhaps revere) The Simpsons (and, I hope, Futurama) for a few decades to come. I suspect that in 100 years, those shows will be as well known and loved as are the films of Harold Lloyd today. Which is to say that there will be a small group of devotees who fight hard to keep the legacy alive, while the vast majority of the population will suddenly be overcome by a blank stare (at best) when presented with a reference to them. By contrast, I'm guessing that "d'oh" stands a very good chance of lasting and being widely used as an expression of anger or frustration or revealed stupidity for at least a couple of hundred years. If I had to put my money on how long "d'oh" will be in common parlance, I'd bet somewhere between 300 and 600 years. (That's me being extremely optimistic, which is rare.)

Assuming "d'oh" lasts that long, will Groening's name be associated with it in any way? Not a chance! But it will still be his legacy, and I'm pretty sure that if it does last that long, it'll likely be his only (directly attributable) contribution to whatever has become of society.

Which is great!

I don't think Jose Saramago or Toni Morrison or Kenzaburo Oe or V.S. Naipaul or Orhan Pamuk is likely to have inserted anything so powerful as that one word quite so far into the future. This is not a commentary on their literary genius. Merely a thought about what likely lasts and what likely doesn't through the coming centuries.

It's fair to say that I am not one of those neologism hobbyists I mentioned at the start of this entry. It's also fair to say that I do not have any expectation that my offerings in this field will catch on, let alone last. However, having stated as much, I figure I might as well throw a neologism or two out there into the internet as see if I get any traction at all.

So, without further ado, one and a half neologisms for your consideration:

intrarogative - adj. Characterized by self doubt. n. One who is characterized by self doubt.
intrarogative question - n. A question, typically rhetorical and usually pessimistic, about one's own place in the universe.

I am an intrarogative (I think), always questioning my own choices in life, rarely certain that I have acted as wisely as I should have done.

"Why me?" is the mother of all intrarogative questions. Others include: "How did I get here?", "Why did this happen to me?", and even vaguer questions like "What else can go wrong?".

Some Thoughts on the Olympics

First, Michael Phelps was spectacular. There's no denying that. What he did was amazing. Congratulations to him and his teammates. (Note: The most impressive moment of all of the swimming events that I saw was Lezak chasing down and passing Bernard in that 4 x 100 m freestyle relay.)

However, given the coverage and praise that has been heaped upon Phelps, Usain Bolt has not gotten nearly enough attention in the television coverage here in the U.S.

Once again (as happens every time the Olympics comes around), I am reminded that our televised Olympics coverage really is way too America-centric. I wonder what the coverage in Jamaica has been like. I hope Bolt has been getting his due there!

Unfortunately, it seems that half the commentary I have heard about Bolt has been disparaging remarks about his poor sportsmanship (exuberance) and showboating (premature celebration). I feel somewhat cheated by not seeing what he would have done in the 100 m if he had really given it his all. But I will not pile on with the criticism. He left me wanting more. That's all.

Here's my take on Bolt: What he did in the 100 meter race may have been the most jaw-dropping performance I have ever seen in sport. It was utterly astonishing! Basically, the guy coasted for the last 15 meters and he still beat the rest the best in the world have ever offered.

Here's the analogy that came to mind when I saw it: Imagine a 50 meter freestyle race, in the final round of the Olympics, in which someone was so far ahead of the field that he could roll over and take his last two or three strokes on his back, still win the race, and still break the world record. It's unthinkable!

The 100 meter run record is a slow dropper. In the last 25 years, the world record in the event has now dropped, on average, just under 0.01 seconds per year. In the last year, Bolt has been responsible for fully 1/5 of that entire drop. And in establishing the new record in Beijing, he wasn't really trying! The guy didn't push until the end. Not even close. He knew he was going to win, and he relaxed. It was absolutely phenomenal.

For comparison purposes, consider that in the last 25 years, the 100 meter dash record time has dropped by just 2.4%.

The 50 meter freestyle long course record time has dropped by 5.51%.
The 100 meter butterfly long course record time has dropped by 5.69%.
The 100 meter breaststroke long course record time has dropped by 5.69%. (This shocks me! Given the complete change that the stroke has undergone, I would have though this would be more like a 10-15% drop.)
The 100 meter freestyle long course record time has dropped by 4.68%.

But winning the 100 meter run wasn't the end of it. Bolt then went on to break the 200 meter running record, which has been an even slower dropper than the 100 meter running record! In almost 29 years, the record for the 200 has now dropped by just 2.1%. Based on these record progressions, it's entirely reasonable to assume that runners are closer to reaching the limits of performance than are swimmers. And Bolt has shown that he is closer than anyone, although watching his performances, it's very difficult to assume that he has come close to reaching his own potential.

Again, I'm not saying that Phelps has not been absolutely spectacular. He has. Period. And in terms of what he has done to shatter records, it's absolutely true that Phelps is head and shoulders above anything Bolt has done. For example, in the 200 meter butterfly, Phelps has singlehandedly dropped the record by as much in just over 7 years as it had been previously dropped in just under 25 years. That's incredible! But in terms of strictly what's happened in Beijing, I would argue that Bolt's performance has been every bit as astonishing as Phelps' performance.

(And just for a bit of snarky nostalgia, I'll throw this in: Michael Phelps will always be an underage drunk driver to me.)

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There's an often uttered saying in the sports world: "That's why they play the games."

The idea is that on any given day, anyone can be beaten. However, with the women's beach volleyball competition, I really felt as much as ever that there was a foregone conclusion in play.

I could hardly have been less enthusiastic about my role as a spectator in this event. As the tournament was happening, I watched minutes here and there, but I made no real effort to tune in and pay attention. I would stop watching matches long before their conclusions, paying little attention to where the scores stood. I simply assumed that May-Treanor and Walsh would prevail. And, of course, they did not disappoint.

There was no surprise in learning that they had gotten to the gold medal match. There was no surprise in learning that they had not dropped a set. Did I watch the gold medal match? Yes. Start to finish, with almost no enthusiasm. I was awed! I won't deny that. What you're watching when you watch Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor play together is simply the best there has ever been, doing what they do best. You should be aware of it and you should marvel at it. It is a genuine privilege. But sadly, it's just not edge-of-your seat, "anything can happen" competition. It's as much like watching destiny unfold as the sports fan can experience.

The Bell Ringer Joke Revisited

or:

If I'm Destined to Get a Pulitzer Prize for 02008, This is the Line of Thought That Will Earn It For Me

I'm pretty sure that it's been at least two decades since the idea of The Bell Ringer Joke started knocking around in my head. (I've mentioned the joke in a previous blog post.) There has been hope and despair, laughter and great disappointment, spread out over more than half my lifetime!

On Thursday morning, out of the blue, I had a few epiphanies regarding the joke for all of these years.

Epiphany #1: The first and second parts of the joke are spectacular, and if I had not been told at the time that I first heard them that there was a mysterious third part floating about in the ether, those two known parts would have been deeply satisfying. There would have been no disappointment associated with The Bell Ringer Joke whatsoever. The two parts stand together as a complete and brilliant story, riotously funny. Which is to say that the third part is only relevant if you know it exists. It is profoundly unnecessary to the success of the other two parts.

Having tracked down the missing third part, (since the internet made all such information readily available to all who seek it), I was precisely as disappointed by the third part as I had been warned I would be. For so many years, the rumor was not merely that there was a third part. Instead the rumor was that there was a third part and that it was a terrible disappointment to everyone who heard it. ("How bad could it be?", thought I, naively. The answer: Every bit as bad as everyone said it was.

This is why it took so many years to get to the third part: It was so bad that nobody who had heard it was willing to repeat it. In fact, there were claims of its being so bad that people completely excised it from their memories.)

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Epiphany #2: There is a reason why the third part is so horribly disappointing. And it's not really an intangible -- "you know it when you hear it" -- reason. On Thursday morning, I determined exactly why the third part is so disappointing. And I can articulate it simply. But first, as I tend to do so very frequently in this life, I feel the need to preface what I'm about to say.

Preface: I've never written a thesis on humor. I'm not very interested in doing so -- although I suppose if someone were to offer me a doctorate for doing so, I think there are certainly less appealing thesis topics to try to tackle.

I'm sure that many theses have been written on the topic of humor. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that The Bell Ringer Joke plays a fairly central role in at least a few of them. To be honest, I'm not terribly interested in reading any such theses. Although again, I suspect these would hardly be the most unpleasant theses to have to wade through.

It may well be the case that the more you try to figure out what makes something funny, the less funny it becomes. (This is the "dissecting a butterfly" argument, which applies also to poetry and beauty (and probably lots of other things).) That's not my point here. I'm not trying to provide a template that can be used to devise new jokes. Nor am I saying "if a joke doesn't fit this criterion, it's not funny". Rather, I'm pointing out where the disjoint is between the two successful parts of the joke and the unsuccessful third part.

So, here it is: The structure of the punch line in each of the two successful parts of the joke plays with the congruence of the literal and the figurative meanings of the idioms used. (In the first part, "I don't know, but his face rings a bell". In the second part, "I don't know, but he's a dead ringer for that other guy".)

This is not the same structure as the third part. The third part has nothing to do with bridging the literal/figurative gap. And for that matter, it has nothing to do with idiom. Frankly, I don't remember the third punch line, and I was so disgusted by it that I'm unwilling to look it up right now. But here's what I remember of it:

It was a pun.

Now, I've written before of my general distaste for the pun. I think it's a pathetic approach to humor. Rarely is it clever and almost never is it genuinely funny. That's my own bias, and I'll freely admit to that. However, that's not where my case against the third part rests.

Nor does it rest in my assertion that it is a horribly convoluted and horribly contrived pun. (Which it is!)

My case against the third punch line rests merely in its not being of the same type as the first two punch lines.

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If we can agree that the horrible third part should be thrown on the scrap heap [and I think all reasonable people can agree on this], we're left with the question of whether there should be a better third part that's properly designed and better fits with the other two parts. I am of the opinion that this is the case. Perhaps it's just based on years of frustration and pent up longing, but I really do believe that there should be a third part of the joke. That would provide closure, assuming that it's worthy of being matched with the others.

Epiphany #3: (This is the real shocker of the bunch.) I've been looking in the wrong place for the missing part. What's missing is not, in fact, the third part. What's missing is the first part! Logically, this makes sense.

The "second" guy is a dead ringer for the other guy. That's established by the fraternal relationship. The "first" guy's face rings a bell. Why? That deserves a set-up. Obviously, it's all in the telling, and it's easy enough to start out by establishing merely as a part of the narrative that the guy whose face rings a bell was taking over for a brother who died or retired or went missing. But I've come to understand that that's a cop out! "Easy enough" isn't necessarily right. Wouldn't it be better if there were a funny story to establish what happened to the first brother?

Of course it would!

So, now the task is not to establish not a new third part, but rather to establish a new first part, which would bump the other parts into the second and third slots. The end result is that you end up with a three-part joke (which, in my view, it deserves to be). And if it's built correctly, it will actually feel related to the other two parts, which is really what all of this longing and disappointment have been about.

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When I was in high school, I took a career assessment. The idea was that by asking a series of questions about a person's interests and personality tendencies, it was possible to make reasonable recommendations about what line of work that person might be best suited for. Much to my surprise, I was judged most suited to being a stand-up comedian.

Funny, that.

I think I could probably come up with a funny routine and get some laughs if I were to put some real effort into it. Doing an open mic night is something that I've long contemplated but never bothered to look into. Maybe I'll get to that before I die. Maybe not.

I don't think anyone who knows me actually thinks of me as being "Mr. Funny". I'm not a cut-up and I've never really put much effort into my joke-telling skills. I hardly ever actually tell a joke, and when I do, it tends to be a very simple joke--largely because I have such a terrible memory, it's just so difficult for me to remember any very complicated story jokes. I'm not terribly comfortable in front of crowds -- I get nervous. And I am naturally a very reserved person, largely keeping quiet and not saying a lot. I am not what you would call a raconteur. (I write at length, but I really don't talk a whole lot at all.)

All of this suggests that if you want me to provide you with a new joke, you're probably looking in the wrong place. However, that's just what I'm about to do.

Again, this must come with some warnings.

1) I'm actually just going to provide you with an outline of a joke -- a skeleton, if you will. In order to become a genuinely good joke, it would need some flesh on its bones. Part of that is simply having a joke teller who knows how to "sell" the story. But part of it is in the actual wording, and (at the moment) I'm just not ready to invest the effort in trying to perfectly craft it.

2) Part of what makes The Bell Ringer Joke so special is that it isn't in the least bit blue. That is, there's no bawdiness in it at all. Now, if you know me, you probably know that I rarely ever cuss. Frankly, I came to realise a lot of years ago that cussing is just a lazy habit. It's easy to do, hard to avoid once you establish the habit, and really doesn't accomplish much. So a long while ago, I decided to make an effort to get out of the habit. In realizing just how lazy a habit it is, I think I came to really appreciate people who don't use it as a crutch for expressing themselves. This has extended to an overall appreciation for civility and a bit of disdain for crassness. You may call me old-fashioned, or call me a prude, or accuse me of being against free speech. That's your right. But the truth is that I think people can do better and I believe that the Jerry Springerification of America is one of the worst things that has happened in our society during my lifetime. I'm not as old as some, but I'm old enough to remember when adults were generally responsible enough to not expose children (in public, anyway) to foul language. I think that was a better time.

This is not to say that I can't appreciate a well-placed cuss word. One of my favorite movie quotes of all time comes from Friday, when Smokey says, "You got knocked the f*** out!" That's a hilarious line! Part of it is Chris Tucker's delivery. But delivery alone does not make the line. If you take the F-bomb out, it just isn't funny, no matter how well delivered it is. I understand this, and I appreciate it. I'm not "above" foul language, I just think it's altogether too overused in today's society. The unfortunate downside of this is that it loses its power and just becomes so much noise instead of providing any real emphasis.

The reason why I mention this is that my joke, while quite tame by today's standards, is still considerably bluer than is appropriate to be a truly good match for the other two parts of The Bell Ringer Joke. This is part of its downfall. I'm putting this out there right up front because I want it to be absolutely clear that this is a flawed "attempt". There should be no confusion about this point. I am not providing this outline of a joke as a proposed addition to The Bell Ringer Joke. Rather, I'm putting this out there as a bad example of how easy it is to do better than what's currently out there, and as a provocation in hopes that somebody out there will take up the challenge of doing even better than this.

3) My outline does take the approach of using the literal/figurative interpretation of an idiom as the basis for its structure. So here are a couple of other parts of its downfall: (a) The literal interpretation isn't literal enough. (b) The idiom I have gone with is too obscure and outdated.

For the existing two successful parts of the joke, the literal interpretations of those punch lines are absolutely literal. My punch line is not truly literal. It's close, in its own way. But it's not quite there.

As for the idiom, I think "his face rings a bell" is very widely understood. I suspect the phrase "dead ringer" is probably a bit less widely understood (and probably becoming ever less widely understood with each passing year). But for now, I think it's probably in common enough parlance to count as being part of the general American vernacular, and will probably remain such for quite a long while. My idiom was probably pretty widely understood 30-50 years ago, but I think it has pretty rapidly dropped out of common usage, and I suspect that in 50 years, it will be considered archaic usage. If I am right about these things, my joke simply does not have the appropriately broad appeal that The Bell Ringer Joke deserves for all of its parts to have.

So, here's my sketch:

Just after the start of the year, the bishop was at the cathedral to interview candidates for the position of bell ringer. The ancient bell ringer had decided to finally take his pension. He had served for quite a lot of years. His back could no longer handle the constant pulling of the ropes and his legs could no longer handle the constant climbing of the stairs that were requisites of the job.

One candidate stood out among the rest. He was young, but had an impeccable résumé, great references, and was a member of the most well-respected family of bell ringers in all the land. His father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather, as well as countless uncles, were all widely known to have served the church with distinction over many years. The man was hired, without audition, and the bishop left the cathedral with confidence in his choice.

The next day, as scheduled, the new bell ringer did his duty, ringing the bells exactly at the turn of the hour, every hour. Over the next months, he never missed a chime, never struck a wrong note, performed spectacularly for every mass, at every holiday. He was widely regarded as the best bell ringer in anyone's memory.

About ten months after the new bell ringer arrived, the church's old housekeeper retired and was replaced by a pretty young lady, who again had a wonderful résumé and unimpeachable references. The new housekeeper was diligent in doing her duty, and the church had never before been cleaner. Everything was spotless and sparkling. When the bishop came through on his annual visit, he was extremely impressed by what he saw and heard. He was even notified that church attendance had been steadily increasing in recent months, and was pleased.

But then one spring day, things started to go a little funny. In mid-afternoon, there was a surprise ringing of the bells. The priests had such faith in the bell ringer that they took this as a call to prayer, perhaps a special mass that they didn't realise was on the calendar. The quickly scrambled to prayer and did their duty.

A week later, there was another "special mass" at the same time of day.

And then the next week.

After that, the special masses started to occur still more frequently. It got to where there was a special mass every day, and their times started to vary.

One day, there were two special masses, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

One of the younger priests couldn't take it any longer. He had consulted every calendar he could find and was convinced there was no justification for these unscheduled bell ringing sessions. "Glory be to God, and the more prayer the better. Nonetheless, we have a schedule for a reason", he told the head priest. So the next day, with the head priest's blessing, he snuck up the bell tower and hid in a little closet one floor below the bells. He showed up early, before the bell ringer arrived for the day. And he waited.

He heard the bell ringer arrive right on time. Every hour, on the hour, the bells were rung, just as scheduled. The priest said his prayers as scheduled, there in the closet. Then at about 3.30 he heard some light footsteps outside the door, heading up the stairs. "Who could that be?" he wondered. And he peeked out, too late to observe the visitor. But he did notice that the banister seemed slightly shinier than it had been earlier in the day.

A couple of minutes later, the priest started to hear some whispering voices, one female and one male. He heard some giggling, which gave way to muffled grunting. The grunts intermingled with squeaks and then moans, getting slightly louder as the minutes passed. Just as they were reaching their crescendo, the bell rang, almost completely drowning out a scream in praise of the glory of God, still 12 minutes before the hour!

The priest cracked open the door to the closet yet again and peered out, waiting for the visitor. When she did pass by, he saw that it was the pretty young housekeeper. She was tidying her hair and straightening her skirt as she headed downstairs. When the hour came, the bells rang on schedule, flawlessly. By this time, the snooping spy had already arrived at the office of the head priest to make a report on what he had seen.

Early the next day, a local man was surprised to see the head priest wandering through the city posting signs in shopkeepers' windows announcing that a new bell ringer was needed for the church, and applicants should come to the bell tower the following Thursday.

The man walked into one of the shops and asked the shopkeeper if she had spoken with the priest. She confirmed that she had.

"So what's the story?", he asked. "The bell ringer we had was so good! Everyone agreed he was the best in our city's history. And especially in recent days, he has had such a big smile on his face when I have seen him going to work. Always so cheery, like he really loved his job."

"Well," said the shopkeeper, "it seems they had to fire him for making time with the housekeeper."

This, of course, leads pretty naturally to the next part of the joke, with some slight adjustments for a proper segue:

The following Thursday, the bishop arrived at the base of the bell tower to perform the interviews, hoping to redeem himself for his previous lapse in judgment. When he got there, he was surprised to see only one applicant. "You look very familiar", said the bishop.

"The last bell ringer was my kid brother" responded the applicant.

"Ah, I see. I must say, I do have some reservations about hiring you", said the bishop.

"Please", said the applicant. "I must restore my family's honor. My brother was a bit of a black sheep, who had strayed from the flock. He was always a bit of a rebel, which is why he was home schooled. Unfortunately, he never really got proper exposure to society before he came here. As you can see, I graduated with honors from bell ringing college. I had perfect marks in all my classes, and my Theory professor has provided you with a letter of recommendation testifying that I was the best student he has had in forty years of teaching. Plus, unlike my brother, I am happily married and would never cheat on my wife. I am a good Catholic, and I want to serve God. Ringing bells is my way of doing this. Please give me the opportunity to restore my family's honor."

"You make a convincing argument," said the bishop, "but I cant help but notice that you have no arms. Won't that be a problem?"

"It's never been a problem before", responded the applicant. If you won't take my word for it, perhaps we can climb the tower and I can audition for you. It's almost time for the hour to turn, anyway."

[. . . .]

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As I said, my own contribution above is meant at least in part as a provocation. I'm sure it's not a great joke, and I'm sure someone out there can do better. I advise you to keep in mind the guidance I have provided in terms of what makes the existing third part such a failure, and in terms of the failure points that I have already identified in my own joke. And so, with that, I invite (I implore) you to put on your thinking cap and please try to outdo me. Please contribute your own "missing first part" of The Bell Ringer Joke. I'm sure someone out there can do a bang up job! And I am desperate to read your offerings. So please post them here as comments to my blog. I look forward to reading what you have to offer. I can't promise fame or fortune. But if you do really well, I can promise you undying gratitude!

The Long Now and Why Nuclear Power is a Bad Idea (Maybe)

Oftentimes, it is a mystery to me why my brain goes off in a particular direction. I have written before, on this blog, about having read an interesting book entitled The Clock of the Long Now. Having read that book is the reason why I try to use a 5-digit year in writing dates (for example, 02008 instead of 2008). It's a technique for trying to train myself to think on a longer term time scale. To think in terms of millennia instead of decades or centuries. I haven't yet fully trained myself on the 5-digit years (which is why sometimes I'll post a blog entry that mentions a 4-digit year and then go back and edit it afterwards--and I suspect there are times when the 4-digit year has simply slipped past my notice).

Anyway, I've recently been thinking about nuclear power, but I've been thinking about it with that "long now" mindset. So, where previously I had mostly taken the view that nuclear power is actually a good idea (better for the environment than burning fossil fuels, for example), I've recently been thinking about how fundamentally bad an idea it is. Not because of the potential for nuclear accidents (such as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl). I think that in that sense, nuclear power is actually pretty safe. We've been powering submarines with nuclear fuel for decades and to the best of my knowledge, there's been no consequence in terms of life or limb--and surely there has been less damage to the oceans from all of those thousands of miles travelled in nuclear submarines than has been caused by more conventionally powered boats covering the same number of miles.

What's been on my mind about the hazards of nuclear fuel is just how long they take to degrade. If we assume that it takes nuclear fuel 10,000 years to become inert, think of just how long that is, in terms of human history.

Let's take a quick look back at what wasn't around 10,000 years ago.

10,000 years ago:

There was no Islam, no Christianity, no Judaism, no Buddhism, no Jainism, no Hinduism, no Taoism.

Zeus, Odin, Thor, Quetzalcoatl, and Ganesha had not yet been imagined, let alone risen to prominence and (in most cases) fallen from grace.

There was no religion that you've ever heard of. This is not to say that religion did not exist. Humankind has an extraordinary capacity for making up stories to explain the unexplainable (and the frightening). It is my belief that humankind's default instinct is to explain thunder (a large-scale scary phenomenon) by making up a god. If I'm right about that, then in its most basic form, religion probably predates just about anything else in the history of human thought. Doesn't mean it's sensible, just means it's old.

10,000 years ago:

There was no Rome, no Greece, no Egypt, no China, no Inca Empire, no Mayan culture. There were no Vikings or Mongols or Visigoths or Olmecs or Toltecs. 10,000 years ago predates every great civilization you've ever heard of (except perhaps for some imaginary ones).

While armed conflict between tribes has probably existed since before the fully modern human emerged, the oldest war you've ever heard of happened less than 10,000 years ago. (Again, excepting for fiction.)

While bullies and chieftains and kings have surely existed for as long as people have congregated in groups (and pack leaders are prominent in much less socially "advanced" species than our own), the oldest ruler you've ever heard of had not been born 10,000 years ago.

10,000 years ago:

The cow had not been domesticated. Sure, there was farming, but it was very primitive.

10,000 years ago predates the English language (modern English, Middle English, Old English). That long ago, there was no French, or Spanish, or Russian, or Basque, or Chinese, or Japanese, or Hindi, or Roman, or Greek, or Navajo, or Hebrew or Aramaic. You've never heard of any language as old as 10,000 years ago (except perhaps some imaginary ones--anybody know how long a time ago Huttese was supposed to exist in a galaxy far away?).

10,000 years ago, there was no Iliad or Odyssey. There was no Code of Hammurabi. There were no Bible, no Talmud, no hieroglyphics, no Sanskrit or cuneiform writing. The book had not been invented, nor had the scroll. Most likely, nothing resembling paper had been invented.

Not only was there no recorded music. There was no way of recording music. Musical notation had not been invented yet. I suspect it's probably fair to guess that people have been playing something akin to drums and bamboo flutes and maracas for at least a few tens of thousands of years. However, with the exception of those and similarly primitive examples, it's pretty safe to assume that almost every musical instrument you're familiar with has been invented in the last 10,000 years. Surely the guitar, piano, harpsichord, trumpet, violin, lute, serpent, tambourine, and cymbal are extremely new developments.

10,000 years ago, metalsmithing was likely not a widespread art. Stone knapping existed, and people made weapons. Hunting was a widespread practice.

Clothing existed, but probably not any clothing you'd be willing to wear in public.

The great pyramids of Egypt had not been built 10,000 years ago, nor had the ziggurats. The ruins of Catal Huyuk may be approaching 10,000 years old at this point.

And that brings me to the important word here: Ruins. There is no structure built by human hands that has remained intact for the last 10,000 years. The closer you get to that age, the more completely ruined are the fragments. I'm not saying that people that long ago were not inventive. I'm not saying that they were not clever or sophisticated or advanced (whatever that means). I'm not saying they were not industrious and capable of doing great things. I'm simply saying that 10,000 years is an extremely long time to expect anything to last. Societies rise and fall. Religions rise and fall. Buildings rise and fall.

What we know for sure about people from that long ago is basically what we can infer, simply from our own existence: 10,000 years ago, people were able to find food and eat it. They congregated in close enough proximity that they were able to find mates. They had sex and made babies and raised children. They migrated. In a nutshell, that's probably the majority of what we know, for certain, of human society 10,000 years ago.

What we know of human nature is probably as true today as it was then and it will probably remain just as true 10,000 years from now. What does that mean? For the purpose of this train of thought, it means this: people are inquisitive and imaginative. That alone is enough to establish the danger of trying to store nuclear waste anywhere.

It is hubris to believe that the USA (or any other current nation) will still exist in 10,000 years. It is extremely unlikely that anyone will still use any language that is currently spoken. At best, there will probably be just a few experts who can decipher any of our languages in any meaningful way.

In the intervening centuries, surely there will be periods of increasing war and increasing peace. Surely there will be periods of increasing tribalism and increasing unity.

It's reasonable to expect that archaeology will to some extent go in and out of fashion. But surely, as long as people continue to exist, people will be digging and exploring.

Where on Earth humankind will migrate is anybody's guess. Historically, societies have tended to rise in areas with easy access to water. However, there's no telling how influential our current and future technologies will be in changing that trend.

The end result of that is that there's no place on the planet that we can be sure won't be explored. Which means that you can't simply "hide" your nuclear waste and reasonably hope that it won't be discovered and cause harm.

And you can't simply put up a sign saying "DANGER" and hope it will be heeded. Going back to the death of languages and the pattern of birth and death of religions and beliefs, it's absurd to believe that a sign, no matter how carefully and strongly worded, will be heeded. In fact, it's probably the case that the more warning you post and the more effort you put into making your stash inaccessible, the more effort will be taken in the future to get at it. Human nature means that the more difficult you make it to get at a treasure, the more valuable the treasure will become in the minds of future generations. Even if they understand the warnings, they may think those warnings to be pure hyperbole. It's possible that people in 2,000 years will doubt our ability to create nuclear power just as much as we doubt the ancient Egyptians to have done so.

If someone today digs up a chest of doubloons (and you know that people are searching), nobody is harmed. If someone in the future digs up a mountain full of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel, the downside is potentially pretty disastrous.

So what's the solution?

I have no idea. Ethically, our policy makers should probably be thinking about such things. I wonder whether they do.

I guess that we could simply take the short view: that our responsibility is limited to the few dozen generations that are likely to still have any philosophical or emotional or intellectual connection at all to us. If we take that view, then yes, we can reasonably think that we have the power to protect our descendants. But if we take the long view, that becomes an increasingly absurd idea.

May Hair Photos, Late

Here are the hair photos I shot on May 2. Sorry they're so late to be posted. I have been terribly busy, and I have been having and trying to fix some technical issues on the blog. This partially has to do with my porting of the host, and partially (I think) with a glitch in Blogger's software. Anyway, here are the photos. Enjoy. (And I aim to get the June photos up much closer to the start of the month.)

Blithering

1) I discovered the other day that the car dictionary does not include another of my favorite words: Luddite. Beth was unfamiliar with this word. (She claimed it was a fake word, just as I claimed that bumf was a fake word when she first introduced me to it. I have since come to greatly appreciate it.)

2) Part of me wonders whether I should provide definitions for the words in question here in my blog. More of me thinks: (a) You're reading this blog on the internet, where information is always available to you. You can find it yourself with a few mouse clicks and keystrokes. (b) Maybe if you don't know any of my test words, you'll check your own dictionary (or dictionaries, if you have multiple). Maybe you'll get your own ire up if you discover that the dictionary you've trusted for years is really quite inadequate. I'll admit that there may be nothing terribly outrageous about a dictionary's editors choosing to omit anhedonia. On the other hand, I can't bring myself to justify the omission of pariah from any dictionary that doesn't have "Children's" or "First" in its title.

3) Nobody's commented about the new look of my blog. I changed the background color and the header graphic so that The Repeal of Gravity Blog no longer looks like the thousands of other blogs that started with the same Blogger template as I chose. I wonder what you think of the new look. Please comment. In fact, I like getting comments about anything I post. So please comment.

4) Part of the reason why I started this blog is just for personal amusement. Part of it, however, was to try to increase the number of hits to my Official Campaign Web Site. Frankly, regardless of how that site's hit counts are doing, I'd really like to see the hit counts increase on the blog. I try to make it interesting. I try to write well and to spell correctly. I try to provide interesting photographs. What am I doing wrong? How can I find a larger (interested) audience (given that I have no budget with which to pay for advertising)? I know I tend to get wordy when I get rolling, but I would think that would be counterbalanced by the infrequency of my posts. Advice, anyone? Maybe the way to go is to put out a call to other bloggers: Link to my blog and send me an e-mail saying that you've done so, and I will add a link back to your blog. Could I do this in good conscience? I suppose it would require some sort of disclaimer: This offer only good if I'm not in some way opposed to or inappropriately disturbed by your blog. Oh, what the heck? Why not? The offer (with disclaimer) is hereby made!

5) As mentioned earlier, it seems that many of my recent visitors have been coming from Google's image search showing my bleeding heart photo. The photos I posted on November 23, however, still don't show up in Google's image search. They all have alt text behind the scenes. (For example, the first , third and fourth all have "Zion formation" as their alt text. but searching Google's image search for that phrase (using quotation marks) only results in one hit. And it's someone else's photo.) Does anybody have any good advice as to how to get those images into Google's image search database? I happen to think that all of those pictures are of an equally good quality as my bleeding heart photo. Perhaps getting them into Google would serve to bring in more gawkers. Gawkers are good! Welcome gawkers!

6) I didn't have my word list with me last Sunday, but I flipped through another dictionary on my lunch break. I have high hopes for this one: The New Oxford American Dictionary. In fact, I also plan to check it out tomorrow to start on a new secret project, inspired by my current research project. (One of the perks, which I rarely use, of working for a book store is that I'm allowed to use it as a lending library for any hardback or trade paperback that we have multiple copies of in stock. I should really take better advantage of this perk, but I have tons of books I already own that I just don't have time to read. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's literally tons. Very sad!)

On Time...Awfully Late...and Not There Yet

Well, of course it's been a lot longer since my last post than I ever intended. In case you were on the edge of your seat, you have my apologies. I think what I need to do is to start actually making time to blog instead of what I've been doing: merely hoping to find time to blog. If I wait for the time to arrive, it slips by, as there's always something that seems more pressing (even if that "something" amounts to nothing more than trying to reduce my sleep debt).

The day after my last post, the new issue of Make magazine arrived in my mailbox. This, of course, thwarted my efforts to quickly get through that Scientific American special issue that I mentioned in my last post. I highly recommend picking up the Scientific American issue, as it's fascinating. But I recommend taking a look at Make, even more strongly. When the fourth issue came out, I didn't think it was possible to produce a better issue of a magazine. Since then, I've been astonished to find that the fifth and sixth issues have been just as good, if not better.

I have finally gotten through the Scientific American issue. I haven't fully read all of the articles, but at least I've read all of the ones that are most important to me and parts of all of the others.

This got me interested in picking up a book that I had long ago started reading and never got around to finishing. So this morning, as we were headed out Essex, MA to take care of some preparatory stuff for this year's Minis On Top, I grabbed the book from the shelf. The book in question is Stewart Brand's The Clock Of The Long Now. It's terrific stuff, very much worth a read, particularly if you're interested in what the future holds or in making a positive contribution to the future or just interested in knowing why you should start to take a longer view than what you're used to.

I finished the book in the car today, and I'd like to share an excerpt here because I think this is one of the loveliest stories I've come across in a very long time:

[The] island, Visingsö, in the Swedish lake Vättern, has a gorgeous mature oak forest whose origin came to light in 01980 when the Swedish Navy received a letter from the Forestry Department reporting that the requested ship lumber was now ready. It turned out that in 01829 the Swedish Parliament, recognizing that it takes one hundred fifty years for oaks to mature and anticipating that there would be a shortage of timbers for its navy in the 01990s, ordered twenty thousand trees to be planted and protected for the navy.

Note: The five-digit year format is a consequence of the long-view thought process that informs the book and inspires the Long Now Foundation. Reading what I read this morning has inspired me to put out a feeler to see whether there's a way for me to change the date format on my blog to conform to this format. If I get a satisfactory answer, you'll see it reflected in my blog entries in the future. (Actually, it will probably propagate throughout my blog.) If not, perhaps it's enough to simply go on record now as saying: I think this is a good idea, worthy of consideration.

Having finished reading the book this morning, I was reminded of something that I had read in it a few years ago on a much earlier page. It's something that I think is worthy of commentary, and so I'm going to comment on it:

When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. Now, thirty years later, they still talk about what will happen by the year 2000. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life.

Frankly, I think this quotation, particularly the last sentence, may be among the most profound statements ever uttered. It's attributed to Daniel Hillis, 01993. Hillis now apparently goes by "Danny" instead of "Daniel" and he's one of the founding members of the Long Now Foundation. That quotation, along with the few sentences that follow, is credited with being the inspiration for the Foundation and its grand project: The Clock/Library of the Long Now.

Sadly, I think the quotation will largely be lost to time, as a great portion of its profundity was stripped from it as the calendar rolled over on 1/1/02000. Now, the future is perhaps more nebulous than ever before. Advances are happening at such a breakneck speed that it's almost impossible to make meaningful predictions beyond just a few years. Frankly, I think it's not only difficult to make meaningful predictions, but it's very nearly equally difficult to make hopeful predictions.

"The future" is ever closer (as it hurtles towards us faster than we can keep up), even while it is ever more distant (as it's so far beyond our grasp). To make long term predictions, it's helpful to have a sense of continuity. It's helpful to have confidence in the fairly reliable accuracy of near-term predictions. That is, it's easier to predict what will be there ten years down the road if we have a pretty good sense of what will be there two or five years down the road. Think back five years. Did you have any idea at all about what your assumptions about the state of your world would be today?

If we forget the larger geopolitical issues, and focus on just small-scale stuff, I'm still astonished at what the last few years has wrought.

As an example, I told Beth just a couple of years ago (three years at most) that if I ever become one of those guys who has meaningful conversations about the features of his cell phone, she should shoot me. I guess it was about a year ago that I noticed there was actually a magazine on the rack at the book store about cell phones.

I'm not in a position to look at job applications, but my suspicion is that if it hasn't happened yet, the following scenario will start to happen soon. I have a notion that someone will list "cell phones" as a hobby, to show that he/she has interests outside of work and that he/she is a well-rounded person. And I further have a notion that the hiring manager will know what "cell phones", listed as a hobby, actually means.

To me, these notions are deeply disturbing.

I still hold firm to my assertion that Beth should shoot me if I ever get there. But I suspect that my resistance of that societal trend will very soon make me seem very much like a premature dinosaur.

I still haven't gotten to where I wanted to get in this blog. But that's enough for tonight. See you soon, I hope.

The Time is Coming. . . .

While I was on my lunch break from the book store today, I wandered over to the Periodicals section, thinking that I would track down one of those magazines about living off-the-grid (power-wise, not technology-wise) and browse through it. [I'm terribly interested in the possibility of setting up a windmill for home electricity use, or possibly putting up a solar panel on the long south-facing side of our roof.] I got sidetracked, however, as my eye was caught by a special edition of Scientific American, devoted to the topic of time. I flipped through it a bit and I bought it. It seems like a very interesting read from what I've seen so far.

I'm going into it with my own preconceived notions. Chief among them, time always moves forwards, never backwards. What happened already has happened and will forever be in the past. It is not possible to go back to before a previous occurrence.

Reading this magazine may turn out to dispel these notions. I doubt it, but I'm keeping an open mind. I'll let you know if it succeeds in this regard.

This whole notion of time is something that I find fairly fascinating. I have been thinking about it for quite some time. It seems to provide a fairly inexhaustible opportunity for mental exercise for those who choose to ponder it. I find it's a sort of "thought toy".

I'm going in believing that time may be relative. Time may pass more quickly or slowly depending on perspective. It's an interesting concept and I don't doubt that Einstein was right on that count. What I haven't seen yet is any convincing argument that the jump from "slowing down and speeding up of time" to "the reversal of time" is a reasonable jump. Surely it's conceivable and it makes for interesting science fiction (at least sometimes). But I don't yet believe it's plausible.

In the meantime, I've been slowly working on an animated demonstration of what I believe to be the main point of impossibility (or EXTREME unlikelihood, anyway--shall we say "stumbling block"?) which would preclude the possibility of human time travel into the past--and no, it doesn't have anything at all to do with the usual "paradox" that's been discussed a million times before.

I don't find myself with much time available for this pursuit. That lack of available time, combined with my not necessarily being a master of the tools at my disposal, means that the illustration/animation and accompanying explanation will take me some time to post. If I've tantalized you with this come-on, you'll just have to bear with me. I hope it'll be worth the wait. (Sure, I could simplify my illustration and crank something out in Illustrator or Photoshop, but it's been a while since I've really tinkered in my 3-D software, and this seems like a perfectly good excuse.)

I also mentioned in my second blog entry that I intend to post something about "Designing and implementing the first ever meaningful time-travel experiment." Of course, it's been fully designed in my mind. I haven't yet implemented it, but when I do, this blog will be the place to find out about it. You'll probably be astonished at how simple an idea it is and how easy it will be to set in motion. It's just a matter of choosing the appropriate moment. (Of course, you might be terribly disappointed at just what the experiment is set up to do, but I have confidence that it's a good methodology for what it's meant to test.)