California's weird election
I see now that Gray Davis now has to go through a recall election. The laws of California say that all you need to run for Governor is to be a resident of California, pay $3,500, and get 65 signatures. A K2 person can easily run for Governor. (K2 means that the person knows or is known by between 31 and 316 people; the notation is logarithmic and is explained in "Logarithms keep Doc Brown in Perspective"). Most of us are K3 (between 316 and 3,162 people), so most of us could run for governor, and a lot of people are. I hear that there are 352 candidates for governor now, and the number is likely to rise. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arianna Huffington, and Larry Flynt are among the candidates. So also is Bridget O'Reilly, who has been unemployed for three years and thinks of this as another job she is trying to get. She will get fame and notice out of this, and that may help her to get another job.
But with so many candidates, we could wind up with a winner with only 5.2% of the vote, say, but leading all the 351 others by a wide margin. And perhaps those 5.2% are a fringe group that the other 94.8% don't believe in at all. You get one of those as governor and almost everyone will be unhappy. So this could get wild. If they are going to do this, they need a runoff election, or several runoff elections, to eliminate the fringes and get at the candidates that are rated in the top 10% or so by everyone.
This may even hurt Bush's chances of getting reelected next year. I thought at first of an Arnold Schwarzenegger challenge to the Republican Party's nomination of Bush, but he is foreign-born. Still, this could be a place where people voice their discontent, and maybe a governor will be elected who will be emboldened by this either to challenge Bush for the Republican nomination or run as a third-party. If either of these succeed, Bush loses a Lichtman key and perhaps the election.
A Journey through Blogrealm
Blogtrek
Blogtrek
2003/08/07
Googlisms
Recently I found out about a googly type site on the Internet. It is Googlisms. No, this is not Google&tm;. It is a site set up by an Australian in which you type in a name, click a radio button labeled "who", "where", "what", or "when", and submit, and the result is a list of quotes from the Internet concerning the name you submitted. For example, if you submit "bill gates", you get things like "bill gates is satan conspiracy theory", "bill gates is the pope" and so forth. So I experimented with it. I submitted my name and got nothing. I submitted the names of some people I know, and I got some items on some of them. I then tried dates and organizations such as the Astronomical League and got lists of items describing them. I tried "blogtrek" and got "blogtrek is getting out". I don't want to see that. I looked "blogtrek is getting out" in Google and got one of my previous pages in which I find that other bloggers are listing a link to my Blogtrek. I wrote "I am glad to see that word of Blogtrek is getting out." As you can see, Googlisms took that phrase right out of context. That is not what I meant at all. I found an even more egregious case when I looked up "toastmasters". I got "toastmasters is only for professional speakers". Whaaa?? The whole purpose of Toastmasters is to give people new to public speaking or afraid of it a chance to get better with speaking. It is not just for professional speakers. I looked up the phrase in Google and got from the site http://www.portlandtn.com/toastmasters.htm the quote "Some might think Toastmasters is solely for professional speakers. It is not. Toastmasters come from a variety of occupations and backgrounds.". By taking the phrase out of context, Googlisms completely reversed the meaning of this quote!
I did some more "googlisming" and concluded that it looks for your search term plus "is" (not "are", not "was"; if you try a plural noun, you may not get any hits) plus a phrase that lasts until something other than a letter, number, sharp, or space is found. No wonder we get out-of-context returns. "of" phrases can easily change radically in meaning: "A daughter of Mary is a kindergartener." to kindergarten together" becomes "Mary is a kindergartener." Googlisms will make the mother go to school too.
Therefore I consider this site dangerous. Using "is" as your verb is said to be bad form, and it does not occur that often. Therefore, most of the people I know get no hits, even though they occur frequently on the Web. You now have to be careful how you use "is" because Googlism will pick it up and chop your sentence to pieces. Googlisms may be fun, but don't take it too seriously. Take everything in context.
Recently I found out about a googly type site on the Internet. It is Googlisms. No, this is not Google&tm;. It is a site set up by an Australian in which you type in a name, click a radio button labeled "who", "where", "what", or "when", and submit, and the result is a list of quotes from the Internet concerning the name you submitted. For example, if you submit "bill gates", you get things like "bill gates is satan conspiracy theory", "bill gates is the pope" and so forth. So I experimented with it. I submitted my name and got nothing. I submitted the names of some people I know, and I got some items on some of them. I then tried dates and organizations such as the Astronomical League and got lists of items describing them. I tried "blogtrek" and got "blogtrek is getting out". I don't want to see that. I looked "blogtrek is getting out" in Google and got one of my previous pages in which I find that other bloggers are listing a link to my Blogtrek. I wrote "I am glad to see that word of Blogtrek is getting out." As you can see, Googlisms took that phrase right out of context. That is not what I meant at all. I found an even more egregious case when I looked up "toastmasters". I got "toastmasters is only for professional speakers". Whaaa?? The whole purpose of Toastmasters is to give people new to public speaking or afraid of it a chance to get better with speaking. It is not just for professional speakers. I looked up the phrase in Google and got from the site http://www.portlandtn.com/toastmasters.htm the quote "Some might think Toastmasters is solely for professional speakers. It is not. Toastmasters come from a variety of occupations and backgrounds.". By taking the phrase out of context, Googlisms completely reversed the meaning of this quote!
I did some more "googlisming" and concluded that it looks for your search term plus "is" (not "are", not "was"; if you try a plural noun, you may not get any hits) plus a phrase that lasts until something other than a letter, number, sharp, or space is found. No wonder we get out-of-context returns. "of" phrases can easily change radically in meaning: "A daughter of Mary is a kindergartener." to kindergarten together" becomes "Mary is a kindergartener." Googlisms will make the mother go to school too.
Therefore I consider this site dangerous. Using "is" as your verb is said to be bad form, and it does not occur that often. Therefore, most of the people I know get no hits, even though they occur frequently on the Web. You now have to be careful how you use "is" because Googlism will pick it up and chop your sentence to pieces. Googlisms may be fun, but don't take it too seriously. Take everything in context.
2003/08/05
The Mystery Man of Carly Simon
I heard in a news story yesterday; for example, in USA Today, that Carly Simon sold at an auction for $50,000 the identity of the mystery man in the song You're So Vain. The winner of the auction had to promise Carly that he would never give away the identity of the vain man. Lots of legends have built over the 30 years since the song came out about just who this vain man with the apricot scarf was. Some say it was Warren Beatty, others Cat Stevens, and Kris Kristofferson and Mick Jagger have been mentioned as well.
The song is interesting in many respects, and it is somewhat vain itself and certainly it contradicts itself, rather like a snake eating its own tail. The picture that it paints is certainly a vain one. This guy saunters out onto a dance floor wearing an apricot scarf, which normally would be found on a woman. He cocks his cap a certain way, strategically. Interesting. He doesn't boogie on the dance floor. He doesn't salsa, waltz, swing, or rock either. He gavottes. He is pretty, prim and proper about it, just like the type of dance the gavotte is. He is looking in the mirror to see how pretty he is. Well hasn't everyone from time to time? And certainly if all the people of the opposite sex wanted to be with you, that would make you feel good, wouldn't it? I certainly would if I had women pursuing me left and right. Sadly, most of my life has not been like that at all, although for a few precious times it has.
So this is a pretty vain cat, whoever he is. Some other aspects of this song interest me as well. For example, She sings "then you flew your Lear jet to Nova Scotia to see a total eclipse of the sun". She means the 1972 July 10 total eclipse of the sun in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Gaspe. I saw that eclipse from Prince Edward Island, but I took the train, not a Lear jet. I wasn't that vain. Besides, a 25-year-old brand new math PhD does not have that kind of money. It got really DARK when I saw that eclipse on Stanhope Beach. I tried to take a picture of it with an Instamatic but it did not come out. I resolved right then and there to see another one with proper equipment.
So I went to Mexico on 1991 July 11 to see it. I had a 4-inch telescope and a camera and took a good photo of that eclipse, the longest in our lives (see My Astronomy Page for my photo of that eclipse). If the Carly Simon song had come out then, it would have said, "took your Lear jet to Cabo San Lucas to see a total eclipse of the sun...".
But talking about my rather huge web site sounds pretty vain in itself, so I will come back to Carly. Some other interesting words in the song are "clouds in my coffee", as though your inner weather is determined by the weather in a cup of holy brown liquid; "some underground spy or the wife of a close friend"; well certainly I would not want to deal with any spy, let alone an underground one; I don't know about the close friend's wife. She said she was quite naïve. Well, everyone is when they are young.
But the thing that really gets me going about this song is that it contradicts itself. She sings, "You're so vain." OK. This guy does sound pretty narcissistic. But then she sings "You think this song is about you, don't you?" She implies by her tone of voice that this song was not written with this vain guy in mind, that it was one of those parts of her life that don't concern him at all. But look again at the lyrics. Just about every word in the song talks about this mystery man. It is about him, isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it? The song contradicts itself; it is essentially an embellishment of the sentence "This sentence is false."
Besides there is something vain about the idea of writing about a mystery person. It gives you a certain sense of price to know that you sang about a person that nobody knows who it is. I know, for I have written such a song. Go to jimvb.home.mindspring.com/music2002.htm and you will see some of the lyrics of a song I wrote about someone. No, I am not going to tell anyone who this is. In fact, I am displaying only four lines of the lyrics of the song. Perhaps I will tell when Carly Simon tells me who she's singing about.
I heard in a news story yesterday; for example, in USA Today, that Carly Simon sold at an auction for $50,000 the identity of the mystery man in the song You're So Vain. The winner of the auction had to promise Carly that he would never give away the identity of the vain man. Lots of legends have built over the 30 years since the song came out about just who this vain man with the apricot scarf was. Some say it was Warren Beatty, others Cat Stevens, and Kris Kristofferson and Mick Jagger have been mentioned as well.
The song is interesting in many respects, and it is somewhat vain itself and certainly it contradicts itself, rather like a snake eating its own tail. The picture that it paints is certainly a vain one. This guy saunters out onto a dance floor wearing an apricot scarf, which normally would be found on a woman. He cocks his cap a certain way, strategically. Interesting. He doesn't boogie on the dance floor. He doesn't salsa, waltz, swing, or rock either. He gavottes. He is pretty, prim and proper about it, just like the type of dance the gavotte is. He is looking in the mirror to see how pretty he is. Well hasn't everyone from time to time? And certainly if all the people of the opposite sex wanted to be with you, that would make you feel good, wouldn't it? I certainly would if I had women pursuing me left and right. Sadly, most of my life has not been like that at all, although for a few precious times it has.
So this is a pretty vain cat, whoever he is. Some other aspects of this song interest me as well. For example, She sings "then you flew your Lear jet to Nova Scotia to see a total eclipse of the sun". She means the 1972 July 10 total eclipse of the sun in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Gaspe. I saw that eclipse from Prince Edward Island, but I took the train, not a Lear jet. I wasn't that vain. Besides, a 25-year-old brand new math PhD does not have that kind of money. It got really DARK when I saw that eclipse on Stanhope Beach. I tried to take a picture of it with an Instamatic but it did not come out. I resolved right then and there to see another one with proper equipment.
So I went to Mexico on 1991 July 11 to see it. I had a 4-inch telescope and a camera and took a good photo of that eclipse, the longest in our lives (see My Astronomy Page for my photo of that eclipse). If the Carly Simon song had come out then, it would have said, "took your Lear jet to Cabo San Lucas to see a total eclipse of the sun...".
But talking about my rather huge web site sounds pretty vain in itself, so I will come back to Carly. Some other interesting words in the song are "clouds in my coffee", as though your inner weather is determined by the weather in a cup of holy brown liquid; "some underground spy or the wife of a close friend"; well certainly I would not want to deal with any spy, let alone an underground one; I don't know about the close friend's wife. She said she was quite naïve. Well, everyone is when they are young.
But the thing that really gets me going about this song is that it contradicts itself. She sings, "You're so vain." OK. This guy does sound pretty narcissistic. But then she sings "You think this song is about you, don't you?" She implies by her tone of voice that this song was not written with this vain guy in mind, that it was one of those parts of her life that don't concern him at all. But look again at the lyrics. Just about every word in the song talks about this mystery man. It is about him, isn't it? Isn't it? Isn't it? The song contradicts itself; it is essentially an embellishment of the sentence "This sentence is false."
Besides there is something vain about the idea of writing about a mystery person. It gives you a certain sense of price to know that you sang about a person that nobody knows who it is. I know, for I have written such a song. Go to jimvb.home.mindspring.com/music2002.htm and you will see some of the lyrics of a song I wrote about someone. No, I am not going to tell anyone who this is. In fact, I am displaying only four lines of the lyrics of the song. Perhaps I will tell when Carly Simon tells me who she's singing about.
The Tri-City Tornado of 1993
Storm after storm after storm this spring. At least it wasn't as bad as 10 years ago here. On 1993 August 6 an F4 tornado tore through Old Town Petersburg, Virginia and a Wal-Mart in Colonial Heights causing four deaths and property damage so bad that some of it still hasn't been repaired. The strange thing about this for me is that first of all I was not at work but I was on RDO ("regular day off"); for the people at work, it was "not a RDO", which if you rearrange the letters thereof, you get "tornado". Everyone should have taken that Friday off. In fact, I think it would do this country good if everyone would take every Friday off and do what they feel like doing; make every Friday a SUUSI.
The other strange thing is that I had a dream about tornados two nights previous. Here is the text of part of that dream:
I was in a large parking lot. I was with another group of people, but the lot was nearly empty. There was supposed to have been some sort of workshop (or worship?) here. I had heard earlier of some approaching thunderstorms. Then I heard thunder.
I looked up and saw a threatening sky in front of us, quite black. I did not want to go anywhere, however. We were discussing some sort of deal. "We" consisted of me, Anne, and some friends of ours, and a group of people from elsewhere that we had known earlier. I heard you should go inside in case of tornadoes striking. I tried to keep attention but I turned around and I saw two tornadoes coming out of the blackness. They were small in diameter, frizzly, and as black as the clouds. They came right at us. We did not do anything but wait and see where they would go. They side-swiped us to the right, and I could feel the high wind from them even though they did not strike us headon. The tornadoes also went up in the air slightly. After they left, I saw things were apparently OK. But I saw more tornadoes coming.
It startled me when I had that dream, and then the real thing struck two days later. It came close to the church I went to but did not quite hit it. Predictive dream? At that time even ABC was interested in my story, but they rejected it. I suppose it was because I concluded that the dream was caused not by the tornado of August 6 but by the storms of August 2, which caused four power outages at my house.
But still that tornado devastated the community, especially Petersburg (Wal-Mart came out of it OK - they replaced the destroyed store with a Sams and built an even bigger Wal-Mart a mile down the road) and it gave pause to me - some day this could happen to my house, to me. We are not the master of nature.
Storm after storm after storm this spring. At least it wasn't as bad as 10 years ago here. On 1993 August 6 an F4 tornado tore through Old Town Petersburg, Virginia and a Wal-Mart in Colonial Heights causing four deaths and property damage so bad that some of it still hasn't been repaired. The strange thing about this for me is that first of all I was not at work but I was on RDO ("regular day off"); for the people at work, it was "not a RDO", which if you rearrange the letters thereof, you get "tornado". Everyone should have taken that Friday off. In fact, I think it would do this country good if everyone would take every Friday off and do what they feel like doing; make every Friday a SUUSI.
The other strange thing is that I had a dream about tornados two nights previous. Here is the text of part of that dream:
I was in a large parking lot. I was with another group of people, but the lot was nearly empty. There was supposed to have been some sort of workshop (or worship?) here. I had heard earlier of some approaching thunderstorms. Then I heard thunder.
I looked up and saw a threatening sky in front of us, quite black. I did not want to go anywhere, however. We were discussing some sort of deal. "We" consisted of me, Anne, and some friends of ours, and a group of people from elsewhere that we had known earlier. I heard you should go inside in case of tornadoes striking. I tried to keep attention but I turned around and I saw two tornadoes coming out of the blackness. They were small in diameter, frizzly, and as black as the clouds. They came right at us. We did not do anything but wait and see where they would go. They side-swiped us to the right, and I could feel the high wind from them even though they did not strike us headon. The tornadoes also went up in the air slightly. After they left, I saw things were apparently OK. But I saw more tornadoes coming.
It startled me when I had that dream, and then the real thing struck two days later. It came close to the church I went to but did not quite hit it. Predictive dream? At that time even ABC was interested in my story, but they rejected it. I suppose it was because I concluded that the dream was caused not by the tornado of August 6 but by the storms of August 2, which caused four power outages at my house.
But still that tornado devastated the community, especially Petersburg (Wal-Mart came out of it OK - they replaced the destroyed store with a Sams and built an even bigger Wal-Mart a mile down the road) and it gave pause to me - some day this could happen to my house, to me. We are not the master of nature.
The size of hailstones
I have been hearing reports in the media and from NOAA and other weather people about hailstorms. In these reports they describe to us how big they were. They don't say "13 mm" or "1 inch" because most of us don't have a feel for how big that is. Instead, they say things like "golf-ball-sized hail", or "quarter-sized hail". I tried doing a Google&tm; game on that. I Googled for "sized hail". I got these sizes: pea, nickel, quarter, dime, golf ball, tennis ball, baseball, grapefruit, softball, soccer, and volleyball. Volleyball-sized hail? That would really be apocalyptic. Good thing I got no basketball-sized hail.
But what is of more interest to me is the object that people use to compare hail with. Most of the time it is either a monetary coin or a ball from a ball game of some sort. Does the selection of such words reflect our society? Is it mainly interested in money and sports? It would appear that way, when football and basketball stars earn tens of millions of dollars a year. Suppose people were more interested in gardening instead. Then we would see "petunia-sized hail" or "dandelion-sized hail"; something like that. A person in the medical field might say "fingernail-sized hail" or "kneecap-sized hail". The fact that hail is either dime-sized or tennis-ball-sized tells me something about our society. Namely, that we are gaga about moolah and sports.
I have been hearing reports in the media and from NOAA and other weather people about hailstorms. In these reports they describe to us how big they were. They don't say "13 mm" or "1 inch" because most of us don't have a feel for how big that is. Instead, they say things like "golf-ball-sized hail", or "quarter-sized hail". I tried doing a Google&tm; game on that. I Googled for "sized hail". I got these sizes: pea, nickel, quarter, dime, golf ball, tennis ball, baseball, grapefruit, softball, soccer, and volleyball. Volleyball-sized hail? That would really be apocalyptic. Good thing I got no basketball-sized hail.
But what is of more interest to me is the object that people use to compare hail with. Most of the time it is either a monetary coin or a ball from a ball game of some sort. Does the selection of such words reflect our society? Is it mainly interested in money and sports? It would appear that way, when football and basketball stars earn tens of millions of dollars a year. Suppose people were more interested in gardening instead. Then we would see "petunia-sized hail" or "dandelion-sized hail"; something like that. A person in the medical field might say "fingernail-sized hail" or "kneecap-sized hail". The fact that hail is either dime-sized or tennis-ball-sized tells me something about our society. Namely, that we are gaga about moolah and sports.
2003/08/03
Anaphylactic Shock
This weekend while running through the woods, I hit a wasp nest and got stung four times. It seems to be OK now but it did hurt at first. The sting puts in a "peptide" which has no lasting effect but it does cause the area to swell at first. My main fear was "anaphylactic shock". I looked this up and found that it was the immune system reacting or overreacting to the attack by the wasps. This can cause much worse problems than the original stings - it can cause shortness of breath and in some cases death. That is why some people when they go out in to the woods must carry an antidote kit with them in case this happens.
When I found out about this, I thought of another case which could be called anaphylactic shock, namely Planeattack, the terrorist attacks of 2001 September 11. They were devastating, especially to some people, but as a whole it just hurt a bit and the nation continued to function after about two months. Sort of like the wasp stings. However, the aftereffects of this attack are still continuing to be fought. There are much tighter restrictions on air travel now. Access to military bases is much stricter. There is a national alert system, and the Patriot Act, which throws a lot of constitutional provisions out the window, was passed. I wonder if this is a case of national anaphylactic shock. I hope not, but certainly the Patriot Act needs to be repealed.
This weekend while running through the woods, I hit a wasp nest and got stung four times. It seems to be OK now but it did hurt at first. The sting puts in a "peptide" which has no lasting effect but it does cause the area to swell at first. My main fear was "anaphylactic shock". I looked this up and found that it was the immune system reacting or overreacting to the attack by the wasps. This can cause much worse problems than the original stings - it can cause shortness of breath and in some cases death. That is why some people when they go out in to the woods must carry an antidote kit with them in case this happens.
When I found out about this, I thought of another case which could be called anaphylactic shock, namely Planeattack, the terrorist attacks of 2001 September 11. They were devastating, especially to some people, but as a whole it just hurt a bit and the nation continued to function after about two months. Sort of like the wasp stings. However, the aftereffects of this attack are still continuing to be fought. There are much tighter restrictions on air travel now. Access to military bases is much stricter. There is a national alert system, and the Patriot Act, which throws a lot of constitutional provisions out the window, was passed. I wonder if this is a case of national anaphylactic shock. I hope not, but certainly the Patriot Act needs to be repealed.
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