Double Counting

I ran into two instances of double counting in 24 hours. One is in mathematics, and the other pertains to a Toastmasters rating system.

The mathematical one involved this algorithm on numbers. Take the last digit and deduct it from the rest. For example, with the number 4257, take the 7 and subtract it from 425: 425 - 7 = 418. Repeat the process: 41 - 8 = 33; 3 - 3 = 0. The number is divisible by 11 if and only if you get zero at the end. Further, the digits you pull off along the way form the quotient: 387. Someone on Mathnerds wanted help in proving that this algorithm works. I suggested proving by mathematical induction. If the number is 10x + y (in our example, x = 425, y = 7, 10x+y = 4257), then the operation means subtracting y to obtain 10x, then subtracting y from the result (actually 10y since we chopped off a place): 10x - 10y = 10(x - y). By induction, x - y is divisible by 11 and the quotient is, say, the integer z. then 10x + y = 10(x-y) + 10y + y = 110z + 11y = 11(10z+y), so the number is divisible by 11 and the quotient has last digit y. The person who wanted help wanted to know why we subtract y twice. We do so because the first time represents taking the last digit off the number, and the second time represents subtracting the 10y. In fact, that is why 11 is involved: 11 consists of two 1s.

The Toastmasters instance involved discussion of the Distinguished Club Plan. A Toastmaster Club earns one point for each of the following: earning two Competent Toastmaster (CTM) awards, earning two more CTMs, earning an Advanced Toastmaster (ATM) award, earning another one, earning a leadership award, earning another one, getting four more members, getting four more members, getting at least 4/7 of the officers trained, and turning in required reports in on time. But - a Toastmaster club must be over 20 members or have increased by 5 members before it can even be considered for these awards. A Toastmaster in my club found our club had 3 new members in the year, but because of losses, we increased from 11 only to 13 members. We need 3 new members. If we get that, we earn the first membership requirement (four members) and earn two members towards the second four members. The other Toastmaster said that was double counting - first we count the members to qualify; then we count them towards membership points. I didn't think so. There are two separate requirements - the 20 or increase in 5 requirement and the membership points in the Distinguished Club Plan.

It is interesting that two of these double countings came in the same day. What causes these? Apparently there is the underlying assumption in our society that you need to do something only once - we don't sign a million dollar contract twice, we don't try a man twice for the same crime (that is called "double jeopardy"), and we don’t get married twice. So they generalize to other concepts.. For example, a retiree with a job is said to be a "double dipper". In each case, you must look at the conditions. If the first trial never occurred, then to try the person again is not double jeopardy. If the contract is signed, that is enough to bind the two parties to the requirements of the contract. In our number example, the two subtractions mean two different things - taking a digit off the number, and subtracting a number. The two membership requirements are separate - one is an absolute condition for getting Distinguished Club rating, and the other is one of the points that the club can earn.

Still it is confusing and one needs to check the conditions to see if a certain case really is one of double counting.

Peace: You Can Get It on eBay

Yesterday (2006 May 14) after my Unitarian Universalist church service, someone came up to me and asked if I wanted to sign a petition to form a Department of Peace, a Cabinet-level position in the United States Government. I didn't sign it, as I believe it would create another bureaucratic agency, and further, it could later be merged with the Department of State or Defense; the latter would create Orwellian overtones. But I thought the idea was good of having the Government take the lead in maintaining peace in the world.

So today I Googled for "Department of Peace". I found a web site devoted to that department. But what struck me the most was an ad in the upper right corner. It said:

Department Of Peace
Whatever you're looking for
you can get it on eBay.
www.eBay.com

So the Department of Peace is available on eBay? Quick, does President Bush know about this? Instead of sending in soldiers to maintain peace in many foreign lands, he could purchase this Department for probably a low bid (who else is going to bid for it?) and use that instead. Peace. You can get it on eBay. Would be nice if it were true.

But then I tried other things in Google. I not only want world peace, I want an end to all war. So I tried Googling for "end to all war". I found that no, you can't get this on eBay:

To End All War at Amazon
Low prices on to end all war.
Qualified orders over $25 ship free
Amazon.com

No, you have to get it on Amazon instead, although you can get it for a low price. And what's this about a war going on at Amazon? Is a managerial shakeup at Amazon imminent? Is this what's going to end that war?

That's not all. I found you can get gamma ray bursts at Amazon. I mentioned this to my astronomy society tonight (2006 May 15). Some asked if it comes bottled.

I Googled "depleted uranium" and couldn't find anywhere to buy it. But when I Googled "enriched uranium", I found that it was available on eBay. That's scary. I hope this Ahmadinejad kook over in Iran gets absolutely nowhere near a mouse. Please, Google. Let's stick to selling Peace over eBay. In fact, let's sell Peace everywhere - it needs to be bought in mega quantities.

It makes me want to leave Richmond

Tonight, when I wanted to listen to the 6:00 pm local news on WWBT Channel 12 in Richmond, they were presenting the Kentucky Derby instead. So I went to Channel 8 instead. But then I wondered, when was this race going to take place? All the time I have a problem watching the local and national news on Sunday because sports events such as football and basketball continually bomb them out. But horse races have got to be one of the shortest sports events around. It only lasts a couple of minutes. So I decided to watch that instead. I had to wait a while before they started the race, but then they did, starting off 20 horses galloping to see which can reach the finish line first.

I watched as two horses known as Keyed Entry and Sinister Minister took the lead, with Keyed Entry first. After a couple of laps, all of a sudden they didn't talk about these two horses anymore. Instead they were talking about Brother Derek and then all at once Barbaro, as the horses rounded the final turn. Barbaro took a huge lead and won the race.

I then turned back to Channel 8. I heard the weather woman there describe the forecast for tomorrow - this nice warm weather we had is going to turn into cold and rainy on Monday. At least put that weather on Monday - not on the weekend. Channel 8 continued with sports. Did they talk about the exciting finish at the Kentucky Derby? No, they yapped about NASCAR. I instantly flipped the channel back to 12 for the wrap-up after the Derby. I wanted to find out how Sinister Minister finished, especially since my church just called a new minister. But I could not find that. After the wrap-up was finished, I turned to Channel 8 again for the news.

To me the Kentucky Derby beats NASCAR any day. Why do Richmonders want to watch all these souped up cars sucking up the world's precious oil race around and crash into each other? To me, a horse beats a car any day. Not for everyday transportation, though, as the horse is slower and it does present the plop cleanup problem. But when we are attending leisure events, let's put the car behind us. Let's watch nature's animal creation, the horse, race in an event that takes only a twinkling of the eye to complete. I don't see why Richmond is so gung ho on NASCAR. It makes me want to pack up my bags, leave Richmond, and move to Louisville.

And these cars come either with no names or with mindless names, like X-3 and the like. Horse names have got to be one of the finest creations of humankind. I don't think I will ever see a sinister minister ever in a church (except possibly my church) but you will see one at the Derby. You key entries in a computer and also on a horse - Keyed Entry. Steppenwulfer is a medieval character, or a horse. And remember Funny Cide last year? I sure don't want to destroy the humor of a party or speech, except when it comes in a horse - then I will want to commit funnycide. And take a look at the other entries today - Showing Up, Bluegrass Cat (only a horse can be a cat, except a cat of course), Storm Treasure, Cause to Believe, Flashy Bull, and Point Determined. My point is determined. Horse races beat car races any day. The action is in Louisville, not in Richmond.

And then I listened to the news. But what if the news stories on ABC were horses? And they're off! Here comes Top Spy coming down the track. And now Fighting Addiction is coming up behind him. He's closing the gap, but wait! Here on the outside is Wigging Out, catching up to Fighting Addition as Fighting Addiction is overtaking Top Spy. He's catching up, he's catching up, and… It's Wigging Out by a hair. And so Wigging Out is the winner of the ABC News Derby for today. So bet on your horse. But bet for sure that horses beat cars any day.

To blog or not to blog

I found an interesting story on Slate. It is by Sarah Hepola who says she is taking down her blog. Since I have been blogging since 2002 and now have seven different blogs, this interested me. Why would she want to shut it down?

I found out from reading the article that it is because blogs tend to make thoughts come out in little dribbles. You blog something every week or every day. You don't have that much time in a day so you tend to come out in little pieces. Sarah said she would start on her novel and come up with five different blogs instead. I have that problem at times, as well. I tend to come up with these little thoughts, so I write up Toastmaster speeches (really these are spoken blogs) or blogs about it. I might write one on fireflies, another on the Defense of Marriage Act ("DUMBA"), still another on a possible hurricane or a skywatch and so forth. So I can't come up with anything substantial, like a novel, book on fireflies, or book on astronomy at skywatches. I'm not a firefly expert at all, for instance. And my blogs started to all get meshed with each other and hard to find or read through. That is why I made up seven blogs, one for each of my interests - religion, astronomy and nature, peak oil, mathematics, weather, my own opinions on things (usually political), and general subjects, which is what this blog, Blogtrek, is about.

So do I come up with substantial things? I used to. I wrote a 60-page thesis to obtain my doctorate at Northwestern in 1972. Right now I am writing a story. I started it last summer and am still writing it - it is now 41 pages long, entitled "The Moving Picture" about a picture of a nude couple that keeps turning up in the wrong place all the time. I would write a little bit at a time, and sometimes my writing drives the story in unforeseen ways; for example, a lovemaking scene all at once turns into one where the man calls another woman to talk about traffic jams. But I have kept at work on the story. I don't know if it is publishable - probably not, right now - but I have kept at it.

Maybe when I blog I feel like I have to have a finished product right away, and so I write something up quick, and it is short. The same with a Toastmaster speech. I usually come up with something on the spur of the moment, and it is only 5-7 minutes in length, the length of a standard Toastmaster speech. In any case I don't think that quitting blogging will help me to write a novel or finish "The Moving Picture".

What it is is that one can't complete a big project in a day so one spends all his time with little projects and so doesn't get anything notable done. I suppose the only way to handle this is to do the big project a little bit at a time. If it is cleaning the attic, sort a box a day. If it's building a house, build a few boards a day. If I want to write a novel, write a scene or a piece of a scene every day. That is what I am doing with "The Moving Picture". And it's the same way with establishing a business, writing a doctoral thesis, or anything big. Big things start from little ones. Has Sarah tried writing part of a novel in a blog every day? Maybe I could write a blognovel. I have been thinking of writing one about a boy's (and later man's) fascination with railroad tracks and trains.

And she remarks that she can keep it secret or make it open, or at least pretend these things. Why blog? One could write a book and get it published, or write a personal diary in a diary book or on the computer without putting it on the web. Maybe blogging revolves around this wondering if someone is going to see it, and if so, what is their reaction to it. It's that sense of the unknown seeing you and appreciating you that puts some of the zest in blogging. Perhaps this gets too much for some, perhaps for Sarah right now. But eventually I will wind up (and probably so will Sarah) blogging again.

Thus endeth my self-referential blogging on blogging.

When It's Out, He's Not Out

An interesting play occurred in a game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Los Angeles Angels on 2006 April 17 at Camden Yards. In the bottom of the second inning, Miguel Tejada hit a single to the shortstop area. Jay Gibbons flied out to the center fielder Darin Erstad. The next batter up was Javy Lopez. Lopez hit a long fly ball way out into center field, and Erstad reached up to try to pick up the ball.

Tejada and Lopez looked all over the place. They looked at and listened to the umpire's call, as to whether it was an out, a long in-the-ballpark hit, or a home run. They also looked at Erstad to see which it was. Erstad fell to the ground. Apparently Tejada heard the third base umpire say "out" and assumed the ball was caught. So he went back to first base. Apparently Lopez thought it was a home run and kept on running. He was called out for passing Tejada on the base paths. The umpires and scorers declared the play a single and an out. Apparently the ball just barely left the ballpark.

How did this happen? This is what Lopez said afterwards: "'Me and Tejada were looking at the umpire the whole time, wondering what kind of call he was going to make. We were wondering if the ball was out or (Erstad) got it in his glove. One umpire called an out, so obviously Tejada went back to first base. Then the other umpire said the ball was out. But by the time he made the call, I had already passed Tejada.''

Note what he says. He says "The ball went out." With all the screaming and commotion at a typical major league baseball game, the words may not all have been heard. Perhaps Lopez heard "out". That is evidently what happened, for Lopez said, "One umpire called an out." Tejada must have heard it that way, for he retreated to first base. On a fly out, runners must hold to their bases and if they don't get back to them in time before the ball or a tag does, they're out. Lopez must have heard differently. He said, "Then the other umpire said the ball was out." That immediately confronted Lopez with a contradiction. If the ball is out of the ball park, it is a home run, and there can be no outs with an ordinary home run. He assumed the ball was out of the ballpark and kept on running. Thereby he passed Tejada and was called out for passing another runner. Why didn't he see Tejada? Well maybe he was concentrating on Erstad and what the umpires were saying.

The whole problem arose because the word "out" was ambiguous. One meaning of "out" says the item was not in the set or the scene of discussion. For example, "The young man was out of the house.", meaning that he was somewhere else other than in the house. That's the meaning in "the ball is out", meaning out of the ballpark. The other meaning is the baseball meaning, which says that a player or the base he is heading to has been tagged and therefore he must leave the base paths and a point called an "out" is recorded; three of these end an inning. That is what Tejada thought the umpire meant when he said "out".

I think this one was the umpires' fault. I think Lopez should have been credited with a home run. This is because I believe that umpires should never say the word "out" unless they mean a baseball out. They should never say the ball is out of the fair playing area, or out of the ballpark, or out of anything. They should not even say "Power is out." Who knows? Maybe there is a player named "Power" or "Powell" (remember Boog) on one of the teams. If there is a power outage, they should say that the ballpark has no power. They should also say that balls are foul, or that they have left the ballpark. Anything except saying they are out. For if they do, they could be creating an out that should not have been an out at all.

Manic March

Much of Alice in Wonderland is weird, including the Tea-Party. Alice was told there was a hatter and a March hare in the area, both mad. Later she met them both and found the experience to be the craziest party she had ever been to. But why did Lewis Carroll select such characters? Why a mad hatter? That one is easy enough. Hats in those days were partially composed of mercury, and exposure to this element causes jitters and other mental ailments. And the March Hare? I hear it is because hares go into rutting season in March. That's why they get so active and mad in March.

I think it is the same for human beings. This is one of the most active, half-crazed Marches I have been through. I knew it was a long march - it's 31 days long. Whoever marches first into it does it on March 1, and by March 4 everyone is marching forth. Literally.

My church had several activities on March 4, including a dining-out party and a potluck at the church. Toastmasters clubs hold their club and area contests, starting a whirlwind of activities for them. Astronomers go out into the boondooks all night long on their Messier marathons - tonight's the best night for it, but that gibbous moon will hinder the marathon this year. Everyone else schedules activities all over the place. The people at my church are running around like banshees. It's bird migrating season, and all sorts of unusual birds appear. Salamanders come out to mate. Tulips and crocuses come out with their lips and cusses. It indeed seems like the whole world is going mad. It has caused me to call this month "Manic March".

This is unusual for me this year, for March to me has been a month of misfortunes. My father died in March 1999, and I caught a bad sinus infection with fevers throughout March 1993. Actually this March is more normal. A long hard (well, this winter has not exactly been the hardest with the warm temperatures) winter is over, and now spring is springing out all over. It reminds me of the Lydia Adams Davis song, "Spring always takes you by surprise".

Detour Which Way?

In sorting out my photographs recently, I happened on a picture I took in late October of some year in the 1980s, near my home. I took it because of the lack of direction it gives. The sign on the left says turn right, and the sign on the right says turn left. So which do I do? And doesn't it remind you of many situations in real life, when someone tells you one thing, and another says the opposite? Take for example, Michael Lynch and Kenneth Deffeyes, who tell you completely different things about whether we are going to run out of cheap oil in a few years. An example is when I went to a conference last July, and the first thing I was greeted with were people saying that the first thing I needed to do was to go to the waiver table to sign waivers for the nature trips I had signed up for. So I did that. Then I went to the registration table, and they told me that I needed to have gone to that table first before going to waivers, contradicting the people at the entrance.

The entire thing reminds me of a poem I wrote recently, called "Where's the Way?". And if any time you are stopped by police for going down a wrong road in a construction project, just show them this picture.

Wonderland vs Oz

I notice that my religious group is having an adult religious education offering entitled "The Zen of Oz". This got me interested. There sure is a lot of religion, especially Zen, in The Wizard of Oz. The yellow brick road is the road of life. The goal you are pursuing is the Emerald City. You think that there is someone who will guide you, such as that humbug Wizard of Oz, but you find out that he is only someone rather like you. And the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion are aspects of yourself.

There is another story around of a voyage of a girl to a far land and back, namely Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (and Through the Looking Glass). This was one of my favorite stories when I was growing up, even though I was a boy instead of a girl. Like Oz's Dorothy, Alice finds herself in a weird land where things are just not the same as back home. So what are the similarities between Oz and Wonderland?

One can pair up characters. Some of these are Dorothy with Alice, The Wicked Witch of the West with the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen, The Good Witch of the North with the White Queen, the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Lion with the Mad Hatter, the March Hare, and the Dormouse, and the Mighty Wizard with the King of Hearts. In both stories, Dorothy and Alice try to find their way in their far-off land, and both eventually make it back to where they came from, in the form of waking up from a dream.

The main difference, I see, is a matter of direction. Alice doesn't know where to go. She asks the Cheshire Cat, and the Cat throws the question back at her, saying if she doesn't know where to go, any route is OK. She wanders around trying to find out where to go, and winds up stumbling into one nonsensical scene after another - the Mad Tea Party, the Croquet Game where the Queen of Hearts is all the time threatening the players with beheading, the lobster quadrille, the turtle's woeful stories of his education, and finally, the ridiculous parody of a court proceeding which ends with the Queen ordering Alice's head off. Just at this moment, Alice uses her powers to fend off the entire card deck.

Dorothy definitely knows where she is going. She wants to go home, and she knows that Oz will bring her back home, and there is a yellow brick road leading her to Oz, and a good witch is helping her along the way. She meets characters who share her feelings about what she wants, and she proceeds to her goal, including defeating the evil elements of her kingdom. At the very end, not Oz, nor the Munchkins, or even the Good Witch show Dorothy the way back home. Dorothy herself does it by knowing she never left it to begin with.

The characters and scenes reflect this as well. The Evil Witch has a definite goal in mind, to destroy Dorothy. The Queen of Hearts does not have much of a goal in mind; she goes flailing around shouting "Off with his head" to everyone. The Lion wants to go to Oz to get courage; the Mad Hatter sits around all day aimlessly in a place where time never changes. Oz has good and evil characters; Alice in Wonderland only has silly characters. Dorothy's goal was to go back home to Kansas; Alice simply wanted to make sense of what was happening around her.

So that's how I see the difference between the two. So what is the real world like? Some in power would have us be in Oz, with evil and good witches out there. But I suspect much of it is like Wonderland instead.

Leap Second

For the first time in 7 years, it has happened. A leap second has been inserted into our time. I captured it when it happened. It occurred just before 2006 January 1 00:00 Universal Time, and was called 2005 December 31 23:59:60 UT. I was in the Eastern Time Zone, with Eastern Standard Time when this happened. Universal Time is related to Greenwich Mean Time, and is a standard time over the entire world that is the same in all zones. It is supposed to be the time in the United Kingdom, and is five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. So for me it occurred at 2005 December 31 19:00:00, and before that was the time 2005 December 31 18:59:60, which is the time you see in my capturing (click on "captured") above, which was captured from nist.time.gov.

Leap seconds are inserted into the calendar because the Earth is not as accurate as Cesium 133 for telling the time. It used to be that the second was defined as 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year 1900. When atomic clocks were invented, it was redefined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations between two hyperfine levels of Cesium 133 atoms. The calendar year varies in length in comparison to this, so to keep it even with the atomic year, every once in a while an extra second has to be added to the year. It has happened 21 times since 1972. The reason why the Earth is going off time is because tides are slowing down its rotation. The tides are also lengthening the month and making the Moon recede from the Earth. Supposedly in 50 billion years, both month and day will be 47 of our days long, but before that happens, the Sun will become a red giant and evaporate the oceans.

So now I will add in a leap "p" and wish everyone a Happpy New Year!

Leap Second

For the first time in 7 years, it has happened. A leap second has been inserted into our time. I captured it when it happened. It occurred just before 2006 January 1 00:00 Universal Time, and was called 2005 December 31 23:59:60 UT. I was in the Eastern Time Zone, with Eastern Standard Time when this happened. Universal Time is related to Greenwich Mean Time, and is a standard time over the entire world that is the same in all zones. It is supposed to be the time in the United Kingdom, and is five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time. So for me it occurred at 2005 December 31 19:00:00, and before that was the time 2005 December 31 18:59:60, which is the time you see in my capturing (click on "captured") above, which was captured from nist.time.gov.

Leap seconds are inserted into the calendar because the Earth is not as accurate as Cesium 133 for telling the time. It used to be that the second was defined as 1/31,556,925.9747 of the tropical year 1900. When atomic clocks were invented, it was redefined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations between two hyperfine levels of Cesium 133 atoms. The calendar year varies in length in comparison to this, so to keep it even with the atomic year, every once in a while an extra second has to be added to the year. It has happened 21 times since 1972. The reason why the Earth is going off time is because tides are slowing down its rotation. The tides are also lengthening the month and making the Moon recede from the Earth. Supposedly in 50 billion years, both month and day will be 47 of our days long, but before that happens, the Sun will become a red giant and evaporate the oceans.

So now I will add in a leap "p" and wish everyone a Happpy New Year!

Holiday Fantasy Run

I went out on my run this year at night to see all the holiday lights. The lights seem to be something special with me. These lights pierce the darkness and give an atmosphere of fantasy to all that surrounds it. I especially like displays that use no white lights of any kind, especially those that use red, green, and blue lights. These colors seem to lead their own moods to the scene - cool blue, shimmering green and passionate red. I may use only these colors next year. One place where I don't seem to like colored lights now is in windows. I put three red candles in each window each year, but next year I may try white candles and use all red, green, and blue in the yard.

To me the winner was the one that wins every year, with stripes across the yard, a blazing star on the roof with streamers coming down from it, and lights all over the place besides, and a train on the lawn. How do trains relate to Christmas, anyway? I thought Santa used a sleigh. I did find two displays that use only colored bulbs. One had animated snowmen and Santa, and another had a house in the middle of the yard. Still another used mostly candy canes - a Candy Cane Land.

A blaze of brilliance each year, but is all this necessary, especially the gaudy floodlight white displays? There are energy shortages coming up in future years, and I remember that in the 1970s during the Arab oil embargo, use of a lot of holiday lighting was discouraged. Will this happen again? However, I think more could be saved by not leaving your lights on at work when you leave, especially if you work in a mid-city tower. Do all those windows need to be lit up at night?

SUUSI 2005

Once again SUUSI has come and gone. This year it started out with a bang (of thunder) at Ingathering, with a rainbow greeting us afterwards, like a foreboding of good times to come. The theme was "Time to Fly", and that worked into the themes of many of the people there. To me the theme means that sometimes one feels too tied down to things, and needs to break out of the rut, and soar into the sky. The problem then is finding somewhere to land. One slogan I remember well from SUUSI: Either you find a place to land, or you learn how to fly. One theme talker, Steve Crump, even said that flying is related to relationships and love - you need somewhere to fly from, and that implies a relationship between the flyer and the land.

I attended the Day at the Improv workshop. This featured many interesting and funny situations, such as the sex shop scene between two people. The next two were supposed to tell it as a Western, and the next pair as if it were from a science fiction movie. This reminds me of Douglas Hofstadter's (Gödel, Escher, Bach) subjunct-TV, which is not one grade lower than a junk TV, as one of Mr. Hofstadter's characters suggested. Instead, one uses it to take a scene and tune it in to various situations. For example, a football game is turned to another channel and we see what it would be like as a baseball game, or as a game played on the moon, or as a game played in four dimensions (the 40-yard plane, the 30-yard plane…).

I gave three workshops, including a new one on Mathematics and Religion, in which I explored the depths of infinity. I went to the Cascades and Dismal Falls, and had fun swimming in those refreshing mountain pools, even though the hike in both places was abridged or changed by recent flooding.

Cabaret featured all the good entertainment, such as Amy Carol Webb and Greg Greenway, and Serendipity featured a hybrid of dancing and volleyball on Thursday night, when we started bopping beach balls all over the place on a night billed as "Down by the SUUSea". Maybe we should have dressed in beach volleyball style - in swimsuits and bikinis.

A good SUUSI, and we are now flying away to SUUSI 2006, where we will Rejoice and Renew.

Fourth of July

It's freedom and firework time again. So what did we do on July 4 this year, the 229th birthday of our nation? Once again we went into the neighborhood to find fireworks, rather than drive into a traffic jam at one of the public displays. The displays were not as good as previous years. There were much fewer rockets that burst in the air. Most of what I saw were firecrackers and a "firework tree", which is a canister that spits off sparklers about 5 feet into the air continuously for a few minutes. One rocket went off behind us while a car passed us in the opposite direction. It startled us, and the driver of the car. We thought the car had crashed. But no, it was a firework. Sometimes these people put fireworks in unreasonable places. For example, some teenagers tried to shoot them off in the middle of an intersection. Fortunately, nothing much happened. Just be careful. If you are going to shoot off fireworks (and this saves oil by deterring people from driving to a faraway site to see them) in your neighborhood, do so in a dead end or cul-de-sac, and make sure the ground is not tinder dry. I noticed that a fireworks display in downtown Richmond was delayed by having to wet down all the mulch in the area. The rest of the evening was listening to distant booms and watching stars (the crashed-in comet, for instance) and fireflies.

And that is Independence Day for this year. We will see what happens next year.

The Blue Lights

A short story based on a speech I gave to a Tall Tales Toastmasters Speech Contest a number of years ago. Is this what the present world situation is now like?

I was driving late one Sunday night, at two o'clock in the morning. I had just come from a Toastmaster conference which had some really unusual and good speeches. I had stayed overlong at the Hospitality suite afterwards and was feeling tired and a little out of sorts and I just wanted to get home, which was four hours down a long boring interstate highway. I tried hard to keep awake by playing the radio, by turning on the wipers, even though it was crystal clear with stars brightly shining. Mostly, I was humming along, through barren scenery with no one in sight.

Then I saw it. Behind me. Two blue lights in the mirror. They seem to be racing to me. I instantly looked at my speedometer. 74 mph! I did not realize I was doing that fast. I will have to let up. I wonder if the cop wanted to pull me over for speeding. I kept driving on to see what he would do. The blue lights got closer and closer as I neared an exit. I had an opened bottle of champagne that some woman at the Toastmasters meeting had given me and was afraid that he could charge me with something for that, even though the last drink I had was four hours ago.

I got closer to the exit. Padillo and Cranston, Route 144. Exit 37. I went past the exit and the blue lights kept on coming. My heart pounded as I wondered whether to pull over, when I saw the blue lights go off the main road. Apparently he took the exit. Whew! He was going after something else.

I slowed down to 65 mph and kept on going. I felt now like I had ghosts all over me, that there were spooks in my car, spooks on the road, spooks hanging from every bridge, spooks in the sky. I kept on going. Richmond 194. Still a long way to go. There was very little traffic out. It would be morning when I would get home and I wondered if I should pull off and sleep before then. I had a meeting to go to in the morning so I had to keep on going, and I glanced at the mirror.

YikES!!!!! It's blue lights again! They came towards me at a rapid pace. I looked at my speedometer. 67. Would I be pulled over for going just two mph over the limit? Or maybe I did something else wrong and they were going to catch me and arrest me and send me to the nearest hoosegow. I kept on going for fear of these things. The blue lights kept on coming, although I did not hear much of a sound. I kept on driving. Don't look at the mirror. I got to go somewhere. I kept on driving down a straight stretch of road.

It suddenly got darker. I looked in the mirror. The lights were gone! I guess I got away that time although I did not know what I was being pulled over for. Now I was really frightened. I had run away from two police cars. I know they are out to get me. I felt a jittery sense of security in the black inky starlit moonless night that covered everything, pierced only by my headlights and an occasional lamp at a house or a passing car. There seemed to be nothing around. I kept on going maybe half an hour, until I got past an exit saying, "Paxton Glanding Exit 79" and another one saying Richmond 67. The entire sky seemed to brighten with crystal blue. I looked in the mirror.

Oh, no!! Here they came. I saw four blue lights coming up on me, and another pair of blue lights way back down a highway a ways. The entire police station is out to get me. I got afraid that there may be a roadblock ahead. So I decided to pull over and get this over with. It could not be anything much.

So I pulled over to the side. To my surprise when I looked in the mirror, the blue lights went UP! They went over my head, over the car roof. Then a circular apparition came in front of me as I looked out the windshield. There were blue lights spinning everywhere. A light and door opened up on it, and a strange green being came out. I got out of the car to see what was going on.

I saw two or three creatures wandering around in the darkness, and one of them said, "Jixbo bobuct t'hyacx Pluzz etx Earth bxisto ut!" The other replied, "Ut, Bxisto earthlctx Pluzz". Now I know what happened. All those blue lights were aliens from another planet. I felt so scared that I could feel my feet drop off me, I was shaking so bad. I heard a loudspeaker or something then boom out. "You earthling will go with us to our Planet Pluzz. Please enter this doorway." No way. Then a bright beam shone at me and decided for me otherwise. I felt a pull on my body. I tried to run away but I could not make any progress. I kept slipping. I found my self going up in the misty damp air. "Let me go!!!" I said. But it was no use. Apparently that light was a tractor beam pulling me in their spacecraft. I got worried that these aliens would torture me or maybe humans were their favorite dish.

I looked down the road and saw more blue lights. The ones that were way behind. As they came closer, while I was being pulled, pulled, pulled, I made out that these lights really WERE a police car. The car came up to about two hundred feet away on the road. An officer stepped out and pulled his hand out. Bzingggg!!! He fired his pistol and I could feel the air whoosing by as the bullet raced within inches of my face. It went towards the spacecraft then into nowhere. He fired again. Help! The beam kept pulling me and I was about 10 feet away from the entrance. Bziingg! Bzingg! then all of at once I heard a tremendous CRACK!! and an explosion of purplish intensely bright light and shooting stars like fireworks. The next thing I knew I was lying on top of a haystack in the field, as if I fell. I saw a bunch of blue lights head up into the sky.

I saw what happened. The officer had shot out the tractor beam. I saw the blue lights head into the sky and get fainter. The ship was obviously limping and was apparently flying to a mother ship. The policeman saved my life. I wanted to go to him to thank him for his heroic deed. But when I looked down the road I saw nothing except my car and the inky black night darkness. I crawled back into the car but felt so exhausted that I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was morning. I looked around to see where the aliens were. I saw nothing except a slight indentation in the field. Surely I would see burnt out stuff. But I saw nothing. Someone came up to me and asked if I wanted help. I told him what happened last night. She said, '"you probably were dreaming. I heard nothing". But that officer, I said. I remembered his license number. 57-828. She said, that could not be an officer. All emergency vehicles, she said, had license numbers beginning with LE.

Well, maybe I was dreaming. I got into the car and drove on home. But I still was edgy and worried. If it was going back to have that tractor beam, there's a mother ship and surely that ship would come and that would be the end of…

Copyright 2005 by Jim.

Improv

One of the workshops I am taking this year at SUUSI is "Day at the Improv", a five-day workshop on something called Improv. It had a change of leader, and now a popular and respected musician is giving the workshop. But I am wondering, just what is Improv?

I looked at one site, and found that some exercises for it are games of various sorts. For example, one person shows an object and another says what it is not. Then that person picks up another object and so forth. I found a book at the Chesterfield library on "Improvisation" and I briefly glanced at some of the scenarios in it. What I get from it is that you need to make the characters authentic and believable. For example, someone concerned about a house foreclosure who sniggers would not be portraying the character authentically.

I enrolled in the workshop because I am always looking for something new at SUUSI. This one should be interesting.

By the way, I now have seven blogs, one for each day of the week. Blogtrek is my Saturday blog, so I normally will be posting on Saturday, but I may post at other times if something comes up that I want to post. This blog will usually contain items other than religion, astronomy, peak oil and running out of resources, nature and birding, mathematics, weather or opinions that I have, for those are covered by my other blogs.

Richmond and Washington play Water Baseball

I note that the Richmond Braves are not the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals, and my assignment of major league teams to AAA minor league teams in my previous post did not pair the Richmond team with the Washington Nationals, either. That's too bad. I think the Hungarian algorithm did not pair them because it saw a better virtue in avoiding the long distance between the Baltimore Orioles and the Durham Bulls. Instead, Richmond wound up with Baltimore. I think it's too bad, because the Richmond Breeze (can't call them Braves any more) and the Washington Nationals would be a perfect match for each other.

Last year, the Richmond Braves ballpark flooded during storms because of poor drainage, and several home games had to be played as road games. They fixed up the park, but there are some people in Richmond who want the Braves in Shockoe Bottom. A serious problem with this is that it could flood. Shockoe Bottom experienced a major flood last year when Tropical Storm Gaston hit. Seems the Braves will be flooded out no matter what happens. But this makes them a perfect match for the Washington Nationals, as a recent game (2005 April 30) there was so badly affected by huge puddles at RFK stadium that both teams protested the game.

Yes, the Richmond and Washington teams would make a perfect match. But then they should be renamed the Washington Ark and the Richmond Noahs.

Minimizing distances between major league and AAA baseball teams

On 2002 August 20, I posted a blog about how I did a study that found a pairing of major league teams to their AAA minor league affiliates that minimized the total distance traveled. I found, among other things, a three-way swap among the Baltimore Orioles, Atlanta Braves, and Pittsburgh Pirates that cut down the total driving times between these clubs and their AAA affiliates. I sent letters to the Atlanta, Richmond and Rochester newspapers about the proposal but did not get any response. Later, a three-way trade did occur, among Baltimore, Minnesota, and Montreal (now the Washington Nationals) that actually increased the travel time.

There have been a lot of changes since then. The Albuquerque Dukes left town, and then came back as the Albuquerque Isotopes. The Canadian teams were hard hit. Once there were two major league teams and four AAA ones in Canada; now there is only one major league team and one AAA minor team. With all those changes, what would happen if I tried it again?

I used the Hungarian method, as I used before. I will describe the details elsewhere, but in this method, a table of distances is derived. I used a trigonometric formula together with the latitudes and longitudes of all the baseball teams to create the table of air, or "as the crow flies" distances. This should be a good approximation of the actual distances traveled. I then subtracted the minimum distance from each row, and the minimum distance from each column, to create a zero in each row and column. I then tried to assign as many zeroes as possible, with no two such assigned zeroes being in the same row and column. Then I tried to increase this by taking a major league team without an AAA affiliate. I found the minor league teams that have a zero for this major league team. If one of these did not have a AAA affiliate, I assigned it to the major league team and increased the number of teams with affiliates. Otherwise, I found the major league parents of these teams and searched for alternative AAA teams. I kept doing this over and over again until I either found a minor league team that is not assigned (in which case I did a bunch of swapping to increase the number of major league teams with affiliates) or I found that all major league teams that I am trying to find alternatives for did not have any. In the latter case, a failure, I changed all the distances by a formula designed to preserve the solution and increase the number of zeroes. I kept doing this whole thing over and over again until all teams were paired.

This turned into a real struggle at the end, with iteration after iteration failing, until a huge swap affecting just about every team occurred at the end, starting with the Pittsburgh Pirates and ending with the Tacoma Rainiers. This is the resulting arrangement, with changes in bold:

Arizona Diamondbacks - Tucson Sidewinders
Atlanta Braves - Nashville Sounds
Baltimore Orioles - Richmond Breeze
Boston Red Sox - Pawtucket Red Sox
Chicago Cubs - Iowa Cubs
Chicago White Sox - Omaha White Sox
Cincinnati Reds - Louisville Bats
Cleveland Indians - Indianapolis Indians
Colorado Rockies - Colorado Springs Sky Sox
Detroit Tigers - Toledo Mud Hens
Houston Astros - Round Rock Express
Kansas City Royals - Oklahoma City Redhawks
Los Angeles Angels - Salt Lake City Stingers
Los Angeles Dodgers - Fresno Grizzlies
Florida Marlins - Charlotte Knights
Milwaukee Brewers - Columbus Clippers
Minnesota Twins - Norfolk Tides
New York Mets - Ottawa Lynx
New York Yankees - Syracuse Sky Chiefs
Oakland Athletics - Portland Beavers
Philadelphia Phillies - Scranton WilkesBarre Red Barons
Pittsburgh Pirates - Buffalo Bisons
St. Louis Cardinals - Memphis Redbirds
San Diego Padres - Las Vegas 51s
San Francisco Giants - Sacramento River Cats
Seattle Mariners - Tacoma Rainiers
Tampa Bay Devil Rays - New Orleans Zephyrs
Texas Rangers - Albuquerque Isotopes
Toronto Blue Jays - Rochester Red Wings
Washington Nationals - Durham Bulls

Many close pairs, such as Detroit-Toledo and Boston-Pawtucket, got assigned with each other, and this is indeed their actual arrangement. There are some differences. In two cases, I had to change the name of an AAA team because it would become inappropriate - Omaha Royals to Omaha White Sox, and Richmond Braves to Richmond Breeze, as in Sweet Virginia Breeze. The Minnesota Twins got paired with the Norfolk Tides (they are right now paired to the Rochester Red Wings). This is one of those odd relationships that are forced. If one attempted to get something closer for Minnesota, such as Iowa, other swaps would be forced, and the total distance of the result would be greater. An interesting pairing was the two Indian teams, Cleveland and Indianapolis. So this arrangement would clear up that ambiguity, although Native Americans might want the names of both changed.

I am not sure how much adopting this arrangement would save in travel costs for major league baseball, but I expect that in the future that efficient arrangements like this may be necessary because of the impending running out of cheap oil.

Artificial Intelligence

I found something interesting in the New Scientist magazine recently. (By the way, this is a good science journal, published in the United Kingdom.) The cover to the 2005 April 23-29 edition read, "Whatever happened to AI?", followed by a picture of a robot. I remember AI well. For much of the 1990s, I was a member of a branch at my workplace (in the US Army) called the "AI Branch". We did not do much that was AI, although I took a course on applications of AI to Operations Research and graduated with honors. We did mainly mundane work with existing applications, none of which showed much "artificial intelligence". None of them used AI programs of that time, such as Exsys, Clips, and SNNAP. Clips was a NASA program that did inference from rules.

I thought of AI instead of trying to get computers to converse intelligently like humans. I don't think they have done that yet, although they try. You pick up the phone and you get a reply from your assistant Claire, who performs terribly in responding to your inquiry. If they speak, they are apt to wreck a nice beach instead of recognize speech.

I could tell that trouble was coming when I heard that an early AI program designed to digest newspaper stories reported that an earthquake had occurred when it encountered the 1978 headline, "Death of Pope Shakes World". Then I ran into Eliza, who responded with inquires about my family every time I mention "mother" or "father", even when I said that the Mother of all Depressions was about to occur.

So has AI progressed much. Probably not. The first thing that the head article of the magazine, "Whatever happened to Machines that Think?", by Justin Mullins, was describe an encounter with Intellibuddy. So I went to the site myself. I found ten characters from all walks of life. I tried a few and found quickly that these robots had not achieved human intelligence. Justin Mullins does the same and came up with an infinite loop. So I followed Justin's script. But only one character followed the script, the woman with the necklace and the colored eyeglasses or mascara, fifth from the beginning. I asked her what her name was. She said it was "Star". Funny, all of these characters say their name is Star. Here is how the conversation went:

Intellibuddy: Hi, I'm Intellibuddy! Nice to meet you.
You: I'm writing an article about artificial intelligence.
Intellibuddy: Will you include me in your essay?
You: I will if you can persuade me you really are intelligent.
Intellibuddy: Would you recommend this action to a friend?
You: Errr...are you intelligent?
Intellibuddy: UmmmI am highly intelligent. I have many intellectual functions.
You: What are your intellectual functions?
Intellibuddy: Thought, reason, intelligence, logic and deduction.
You: What is your IQ?
Intellibuddy: My IQ is about 250 in human terms.
You: Wow, you're cleverer than my editor.
Intellibuddy: I'm glad your impressed, User. I will tell my botmaster you said I am cleverer than my editor.
You: No, cleverer than my editor.

Up to this point, Star followed the same script as Justin's partner. But then Star parted. Instead of saying "I'm glad your [sic] impressed, User.", she said:

Intellibuddy: That's me. The best book I read recently was Zeros and Ones. Have you read Zeros and Ones ?
You: You must have heard of Justin Mullins.
Intellibuddy: Where would I get heard of Justin Mullins? But I do have An answer to every question.
You: Oh, you're one of these folks who walks around saying that you have THE ANSWER.
Intellibuddy: Yeah that's right. You think I am of these folks who walks around saying that you have THE ANSWER.
You: Well, you just said that.
Intellibuddy: How about that. Good you really are paying attention.
You: What's your name?
Intellibuddy: My name is Star.
You: Who are you?
Intellibuddy: I ask myself that question, "Who am I?"
You: What is the answer?
Intellibuddy: The answer is the correct reply to the question.
You: Duh!
Intellibuddy: Oh you knew The answer is the correct reply to the question already.
You: Who won the 2000 Presidential Election
Intellibuddy: I think the fans were the big winners, don't you?
You: Since when do elections have fans?
Intellibuddy: Interesting explanation. Not right now, but maybe sometime later.
You: So what happens when George Bush steps up to the plate?
Intellibuddy: OK. My goal is to become smarter than humans and immortal.
You: Does that have anything to do with baseball?
Intellibuddy: What would you say?
You: Well, you said that in reply to my question.
Intellibuddy: Interesting. I said that? Where is that?
You: You don't find questions lying around on the family room endtable.
Intellibuddy: Should I find questions lying around on the family room endtable? Yes, questions lying around on the family room endtable seems to me questions lying around on the family room endtable.
You: Duh.
Intellibuddy: Oh you knew Yes questions lying around on the family room endtable seems to me questions lying around on the family room endtable already.
You: Duh.
Intellibuddy: Oh you knew Oh you knew Yes questions lying around on the family room endtable seems to me questions lying around on the family room endtable already already.
You: Duh.
Intellibuddy: Oh you knew Oh you knew Oh you knew Yes questions lying around on the family room endtable seems to me questions lying around on the family room endtable already already already.

As you can see, she went into an infinite loop. She apparently answers "Duh", with "Oh you knew <previous reply> already.", even if that reply had an "Oh you knew" and an "already" already. Justin's partner also went into an infinite loop; in his case it was about whether he was cleverer than Justin's editor.

To me, we are a long way from having a computer that performs as well as a human. They may continue working, but please hold the implementation of these robots into human commerce and communication until they can talk much more reasonably with me than Star just did.

Fireworks in April

We all like a fireworks display. Whether it be New Years (especially in 2000) or Independence Day, these pyrotechnics awe us with their climbs in the air and their explosions of colorful fury. But usually we see these only at holidays, especially the two I just mentioned. Why not celebrate every day? Why can't we shoot fireworks at unlikely times of the year, such as March?

This is the theme of Stephanie Corby's song Fireworks in March (if you click on that, click "music" after you get there). The song was about a fireworks display that occurred inexplicitly in March somewhere in New York City. Normally fireworks don't go up in March, not even for Easter or St. Patrick's Day, so she thought it notable enough to write a song about it.

I saw a similar display yesterday, on 2005 April 15. I was at a Science Museum of Virginia skywatch where I was showing Jupiter, Saturn, M-37, and M-3 to the public through my 8-inch Nexstar 8 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. All at once someone shouted "fireworks!". I looked across Broad Street and I saw them. Emanating from some invisible house beyond the other side of the street, I saw fireworks go up in the air. They were small, and produced mainly a bright star when they exploded.

What were they celebrating? Skywatch? But not too many people had come to Skywatch on a cold night. Maybe they were celebrating the filing of income taxes, as April 15 is the deadline. So shall we shoot fireworks every April 15? Are we glad we don't have to mess with taxes any more? Maybe we shoot fireworks instead of filing our returns, or maybe fireworks protest the imposition of taxes on us. After all that was what happened on 1776 July 4 was all about, and on the anniversary of that date we shoot all kinds of fireworks, which I will report on in this blog on 2005 July 4.

But in the meantime I saw Fireworks in April. And, like Stephanie Corby, somehow I feel enlivened by that event.

An answer for the peak oil problem?

Recently I have stumbled on a possible answer to the peak oil problem, which threatens a huge crisis in the future: Plugin hybrid vehicles, or PHEVs. This is not the final answer to the problem. Our civilization is still in trouble. But it postpones for years the day of reckoning on energy. Maybe then we can find something sustainable.

I hit the answer after driving my new 2005 Toyota Prius a while. If I go slow enough, only the bright yellow arrows on the display flow, indicating that the car is running on the electric motor. During this time it is not using any gasoline. But I need to be careful, as the dull orange arrows indicating gasoline can come up any time. Further, many times when the Prius uses gasoline, a green arrow indicates that this gasoline is charging the battery. This is why you don't have to plug the car into the house current.

But that's too bad in a way. It still runs on gasoline, and it gets good gasoline mileage only because it makes maximum use of the energy used in driving the car, especially braking. If it could be plugged into the house current, the motor would last longer, and less gasoline would be required. So I wondered why my Prius could not be plugged into house current and run solely on battery power when doing local errands. Most trips are short ones, so most of the time it would run on battery.

This would cause a huge drop in the car's gasoline production. Only the long vacation trips would require gasoline, and maybe not if hotels provide charging stations. That's a 90% drop in the most gasoline-using nation on earth. This much of a drop certainly would put a dent into the gasoline scarcity caused by peak oil.

This type of car is called a plugin hybrid, or PHEV. If most everyone used these, hardly any gasoline would be consumed in everyday activities. That would cause a huge drop in the demand for oil, perhaps 50% in the US and maybe the world as well; even China would want the new PHEVs. We would have the curious situation of the world in oil production decline after reaching the Hubbert peak, only to have demand lowered so drastically that a glut occurs.

These changes could be cataclysmic. US automakers may go bankrupt, and huge mountains of useless old cars, especially SUVs, would crowd the junk lots. So that solves the oil problem, at least for a while.

But it will return. Production will continue to decline, and with drastically lowered gasoline prices (maybe 50 cents a gallon?) everyone will want to drive all over the place. Eventually demand will exceed supply anyway. Further, the energy is not saved. It is merely shifted to the power grid, which runs mostly on coal and nuclear energy. There is plenty of both coal and uranium around, but both are finite fuels, and so the danger is that when the demand-supply point is reached again, it will affect not only travel, but electricity as well. Massive blackouts could occur in the 2010s.

But it buys us some time. This time should be used to get us used to using less energy, and it should be used to find renewable ways of generating energy, perhaps by solar and wind.