down with “capitalism”

Posted on Friday, 2013 May 24 by Anton

I posted this, which is mostly a condensation and paraphrase of part of Roderick Long’s zaxlebax speech.

Except for the chicken part.

Posted in me!me!me!, politics | Leave a comment

calendar reform

Posted on Thursday, 2013 May 23 by Anton

Each month shall have 30 days, except within a lune spanning 157°15′57″ (5.242199 × 30°) of longitude, wherein the month shall be extended by one day which shall not affect the cycle of the week. The lune so affected shall shift westward(?) each month by its own width. The phase of the lune shall be such that, in every longitude, the northward equinox shall fall on the last day of March. (During a transition of roughly two years, each month shall have 30 days without leaps, to shift the equinox from March 21 to March 30/31.)

Posted in calendars | 3 Comments

to pass the time

Posted on Friday, 2013 May 03 by Anton

If I didn’t have to worry about such mundanities as weather and fatigue — if, say, I had a synthetic antimatter-powered body with some of the traditional flaws ironed out — I think I might like to spend eternity walking around the world, stopping only for conversation.

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what didn’t happen in Juneau didn’t stay in Juneau

Posted on Friday, 2013 March 29 by Anton

In “It Happened in Juneau”, near the end of the third season of Northern Exposure (one of very few TV series of which I’ve seen every episode twice), Maggie flies Joel to Juneau for a conference; they both get lonely, and drunkenly seduce each other. But Maggie falls asleep and cannot be roused, so Joel puts her to bed alone.

In the morning they return to Cicely. Maggie believes that they did copulate, and partly regrets it. Some time goes by before Joel succeeds in telling Maggie what really happened. She is insulted: “Why didn’t you? I had consented!”

Maggie later invites Joel to her house to try again. She asks him to say his desire for her is so strong that he’ll let nothing get in its way. She then finds (or reveals) that that expression of desire, rather than the execution, was what she really wanted from Joel, and dismisses him.

This affair bugs me on two points. First: I can accept that Maggie is insulted by Joel’s inaction, but wouldn’t the insult be outweighed by relief? (Well, the people of Cicely are quirky, and Maggie more so than some.)

Second: what Maggie asks of Joel in the end, taken literally, includes a commitment to rape her. Am I sick for noticing that? On reflection, I guess it’s in character – and suitable for prime time – that Joel is too startled (and perhaps deflated!) by the dismissal to respond with more than a bewildered verbal protest; but I’m still disappointed that the script didn’t explore that point at all.

Posted in cinema, ethics, psychology | Leave a comment

unexpected solutions to unknown problems

Posted on Monday, 2013 March 18 by Anton

I woke up (within a dream), looked out my window and saw that my new upstairs neighbor (there is no upstairs unit here) stored his cello by hanging it from a kite. I went up to the roof and found a copy of the neighbor’s self-published, glossy, lavishly illustrated but poorly bound book.

The book’s introduction assured me that he had never lost an instrument stored in this way, other than that one flute; but then the book went on and on about rivers (natural or diverted) and bridges, whose bearing on the subject was not obvious. My reading was interrupted by knocks on some door.

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mood swing

Posted on Friday, 2013 March 15 by Anton

Thursday I saw that my favorite bookshop is hiring. I got a bit of a buzz from the fantasy of working there. Friday I went to the shop and had a polite chat with one of the owners. When I got home, I was depressed, perhaps because the fantasy wore off. After dinner I went straight to bed “for a nap”; slept three hours, woke up feeling rested but still depressed.

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better my computer than me

Posted on Sunday, 2013 March 10 by Anton

My computer ran for eight solid days to extend this table from six rows — (2 3 7), (2 4 5), (3 3 4), (2 3 ∞), (2 ∞ ∞), (∞ ∞ ∞), each of which is (in some sense) minimal — to 106, by request. I don’t know why anyone would want all those others; I see no qualitative difference between any of them and one or more of the six.

Now that the run is done, I look again at my code and see where it could be made more efficient, by changing from complex to real arithmetic; I’ve already done that in my other hyperbolic programs, the ones that generate the ribbon patterns.

Posted in mathematics | 3 Comments