2009, JANUARY

January 28

I don’t have anything of particular interest to talk about today, so I’d like to talk about talking about things in this forum.

If nothing else, it has allowed me to remain at large. If you sit in a room and talk to yourself, they come and put you away. But if you do it online, they leave you alone.

As it says at the top of the page, things tend to come to me in the middle of the night. Then what? I don’t want to get up, and I don’t want to wake Jeanine by turning on the light. I have tried writing things down in the dark, with exactly the results you would expect. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I write over what I wrote before and can’t make out any of it in the morning. Sometimes I use the wrong end of the pen. Jeanine suggested I use her alarm clock, which glows green for about 10 seconds when you hit the snooze button. This works, sort of, but I find I am scribbling as fast as I can in a hand unintelligible to anyone including, frequently, myself. And every time I hit the button, the damn clock tells me in numbers two inches high that it’s an ungodly hour and I am going to feel like crap in the morning. And so it is.

I’ve noticed that this column has had a negative impact on my social skills and consequently on my social standing. I was never what you would call a garrulous party guy, but lately I have been downgraded from the B list to a C-minus because I don’t want to talk to anybody. I don’t mind listening, but I am reluctant to say anything because if it’s boring, it’s boring, and if it’s interesting I want to save it for Brain Static. If somebody asks how my day was, my response is “You can read about it in tomorrow’s blog.”

The problem is, you might find a mindless entry like this one. But hey, as long as you’re here, have a look around. Maybe it was more interesting yesterday. Maybe tomorrow.

January 24

The House Oversight Committee got me thinking about contranyms, words with two opposing meanings. “Cleave” is the commonest, and I often wonder which sense the biblical injunction that a man “shall leave his father and cleave unto his wife” intended. But there are many others, some fairly obvious like “sanction” and “dust,” and some a bit subtler like “fast”—moving rapidly or not at all. I’m not sure about “sanguine.” It means cheerful and optimistic and also causing or delighting in bloodshed, but I guess those aren’t exactly opposing or even necessarily inconsistent meanings. Interestingly, it seems to be used most often to describe how you aren’t, as “I am not sanguine about the prospects for peace.”

In court if you want to require someone to do something or prohibit him from doing it, you ask the judge to enjoin him. But if the case isn’t going well and you don’t want to continue, you ask for a continuance.

“Clip” means to hold together or to cut apart. And “trim” means to add something or take something away, depending on whether you do it to your Christmas tree or your hedge.

“Valuable” and “invaluable” mean the same thing, as do “limber” and “unlimber” and “flammable” and “inflammable.” But “inflammable” also means not flammable, so it belongs in this list. If you think that’s odd, consider “ravel,” which means to entangle or to disentangle. So does “unravel.”

There were two of us but you went away. You’re the one who’s left, but I’m the one who’s left.

If you’re below par, you’re worse than average, unless you’re on a golf course, a place where your handicap is to your advantage.

“Stay” may mean to hold on or to hold off, as an execution. And if you “execute” a plan, you bring it into existence.

“Skin” as a verb means to remove the outer layer, as in skinning a cat (or a peach, if you happen to be a cat fancier), but when it happens to pudding, it’s adding another layer. And while we’re in the kitchen, you can garnish your plate by adding some lettuce, but if your wages are garnished, somebody’s taking lettuce away.

Canning is a good way to save your excess fruit or get rid of your excess employees.

If the mayor gives you a citation, it’s a good thing. If a cop gives you one, not so much.

I woke up when the alarm went off but I fell back asleep when it went off.

If a puzzle is not too difficult, you can puzzle it out, but I’m not really anxious to do so with the puzzling word “anxious,” because it doesn’t really mean “eager,” irregardless (a nonword that doesn’t actually mean anything) of how often it is misused.

In a brainstorming session you might throw out an idea but if it’s no good, the group will throw it out.

I don’t know if you can count “resign,” which means to leave the group if you pronounce it “re-ZYNE” but to rejoin the group if you say “re-SYNE.”

Then there is “won’t,” what you refuse to do, and “wont,” what you usually do. You may quibble about the apostrophe (although it is many people’s wont to leave it out, that doesn’t make it right) but its such a small thing…. If you wont buy that as a contranym, wont and won’t still fit into the category of antonymc homophones (is there a word for this?) like “razed,” and “raised.” But that’s another kettle of fish, one we will stew another day.

Add Feb 16: Jeopardy had a “Contranyms” category tonight. The only one I didn’t have, “weather” as a verb meaning to survive a storm or be eroded by it, seems a little off. But I’m probably just being a sorehead because I didn’t think of it.

January 21: It’s about time. A philosophysical musing.

The first entry you see in the dictionary under “dimension” is “a measurement of something in one or more directions, such as length, width, or height.” There are another half a dozen intervening definitions before you get to anything to do with physics that suggests time is a dimension, and personally I’m not convinced.

We can move in space. The spatial dimensions are there, and we move around in them. We can go from here to there, or we can go in the opposite direction, from here to back there. But we can’t move in time; time goes on around us, all by itself and there’s nothing we can do about it. You can stay in the same place, but you can’t stay in the same time. And we can’t decide what direction time should move, either. Time doesn’t go back, or up, or down. It doesn’t even go forward, despite the semantic convention. It just goes on. What the heck kind of a dimension is that? It isn’t like any of the others; why do we call it a dimension?

But if an object moves only in the “fourth dimension,” is it moving? Einstein says that the faster we go, the slower time goes. Time goes? What kind of dimension goes? The other ones don’t “go,” they just sit there.

We can’t be in two places (let’s agree that “place” refers to spatial position) at the same time, but we can be in the same place at any number of different times.

Different times? What are different times? There are only two: before and after. Now, being infinitely small, cannot really be said to have independent existence. It is merely a fold in the fabric of dimension, the transition from before to after. And after hasn’t happened yet. So time is all past—it exists only in memory. It goes back to the first event, the Big Bang, whatever. Before that, nothing had happened, so there wouldn’t have been any time. The concept of time has no meaning if there is nothing to be “before” or “after.”

Space, like any self-respecting set of dimensions, exists anywhen. Pocatello, Idaho occupies a position in space; it’s always there, even at 3 o’clock Sunday morning. It was there before we knew it was Pocatello, and even before the earth was formed, a position in space existed where Pocatello would be. Although as a point in empty space, it existed only because it related to something else. So there had to be something before any dimensions could exist. Pocatello is there only because there is a there there. Too bad about Oakland. But that’s another story.

We need time, though--whatever it is--in order to move at all. An object can’t move unless it’s in one place and then in another—and you can’t have “then” without time. So the next time you hear somebody say “I don’t have time,” bet him a nickel he’s wrong.

I don’t know how many dimensions there are. I can get along quite nicely with the three I can see, as long as I have time to look at them. And don’t get me started on String Theory with its six or seven extra tiny, curled up dimensions. How can a dimension be tiny? Or curled? It would have to be measured in other dimensions. And wherever that is, I’m not going there.

January 18

They’ve won. I give up.

You will recall, I trust, my tale of the machine that took longer than my nephew Mark to boot up. Apple tech support initially told me to reset the thingummy, which didn’t work and caused all sorts of new annoyances. Then other things started not working. Apple told me they couldn’t tell me anything because I hadn’t paid for their advice. Then I paid and they told me to take it in to the Apple Store. They have no idea what “Mac OS Error Code –72004” means. When I suggested that my problems, including those with a variety of software programs, might be related to my recent upgrade to the latest operating system, they told me I was doomed. I can’t go back. Well, actually I can: all I have to do is erase my entire hard drive, reinstall the old OS from the disc, and then download upgrades until JUST BEFORE the last one. Like I said, doomed.

I should have been suspicious when I saw that the manual had a preface by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

My CD burning software no longer works. I went on line to download the most recent driver, but the website refuses to recognize me. They say they do have someone registered with my user name and my password, but it isn’t me. Their telephone tech support doesn’t answer. I wrote them a letter, but they don’t read snail mail. I finally found an address to e-mail a question and a week later I got an automated response from noreply@sonic.com (you think the return address is a clue?) telling me that “once a Roxio agent begins working on your Ticket, you’ll get an e-mail…” That was a week ago. Doomed. In case you might be in the market, the company is ROXIO.

Last night I had to switch my automatic back-up software to semi-automatic. It’s supposed to turn on the computer at 2:00 A.M., do a back-up, and shut down. Here’s how it works: At 3 o’clock Monday morning I wake up (for other reasons) and notice the light on in the other room. I come in and find the computer turned on, doing nothing. I push the “One-Touch Back Up” button on the external drive, which immediately causes it to do nothing. I open the program, click on “back up now,” and go back to bed. Thirty minutes later I get up and turn off the machine.

But the thing is, I don’t care any more. I just want to sit and play my guitar. Only it’s not mine. And I can’t play.

Addendum, Feb 14: I sent another email, got a new ticket and finally got an actual response: Thank you for contacting Roxio Technical Support.

The product you are inquiring about is a 'legacy' application and is no longer supported by Technical Support. To keep our software prices competitive, Roxio Technical Support agents only support the latest release and one version previous.

They went on to invite me to upgrade, and I asked them why they imagined I would want to continue to deal with them.

January 15

One of the bad things about attaining a Certain Age is being viewed by a large segment of the population, known as “whippersnappers,” as a doddering, senile old relic who should be put out of his misery or at least out of the way. One of the nice things is the other group—we’ll call them “adults”—who believe that with years you have also accumulated valuable experience and wisdom, and they rely on you for advice and guidance. The scary thing is they’re often both right. Which brings us to our topic of the day.

My doctor says I should not bother having my carotids scanned because there is no reliable evidence that endarterectomy (cleaning the crap out of the arteries) or any other intervention is of benefit in asymptomatic individuals.

All well and good, I say, but how do you know if you’re asymptomatic? I think I could pretty much tell if I had ulcer symptoms, or arthritis, and I suspect I’d notice if I had erectile dysfunction. But what are carotid artery symptoms? How do I know if my brain’s not getting enough blood? I suppose I could wait until I wake up and can't move my entire left side, but that doesn’t seem like a very practical strategy.

Some mean-spirited people have suggested that this column is itself evidence of cerebral ischemia (inadequate blood flow to the brain), a contention I reject out of hand. But there are other subtle signs. My memory’s not as good as it once was, for instance. At least I don’t think it is. It’s hard to remember how it used to be, but I’m pretty sure I used to know what I went into the garage to get.

What if I couldn’t remember the name of my First Grade teacher? Or the name of my first wife? The chemical structure of Vitamin B12? My address? Is it a matter of degree? If I can’t tell a dodecahedron from an undecahedron at a glance, I still think I’m all right. But if I can’t tell a triangle from a square, I’m clearly in trouble. Where is the line?

Sudoku’s seem to be getting harder lately—is that me or them?

What if I can’t tell my car key from my house key? Or my car key from a turkey?

What if I couldn’t read Homer in the original Greek? What if I could? Since I don’t know Greek, would that be a symptom? What if I couldn’t tell it was Greek? What if I thought The Old Man and the Sea was in Greek? What if I couldn’t understand The Old Man and the Sea? What if I couldn’t understand Finnegan’s Wake?

I use my brain for lots of things—some of them fairly abstruse and difficult to quantify. People who have tolerated me for twenty years tell me I’m calmer than I used to be. Is that maturity, or just hardening of the arteries? If these notions stop occurring to me at 3 A.M., is that an indication of growing serenity or a growing clot?

I don’t know the answers. I think that’s a bad sign: I used to know everything. Maybe I should have my carotids examined.

January 12: Good News

Every so often one of those oddball downtown churches takes out a full-page ad on the back side of the newspaper. It’s not very enticing, a full page of text, but for some reason (it’s Monday: the sudoku was easy) today I read it. The sermon was about the Samaritan Woman Who Accepted Jesus’ Words, but I won’t quote much of it. Just a little: “It is extremely important that all of your thoughts crumble down and that you discover you are absolutely nothing…. God does not want you to become good, great, smart, and wonderful people. He wants you to discover the evil inside of you, know that you are filthy and dirty, deny yourself, and accept the words of God whether you understand them or not.”

For more information, contact the Good News Central Church. But whatever you do, don’t ask what’s the bad news.

January 10

If you had any lingering doubt about whether the American corporate hegemony had been supplanted by the burgeoning Indian enterprise, consider this breaking news bulletin. Ramalinga Raju, the CEO of Satyam [Sanskrit for “truth”] Computer Services, Ltd. has admitted faking profits, inflating his company’s bottom line by a billion dollars, give or take.

Satyam is one of those Indian companies that does billing and tech support for a number of little known businesses including General Electric, Microsoft, and Nestle.

Raju (who answers his phone in Hyderabad “Hello, this is Kevin, how can I help you?) claims he did it all himself, and nobody else in the company knew about it, though there has been some speculation that the corporate malfeasance was in fact one more function that has been outsourced to India by American industries.

PriceWaterhouseCooper, the accountancy firm that’s been doing Satyam’s books for the past eight years, issued Public Disclaimer #42, saying that they are shocked and have “pledged to cooperate with authorities.”

January 7

The Los Angeles Unified School District hired Admiral David Brewer, a retired Navy officer with no experience in the field of education as their Superintendent because they wanted a “fresh thinker.” Halfway into (optimists would see it as “halfway through”) his four-year contract, the board decided that “bold and unorthodox” wasn’t what they really wanted, and they paid him $500,000 to sail quietly away.

The board was a little upset when they learned they would have to buy out the remainder of his contract, just like a ballplayer. I guess that’s why they gave his replacement only a three-year deal. They hired Ramon Cortines, who had been interim Superintendent eight years ago, but it hadn’t worked out. Since then, Cortines had been fired from his job in Padadena, “acclaimed” in San Francisco, and hounded out of New York by Rudy Giuliani. His most recent position was as ex-Admiral Brewer’s chief deputy, where he “quickly assumed responsibility for both day-to-day operations and long-term planning….”

Those who do not learn from history…

January 4

Global warming, energy shortage, nuclear war, terrorist fanaticism, poisoning of the oceans or the atmosphere: it seems pretty clear that, one way or another the planet is doomed. We know the Apocalypse is coming, we just don’t know where it’s coming from. There is nowhere you can turn without banging up against some catastrophe that will mean the end of the world.

But wait. Underlying all of these predictions of disaster is an unstated assumption, namely that by 2050 the world will be occupied by something in excess of 9 billion souls. I would have no trouble believing any of the doomsday scenarios if that were true. Paul Ehrlich was right—he just had the timing wrong.

But I don’t buy that underlying assumption. I think the world’s population in 2050 is likely to be closer to 2 or 3 billion. I don’t know if it will be the result of famine, drought, pestilence, war, or just loss of interest. Who knows, maybe there will be massive crop failures because all of the bees are snorting coke and can’t be bothered to go hopping around from flower to flower.

If you take the long view of history, the Earth has always been smarter and more adaptable than people, and she will win in the end. I’d be willing to bet on it, but I’m not planning to be around to collect in any case. I hope.

January 2, 2009: Where the Bees Are.

Remember my wondering what had become of the bees? It was last March, not in the online archives, so in case you forgot, the bees have been disappearing, to the great dismay of growers everywhere. Everybody had a theory—disease, pollution, poison, despair. All of the theories assumed they were dying somehow, but nobody could find the bodies.

Well, apparently the answer is at hand. According to a report published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, bees get addicted to cocaine. Researchers were surprised because most insects are repelled by cocaine, and that was thought to be why the coca plant makes the stuff in the first place. I don’t know why they found that surprising: if I was a plant, something that repels harmful insects but attracts bees is exactly what I would want. It’s a shame we can’t dose all our crops with the stuff. What surprises me is that bees and cocaine have been around for a long time, and nobody noticed this before.

Anyway, my theory is that the bees are all down in Colombia, hanging around the coca plants, buzzed. And the reason nobody has seen them is that the Cali cartel won’t let anybody near.

BACK TO CALENDAR

<< PREVIOUS MONTH

NEXT MONTH >>

BACK TO CURRENT MONTH