Wow! It's been a year since I added an entry to this blog...maybe the last entry was just too darn long! Well, I'll try to be a little more up-to-date, especially now that I'm adding a link to Technorati. Be sure to check out this computer forensics blog, by the way.
More soon!
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Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Intermission: Just imagine
We live in a Universe of unimaginable complexity.
(note: this post is >2000 words long)
But we act as if we know everything, or that science knows everything.
Let's try to wrap our mind around the unimaginability of our physical world and why it will be some time before we are able to understand more than an infinitesimal fraction of it.
Everybody knows that the physical world is made up of matter, that matter is made up of molecules, and that molecules are made up of atoms. Furthermore, we've all seen models of atoms as little balls (electrons) whirling around little clumps in the center - the nucleus, made up of neutrons and protons.
We've come to understand that the electrons aren't in orbit, exactly, but in a cloud around the nucleus - there isn't any way to know both the location and the velocity of the electron at the same time. It's approximately in an area enclosed by a "shell." But the shell is really a mental construct - a model to help us understand approximately what we're looking at ... or at least, imagining. Those electrons are not really in some hard, well-defined shell, they're whirling around at nearly the speed of light, jumping from "shell" to shell and back at nearly unimaginable speeds.
But what are these little balls, these electrons, neutrons, and protons made up of? Humans used to think that everything was made up of water, earth, and fire, and later they added ether. Then we thought that molecules were the smallest part of matter - the elementary particles, then atoms, then the little balls we see in models of atoms, or in the logo of many companyies and organizations - like the Atomic Energy Commission. Over the past few decades, we've come to understand that electrons, neutrons, and protons were made up of smaller elementary particles - muons, gluons - all part of a class of particles called, "quarks."
Well it turns out that quarks are quirky, as are photons - the "particles" that light is made up of. Quarks have attributes that have been given quirky names like, spin or charm. Photons are hard for physicists to pin down - are they particles or waves? Waves are simply a form, a way for energy to propagate through matter. An ocean wave is the ocean moving in response to a form that is moving through it. The "wave" that we see is at the beach is not a wave at all, but the water being pushed around by a wave. Get it? It's movement of energy that moves matter. Photons can't be pinned down, so Professor Banesh Hoffman, a collaborator of Einstein, named them "wavicles." They're part wave and part particle.
Furthermore, when we look at atoms, we find that they're mostly just space. Yes, space with these little ball things whirling around in it. And when I say "mostly," I mean way more than 99%.
And those ball things? They're mostly just space themselves - way more than 99% as well.
When it comes right down to it, all "elementary particles" are not made up of matter at all. Most people have heard of the field of Quantum Physics (let's call it QP for short). Now don't go to sleep on me!! QP describes the behavior of elementary particles and the stuff that they're made up of. Lo and behold, they're not made up of matter at all, but of waves - quanta (which describes a really large number) of waves! And waves are organized energy - frequency and amplitude, or how fast & how big.
Wow! The real world is just waves! How does that work?
Well, waves are really well organized. They're organized so well that they essentially resolve to acting like solid matter. "Organization" is another way of saying "information." Between gravity, magnetic attraction and repulsion, electronic charges and things like that, most of the "real" world that we see hangs together pretty well.
But it's made up of:
So we have: energy and information make up...everything!
That's quite remarkable, don't you think?
Let's think about information.
I'm going to talk about computers for a minute so that if this kind of thing puts you to sleep, you can skip the next paragraph.
Most people have a computer. A computer is mostly measured by how much data it can store and process, and how fast. I'm writing this on an iMac, which has a 55GB hard disk, and it operates at 800 MHz. What does that mean? A byte is eight bits (like "pieces of eight" from which the term derives) and a bit is a zero or a one. That's binary computing. At its root level, a computer only knows 0 or 1, yes or no, on or off. 1 GB is about a billion bytes (it's really just under 1.1 billion bytes, but who's counting?). 55 GB is about 55 billion bytes, or about 440 billion bits. The 800 MHz means that it can flip these bits on & off at a rate of 800,000 times (cycles) per second. Newer computers do about 3 GHz, or 3 billion cycles per second. Sounds impressive, doesn't it?
A recent article in Scientific American says that physicists see everything as a computing device, even black holes. Everything processes information, just as (although not in exactly the same process) as a computer processes information. "Everything?" you ask, "even a rock?" Yup, even a rock. Shine white light on a rock, and it gives off rock-colored light. Put a rock out in the sun, and it gives off heat. Tap a rock with another rock, and it gives off sound. Hit a rock with a sledgehammer, and it rearranges itself into a bunch of small rocks (also known as dust!) as well as light, heat, and sound.
Not just every object, but every particle processes information - every quantum particle. They can process information really fast, too. At a quantum level, particles can flip states (binary computing) at a rate of 10 to the 20th power times per second. That's a big number: 100,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's more than 100 billion times faster than my computer. "Those are big numbers you're throwing around," you might say. You'd be right.
What is 100 billion times bigger? To illustrate, imagine the plight of we Californians, with our earthquakes. The Richter scale (how we measure earthquake size) is logarithmic: a 3.0 is 10 times a 2.0 quake, a 4.0 is ten times a 3.0, and so forth. Almost nobody feels a 3.0. We recently had a couple of quakes that were a little bigger than 5.0, a hundred times bigger than a 3.0. A 5.0 makes people get a little worried, and probably make ready to run outside. A 7.0 is a hundred times that. In a 7.0, buildings, overpasses and bridges are falling here and there. Houses are moving off their foundations and grocery stores are a complete mess, their aisles covered with broken jars of goo and powder. A 9.0 is 100 times bigger than that - everything is flattened and there are monster tsunamis. The southeast Asia tsunami of December 26, 2004 was caused by a 9.0 quake.
A 9.0 that flattens everything around is a million times bigger than a 3.0 that almost nobody even feels. Are you still with me?
The Richter scale tops out at 10.0. We don't bother to measure anything more than ten times bigger than the Dec 26 quake. But what would a thousand times bigger do? Well, we wouldn't have such an event, because I think the Earth would shake apart long before then, and there wouldn't be anything left to shake - just dust and random rocks where we all used to be. If this is so, then a quake a billion times bigger than one we don't even feel would pulverize the planet. Do you get a sense of the scale?
Now, any single particle can process information 100 billion times faster than my computer. Hmmm. How many particles are there? Let's start with something easy: sand. Glenn Mackie says that there are 2,000 billion billion (that's a billion times a billion!) grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. That's just on the beaches. Our planet is 8,000 miles across, and it's not mostly beaches.
Our planet is one of nine in our solar system, and it's one of the smaller ones, all of which are dwarfed by the sun. Mackie says that there are 50,000 billion billion stars, each of which may have its own planets. And don't even get me started on intergalactic gases!
We talked about grains of sand, but even a grain of sand contains millions of atoms, many millions of particles. David McEcoy, a Physics undergrad says there are 23 billion billion.
Can we cut to the chase here? Well, Jefferson labs says that there are 133,000 billion billion billion billion billion atoms on Earth. Yikes!
What does that give us?
John Dreyer, an astronomer at the SETI Institute estimates that there are 1.2 x 10 to the 79th power (12,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ) atoms in the universe, as related in "Mad Sci Network, the Laboratory that never sleeps!"
Each of these atoms contains a bunch of subatomic particles, each of which can process information at 10 to the 20th power ( 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 ) cycles per second.
How long has this been going on? Believe who you will, but About.com says that the universe is about 14 billion years old. In seconds, that's roughly 4.4 x 10 to the 17th power. Oops! There goes another one!!!
Okay, how many calculations in the Universe so far?
That would be somewhere around 4.4 x 1.2 x 10 to the17th x 10 to the 79th x however many subatomic particles are in an atom (let's just use 1,000 for fun), or:
5.28 x 10 to the 99th
5,280,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
Wow!
Oh no! One more concept! Quantum entanglement.
I promise that this will be the last bit of heavy lifting for your brain.
Photons and quarks have different quantum characteristics. Remember - spin, charm, cute things like that. And two quantum particles can be entangled - have complementary characters. Like partners in a marriage, like Democrats and Republicans, like siblings in a family, one set balances out the other set (we can only hope!). And, like sides in an argument, when one side takes a position the other side takes the opposite one. It's not exactly like that, but you get the idea.
When a photon in a quantum entangled pair takes one form, its partner takes the complementary one. Change one, the other one changes. This even works when the photons are very far away. This was proved in an experiment in Bern, Switzerland just a few years ago. It appears to happen instantly and, as far as we know, over any distance. This should be impossible, right? How does the one particle tell the other one to switch? Nothing travels faster than light. Einstein thought the effect was a mistake in his calculations. He called it "spooky interaction at a distance." But it's now been proven to work. How?
It seems that information is not traveling, but that the photons, when they get quantum entangled, are part of the same system. Try this little experiment. Hold a pencil at its middle, between your thumb and forefinger. Push one end of the pencil down, and the other end moves up. Of course. So what. One end of the pencil said to the other end of the pencil, "I'm moving down - you better move up." Of course not. It's all part of the same system, it all acts like it's one thing - like it's one particle - like quantum entangled photons. Our planet works the same way. Mt. Everest is about 8,000 miles across the Earth from Mt. McKinley, but they both spin at the same speed around the Earth, and when the planet wobbles, both peaks do the same. If your pencil were as far across as the Universe is, and you were able to hold it in the middle and push one end, the other end would move the opposite way at the same moment.
We have no idea how many quantum-entangled the particles in the Universe are - how many paths of information there are. But we know about how many particles there are, and how many calculations they could make.
What could be figured out, what could be created, what could be imagined in that number of calculations? Angels, spirits, other universes, auras, chakras, energy fields, our current model of science, the vast majority of reality - the mind of God. We hardly have any idea.
Well, that's the point of this whole essay. We have only begun to imagine.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Strange Days
JG & Kami
JG went to my high school (although I didn’t know him at the time) & was half of a pair of twins. The twins were both tall, funny, intelligent, and good-looking, but only one hewed to the straight and narrow. JG was the party animal. One night, JG went to a party with his best friend & they were dared to do a jar of acid together. They accepted the dare – 100 hits of blotter acid between them. I suppose the people at the party must have thought it was funny when the two of them started acting silly and wandered off together. They made it down to the shore in Isla Vista, where JG watched his best buddy walk off into the ocean, never to return. It seems that some of the organization of JG’s mind went with his friend, for JG was never the same. That old mind-expanding LSD had rerouted some of his connections.
When I met JG, he was a regular at the New York Hero House. We used to call him the king of the non sequitur. Much of the time when one would speak with James, something unrelated would come back. “How’s the weather?” you might ask. The answer would come back, “The Dodgers didn’t play.” For years we thought we were getting pure nonsense back from our chats with JG. But it turns out that the answers tended to be more post-sequitur than non-. JG was projecting the conversation and giving the reply a few exchanges down the road, apparently without realizing it.
The weather/Dodgers conversation might have otherwise gone: “How’s the weather? - It’s been raining pretty hard. – Yeah, it’s been one of the biggest storms on record. - There have been event cancellations all over. - Yeah, baseball games have been cancelled. - The Dodgers didn’t play.” But JG would preempt the whole middle of the conversation.
When JG would drink coffee, those old neurons would start firing up, and he would be manic. After three cups, practically nothing he said would seem to make any sense. The simple act of getting a sandwich order from him would be an exercise in futility. On the other hand, when he would smoke weed, it would slow him down enough that he would be almost normal. It was very strange, but I suppose he never wanted to be like others.
JG was unemployable and legally crazy, but apparently harmless. As a result, his support was a monthly check from the Social Security Administration. But that SSI check didn’t last long. JG would get the check, rent a room, and throw a party for all of his buddies. Of course, many more would show up, and many street people would have a roof over their heads for a couple of days. Then the money would run out, JG & friends would be run out, the room would be left squalid, and JG would be without a means of support for another 3 weeks. His social worker caught wise (after calls from angry landlords, and reports of a hungry JG begging) and struck deals with local business proprietors. JG no longer would get a check, but he got to run a tab at places like the Hero House. As a result, he got fed, we got paid, & we saw him a lot.
Everything JG wore, he got from the Free Box. So imagine our surprise when he walked in one day in a leather suit! He had retrieved perfectly fitting brown leather pants and jacket in perfect shape from the free box. Must have been worth about $2500. He looked like he just came from Beverly Hills – well, aside from the grizzle on his face and the bits of shrub in his hair from sleeping in the park. We lent him the bathroom, a comb, and a disposable razor to clean up and when he walked out, he looked more like a rich celebrity than another Isla Vista burnout. College girls turned their heads, a cute little new arrival from the Midwest began sharing his sandwiches, soon shacked up with him and JG had a steady girl!
Kami was adorable. She had just arrived in town from Wisconsin and was very attractive and sweet. Like so many other new arrivals, she dropped into the New York Hero House for a bite to eat, a few jokes, some conversation, and to learn about the lay of the land. And then in walked JG, all cleaned up, with the brush removed from his hair, and in his cool leather outfit. His good looks were too much for Kami. She nearly swooned. They hooked up, and began living in some comfort in an abandoned bus in a green tree-filled lot. It seemed kind of romantic and they both were so happy that I even thought JG might heal his mind. But it was not to be.
After a few weeks, JG’s hair started going back to the way it had been. The leather started to smell. The grizzle was back on his face. The manic conversation was back. And whenever we saw Kami, JG’s arm was tightly and possessively around her, and she began to look scared. As time went on, her face got darker, her eyes got sunken and she began to look haunted. We didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was wasn’t good. She looked like she was experiencing years of street living in a few weeks. I discussed the situation with my roommates, Lyn, Eva & Alan. We thought we needed to do something, because at this point, Kami was beginning to resemble a wild animal and had moved quickly from a bright-eyed new arrival in town to something almost not quite human. It was very disturbing.
Alan & the girls came to hang out at the Hero House at about the time we thought we’d see Kami & JG. Sure enough, they arrived, JG holding on tightly. I offered to let Kami use the bathroom in back & told JG he couldn’t go in with her – there already was a longstanding policy that he couldn’t go in the back. Alan & the girls met her in the back & asked her if she wanted to get out, to escape JG. At this point, Kami seemed to have forgotten how to talk, but she nodded, so off they went & put Kami up in our spare bedroom.
She had gotten to be like a wild animal. She barely spoke. Her eyes were darting around constantly. When we gave her food, she shoved it into her mouth. She was starving, filthy, and apparently drug-addled. The girls bathed her and dressed her in some fresh clothes of theirs. Over time, we combed the tangled, matted hair out, and got her fed. Whatever drugs there were wore off, but it was taking time for the after-effects of her time in the bus with JG to be healed. We managed to get her parents’ names & phone number from her and called them in Wisconsin. We suggested they had best come soon, for their daughter seemed to be in peril. We warned them that their daughter needed help & that they might no longer recognize her personality.
One day, we got home to find that Kami had disappeared from the house. We were panicked. Had JG figured out where we lived in Santa Barbara? Had he cast his Jim Morrison-like spell over her again? Fortunately not. Kami’s parents called a week later to tell us that they had come to the house, had taken Kami home and that she was getting psychiatric help. Her bright eyes were starting to come back, and they were grateful.
After losing Kami, JG seemed to get very dark for a while. Now he was always angry when we saw him, and looked a bit haunted himself. The leather clothes were falling apart, the owner of the bus had returned to throw him out & JG seemed to feel he had lost something. Soon though, with the transitional ease of the addled, the wacky JG returned. He was back to laughing at life, back to being manic under the influence of caffeine, and nearly normal under cannabinol. But I must say that my roommates, my coworkers and I never saw him again in the same innocent light as a harmless wacko.
JG went to my high school (although I didn’t know him at the time) & was half of a pair of twins. The twins were both tall, funny, intelligent, and good-looking, but only one hewed to the straight and narrow. JG was the party animal. One night, JG went to a party with his best friend & they were dared to do a jar of acid together. They accepted the dare – 100 hits of blotter acid between them. I suppose the people at the party must have thought it was funny when the two of them started acting silly and wandered off together. They made it down to the shore in Isla Vista, where JG watched his best buddy walk off into the ocean, never to return. It seems that some of the organization of JG’s mind went with his friend, for JG was never the same. That old mind-expanding LSD had rerouted some of his connections.
When I met JG, he was a regular at the New York Hero House. We used to call him the king of the non sequitur. Much of the time when one would speak with James, something unrelated would come back. “How’s the weather?” you might ask. The answer would come back, “The Dodgers didn’t play.” For years we thought we were getting pure nonsense back from our chats with JG. But it turns out that the answers tended to be more post-sequitur than non-. JG was projecting the conversation and giving the reply a few exchanges down the road, apparently without realizing it.
The weather/Dodgers conversation might have otherwise gone: “How’s the weather? - It’s been raining pretty hard. – Yeah, it’s been one of the biggest storms on record. - There have been event cancellations all over. - Yeah, baseball games have been cancelled. - The Dodgers didn’t play.” But JG would preempt the whole middle of the conversation.
When JG would drink coffee, those old neurons would start firing up, and he would be manic. After three cups, practically nothing he said would seem to make any sense. The simple act of getting a sandwich order from him would be an exercise in futility. On the other hand, when he would smoke weed, it would slow him down enough that he would be almost normal. It was very strange, but I suppose he never wanted to be like others.
JG was unemployable and legally crazy, but apparently harmless. As a result, his support was a monthly check from the Social Security Administration. But that SSI check didn’t last long. JG would get the check, rent a room, and throw a party for all of his buddies. Of course, many more would show up, and many street people would have a roof over their heads for a couple of days. Then the money would run out, JG & friends would be run out, the room would be left squalid, and JG would be without a means of support for another 3 weeks. His social worker caught wise (after calls from angry landlords, and reports of a hungry JG begging) and struck deals with local business proprietors. JG no longer would get a check, but he got to run a tab at places like the Hero House. As a result, he got fed, we got paid, & we saw him a lot.
Everything JG wore, he got from the Free Box. So imagine our surprise when he walked in one day in a leather suit! He had retrieved perfectly fitting brown leather pants and jacket in perfect shape from the free box. Must have been worth about $2500. He looked like he just came from Beverly Hills – well, aside from the grizzle on his face and the bits of shrub in his hair from sleeping in the park. We lent him the bathroom, a comb, and a disposable razor to clean up and when he walked out, he looked more like a rich celebrity than another Isla Vista burnout. College girls turned their heads, a cute little new arrival from the Midwest began sharing his sandwiches, soon shacked up with him and JG had a steady girl!
Kami was adorable. She had just arrived in town from Wisconsin and was very attractive and sweet. Like so many other new arrivals, she dropped into the New York Hero House for a bite to eat, a few jokes, some conversation, and to learn about the lay of the land. And then in walked JG, all cleaned up, with the brush removed from his hair, and in his cool leather outfit. His good looks were too much for Kami. She nearly swooned. They hooked up, and began living in some comfort in an abandoned bus in a green tree-filled lot. It seemed kind of romantic and they both were so happy that I even thought JG might heal his mind. But it was not to be.
After a few weeks, JG’s hair started going back to the way it had been. The leather started to smell. The grizzle was back on his face. The manic conversation was back. And whenever we saw Kami, JG’s arm was tightly and possessively around her, and she began to look scared. As time went on, her face got darker, her eyes got sunken and she began to look haunted. We didn’t know what was happening, but whatever it was wasn’t good. She looked like she was experiencing years of street living in a few weeks. I discussed the situation with my roommates, Lyn, Eva & Alan. We thought we needed to do something, because at this point, Kami was beginning to resemble a wild animal and had moved quickly from a bright-eyed new arrival in town to something almost not quite human. It was very disturbing.
Alan & the girls came to hang out at the Hero House at about the time we thought we’d see Kami & JG. Sure enough, they arrived, JG holding on tightly. I offered to let Kami use the bathroom in back & told JG he couldn’t go in with her – there already was a longstanding policy that he couldn’t go in the back. Alan & the girls met her in the back & asked her if she wanted to get out, to escape JG. At this point, Kami seemed to have forgotten how to talk, but she nodded, so off they went & put Kami up in our spare bedroom.
She had gotten to be like a wild animal. She barely spoke. Her eyes were darting around constantly. When we gave her food, she shoved it into her mouth. She was starving, filthy, and apparently drug-addled. The girls bathed her and dressed her in some fresh clothes of theirs. Over time, we combed the tangled, matted hair out, and got her fed. Whatever drugs there were wore off, but it was taking time for the after-effects of her time in the bus with JG to be healed. We managed to get her parents’ names & phone number from her and called them in Wisconsin. We suggested they had best come soon, for their daughter seemed to be in peril. We warned them that their daughter needed help & that they might no longer recognize her personality.
One day, we got home to find that Kami had disappeared from the house. We were panicked. Had JG figured out where we lived in Santa Barbara? Had he cast his Jim Morrison-like spell over her again? Fortunately not. Kami’s parents called a week later to tell us that they had come to the house, had taken Kami home and that she was getting psychiatric help. Her bright eyes were starting to come back, and they were grateful.
After losing Kami, JG seemed to get very dark for a while. Now he was always angry when we saw him, and looked a bit haunted himself. The leather clothes were falling apart, the owner of the bus had returned to throw him out & JG seemed to feel he had lost something. Soon though, with the transitional ease of the addled, the wacky JG returned. He was back to laughing at life, back to being manic under the influence of caffeine, and nearly normal under cannabinol. But I must say that my roommates, my coworkers and I never saw him again in the same innocent light as a harmless wacko.
Whale of a tale
Man meets whale
My friend Bob went out on a boat. He’s a thin guy, but he came back flatter.
Bob & Vicki went out on Gerry’s new 27’ Bayliner. A beauty of a boat, and its maiden voyage was out in beautiful Santa Barbara Harbor. A perfect day full of whale watchers and grey whales.
Once they got out a little ways, enjoying a legendary Santa Barbara fall afternoon on the water, Bob noticed a large shape dive close by.
He called out to Gerry, “a whale sounded pretty close to the boat. You might want to watch where we’re going?”
Gerry asked, “Where’d it go down?”
Bob pointed, “over the….” and Bob’s world got very dark. A mother grey whale surfaced and leapt up at exactly the point Bob was pointing, blotting out sky, ocean and everything else from Bob’s consciousness except dark. As he was going down, Bob looked up to see Gerry getting knocked off the pilothouse, and the pilothouse getting shattered. He felt himself being pushed toward the back of the boat, knowing that no one was at the controls to stop the props. He didn’t want to end up chum in the harbor and tried to fight the great weight pushing him aft, pushing him towards those sharp, spinning props.
For Gerry’s part, as he went down, he saw Bob’s face framed in the whale’s flukes. In other circumstances, it might have been a funny picture.
As Bob’s body, ribs cracking, was pushed into the railing, the weight of the whale caused the boat to keel partway over. The whale rolled off Bob and off the boat. Bob took his first breath in a minute, and wished he hadn’t as the cracked ribs punctured his lung.
When the grey rolled off, it came back to the boat & rubbed its fluke al the way down its length before diving to join its calf.
Moments later, a whale-watching boat happened by. People on the boat leaned over to get a better look, and to take pictures of the wrecked boat and the potential tragedy of the skinny guy with the long black hair gasping for breath in the bottom of the boat, amidst the blubber & flesh the behemoth had left behind. As Bob was later told me, “there was enough whale meat left behind to have a barbecue for everyone on the boat and their families on the shore.” But then the boat went on by.
Another minute or two and some heroes in Coast Guard uniforms came upon the scene. They pushed Bob across the deck onto a stretcher and took him to a local hospital. They cut off his clothes and found 10 or 20 pounds of whale blubber inside.
His pal, Gerry the boat owner, was not badly injured. Miraculously, Bob’s wife Vicki sustained not even a scratch. Bob & Vicki’s phone had 128 messages from the media the next day.
As Gerry stood by Bob’s bedside in the hospital, the phone rang yet again. “Bob,” it’s the Montel Williams show. They want to talk with you.”
“I…..can’t….barely breathe….don’t want….to…..talk.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”
The phone answered, “But everyone wants to talk to Montel.”
This apparently had immediate but temporary curative effects, for Bob was able to growl out an entire sentence, “F**k Montel!”
The story went into the papers, Bob came back to work after a little while, leaning on a cane, trying not to laugh, or otherwise breathe too much.
It’s hard to believe, for (I am told) only two other people have ever survived being landed on by a whale!
I was talking to Vicki in her shop, The Silver Gypsy. What was it like? I wondered.
“Well, it was scary. And it was over almost before I could react. I still can hardly believe it. And it was the first time I had ever been out in deep water in a boat! So, as it turns out, 100% of the time I’ve been out in a boat, some giant water creature landed on it!”
Interesting odds...
“Yes,” she said, “if I ever go out in a boat again, it’s going to be at Loch Ness. And I’m taking a camera.
By the way - the Silver Gypsy in Santa Maria, California has every kind of cool and unusual little perfume, knife, incense, herb, figurine – “gifts for the soul.” And everything a happy pagan might want as well. You should give it a visit if you’re ever in town. And let one-in-a-billion Bob or Vicki tell you a real whale tail.
My friend Bob went out on a boat. He’s a thin guy, but he came back flatter.
Bob & Vicki went out on Gerry’s new 27’ Bayliner. A beauty of a boat, and its maiden voyage was out in beautiful Santa Barbara Harbor. A perfect day full of whale watchers and grey whales.
Once they got out a little ways, enjoying a legendary Santa Barbara fall afternoon on the water, Bob noticed a large shape dive close by.
He called out to Gerry, “a whale sounded pretty close to the boat. You might want to watch where we’re going?”
Gerry asked, “Where’d it go down?”
Bob pointed, “over the….” and Bob’s world got very dark. A mother grey whale surfaced and leapt up at exactly the point Bob was pointing, blotting out sky, ocean and everything else from Bob’s consciousness except dark. As he was going down, Bob looked up to see Gerry getting knocked off the pilothouse, and the pilothouse getting shattered. He felt himself being pushed toward the back of the boat, knowing that no one was at the controls to stop the props. He didn’t want to end up chum in the harbor and tried to fight the great weight pushing him aft, pushing him towards those sharp, spinning props.
For Gerry’s part, as he went down, he saw Bob’s face framed in the whale’s flukes. In other circumstances, it might have been a funny picture.
As Bob’s body, ribs cracking, was pushed into the railing, the weight of the whale caused the boat to keel partway over. The whale rolled off Bob and off the boat. Bob took his first breath in a minute, and wished he hadn’t as the cracked ribs punctured his lung.
When the grey rolled off, it came back to the boat & rubbed its fluke al the way down its length before diving to join its calf.
Moments later, a whale-watching boat happened by. People on the boat leaned over to get a better look, and to take pictures of the wrecked boat and the potential tragedy of the skinny guy with the long black hair gasping for breath in the bottom of the boat, amidst the blubber & flesh the behemoth had left behind. As Bob was later told me, “there was enough whale meat left behind to have a barbecue for everyone on the boat and their families on the shore.” But then the boat went on by.
Another minute or two and some heroes in Coast Guard uniforms came upon the scene. They pushed Bob across the deck onto a stretcher and took him to a local hospital. They cut off his clothes and found 10 or 20 pounds of whale blubber inside.
His pal, Gerry the boat owner, was not badly injured. Miraculously, Bob’s wife Vicki sustained not even a scratch. Bob & Vicki’s phone had 128 messages from the media the next day.
As Gerry stood by Bob’s bedside in the hospital, the phone rang yet again. “Bob,” it’s the Montel Williams show. They want to talk with you.”
“I…..can’t….barely breathe….don’t want….to…..talk.”
“He doesn’t want to talk to you right now.”
The phone answered, “But everyone wants to talk to Montel.”
This apparently had immediate but temporary curative effects, for Bob was able to growl out an entire sentence, “F**k Montel!”
The story went into the papers, Bob came back to work after a little while, leaning on a cane, trying not to laugh, or otherwise breathe too much.
It’s hard to believe, for (I am told) only two other people have ever survived being landed on by a whale!
I was talking to Vicki in her shop, The Silver Gypsy. What was it like? I wondered.
“Well, it was scary. And it was over almost before I could react. I still can hardly believe it. And it was the first time I had ever been out in deep water in a boat! So, as it turns out, 100% of the time I’ve been out in a boat, some giant water creature landed on it!”
Interesting odds...
“Yes,” she said, “if I ever go out in a boat again, it’s going to be at Loch Ness. And I’m taking a camera.
By the way - the Silver Gypsy in Santa Maria, California has every kind of cool and unusual little perfume, knife, incense, herb, figurine – “gifts for the soul.” And everything a happy pagan might want as well. You should give it a visit if you’re ever in town. And let one-in-a-billion Bob or Vicki tell you a real whale tail.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Truthiness Vs. Distypic
May the Better Word Win
Okay, this entry isn’t strictly about an interesting character that I have known. Although Stephen Colbert is an interesting character, I don’t know him - yet I love his character – go figure. Colbert’s word, “truthiness,” received the American Dialect Society’s 2005 Word of the Year award. It’s a great word and reflective of our times and our current leaders and yet, it’s a word that only comes up in discussion about either contemporary events, or about Colbert himself.
But what about a word that comes to mind every single dang time that I type? I have no trouble reading, I have no trouble writing, I have no trouble spelling words – not even ones like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. But typing! Why didn’t anyone ever teach me to type? Nearly every time I intend to type “to” it comes out “ot.” There are so many times I’ve edited something I wrote late at night and added words to the dictionary inadvertently that ”ot“ doesn’t look weird to my spellchecker anymore. “From” is almost always “form.” No respectable spell checker will reject “form.” When I am IM-ing, I can be almost indecipherable. Sure, you know what I’m talking about when I mention my iPid, but how about when I pone my phone – or when “but typing” becomes “butt ping?” Please!
It’s a condition, it’s a syndrome, it’s a disease – it at least deserves its own word. And that word is…”distypic.” Yes, my name is Steve Burgess and I’m distypic. My kids have known this since they were little and tease me about going to Distypics Anonymous – “DA-DA’” they cry.
I don’t get no respect!
So here’s my own little attempt to manipulate the language. Distypic is a far more useful word than truthiness because it applies far more often. It’s not truthy for your fingers to betray you in this way – it’s distypic.
Where can I look for help?
The other day, I posted an article about what happens when hard disks make loud noises, which is posted here. In my real life, I do data recovery and computer forensics.
The spellchecker didn’t like distypic – can you imagine? It wants to substitute “dactylic!” Like that’s a real word anyway…
I went to the web and asked for a definition. Define: distypic – no results. Wikipedia – no results. Webster’s – don’t even get me started. It’s not even in the Funk’n Wagnall’s.
I just posted the article. Lo and behold, a week later, when I Googled “distypic,” there it was! Two entries! It’s a revolution!!!
So I’m making my stand. Distypic. A term for an entire generation of boomers who never learned to type but have to do so anyhow. Distypic.
And that’s The Wrod.
Okay, this entry isn’t strictly about an interesting character that I have known. Although Stephen Colbert is an interesting character, I don’t know him - yet I love his character – go figure. Colbert’s word, “truthiness,” received the American Dialect Society’s 2005 Word of the Year award. It’s a great word and reflective of our times and our current leaders and yet, it’s a word that only comes up in discussion about either contemporary events, or about Colbert himself.
But what about a word that comes to mind every single dang time that I type? I have no trouble reading, I have no trouble writing, I have no trouble spelling words – not even ones like pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, or Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. But typing! Why didn’t anyone ever teach me to type? Nearly every time I intend to type “to” it comes out “ot.” There are so many times I’ve edited something I wrote late at night and added words to the dictionary inadvertently that ”ot“ doesn’t look weird to my spellchecker anymore. “From” is almost always “form.” No respectable spell checker will reject “form.” When I am IM-ing, I can be almost indecipherable. Sure, you know what I’m talking about when I mention my iPid, but how about when I pone my phone – or when “but typing” becomes “butt ping?” Please!
It’s a condition, it’s a syndrome, it’s a disease – it at least deserves its own word. And that word is…”distypic.” Yes, my name is Steve Burgess and I’m distypic. My kids have known this since they were little and tease me about going to Distypics Anonymous – “DA-DA’” they cry.
I don’t get no respect!
So here’s my own little attempt to manipulate the language. Distypic is a far more useful word than truthiness because it applies far more often. It’s not truthy for your fingers to betray you in this way – it’s distypic.
Where can I look for help?
The other day, I posted an article about what happens when hard disks make loud noises, which is posted here. In my real life, I do data recovery and computer forensics.
The spellchecker didn’t like distypic – can you imagine? It wants to substitute “dactylic!” Like that’s a real word anyway…
I went to the web and asked for a definition. Define: distypic – no results. Wikipedia – no results. Webster’s – don’t even get me started. It’s not even in the Funk’n Wagnall’s.
I just posted the article. Lo and behold, a week later, when I Googled “distypic,” there it was! Two entries! It’s a revolution!!!
So I’m making my stand. Distypic. A term for an entire generation of boomers who never learned to type but have to do so anyhow. Distypic.
And that’s The Wrod.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Grumpy (but sweet) Old Lady
Nana Florence
My mother’s adoptive mother. How I loved her, this lady with three teeth, thin grey hair dyed orange, always ready with a laugh or a grumble. She lived on the East coast & we lived on the West. I met her when I was little. I’m Anglo, but was always outdoors and inherited Mediterranean skin from my Spanish grandfather. So when Nana saw me for the first time, she told my mother, “Joan, he’s two shades lighter than a nigger!” She was crass but innocent, big-hearted but grumpy.
After Grandpa Joe died, she lived alone for years in an apartment with her beloved Pekingnese. What a nasty little dog! But she loved it completely. She would cook hamburgers and the occasional steak for the little pug-nosed creature. She would take a licorice whip and have a tug of war with the slobbery little thing. When they were done, she’d eat the (tenderized) licorice!
She came to live with us in California when I was in high school. We picked her up at LAX and we heard about the flight for much of the drive home. She had never flown before, and was not versed in the laws of aerodynamics. The stewardesses (as cabin attendants were known in those days) had been handing out drinks in coach, which she thought was nice. Then they went behind the curtains to first class, which Nana thought was the cockpit. She looked out the window and down at the clouds that just seemed to sit there motionless. She became very indignant as she told the story. “Didn’t they know there were people trying to get to California? How dare those pilots stop the plane to have a drink!”
After a few hours on the road (which has some stories of its own) we arrived home in Goleta, just outside Santa Barbara. Goleta has a LOT of avocado trees, and my mom loved ‘em (still does). Nana had heard of these “alligator pears” (as avos were called in Boston) but had never tried one. We were sitting around the table, and she said she had heard great things about these alligator pears, so we presented her with one. She looked it all over, then took a big bite with those three teeth of hers. Such a face you never saw! “How can you eat one of these? I can barely bite through the skin!”
Nana was one of those people who classically picked and chose from science, medicine, religion, and whatever else she chose to believe in. She would never accept that we had ever put a man on the Moon. “It’s all a hoax. If God had meant us to live on the Moon, he would have put us there!” She was diabetic and would religiously use those bitter little saccharin pills in her coffee, and eat candy for diabetics, but would tuck into ice cream, cakes, and cookies whenever the opportunity arose.
Nana loved to people-watch. One of her favorite things to do was to go to Solvang, a little Danish tourist village near Santa Barbara, and sit for hours, describing the people we were looking at. I feel she could have spent a happy lifetime, just seeing and commenting on the great variety of humankind for days without end. The one place that was too much for her was Isla Vista, home to many of the most interesting characters I’ve known. But IV’s street people were too much for her – too scary, and some of them talked to me, God forbid! That was just a little too weird and a little too real for her taste. She didn’t like “them dope fiends.” But I remember sitting with her in Boston Square, hearing her descriptions of all the people walking by (including the dope fiends). One guy in particular who had a moustache (no beard) that was combed straight down and hung almost to his chin sent her into paroxysms of laughter.
Her laugh was absolutely infectious. It was somewhere between a cackle and a belly laugh and went on so you could not help laughing yourself. She loved to sit in the old overstuffed rocker and watch the Country comedy-variety show, Hee-Haw. One time, Buck Owens was talking to someone in the Cornfield and cracked a joke. Nana started laughing like crazy, rocking back & forth. “AAHhhhhh-“ as she rocked back, then exploded with “HAHAHahahaha” rocking forward, “AAHhhhhh-“ back again, “HAHAHahahaha” forward. We all laughed so hard with her laugh, we were crying. But we hadn’t heard the joke.
“Nana, what did they say?”
“AAHhhhhh” - (back) – “I”- “HAHAHahahaha” (forward) – “don’t” – “AAHhhhhh” – (back) – “know! – HAHAHahahaha …” (forward)
One of her favorite jokes was one we told her:
“Did you hear the one about the three eggs?”
“No.”
“Too bad!” (two bad)
That would just send her into one of those delightful minute-long laughing fits. And she loved to tell the joke too. But here was her version.
“Did you hear about the three eggs? Two was rotten! Aaahhhhh – hahahahaha…”
For years, if we kids wanted to get a laugh out of each other we’d just say, “2 was rotten.”
Nana had the room right next to mine and I was glad she was a sound sleeper, because her window was right next to mine too. And I used my window to sneak nightly out of my room and up to my girlfriend’s house. Nana loved me, but I didn’t know what she’d think of me sneaking out the window, onto an old tire I had sitting outside for the purpose, and up to Suzie’s. Scandalous! I also didn’t know if she’d think there were burglars and wake up yelling, so I was happy for that sound sleep.
When I was about 20, Nana started into a rapid and steep decline. She was at Goleta Valley Hospital, and I’d ride my bicycle out from where I lived in I.V. to visit her. She was in more and more pain. She barely had the energy to complain. One time, while I was sitting in her room and talking with her, she got to looking more and more uncomfortable. I asked her several times what was wrong and she demurred each time. Finally, with a grimace, she said, “Oh Hell, I’m a dead woman anyway,” and told me, “I can’t move in the bed and I’m getting sores under my tit.” It cost her a lot of pride to say that, so I lifted that long empty bag and put baby powder on her chest. That seemed to be the last barrier between us, and I found we could talk about absolutely anything after that.
I told her stories about my life I wouldn’t have told anyone else. I told her details I wouldn’t tell a priest in Confession, things that might make a madame blush. The only things that would make her laugh at this point were dirty jokes and stories. I told her the absolutely most off-color jokes I knew. If my mother was visiting Nana’s room (which she almost always was), then I had to send her out of the room to tell Nana the stories! She would laugh so hard that it hurt, But she preferred laughing and hurting to just dying and hurting, so she asked for more.
I told her about sneaking up to Suzie’s at night. It turns out that she knew! She just hadn’t let on to anyone. She did finally let it slip to my mom in those final weeks, but it was water under the bridge by that time. She knew the punch line to the three eggs joke, by the way. My mom told me that Nana had said she just told it with the “two was rotten” punch line because that made us kids laugh more than the real joke.
My mom called me to say that she didn’t think Nana had much time left. I jumped on my bicycle and sped down to Nana’s bedside. But when I got there, she had let her last breath go a minute before. I kissed her still-warm forehead and stood by her side as the color drained from her – as she went from pale to waxy – as her body went from human to thing.
I know she knew I got there. Because I still feel her from time to time.
Nana loved me unequivocally. I sense she still does. At a time when I was doubting myself, she showed me a picture. It was me in her arms. She said – “I loved you and you didn’t even have to do anything.”
I still get a happy feeling when I talk to a good-hearted but grumpy old person. It’s like having a little bit of Nana again.
My mother’s adoptive mother. How I loved her, this lady with three teeth, thin grey hair dyed orange, always ready with a laugh or a grumble. She lived on the East coast & we lived on the West. I met her when I was little. I’m Anglo, but was always outdoors and inherited Mediterranean skin from my Spanish grandfather. So when Nana saw me for the first time, she told my mother, “Joan, he’s two shades lighter than a nigger!” She was crass but innocent, big-hearted but grumpy.
After Grandpa Joe died, she lived alone for years in an apartment with her beloved Pekingnese. What a nasty little dog! But she loved it completely. She would cook hamburgers and the occasional steak for the little pug-nosed creature. She would take a licorice whip and have a tug of war with the slobbery little thing. When they were done, she’d eat the (tenderized) licorice!
She came to live with us in California when I was in high school. We picked her up at LAX and we heard about the flight for much of the drive home. She had never flown before, and was not versed in the laws of aerodynamics. The stewardesses (as cabin attendants were known in those days) had been handing out drinks in coach, which she thought was nice. Then they went behind the curtains to first class, which Nana thought was the cockpit. She looked out the window and down at the clouds that just seemed to sit there motionless. She became very indignant as she told the story. “Didn’t they know there were people trying to get to California? How dare those pilots stop the plane to have a drink!”
After a few hours on the road (which has some stories of its own) we arrived home in Goleta, just outside Santa Barbara. Goleta has a LOT of avocado trees, and my mom loved ‘em (still does). Nana had heard of these “alligator pears” (as avos were called in Boston) but had never tried one. We were sitting around the table, and she said she had heard great things about these alligator pears, so we presented her with one. She looked it all over, then took a big bite with those three teeth of hers. Such a face you never saw! “How can you eat one of these? I can barely bite through the skin!”
Nana was one of those people who classically picked and chose from science, medicine, religion, and whatever else she chose to believe in. She would never accept that we had ever put a man on the Moon. “It’s all a hoax. If God had meant us to live on the Moon, he would have put us there!” She was diabetic and would religiously use those bitter little saccharin pills in her coffee, and eat candy for diabetics, but would tuck into ice cream, cakes, and cookies whenever the opportunity arose.
Nana loved to people-watch. One of her favorite things to do was to go to Solvang, a little Danish tourist village near Santa Barbara, and sit for hours, describing the people we were looking at. I feel she could have spent a happy lifetime, just seeing and commenting on the great variety of humankind for days without end. The one place that was too much for her was Isla Vista, home to many of the most interesting characters I’ve known. But IV’s street people were too much for her – too scary, and some of them talked to me, God forbid! That was just a little too weird and a little too real for her taste. She didn’t like “them dope fiends.” But I remember sitting with her in Boston Square, hearing her descriptions of all the people walking by (including the dope fiends). One guy in particular who had a moustache (no beard) that was combed straight down and hung almost to his chin sent her into paroxysms of laughter.
Her laugh was absolutely infectious. It was somewhere between a cackle and a belly laugh and went on so you could not help laughing yourself. She loved to sit in the old overstuffed rocker and watch the Country comedy-variety show, Hee-Haw. One time, Buck Owens was talking to someone in the Cornfield and cracked a joke. Nana started laughing like crazy, rocking back & forth. “AAHhhhhh-“ as she rocked back, then exploded with “HAHAHahahaha” rocking forward, “AAHhhhhh-“ back again, “HAHAHahahaha” forward. We all laughed so hard with her laugh, we were crying. But we hadn’t heard the joke.
“Nana, what did they say?”
“AAHhhhhh” - (back) – “I”- “HAHAHahahaha” (forward) – “don’t” – “AAHhhhhh” – (back) – “know! – HAHAHahahaha …” (forward)
One of her favorite jokes was one we told her:
“Did you hear the one about the three eggs?”
“No.”
“Too bad!” (two bad)
That would just send her into one of those delightful minute-long laughing fits. And she loved to tell the joke too. But here was her version.
“Did you hear about the three eggs? Two was rotten! Aaahhhhh – hahahahaha…”
For years, if we kids wanted to get a laugh out of each other we’d just say, “2 was rotten.”
Nana had the room right next to mine and I was glad she was a sound sleeper, because her window was right next to mine too. And I used my window to sneak nightly out of my room and up to my girlfriend’s house. Nana loved me, but I didn’t know what she’d think of me sneaking out the window, onto an old tire I had sitting outside for the purpose, and up to Suzie’s. Scandalous! I also didn’t know if she’d think there were burglars and wake up yelling, so I was happy for that sound sleep.
When I was about 20, Nana started into a rapid and steep decline. She was at Goleta Valley Hospital, and I’d ride my bicycle out from where I lived in I.V. to visit her. She was in more and more pain. She barely had the energy to complain. One time, while I was sitting in her room and talking with her, she got to looking more and more uncomfortable. I asked her several times what was wrong and she demurred each time. Finally, with a grimace, she said, “Oh Hell, I’m a dead woman anyway,” and told me, “I can’t move in the bed and I’m getting sores under my tit.” It cost her a lot of pride to say that, so I lifted that long empty bag and put baby powder on her chest. That seemed to be the last barrier between us, and I found we could talk about absolutely anything after that.
I told her stories about my life I wouldn’t have told anyone else. I told her details I wouldn’t tell a priest in Confession, things that might make a madame blush. The only things that would make her laugh at this point were dirty jokes and stories. I told her the absolutely most off-color jokes I knew. If my mother was visiting Nana’s room (which she almost always was), then I had to send her out of the room to tell Nana the stories! She would laugh so hard that it hurt, But she preferred laughing and hurting to just dying and hurting, so she asked for more.
I told her about sneaking up to Suzie’s at night. It turns out that she knew! She just hadn’t let on to anyone. She did finally let it slip to my mom in those final weeks, but it was water under the bridge by that time. She knew the punch line to the three eggs joke, by the way. My mom told me that Nana had said she just told it with the “two was rotten” punch line because that made us kids laugh more than the real joke.
My mom called me to say that she didn’t think Nana had much time left. I jumped on my bicycle and sped down to Nana’s bedside. But when I got there, she had let her last breath go a minute before. I kissed her still-warm forehead and stood by her side as the color drained from her – as she went from pale to waxy – as her body went from human to thing.
I know she knew I got there. Because I still feel her from time to time.
Nana loved me unequivocally. I sense she still does. At a time when I was doubting myself, she showed me a picture. It was me in her arms. She said – “I loved you and you didn’t even have to do anything.”
I still get a happy feeling when I talk to a good-hearted but grumpy old person. It’s like having a little bit of Nana again.
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
A Young Man's Lament
Sitting outside in the sun at Perry’s Pizza, drinking beer with the guys in 1975, watching the bicycles go by.
By Steve Burgess
Passing by, they’re passing by.
There’s certain joy in observation,
But always comes the inclination
To call out, “Hi!”
To touch her thigh,
They’re passing by.
Yearning grows, it overflows,
It makes a man feel near psychotic
To get inside and get meiotic.
You feel a push,
To touch her tush,
They’re passing by.
Love comes and goes,
You never know
When you’ll find her in your mind
But all the time,
You feel the prime
Expediency’s
To slip, then see if she’ll stand by.
Lose your smile when she stays a while.
Usually turns out wrong in the end.
You never wanted to be her friend,
Just want to touch
What you want so much.
They’re passing by.
By Steve Burgess
Passing by, they’re passing by.
There’s certain joy in observation,
But always comes the inclination
To call out, “Hi!”
To touch her thigh,
They’re passing by.
Yearning grows, it overflows,
It makes a man feel near psychotic
To get inside and get meiotic.
You feel a push,
To touch her tush,
They’re passing by.
Love comes and goes,
You never know
When you’ll find her in your mind
But all the time,
You feel the prime
Expediency’s
To slip, then see if she’ll stand by.
Lose your smile when she stays a while.
Usually turns out wrong in the end.
You never wanted to be her friend,
Just want to touch
What you want so much.
They’re passing by.
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