13 Dec 2000 
 
Oh Lord, have mercy on me. 
 
Actually, there's not much wrong with me, I just want to put some stuff 
up.  As I've remarked before, I know I haven't been putting much in here since 
I started livejournal, but if one notes the entries to livejournal that I do, 
it's not anything I would've put here to begin with. 
 
Also, one may wonder, if I actually prefer this method of posting, do I not 
use blogger?  Because I predate blogger!  Look at this baby -- it goes all the 
way back to 1996!  These web pages go back to 1993 (though they've moved a bit 
over time - Stu tells me the digital cable is in, so I can update marypat.org 
every morning as well, and can make =it= my default web site.  About damn 
time.) 
 
So let's see what notes I wrote while on the subway this frosty morn: 
 
I'm too tired to flesh this out right now.  I've found that LaTeX does margin 
notes, and visions of smart-assed prose booklets on fractals and whatnot may 
be in the works.  Perhaps I can do an adult and a kiddie version. 
 
So here's my notes from my pocket notebook, verbatim: 
 
truth is selected for (as is extremely skillful lying) -> =but= mainly useful 
for senses.  If illusions were major players... blah blah blah 
look at illusions to see assumptions, way the world works 
 
Tesla & photons =no mass= -> fields -> see how complicated it is?  Why 
waves?  all the virtual photons 
 
movies - portray faster than we can see - can't see quanta of time, light 
moving, individual spokes spinning, computer screens refreshing -etc. 
 
What in the real world moves that fast that we =need= to see to 
survive?  lightning-fast amphibian tongues? (we aren't flies) 
 
"The psychologist Paul Ekman created a furor in anthropology by showing that 
isolated New Guinean highlanders could recognize the facial expressions in 
photographs of Berkeley students.  (Emotions, like everything else, were 
thought to be culturally relative.)  Lost in the brouhaha was a more basic 
discovery: that the New Guineans were seeing things in the photographs at all 
rather than treating them as blotchy gray paper.)" (from How the Mind Works, 
Steven Pinker) 
 
bigger margins in books!  margin notes in LaTeX.  Concrete Math. 
 
 
So a few comments right now - last night I stayed up way too late because, by 
accident, I saw that a program on Tesla was starting - and Stuart is enamored 
of Tesla.  He was, indeed, a rather smart man, but unfortunately got 
sidetracked by what he wanted to be true rather than what he figured out could 
be done.  He made all sorts of improvements based on Faraday's ideas for 
alternating current, and Maxwell's ideas of light as an electromagnetic wave - 
and thus developed AC generators and some radio transmitters.  He sure got 
screwed over by several people, not the least being Thomas Edison who also 
fell into the trap of wanting something to be true - that DC was better than 
AC (which, unfortunately for him, it wasn't.  DC is good only if you carry 
your generator around with you and it's at the voltage you want.  AC you can 
change to any voltage you want with little loss.)  Semi-amusing was how Edison 
was somewhat tarnished (for modern viewers, that is) by footage of some 
anti-AC propaganda his people did -- they electrocuted an elephant with 
AC.  Obviously, one couldn't do such a demonstration today. 
 
In any case, Tesla himself became enamored of the idea of being able to 
wirelessly transmit electrical power - something I've thought about myself in 
wanting to have outer space solar energy stations set up, and the power beamed 
to Earth somehow.  In any case, Tesla never did get it done in any practical 
way ("the lost papers of Tesla" notwithstanding), and also his dream of ending 
war was also unfulfilled.  I assume when people talk about ending war nowadays 
they mean the stop to mass-killing and similar bloodshed.  I do not believe 
there will ever be an end to violence as long as people are around -- violence 
is a highly effective tool in achieving many ends - look at the results of IRA 
and Palestinian terrorism - forcing opposite sides to negotiate when they'd 
rather ignore the situation - look at how Serbia and other Balkan nations 
spread their boundaries through armed conflict.  It seems to have worked to 
me.   
 
In any case, Tesla's idea was to stop war by making an anti-armament defense 
universally available - something that would shoot missiles and airplanes out 
of the sky (SDI, if you will).  What people forget is that this will in no way 
stop war.  It just limits the weaponry to things such as man-to-man combat, 
landmines, biological and chemical warfare, and the like.  We need to admit 
that there will be conflict and then decide what is the best way to control 
damage and prevent too many unintended casualties (like with landmines). 
 
In any case, this goes back to anthropology, sociology, and psychology - too 
many researchers have agendas and do not admit them.  We shouldn't expect 
people to come to any field without some kind of an opinion - for example, I 
loathe Integrate & Fire models and want to see them die.  By being up front 
about that, I can try my best to address what the failings of I&F is compared 
to some other model and try my very best to put I&F in the best possible 
light.  I have to be open to the possibility that I&F might truly be the best 
there is. 
 
Decrying some research because you don't like the outcome is going to prevent 
any kind of understanding of what's actually happening, and will make one's 
own work look weak in the long run.  You've got to come up with better reasons 
for dismissing some results than "Of course emotional expressions must be 
different from culture to culture, because we know human behavior is 
infinitely malleable." or "We can't say that women are physically weaker than 
men because we want to say both genders are equal."   
 
It makes me want to say Ha! 
 
HA!