A Curious Statistical Anomaly

For some reason this has been a bad week for me — migraines, bad fibro days, and let us not forget the poison ivy. Luckily, the poison ivy (cross every set of fingers within ten miles) looks like it’s not going to go systemic on me this time. My right arm has pretty much cleared up. The left is taking longer for some reason but it’s not weeping and not spreading, so that’s a win.

We’re coming up on the publishing date for SFRevu and Gumshoe Review and things are a bit hectic. Most of the content is in as far as the book reviews go. I’ve got the interview for Gumshoe Review in and formatted and just need to write an introduction (I’m doing that interview). For SFRevu one of our regular contributors is doing the interview and I’m on pins and needles waiting for it.

For the next few days, I have to write up my reviews. Every month I say next month I’ll read the book and write the review in that order before reading a second book. But, somehow each month I find myself with a pile of read books filled with notes, sticky notes, highlighted passages, and no reviews in evidence. Then it comes down to lots and lots of coffee and writing, writing, writing (interspersed with coffee, coffee, coffee). It usually comes out okay in the end but it makes for some tense time just at the end of the month when the crunch comes.

Of course, having the unexpected come up during the same time period — we’ve been having a lot of severe storm warnings and have lost power for seconds and minutes at a time (no long outages thankfully). However, the worse unexpected occurrence is increased migraines with stormy weather. (I know it’s not just me because my husband gave me a reality check — our friends with migraines have also been afflicted.)

The creativity of the title is that, I’ve been jotting down notes and sentences for a short story idea I have. Just when I think I’m all focused on a project or reading or something — I’m shiny thinged. For those of you who don’t know, it often happens that people with migraines and fibro have trouble focusing and staying focused. Once I’m interrupted by something, I find myself shooting off in some other direction and working on things other than what I planned. If you’ve every read that joke going around on the internet about going to the store — first they have to find the car keys, then they see the bills need to be paid, then they go to find the checkbook, but notice the floor needs to be swept…and on and on. That’s being shiny thinged.

I just feel like of all the billion of things I want to do in a day, there just isn’t the time to do them all and I have a terrible time trying to focus on the list, choosing the things that can be done in the time period because I want to do them all. Or most of them. Or at least some of them. Today was a really bad day. It took almost all my spoons to get dressed, treat the poison ivy, get downstairs, pick up the dining room table, start the laptop, download mail, get breakfast, and read email, answer same, and start proofing and formatting reviews. Now it’s evening and I’m all caught up on everyone’s stuff but my own. So, I guess with 3 days left to go that’s a good thing — but it still feels like there so much left to do. And did I mention I have a sweater almost done that I need to write the pattern up for? Never enough time.

I remember that I first saw George Carlin on The Mike Douglas Show. I loved his strange views of what should be totally mundane. Later, I learned he was a stand up comedian and had stood up against censorship with 7 little words you can’t say on TV.

Today, I opened CNN.com and saw that he’d died of heart problems. How could anyone with a heart that big die? His humor, though often ribald and on the edge, was never cruel. It often raised more questions after the laughter died away. He was a social commentator. Most comedians, at least to my mind the ones that have lasting power, are not just telling jokes but making observations on society and humanity. Carlin saw the absurd in our society and brought it out into the light so we could all take a look at it. He fought constantly against censorship and held a mirror up to us so we could see ourselves from the outside. He looked at relationships, cats, broadcasting, trends, fashion, just about everything — with a sharp wit, light mockery, and humor.

The world will go on. Silliness will be prevalent in society. He will be missed and I, for one, will miss his humorous take on daily life here on planet Earth.

Remember physics class in high school where they give you the box and you’re supposed to shine a light through some holes and see light as waves but it passes through the holes as particles? This photo brought it all back. Isn’t it great?

The photo is from an article in New ScientistTech. Among other things:

Researchers have found a way to generate the shortest-ever flash of light – 80 attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second) long.

Such flashes have already been used to capture an image of a laser pulse too short to be “photographed” before. (The photo with this post.)

Remember me, science geek? I just thought the photo was “cool” — yeah, I’m dating myself but so what. Imagine taking a photo of light. That long ago science class project just seems even more real to me now.

With this technology, they believe they may be able to photograph electrons going around a atom.  Well, it beats trying to shrink a man/woman to go take a look for them and sending back sketches that have to be enlarged.  Oh, don’t tell me you didn’t watch The Incredible Shrinking Man and think at the end “I wonder what he’ll see when he gets really small?” I can’t be the only one who wondered what happened next.

Now, I wonder what will these scientists do next?

I ran across this Wired article that mentioned an article in the March issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry that internet addiction be included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.  Really, people get a grip.

This is the kind of stuff that causes non-psychologists/psychiatrists to believe that all mental disorders are bunk.  Addiction is a real problem and some people, especially those with addictive personalities can become addiction to just about anything: drugs, alcohol, gambling, people. In other words,  just because some people get addicted to the internet, it doesn’t mean that the internet causes the addiction. There is nothing inherent in using the internet that causes people to become addicted to it.  When someone exhibits addictive behavior it is far better to first look at what else is going on in that person’s life.

Many of us in the computer field/industry use computers daily and nearly continuously for hours.  Are we addicted? No, we’re working.  On the other hand, a lonely person who’s bullied at home, school, or work may turn to the internet for the interactions and support that they are missing in their daily lives.  A relative of mine spent hours on the internet, everyone claimed she was addicted to it.  But in point of fact, she was miserable in her life and was not getting any support at home or from her family.  Addicted? It seemed that way but once she got divorced and remarried to someone she met over the internet the constant hours on line ended because she didn’t need the escape the internet was providing.

There is a fine line between addiction and use as a relief valve or escape from an unpleasant situation.  Labeling internet use over a certain number of hours, checking of email, desire to upgrade equipment, and so on as indicators of addiction seem to always come from people who don’t work on computers or write code for a living.

Before deciding to label something an addiction, it would be better to actually study the use patterns across groups controlling for profession, life style, and other factors — this wouldn’t be brought up to the association.  Perhaps if doctors learned to use computers as a tool to communicate information and assistance to their patients, they too might begin to check their email and consider upgrading their equipment and software.

There needs to be a lot more research and serious study of the issue before even contemplating adding another item to the book.

Not much to report on. Was going to skip posting tonight altogether but figured what the heck — hit the highlights.

* Went to Maryland Sheep and Wool on Saturday. Got some great sock yarn and one pound of soy silk to spin. I’m in heaven but haven’t been able to start spinning yet. Will post some pictures later.* Tomato seedlings are sprouting. I planted two different kinds of tomato seeds and only one has sprouted. I have hope for the others but how much longer do I hope for new sprouts. Got to start some more seedlings tomorrow.

* Finished Sara Beth Durst’s Out of the Wild. I’m reviewing it for SFRevu’s June issue so check there in June. But I loved the quirky take on fairy tales in Into the Wild and this one has a few more surprises.

* Started reading The Host by Stephanie Meyers, also for a June review. So, far I’m finding it an interesting take on alien invasion tropes.

* Pain, pain, go away and don’t come back another day. Today, I have a migraine. It’s all on the right side and after three Advil and an Imitrex — it’s still here, thumping away. So since I’m not thinking clearly anyway, I’m giving up.

So, it’s migraine fall back time, dark room and an ice pack. Doesn’t work but it feels good in this heat.

Have you ever noticed that flat surfaces attract clutter. I believe that if you have a house that has only a coffee table and one chair, and no one ever visits and no one lives there, that within a month the coffee table will be piled high with clutter — usually paper based clutter. Really, it happens to every flat surface in the world. I bet if you traveled to the center of the salt flats you’d find a huge pile of paper based clutter or tumble weeds (wood pulp or paper based in a squinted viewpoint). All flat surfaces attract clutter the minute you turn your back.

It seems lately hat my life is being taken over by a burning desire to have at least one flat surface in the house that is not cluttered. I’ve been clearing the dining room table for months now. Today, I achieved partial table top. I mean, I could actually see the wood surface of the table in places. Really, it’s been under so much stuff: books, papers, notes to self, magazines, knitting (usually socks), pens, envelopes, unopened mail, opened mail, various piles of mail, catalogs, …. I’m sure you get the picture. [Note the picture is the azalea bushes outside — no one gets to see the huge pile of clutter on the table because I’m sure as bad as you can imagine it — it’s worse.]

Last year I started to live to a plan to open and deal with all mail on the day it arrived. It either goes into the stack to get paid or the recycle bin or, if it has personal info, into the shredder, or it gets answered and then into the trash, a file, or the shredder. That seems to work pretty well but my desk is now the dining room table and things have gotten out of hand. Monday, I decided this has got to stop. So yesterday and today all breaks have been spent clearing piles off the table and putting them where they belong. And today, I struck wood surface. I’m hoping by the end of tomorrow to have the whole surface cleaned to the point that I can have out my datebook and a notebook and put it away each night and have a clear table.

Sigh…it’s a wonderful thing to have a goal, a dream to work towards. It’s even better if that dream is achievable. I do so want to win one surface free of the flat surface clutter curse.

I was at a meeting a week or so ago and a friend mentioned that they’re doing a fund raising party for cancer and calling it Liver for Boobs. Raising money for breast cancer research is something that I’m committed to since I was diagnosed with breast cancer six years ago. While mine was found very early and I just had a lumpectomy, my mother and my uncle both had to have mastectomies. So, before I knew what I was doing, my mouth opened and I said, “I can knit you a boob or two and maybe a liver for your event.”

Then I get home and the panic sets in. What was I thinking. A quick search found a pattern for a boob but it couldn’t be sold, only made for personal use — wasn’t sure whether fund raisers counted so gave it a pass (Yes, I know I should have checked but I was under a deadline here). I looked at the photo and decided it couldn’t be that difficult, after all I’ve got two of my own to build a design on. In the past, I’ve done several circular objects: hats, tea cozies, bowls (felted), so the basics should be the same. I ended up making two different ones, each in one piece using the top down sweater increase only knitting one row and decreasing 6 stitches or increasing 6 stitches in the next round depending on whether I was knitting up to the fold or decreasing down to the forward tip. (In the first you can see I tried increasing and decreasing on each row but I didn’t like the swirl that it made so on the second I did the increase and decrease ever other row and then spaced them randomly to get smoother look.

For the liver I found a pattern, which for some reason (probably the migraine I had the day I made it) I totally misread the pattern and did it back and forth instead of in the round. Because of that it was in garter stitch so then I had to keep it that way when I did figure out it should be in the round. But by then it was a lot of short rows so I could cope with keeping the garter stitch with an occasional stockinette row popping up here and there. Figure we’ll explain that the liver is from too much drinking to raise money — moderation in all things, etc., etc., and so forth. It’s not much of a liver, but that’s my fault — but it was for a good cause and if I ever knit another one, I’ll try to time it for a non-migraine/headache day — though duress does make for some interesting and weird results.  Someday I figure I might make a liver using the pattern as written to see what it would really look like — this one is only an approximation of a liver — if you squint.

So, I finished my promised boobs and the liver so they could have visuals at the party. Hopefully, they’ll have fun and raise money for a good cause. It was the least I could do since I don’t drink. But I must say, I never expected to knit body parts — but it was fun.

I’ve been thinking about the abstract comment:

While research on the acoustics of speech production indicates that a vocal tract with this shape is insufficient for producing quantal speech sounds resistant to articulatory error and perceptual confusion, other modeling studies suggest that Neanderthals could have possessed fully-articulate speech capabilities.

I’m thinking that since we’ve never heard the speech of a Neanderthal, we really don’t know what their language was like. They sure didn’t speak English. There are so many languages in the world and many that have components other than the vowels and consonants that we use in English. Some languages are tonal where the same words may mean different things depending on the notes the syllables hit when spoken. There’s a language that uses clicks in addition to sound. So, even if the Neanderthals couldn’t produce quantal speech, they may not have needed it because their language compensated for the lack somehow (lots of hand waving here).

In looking up the word quantal in Merriam-Webster’s Medical Dictionary:

being or relating to a sensitivity response marked by the presence or absence of a definite reaction (an all-or-none response to a stimulus is quantal)

It seems to me that the “quantal-ness” is in the hearer not the speaker. The listener adjusts for errors in articulation not the speaker. So isn’t this backwards? Just thinking because I’m not a linguist but I find that often science uses perfectly good words in ways that make clear understanding by laypeople a tad difficult. Looking at the above definition, I really think the onus of understanding is on the hearer, whether or not the speaker clearly enunciated each syllable, vowel, and/or consonant. Often, I have trouble understanding people who slur or lisp or otherwise have difficulty clearly speaking, but that’s may problem in understanding and their speech problem is a separate issue. I sometimes have problems understanding people who speak clearly (such as politicians) but that an entirely different issue.

I still think the research is amazing and I look forward to hearing a full sentence with their synthesizer but, I think the only way we’d know for sure what a Neanderthal actually sounded like and what their language was like is to invent a time machine and then, of course, we’d have all those pesky time travel tropes to deal with.

Hyperion here. Just thought I’d add one extra datapoint. Several years ago, we were in Scotland for the World Science Fiction Convention. Our hotel was right next door to a hole-in-the-wall fish and chips shoppe. We went in to place our order and the clerk asked me something. Could have been to describe quantum relativity as far as I knew. All I heard was incomprehensible gibberish. So I asked him to repeat it. He did … and it was just as nonsensical as the first time. The third time was just as bad. So I’m staring at him, he’s staring at me, and we both know that we’re not going to be getting anywhere. Then Gayle puts a hand on my shoulder, looks at the clerk, and says, “Let me translate for you … Would you like vinegar on your fish?”. I responded enthusiastically, and then the clerk just stared at us like we were nuts. Then he went off and got two meals ready for the crazy Americans.

But the fact was that he was speaking clearly (for a scotsman anyway), and Gayle could understand him fine. But his accent rendered his speech total opaque to my best efforts. So was the problem in his speaking or in my listening? Or both?