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Him many lemon, give air ember gum. [Apr. 29th, 2008|03:26 am]
"Snail bet mule, 'let our limbs pose, sir!'
Illumine synthesis leaves."
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Two Synthetic Limericks [Oct. 23rd, 2007|01:41 am]
I worked these up a couple of weeks ago. They aren't too terribly witty, but they rhyme alright, and as Swift sarcastically said, "if it rings well upon the knuckle, be sure there is no flaw in it."

A Chemist, gone mad with distraction
Hurled into the sea his reaction.
To atone for this loss
He was made by his boss
To recover it via extraction.

--

There once was a fellow from Stowles
Who bred cockroaches, rabbits, and voles
Asked how he could keep track
Of this prolific pack
He replied "I just count them in moles."

--

Oh! I have a new website. Right now it's only filler and fluff-- stylesheets, scripts, odds and broken ends; the domain name is a charmer, though. It's six characters, and I got the dot com too!
http://ataxon.us
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Post post. [Jun. 7th, 2007|12:22 am]
For a while now in the lab I've been working with a compound called diformylferrocene. I need it for the chemistry I do, it can't be bought, and it takes two days and maybe eight (inefficient) man hours for me to make it. This makes it a commodity of great value in the Diaconescu microcosm, and as such it is the object of perhaps more introspection than it deserves.

It is an interesting compound in its own right. Born from a mixture of opaque orange goop, it blooms into a deep, artificial red. It forms rocky, brittle, crystals that are almost black. It isn't toxic (I hope), but it is an "aromatic" compound-- which means one thing in the arcane world of Chemistry, but in real life means that it probably smells weird. It does, too! At first whiff I got the impression of mint, Play-Doh, and boing. I gathered the group to try for a scientific consensus. Colin thought it smelled like chocolate. Erin thought it smelled funny but couldn't say what it brought to mind. Nate just wrinkled his nose.

After a few minutes of monkey talk, the novelty of categorizing this strange new fruit wore off and we went back to work. I would still stick my nose over the vial before taking some out, would hold it up to the light and shake it a little, but no longer gave it any serious thought. After I while though, something started to happen. Y'see diformylferrocene is, like I said, a deep artificial red-- like cherry candy. And I found, after a few weeks of working with it regularly, that it had started to smell like cherry. Every time I caught the smell, the cherry was more distinct, more dominant. After a while it stopped smelling like mint or Play-Doh or any other weird thing-- it became cherry. It always *was* cherry. Diformylferrocene smells like cherry!

What's going on here? How can a thing that has nothing to do with actual cherries, and didn't smell like them at first, get that association in my brain? It's a testament to the flexability of the human brain, and actually it happens all the time without anyone noticing. Have you ever eaten Mexican watermelon candy? It doesn't taste anything like watermelon, does it? But then again, neither does a watermelon Jolly Rancher, if you think about it. Side by side, a real watermelon and a watermelon Jolly Rancher are about as similar as a miniature pony and a firetruck.

But! Every candy in the United States that says "watermelon" on it tastes like every other candy that says "watermelon" on it. And it's pink! Watermelons are also pink. The fact that watermelon candy tastes like nothing so much as Watermelon Candy makes little difference to your bendy, bendy, brain. Without thinking about it, your brain suspends its sensory disbelief. After all-- it no make monkey sick, it taste sweet. Why complain?



Well, it's like Democritus said-- "By convention sweet, by convention bitter, by convention hot, by convention cold, by convention color: but in reality atoms and void." It's an innocuous statement when the atoms are out of man's grasp. Sensations are caused by atoms-- but if you don't know anything about the atoms, who's to care? A pear is a pear is a pear. 'convention' assigns roughly one sensation to one object, and the sensations are produced mostly by the natural world. Here intuition works well.

The litany of progress, however, has delivered to us in the modern world a new kind of control. We can now manipulate the tastes and smells of every thing. This isn't bad, it's merely more complex. To get a good picture of this new world we need some new ideas, or rather, we have to be more conscious of our old ones. If 'watermelon' doesn't always mean a big green fruit with juicy pink pulp, then when we say 'watermelon' there is a little hint of ambiguity. The word is muddied, and slowly the idea will be too.

Of course this is natural-- a language is a big festering pool of words-- we always have to muck around to make ourselves clear. We can say "watermelon candy" is one flavor, and "watermelon" is another-- no harm done, you might say. Imagine, though, if watermelons were to disappear all of a sudden. 'Watermelon candy' could then just be called 'watermelon,' with no apparent ambiguity. The words are in competition, then.

In a hundred years we might call the green fleshy thing 'watermelon fruit' and leave the unmodified noun to the pink candy. An object, a taste, a unique sensation, would then have been eradicated. Worse than eradicated! Replaced-- not even remembered as an absence. This is all very paranoid and silly, but it bears remembering. I doubt man would, even if removed from nature entirely, ever forget completely the taste of "real" food, but stranger things have happened, and it would be a shame to lose the variety.
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LAUGHTER-CALM [Jan. 4th, 2007|01:15 am]
For 7 1/8ths of a second, in a cave, screams of very wild laughter come from the rear (then front) of a split pole, while calm ("a frozen numbness") comes from the front (then rear), giving a sensation of total disagreement.

"The trick is to conceive of both at the same time."

(From supplementary material regarding The Fishman Affidavit.)
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Beep Boop Breakdown [Nov. 3rd, 2006|07:12 pm]
Richter and many other scientists hope a shift in Congress will allow
moderate Republicans -- of which there are few in the House -- to
"stop being party robots."
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2.50 Chinese Food [Mar. 27th, 2006|03:18 pm]
I'm driving around on my lunch break, scouting the greater Sylmar area for takeout Chinese food and cheap coffee. I see something. Oops! Miss it. I turn, but too late. I'm in an uncharted parking lot. I see a sign. It says "Takeout Chinese food." I go in. I see a menu in front of the counter. It says "2.50." I wonder if it means the food. It does. A Chinese man standing behind the counter takes my order (there's nobody but him, me, and the cooks). I order the Mandarin Chicken. I'm told to wait 5 minutes. I go outside. I see another sign. It says "Coffee and Cream". I go in. I see a menu behind the counter. One line says "World Famous Mud Coffee." I have never heard of Mud Coffee. I think it sounds good. I ask for some Mud Coffee. The woman behind the counter says they don't serve it anymore, because it wasn't popular. I think that's too bad, but I order some regular old coffee anyway. It's 1.50 (plus another 1.50 to use the ATM-- but that's ok, because I don't think the "Takeout Chinese Food" people are going to take my credit card, so I need cash.) I go back to Takeout Chinese Food and wait for my Mandarin Chicken. I try to read the magazines, but they're all in Chinese. I look for Roman characters. The only thing I can find is "H A Y A O M I Y A Z A K I." I guess that makes sense. China and Japan use different alphabets. I put down the magazine. I get my Mandarin Chicken. I pay 2.50(!) I go back to the lab and open up my takeout container.

Amazing.

It's like normal takeout chinese food, but with much less meat. It turns out you don't *need* the meat. Most places just put it in there because you expect a lot of meat with your meal. These guys just weren't worried about that. I ate all of it. I was satisfied-- full, even.

Continued later. Time to close up the lab.
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Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. [Dec. 23rd, 2005|04:35 pm]
I don't know. I try to make a contribution to this internet thing. I try real hard sometimes. I think it's important. But it doesn't matter. I can't even make a dent. The internet belongs to the collective, and sometimes it's obvious. These things just spring up like mushrooms. It's damn magical.
Fantastic.

Big Mouth Billy Bass. A controversial man, but well liked. Popular, even. Why?

" Big Mouth Billy Bass is a very funny piece of comedy. It has the outer appearance of a well taxidermied fish, but is in actuality, a robotic singing fish. You just put Billy on a wall, table, bookshelf, endshelf, mantle or any other place at all, and when someone walks by, he starts singing a song and wiggling around. It is really funny because people don't expect it, because its a fish, and it looks dead, but it is actually not dead, it is robotic, and it can sing. You could really surprise a person in your office, or a child, or an older person with this. I'm certain that especially older peoples will fall for this gag, because often, the elderlies are not aware of technology.

A child might also like this, and it could possibly be used to teach songs to children in a group learning environment with a microphone and a speaker rig. Or perhaps a funny principal could have it in his office, and sometimes it would sing."

I don't know where this one really comes from. The guy who did the review hasn't reviewed anything else. Is this capitalism gone awry? He has that foreign mystique about him though, doesn't he? A sincerity that can only come from being utterly in over your head.


Some of these reviews are obviously satirical and some are by small children, but they aren't the real interest. There are some self proclaimed adults here.

"Steve", a reviewer of no little renown, says:

"This is a cute little device that will amuse people who have never seen it before. It's also useful to hear Billy Bass sing "Don't Worry, Be Happy" when you're a little depressed."

First an enigmatic traveler (do I detect the scent of cumin?) and now a man whose soul was lost long ago. I can almost feel the drudgery of an industrial workday fading into dull white light, pulsing to the rhythm-- "Take me to the river... Put me in the water..."

And then, just as we begin to fade into opiate induced coma...

BILLY BASS IS GOOD & VERY GOOD FISH> NO MATTER WHAT EVERY BODY THINK I T IS VERY GOOD IAM 35 YEAR OLD

And we are snapped to attention. This one I cannot explain. Small children do not have this kind of spelling-- and look, he used the ampersand. That's advanced.

He reminds me of a certain Fallen Idol.

Of course, not all of the reviewers are of the lower class:

"buy this cheesy fish for your friends. It's guaranteed to be the hit at a party. The fish is great for a party room."

This enigmatic globetrotter has found the perfect icebreaker. Ah! The marvels of the modern age!

And then a prophet of disturbing prescience, signed "The maw of hell, opened". After describing Big Mouth Billy Bass's shortcomings, he says:

"Dear God, please don't let them come up with a sequel. At least not before Christmas. The thought of a singing mounted deer head (or God forbid, moose) makes me shudder."

Of course, both these exist; the former in a sharper image catalogue, the latter at Six Flags Magic Mountain (its image I carry with me to this day, the only memory of The Most Depressing Restaurant In History too traumatic even to suppress.

But after this wisdom, another icepick to the skull:

"Great "ice breaker"
Think about "Billy" as an investment in someone's smile. What a great way to start up conversations with someone. No one can listen to the singing fish and not make SOME kind of comment! Even after the "new" wears off, it's funny to occasionally push the button when no one is suspecting and give 'em a little chuckle. Beware tho, the songs can get "stuck" in your head! Hey, life's short, be a little silly sometimes!"

Chilling. Life is short, O' gentle reader, and Big Mouth Billy Bass may be your last trainstop between this realm and the bleak halls of the underworld.

And then...

"Well if you like this sort of thing, then it is definately a knee slaper! But if you don't have a good sense of humor then you will find if a waste. I will say that it went over very well in my ENTIRE family, but, we tend to have a dry sense of humor. If you don't, then don't bother! If you do, well plan to laugh!"

Yes, a dry sense of humor.

I can't do anymore. It's just too much for me. Some people understand what's going on. Some of those reviewers have things straight. But those guys are there by mistake. They just wandered in. They wandered into a cultural party they just weren't ready for.

I mean, there's more. Protestations, disbelief, anger, apocalyptic dismay. Unadulterated joy, mirth, laughter, amusement, annoyance. Human emotion, in all flavors and degrees of sincerity. "Write a review". Dear God.
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Corn - News - Sex [Dec. 9th, 2005|04:01 am]
They've got almost everything on the Internets now.
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[Oct. 12th, 2005|10:50 am]
I don't know how you people get around with so few dimensions.

Image hosted by Photobucket.com
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[Jul. 12th, 2005|05:04 am]
( Zeusiness. Alternatively titled: Azimbony of Zhound: A BRIEF P* )
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[May. 17th, 2005|12:21 am]
The sting of the fire coral induces intense burning pain, with central radiation and reactive regional lymphadenopathy.
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Subproject: complete! [Mar. 15th, 2005|04:45 pm]


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My Take [Mar. 14th, 2005|04:18 pm]
On the balance between Empiricism and Rationalism.

Rationalists, so far as I can tell, think that the ability to reason is inborn and natural. Reason is a means to determine unknown values using given known values. Which means that it is a way to glean information from the world at large. This trait it shares in common with only a few other human faculties. Specifically, the senses. The ability to percieve sight, sound, feel, smell, and taste all involve taking known values and using them to determine unknown ones. Note that they do this without using reason. Also note that this function is (apparently) the *only* function of the senses, and the *only* function of reason. All use derived from the senses stems from this function, without exception-- the same is true for reason.

Therefore, I postulate that reason is a sense. No different from vision, say, than vision is from hearing. The question must be answered, of course: If reason is a sense, whence does it get it's input? The answer is, I think, from the other five senses.

Consider then, that without an influx of empirical information, the senses do not develop. A child born into a dark world would have no use for his eyes if after living there he came to a world with light. His eyes would have become useless appendages-- and the same is true for any sense. So then, a child deprived of the sensory information necessary to conduct reason (assume, say, that he is kept in a sensory deprivation chamber from the moment he is born. Provided with nutrients, but no sensory input) will be incapble of comprehending even the most basic logical construct. Even the statement "a = a" would have no meaning to him. A person like this would appear, most likely, to be in a vegetative state. He would not appear to be a concious being-- and indeed, since he would be incapable of understanding or using equalities, he would also be incapable of understanding the idea of his own conciousness, which would make him, by the accepted definitions, a being *without* conciousness.

If this is so, then a few strange conclusions can be drawn. First, that every human mind contains at birth the seed necesary to produce a rational, concious, being. And second, that rational sensory information is the only way to germinate this seed.
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Progress and Mental Poverty [Mar. 4th, 2005|10:50 pm]
Courtesy of Ben.

You could be the next winner!
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Slapdash Statistics [Jan. 24th, 2005|01:43 am]
Tinkering around with my a calculator, the internet, and a wild menangerie of insane assumptions, I arrived at the following:


Each cigarette smoked is equal (in terms of danger) to 69.2 miles driven in the United States.

I'm not even going to make a list of how many things I had to pull out of my ass to make that up, but I'll tell you that if anything, that is a very high estimate.
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Shoddy Lumber. [Jan. 14th, 2005|02:26 am]
The magazines coming my way this past week are telling me something. Time magazine is talking about happiness. Talking what makes people happy, talking about money, how it doesn't make you happy. A whole issue, almost all about happiness. Discover magazine had an article this month about how the disappearance of the human race would effect the world. Human effect on the world was one of the big themes throughout the issue. Time magazine, along with Wired, has been telling me for months about luxury, and about how humans have more of it now than ever-- specifically, they have been talking about how the accoutrements of the upper class are filtering down to more and more of the population. A physicist is talking about all the energy we'll need to support developing nations-- since they'll develop a thriving middle class before too long. Middle class people take a lot of energy to maintain. Specifically: I, a middle class person, require a lot of energy to maintain. I am a greater drain on the enviornment than almost anyone before me. This forces me to think, to consider the path upon which my enviornment has set me. Is it correct for me to ride the wave that my sources tell me is coming? Is it an advantage to me? Does it aid my goals?

Human beings, by default, obey certain rules. We eat, we sleep, we procreate. Beyond that, there are secondary items. Not so much rules as guidelines-- percieved internally as "goals". The primary directives we are almost powerless to alter. The secondary ones can be altered almost at a whim. Today, it is left to the individual to determine their own secondary directives. What are appropriate directives? What is the appropriate thing for a material entity to do when all the primary directives are accounted for? Most people in the world forced to answer this question have taken the path of least resistance. Their primary needs fulfilled, they shrug and keep consuming, still striving towards primary objectives. That is the path provided by inertia. That is the thing that people do if they do not do anything else. I think I have followed that path, and I think that is a mistake. Problem: If I stray from the path provided by inertia, I must do so with reason. What reason do I have?

I am afraid this will come down to painfully stubborn axioms. I don't like the feel of it. I don't like the way it slides through my fingers. It is a slimy issue.

Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome your input. What path are you following? I am curious. Tell me if you'd like.

I think what it will come down to for me is religious zealotry. If you're in a dark room and you see a light, follow it. If you don't see a light, strike a match and chase that. That's the anthem of religion. Some people have been lucky enough to hallucinate a light. I, unfortunately, do not have the schizophrenic inclinations necessary to fabricate one. I must rely on the material world, and strike a match to follow. It does not much matter what I call it, so long as I can follow it. I think I will call that match "science", and run as far as I can. But I am lucky in that. I am insane enough persue a goal as esoteric as "knowing what the material universe is like". Without scarcasm, I will admit that it was picked, more or less, at random. I think it was picked very early in my life, but it was random nonetheless. The rest of you, who may be not so mad as I, or may be madder: what do you call your match? Answer if you please, and illuminate me.
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You Can't Fight City Hall. [Dec. 10th, 2004|03:04 am]
One of the consequences that comes from studying the Sciences is an occasional feeling of purposelessness. Scientific disciplines encourage, nay, require, one to see the Sum of Things from a very distant point, and this causes the kind of theological nausea to which I refer. As one gets farther away from the personal motivations that drive everyday life, all of humanity, and then all of existence, seems to blur into a single point-- devoid of "purpose". Matter, after all, does not care. The atoms that compose our bodies do not give a whit if we take them all and jump them off a bridge. The entire universe, active though it may be, is without motivation, without emotion, without *humanity*. It is a very impersonal place, looking at it scientifically, and that is, once again, a bleak thought. One cannot cling to the idea of the soul, either-- synaptic firings are testable, supernatural entities are not. Chemistry and Biology will, without a doubt, one day reduce our thoughts, actions, and emotions to mere causality. At every turn we find the material nature of things. Human beings are metaphysical entities awash in a sea of the material. Even our bodies and minds are material, completely and utterly-- and any urge we get, any thing we do, is nothing more than the result of chemical reactions.

One feels like a child left without his parents at a carnival-- despairing, clueless, and utterly turned around, and that is the only side of the coin some people choose to see. Certainly, even the most avid proponent of science must see it-- but there is a cure to this theological nausea.

After all, a lost child at a carnival is, with the proper application of perspective, a rambunctious youngster in a fantastic wonderland, free of constraints and supervision. Just as the universe does not care if we jump off a bridge, it is powerless to stop us from doing whatever else we will to do. Even as our sentient nature places us apart from the rest of the known universe, it gives us domain over it-- with no one to oppose us but ourselves.

This has all been said before, but one benefits from the occasional rehashing of the obvious.
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Choleric Imbalances. [Nov. 7th, 2004|01:09 am]
This one time I will allow myself a quote.

"There is nothing permanent that is not true, what can be true that is uncertain? How can that be certain, that stands upon uncertain grounds? The mind of man a greedy hunter after truth, finding the seeming truth but changing, not always one, but always diverse, forsakes the supposed, to find out the assured certainty, and searching everywhere save where it should, meets with all save what it would. Who seeks & finds not, seeks in vain. Who seeks in vain, must if he will find seek again, yet all in vain." -- George Silver, Paradoxes of Defense.
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928th In A Series of Wednesdays. [Nov. 3rd, 2004|09:29 pm]
And I expect nothing less.

Oh, I guess we have a new man who wears a hat. I mean, the vote guy. The guy who we vote for that wears the hat. The *metaphorical* hat. The hat of authority. And I guess he's not a new guy. He's an old guy. But he was gonna be an old guy either way, but I mean he's the *old* old guy. The previous one. The one that was the new old guy last time when the *old* old old guy's turn wearing the hat was up. When the old old old guy got done wearing the hat, he had to give it up, and the old old old guy's old buddy decided he was going to try for the big hat. Of course, some other guy wanted the hat too. He had some relative who wore the hat before, I guess. I'm thinking he wanted the hat back. So he got the hat. A lot of people say he took the hat from the old old old guy's buddy. I guess they were both buddies of people who used to wear the hat. But I think the guy that got the hat had some other connection with his buddy-- like maybe the guy caused him to be born by impregnating somebody. I don't know the details. Hat people are very private, and I imagine something like that would be pretty embarrassing.

But that's history. This time the guy who got the hat last time was protecting his hat from this other guy who was wearing a smaller hat. He really wanted that hat. They both wanted the hat, actually. The one guy wanted to keep it, and the other guy wanted to have it, cause it was bigger than his old hat. That didn't work out. A bunch of people decided that he wasn't going to get the hat. Some people aren't happy about that, but some people think it's ok.

That's the summary. Old old guy was fiddling around with the hat last night, but then he put it back on. The new old guy doesn't have a hat now. He used to have a smaller hat, like I said. I don't think they're going to give it back.

I guess a lot of people took off smaller hats last night, too. They gave their hats to other people. I think some of them want to use their small hats to earn a big hat. Some of them just like the shade, though.

And that was Tuesday. A lot of hat shuffling. They don't do it very often, so people were excited. I thought new old guy was going to get the hat, but he didn't. That makes sense. It can be tough to take someone's hat, especially when they know you're trying to take it.

In case you feel like I might be wasting your time:

No dood geed poes ungunnished.
Stime pops for Moe Nan.
Murning the Nidmight boil.
Mrying over crilt spilk.


And that's all. In the 21st Century, try not to hit your head on anything.


LAST MINUTE ADDENDUM
So I was filling out the voter registration form the other day. There's a party called the Peace & Freedom party. I didn't think you were allowed to make your party name nothing more than positive sounding nouns. This is a revelation to me. I figure in 2008, I'll run on a similar platform. Of course, the Peace & Freedom party are bunch of feminist socialists, so it will take some retooling to get the ideas just right for me. Have to change things around a bit. I've settled on calling my platform the Eye, Doughnut, Car, Party. I'll get more votes, because I have three positive sounding nouns instead of two. So remember: Vote Eye, Doughnut, Car, in 2008!
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[Oct. 25th, 2004|07:50 pm]
Blar!
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