Nitrogen and oxygen are floating through the air. You don't see them doing so but still, they're always there. 6/8/02010 A science poem!

The established pattern of my thought processes is that I get funny notions into my head and sort of let them stew in there for a while, for no apparent reason and with no obvious trigger. Such has been the case with what I present today. This won't be structured and it likely won't be pretty. Think of it as a philosophical doodle—just a sloppy sketch that may or may not contain a kernel of something worth pursuing in a more formal structure at some point. ----- Based on what we generally know about physics [not including quantum mechanics, which very few of us have any reasonable conception of], it seems to me that a perfectly sane person might reasonably conclude the following: If we could accurately model the position, spin, direction, and velocity of every particle in the universe at any given moment, it would be theoretically possible to plug that data all into an imaginary supercomputer and predict with perfect accuracy the exact state of everything at any future poin...

I used to donate blood very frequently. I went in for apheresis donations (platelets) quite regularly. I have lost count of how many pints of blood product I have donated over the course of my lifetime, but I know that it's somewhere well north of ten gallons. The skin in the crooks of my elbows is a mess of scar tissue from all of those Red Cross needles. I view blood donation as my civic duty. I have all of this extra blood that I'm not using and I know that there are people who can benefit from it. I have never done anything to put my blood at risk for causing anyone harm. And I am somehow a member of the minority of people who are not infected with cytomegalovirus (CMV), which makes my blood products particularly valuable for certain types of recipients. Sadly, I have not been quite as diligent in my donation schedule in recent days as I used to be. I donated whole blood last week and 9 weeks before that and I think about 8 or 9 weeks before that. But I have not been in for...

First, Michael Phelps was spectacular. There's no denying that. What he did was amazing. Congratulations to him and his teammates. (Note: The most impressive moment of all of the swimming events that I saw was Lezak chasing down and passing Bernard in that 4 x 100 m freestyle relay.) However, given the coverage and praise that has been heaped upon Phelps, Usain Bolt has not gotten nearly enough attention in the television coverage here in the U.S. Once again (as happens every time the Olympics comes around), I am reminded that our televised Olympics coverage really is way too America-centric. I wonder what the coverage in Jamaica has been like. I hope Bolt has been getting his due there! Unfortunately, it seems that half the commentary I have heard about Bolt has been disparaging remarks about his poor sportsmanship (exuberance) and showboating (premature celebration) . I feel somewhat cheated by not seeing what he would have done in the 100 m if he had really given it his all. B...

Oftentimes, it is a mystery to me why my brain goes off in a particular direction. I have written before, on this blog, about having read an interesting book entitled The Clock of the Long Now . Having read that book is the reason why I try to use a 5-digit year in writing dates (for example, 02008 instead of 2008). It's a technique for trying to train myself to think on a longer term time scale. To think in terms of millennia instead of decades or centuries. I haven't yet fully trained myself on the 5-digit years (which is why sometimes I'll post a blog entry that mentions a 4-digit year and then go back and edit it afterwards--and I suspect there are times when the 4-digit year has simply slipped past my notice). Anyway, I've recently been thinking about nuclear power, but I've been thinking about it with that "long now" mindset. So, where previously I had mostly taken the view that nuclear power is actually a good idea (better for the environment than b...

There are a few things I would like to share with my readers today: For the last couple of years, I have been enjoying listening to the tail end of the Vinyl Cafe on CBC Radio , when I get out of the book store on Sunday afternoons. I don't think I've ever caught an entire episode, which is a shame. I was thrilled to hear a couple of months ago that they are making weekly Vinyl Cafe podcasts. It's a free subscription, so of course I subscribed as soon as I learned that the podcasts were happening. I'm a bit disappointed that the podcasts are not the entire shows. However, they're absolutely worth listening to. If you've never listened to the Vinyl Cafe, you really should give it a try! And with podcasts, it's easy to fit the listening into your schedule, rather than trying to fit your schedule around listening. This Stuart McLean fellow is a truly amazing storyteller. Really, a Canadian national treasure, in my opinion. ----- If you've spent years using ...

I was listening to NPR's "All Things Considered" the other day when they aired part of an interview with presidential candidate Mitt Romney . The interviewer (Robert Siegel) asked about Romney's belief in the literal truth of the Bible, and Romney very slickly evaded the question while trying to make Siegel feel somehow dirty for asking the question. What follows is the feedback I provided to NPR: Shame on Mitt Romney for trying to make Robert Siegel feel ashamed for asking a legitimate question and, by extension, trying to make NPR listeners feel ashamed for caring about the answer. Does it matter to me which specific book(s) of the Bible a candidate takes more literally than others? Nope. But does it matter to me whether my vote supports someone who believes in superstitious hokum, to the exclusion of reason, logic, science, sense, and critical thought? You bet! It's terrifying to me that Romney can, in one sentence, decry the "global jihad" that'...

I'm always disturbed by people claiming that Columbus did not "discover" America, on the grounds that people were already here. (There are other grounds on which to argue with the Columbus discovery myth, like (a) where he landed and (b) that there seems no good reason to call him Columbus. (Cristóbal Colón seems more likely the guy's name.)) Discovery does not require being the first to discover something. All it requires is finding something when you weren't already certain it was there. Although, even that requirement is a little sketchy. I think you can "discover" the truth, even though you were already aware of its existence. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent even before I've started with the topic of this post. Today, I thought I'd mention some original thoughts I've had. They were original thoughts, because as far as I knew, nobody had previously had them. I've since discovered that I was not the first person to have them, how...

This morning, I invited most of the authors of the Language Log blog to take a look at my last blog entry. (Most, not all, only because there were a few whose e-mail addresses I was unable to locate.) Anyway, what has ensued is a fairly fascinating discussion that's been carried on via an e-mail thread rather than as comments to my blog. Oh well. At least they all included me in the e-mails, which have been most edifying. (They're a bunch of professional linguists, and I certainly am not.) So here's the gist of what seems to be the consensus: Both usages are in common parlance. This does cause confusion when people of one camp converse with people of the other camp (especially when scheduling, as the "next Wednesday" issue is just as much a problem as is the "last Wednesday" issue). The rift does not seem to be a recent development. This has been previously studied from a linguistic perspective. Such divergent dialectical usages are probably more common...

Well, Beth was working this morning, so I was left to my own devices. After taking the recycling to the local recycling center, I popped into Shirley's Restaurant in Claremont for a Bill Richardson "Meet and Greet", which I knew from the local paper was scheduled for this morning. The owner of the restaurant, Dan Fillo, was quoted in the paper as having said, "We've been told by the campaign not to expect a question and answer format. He's probably just going to come in and speak, giving a brief 10- or 15-minute speech about his platforms." So I was quite pleasantly surprised when after giving his talk, Richardson did open the floor to questions. In my last blog post, I mentioned that Beth got in the last question from the floor at our session with John McCain. I didn't say anything about what she asked him, however. So here I'll mention that she asked him about Darfur. We were both bothered that it took until she got in (right under the wire) fo...

We went to our first presidential campaign town hall meeting today. This time was an event for John McCain at the American Legion hall in Claremont. I was surprised to get the phone invitation the other day from McCain's people. I guess he's courting the independent vote. As this will be our first presidential election cycle since moving to New Hampshire, I'm still not altogether certain of the process. From what I gather, we'll be allowed to choose which primary we want to cast our ballots in (assuming we wish to cast our ballots in either primary). If you've read my campaign web site, you'll probably already be aware that I am, on principle, opposed to the whole two-party system. By extension, I'm also of the opinion that there ought not to be a primary election cycle. I think we'd all be much better off if we just went straight to the general election. Stop playing this game of trying to determine which of our like-minded people would best represent a...

I watched some of the Republican debate the other night. There was a point at which the questioner asked for a show of hands of who does not believe in evolution. Much to my disgust, some hands went up. I didn't catch whose hands those were, but I checked the New York Times online edition for the transcript , and they reported that the hands that went up belonged to Brownback, Huckabee, and Tancredo. Assuming that the NYT transcript is correct, and assuming that the question's intent was clearly understood*, and assuming that we're not dealing with a semantic issue of what "believe in" means...these three men should automatically be deemed unelectable. So here's where the semantic issue comes in: Does "believe in evolution" mean "accept that evolution is a process that actually occurs"? or... Does "believe in evolution" mean "put your faith and trust in evolution"? If it means the former, then Brownback, Huckabee, and Ta...

Our friends Kuki and Gary were kind enough to get us an interesting jelly-based ant farm as a gift. We ordered harvester ants to occupy it. They arrived earlier in the week. I believe we have 14 survivors from the journey, and they've started tunneling. Fascinating little beasts, really. Anyway, here are some pictures:

I've said before and I'll surely say again that in my view, my generation is as much defined by Ultraman and Kung Fu Action Theater as by anything else. This may well define me as the lone member of "my generation". I'm not sure about whether that's the case or not. There may be others out there. The bottom line on that definition probably amounts to little more than this: For better or for worse, my cultural awareness is and will likely always be something that (at least in part) is tinted by the influence of television. Whether that's ultimately a good or bad thing is not something that I'm interested in discussing at this point. (At least not during this blog entry.) However, I have mentioned it as simply a noteworthy scrap of information . Having said as much, I am willing to go on record as saying that neither is this truth a cause for great celebration nor is it one of the world's great tragedies. I'm quite certain that it falls somew...