General – Page 21 – Me on the net

Parents

Most people become parents at some time or other, and this is still true in spite of a supposed trend to childlessness in more couples. It is an ancient joke that the childless, in particular, the childless who do intend to have children at some time, don’t know how fundamentally life will change for them when they have children.

Childless couples, while not being selfish per se, are only responsible primarily for each other. Of course they are responsible for relationships with relatives and friends, but to such outsiders they appear as a single entity – John-and-Mary, Peter-and-Joanne, or maybe Mark-and-Andrew, or Lucy-and-Anna.

They become atomic, like the electron and proton of a hydrogen atom. We can’t press that analogy too far of course, as electrons tend to get shared around in compounds and that sort of relationship doesn’t work too well with humans.

When a child comes along, by natural methods, or by adoption, or by donor, or by less formal methods in some societies, everything changes. No longer is the prime focus of the relationship each other, but is now the third person.

The parents quickly become the support structure for the child, and the view of the world is now that they are ‘parents’ and not a ‘couple’. In the view of the world, the child’s needs are paramount. At parent-teacher meetings the sole topic is what is good for the child. Schools send notices to parents demanding money with menaces – there’s no softer way to put it – so that the child gets the laptop, the sports gear, the musical instrument that the child absolutely needs according to the school.

English: Three Children in the courtyard of Th... — English: Three Children in the courtyard of The Druk White Lotus School Shey, Ladakh. Русский: Трое детей во дворе Драконовой школы Белого Лотоса в Шей, Ладакх, на севере Индии. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After the initial shock, and it is a big shock, a world-shaking shock, most parents adapt. Babies are designed to be cute after all. Super cute, so that the mechanics of nappies and feeding, the deprivation of sleep, and well, the loss of an independent life have their compensations.

There is almost certainly something instinctual here, some urge to protect one’s offspring, or indeed any small cute creature. How else can it be explained that couples allow their whole lives to be derailed by the arrival of a child?

I can’t overemphasise the oddness of this. Leaving aside the fact that couples don’t know in advance how world-shattering the change is, couples in the main seem to embrace the change once it happens. Many women plan to go back to work after the first few months have passed, and a significant number fail to do so, even in this day and age.

If you talk to someone with a new baby, well after the first few tumultuous months anyway, it is usually a bit like switching on a light. Parents trumpet the amazing achievements of their children as if no other child has crawled, walked or said “Da-da” in the history of the human race. Prior to that point sleep deprivation means that any communication is difficult in the extreme.

Prior to the child’s arrival the pairs major preoccupation is strongly with each other. Of course pair bonds vary in intensity, but in couples the bond is usually strongly couple-centric. When the baby comes along, their major preoccupation is intensely with the child. In the first few months the child will be the topic of almost all conversation, except for the essentials of daily living.

After a few months, the child quickly starts to give back some of the attention. In fact most parents believe (as I do) that interaction between child and parents starts pretty much from birth, but the interaction between child and parents deepens as the child develops in the first few months.

Call it love, because that is what it is. It begins right after birth, and grows as the child learns to react to the parents, the feeding, the changing, the cuddles, the kisses. I believe that animals, at least those that bring up their young, in some ways feel for their offspring in the same way as humans. Heck, let’s just say it – animals that bring up their young must surely feel love, in a sense, for their young.

Certainly the higher animals do seem to feel something, as ape mothers carry around dead young, and elephants appear to grieve over their dead calves. Dolphins have been seen carrying their dead calves.

Having survived the culture shock of the birth parents usually embrace the role. They pretty much dedicate their lives to their children, and if they are thoughtful people, will recognise why their own parents behaved the way that they did. Having railed at the restrictions put on them by their parents, they find themselves imposing similar restrictions on their children.

Indeed often they find themselves using the exact same phrases as their parents. It can be a great shock to realise that you are turning into your parents and that they turn out to have been right, justified and after all, reasonable. How did that happen?

In most cases parents quickly come to terms with their somewhat subordinate role, which is at times infuriating, frustrating and drives parents to the edge of despair. It is also immensely rewarding, fulfilling, and enjoyable. Parents feel more pride when their child achieves a milestone like learning to walk than they ever felt over any of their own achievements.

If their children shows promise at any sport or academic achievement a parent’s pride is immense. This extends to at least the second generation, as I can attest. It’s not that a parent’s life is subsumed by their role in bringing up their children, but child rearing certainly causes some of a parents activities to take a back seat for a while.

If a parent is so inclined the child can be incorporated into the parent’s preferred recreational activity, so we see parents jogging with purpose-built strollers or pushchairs, and children being carried in backpacks. Children may play in the crèches of educational institutions while one of their parents continues their studies.

Most people go into parenthood not knowing how their lives will be wrenched into a different course by becoming parents. Most parents quickly come to terms with the enormous shift in the emphasis of their lives, and most would not go back to pre-parenthood if given the choice. Parenthood is that rewarding.

The Start of New Year

an old post card (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to sources on the Internet, the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere occurs at 10:51 am UT on 21 June (this year, 2014). That translates to 10:51 pm in New Zealand. Just as in the Northern Hemisphere the start of the year corresponds roughly to the winter solstice there, I like to think that the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere corresponds to the start of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. I don’t think that I would get much support to the start of the year officially changed, though!

The year can be divided into halves by the solstices, the winter solstice marking the sun’s most negative elevation with respect to the South Astronomical Pole since the previous June. From that moment in time the sun starts to move higher into the sky until, at or around 21 December, when the summer solstice occurs.

Midway between the solstices falls a time when the day and night are roughly equal in length. Around this time the sun crosses the celestial equator, and this time is called an equinox. There are two in the year, one when the sun is apparently moving south in the sky (the vernal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere) and one when it is moving north in the sky (the autumnal equinox in the Southern Hemisphere).

The Sun & the ecliptic rotation around the Ear... — The Sun & the ecliptic rotation around the Earth : The green Sun is the one of the vernal equinox (march), it is followed by a summer solstice Sun. Then automn equinox and winter solstice. The ground plane (latitude 50°N) is green, the rotating ecliptic plane is blue. Also represented are the celestial equator, the two tropics and the rotation axis. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Each of these quarter points of the year is or was celebrated with a festival of some sort, some of which, particularly the winter solstice were supposedly characterised by “unrestrained revelry“. The summer solstice was comparatively restrained, the vernal equinox was a celebration of new growth, and the autumnal equinox was a harvest festival, a gathering in and celebration of bounty produced by the year’s hard work.

What I wasn’t aware of is that there were other events called “Cross Quarter moments”. These are moments halfway between the equinoxes and solstices, and they are known as Embolc, Beltaine, Lughnasad, and Samhain. The Cross Quarter moments. the solstices and the equinoxes are set out in order for 2014 in the chart referenced here.

Two of the Cross Quarter moments I have heard of, Beltane and Samhain. Beltane falls between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice and is roughly at the beginning of May, so corresponds roughly with May Day. It is astronomically the beginning of summer, but seasonal lag means that the season starts a little later than this.

Children (usually girls) still dance around the maypole or maytree, but few of them, and probably few of the adults have any idea of the origins of this ritual. Although it probably is related to Beltane or the start of summer, the significance and symbolism of the maypole is still debated. Some of the possible suggestions seem dubious and far-fetched, and I don’t think that is wrong to suggest that they reflect the prejudices of the people that make them. In particular it appears that Puritan Christians may have over-emphasised some aspects of the dance and celebration to argue for its banning.

Morris dancing is also associated with a spring festival, usually Whitsun. It may possibly have been associated with Beltrane, but I don’t know the history of morris dancing, Whitsun and Beltrane or spring festivals in general well enough to assert this. There is a long tradition of ancient non-Christian rituals being adopted and given a Christian slant, so this may be possible.

Cotswold-style morris dancing in the grounds o... — Cotswold-style morris dancing in the grounds of Wells Cathedral, Wells, England — Exeter Morris Men (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Samhain also has a long history and probably pre-dates Christianity. It is associated with the beginning of winter and marks the point where all crops are gathered and animals prepared for winter. Once again the Christian church has adopted the festival and the roots of “harvest festivals” are to be found in Samhain’s pre-Christian traditions.

The Christian church adopted the festival as All Saints (Hallows) Eve or Halloween. I note from the Wikipedia article that I linked to that some people consider that Halloween has no relationship with Samhain, but considering the similarities of the two traditions which happen at the same time of the year, I think that this seems unlikely.

Bonfires form a great part of the Samhain festival, maybe as an attempt to ward off the coming darkness of winter. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that there are still “celebrations” on 5 November, otherwise known as Guy Fawkes Day. An effigy of Guy Fawkes is burnt on a bonfire, in spite of the fact that Guy Fawkes was actually hanged.

All of the example above refer to the “Gaelic versions” of the various dates and festivals. It’s a bit simplistic to refer to a single “Gaelic version” as the dates and festivals have, naturally, changed over the years. Other cultures of course have their own versions of the various festivals. In the Tropics (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn the sun is overhead at least once in the year, an obvious time for a festival!

Since we have just passed the winter solstice, we can look forward to longer days and shorter nights from now until the summer solstice, which for us in the Southern Hemisphere comes around 21 December. So far this year winter has been fairly mild and a little wet. As we move towards the vernal equinox we still have the bulk of winter to come, as the astronomical year does not match the climatic year because of the seasonal lag.

Nevertheless it is a time to look forward and one can understand why the winter solstice is a such a time. It is a time of feasting, of using up some of the stores put away at the time of the autumnal equinox, the salted beef and cured hams. It is a time to relax, for mending and repairing, and for staying out of the weather as much as possible, as the weather of winter means that essential tasks only will be undertaken and the rush of springtime is still ahead. While the end of winter may bring shortages , it is still near the beginning and the stores are still full.

Is “schooling” an education?

Well, schooling should be an education. It should prepare the pupil for life. Dictionary.com has this as a prime definition of education:

The act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgement, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for life.

Schooling doesn’t always do this – Greek history is probably of little use to a car mechanic and scientists are only interested in Greek history in so far as it has cool cast list of names and an alphabet from which they can plunder names for obscure fundamental particles or asteroids.

View from one end of Eros across the gouge on ... — View from one end of Eros across the gouge on its side towards the opposite end.(greyscale) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Arguably, though, Greek history is a fascinating window into an early culture, and studying events in Greek history can provide insights into contemporary society and while it may not be of obvious direct benefit to the mechanic and the scientist, such studies can inform sociologists, political studies specialists and many others, and it is worth remembering that mathematics, science, logic, philosophy, politics and many other fields of human endeavour have their roots in ancient Greece.

Temple Statue of Poseidon (Photo credit: greekgeek)

But back to schooling. Everyone has been bored at school, for a number of reasons. The subject could be more than the student can handle, or it could be too simple, or it may not be a subject in which the student has no interest.

One of the issues with schooling is that we are taught, well, “subjects”. Well, we are taught “maths” or “biology” or “French”, or “Woodworking” or whatever. We are taught “English”, which is about how sentences are formed and we are drilled in verbs, nouns, adjectives and more esoteric beasts of the English language. Then there is “English Literature”, which largely consists of forcing pupils to read and “study” relatively old English language texts ranging from Shakespeare to Dickens. Rarely anything more modern.

English: Literature (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is a syllabus, specifying what we are to be taught. This is used to constrain the teachers and students, so that they can be set examinations to see, basically, how much the teachers have been able to force into usually unwilling minds.

writing/editing my environmental sustainabilit... — writing/editing my environmental sustainability cornerstone seminar syllabus at nabolom bakery in berkeley (Photo credit: davidsilver)

This all seems mechanical and soulless, but a good teacher will try to insert into the gaps and voids of the subject and the syllabus a little education. He or she will try to convey the beauty of the English language as used by Shakespeare and the other authors, he or she will try to make Romeo and Juliet into real people for the students, he or she will explain the societal background of the Dickens tales.

The good teacher will teach something more – how to look beyond the surface story to the people and the societal background, not just in the set books or any books, but in all the situations that life may throw at the student over the years.

A study of literature can not only give the student the knowledge of what is in the books, and maybe an appreciation of the era in which the books are set but may also provide the student with the ability to look critically at the era in which they are living. For some, maybe more than a few of the students, this will provide them with the tools to examine sources like the media and consider such things as bias and veracity.

A teacher of maths will try to not only enable the students to pass their maths exams but also to prepare them, a little, for life. The simple techniques of addition and subtraction may be all that they need, but sometimes they may need a bit more. Some of the students may go on to be mathematicians, to study the subject in its own right. But many more may acquire the tools to understand some of the numbers that surround us all in our daily lives.

Day 304: Problem Solving Strategies for Math (Photo credit: Old Shoe Woman)

For instance, when a poll result is given on television, often they also quote a ‘margin of error’. A small but significant number of people will have some idea of what that actually means from some long ago statistics class. The vast majority doesn’t have a clue as to what it means, but the brightest might gather that it relates to how accurately the poll represents the wider population.

Another example of a mathematical tool that could be useful is contained in an episode of the British sitcom, “Please Sir!”. This is a comedy about an inspirational teacher and a class of pupils who are rejects from other classes. The teacher follows an informal teaching agenda as it is evident that his class is not going to pass any exams.

He tries to instil some mathematics into his students, using as an example a bet on a horse race. He calculates the odds only for one of his students, the son of a bookie, to correct him. The teacher is astounded that the student can calculate the odds so accurately in his head, saying to the student that he didn’t know that the student was good with maths. The student replies that this wasn’t maths, it was “odds”.

At the bookies (Photo credit: Phil Burns)

Science, likewise, has ramifications beyond the bland and often boring stuff a student learns at school. While he or she may come close to disaster in a lab, he or she may take away the concept of analysis and the scientific method that may help him or her in later life. At least when one of the TV detectives grabs a scrap of clothing or a sample of blood or something and sends it for analysis, he or she may have an inkling of what is happening. Though these shows are an education of a sort in themselves.

Day 53 - West Midlands Police Forensic Scene I... — Day 53 – West Midlands Police Forensic Scene Investigators Lab (Photo credit: West Midlands Police)

So why is the educational system focussed on schooling rather than educating? Well, for one thing it is easier to measure schooling rather than education. Facts trotted out for an exam yield a measurable yardstick to judge both student and teacher. It’s altogether more difficult to measure education.

Seal of the United States Department of Education (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

That’s because an education is not about facts learned. It’s about facts learned and a deeper understanding of how the facts interrelate within the system, be it Greek history, English literature, maths or science. Nevertheless, the best teachers provide an education as well as schooling. They should be applauded for it.

Where sex came from

When I decide on a topic, I usually hold onto it in my mind, and maybe flesh out a few ideas mentally. I’ve mentioned this before. This topic suddenly came to mind for no good reason, and I haven’t thought of any significant lines of discussion. I wish I could snapshot the “Related Articles” that have popped up, but it looks like they will lead me to places I do not intend to go. An example is “Casual sex isn’t just for college kids”. Mmm. As if college kids a) invented it b) have a monopoly in it.

But I digress. Sex. Most living organisms have it. Amoeba, the popularly held archetype of the simple single celled organism, was believed to reproduce simply by fission. I’m unable to understand much of the scientific literature about amoeba reproduction, and there doesn’t seem to be much material about it anyway, but fission, I believe, results in each child organism having half the genetic material of the parent cell.

AMOEBA PROTEUS (Photo credit: PROYECTO AGUA** /** WATER PROJECT)

Maybe nuclear genetic material is doubled before the split. Maybe each ‘individual’ is half an individual and needs to find another ‘individual’ in the same state to merge with? Merging has been observed in amoeba.

What is certain is the enormous size of the genome of an amoeba species. Some of them have genomes which are more than 200 times the size of the human genome. Amoeba are presented to us in school as possibly the simplest organism that there is. Based simply on the size of genome, this isn’t true.

I can conjecture, based on little to no knowledge at all of the genetics of amoeba, that fission and fusion would enable amoeba species to mix and match their genetic material with much greater freedom than simple sexual reproduction.

So, amoeba splitting and merging could create an enormous genome, even in a simple organism. The size of a genome could be just a result of a less restrictive reproductive process than applies to more “advanced” multi-celled organisms (not to mention more “advanced” single-celled organisms.

Martin Krzywinski, Circles of Life - a compari... — Martin Krzywinski, Circles of Life – a comparison of human and dog genomes (Photo credit: chrisjohnbeckett)

If I’m correct or anywhere near close to correct about the amoeba genome and its reproduction, amoeba may represent an early stage of sexual reproduction. Amoeba were inventing reproduction, in a way. One can imagine that early organisms would absorb other weaker organisms, and in doing so, acquire their genetic material or proto-genetic material.

a haploid cell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course in most cases they would simply digest it, but in those days, the early days of life, when the chemical processes and genetic processes of life were shaking down into the rules that we know today, things would have been more fluid and the genetic material could have been incorporated into the organism’s own genetic material. Indeed, in the beginning the genetic material would probably not be distinguishable from other material in the organism. There wouldn’t have been a nucleus, as such.

English: In telophase, the nucleus of one cell... — English: In telophase, the nucleus of one cell is divided equally into two nuclei.It is the last stage of mitosis and directly proceeds interphase. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One can imagine that in the beginning, organisms just didn’t reproduce, by fission or any other method. They would have fairly quickly died out. Then organisms could have happened which just grew and grew until they split. Parts would have died off, parts would have lived.

The parts that survived would have been changed, modified by the environment, until the bits that would have earlier died, survived as new individuals. Maybe they couldn’t themselves reproduce, but eventually, the split off bits would have survived and been able to reproduce.

Diagram of bacterial binary fission. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In retrospect, it appears that the best way to be able to reproduce is to separate the reproductive materials and functions mainly into a single location, the nucleus.

Organisms can they reproduce simply by duplication of the genetic information in the nucleus, producing a clone of themselves, which they can hive off as a new individual. Some organisms bud off a clone of themselves as a reproductive process.

This doesn’t allow for change in environment though. A self-cloning organism can’t react to environment changes. However if organisms can exchange genetic material while creating a child, it may be that the child’s genetic make up may allow it to survive where its parents would struggle.

The process used by amoebas, that is to say the process of division and merging of individual organisations could be the first step in that direction. Of course, uncontrolled merging could result in possibly viable individuals with large genomes, which is what we see in some amoeba.

Immature and mature fruits of Cocculus orbicul... — Immature and mature fruits of Cocculus orbiculatus….Trái của dây Sâm, dây xanh, Mộc Phòng kỷ … (Photo credit: Vietnam Plants & The USA. plants)

There are two routes here. Either an organism would clone its nucleus including its genetic material, then split, producing two identical organisms. or it could halve its genetic material and merge with a similarly haploid organism, resulting in a diploid individual.

The advantages of the haploid/diploid cycle are obvious – genetic material is mixed so at least some individuals may survive an environmental change, because the expression of the genome in the individual (the phenotype) allows them to differ from their parents and survive the change.

What is less obvious is why organisms split into male and female sexualities. It’s possible that the difference is caused by the necessity of one set of haploid individuals to supply an environment in which the child organism can develop. The other set of haploid individuals merely supplies the other half of the necessary genetic material.

So the female supplies the support environment plus the genetic material, or egg (ovum) and the male supplies only the genetic material, the sperm. One can imagine that originally organisms would directly exchange genetic material by fusion and fission, like amoeba, but at some time it became more efficient to disseminate genetic material outside the organism.

English: Electron microscope image of sperm. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cells within multicellular organisms or possibly unicellular organisms developed the ability to create new haploid cells with a copy of half the genetic information leaving behind unicellular haploid organisms or haploid cells within a diploid organism. In female organisms the haploid cell would be an egg and would have the support environment to create a new diploid individual, and in male organism the haploid cell would just have half the genetic material and be a sperm.

Description unavailable (Photo credit: EYECCD)

There are some hermaphroditic animals, for example some snails and slugs, which produce both eggs and sperms and many plants have both male and female characteristics, but many, many animals have separate male and female individuals. (I’m not keen on saying the majority of animals display sexual differentiation, because I don’t know if it is true.)

So, when life began it would have been simple unprotected self-replicating molecules. Growth would have been by accretion. At some stage the molecules would have evolved to the point where they developed some structure around themselves, maybe by rejecting some unwelcome molecules. Organelles, small biological factories would have developed as the organisms became more complex, all enclosed in a membrane that allowed the necessary chemicals in and unwanted ones out. This membrane would eventually enclose the nucleus of the cell. More complexity, more biological factories, and the cell would have formed an outer membrane, that enclosed all the necessary mechanisms that modern cells contain and require. (OK, I’m no expert so some of these conjectures may be wrong).

Cells would initially have not had any reproductive mechanism. They would grow and then split when they got too big. When cells developed specialised mechanisms for reproduction they needed some way of passing on the genetic material. Some cells would have developed a method of creating haploid individuals and these would have then merged with other haploid individuals to create normal diploid individuals.

Or maybe so-called haploid individuals arose first and diploid individuals arose from the merger of two haploid individuals. When multi-cellular organism arose, they evolved special organs related to reproduction. Such organs created haploid versions of the organism and a method of delivery to the outside world of these eggs and sperm.

Once individuals have evolved to specifically create eggs or sperm, they are sexual individuals. If an individual evolved to create a support system for their haploid genetic material, for example eggs, it would find it difficult to find similar individuals to merge with since eggs are not particularly mobile. Sperm on the other hand are specialised to be mobile, so are ideal for merging with the eggs.

Once the individuals have sexual differentiating characteristics this would flow through to the phenotype (physical expression of the genetic material – the multi-cellular organism). And that is my guess, as a complete amateur in the field of genetics is where sex came from. So the above may make sense at some level, or not. Even it does make a sort of sense, I may well be wrong about the detail! But it has been fun speculating.

here comes life (Photo credit: AlicePopkorn)

Weather

It is a cliché that if two Englishmen meet they will always first talk about the weather. Samuel Johnson once said:

“It is commonly observed, that when two Englishmen meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.”

When Stanley met Livingtstone and said “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” they probably then started to discuss the weather.

Noel Coward once sung that “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun“. The song is a reference to the days of the British Empire in what were, in those days referred to as “colonial times” and the self-perceived “sang froid” of the colonial rulers of the time. In these post-colonial times the attitude expressed in the song is embarrassing.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen; Marsaxlokk, Malta (Photo credit: foxypar4)

Although the English may care about the current weather to some extent, I think that the initial conversation gives the conversationalists the chance to size each other up, to fit the other person into one’s world-view so to speak. The other person’s way of speaking allow one to decide if they are “posh” or “common” or somewhere in between. Voice and body language would offer other clues during this initial meteorological discussion.

All the Leaves are Brown, the Skies are Grey, ... — All the Leaves are Brown, the Skies are Grey, and Someone Wearing a Blue Coat Walked into My Picture (Photo credit: bitzcelt)

The English are proud of their weather which they informal believe is the worst in the world. Of course they are wrong, as their bad weather and their extremely boring weather is neither as bad nor as boring as the weather in other places in the world. They love to complain about the weather, and this has perhaps led somewhat unfairly to the stereotype of the “whinging pom“.

English: Earliest known map of the Gulf Stream (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most English people don’t realise that the ocean current of the Gulf Stream ensures that the British Isles don’t freeze in winter and boil in summer as it moderates the climate that the English and the other nations of the British Isles receive. A glance at a map will show that the British Isles are several degrees further north than Labrador in Canada, and only a few degrees further north than Moscow.

What I remember about the English climate was long weeks of gun-metal grey skies, but however I also remember long warm summer days as a child. I don’t have sufficient real evidence to support these memories, and although the climate is changing, I suspect that my mind is editing my memories somewhat!

I’ve moved to the other side of the globe, where weather patterns are distinctly different. (Aside: I originally wrote “the other end of the globe”, but that is a more mathematical topic, I think). Wellington has a temperate maritime climate and the weather is changeable, meaning that we may see “Four Seasons in One Day“. The Crowded House song, though, was not written about Wellington, but was inspired by Melbourne, Australia where Crowded House was based at the time.

Four Seasons in One Day (Photo credit: horrigans)

The weather in New Zealand originates in and around the eastern parts of Australia. Anti-cyclones spin up off the south coast of Australia, past Tasmania and over New Zealand. High pressure bubbles emerge from the main land mass of Australia, and tropical cyclones can dip far enough south to cover New Zealand.

Looking Out over the Sea (Photo credit: Jocey K)

It is no wonder with these competing factors that New Zealand’s weather can change from minute to minute. Fronts can sweep rapidly across the country, bringing rapid changes of temperature as they do so. Temperatures can change by ten degrees or more between morning and afternoon.

The weather is not always changeable though. If a high pressure area extends from Australia across New Zealand the weather may “stall” and an extended period of warm weather in the summer or cooler weather in the winter may ensue, with clear skies and sunshine across the country.

'A Reflective Moment', New Zealand, Tasman Sea... — ‘A Reflective Moment’, New Zealand, Tasman Sea Coast (Photo credit: WanderingtheWorld (www.ChrisFord.com))

Wellington is close to the Cook Straight, the gap between the North and South Islands. The Straight acts as a funnel for wind, and Wellington has a deserved reputation for being windy. However the average wind speed is not that exceptional, However, as the linked article says, there are more windy days per year than in most other New Zealand coastal cities. Hmmm. Some gusts can be exceptionally strong lifting roofs and knocking over trees, but the occasional strong blasts also happen outside of Wellington.

I was at Wellington airport yesterday, seeing my daughter off to Auckland. Several flights were cancelled but fortunately not my daughter’s flight, though apparently it was a rough take off. What we didn’t see was an incoming flight which actually did a touch and go before diverting elsewhere. I did wonder why the crash trucks were speeding about! No wonder New Zealanders, like the English, like to discuss the weather.

737 Touch and Go practice (Photo credit: Fly For Fun)

The changeable weather in New Zealand often catches tourists out. Mountain weather in any country can change rapidly, and New Zealand is no exception. Bright sunny days can often turn very bad, very quickly. Mist and cloud can suddenly descend and remove all visible landmarks, and if the tramper (hiker) is not well prepared, he or she might well be in trouble, and several foreign tourists do get themselves into trouble every year.

Hiking the ridge line (Photo credit: IamNotUnique)

This is no different from elsewhere of course, but it seems that tourists may underestimate the wildness of the New Zealand “bush”, maybe because they come from countries where the countryside is more benign, or maybe because they overestimate their own abilities. Sometimes tourists venture into the bush, totally under equipped and are caught out by the rapidity of the changes in the weather.

change in the weather (Photo credit: paparutzi)

In spite of my discussion of the bad weather above, New Zealand also has glorious weather. Following the winter storms, in the clear weather under a high pressure system, New Zealanders and tourists alike head for mountains and a number of world class ski fields. In the summer, glorious weather under a high pressure system leads people heading for the beach, or heading to the bush, or merely staying home and firing up the barbecue.

20111130-IMG_2576 (Photo credit: vauvau)

There is a saying in Wellington – “You can’t beat Wellington on a good day”, and I would add that the good days outweigh the occasional windy and rainy days!

Update: After writing the above, Wellington turned on a great morning, a crisp autumn sunny day. The first picture below is of the city of Wellington from Petone, framed by a couple of flax plants.

The second picture is of Petone Wharf from about the same spot.

Of course, in accordance with the principle of perversity and the “four seasons in one day”, the weather has turned grey.

Death of print

It’s amazing how the world has changed in a lifetime. My lifetime. Phones, TV, the Internet, electronic funds transfers, payment by waving a plastic card.

My parents were paid by their employers in cash and they paid for everything in cash. Most people didn’t have cars and relied on public transport and paid in cash for their tickets. Today cash is endangered.

Money Cards (Photo credit: jacqui.brown33)

A little later, people started to acquire bank accounts, usually in conjunction with a mortgage. Their pay was paid into their bank accounts and the mortgage payments were extracted from the bank account directly. The thing was, the bank account came a lot of paperwork. There were statements and cheque books. To whip out a cheque book and offer to pay for something was a real show of status. Today cheques are almost unused, being almost completely replaced by credit cards, debit cards and charge cards. Some younger people have never seen a cheque and most shops will not accept one. Many banks will supply statements over the Internet these days.

English: 1912 US cartoon by Rollin Kirby, show... — English: 1912 US cartoon by Rollin Kirby, showing George Walbridge Perkins (with a check book symbolizing control of money) and Amos Pinchot (weilding a letter of support from Theodore Roosevelt campaing manager Senator Joseph M. Dixon) battling for control of the U.S. Progressive Party. Figure in the distance presumbably represents Roosevelt coming with his “big stick” to settle things. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most people got their news through newspapers. Paper newspapers, from the rarefied air of the Times to the slightly more foetid air of the tabloids. The network of distribution of news via started from the printing presses and initially was distributed by vans, trains, and more vans. Bundles of papers were dropped off at strategic points, and newsagents picked them up, sorted them and gave them to young boys and girls to distribute, dropping them into letter boxes, countrywide.

Galveston, Texas, 1943. Newspaper delivery boy... — Galveston, Texas, 1943. Newspaper delivery boys with bicycles. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A similar distribution network was used for the evening papers. These however were distributed mostly to the streets around business places and railway stations and similar places where people would pick them up on their way home from work. The main headlines would be prominently displayed as teasers to persuade people to buy them.

Checking the headlines (Photo credit: gato-gato-gato)

Newsagents existed to distribute the paper that the news was printed on. As a sideline, they would sell other things, like magazines, tobacco, and confectionery. As newsprint volumes have fallen, the old time newsagents had to specialise in something else, like the confectionery that they used to sell as a sideline, or in some cases groceries, particularly the staples such as canned foods and milk. Some might sell books or glossy magazines, but even these versions of print material are under threat.

dakar newsagent (Photo credit: noodlepie)

My letter box is still full of paper. Much of it is the ubiquitous junk mail, of course, the flyers and offers which advertisers hope will entice us into buying. It appears that the expense of creating and sending junk mail is still worthwhile, or so the advertisers believe. Some of the paper is comprised of what can loosely be called “community newspapers”. These papers, largely funded by advertising, and run on the cheap, are distributed free, and contain local news only, mainly sports and local politics.

“Letter boxes” in the UK are slots in the front door of a house, not actual boxes on poles as in many other countries.)

What my letter box rarely contains is an actual letter, written by someone, stamped and posted by someone, sorted and delivered to my letter box by a real postman. There are a few firms that still insist on paper invoices and local tradesmen tend to still prefer papers invoices but apart from that and a few real letters from older relatives, I receive little real mail these days. No wonder that postal services world-wide are having issues.

It is easy to see the reason for the decline of the print industries world-wide. In a word, the Internet. When it is simple and cheap to sit at a computer and type an email, or finger tap a message into a tablet or phone, and have a response in minutes, why would anyone manually write a letter, find an envelope, find or purchase a stamp, and find a post box to drop the letter in? Although the vast majority of letters get through safely, there are exceptions, while email is almost certainly going to be delivered and you will get a message if your email doesn’t go through.

Email email email (Photo credit: RambergMediaImages)

Similarly in banking. Once every transaction had a paper trail. All transfers and payments were neatly written in books, all ledgers were balanced by hand and banks shifted huge numbers of notes, cheques, coins and other forms of paper money. These days I rarely carry cash, and I haven’t seen or used a cheque in years.

I do all my banking on the Internet, using my computer or phone. I pay for things, even small things like a cup of coffee (actually I drink tea), with a debit card, with a credit card as backup for emergencies. Gas stations, grocery stores, tradesmen, and every other kind of store takes the plastic.

Swipes, Bytes, and Debit Cards (Photo credit: SimpleIllustrations)

More and more our transactions with government departments, like car licensing or tax matters, are conducted online. Even if you have to go in to a government agency for some matter or other, they will scan your documents rather than copy them. If you fill in a paper form, they will transfer the data to their computer systems while you wait.

In all fields, except possibly the field of junk mail, paper is being used less and less. Even magazines are headed online, with smartphone apps for New Scientist magazine allowing you to read it anywhere that you may be. An added advantage of on-line magazines is that the electronic copy is, in general, cheaper than the paper version.

I have forgotten, until now, that I was going to mention books. Books are nice objects to hold, and they make a nice addition to one’s decor. I enjoy reading a book and have several shelves full. Maybe 200 books? But on my electronic devices I have maybe 10 times that number. OK, most are old classics, which are out of copyright, but a number I have bought specifically to read on-line. An on-line reader keeps your place, let’s you bookmark passages and allows you to quickly search for something that you read somewhere in your on-line collection.

Books are not yet redundant, but they are slowly heading on-line. While it may not be soon, and while not every book will disappear on-line, printed books may become rare and expensive.

Print is dying everywhere and the amazing thing is that it has happened in a short period of time. The spread of computers first caused volumes of paper generated to increase, but the Internet and the way that it has allowed sharing of documents, plus the smaller and faster computers and hugely capacious hard drives, culminating is the ubiquitous smart phones has saved millions of trees from destruction.

Printing: Greener than You Think

Inequality and equality

Usually, but not always, I have an idea in the back of my mind of the structure of a post before I write it. Well, I have an idea of a few key concepts and how they will fit together. Sometimes it goes much like my skeleton idea and sometimes it turns out completely different. However, today, I have no structure in mind.

Inequality. It’s an interesting concept. The things that are being compared can be practically anything, but have to be of the same sort, hence the saying “you can’t compare apples with oranges”. Like all adages, this saying has more depth than appears at first glance. Of course you can compare apples with oranges if, for example, you are comparing their Vitamin C content or their fibre content. What the saying conveys is that it is incorrect to mix categories when the attribute being comparing is obviously not found in one of the categories, or the attribute is expressed differently in the two categories.

Apples & Oranges - They Don't Compare — Apples & Oranges – They Don’t Compare (Photo credit: TheBusyBrain)

For example, it would be wrong in most cases to compare the tastes of apples and oranges since the tastes of apples and oranges are significantly different. Or one might compare the performance of a truck and sedan car, and someone might object that any comparison is like comparing apples and oranges – while both are vehicles, but they are by nature significantly different.

An inequality yields a true or false verdict. In logic and mathematics this is often called a Boolean value after mathematician and philosopher George Boole. In computer languages a Boolean value is usually, but not invariably, given a value of 1 for true and 0 for false.

When children learn arithmetic and mathematics the emphasis is usually on equality rather than inequality. They learn that 1 + 1 = 2 and often don’t get taught such formulations as 1 + 1 < 6. When learning algebra they may be taught that y = x² is the equation of a parabola, but they may only learn in passing that y > x² represents all the points in the plane inside the parabola, and that y ≥ x² also includes the points on the parabola.

This is a graph of an inequality. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Computer programmers are usually deft at dealing with inequalities. When programming a payroll for example, the programmer may be required to calculate the tax that an employee may have to pay. Say the first $10,000 is taxed at 5%, and anything between $10,000 and $50,000 is taxed at 7%, and anything over $50,000 is taxed at 10%.

The programmer has to check if the salary is less than or equal to $15,000 (≤) and if it is he or she taxes the pay at 5%. If the pay is greater than (>) $10,000 and less than or equal to (≤) $50,000 he or she subtracts $15,000 from the salary and calculates 7% of that. He or she then calculates 5% of $15,000 and adds the two numbers to make up the tax for that employee. And so on, for the CEO who obviously exceeds the $50,000 threshold.

"Pay Day! Pay Day!" — “Pay Day! Pay Day!” (Photo credit: JD Hancock)

The simple statement – “Is the pay ≤ $15,000?” hides a complexity that is not obvious. It can be rewritten as – “Is it true that the pay ≤ $15,000?”. Such a statement has a value of “true” or “false”. The sub-statement “the pay ≤ $15,000” has a value of “true” or “false “. If the pay is $9,000 then the sub-statement has the value “true”. Putting that back in the original statement yields “Is it true that true”. A little ungrammatical maybe, but it can seen that the whole statement is in this case true. This sort of complexity can trip up the unwary.

True/False Film Festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Logicians and mathematicians aren’t content with simple “true” and “false”. They have contemplated a third value, neither true nor false. Some versions call it “unknown” but it could be called “fred” or something. It doesn’t make any difference. Of course, mathematicians would not be satisfied with that, so they have derived “many-valued” logic systems.

It’s probably worth mentioning that some computer language allow for a “null” value, which is essentially the value you have when you haven’t set a value. Using the old pigeon hole analogy, if a pigeon hole is called “A”, then when the pigeon hole is empty, its value is “null”. When it contains, say, the integer 3, it’s value can be said to be “the integer 3”, so the statement “A contains a value greater than 1?” can be “true”, “false” or “null” so multi-valued logics can be more than an intellectual exercise.

Another form of inequality relates to societal inequality. There are very poor people and astronomically rich people. Of course people will never be universally equal, but a society that doesn’t recognise the extreme inequalities will not be a good society by most people. We don’t have a working philosophy which can address this inequalities. We have Marxism economics which favours the workers, and the Smithian lassez-faire economics which favours market forces, and Keynesian which has supply and demand economics.

None of these philosophies (and there are many others to choose from) really deal with the gap between the rich and the poor. Marxists would destroy society to rebuild it, but there is no guarantee that it will be better, and a very large chance that society would easily recover from such a cataclysm. Smithian economics would not admit to there being a problem. Keynesian economics at least considers unemployment but doesn’t directly address poverty.

There does not appear to be a working economic model that deals with poverty as such. Distributing public funds through the dole doesn’t result in a decrease in poverty and merely reduces the self-esteem of the poor. Likewise, reducing support through reduced “benefits” doesn’t drive the poor into employment and doesn’t reduce poverty by providing an incentive to the poor. This is largely because the few jobs available to the unskilled don’t provide a route out of poverty as they are not well paid.

There is no doubt that poverty is relative. The poor in the developed countries are well off as compared to the poor in developing countries, but that’s not really a justification for the vast inequality that is seen between the very rich and the very poor, in any country.

Strike Solidarity (Photo credit: Light Brigading)

The process of Philosophy

Philosophy & Poetry (Photo credit: Lawrence OP)

Philosophy is a strange pastime. Scientists measure and weigh. Mathematicians wrangle axioms and logical steps. All other disciplines draw on these two fields, which are probably linked at deep level, but philosophy draws from nothing except thoughts and the philosopher’s view of the Universe.

Well, that’s not completely accurate because philosophy has to be about something and the only something we have is the universe. But philosophy does not have to be about the universe as we know it. What if there was no such thing as electrical charge, or, the prudent philosopher thinks, what if there was no such thing as the thing we call electrical charge. At a more basic level, what is electrical charge.

Philosophers are always getting pushed back by scientists as scientists figure what they think is the case. If there is a scientific consensus on what comprises an electric charge then that question no longer interest philosophers to any great extent. Philosophers mentally travel through the lands marked “Here be dragons”.

Philosophy is also interested in less “physical” things like ethics and morals, what comprises identity, predestination or free will, what can we know and what knowing is all about. How did the Universe come to exist, or more basically, why is there something rather than nothing?

If you look at this list it comprises extensions to or extrapolations from physics, psychology, physiology, medicine, biology, and other fields of science. Philosophy doesn’t use mathematics (usually), but it uses logical argument or should. It not (usually) built on axioms, so doesn’t have the rigid formality of mathematics.

Illustration of Plato's Allegory of the cave. — Illustration of Plato’s Allegory of the cave. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Philosophers are big users of metaphor, such as Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”. A metaphor of the expansion of a balloon was used as a philosophical explanation of the expansion of the Universe discovered by Edwin Hubble. Philosophers also imagine physical machines which do not yet exist and which may never exist, such as the ‘teleporter’ which makes a material object at point A disappear and reappear at point B.

Star Trek - Enterprise D Transporter — Star Trek – Enterprise D Transporter (Photo credit: tkksummers)

Quantum physicists have teleported quantum information from one point to another, but this is not the same as teleporting atoms. So far as I can gather from the Wikipedia article, what is teleported is information about the state of an atom, so the same atoms must already be at point B before the teleportation event, and the event is a sort of imprinting on the target atoms. It sounds like the atoms at point A remain in situ, so it is more of a tele-duplication process really. However I don’t really understand the Wikipedia article so I may be wrong.

The philosopher is not interested in the quantum nuts and bolts though. He or she would be interested in the process – is a person walks in to the teleporter at point A the same person as the person who walks out of the transporter at point B? Unless his actual atoms are transported by the process, which seems an unlikely implementation, the person at point A shares nothing with the person at point B except a configuration of a second set of atoms. Is the person at point A destroyed by the machine and recreated at point B? What if something goes wrong and the person at point A does not disappear when the button is pressed? Then we have two instances of the person. Which is the real instance?

Unknown Person (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Notice that the philosopher takes a physical situation of travel from point A to point B and considers a special case, that of travelling between the two point without travelling the old slow way of travelling between all the intervening points and doing it quickly. There is no physics which can currently perform this task, but as usual, scientists are working to, one might say, fill in the gaps.

The Sci-Fi Fly! (Photo credit: Carolyn Lehrke)

Many times the scientist is also a philosopher – he may have at the back of his mind the concept of teleportation when he creates his hypotheses and does his experiments, but he probably doesn’t concern himself with identity. That is still the realm of the philosopher at present, but if a teleportation device were ever created, it would stop being a philosophical matter, and become a matter of law and psychology and maybe some field that does not exist yet, just as the field of psychology did not exist at one time.

General Psychology (Photo credit: Psychology Pictures)

I’m trying to paint a picture of the area that a philosopher is interested in. If the whole of human knowledge is a planet, then physics and maths are part of the outer most layers of the atmosphere, the exosphere, and this merges with the depths of space are the domain of philosophy. At lower levels are things like chemistry, biology, psychology and other more applied sciences. Don’t look too closely at this analogy because I can see two or three things wrong with it, and I’m not even trying.

But the main point I am making is that philosophy purposefully pokes and prods the areas beyond the domain of current mathematics and physics. Of course the line is not a definite line and there is a grey area. Some physical hypotheses verge into philosophy and some philosophical ideas are one step from becoming physical hypotheses. The suggestion that there be many universe like and unlike ours is one such suggestion that physicists are taking seriously these days.

2-step branching in many-worlds theory (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Many of these ideas are not new and many have been used in what has been called “science fiction” for many years, especially the parallel universe theory. Time travel is another common science fiction theme. Although these ideas are used and developed by authors of fiction, physicists have adopted such ideas to advance science, though I don’t mean to suggest that scientists have directly borrowed the ideas of science fiction authors. It is probable that many ideas actually travelled in the opposite direction, from science to fiction.

Since philosophy is at heart discursive and not rigidly analytical (in most cases), there is more freedom to expand on ideas that are not what is called “mainstream”. Because of this freedom it is likely that (like economists) no two philosophers will agree on anything, but they will have fun arguing about it.

Existence of things – Ontological questions

“Just the two of us”. This song by Bill_Withers encapsulates the idea of a pair of people (male and female from the context) and the separation of the pair from everyone around them. The lyrics assert that “we can make it if we try”, although what “it” refers to is not made apparent. It’s a pleasant, smooth song and serves well enough to introduce my post for this week. I like it.

Eggistentialism 1.5 or Three of a Perfect Pair (Photo credit: bitzcelt)

The idea of a couple or pair is a concept that acts to separate or compartmentalise one object and another related object from all possible instances of the class of object. Eleven and twelve. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. POTUS and FLOTUS. Mercury and Venus.

It can also relate members of one class of object with another class of object. Seven and fourteen (the seventh natural number and the seventh even natural number). 28th and January. “x” and “y”.

It can also be a generator of other objects. The number one and the operation of addition leads to two, three, four and so on for ever. (OK, I missed a huge chunk of detail there and it is nowhere near as simple as that).

Another twoism is the concept of opposites. Black and white, top and bottom, man and woman. OK, that last concept is a bit blurry these days, but everyone (with the exception of a few genetically different individuals) is genetically male or female. XY or XX.

The big twoism is the concept of existence/non-existence. Is there a river of lava flowing through my garden? No, there isn’t. Such a river does not exist. But if I lived in Iceland or in Hawaii, or in another location near a volcano, such a river might exist. My cat Madonna doesn’t exist, but my dog Ben does.

This seems such a definite concept, but looked at a bit closer, and it begins to get fuzzy. There is in fact a river of lava flowing through my garden! Eh? Well let me start up Minecraft and the world where I’ve been building a garden, with a lava river flowing through it.

Minecraft/DwarfFortress Entrance with Lava Trap (Photo credit: colmmcsky)

Of course you might argue that the Minecraft world doesn’t really exist. But it does! It exists in Minecraft, and Minecraft exists in this world, so the Minecraft lava river exists in this world. If A exists in B, and B exists in C then A exists in C.

Actually the Minecraft world only exists in my thoughts. I haven’t built a garden in Minecraft and I haven’t got a river of lava flowing through it, but by the logic above, the river of lava exists in my mind in a Minecraft world, my mind exists in the real world, so the river of lava exists. If A exists in B, and B exists in C then A exists in C.

English: illustration for the transitive relat... — English: illustration for the transitive relation Magyar: illusztráció a tranzitivitáshoz (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Of course, some people might have issues with that logic. Does the lava river really exist? Well, I maintain that it does, but it is necessary to specify that it exists in my mind. Anything that I can think of exists in my mind and since my mind is part of the real world, “anything that I can think of” exists in the real world.

There is a difficulty here. Consider the sentence “The present King of France is bald“. The issue is whether or not this sentence is true. It would appear not, since there is no present King of France, but the negation “It is not true that the present King of France is bald” is also (apparently) not true. The difficulty is that there is no present King of France, since France is a republic.

However “the present King of France” exists in my mind, and the mind of anyone who reads the sentence. The King of France in my mind may be bald or he may not, so the sentence may be true or false, and the difficulty does not arise. Provided we consider the sentence as applying to a mental image of the King of France.

The King of France, bald-headed or not, exists in my mind if I consider him, and my mind exists in the real world so in that sense he exists. What though, of the existence of things that exist in the real world, but differently in one’s mind?

Paradoxes, I (Photo credit: Newtown grafitti)

The British TV Series “Call the Midwife” is set in the 1950s. It is obviously not the 50s. At the time Queen Elizabeth was about to ascend the throne, or had already done so. Does Jenny Lee live at Nonnatus House? Since neither exist in the real world, my argument above applies. However, consider the question “Has Queen Elizabeth II ascended the throne yet?” We have no difficulty in ascertaining that the question is most likely about a fictitious or historical event, since it is well known that she has been Queen for a long time.

Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II X (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suggest that the same is true of the bald/not bald King of France. We know that there is no present King of France so can conclude that the King of France in question must be a historical or fictional figure. If I have no preconceptions about the fictitious King of France, I might envisage him in ‘period’ costume with a huge powdered wig (is that in period? I’m not sure), so I would probably guess that he was shaven-headed if not bald. But you might disagree. Your “present King of France” could sport a full head of hair.

One Young Man in a Powdered Wig (Photo credit: Emily Barney)

But what of things that don’t exist in the (loosely speaking) real world, and no one has ever thought about? Do they exist in any sense? I believe that the Universe is deterministic, so any future event or thing, is implied by the current state of the Universe, so if anyone will think of something, or if some event happens in the future, then it exists in the present, and not even simply as a potential. If the Universe is deterministic, it must happen.

I was going to talk about Schrödinger’s cat in the context of existence but he was squeezed out by the present King of France. Maybe I’ll get to the cat in another post.

Little Green Men revisited.

Offset Gregorian antenna used in the Allen Tel... — Offset Gregorian antenna used in the Allen Telescope Array, a radio telescope at the University of California at Berkeley, USA. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m going to continue the LGM theme. I don’t plan on doing multiple posts on a single subject very often, but there were some things that I want to add to my previous post.

It seems to me that the difficulties of point to point interstellar communication are such that it makes it unlikely that we will be able to find LGM by searching for intentional broadcasting or unicasting of signals, for the reasons that I raised in the previous post. There are other reasons that I haven’t touched too.

Radio Transmission Towers Atop Mt. Wilson (Photo credit: FastLizard4)

One big question is one that occurs to me, probably because I am a computer professional. Why would a civilisation want to be found? If you broadcast something on the Internet, you attract all sorts of undesirables trying to access your systems, your data, your private stuff.

Some of the undesirables might be governments of course, depending on your point of view and political affiliations. On a more personal level, people have told friends on social networking sites of a private party and hundreds of people have read this and gatecrashed. As a consequence the party gets overrun and the house gets trashed, the police get called.

A party at Colorado State University -- yeah, ... — A party at Colorado State University — yeah, that’s a riot. (11pm on April 27) …item 2.. a combination of Woodstock, ‘Animal House’ and Girls Gone Wild. (08/30/2011) … (Photo credit: marsmet553)

If you broadcast to the Universe the same sort of thing might happen. The LGM might not be friendly and with benign intent. Why would you risk attracting undesirables? Of course, the civilisation sending the signals may not be benign. Such a signal could be a honeypot, designed to attract unwary civilisations.

Lavender Attracting Bees (Photo credit: rutthenut)

So, it seems that it might be unwise to respond to alien signals. Murray Leinster’s novelette “First Contact” explores the issues, albeit in a first contact away from the origins of the contactees.

Two technologically equal species are making first contact in deep space. Both desire the technology and trade the other can provide, but neither can risk the fate of the home planet based on unfounded trust.

Another danger would be encountering a more advanced civilisations. In all cases where this has happened on earth, this has always resulted in disaster and absorption of the less advanced civilisation. This usually starts with disease, both sexual and non-sexual, which may be common in the more advanced civilisation but which the less advanced civilisation has no defence against. However, ultimately it is foreign ideas that cause the destruction of the less advanced civilisation and there’s no vaccine against that.

With masks over their faces, members of the Am... — With masks over their faces, members of the American Red Cross remove a victim of the Spanish Flu from a house at Etzel and Page Avenues, St. Louis, Missouri. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, maybe we should avoid alien civilisations, at least until we can be sure that contact will not harm us. But how will we know that they are there, so that we can avoid them? Can we detect them before we blunder into something we can’t handle?

One possible way would be to observe the rate of emission of radio waves from a stellar system. If the electromagnetic spectrum emission in the wavelengths that are used for TV and radio is unusually high, it may indicate that a civilisation exists in the stellar system.

So if an otherwise unremarkable star should suddenly (in astronomical terms) start emit radio waves it might indicate that an advanced civilisation might have discovered radio on a planet orbiting the star. Or, rather, that it did discover it, a long time ago. If we did discover such a star (and I’ve no idea if it is remotely possible to detect such an anomalous production of radio waves), it may be thousands of light years away, which means that the waves have been on their way for thousands of years.

A supernova remnant about 20,000 light years f... — A supernova remnant about 20,000 light years from Earth (Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution)

If we then send an expedition to a star at, say 20,000 light years, it would take us 20,000 years at least to get there, and probably many, many more. That 40,000 years that would have passed since the wave were generated and no civilisation that we know off has lasted for more than a few hundred. They might have all died out or reverted to savagery or evolved into something that we can’t understand. We might have done similar in the 20,000 years that it would take to get there.

It’s unclear why we would want to contact them anyway. A conversation that takes millennia would be a strange one. About all we could say would be “Hi from Earth. Here are some snaps from our family album”. Of course, when we decode their signals, as XKCD notes, we would most likely find that they are unintentionally broadcasting the alien equivalent of cheesy TV shows like “I Love Lucy” or contrived “reality” shows. After all, that’s what we have been broadcasting.

All of the above is moot as is my previous post if the LGM do not exist. The most famous attempt to estimate the likelihood of there being other civilisations other than ours out there is the Drake Equation. As I mentioned in my previous post, this equation irritates real mathematicians, since it is not derived from anything, but is merely a string of terms strung together to look like an equation. Plausible values for the components of the equation can give answers ranging from almost zero (there are no other civilisations other than ours in our galaxy) to 38 million or more.

"Where is Everybody?", or "Why ... — “Where is Everybody?”, or “Why am I so Lonely?”: Fermi’s Paradox / the Drake Equation, Logocentrism and Gabriel Garcial Marquez (Photo credit: timtak)

The SETI Institute concludes that “The importance of the Drake Equation is not in the solving, but rather in the contemplation”. Certainly the values of most of the terms of the equation are not really known, though estimates can be made. Investigation of one term may throw up information which throws some light on the other terms.

The crucial term is, I feel, “L”, the length of time that a civilisation will be able to and desire to make radio signals. Looking at how we have used radio waves, there seems to be a trend from the low end to the high and very high end of the broadcast spectrum. Early experiments and usage was in the VLF (very low frequency) band, but the frequencies used for most radio broadcasting moved to medium frequencies. TC, both digital and analog use VHF (Very High Frequencies) and UHF (Ultra High Frequencies). Satellite broadcasts use even shorter wavelengths (higher frequencies). So our radio usage has changed over the 100 years or so that we have had radio receivers and transmitters.

All in all I think that it is unlikely that we will contact LGM. We may stumble over some, if we ever manage to go Interstellar, and it may be that some as yet unknown technology might enable us to easily spot advanced civilisations from a distance, so that we can signal or visit, but although I applaude the SETI effort I don’t think that the search will be fruitful.

SETI@home logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It may be that we can never visit other stars because no way exists for us to do so. In a story that I once read, but can no longer remember the name of, one character referred to star systems as “God’s test tubes”. I recall that at the end of the story the human race had just found a way to escape its “test tube”.

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