The Sporadic Curmudgeon

This one’s gonna ramble, so get ready.

Back in ye olden days, when the World Wide Web was a twinkle in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye and pteranodons ruled the skies, I got into computers in a big way. I didn’t just dive into the digital revolution, I cannonballed into it. I played Flight Simulator when it was amber-on-black vector graphics. I discovered that just anybody could log onto some pretty heavy BBS’s (I won’t be more specific because I enjoy my freedom), you could program computers to draw pictures, and there was free porn all over the place if you knew where to look. I dreamed of the day when I could have all the worlds’ information at my fingertips instantly. I knew it was coming; it was inevitable.

And yet, now that it’s here, something disquieting has been nagging at me. That something is the unfortunate historical period known as the Dark Ages. A little hun-based library-torching here, a little faith-based manuscript burning there, and before you knew it almost the entire accumulated knowledge of millennia of civilization was gone. Poof! Just like that. We are only beginning to understand the full extent of what was lost. Our understanding of the ancient world comes from the small glimpses afforded by the surviving fragments, backed up by modern archaeology.

I had assumed, when I used to dream of what life would be like in the 21st Century (before Bush and Cheney took a huge steaming dump all over the whole damned thing), that print and digital works would exist side-by-side.

Today, I read this story: The Oxford English Dictionary’s next edition may only be published in digital form.

Is this wise? Think about it: many of the data tapes from the Apollo moon missions are unreadable just forty years later, and the meager progress that’s been made on them is only because someone thought to save one of the old tape readers in a garage somewhere.

Think of all the information stored on vinyl records and cassette tapes and videocassettes. Yes, devices to play those data formats exist, but how many of you still own any of them? Could you play a 5 1/4″ floppy disc if you needed to? I know I couldn’t.

And it’s not just the format information is stored in. There is deterioration. Tape gets brittle. Hard drives crash. Discs get demagnetized.

Here’s an interesting story that you probably don’t know. There are several periods throughout the 1800s where many, many official documents have faded to the point where they cannot be read without specialized modern equipment. Documents immediately prior to these periods and following them are perfectly legible. Why? Because the dyes used in those inks faded over time, or in some cases actually ate through the paper.

The permanent ink was generally iron gall ink, which actually changes the chemical composition of the paper. The ink fades, but the paper underneath is permanently altered, having a brown color. After the disastrous ink problems, the government realized that something had to be done, and so an official permanent ink formula was created to be used on legal documents. You can read an account of this here.

I fear that something will happen to our glittering digital utopia. A solar flare that wreaks havoc with electromagnetic storage systems, religious fanaticism and rampant anti-intellectualism decreasing the number of people able to maintain the infrastructure, or some other damn thing. Cultures, governments and religions collapse. Machinery decays. It happens all the time; hell, we can’t even keep our bridges from falling apart anymore. What is to keep the internet from suffering the same fate?

Where is the backup for our time? If the internet is destroyed and the information it stored has not been durably printed, what do we do then?

Something very similar to this actually took place in the late 1800s. The French were the first to attempt to dig the Panama Canal. At the time, they were one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet. They sent the cream of their engineers to Panama, where they promptly died of malaria and yellow fever, the causes of which were still unknown. They sent the second-tier engineers, and they croaked also. Between 1881 and 1889 over 22,000 men died there — an entire generation of engineers and all they knew was lost. Furthermore, since much practical engineering knowledge was passed on by word of mouth, France lost the knowledge of the engineers that came before them. It was decades before they recovered.

Reference works, at the very least, should be required by law to be printed. The internet will not last forever. We are risking another Dark Age.

Special Extra-Pedantic Note: The use of the word “ye” as in “ye olde shoppe” is a misnomer. (”Ye” as in “Ye are a comely wench” is perfectly acceptable, although it’s likely to get you slapped or worse under most circumstances.) The digraph “th” was originally a single letter, called thorn. It looked like this: þ. In time it became almost indistinguishable from a “y”, and since the typefaces printers used were often purchased in Germany or Italy (neither of which used thorn), a “y” was usually substituted. So “ye olde shoppe” is actually pronounced “the old shop.”

A little over a year ago I was doing some research on the Disney masterpiece “Pinnochio,” and stumbled across a recording of Jiminy Cricket singing a filthy song. The discovery delighted me no end.

Tonight I was looking for a recording of “Ghost Riders in the Sky” for a project I’m planning, when I found this unexpected little gem: an utterly foul sendup of the old cowboy ditty The Strawberry Roan. Best of all, it was recorded by none other than The Sons of the Pioneers in 1943!

I’d better warn you, this baby has rough language, sexual situations, drug abuse and some truly squirm-inducing gore. So send the young’uns to the bunkhouse, gather ’round the campfire, and listen to a song that’s sure to send you straight to perdition. Git along, little dogies!

The Castration Of Strawberry Roan

I can just imagine Al Swearengen hiring these guys to play at the Gem Saloon.

I may have discovered some previously unknown Roman structures buried under a field in central Italy. Of course, it could just be agricultural artifacts, or ruins from any time in the region’s immensely long history, but this area was definitely inhabited in Roman times (and long before).

A small Roman colony named Vicus Elbii was in this vicinity, possibly under present-day Viterbo 6½ miles to the east, possibly not. No one knows for sure because Vicus Elbii vanished long ago. Viterbo is the most likely candidate.

Could this actually be the site of Vicus Elbii? Probably not; if it’s Roman I suspect it’s just a farm villa. On the other hand, to the northeast of the “villa” is what may be a colonnaded building. I’m going to send this information to an archaeologist in Viterbo, since it’s definitely worth checking out. That would be so freaking cool if I found a lost Roman colony!

View Possible Roman Archaeological Site In Italy in a larger map

I hereby claim four neologisms, all related to the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics (of which I am an adherent; screw Bohr et al):

Everywhat

Describes something that exists in all possible universes.

Otherwhat

Describes something that may have happened in another universe, but did not happen in ours. (Synonymous with “alternate history”.)

Neverwhat

Describes something that cannot exist in any possible universe.

Anywhat

Describes something that could exist in any possible universe.

I breathlessly await the Nobel Committee’s call.

For a few years now I’ve been corresponding off-and-on with the editor of The Devil’s Dictionary X, a hilarious and worthy sequel to Ambrose Bierce’s classic work, The Devil’s Dictionary, and we have become long-distance friends.

Eventually I began sending him definitions of my own, some of which made their way in and some of which didn’t. Therefore I’m going to inflict them on you.

Birthday

An annual 24-hour chink in one’s cynicism, during which a few quick jabs of disappointment can inflict wounds that fester for a lifetime.

See also Anniversary, Christmas, Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, etc.

Demoticon

To add spaces between letters and/or punctuation to keep your text-messaging client from turning them into an annoying little image.

Example usage: “I demoticoned that last sentence because for some damned reason the ‘(x)’ kept turning into a tiny picture of a woman.”

(I coined this word.)

Environmentionalist

Someone who talks green but walks magenta.

(Another word I came up with.)

Feng Shui

1. Expensive Chinese fertilizer.

2. Mandarin for “Sinophilic pansy.”

Inflated Self-Worth

Washing your hands before, not after, you pee.

Late Middle Age

The time of life when the number of people who would like to see you naked dwindles to the readership of that one really weird website.

Living

The process of attaching unpleasant memories to geographic coordinates.

Misunderestimate

To inadequately assess the popularity of corruption and stupidity.

Neolojism

A newly-coined sex word.

(Another word I invented, and thus a rare example of a recursive definition.)

Prostitution

1. A democratic institution hated by wealthy males, who consider mercenary women their private game preserve.

2. A policeman’s cudgel used to beat the ugly.

Rectify

To correct. From the Latin for become an asshole.

Torture

The application of extreme physical discomfort so as to extract a pretext.

There are a number of astonishing revelations in this video clip, not least of which is that modern combat helicopters have windshield-mounted rear-view mirrors just like passenger cars:

Man, oh man, I’m looking forward to today. I’ve taken a cherished vacation day and my daughter Naomi is playing hooky so that she and I can see the first showing of Speed Racer at noon. I’m a rabid fan of the original early-60s series, and if the rumors are true that they’ve gone to absurd lengths to preserve the cartoon’s atmosphere then I’m a happy man. Later this evening I’ll post my typical half-baked review. I’m expecting a ridiculously fun popcorn movie. Keep your fingers crossed!

By the way, this is the first non-Pixar movie I’ve made it to in a theater since The Fellowship of the Ring came out. Parenthood is a mixed blessing for a cineast: attendance goes way down, but DVD rentals skyrocket.

Special correction note: Actually, I saw the third Matrix film (I think it was called Matrix: Regurgitated or something like that, and was made by the same people that made Speed Racer) but it was such a God-awful mess that I blocked it from my memory. I mean, come on. Exoskeleton battle suits with completely open cockpits so that a ten-year-old could take the pilot out with a well-aimed rock? Give me a break. Weapons designers of the future, please take note: if your primary enemy wields deadly mechanical pincers at the end of flailing tentacles, at least PUT IN A FRIGGIN’ WINDSHIELD.

Special After-Movie note: We just got back from watching Speed Racer, and all I can say is that the negative critics out there are probably the same soul-dead jerks that think they’re above enjoying Disneyland. This movie is loud, colorful, fast-paced and one hell of a lot of fun. I’ve even read reviews claiming that kids were bored by it. My daughter is as hyperkinetic as they come, and she sat through the whole thing with a goofy smile on her face. Come to think of it, so did I. If you’ve got one little smidgen of the eight-year-old you used to be left in you, go to the theater, buy the biggest soda and popcorn they have, and settle in for some serious fun.

To wrap up: my life is little more than a steaming pile of pain and degradation, but my personal troubles didn’t enter my head once during Speed Racer. You won’t learn any major life lessons from it, but you’ll be free of the crap we all live in for a couple of hours. If that sounds good, by all means go see it and enjoy yourself.

And take the kids, too.

About 6:45 PM EST tonight my daughter and I were climbing out of our car and starting across the parking lot toward the apartment. I happened to look at the sky. There, almost straight overhead and slightly to the west, was what looked like an extremely bright comet. By bright, I mean that the nucleus of the comet was almost three-quarters as bright as Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. The wide tail spread out toward the west; I’d say it was about the size of a fingernail at arm’s length. We live in a pretty light-polluted place, but you couldn’t miss it. If you looked up, you saw it.

That’s odd, I thought. I didn’t know Comet Holmes was that bright. And the last time I heard it was in the constellation Perseus. This was about a sixteenth of the sky away from Perseus. Was I seeing a normal star through high cirrus clouds? Nope; there are no comparable stars in that part of the sky.

Still, something seemed off about it. I didn’t realize until later that the tail of the comet was fanning out toward the sun. Comet tails always stream out away: they’re like windsocks in the solar wind.

A neighbor was resting against one of the garages after jogging. I pointed up and called to him. Both of us assumed it was probably Holmes, although that didn’t seem really possible given the position and magnitude. Could there have been another, unknown and incredibly bright comet that just swooped in tonight? Or did something big happen to Holmes? It’s exploded unexpectedly several times on this pass through the inner solar system. My daughter and I ran inside to get my telescope. Chances like this don’t come around very often.

I’ve observed four comets in my life, and this was by far the biggest one. I alerted my nephew, and we dragged the scope outside. I set up on the sidewalk and looked up. It was dimmer. The nucleus was no longer a shining point of light. My neighbor concurred. And it didn’t seem to be in the same position as it had five minutes ago.

I grabbed my wide-angle lens and screwed it in place. I hadn’t had time to align my spotter scope, so it took a couple of minutes of sweeping back and forth before I found my target.

I knew right away that I wasn’t looking at a comet. The “tail” came down to a tiny point like the tip of a narrow wedge; it wasn’t expelled gas surrounding a nucleus. This had no internal nucleus at all.

The edges of our vision are more sensitive to dim light, so I used an averted gaze to try and make out any internal structures (it’s an old astronomer’s trick). Sure enough, I saw a faint point of light like a barely-visible star well out past the tip of the wedge. That’s like no comet I’ve ever seen.

Animation of the object sketched from memory. Background stars are only to illustrate apparent motion; they do not correspond to actual stars.

It was moving.

I could see it sliding past the stars at maybe 30 degrees an hour. The sky normally slides across a telescope field of view unless you’ve got a motorized drive, which I could never afford. The earth revolves through 360° in just a smidgen over 24 hours, so the stars seem to move at fifteen° per hour (360/24). The mysterious object was crossing my telescope’s field of view about twice as fast as a normal star.

What the hell was I looking at? No comet I’ve ever heard of moves that fast. This had to be something in orbit.

My neighbor wondered if it was the Shuttle. I told him the launch planned for Sunday had been scrubbed until January. Was it the International Space Station? No, it couldn’t be that either. Both the shuttle and the space station are in low orbits; they cross the sky in a few minutes. This had moved a fraction of that distance in ten minutes.

I let my daughter, nephew and neighbor take a quick look, but I didn’t want to lose track of it in the scope, so most of the time I had my eye glued to the eyepiece trying to keep it in the middle of my field of view. I noticed another point of light moving along with it, just to the side of the gas wedge. It hadn’t been there before, and five minutes later was gone as well. Twice I saw a flash of light from the gas wedge; my daughter (who is seven years old) was watching through binoculars the second time and exclaimed just as I saw the flash.

It was getting fainter, and it was just past the zenith and moving toward the North-Northeast. My telescope is a Dobsonian mount, and I’d happened to position it so that it couldn’t follow the movement any longer. I had to take my eye away and reposition the scope, and by the time I got back to the eyepiece I couldn’t find it anymore. It was too faint.

We watched it naked-eye for a few more minutes, until it was just a nondescript smudge in the sky, much like the Andromeda galaxy from the suburbs.

As I packed up, more and more things puzzled me. This was apparently something that blew up or got hit, and it did so in high orbit. But why were the gas and (I’m assuming) debris so directional? Why did it have a tail, in other words? Something moving against the stars in the background like that is almost certainly pretty close to Earth. The time scale of what we witnessed was very short, far too brief for solar wind to have swept the material away, and besides, it was pointed in the wrong direction. Given the rate at which it dimmed, I probably first glimpsed it within fifteen minutes of the event, whatever it was.

I don’t think our atmosphere was the reason for the tail, since for air to have swept the gases away it would have had to be in a low orbit, at least as low as the ISS and probably much lower. It would have zipped across the sky and vanished over the horizon in less than two minutes.

It was almost like gas and debris were spewing from something.

I really have no idea what the hell we saw, and have seen nothing about it on the internet or news. I sent an email to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena giving the details, along with my estimates of the Right Ascension and Declination of the initial observation and where the object ended up. (I made a mental note of the orientation of Cassiopeia so that I could approximate the positions when I got back to my computer and could run an astronomy program.)

As I see it, it was probably one of three things: a satellite getting smacked by a meteoroid and blowing up, another Chinese military orbit-sanding experiment, or a space rock impacting another space rock. (We’ve got a close approach by a small asteroid tonight, although the apparent motion I saw does not jibe with the distance to the asteroid, which is over eight times the distance to the moon. In fact, the apparent motion rules the asteroid out completely. The moon does not appear to move against the stars, so why would something eight times as far away do so?)

But there are problems with the explosion or impact theories also. The wedge-shape of the gas/debris doesn’t really fit; violent releases of energy such as those would send material out in all directions. Even if the main force of the energy was tightly focussed in one direction, a clean wedge would not have been the result.

And if the Chinese were doing another of their horrific orbital experiments (thanks a WHOLE LOT for adding to the space junk problem, guys!) then why would the main show take place over the eastern seaboard of the United States?

Whatever it was, it was strange. I’ve been poking telescopes into the sky for forty years, and I’ve never seen anything like it, nor can I come up with an explanation that completely fits what I saw. Something blew up in the sky tonight. Does anyone have information? Or even a plausible theory?

Special Just-The-Facts-Ma’am Update: As “someone” was kind enough to point out, the comet-like object was a classified military Atlas V rocket dumping fuel.

Today on the radio I caught an ad hawking (from ad hoc: the sudden exhalation you make for the special purpose of expelling mucus*) an alleged musical called All Shook Up. Other than the soul-curdling ghastliness of hearing Hound Dog eviscerated by an overgrown swing choir, what got my attention was the phrase “inspired by the spirit of Elvis Presley.”

You often hear that phrase in advertising, usually applied to something insipid. “Inspired by the spirit of Abba.” “Inspired by the spirit of Donnie and Marie.” So I decided to look into its etymology. Sadly, that’s the sort of thing I do a lot.

“Inspired” comes from the Latin word inspīrāre (to breathe upon or into), which is equivalent to in- + spīrāre (to breathe).

So far, so good. Now let’s investigate “spirit.”

That’s odd. “Spirit” is from the Latin spīritus (breath), from spīrāre (to breathe).

Turns out the phrase literally means “to breathe into the breath of Elvis.” It’s probably much like adding flavor to taste, except more perverted.

Wow. Now I kind of want to go see it.

* A very bad and labored Latin joke, folks. Like this one:

Q: How do you conjugate the verb “to spit?”

A: Spitere, Spitare, hoc tu splattum.

I got that joke from a short story in my junior high literature textbook about cheating in school, the title and author of which I have long forgotten.

Special Three-Years-Later Update” Believe it or not, I have finally (1:20 AM, July 19, 2010) found the name and author of that story. It is a respected short story by C.D.B Bryan, and you can find it in PDF format here: So Much Unfairness Of Things. Of course I’ve got the quote wrong.

The De Lorean DMC-12 was without question the coolest car of the 1980s. Nice lines, gull-wing doors, and a gorgeous brushed stainless steel body that inspired more wet dreams than that poster of Nastassja Kinski with a snake. Plus, there’s that whole doubles-as-a-time-machine thing.

You will be pleased to learn that the coolitude continues.

As reported on Digg, if you go to the auto parts search page for the DeLorean Motor Company and do a search on the word “flux”, you find this:

Yes, you can get your very own Flux Capacitor for only $5,995!

I especially like the part number: 18851985. Those are two of the four years depicted in the Back to the Future trilogy. (The other two are 1955 and 2015. Doc Brown apparently had a thing for fives.)

Hats off to whoever at DMC stuck this little joke in.

On a side note, in the late 80s Crispin Glover (George McFly in the first film) lived just a few doors down from me in Hollywood. Supposedly his apartment was painted entirely black and the only furniture in the living room was a nineteenth-century gynecologist’s chair. I believe it; he really is that odd. We met when I repaired his airbrush the day of his first big gallery show in downtown LA.

The producers of Back to the Future shafted him. He should have been allowed to do the sequels.