weather

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“Bright and early for the daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere…”

First of all, I would like to point out a bit of numerical fun we have regarding today’s day and date:  it’s November 11th, or 11-11.  That’s the case whether you’re using the US or the European date ordering system, since 11-11 is indistinguishable from 11-11.  It’s also Tuesday, and we have 2 of the same number with 2 of the same digits, which each add up to 2, so, two twos on Tuesday.  Fun!

Well, maybe things like that are only fun for me, but I have to try to entertain myself and find fun where I can; no one is gonna do it for me, that’s for sure.

Speaking of fun, what about this crazy weather?  I imagine it must be worse for the rest of the eastern US where this front or thing or what have you has had its effect, but it’s remarkable enough here in south Florida.

Yesterday, the high was 80F (I think that’s just under 27C‒or almost exactly 300K‒but I’m doing the figuring in my head while on the way to work, so I may be off), but now, this morning, it is 51F, and it is supposed to get lower before it starts warming up a little.  That’s a 29 degree drop (in Fahrenheit‒it’s roughly a 16 degree drop in Centigrade or Kelvin, which I guess would make the current temperature 11C or 284K) in about 12 hours.

This is one of the days I’m glad I’m not riding my “scooter”* anymore, because when you’re going over 70 on the highway and it’s 50ish degrees out, the effective wind chill is brutal.

For most of the US, especially up north, and for Canada, the weather down here is probably laughable.  Canadians would probably go swimming when it’s 50 degrees Fahrenheit (10C), and not in a heated pool, either, but in one of those cold Canadian lakes.  I grew up in Michigan, so I’m not far from that background, myself; I swam in cold lakes and rivers quite a few times in my youth.  But of course, I’ve now lived in Florida for quite some time‒more than 2 decades‒so I’ve gotten a bit soft.

Ugh.  I’m doing a blog post about the weather!  I was even about to talk about whether I prefer it hot or cold, and to give my reasons.  I’ll let you guess, if you’re so inclined, but I need to veer away from this subject.  It’s one thing to discuss the science of weather and climate‒those are interesting and very nifty and important subjects‒or the mathematics of weather prediction.  But merely to talk about the weather is just too sad.

I already expect it will be the “hot topic” (ha ha) at the office this morning.

There are, of course, good, sound, biological reasons for people to be concerned about the weather.  But that is not what I’ve been discussing, is it?  I’ve just been discussing it because it’s a little bit out of the ordinary, and it’s easy to talk about the weather.  That doesn’t make it particularly fun or engaging, though.  For instance, I never did quite grasp the opening lyrics to the Tears For Fears song, Head Over Heels:  “I wanted to be with you alone and talk about the weather.”

Presumably this is some manner of love song, and in it the protagonist wants to talk to someone‒I presume*** the object of his affections‒about the weather?  I’m almost sure there’s more to it; perhaps it’s an expression of how gripping the loved one’s company is, such that even talking about the weather with them is something worth seeking.  I have to think there was depth there (I don’t know the song well), because these are the guys who wrote Everybody Wants to Rule the World, and also Mad World (though my favorite version of that latter song is not theirs but the cover done for the movie Donnie Darko).

I guess in some ways I am too literal-minded, but I do try to catch myself at it and make it into a joke when I can, which often works very well.

Speaking of literal jokes, here’s a little one I posted on Threads and Facebook and the website formerly known as Twitter yesterday.

I made the joke up on Sunday, when I walked past a (now-abandoned) furniture store which still had a sign out front like the one in my joke.  If you know me, you’ll understand why this joke occurred to me at that time.

That’s enough gibberish for now, I guess.  I’m certainly past 701 words.  I hope you all have as good a day as you could hope to have (even if it’s not necessarily as good as you could wish to have).  Stay warm, my friends.

*I used “scare quotes”** because it was a 650cc scooter, so basically it was a full-on motorcycle, just with continuously variable transmission.

**It wasn’t strictly necessary, but I couldn’t resist putting scare quotes around the term “scare quotes”.

***Though one must be careful.  As we all know, when you presume, you make a pres out of u and me, and that’s not as good a thing as it might have been in the past.

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You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the blogs!

Hello and good morning.

I’m going in to the office today, since down my way, Hurricane Milton has not been very impressive so far.  This is not a surprise.  We were always going to be only on the periphery of the system, and on the leeward side of the state (so to speak).  There wasn’t even any rain of significance down by where I live; just a bit of relatively high wind.

We are going through a bit of rain as I ride in my Lyft to work, but for south Florida, it’s a piddling amount so far.  The wind is mildly interesting, but I’ve ridden a 650 cc scooter (basically a motorcycle with automatic transmission) through wind and rain much worse than this.  I don’t think that was a wise thing to do for anyone who cared about his or her life and health much, but for me, it was just fine.

I’m in a Lyft, by the way, because the train service is suspended today, as it was yesterday.  This was probably not absolutely necessary, but I respect the abundance of caution.

Traffic, at least, seems very light, which is also not surprising.  Most people in the area are not working today, I suspect.  We shall see how many people come to the office today.

I’ve been a bit frustrated lately, as an infection of some kind (possibly a few different ones) has afflicted quite a few people at the office, but I have not gotten sick.  Not only would such an illness give me the opportunity for rest for which I am able to excuse myself (and might even allow me to sleep, given the physiology of the immune response), but it’s also an opportunity potentially to develop some more severe, life-threatening superinfection*.

Apparently, some people used to call pneumonia “the old man’s friend”.  Well, I’m not that old (and I wouldn’t recommend my friendship to anyone, even a pulmonary infection) but apparently the average lifespan for people on the autism spectrum‒assuming that I am, which I give very high likelihood‒is somewhere in the mid-50s.  So, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for something to kill me sometime soon.

Of course, such averages are strongly affected by outliers.  People with the highest support needs are probably more likely to die at significantly younger ages, and that will tend to bring the average down.  It’s a bit like how the very high infant mortality rate strongly skewed the average lifespan in pre-modern times.  People who did reach adulthood probably didn’t live much shorter lives than we do now.

Actually, modern people in the west may be backsliding lifespan-wise, at least in America, as we eat more refined carbs and are less active and so are more prone to hyperinsulinemia, which brings with it not just increased risks of diabetes and elevated lipids, but even increased risks of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and many cancers, as well as infections.

The infant mortality issue illustrates one way in which reported average lifespans and similar statistics can be misleading, at least for people who don’t understand what’s behind the numbers.  It reminds me of something I may have discussed here before:  people (rightly enough) make fun of the fact that (to make up a statistic that’s probably not too far from reality) ninety percent of people think they are above average drivers.

Now, it is almost certainly true that ninety percent of people are not above average drivers; it’s just that so-called neurotypical people tend to have overinflated (and undeserved) senses of self-esteem.  But the notion that seems to be implied in most discussions of such statistics is that it’s impossible for 90% of people to be above the average.  This is not the case, at least not if “average” refers to the arithmetic mean, as it usually does.

If ninety people out of a hundred each scored exactly 51 (out of a 100, say) on some test of driving ability, and the remaining ten only scored 1 point each, then the average score would be ((90 x 51) + (10 x 1))/100, which is 46.  So, ninety percent of people would not only all be above average, but would be five points above average.  It’s not a very impressive score, but it is true.

Now, if it were said that ninety percent of people think they are above the median, then that would be erroneous by definition, because of the meaning of the term “median”.

Most people don’t seem to understand these and other mathematical concepts, and yet those concepts and related ones of many and varied kinds can have significant impacts on the lives of billions.  I once wrote a blog post on Iterations of Zero recommending that probability and statistics be more aggressively emphasized in secondary school education, because I think understanding them would give people far greater insight and even agency in the world.

And yet, we see “humorous” memes such as the one below, of which there are numerous iterations and variations:

pythagorean meme

I say the fault for that lack of use lies with the individual, not with their education.  Just because they don’t use the Pythagorean Theorem doesn’t mean it isn’t and couldn’t be useful**, and even if the specific theorem wasn’t useful then the capacity to do it and other, related things, is useful.

I feel I may have mentioned it here recently, but even when one doesn’t use mathematics*** in one’s profession, working with them strengthens the mind and makes it more fit for many other purposes.  Usually, one doesn’t do push-ups to become really good at doing push-ups, and one doesn’t jog in order to become a really good jogger.  One exercises to become stronger and healthier, more capable.  The mind is even more responsive to exercise than is the body, and if there are limits to how strong it can become‒in whatever sense‒I don’t think anyone has come close to reaching them****.

That’s that for today.  I hope you’re all weathering your personal storms reasonably well.  The one down here hasn’t done much to me; I probably could have slept outside in the rear of the house last night without any trouble.  The wind might have been soothing.  It might even have helped me get a better sleep.  It’s not as though it could have been much worse.

TTFN

*By which I mean an infection that opportunistically occurs due to the body’s weakened defenses caused by an initial infection, not an infection with exceptional nature or virulence.

**Understanding geometry is so potentially useful in so many ways that it’s said that the only time in his life that Isaac Newton laughed was when someone asked him what the point was in studying Euclid.  Newton is universally reputed to have been quite arrogant, vindictive, and impatient, to say the least.  One can only imagine the sheer amount of vitriol and scorn that would have been conveyed by that solitary gelastic moment.

***Or philosophy, or physics, or chemistry, or biology, or history, or literature, etc.

****Not even Newton or Von Neumann.

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What freezings have I felt, what blog posts seen!

Hello, ahoy-hoy, good day, and Happy New Year to all.

In my neck of the world, we’re currently suffering through a cold front/cyclone system that’s battering the eastern half of the United States with bitter cold and snow; even here in South Florida it got down to 45 degrees (Fahrenheit), last night, and it may get colder tonight.  That probably doesn’t seem very impressive to anyone who lives almost anywhere else in the US, or in most of Europe, but it’s the coldest it’s been here since I moved to this part of Florida.  Remember, I’m at roughly the same latitude as Egypt here, at least according to a map I saw online.*

As you know, last week we released “I for one welcome our new computer overlords” as a 99-cent short story for Kindle (and yes, that is how I’m capitalizing—or not capitalizing—the title).  I’m very happy with the way it turned out, so I’ve already begun arranging the other two short stories which had previously been posted on this blog.

This brings me to an interesting point:  As some of you know, I’d already recorded myself reading the short story “Prometheus and Chiron” aloud, for eventual placement on the blog, but simply hadn’t edited it yet for that purpose.  Well, now it turns out that my procrastination has served me well, since I’m in the process of doing further editing of the written version of that story.  I can honestly say that “Ifowonco” benefited greatly from that extensive re-editing process, and I think that “Prometheus and Chiron” will likewise benefit.  So, of course, I’m going to need to re-record it, and will then prepare that new version for release on the blog.  I’d like to say, or to imagine, that my subconscious was looking out for me in keeping me from releasing the audio before, but I can’t reasonably or honestly draw that conclusion.  I think it was mainly luck.

In any case, “Prometheus and Chiron” is the short story that will be released next for Kindle, and then on audio on this blog, but it’s going to be at least a little bit before it’s available (though we are already working on a cover design for it).

Speaking of audio—I did a bit of ex temp recording yesterday, speaking my thoughts, stream-of-consciousness style, on the dangers of so-called Regressive/Authoritarian Leftism, and especially on the dangers of virtue-signaling, dogmatism about ideological purity, and the in-fighting, denouncements, victimhood hierarchies, and the general level of shrieking hysteria one finds these days in segments of the left.  Quite apart from the impediment such idiocy presents to real, honest, classical-style liberalism—which has much in common with what might now be called libertarianism—and the contribution it made to the loss of the last election for the Democrats (and the possible loss of coming elections, for similar reasons), I have longer-term, possibly more disturbing worries, and I discussed them in brief…with myself, I guess.  Specifically, I pondered historical occasions when such intolerant and dogmatic leftists achieved power, and how those occasions gave rise to such historical horror shows as the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, the slaughter of the Czar’s family and the subsequent gulags and purges of Soviet Russia (and the conflicts between Stalin and Trotsky, which led, among other things, to Trotsky’s murder), and of course, the cultural revolution and the millions of deaths associated with Maoism.  I’m not sure how coherent my speech was on that subject—I just didn’t feel like writing about it at the time, even though writing is almost unfailingly more organized than free-associated speech—but I’m going to listen to it, and if it’s good enough, I’ll edit out the hems and haws, the misspeakings, the false starts, and so on, and release the audio on Iterations of Zero.  It’s an interesting experiment, in any case.

I do still intend to make use of audio in the future with some regularity, though I think I’m going to put the video notion on hold for the time being.  Maybe someday I’ll make videos out of my eventual audio files, attaching them to pretty, nature-oriented background scenes, with flowers, and birds, and bees, and sweet little children.  That way you can keep yourself alert by suppressing your urge to vomit, even as you listen to my riveting words spoken in the dulcet tones of my own angelic voice.

Believe me, it’s better than having to look at my face.

Of course, despite all these other projects, “Unanimity” is proceeding well.  Things have begun to fall apart for the main characters, as it were—though of course, they really began to do that near the beginning of the story, but no one realized it until now—and we are approaching various revelations, confrontations, acts of violence, and ultimately the conclusion.  I won’t quite go so far as to say that no one here gets out alive, but no one will get out unscathed.  The book should be released sometime this year, but I’m not sure exactly when, yet.  Much else is happening, currently, so my writing on “Unanimity” is going more slowly than it might otherwise.

Okay, well, that’s about it for announcements this week.  I haven’t yet begun writing my various “author’s notes,” nor have I decided whether I’ll put them on Amazon, but they will be forthcoming here.  Please stay tuned for them, and at the same time, stay warm everyone.

TTFN

*Upon subsequent investigation, I have confirmed that Florida is indeed roughly at the same latitude at Egypt.  In fact, Cairo is 2 degrees farther north than Orlando, Florida (30.04 degrees north, versus 28.53 degrees).  By comparison, the city in which I live is at 25.98 degrees north latitude, which is just south of Okinawa, and level with parts of Morocco, the UAE, and Oman, among other places.