Echopraxia

Peter Watts' Echopraxia is not so much a sequel to Blindsight as a sequentially-timed companion piece. The characters and locations are all different; weirdly, the only constant is the aliens (kind of), and since they are not identifiably individual/group entities and don't speak, I don't think it/they really count for story continuity.

As a companion piece, Echopraxia does well --- it maintains the balance of cool and weird ideas* with an engaging and unpredictable plot. The structure was eerily similar: a slow build of action and ideas, turning in a widening gyre, punctuated by a sudden flurry of violence, trailing off into chaos as things fall apart and the book ends. Anarchy is, of course, loosed upon the world.

Again, many elements of the book were pure bait to me.

But she wasn't letting it go. "Everything's numbers you go down far enough don't you know?" She poked him, pinched his arm. "You think this is continuous? You think there's anything but math?"

He knew there wasn't. ... Numbers didn't just describe reality, numbers were reality, discrete step functions smoothing up across the Planck Length into an illusion of substance. (p. 166)

This quote flung me out of Echopraxia and back to my forever-sustained reread of A Compact History of Infinity, whose prose about the continuum is pure joy.

Echopraxia didn't really stick the landing for me. The main character was often off-balance and uncomfortable, but I felt sympathy neither with his feelings, nor his situation, nor his ignorance, nor him himself, even though he was the most relatably-like-modern-humans character, and recipient of the (reader-oriented) explanations and gradual reckoning of ideas.

The ending was incredibly bleak and pessimistic, a sort of anti-engaging wrapper around all the neat ideas. A bushel over the light. Blindsight was about consciousness and neurons, but Echopraxia seems to be about religion and neurons, which is just not as interesting to me.

This book made me feel retroactively obsolete from the vantage of future observers. Meh. I do not especially recommend it.


This post's theme word is casuistry, "deceptive or excessively subtle reasoning, especially on moral issues." Sufficiently advanced rhetoric is indistinguishable from casuistry; we're too dumb to understand the necessary nuanced reasoning.

*thoroughly-cited in Real Academic Literature, adding a huge chunk to my nonfiction reading queue

Terrible relationship metaphor

There are several bridges in Paris coated with padlocks. Each lock is engraved --- or sharpied in a modern take on the tradition --- with two names or sets of initials. Then padlocked to the bridge railing.

Crowdsourcing a windblock?

 As I understand it, the lock functions as an instantiated metaphor for the constancy and commitment of the two people named thereon. Their love for each other is hereby fastened, made sure, immortalized, etc. Then they throw the key into the Seine. I don't know how the metaphor works for combination locks.

But it's a terrible metaphor. For one, the locks are small. Is your commitment to the relationship small? Easily broken by a pair of bolt-cutters or even just a screwdriver and a few seconds' work? Your relationship is periodically removed, cut free, and cleaned up by public employees sent to keep the bridge clean. It does not lock anything; it serves no function; it is empty, meaningless, a dead weight. (Not to cast your relationship too cruelly.)

In short, this supposedly-enduring emblem of your relationship is doomed to end. Soon. Just like all the other, identical, not-special-or-unique romances that led to the same strained metaphor and what I'm sure were very sweet, but transient, kisses on a bridge in Paris.

Other photographers shared my prospect.

This post's theme word is gris-gris, "a charm, amulet, or fetish." A true gris-gris of a devoted relationship should have more properties in common with its object: permanence, size, import, durability. The monument to my love will be more like a swimming pool filled with concrete --- large, heavy, immovable, and requiring specialized machinery and many man-hours to disassemble. Ah, concrete pool! light of my life!

Jardin des Plantes: giant flower

Brazen hussy of a flower, with your head-sized genital display out in a public park, where children play! Have you no shame?!

I have not been accustomed to such displays.

Paris in springtime is quite lovely. Toronto's springs are more demure --- demurer? --- and delayed besides. Plus fewer people speak French there.


This post's theme word is corolla, "the petals of a flower as a group." That corolla is large enough to be a headdress.

Versailles

The buildup to Versailles is extreme. The grandest palace, built specifically to overawe the world (and nobles!) with the magnificence of monarchy. The descriptions in Stephenson's The Baroque Cycle --- a work which forms much of my knowledge of world history, 1660 to 1750 --- made it seem the pinnacle of palace architecture.

The approaching walk does not disappoint. On the weekend, everyone in the area is walking to the palace, which contributes to the general feeling of grand power.

Approaching Versailles from the front

The entire front courtyard here --- large enough to encompass many castles of my experience --- was where the carriages would line up to discharge the nobility into this lair of Louis' power.

The front parking lot is large. N.B.: most of the castle is not even visible from here.

The in-home chapel rivals many cathedrals. Here we see the first hint of the overarching decorating schemes (pun intentional): firstly, that heaven descends to earth at Versailles, and secondly, that which can be gilt in gold shall be gilt in gold.

Just a little family chapel.

Serious ceiling fresco.

The gold-and-fresco theme continues in every room. An interesting visual trick is played whereby the 3D corner detailing is blended into trompe-l'oeil 2D painting. I fantasy that this was to spare the expense of having to dust the intricate details of so much plasterwork.

In addition, most of the frescoes are painted with perspective. The point-of-view of we plebian viewers on the ground is taken into account: the soles of feet, bottoms of carriages, etc. are visible as if to continuously remind us how far below the Sun King we stand.

The chandeliers and other fixtures aren't unintimidating, either. More gold! More!

I ran out of time to explore the full gardens (and outlying sub-palaces) behind Versailles proper. Here is one wing --- the queen's, I believe --- taken from a distant enough vantage point that the entire wing could be in-frame.

Our shadows in the evening, rising to meet us.

The visit was fantastic, intimidating, exhausting. Overawing. Even several centuries dead, I am impressed by Louis' power.


This post's theme word is stentorian, "loud and powerful." Versailles makes a stentorian statement about the monarchy; the absence of modern monarchy from France makes a quiet but persistent retort.

Time shrinks all sizes

Last week I went shopping for jeans to supplement my ever-dwindling supply. I dislike shopping and trying on clothing. In order to expedite the process I wore a pair of jeans I own and like, that fit, to the Elderly Marine store where I bought them, hoping to find identical (but newer) jeans and purchase them forthwith.

This hope was in vain.

I have (apparently) shrunk two sizes. (Women's sizes go by evens, so I actually went from size x to x-4.) This is wrong. What sort of time-dilation factor is at play here? Probably the same weirdness that causes men's sizes to distort. Companies cater to vanity. I'd rather have consistency, but (as usual) I seem to be an outlier.

I wonder: I am approaching 0, which I thought was the smallest size. What happened to the people who used to wear size zero? Do they now wear negative four? Or do the sizes go 0, 00, 000, 0000, etc., until they run out of space on the tag, in the style of DDDDD bras (since H sounds shamefully big to admit)?

[Update: I notice that the Wikipedia article on "vanity sizing" offers a few explanations and a scientific study of the drift of sizes over time.]

This post's theme word is buskin, " a thick-soled laced boot, reaching to the knee or calf, worn by actors of ancient Greek tragedies"
This post's alternate titles are: "Time shrinks all waists" and "The time-dilation factor (in my pants!)"
This post written like William Gibson.

Rubik's yeah!

My graduation date may need to be pushed back a few years. I love these puzzles. This one in particular is quite devious. Mind games. The math is so delicious.


This post's theme word: birl, "to rotate (a floating log) by running on it in place," or "to spin or rotate. "

Puzzle challenge 2008

My team did a lot better this year. You can see the puzzles and solutions here, if you're interested.


This post's featured quote (interchange):

- Now I know how a dynamic programming algorithm feels.
- And how is that?
- Confused.

Knights and knaves puzzle variations

My guess is that nearly all my readers have heard the basic knights/knaves puzzle, but I have recently come across interesting modifications of the problem. (It took four -- count them! -- theory grad students to figure out the "challenge" below, and it is probably within ε (i.e., nigh) of murderously frustrating for non-mathematical laypeople.) I have not solved the last three, although two of them have solutions posted on Wikipedia.

As so often occurs in puzzles, you find yourself shipwrecked on an island. The population of this island can be partitioned into two groups: knights and knaves. Knights answer all questions truthfully; knaves always lie. While wandering, you come upon a building with two doors, each guarded by one native islander. You know that one of the doors leads to a pile of treasure, and the other leads to a hungry, man-eating lion. You may ask a single yes/no question to one of the guards. Then you must select a door, and meet your fortune/death.

Warm-up: If you know that exactly one of the guards is a knave and one is a knight, what question do you ask? This is the standard knights and knaves puzzle.

Challenge: If you know nothing about the distribution of the two islanders (maybe two knights, maybe two knaves, maybe one of each), what question do you ask?

Hard challenge: The island also contains some residents who reply at random. You happen upon three islanders, and know that there is one of each type (Knave, Knight, Random). You may ask three yes/no questions. (Each question can be addressed to only one of the islanders.) What do you ask in order to determine their identities?

Harder challenge: Same as the hard challenge, except that the islanders reply in their language, where {yes, no} = {foo, bar} but the exact correlation is unknown. Wikipedia lists this as "the hardest logic puzzle ever."

Impossible:

This post's theme word: ambisinister, "clumsy with both hands." Unfortunately, it does not mean that you are equally sinister with both sides of your body.

Lightswitch puzzle

There are three switches on the wall outside a room. (Four, for the more ambitious.) Exactly one of them controls a lightbulb inside the room. You are allowed to change the switches as much as you want, after which you may enter the room only once and see the lightbulb. Then you must say which switch controls the light.

This puzzle is not probabilistic. There is a solution that gives the correct answer 100% of the time.


This post's theme card game: Bang! I, the sheriff, was killed this evening by one of my misguided deputies in the hurried speed-round we did as we were being kicked out of a closing building. So the outlaws won. In retribution, I left them all befuddled by this puzzle.

Extra day! Hat puzzle.

Today is an extra day. As a special bonus, it is also snowing big, fluffy flakes, and it's not too cold. This is a good sampling of weather for the prospective students who are visiting the department this week. Last night, the department sent us forth in groups of {two current, four potential} students to eat dinner. The dinner degenerated (after a long period of substantive, informative conversation) into puzzles. I love puzzles!

... and so I shall introduce you to the "hat" puzzle. There are many versions of this puzzle, but I heard this one first so I think of it as the canonical "hat" puzzle. I am sure I will post many more.

A hundred mathematicians are shipwrecked on a cannibal-infested island. The cannibals are sporting, though, so rather than skewer and roast all the mathematicians right away, they give them a chance to win their freedom, saying,

Tomorrow at dawn we will line you up on the beach, each facing the back of the next person in line. Then we will take a bunch of red and blue hats and put one hat on each person's head.

Starting with the last person in line (that is, the person who can see everyone else), we will ask you what color hat you are wearing. If you answer correctly, you will be set free. If you answer incorrectly, we will drag you off to "participate" in the evening feast.

What strategy do the mathematicians develop to save themselves? Can they save everyone?


This post's theme song: "Problem Girl" by Rob Thomas.

Right where I need to be

Since arriving alone in this foreign land (O, Canada!), I have frequently doubted myself. In the spirit of “fake it ‘til you make it,” I embraced my new life with confidence, or the best approximation I could rustle up. I have never done anything like this in my life – not just graduate school, which is of course new, but living off-campus, grocery shopping and preparing food for just myself, existing in the real world.

Of course, graduate school is not the real world. But it’s the closest I’ve ever been, so indulge me in my drama! Although I rarely venture out of my academic shell, I do spend about an hour every day reading the news (Slashdot, Boing Boing, my friends’ blogs, and occasionally the real news), so I have an increasingly good view of [my small corner of] the real world.

G likes to remind me that is what I chose for myself, and although she means “how wonderful that you get to live your life as you want!”, every time she says it I hear an undercurrent of “don't be dissatisfied!” Both those messages are worthwhile, since I could leave at any point if I realized that graduate school, or my current way of life, or even this looney country are not what I want to do. So it’s important for me to remember that I’m in control. That said, I have been living mostly alone, mostly in my own head, much like L, and like C I am slightly wistful for the society I am missing, though not enough to make me leave graduate school for anything else.

Could I even meet the right kind of people elsewhere? A while ago I exclamatorily wrote, “I found my people!” upon discovering a group of graduate students who meet once a week to play board games. (I am a strategy fiend, and live for the kind of 12-hour-long, friendship-ruining games like Diplomacy.) Unfortunately we seem to have stopped meeting since the semester’s work began in earnest, sending us scuttling back into our offices.

Luckily for me, I was bold enough to blindly email my entire department and get a four-person team to compete in last weekend’s College Puzzle Challenge, an “an annual puzzle-solving competition held simultaneously on college campuses across North America.” It’s a twelve-hour nerdfest, with staggered release of packets of devilishly obscure puzzles. (And no instructions. They are for the weak.) I found my people again! It turns out that, much like X-men, the Incredibles, or heroes, sarcastic, hilarious math and CS nerds are all around us. They keep their abilities hidden to avoid ostracism/exploitation/genocide/your-favorite-sci-fi-disaster-here.

The puzzles were difficult, and my team didn’t pick up steam until the final three or four hours, but it was still lots of fun, and made me happy. I have been laughing to myself intermittently since then, something I hadn’t done in a long while.

In sum: it’s good to be me, everything about my life is perfect, and I love what I’m doing! Now back to the grindstone.


This post’s theme song: the eponymous Gary Allan song.