The Prologue is written. Mouse over the Writing tab, then Matryoshka, and Prologue to the right.

Sorry I haven’t posted for two months. I’ve been working on what I call my “opus”, a grand-scaled novel about Miami, Cuba, nuclear war, water shortages exacerbated by hydraulic fracking and virtual reality. How’s that for a combination of topics, all in one book? If interested, the outline can be found under the Writing tab. It’s called Matryoshka, and the beginning of that post explains what that means. Donna Tartt, who wrote “The Goldfinch”, was my inspiration in beginning this novel. She showed that a great story can be told, even if it takes 10 years and 778 pages. Thank you Donna.

Since this is the last episode of the show, I thought it might be fun to live blog it.  There’s no possibility of a cliffhanger, as the producers say the next episode of the show will be completely different with different actors.  It is clear the “truth will out” in this episode, showing the seamy, decadent element of rural south Louisiana.  It’s 10 til, so we”ll get prepared to watch and tap.

McConaughey has has been on a roll for a while, now winning the Oscar for playing that incredibly thin fellow in Dallas Buyer’s Club. He’s still skinny in this show, and about as weird as you can get without getting Baker Acted.. So now the finale is starting with the familiar intro by the wonderful Handsome Family.

Intro with lawnmower man and he’s got somebody tied to a pallet. He’s adopted a weird English accent, after watching a snippet of a Cary Grant movie, and throwing pot lids at curs. Old woman and lawnmower man having weird dialogue. She appears to be some kind of grotesque love interest. So far stranger than normal. Long shot, then back to the boat and the sheriff being forced to reveal all (a leftover from the end of last week’s episode). He hollers watching the evil video that freaked out the Woody character Marty Hart. Family connection being alluded to. It’s chain of command seems to be the watchword. Oh dear, lawnmower man is painting at a school with little girls..that’s not good. Rust is threatening sheriff Steve trying to shake something more out of him. Oops- small interruption with Emily calling. Back to the show. Hart going back to crime scene photos. Shows Rust a house with a fresh paint job. Connecting to painters? Now some old history dialogue…guy stuff..blah blah..get on with it!

Old lady in nursing home id’s lawnmower man. The boys Look at tax records where the owner listed the expense so now they have evildoer’s name. Investigating cop hectoring Hart…hart says they’re working on the case and he says the investigator needs to help them…bad idea..not sure he’s trustworthy. Apparently they’re going to lawnmower man’s house. More blah blah.. Drive up to the house with the freaky old woman in the foreground. No signal on cell..Rust says “this place”?? Creepy..asks to use the phone Hart she’s yelling at the dog. Hart’s in the house Rust follows the dog who’s dead on the ground. confronts lawnmower man who runs away, house is a hoarder’s dream. Hart goes upstairs finds old woman in corner. Back to Rust chasing lawnmower man. Person on the pallet is a dude with long hair. Rust still chasing lawnmower man. Sees all the symbols from the case. Long shot showing the vine covered buildings. Looks like a maze of buildings. Can hear lawnmower man. Quite an elaborate set.. lots of twisty vines and old brick.. Oh, my, lawnmower man has Rust impaled and he’s bleeding profusely. Now he’s got Hart down. Rust shoots lawnmower man in the head. Rust pulling knife out of stomach..not good..investigators show up like the cavalry. Hart hollers for them..next scene Hart in hospital. Fifteen minutes to go and blaming all murders on lawnmower man. Family comes to see Hart..starts to cry..lawnmower man is a Childress. Calling him a serial killer. Lots of bodies..both Marty and Rust are alive.. Rust is mad because he saw lawnmower man in ’95. Rust knows there’s more bad guys. Long shot around the area showing the house,cropland, water. Back to the original scene of the murder. Hart and Cohle outside hospital. Marty gives him cigarettes. Smoking on hospital grounds. Cohle talks. About death and his daughter and father waiting for him on the other side. All he had to do is let go. And he did. He disappeared but he says he could still feel her love there. Crying for that lost love. Then he says he woke up. Hart consoling him about watching the stars. This is going to leave a lot of loose ends. Light versus dark. Dark has a lot more territory. Cohle agrees. Or does he? I’ll have to look again. Says he needs to not spend another night in the hospital and they leave. End of story..

All that energy connecting loose ends wasted. Very pedestrian ending. The Atlantic folks will howl.

Post Script: The Atlantic folk did howl, but not excessively. Here’s a link to their musings:

The Atlantic media critics discuss the ending

They point out a few things I missed, but all in all I think I got the gist of it. Marty goes from a cockeyed optimist to saying there’s more dark than light. Cohle had to die and return to know there is an afterlife where those you love are waiting to greet you. The Atlantic folks called this show a bromance…well, sorry, I don’t think so. It’s more about what the team that put this together had in mind with the opening: men struggling to do good to redeem their own failures and selfish indulgences. That resonates with me. Glad to have followed it: glad it didn’t have a totally cheesy ending.

Oh, my how quickly things change around here.  From a happy, smiling Vlad the Impaler (aka Putin) at the Sochi Olympics to the Yellow King* in just a few short weeks.  How did that happen, fer cryin’ out loud?  Well, frankly my dears, it really all started a long while ago.

*The Yellow King is a reference to the prime evil-doer on True Detective, set to wrap up Sunday night.

For the majority of what would consider Ukraine’s modern history, it has been an acknowledged part of Russia.  It became an independent country in 1991 with the breakup of the old Soviet Union.  Since then it’s been anything but calm, economically and politically.  The so-called Orange Revolution in 2005 started to destabilize the country, with two opposing groups fighting for control.  The west side, formerly a part of Poland, is mostly Catholic and speaks Ukrainian.  The east is populated by Russian-speaking transplants from mother Russia.  How’d they get there?  In WW II, Stalin was convinced that the Tatars that were living in the east part of Ukraine had collaborated with the Nazis.  So when he retook the land, he forcibly removed the Tatars, giving their land and belongings to Russians.  Not a recipe for stability, eh?

So recent troubles started when Ukraine applied for associate membership in the European Union.  Kissinger blames the EU for starting the troubles by “taking a dilatory approach” to Ukraine’s application.  The EU put two conditions on membership:  free the opposition party members from jail, and implement austerity measures.  These two conditions made the duly elected president Viktor Yanukovich decide to see if he could get a better deal elsewhere.  Enter Vlad the Impaler with a sweet deal of money and subsidized natural gas.  Score!  Hold it Viktor, not so fast.  Before you could say Jack Robinson, protestors were demanding his resignation, he fled the country, but not before having his troops shoot about a hundred of those protestors, mainly from the west.  Ouch.  So Putin, putting on the happy face at the Olympics, waits until after the closing ceremony, and then sends in troops to the eastern portion of the country.  Clearly a violation of international law.  But in typical Putin fashion, he advances, then stops and waits to see what the reaction will be.  Then he advances a bit more.  But so far there’s been nothing other than rhetoric and threats in response to his provocative action.

The Clash Say It BestMoving on from Cosmology to the Meaning of Life (indicating you have to read the Post below in order for this post to flow nicely…scan down, please.)  That’s Meaning with a capital M and Life with a capital L.  The big notion… what’s it really all about, Alfie?  Well, there are a couple of different notions on that.  Let’s discuss them.

First: picking up where Michio Kaku left off: if we’re well on our way to becoming a Type I civilization from the anarchy of Type 0, and if we make it past the annihilative fates that may have befallen others in the galaxy and universe, then we’re likely to meet some other folks along the way.  Other folks from galaxies far, far away … you know, the scrolling screen Star Wars thing.  He says in a couple hundred years.  If that occurs, then Stephen Hawking will likely have gotten it wrong.  And we won’t have followed the path recommended by Rust Cohle from True Detective.  Come again?  Oh, let’s go further into those two notions.

First Hawking, which I alluded to in the last post.  Stephen’s contributions  have been extraordinary to cosmology, but some of his ideas about what it means to be human are, well, frankly, a bit depressing.  Think The Matrix and you’ve got a pretty good idea of his notion of what it means to be human.

In fact, they use an illustration in his Grand Design series showing a bunch of brains in jars connected to some kinds of overarching infrastructure – sort of  like the babies in The Matrix.  That scene still gives me the creeps.  Anyway, he believes we are mere players in a giant computer’s game, and that the individual’s life is meaningless because it’s merely the perception of life.  The Creationists just go crazy bad-mouthing poor Stevie for his notions.  But is he sort of on the right track?

Next we turn to the immortal words of the character Rust Cohle in the new HBO series True Detective.  If you haven’t seen it, you should, if for no other reason than to watch the interaction (or the lack thereof) between the two leads Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey (have you noticed how weird Matthew’s gotten of late, with his appearance and his roles?)  So here is Rust’s idea of the meaning of life, from Episode 1, “The Long Bright Dark”:

“I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution.  We became too self-aware, nature created an aspect of nature separate from itself, we are creatures that should not exist by natural law.  We are things that labor under the illusion of having a self; an accretion of sensory experience and feeling, programmed with total assurance that we are each somebody, when in fact everybody is nobody.  Maybe the honorable thing for our species to do is deny our programming, stop reproducing, walk hand in hand into extinction, one last midnight, brothers and sisters opting out of a raw deal.”

Think Rust is channeling Hawking?  I’d say.  So which will it be: stick around and become a Type I civilization, harnessing the energy of the planet, not just coal, oil or solar, and see what the next installment of life has to offer?  Or do as Rust says, stop reproducing and go the way of all those other civilizations that didn’t make it.  Is that really our choice to make? Or is it all just a random jumble of programmed actions, and when the giant computer’s chips overheat or the programmer gets tired of playing and switches off the machine, will we miss out on seeing what else is out there?  I guess you’ll have to decide for yourself.

But I mentioned in the last post having gone back to the original short story Arthur C. Clarke wrote that became 2001: A Space Odyssey.  Recall the scene in the film with the apes touching the monolith shortly before one giant ape clubs another to death, and then the scene immediately switches to the moon ship and The Blue Danube (that’s Johann Strauss music ya know…).  What Clarke and Kubrick were alluding to rather cleverly was the notion of the monolith starting “us” on the path to evolution from apes to space travelers, with violence and death a hazard to be dealt with along the way.  And what is the monolith?  The creationists would say God.  Michio says Clarke’s story intended the monolith to be a Von Neumann probe, sent to the moon to signal to a Type III civilization that a Type II civilization had arrived, and to come check it out.  The film continues on, with what I had always assumed was the notion of the circle of life.  Recall that ending image?  Instead, maybe Kubrick was depicting a Type II civilization member, developing outside a human mother, since humans stopped evolving and therefore became extinct like the Dodo? Recall a Type II civilization derives its energy from the stars, as their planet’s energy is presumably depleted or endangered.

Michio has something interesting to say about evolution in that same chapter I referenced in yesterday’s post.  This is a bit long, but I think it’s worth reading.

“Evolution tends to accelerate when there are isolated pockets of individuals and harsh environmental conditions.  Within a small colony or tribe, small genetic differences due to inbreeding are gradually magnified, creating genetic ‘drift’ within the same species.”  “Today, breeding populations are usually in the millions.  In general, the larger the breeding population, the slower the rate of evolution.  Because a Type I civilization will no longer have isolated breeding populations, there will be a gradual mixing of peoples which will terminate their evolution as a species.”

 So the end of the evolutionary line for humans will be when we become a Type I civilization.  That’s what Rust recommends for us but for completely different reasons.  When we become a Type I civilization, the need to evolve as individuals will cease, but what comes next?  Michio suggests that the population of the earth will top out at 12 billion in the 22nd century.  That’s about when he suggests we’ll make the leap to the Type I civilization.  Will we make it that far?  And is that all just part of that cosmic computer game’s programming?  It does kind of feel like Luigi the Mario Brother would have made it through the initial hazards, only to go on to the next series of more difficult jumps.   So maybe Hawking and Morpheus are really onto something!  Think about it…

It seems to me that writing is like exercising.  Once you start and get in the habit, the words and the reps just flow.  But get out of the groove, and to begin again is to fear pain.  My thighs always hurt after I restart the exercise bike.  And my brain hurts thinking about stringing words together to try to say something cogent.  But Michael wrote a lovely piece about the Marlins, which oh by the way got ‘retweeted’ by the Marlins announcer, so Wow!  If he can find time amongst his heavy school load, I will make time and gird my fingers and brain to write again.  It’s good therapy anyway – just like riding the stationary bike.

So this is what I’ve been thinking about today –  Cosmology…and the meaning of life.  Trivial subjects suitable for my Facebook page, you say?  Well, I never denied being a nerd, and enjoying being a nerd.  So there! 

So what’s this all about Alfie?  Re-reading sections of Michio Kaku’s book Visions, and watching Stephen Hawking on “The Meaning of Life” from his Grand Design series, available on Netflix.  I also went back to Arthur C. Clarke’s original short story from 1951 “The Sentinel”, which formed the basis for Stanley Kubrick’s immortal 2001 – A Space Odyssey released in 1969, I think … wait a sec, I’ll check.  Hold please…nope – 1968.  Guess we didn’t see it until a year later…well, we were very poor in 1968.

Back to Cosmology and the Meaning of Life…Chapter 15 of Kaku’s Visions:  Toward a Planetary Civilization”, starts on page 322.  This is assigned reading so read and we’ll discuss.  Just kidding.  Kaku is a master at making very complex subjects fairly understandable for us non-physicists.  I could describe it in detail, but I’d rather share what I found to be mind bending in this chapter:

• Astronomer Nikolai Kardashev introduced a concept of civilizations, and labeled them Type I, II and III, based on the natural progression of energy consumption.
• “…any civilization in outer space will rely successively on three main sources of energy: their planet, their star and their galaxy, corresponding to Types I, II and III civilizations, respectively.  The energy output of each civilization is roughly 10 billion times larger than the previous one.”
• Economic growth is fueled by increased consumption of energy.
• Astrophysicists have searched for life by analyzing characteristic “energy signatures”
• “Our civilization is so new that even a hundred years ago we still got most of our energy from burning wood and coal, and any discussion of extraterrestrial energy sources would have been considered madness.”  So we’re Type Zero!

Of the three transitions, the most perilous – and likely the one that potentially destroyed other civilizations out there (hypothetically anyway) is the transition from Type 0 to Type I.  Why?  Let’s think of a few reasons:

1. Sectarian, fundamentalist, nationalist hatreds leading to war and genocide;
2. The discovery of the power of the atom and development of nuclear weapons;
3. The discovery of the power of chemistry with pollution and accompanying toxic threats

So the good news here is that we are just beginning our lives as a civilization on this planet, with lots to look forward to, if we can avoid the hazards of self-destruction brought on by any or all the above. Oh, and don’t forget the potential for natural disasters to exterminate large quantities of us,  like meteor strikes, global warming, solar flares, the shift in the magnetic poles, the eruption of a supervolcano like Yellowstone (it is overdue, you know…) Whew…makes your head spin.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss the meaning of life espoused by Stephen Hawking with an adjunct theory posited by Matthew McConaughey’s character in True Detective.  Stay tuned.

I finished Chapter 2 and 4 of the homework assignment for the Resilient Design Class.  Those were my assignments, and my two partners Rinki and Richu will each take two chapters.  It was an eye-opening experience to think about life in the Phillipines with heat, humidity, typhoons, earthquakes and oh … did I forget… volcanoes?  In fact, the Phillipines, sort of like Hawaii, was mostly formed from volcanoes.  According to my research in the climate section, a typhoon in 1881 killed 20,000 people.  Now that’s a typhoon.  The latest one, Haiyan, was the strongest in recorded history.  So I thought I’d share some pictures that I used in my chapters with you.  Enjoy~

Oh, by the way, I can see why people like Facebook – it’s quite useful for this kind of work!

This is an example of vernacular (native) architecture in the Phillipines.  It’s called a bahay-kubo, or nipa hut.  Seems very functional to me.

Next one is called The Coconut Palace, currently the residence of the Vice President of the Phillipines.  The whole thing is balanced on one main support pole.  Amazing, eh?

That’s all for tonight – tired from all this work which clearly I’m not used to.  Hope my partners like my work!  ‘night…

I’m back!  I needed a month off to recover from finishing up work, the holidays and other related activities.  But I’m back and will be likely sharing with you in a different way.  Where before I tended to be global in nature, I made a resolution to keep it micro this year.  The economic and political landscapes will just have to get by without me for a while.

Now let’s talk about this new course in which I’ve enrolled:  Designing Resilient Schools.  MOOC is the acronym for massive online open course, and that is just what this is.  Nearly 600 individuals have signed on to work as teams and design a prototype school to be built on a site in the devastated municipality of Guiuan in the Phillipines.  The Guiuan high school was destroyed in the aftermath of the Typhoon.  That is likely the first school that will be built from the selected prototype.

The class lasts for six weeks, and as I mentioned, we will form into teams and work together to come up with these designs.  So far we are a team of three:  Richu Thomas and Rinki Shah, two young architects from Indian have joined with me to be a team.  We’ll recruit a few more along the way, but it’s a start.  Our first assignment is to write about the native architecture of the Phillipines.  It’s due on the 24th, and is required to be in A3 .pdf format, whatever that is.  I see I have some peripheral work to do in order to meet the class standard for submittals.  In any event, I am confident our team will shine, as we are a motivated group and want to see this thru to fruition – maybe even to construction!  I’ll be writing more about this in the days to come.  In the meantime, here’s some pictures of the devastation that the area has suffered.

Later!

Nephew Michael and I were trading texts last night. He was working on test prep for his latest quiz, involving logarithms. Now I haven’t even thought about logarithms for 30+ years, so I had to brush up myself to help him sort through the issues. We got through it, but I must say he is really a lot more on top of his game than he realizes. Which brings me to the point of this post.

There’s been a fair amount written lately about math – call it meta-math, which is what you call it when you’re writing about a subject instead of performing in the subject. There’s a lot of myths about math (say that fast three times… ahem) like women as a group are just bad at it, or that some people are just never going to be able to balance a checkbook because – well, because numbers just elude them.

Stuff and nonsense, I say, stuff and nonsense! What most folks don’t realize is that math isn’t like reading a book or listening to music or watching TV. In order to work with mathematics, you have to treat it like a wrestling match. Huh? OK, you have to understand some basic notions that I’ve developed over many years of working with the subject, and tutoring kids from arithmetic to calculus. Here’s what I’ve determined:

You have to spend time with it, saturating your left brain with effort, to build it up like a pectoral muscle. In this instance, familiarity does not breed contempt, it breeds understanding and facility with manipulation of the elements of mathematics. So my rule of thumb formula for him was for every hour you spend in class, you should spend 2.5 hours at home reviewing, working with and mastering your math topic. Then you will be about 1/3 the way there (fractions – the bane of every child’s existence…)

The second piece of advice I offered was: use your resources! Back in the day you had a math textbook that was about as helpful as a Latin dictionary to assist you in working through the problems. Math books are written by math teachers, and math teachers ostensibly are good at math. But not so good at writing about it, and less good at explaining it because…well, because it’s easy for them, why isn’t it easy for you? Duh!

But now, thanks to this glorious invention called the internet, you have a wealth of information available with a click of the mouse. I particularly like a site called:

mathsisfun.com

Don’t ask me why maths is plural – maybe mathisfun wasn’t available. Anyway, they take topics that are written in math teacherese and simplify them for mere mortals like us. When I went to school a very long time ago, I’d always get 5 A’s and a C, and guess what the “C” was in? Why, math of course. So how come I can do it now? See rule #1 above, with one additional, scientifically proven fact.

THE BEST WAY TO LEARN SOMETHING IS TO HAVE TO TEACH IT.

So when I was a math tutor, that was more chutzpah and financial desperation than ability. But I managed to keep up with fifth graders until I got better at it. And thus I developed notion #1.

But is that enough? Michael was smart enough to think maybe there was more to it than just grinding effort to become a math genius. And yes, there is more. Let’s say you look at a math problem and figure, I have no idea how to do that problem – don’t even know where to begin! After the 2.45 hours spent and a fruitless search thru the internet for help, you do like they did on that Millionaire TV show – you call a friend. It’s never a sin to ask for help, and if that friend is supportive and friendly (and hopefully math literate), sometimes your just explaining the problem provides you with some insight into how to solve it.

So there you have it – easy as 1,2,3! So the next time you have to solve a tiny little math problem, use these steps and you’ll be considered a math wizard or wizardess!

We went to the 4 pm showing of Philomena this afternoon. The theater was full of Q-Tips just like us. Q-Tips are old people with gray or white hair…get it? Yeah…

Steve Coogan, the British comedian, played it straight in this movie from a book about a woman searching for her son, sold by Irish Catholic nuns to a family in America in the 1950’s. Judi Dench was the mother, pregnant via a casual experience at a fair, family turned her over to the nuns and … well, you know how it goes. She finds the son, and I won’t spoil how the plot turns out if you are inclined to go see it.

Steve and Judi have reasonably good chemistry, and of course the camera loves every wrinkle on this actress’ fabulous face. Recall Ms. Dench won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her 15 minutes on the screen as QE the First in Shakespeare in Love. Having been rejected for what should have won her the Best Actress Oscar for Mrs. Brown, the Academy made amends by the consolation prize the following year. She’s been acting professionally for 54 years, starting out as the French Princess Katherine in Hank Cinq in 1960. Along the way she’s appeared in British comedy series and, of course, as M in a slew of Bond flicks. Her voice is even in a Bond video game~! That’s a hard working woman.

Recall Steve Coogan was the poor literally beheaded director in Tropic Thunder, the first time I recall seeing him perform. Very over the top, albeit short-lived part. In this film, he’s a very low-key Martin Sixsmith, the real guy that wrote the book from which Philomena was adapted. I saw Coogan talking with Charlie Rose about the challenge from normally doing broad comedy to performing as a cynical, lapsed Catholic journalist and former spin meister for the Labor government. He did a good job.

I won’t spoil the plot, but the mid-80’s and early 90’s Republican administrations fit into the story, and it reminded me of how much things have changed since then. The AIDS epidemic was raging, and Republicans refused to fund research because they saw the disease as punishment for sin on the part of gay men. And, of course, the unwed mother in Ireland was parted from her child as a function of the ‘wages of sin’ punishment meted out by the Catholic church and the hard-core Magdaline sisters. Of course the fact that Americans paid a thousand pounds for the child never figured into that equation. Liz Taylor and other celebrities filled in to raise money for AIDs research that led to what will soon be a curable disease. The Catholic Church has been de-frocked as a religious institution and branded a criminal enterprise because of its cover up of child molestation by priests. So the wages of sin? The God I know has an interesting way of balancing the books, but there is a lot of misery generated by these institutions along the way to reaching this fair equilibrium. Having said that, this film takes a heart breaking experience and sheds light on profane injustice. That is part of the big plan, I believe. Shining the light into dark corners like this is what leads to necessary change, and confirms our belief that everyone gets their just desserts in the end. Check it out.