Freefall: Jerry Pournelle’s Review.

Posted on March 8, 2014 by The Old Wolf

Art: Mark Stanley. Background and color: The Old Wolf

I’ve mentioned Mark Stanley’s Freefall webcomic several times in this blog (just do a search, you’ll find the articles, but here’s one of my favorites).

I found a link to this article by Jerry Pournelle at the Freefall discussion forum, and was so impressed I felt I needed to share it. WARNING: If you decide to check out the strip before reading Pournelle’s review, start here. There is great value in working up to the current storyline climax, and not spoiling it. Unless, of course, you’re the kind who reads the last chapter of a mystery first, which is fine as well. Just saying.

I wrote this for another conference, but it occurs to me that while I have mentioned Freefall here before, it has been a while:

If you are not a fan of Freefall http://freefall.purr…100/fv00001.htm you ought to be. Alas, it really will involve some time because it is a serial story, and the current panels are shocking — that is, they have a total surprise that I do not think many readers saw coming. I did not. And you should not see them before reading the rest of the story leading up to now.

The graphic novel — it has become as long as one — has as its premise that mankind has settled planets other than earth, and on one of them there is a population of a small number of humans and tens of millions of robots, all pretty well subject to Asimov’s three laws, only a lot of that is in my judgment better thought out than Isaac did. The robots are highly intelligent and competent, but they are programmed to obey most human direct orders, and are very protective of humans. This situation can be exploited by certain unscrupulous bureaucrats.

And into this mix comes Florence, a Bowman’s Wolf, an artificially intelligent product of genetic manipulation, a genetic mixture of red wolf, dog and human genes with programming for artificial intelligence, born of a dog (St. Bernard) who was not her biological mother, and developing opposable thumbs, human speech, and the ability to walk on her hind legs although she runs much faster on all four legs. She wears clothes and has normal human modesty, and grew up in a household of humans, first as a pet then as — well, as an intelligent dog, then as a sibling. In theory she is the property of the human family. She has most of the powers of a real wolf and an IQ I would estimate at 140 or so. She is a graduate engineer.

Also living on this planet is a single member of an alien species brought there as a stowaway from another planet — he is not artificially intelligent, he is intelligent, but he has nothing of the ethics and mores of a human and no human companionship. He is of a race of scavengers, and had thousands of siblings but he is probably the only survivor, and that because he stowed away on the human ship. He owns two robots and as owner he can give them direct orders. One is a general purpose robot who likes him, and the other is his space ship which he managed to acquire as scrap and sort of get it running — but the ship considers him a danger to humans and hates him and would like to kill him but has been forbidden to do that. It belongs to Sam. Sam wears an environment suit which makes him appear sort of humanoid, but under that suit he is not humanoid at all.

All this happens in the first couple of dozen panels. Sam acquires the Bowman’s wolf as his ship’s engineer. He does so by devious means, but she considers herself bound as a crew officer to be respectful to and obey the captain. Only sometimes that would be disastrous and she’s pretty clever about playing logic games.

There are now two thousand four-panel pages of story, all relevant to the story line although some are not obviously so. We are now reaching a climax, I think, and certainly the story has taken a surprising turn. Meanwhile we have met many fascinating characters, including robot police who have to deal with humans, a veterinarian who sort of falls in love with Florence the AI wolf, a child who wonders if Florence and the vet will marry prompting Florence to be amused that the kid thinks all mammals have the same number of chromosomes, scheming officials who try to prompt a robotic war so they can get rich on scrap, and a great number of antics in which Sam acts quite morally for him == he is a scavenger, after all == but which drive the human authorities nuts. Especially since Sam is a very skilled thief, pickpocket, and jail breaker.

If you never heard of this you should try it: it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s the best of this kind of thing I know of. It is a combination of comedy of manners and some broad farce, and it mixes those elements well. It starts black and white but acquires better art and color at a couple of hundred pages (again four panels to a page). It is now up to a couple of thousand and it will take you a bit of time to get from the beginning to where we are now, but I liked every episode I read. I urge you NOT to skip ahead, and particularly don’t look at the current pages at all; catch up to them from the beginning. It will be worth it in my judgment. The story is well developed and very logically constructed. I’d like to see it win a Hugo. It’s really good.

Recommended.

Be aware that the Freefall time line is mind-shatteringly slow. Day One begins on March 30, 1998; as of today, Florence has spent approximately three weeks on the planet’s surface. And for those of us who want to find out how the story ends, the three updates per week can be painful… but I’ve been hooked for over 10 years, and by Mogg’s tufted tail I am not giving up.

If you don’t take my recommendation, take Pournelle’s… and enjoy.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

James Gurney: The Soy Bean

Posted on February 28, 2014 by The Old Wolf

This lovely painting by James Gurney appeared in the July, 1987 edition of the National Geographic, long one of my favorite magazines since early childhood. I’ve had multiple collections of hard copy editions, gathered over the years and then given away when moving (they’re heavy!) and then gathered again. I recently scored a complete set on DVD that included everything up through the 90’s – it still runs on my XP virtual machine – so I was able to get rid of all but the few special editions I wanted to keep.

Gurney managed to get dozens of things based on soy into his painting; about the only thing I haven’t spotted is nattō. The photo of the painting came with the following caption:

Invisible ingredient in countless products, the soybean plays an amazingly pervasive role in everyday life. Artist James Gurney included more than 60 soybean-related products in this painting, done in the style of Norman Rockwell. He not only called on neighbors and friends for models, but also portrayed himself and his wife emerging from the store, startled by a skateboarding boy carrying a cone of tofu “ice cream”; the boy’s shorts-like the tablecloth-bear a bean-pod motif.

The bags the couple carry, the store-window and sidewalk displays are replete with items that have a soybean connection

Cardboard, glues, and animal and human foods are commonplace soybean products. The sidewalk customer’s caulking, paint, wallpaper, gasoline, and the muffin he buys all owe a debt to soy-as does the bicycle tire.

The beer sign reflects the use of soy meal in the brewing process. The fire extinguisher uses soy protein in its foam. And pre-1981 National Geographics were printed on soy-lecithin-lubricated presses. The car symbolizes an experimental one built with soybean plastic by Henry Ford. The artist’s final tribute: He used soy-based paint.

There’s a lot of conflicting information out there regarding the health benefits or detriments of soy; it’s hard to know who’s right at this point in time, but I’ll keep enjoying my tofu and other fermented soy products.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share this delightful and intriguing work of art.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Surfaces of our Solar System

Posted on January 3, 2014 by The Old Wolf

I have no idea who put together this collage. Mad props to them; the image is beautiful. Click it for a full-size view.

From left to right: Venus, Terra, Luna, Mars, and Titan. All but our own world would freeze you or roast you or both.

My hat is off to the scientists and technicians who made these pictures possible.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Pollen: Good for more than hay fever

Posted on October 27, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Just look at that stuff. Magnified 500 times (the image is colorized), it’s easy to see why some people’s noses and eyes respond unhappily to the invasion of this vegetative sperm. On the other hand, without it plants would reproduce and the world would be left dead and sterile.

It turns out pollen is great for science, as well. Pollen lasts for a long, long time – millions of years when fossilized. A 3,200-year drought and cold wave destroyed a late Bronze Age thriving society near present-day Tel Aviv and far beyond, and until now scientists had no clue as to why – but pollen appears to have solved the mystery.

According to The Jewish Press,

A study of fossil pollen particles in sediments extracted from the bottom of the Sea of Galilee has revealed evidence of a climate crisis that traumatized the Near East from the middle of the 13th to the late 12th century BCE. The crisis brought about the collapse of the great empires of the Bronze Age.

Even older, analysis of pollen hundreds of millions of years old showed that flowers may have existed as early as the first dinosaurs, according to an article in LiveScience.

Newfound fossils hint that flowering plants arose 100 million years earlier than scientists previously thought, suggesting flowers may have existed when the first known dinosaurs roamed Earth.

Under high magnification, these little grains are beautiful, and it seems very useful to scientific research. But that is cold comfort to those who suffer from hay fever, a malady from which I have been blessedly exempt – but having watched my kids suffer, I have endless sympathy for those who do.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Posted on October 20, 2013 by The Old Wolf

There is supposedly a Serbian proverb that states, “Будите скромни за вас су од земље, да буде племенита за вас су од звезда.”

Be humble, for you are made of earth. Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Whether it is Serbian in origin or not, it’s a good proverb. I like it. Because it’s true. From Random Science Tools comes this chart of the relative preponderance of elements in the body of an average 70kg man:

Element	Amount / kg		Amount / Mol.
Oxygen	43		2700
Carbon	16		1300
Hydrogen	7		7000
Nitrogen	1	.8	130
Calcium	1	.0	25
Phosphorus	0	.78	25
Sulphur	0	.14	4	.4
Potassium	0	.14	3	.6
Sodium	0	.10	4	.3
Chlorine	0	.095	2	.7
Magnesium	0	.019	0	.78
Silicon	0	.018	0	.64
Iron	0	.0042	0	.075
Fluorine	0	.0026	0	.14
Zinc	0	.0023	0	.035
Rubidium	0	.00032	0	.0037
Strontium	0	.00032	0	.0037
Bromine	0	.00020	0	.0025
Lead	0	.00012	0	.00058
Copper	0	.000072	0	.0011
Aluminium	0	.000061	0	.0023
Cadmium	0	.000050	0	.00044
Boron	< 0	.000048	0	.0044
Barium	0	.000022	0	.00016
Tin	< 0	.000017	0	.00014
Iodine	0	.000013	0	.00010
Manganese	0	.000012	0	.00022
Nickel	0	.000010	0	.00017
Gold	< 0	.000010	0	.000051
Molybdenum	< 0	.0000093	0	.000097
Chromium	< 0	.0000018	0	.000035
Caesium	0	.0000015	0	.000011
Cobalt	0	.0000015	0	.000025
Uranium	0	.00000009	0	.00000038
Beryllium	0	.000000036	0	.0000040
Radium		3.1×10^-14		1.4×10^-13

Chemical composition of the human body by mass

As little as it may be, we have gold in us. And other rare elements. And we have to remember that at the creation of the universe, the only elements present were hydrogen and helium. Every other naturally-occurring element in the periodic table was born in the hearts of dying stars which ended their lives as supernovæ, or – as recently hypothesized in the case of heavier elements like gold – in collisions between neutron stars.

I like Carl Sagan’s quote, which he also managed to work into his book Contact: “The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space.” Whether we are alone in the universe is a question which science has yet to answer, but it’s pretty mind-bending to think that the elements which make up our bodies came from the universe around us. As astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson said,

“Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us.”

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Are people “good” or “bad” at math?

Posted on October 12, 2013 by The Old Wolf

Over at Quartz, writer Allison Schrager says no. I originally spotted her article over at Newser, which summarized it this way: “Think You’re ‘Bad at Math’? You’re Just Being Lazy.”

While there are some good points in the article, I feel as though her conclusion is flawed.

Yes, math is difficult – especially when you get up into the higher levels. To learn it requires intellectual rigor, patience, discipline, and hours and hours of repetition. I remember this passage from the first science fiction book I ever read as a child, Heinlein’s Have Space Suit, Will Travel:

“Anybody who thinks that studying Latin by himself is a snap should try it.

I got discouraged and nearly quit-then I got mad and leaned into it. After a while I found that Latin was making Spanish easier and vice versa. When Miss Hernandez, my Spanish teacher, found out I was studying Latin, she began tutoring me. I not only worked my way through Virgil, I learned to speak Spanish like a Mexicano.

Algebra and plane geometry were all the math our school offered; I went ahead on my own with advanced algebra and solid geometry and trigonometry and might have stopped so far as College Boards were concerned-but math is worse than peanuts. Analytical geometry seems pure Greek until you see what they’re driving at-then, if you know algebra, it bursts on you and you race through the rest of the book. Glorious!”

I loved that story when I read it at age 10, and I still love it today, but I’m bitterly disappointed that I never had that breakthrough that the story’s protagonist experienced. I did fair to middling through high school in algebra, geometry, trigonometry and analytical geometry, but I was always doing it like a cook follows a recipe – it never burst on me, and I never saw what they’re driving at. So when I hit college with dreams of being a doctor, and discovered that in order to pursue a chemistry major I would have to take all the concomitant calculus courses, that was all she wrote. It was worse than pure Greek, because that’s a subject I did well in.

Mastering a foreign language is no piece of cake either, and yet for some reason I can master enough of a foreign language to become reasonably fluent in 3 months, whereas learning even the rudiments of calculus has eluded me for over 40 years. The disappointment stems from the fact that I love the world of science, and mathematics is the key that unlocks the door to understanding – a door through which I will only ever be able to peer through a keyhole to where the big boys and girls are playing.

This is music to my ears…

“Per me si va ne la città dolente,
Per me si va ne l’etterno dolore,
Per me si va tra la perduta gente.
Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore:
Fecemi la divina podestate,
La somma sapienza e ‘l primo amore.
Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create
Se non etterne, e io etterno duro.
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate”.
(from Dante’s Divina Commedia)

whereas this makes my mind shut down completely:

Kepler’s equation for calculating orbits

And all we’re talking about here is limits, let alone the really weird things. To a scientist, this is really simple stuff.

My own experience has demonstrated to me that each person born has gifts and abilities unique to them. As no two snowflakes are a like, as no two stars have identical magnitudes or compositions, so no two people have the same talents. For me, math is terribly difficult, and language is uncannily easy.

As a result, the formula above is the only bit of calculus that I have ever been able to memorize – and I’ll never forget it. Don’t get me wrong – I can’t evaluate it, even though I’m told by smarter friends that both sides equal ⅓; no, I remember it because it’s a limerick. ^[1]

Integral zee squared dee zee,
From one to the cube root of three,
Times the cosine
Of three pi over nine,
Equals log of the cube root of e.

Here is a drawing done by my daughter, who has never had an art lesson in her life. This is a gift that springs from within her.

Where I agree with Ms. Schrager is that despite the difficulty, if I worked at it long enough and hard enough, I could master it. But somewhere else there is a brilliant mathematician who trembles in terror at the thought of trying to learn Italian, because he or she knows that it would almost take more effort than it is worth.

In conclusion, I would retitle Ms. Schrager’s article to read: “Yeah, math is hard – but it’s worth the effort.”

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] I have hundreds of limericks rattling around in my skull. Unfortunatly,

A limerick packs rhymes anatomical
Into verses quite economical
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

Our bodies do strange things

Posted on October 6, 2013 by The Old Wolf

I recently came across this article about a gentleman who brews his own beer… inside his gut. Apparently he harbors Saccharomyces cerevisiae, with the result that his digestive system was literally manufacturing alcohol every time he consumed carbohydrates due to the fermentation action of S. cerevisiae mixing with carbs and sugar.

From the article:

The man, who at first was assumed by other doctors to be a “closet” drinker,^[1] was eventually cured of his condition after being put on a low-carb diet and taking anti-fungal medications to purge his body of S. cerevisiae. But his case now serves as an example of what can happen to a person when taking conventional antibiotics — the body’s delicate microbial ecosystem can undergo drastic changes that leave it prone to takeover by harmful yeast strains.

I recently had an experience that was different but related, and was pretty strange. I’m putting the rest of this post under a “more” cut, in case it falls into the category of “too much information.”

Continue reading →

The Alien Lake

Posted on October 2, 2013 by The Old Wolf

This eerie calcified flamingo appears on the shores of Lake Natron in northern Tanzania. Read more about the lake that turns animals into “statues” at New Scientist.

Nature never ceases to amaze me.

Oh, and don’t go swimming.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The sun, up close and personal

Posted on August 7, 2013 by The Old Wolf

This image of a sunspot (with superimposed USA for approximate scale) was taken by the New Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory. It is the most precise image of a sunspot ever taken. The granules on the sun’s surface are approximately 1 million meters (621 miles) in diameter, and roughly 2500 miles deep.

From the BBSO website: “New observations of the solar granulation with the New Solar Telescope (NST) at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) allowed a NJIT-Stanford research team to make the next step in understanding of the solar surface structure. A new complex world of very small granules became visible between normal solar granules. Mini-granules, as small as Maine, form a multi-fractal structure, similar to other systems in nature, such as coast lines, glaciers, earthquakes, stock market, etc. A key property of such systems is their unpredictable, burst-like behavior and jagged, irregular shape. Usually, occurrence of numerous independent random processes lead to the formation of a such system. Studying of such systems is beneficial for understanding both the universe and the social life.”

So much energy there, free for the taking.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Playing in the World Game

As One

Category Archives: Science

Freefall: Jerry Pournelle’s Review.

James Gurney: The Soy Bean

Surfaces of our Solar System

Pollen: Good for more than hay fever

Be noble, for you are made of stars.

Are people “good” or “bad” at math?

Our bodies do strange things

The Alien Lake

The sun, up close and personal

Heavy coffee consumption linked to higher death risk – USA Today

NIH study finds that coffee drinkers have lower risk of death – National Institutes of Health