Back at Old Stone Dock, in a different mood.

Function iteration problem

 Solve for f, in

f'(x) = f(f(x))

I have no idea how to solve this. It is one of a set of similar questions, seeking to transform the function iteration into something more manageable. 

Quisset Harbor - a quiet January afternoon

 

before I messed it up:

A couple thoughts from the edge of sleep - noun replacement and cognitive momentum

It seems like there is a language template activity in my mind, where the activity and template are a bit independent of the nouns. This is one way I make mistakes: when I am going to the sink to do something and pick up the wrong utensil. I think I am almost always within some narrative framework.

It is pretty easy for the nouns to slip out of place in the narrative structure and be substituted for by other things. I observe this to be happening when I begin to dream: the wrong noun gets into the story, but the story continues as I dream.

I recently noticed something that might  be responsible for noun substitution, that I want to call cognitive momentum. This is the idea that what you are thinking is a whole surging mass of different separate thoughts, with some more central than some others; and then some another mental mechanism (behaving like an external applied force) causes the whole mass to change direction. What can happen as you go to sleep, is that some constituent of the mass slip out, and continue in the direction they were going, while others respond to the external force and change of direction. 

The act of dreaming begins when you switch to the residual mass - perhaps with the existing narrative structure, but now with the wrong ideas elevated to central position, creating impossible combinations.

Red Crab

 

Too bad the CDC is run by incurious politicians and not scientists

I think "big" science has a lot to answer for. How many people suspected a bioengineered virus and kept it to themselves for fear of ostracism? How many of them challenged the censoring of information, publicly and loudly? How many of them held the CDC's feet to the fire? How many of them have publicly clarified that science can never determine public policy or the answers to ethical questions? How many of them have shifted their research goals to encompass some of the basic questions? Why didn't they set up a test species (eg mink) lab and get to work on the obvious:

 - What is the nature of cross immunity? - Could we have distributed a common cold rather than a vaccine?

 -Why were different demographics affected differently?

 - How does viral "load" work?

 - Why are different people affected differently, and in different parts of the body?

 - How early was it, and where - by sewage DNA analysis.

 - Transmission medium: air versus surface

Those questions have been there from the beginning and might have been answered or better understood in a short time frame.

Bufflehead

 

McDougal's under the moon

 

Fairmount and Wyoming, view of the Vineyard from Falmouth Heights

 

Often there is more beauty in the promise, than in the realization.

Falafel with Coleslaw

I don't know how to make falafel in pita and this was a second try. Using what was at hand and making some substitutions and some mistakes... and we got one of the most delicious things I have eaten lately. Here are the basic contents:

Start with a pita pocket. On the inside:

A bed of cole slaw

A layer of diced tomato

A layer of diced Bermuda Onion

A layer of humus with oil and vinegar

Several falafel [We used 2 per small pita. You could make larger pita and use more falafel per sandwich.]

A bit of Ranch dressing

You can buy the components or make them - I am not making ranch dressing! 

Honestly, it might be a good idea to buy all the ingredients. Except for the low-salt Cole slaw, it'll probably be better that way.

Details for 4 small sandwiches.

Pita: You can buy these, Here is how to make 8 small ones. I used this recipe and only half of the resulting pitas. For store-bought pitas, you'll use more falafel per sandwich. For the following small pitas, use 2 falafel per sandwich. It was fortunate I made extra pitas, cuz I ruined some experimenting with "baking".

Put 1.5 tsp active dry yeast in small bowl, dissolve in 1 cup warm water, stir in 1 cup of flour, wait 20 minutes. Then stir in a second cup of flour and 1/2 tsp salt. Stir till it becomes a ball. Stir in 1 Tbs of olive oil [kind of greasy]. Knead dough for 8 minutes. Let dough double. Punch down dough, form 8 dough balls, let rest for another hour. You will roll each out to 1/8 thickness before baking it.

"Bake" - I tried hot, cast iron, pan at 500 in the oven for 3 or four minutes. Didn't like the result and switched to cooking on the stovetop at medium high. Look up other possibilities. If you are lucky, the pitas will inflate. If not, you'll slice them in half carefully.

Cole Slaw: Mix in bowl: 2 cups shredded cabbage, a grated 1/2 carrot; 3 Tbs of mayonnaise. I Tbs of white vinegar, 1.5 tsp of celery seeds. One tsp sugar.  I left out the salt and it was GOOD. But you may add 1/2 tsp, as you like. We used it when it was a day old.  So: best to make one day in advance.

You can figure out how to dice tomatoes and Bermuda onions.

Humus sauce: to 2 Tbs of humus, stir in 1 Tbs olive oil, 1 tsp of vinegar.

Falafel: I used Knorr instant falafel. One package makes 8 falafel balls. They were great. Otherwise, look up how to make them.

So: bake the Pita. If needed, slice them, then lay down the layers and eat. Don't forget the ranch dressing. You could try Tahini instead of the humus sauce and lettuce instead of Cole slaw. But why? This is a good sandwich as is.

Painting from photographs rather than directly from reality.

Is it alright to paint from photographs? Of course. But you will be producing a different kind of result and it will usually be pretty obvious that it is a painting of a photo. It requires a very 1-dimensional creativity - choosing the paint color.

Joe and I started a list of ways in which painting from photographs is different from painting from reality ("plein air"). I probably already forgot several differences, but let's start a list. These items have some overlap and inter-dependency:

 - Geometric differences: straight lines show up as straight in photos but by eye are perceptually curved away from the center of view, where you swivel your neck or eyes to see away from the center.

 - Foreshortening: lenses usually compress distance, throwing off the proportions of left-right/up-down versus front-back. So the fence posts shrink differently in the camera than from in your eye.  Eg faces are flattened by the camera.  (Perspective is different between an eye and a camera).

 - The brain's processing of 3D, is not the same as the processing of flat 2D photographs. Eg you can tilt a photo and distort the view, but the brain compensates for it. You are painting a photo and weirdly, it is always pretty obvious.

- Colors are different. We can see in the shadows, cameras do not (except "dodge and burn"). The eye's color "gamut" is quite different from the cameras. 

 - In reality, the eye is adjusted to the whole scene. Painting from photos, you eye is adjusted for indoors. In summary: you have a different "white point". Plein air is limited by one gamut, painting from photo is a "double filter", as the original light passes through a camera's gamut, then the eye's gamut.

 - Cameras freeze the action in a way that is hard to do psychologically for moving objects. Consider the wingbeats of a hovering hummingbird. [I was watching sparrows flying, they do little bursts of flapping and pausing with wings closed. You cannot make out the wing and only see a shaped blur. Would I rather paint the blur or cheat and use a photo?

 - Most cameras have a focal plain. The eye can focus back-and-forth. 

These are all physically and perceptually straightforward things. There are several deeper psychological considerations.

When drawing from reality you are actually drawing your minds ideas of what it is looking at. From photo you do not need any ideas. No ideas are required when painting from photo. Effectively, you are painting dots, not things. As a result, painters from photo have no machinery prepared for abstraction or simplification of the ideas. 

Another thing about painting the ideas you see in a scene, is a tendency to reuse the same abstractions, creating parallelism between elements of the scene. You bend the curls of a girls hair slightly to better match the waves in the background - or something like that. It happens subconsciously. In general any subconscious influence will probably be different when painting from photo.

Painting athletically: I am always trying to paint with smooth elegant curves and exaggerated contrasts.  On the one hand this permits me to develop a style affecting more than just color; on the other hand it allows the actual athleticism to affect the result. If I could do the whole scene with one smooth curve, I would give it a try.

Gulls at Old Stone Dock, southerly breeze, near dark

 

Gulls eating Juniper berries

Not sure if it is for food, for the hallucinogenic properties, or the anti-inflammatory ones.

I have been driving on Surf Drive daily for about 3.5 years. I never saw this gull behavior before and wonder if it isn't gulls being smart about handling their own coronavirus aches and pains. No lock down for you!

Old Squaw (Long Tailed Duck) on Eel Pond

Town Dock, from Yacht Club

Kingfisher at Salt Pond

Same day as previous post.

I love Kingfishers.

More Cedar Swamp

First time recently that I tried to start directly with paint, rather than coloring in a pencil drawing.

Maybe this is the direction I should go.