The Boy and the Dragon, scenes II and III

Scene II: The Naysayer visits the wise woman to ask about dragons. She assures him that, in fact,  dragons are not mythological nor extinct and that, for example, a Crag dragon had been spotted in Aireilgrthe several years ago. Here are introduced various theories about dragons - mostly not correct. She explains about Red dragons and Green dragons. Red ones live in groups and are social. Green ones tend to be solitary. She says that red dragons are shy and avoid human contact. Actually they are aggressive but too busy to bother with humans. 

Scene III: The lair of some Crag dragons - a type of Red dragon. They have extremely high metabolisms and are argumentative. They eat rocks and can vomit small bits of lava. In this scene a young red dragon is practicing hypersonic dives across a ridge in a high wind - almost too fast to see. The lowland carryings on with the fake red dragon have been noticed by these dragons and they don't like it a bit. It is insulting. There is some argument. Also some technical facts here about dragons and how they stopped making their own technology around the time of the IBM Selectric typewriter*. It was easier to steal it from humans. Now dragons were mostly agriculturalists. Red dragons were famous for their wines. 

* Maybe you could have a scene with a red dragon, wearing glasses and trying to take apart a delicate gear assembly. His claws keep getting in the way and he fumbles a small part on the floor. "Shit!" he says and emits a small belch, melting the whole thing by mistake. 

It is tempting to have commentary to the effect that red dragons can spit on themselves by mistake, causing minor pain, like stubbing your toe.

My son's girlfriend asks: why are humans and dragons not getting along? The history of how the King's family became "Lord of Dragons" has been forgotten - it was about being friends with dragons rather than antagonists. As it turns out: dragons (older ones) speak so slowly, humans cannot make out what is being said. People talk too fast, dragons think it sounds like bursts of squeaking. You don't want to stand near a Red dragon when he asks "Hun?". However, young dragons like Esque talk so quickly and are so acute, they can communicate with people. Esque and Tom are the first dragon/person friendship in a long time.

Orcas attacking sailboats

Let me propose the reason for recent Orca attack on yachts (in the news).  Since they attack the rudder, perhaps the fluttering of the rudder  (which can happen) is unpleasant for them.

A little paradox of order

 This is from my college era. Consider:

Left to Right

One can say you are reading left to right. Now what about this:

Right to Left

Are you reading left to right or right to left?

[Of course this is the usual nonsense of use versus mention.]

Woods Hole and song sparrows

It makes me feel nostalgia for Woods Hole and the generations of song sparrow I listened to here. 

Song sparrows, fog rolling in, ... honeysuckle. 

At the moment, the sparrow singing outside caught my attention by how its song pattern-matched something in my memory from a sparrow last summer. It is probably the same bird. I had tried to memorize the song. A friend of mine and I used to whistle the melody of one particular song sparrow - to let each other know when we were approaching.

Clouds are bacterial colonies

Seems like a truth.

Transitivity of Containment

Back to the example: the present is in the box and the box is in the garage, therefore the present is in the garage.

In my linguistic paper, I came to understand that a preposition like "in" is a persistent state achieved after an event. So, a present can be found in a box by opening the box and looking inside. Similarly [but not identically] a box can be found in the garage by going to the garage and scanning from side to side, top to bottom. If there are several boxes they can be opened one by one.

If we are willing to string together the two activities: going to the garage and scanning, plus opening the box and looking inside, then the "containment" is demonstrated by achieving the same result - finding the present. 

***

So, you know, I am kind-of thinking this is idle abstract masturbation. But I don't think it is. If you really wanted to understand the infinite in mathematics, which appears to be a biproduct of which set theory assumptions you accept, then details about how a persistent state is achieved through events becomes relevant. You want to investigate the axiom of choice? Think about how sets are formed, how membership is tested, and how review and selection work for this kind of set.

Definition of measurement

In my paper I write about numeric values being "derived from measurement" prior to assumptions about arithmetic or magnitude. A measurement involves two things. Typically one is variable and the other is "constant" or in some way standardized. The constant is derived from the variable. 

For a range of standardized items (constants) if you can run through them and stop when you find a match, that is one way to measure. Any function from the variables to the constants is a measurement.

 

AI assisted butchery

A friend sent an article about automated chicken and beef butchery using AI. I responded:

That's hilarious. We have had machine vision assisted manufacturing for about 40 years. Now we get to call it AI?

I admit, an automated chicken poses interesting pattern recognition and alignment problems. These certainly could be assisted by an easy to train lookup mechanism a la AI. But I have to feel a bit sorry for the people who had to train the system using dead chickens.