Red dragons to the rescue

Comes a time when things have started to get out of hand. The green dragons see the red dragons flying in, at a distance. One comments: "Not a moment too soon".

Later the red dragons get pissed off and melt a tower. Which folds over on itself in a curious shape that, in later years, becomes an important tourist attraction.

[Red Dragons are comic relief characters. They seem to routinely burn themselves and incinerate things by mistake. Approaching one carelessly can result in accidental death]

There has to be scenes with Lell talking to Wend, and dealing with his thick highland brogue. Everybody speaks English. Different forms of dragon insult emerge - messing with names being particularly rude.

***

We were talking about the historic background and the current situation dominated by the Knight Industrial Complex and the Armorer's Guild. The fake dragon was their idea, in council.

Things to see in Woods Hole they don't tell you about

Having watched videos about the lobster rolls, lighthouses, and beaches around the Cape, it is clear that most people see the Cape as they would see any other part of the east coast. Here are some things to do around Woods Hole that even the locals may not know about:

 - Stroll out Penzance Point and admire the estates

 - Get lost in BB Woods.

 - Visit the Indian Mounds at Flume Pond

 - Watch the Cape Cod Knockabout Races (Woods Hole Yacht club has the schedule)

 - Friday Evening Lectures at the MBL (and the Falmouth Forum in wintertime)

 - Sippewisset Beach - the wading river and beach sands are great for kids

 - Atlantic White Cedar Swamp

 - Fishing for False Albacore from the NOAA jetty

(Occasional)

 - Tour of the Neil Armstrong Research Vessel, at WHOI

 - Woods Hole Film Festival

 - Woods Hole Model Boat show

Who has "got" that pop fly - in baseball?

Sometimes in baseball, the batter hits a pop fly up and over towards the outfield, about 1/2 way between two of the outfielders. They both prepare to catch the ball and then both leave it to the other fielder, and the ball drops between them. This is called a blooper. The same thing happens in doubles tennis, when a ball comes down the center of the court and each of the players on the receiving side leave it to the other player - and the ball goes between them. With a bit of a stretch, here goes an analogy....

Something similar has happened in the gap between the fields of language and mathematics. On one side of the gap, mathematicians think they have gotten all they need from language and that linguists have the rest covered. After all, the parts of speech have been identified and sentence structure has been completely understood. Meanwhile linguists think they have gotten all they need from language and that mathematicians have the rest covered. After all, the workings of logic have been extracted from language and are completely understood. 

I claim there is an important "ball" of content being dropped between these two fields of study: the central topic of meaning. Both mathematicians and linguists seem incapable of coming to grips with a good definition of "meaning" or "truth" and I wonder if any current practitioners think the other team has it figured out? 

The whole point of having a crisply defined data structure to store the content of external expressions is that it implements meaning. You can argue about the proper data structure but the conversation moves way from vagueness in important details. 

Hollyhocks - June 2024

 

Not my best effort but I can try again as the flowers develop. In this photo, the colors came out closer to what I wanted than the actual drawing did.

Dialog with a Foolish Mathematician

Me: You don't even know what "truth" means.

FM: I don't need to, as long as arguments follow the laws of logic, truth is preserved. Eg the Boolean Truth Tables for and, or, not, and implication.

Me: If I count from 1 to 10 then I pass 5. That is true Right? 

FM: Yes

Me: But it does not follow from the rules of logic or things like the Boolean operators.

FM: Well that is because you have not gone back far enough into the definitions of "1", "5" and "10". Considering the set theoretical definition of cardinal numbers and the successor operation, it is obvious enough that five applications of the successor operator is needed in order to accomplish ten iterations.

Me: Sure, you can muddy the discussion. But let's ignore that what you said just now was circular. More importantly it is irrelevant. For one thing, you have shifted the goal posts from formal logic, to formal logic plus (some form of) arithmetic. For another you ignored the question. Here let me prove that you are wrong (I speak) "One, two, three, four, Johnny, six, seven, eight, nine, ten". Huh? What do you know, you do not always pass "five".

FM: Yeah but that is not counting.

Me: So in order to understand truth, now you find yourself having to understand the underlying nature of naming, pattern recognition, similarity, counting, and much more that is prior to the Boolean Tables. When you are done, the value of the concept of "truth" is seriously diminished. Maybe it is not so foundational and could be discarded.

Resolving issues in subplots

One wonders whether unresolved issues in a subplot need to be resolved.

I am watching a movie where a person looses their car keys down a sewer opening. As soon as it happened and the movie switched to another scene, I knew I was not going to be happy till we went back and found those keys.

Example of VIRTUE transfer

I have an upstairs and a downstairs kitchen. The same kettle boils faster upstairs because it is a better stove. The same kettle fills faster at the faucet upstairs because there is better water pressure. So with these two things setting the stage, I think of everything associated with the kettle as being better upstairs than downstairs. 

So, I go to empty the kettle and find myself expecting it to empty more slowly downstairs than upstairs. Of course it makes no difference, but that transfer of negativity goes with the pairing of kettle and downstairs.

Correction: this is actually pattern continuation.