Fish Freeding Frenzy

 

September Shrooms

 Don't hurt:

For reference, here is a non-trip effort from a few weeks later:

An approach to systematizing Truisms.

 The latest list of Truisms is as follows:

TRUISMS
(X->Y)_/[place, time, manner] (events have implicit localizers)
X_/A :: X_/[A] (attributes remain constant)
X_/A_/GOOD :: X_/B_/[GOOD] (virtue is transferred between attributes of an object)
(X->Y)_/GOOD :: Y_/GOOD (efficient actions have virtue)

X->person::person_/feeling (affects cause feelings)
person_/feeling::person->Y (feelings cause actions)
(person->Y)_/[GOOD] (actions are efficient)

X*::X (contrast is resolved)


JUST-IN-TIME TRUISMS
Nar([Z]),Z (the implicit MAY become explicit)
Nar([Z]*)::Z (the blocked implicit MUST become explicit, eg "ready")
Nar(X),Nar(Y),[Nar(Z)] (lists - patterns are expected to continue)
A, B, [Nar(A,B)] (tropes - familiar pattern are expected)

***************************************************************

I have been trying to figure out some kind of logic that would reduce these to a fewer number of more fundamental parts, with little progress. I was saying to Barb: "I would like to understand how these Truisms are interrelated".

So here is an approach that should have been obvious:

Truisms are relations between narrative structures that relate topics in a "topic tree" to each other. The Truisms can be analyzed as behaviors between topics in the context of their position in the tree.

Not sure how this may work out but I can come back with at least one fruit from this tree approach (ha ha pun). 

The first Truism says: events have context. We have that events 'X-v>Y' are the simplest connection between two topics 'X' and 'Y'. First, the event name 'v' has some presence in the tree, with the typical attributes (and parts?) of any topic. But second, it connects 'X' and 'Y'. So the Truism takes the form of activating the common denominators between 'X' and 'Y' in the tree. For 'X' to act on 'Y' they must share enough context for the verb to make sense. Bob cannot slap Mary if they are in different places.

This dingy little piece of "fruit", incomplete as it is, shows the possibility of using a tree structure to explain the Truisms.  But it is an awkward formalism because other Truisms seem to corresponds to quite different tree mechanisms and principles of tree modification. It would be surprising if such quite different mechanisms would manifest as similar usages of the word "but".

The Mystery of Beta Decay

A fellow named Unzicker on YouTube has been explaining that "beta decay" is not well explained by postulating a "beta" particle that nobody can detect. He says the theorists are replacing something they do not understand (the loss of mass of the neutron when it decays into an electron and a proton) with something they cannot observe. 

Listening to another video from the same guy he pins a nobel prize winner to the wall when that person says he can ignore gravity because it is too small to detect in the situations he is measuring. 

So, here on my own blog, I am allowed to make a fool of myself and suggest that physicists should consider that the so-called weak forces holding a neutron together, are losing out to gravity when the particles get far enough apart. Perhaps it is during the conversion of weak force into gravity that mass is lost.

Great trick for removing scum on top of beef soup

So I took the recipe for Taiwanese beef soup and swapped out the spices and replaced them with carrots, celery, onion, and parsley. A few flavors like tomato paste (and a few tomatoes if available) and soy sauce; salt and pepper. No garlic, although I was not sure about that. I thought I would just make it straight.

Whenever you make beef soup you get a scum on the surface of the liquid. I usually try to spoon it out, or catch it in some way. So I read a great trick here Beef Consomme - Craving Tasty about using brown paper to sop up the surface gunk. It really works.

Wasp with Cicada

I just witnessed something unusual, so I might as well record it. I was bending close to the ground and a huge wasp landed with a buzz at my feet. Before I could barely register that it was carrying an entire cicada underneath it, it rushed into a nearby hole and disappeared underground. The tailings from the hole had looked like an anthill.

Number of segments derived from the glance function

For glance function H, with last jump at diameter, we have 

H(diameter)=number of segments

Several ways to see this is true without the (lost) argument by induction based on the (false) analysis of adding a new (segment+gap) at one end of the collection of (one fewer) segments. One is to simply examine the form of the glance function for these segments (N=3, diam=a+b+c+d+e):

With segments of lengths a, c, and e; separated by gaps of lengths b and d, then the glance function has rows with +/- jumps at these places (sorry about the shitty notation, inserting the "h" is awkward):

+a - (a+b) + (a+b+c) - (a+b+c+d) + (a+b+c+d)

       +b      -   (b+c)    + (b+c+d) - (b+c+d+e)

                       +c      -   (c+d)   + (c+d+e)

                                    +d     -    (d+e)

                                              + e

For each segment row: the row ends with + and all other +/- cancel. For a gap: all the +/- cancel. Hence the height of the glance function at (diam) is the same as the number of rows that start with a segment length - one per segment.