Finishing on a downstroke

 kw: continuing reviews, story reviews, science fiction, fantasy, anthologies, world science fiction, dystopias, human extinction

Of the four stories remaining in The Best of World SF, Volume 2, edited by Lavie Tidhar, I skipped one, which happens to be a novella. The other three are not up to the standard of the earlier stories in the volume, but are of moderate interest.

"Between the Firmanents" by Neon Yang (Singapore). I got a page or two into this novella, realized it was going into hellish territory, and skipped out. It is fantasy, with no hint of the "science" of SF. The "gods" portrayed are as wicked and lascivious as the old Greek and Roman deities, or perhaps more so.

"Whale Snows Down" by Kim Bo-Young, translated by Sophie Bowman. Told from the viewpoint of deep-sea dwellers such as anglerfish and siphonophores (as this image, from NOAA), it consists mainly of ruminations and conversations among those dwellers regarding the sudden increase, oceans-wide, of "marine snow" (organic detritus from things that die at the surface or in shallower water). The denizens conclude that the humans have finally done themselves in. It's odd: whales are depicted as having gills. Possibly the translator mistranslated a word for "baleen". This is the best of these three.

"The Gardens of Babylon" by Hassan Blasim, translated by Jonathan Wright. This story and the one that follows circle back on themselves, in different ways. Both are fantasy, although somewhat technological fantasy. This one is slightly better written than the other.

"The Farctory" by K.A. Teryna, translated by Alex Shvartsman. "Farctory" is but one of several words that get an inserted letter or two ("cola just to keep the reader off balance. The other imagery follows suit.

The volume ends with a letdown, although there are a couple of interesting ideas here also. Overall, Best, V2 is well worth reading.

Idea stories, a baker's dozen

 kw: continuing reviews, story reviews, science fiction, fantasy, anthologies, world science fiction, utopias, dystopias, robots

Here I limn another thirteen of the stories in The Best of World SF, Volume 2, edited by Lavie Tidhar. It's something more than a third of the volume. As before, I skipped none, and enjoyed nearly all equally.

"To Set at Twilight in a Land of Reeds" by Natalia Theodoridou (Greece). Maintenance robots need maintenance also. I wonder why SF robots are so frequently emotional? 

"The Beast Has Died" by Bef (Mexico), translated by Brian Price. An alternate history, with TV and other technologies in the 1800's, and also a technology for scanning a brain to produce a simulation of a person.

"Twenty About Robots" by Alberto Chimal (Mexico), translated by Fionn Petch. This story is dedicated to the prior author. Each vignette is preceded by a binary number from 0 to 19 (00000 to 10011), but not in any order I could discern. The author stretches the limits of the robot genre. It's becoming clear that the editor loves robot stories.

"The Regression Test" by Wole Talabi (Nigeria). An advanced version of a Turing Test. An uploaded human mind, as it interacts with others, will naturally learn and evolve (in the non-biological sense). The test, by someone intimately familiar with the original person, is to detect a divergence into delusion. As I expected, there is a betrayal awaiting.

"Kakak" by William Tham Wai Liang (Malaysia). "Kakak" means "sister" in Malay. Another story rooted in emotional robots, but here the levels of emotionality vary more.

"Beyond These Stars Other Tribulations of Love" by Usman T. Malik (Pakistan). Caring for an ailing and increasingly demented mother… It's unclear how the protagonist thinks going on a starship (a NAFAL accelerator), with increasing time dilation as the trip proceeds, can help him care for his mother, even though a quantum-entanglement link has been set up between him and a robotic caregiver.

"A Flaw in the Works" by Julie Nováková (Czech Republic), translated by the author. Another story of emotion-laden robots, written for the centennial of R.U.R. by Karel Čapek; those robots had an emotional element also. These robots, in political exile, get the opportunity to make first contact.

"When We Die on Mars" by Cassandra Khaw (Malaysia). The gradual weeding out of more than 100 volunteers for a one-way trip to Mars, to a final twelve (see Note 1 below). This initial crew will establish a basis for others to follow. This seems a lot like Elon Musk's plan.

"The Mighty Slinger" by Tobias S. Buckell (Barbados) and Karen Lord (Grenada). Early in the story, the thought emerged, "Music as a political force". By the end: "Music as a weapon". Concepts that were obvious to the protest singers of the 60's, my musical mentors. If you've never heard "There, but for Fortune" sung by Joan Baez, go right now and do so! Oh, and the title...think David.

"Corialis" by T.L. Huchu (Zimbabwe). If you've seen The Andromeda Strain, or read the book, you may recall the extensive decontamination of the people before they can enter the super-clean laboratory. Preparing to adapt to the microbes of a new planet goes far beyond that (see Note 2 below). The protagonist realizes something more is needed for the humans and the life-forms of Corialis to become fully compatible.

"The Substance of Ideas" by Clelia Farris (Italy), translated by Rachel Cordasco. A different kind of alien world. Here, it seems that certain life-forms store ideas and memories in proteins, so that eating them… well, that's the "substance" the author is talking about. As usual, Murphy's Law intervenes.

"Sleeping Beauties" by Agnieszka Hałas (Poland). Suspended animation, we used to call it. Here it's used to exile an increasing range of "undesirables" to a prison planet. You gotta wonder, is it worth the expense? I could have done without the ending, a scene more sadistic than any I've encountered. This makes other dystopias seem tame.

"Waking Nydra" by Samit Basu (India). Another take on the phrase "sleeping beauty". The elaborate defenses of Nydra's "castle" make the story longer than it needed to be. The mindset of the caste system (the protagonist is clearly considered beneath contempt by the "heroine") underlies it all. A not-so-surprising betrayal rounds it out.

There are but four stories to go. Stay tuned.

Note 1: My first two years of college I was a chemistry major. My sophomore year I took Organic Chemistry, a three-quarter series of classes; the school year was in quarters, rather than semesters. The first day of class the professor (a rather recent PhD from Harvard) said the following:

This class will decide which of you will actually major in chemistry. The testing and work in each quarter will reduce your number by half. At the moment there are 150 of you…149…148 (as two students walked out). About fifteen will pass the final exam at the end of the third quarter.

He was right. I was one of those fifteen, finishing with an A-. I loved those courses.

Note 2: You may know the Central Dogma of Genetics, that DNA is copied to RNA, and the RNA is used to construct proteins, according to a standard coding table. There are 20 amino acids that make up all proteins (on Earth), and there are 64 3-unit codes (the units are A, C, G, and T in DNA, and instead of T, RNA has U), called codons. This allows for some redundancy in the translation, and protects against certain kinds of single-nucleotide mutations.

You probably don't know that there are (so far), 24 variations on the "standard" translation table. They can be considered minor variations; all the variations occur in one or more of 18 of the 64 "positions", leaving 46 untouched.

Some bacteria, most mitochondria, a few protozoa, and even a few small metazoans (multicellular animals) have variant coding schemes. That means the ribosomes, the protein-building "machines" that couple the RNA codons to their corresponding amino acids, are tailored to the appropriate table for the creature in question. It also means that the mitochondria in every cell of your body have the "vertebrate mitochondria" coding table, and some of the bacteria and archaea in your intestines have specific variations.

Now, consider, if we find life on another planet, will it be DNA/RNA/Protein based? Perhaps that is inevitable, but it's not certain. Even if so, will that planet's "standard" code translation table be the same as any of the Earthly ones? That is much less certain! Mathematically crossing 64 with 20, we find about 10⁷⁰ possible tables! If multiples are kept together, the number reduces to about 10⁴⁰. These numbers might be much higher; I may not have thought of everything when I did my bonehead permutation math.

The bottom line: I suspect it's impossible for aliens to eat us, or for us to eat them...or their food animals/plants/whatever. If we want to migrate people to an exoplanet, we'd probably do best to find a totally barren one and terraform it.

Ideas in abundance

 kw: book reviews, story reviews, science fiction, fantasy, anthologies, world science fiction, utopias, dystopias, robots, zombies

By page count I am a bit more than a third of the way through The Best of World SF, Volume 2, edited by Lavie Tidhar. I reviewed stories in the first volume in six posts, beginning with SF from everywhere, almost a year ago. As with that volume, I'll review story by story, 12 in this post, focusing on new ideas.

"The Bahrain Underground Bazaar" by Nadia Afifi (Bahrain). It takes an aging woman a very long time to come to terms with the death wish within. A technological ability to experience a dying person's last moments don't seem to make her journey any easier than ours.

"The Ten-Percent Thief" by Lavanya Lashminarayan (India). With most of the world a slum of poisoned air and water, devoid of nature, a woman risks her life to plant a single flower bulb outside the protected enclave of a city of the rich.

"At Desk 9501" by Frances Ogamba (Nigeria). A technology permits those with the constitution to live extra-long lives to confer some of their lifetime to extend the lives of others who are dying untimely, for a fee of course. The life-givers experience side consequences.

"Milagroso" by Isabel Yap (Philippines). One translation of "milagroso" is "miracle". A producer of technological miracles is confronted with the real thing. Magical reality, in a controlled, subdued way.

"Bring Your Own Spoon" by Saad Z. Hossain (Bangladesh). In a dystopia that is not too different from much of life in Bangladesh, a poor man who is a superb cook is helped by a Djinn to open a restaurant for the dirt-poor, who can pay only with bartered goods. Of course it is illegal, and doesn't last, even with the power of the Djinn. Magical reality with a slightly hopeful ending.

"Blue Grey Blue" by Yukimi Ogawa (Japan). It's ambiguous whether the colors seen are in the world around or the eyes themselves. In this fantasy, eye colors and the colors of the people change with mood and the fortunes of life.

"Your Multicolored Life" by Xing He (China), translated by Andy Dudak. This seems peripherally related to The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain, without the happy ending. I would retitle it "The Slave and the Scholar". Two men do indeed change places, and though the circumstance of each is actually improved, it doesn't last.

"The Easthound" by Nalo Hopkinson (Jamaica). A kind of zombie story, where all adults became monsters that destroyed and devoured first each other, and then attempted to do so to their children. Some children survived by killing the remaining "sprouted ones". Then they learned that puberty results not in adulthood, but in "sprouting" as a monster. It's the most dystopian story I have ever read; the extinction of humanity is at most a dozen years in the future.

"Dead Man Awake, Sing to the Sun!" by Pan Haitian (China), translated by Joel Martinsen. Not all who die are fully dead. Some are undead, and the undeadness is spreading, transmitted by a bite. Perhaps the human race is being transformed into a new kind of creature that cannot die all the way dead. Zombie or vampire, or both?

"Salvaging Gods" by Jacques Barcia (Brazil). AI to the max. Manufactured gods, and at least the one limned in this story can perform miracles of the sort that genies (or Djinn) perform in Arabian folk tales. But nothing lasts, for God is flawless, while these gods are flawed.

"The Next Move" by Edmundo Paz Soldán (Bolivia), translated by Jessica Sequeira. An occupying soldier has gone rogue, "saico" (psycho) in the parlance of the story, which has a number of phonetic spellings of colloquialisms. Of course he is eventually "eliminated". Much of the story is his own stream of consciousness.

"The Child of Clay" by Dilman Dila (Uganda). A robot world, in which the strongest motivation is reproduction, by a technology full of mystery. One robot is childless, and in seeking a solution, returns biological life to a barren land. It took a page or two to realize that "rit" and "rits" are pronouns, the pronouns "it" and "its" preceded by an "r" for "robot". I suppose the making of new pronouns arose from the recent "choose your own pronouns" fashion. That's the closest to anything positive to arise from recent "woke" fashions.

By comparison with the best stories I've read in recent anthologies of both science fiction and mainstream fiction published in the US, nearly all of the stories in Best of World SF are better.

AI illustrates Jabberwocky

kw: ai experiments, artificial intelligence, generated art, poems, illustrations

Behold the Jabberwock! The first poem longer than a nursery rhyme that I learned to recite was "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and other books.

I've been experimenting a lot with DALL-E 2, and I decided to see how it might "illustrate" the poem. First I prompted it with the word Jabberwocky. This is an out-painting of one of the results.

DALL-E's initial response was this panel of four images:

It's interesting that two of the pictures have the creature holding a book or paper, indicating that DALL-E "knows" this is a piece of literature. I like the whimsical blue ones, so I out-painted the second one also. 

Note that each session of out-painting required five or six "generate" actions, each of which consumed a credit. For those new to DALL-E 2, when you sign up you receive 50 free credits, which is enough to help someone become familiar with the way it works. Thereafter, 15 free credits are added to your account each month, but must be used up in the month they are added. If your usage is light, and you have a modicum of patience, that is enough. At any time, credits can be bought in batches of 115 for $15, which comes to just over 13¢ per credit. Thus, generating each of these lovely creatures cost me about 75¢.

I wanted to have DALL-E illustrate the verses of the poem. I decided to get its response to couplet after couplet; each verse is two couplets. DALL-E doesn't keep track of what we do with it so I knew I couldn't get it to produce illustrations with any coherence from one to the next. Therefore, I just generated a single response for each couplet and extracted all the results.

Here they are; enjoy!

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

I did not re-run the last verse. The source for the text of the poem is the Poetry Foundation. It differs slightly from my recitation memory.

Cool stuff about the Universe

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, astronomy, universe, humor, essays

Can you see the difference between the two lower rows of light-colored ovals? We'll mention the dark blue ones in a moment. The three ovals in the bottom row are "white", meaning they have the color value #FFFFFF or (255,255,255). According to Dr. Jan Scudder, author of The Milky Way Smells of Rum and Raspberries … and Other Amazing Cosmic Facts, that very pale yellow, which she calls "light beige", is the average color of the Universe. The color value is #FFF8E7 or (255,248,231). I used PowerPoint to produce the ovals and to set them on backgrounds of white, black, and sky blue. 

This is found in the second chapter of the book, in which color values are discussed briefly, but one fact is reversed: A footnote on page 9 states that #000000 is white and #FFFFFF is black, but the reverse is true. Zero means "no illumination" and FF (or 255) means "full illumination". Otherwise, the usage of color values is correct, as I verified with the top set of ovals, #0D0ACB (13,10,203), called "a particularly pleasing deep blue"; the little bit of red and green slightly desaturate the dark blue so it doesn't overwhelm the eyes. The pure blue color of computer screens is a bit harsh all by itself:

In this image, the oval on the left has color value #0000C8 (0,0,200) and the one on the right is "full-on blue": $0000FF (0,0,255). Some people's eyes are more sensitive to the slight difference between the leftmost oval and the one in the center. By the way, values prefixed with the hash are hexadecimal, or base 16, in which the letters A through F represent quantities from 10 through 15.

The book consists of 34 essays, enlightening, humorous essays. The fifth chapter, from which the book's title is taken, is "The galactic center tastes of raspberries and smells of rum". The "dense" gas clouds near the center of the milky way are still hard vacuum compared to the air we breather, but are 3,000 times as dense as most interstellar gas. That makes these gas clouds capable of blocking much of the damaging UV that breaks apart most molecules, so that deep within them (they are hundreds to thousands of light years across) molecules such as ethyl formate survive. Ethyl formate is an ester that is found in abundance in raspberries. Also found is another ethyl compound, ethyl alcohol (ethanol), the "kick" in rum, vodka and whiskey. The author also points out that, if we were to somehow gather a few cubic parsecs of this gas and concentrate it by a factor of ten billion billion (ten quintillion), it would be a rather toxic brew. It may have hints of raspberry rum, but would also contain cyanide compounds and formaldehyde, for example. So it would really be more like the smell (don't taste!) of a preserved corpse of someone who died of cyanide-spiked rum, with an odd raspberry note.

I was interested in the chapter titled, "There's a pitch-black exoplanet". A distant planet designated WASP-12b is as dark as fresh asphalt; it reflects only 6% of the light that hits it. The dark patches on the Moon reflect about 7%, so you can look in the sky at a full moon to get the idea. By the way, the lighter parts of the moon are more like fresh, dry dirt, and reflect perhaps 15%, making the overall "brightness" of the moon about 12%. If the moon were papered over so it reflected 90% or more, it would be six or seven times as bright as it is. I wish Dr. Scudder had mentioned this. I take issue with a statement in that same chapter: "You'll never get a reflection off a star". In a close double, a pair of co-orbiting stars that are perhaps as close to one another as Mercury is to the Sun (36 million miles, or 58 million km), one of the stars is frequently much brighter than the other, and the dimmer star does indeed reflect a little of the brighter star's light. This has been observed spectroscopically. It stands to reason that some of the dimmer star's light will also reflect off its partner, but this would be extremely hard to detect.

There's an interesting timeline in "Jupiter's magnetic field will short-circuit your spacecraft, but Venus will just melt it." According to this Wikipedia article, Earth's magnetic field ranges from 0.25 to 0.65 gauss (refrigerator magnets have around 50 gauss at their surfaces). The larger unit, the tesla, is 10,000 gauss. The high-dollar superconducting magnet in an MRI machine has a strength of 3 to 10 tesla. That can pull the wristwatch off your wrist (or right through it!), which is why you daren't wear any metal into the MRI room. Electronic conductors moved through a magnetic field produce an electric field; that's how generators work. Move a typical laptop or smart phone around in space near Jupiter, and it will generate thousands to millions of volts, throwing sparks all about. Venus is less spectacular, but just as deadly to almost anything not make of tungsten. Its surface temperature is 450°C (~840°F), and the atmospheric pressure is 100 times that of Earth. In the timeline, starting with Venera 4 in 1967 and ending with Vega 2 in 1985, every spacecraft that landed or attempted to land on Venus had the same experience: crushed and then melted, after times ranging from 20 to 127 minutes. That's 13 spacecraft (all sent by Russia) that gathered a total of somewhat over 880 minutes (14.7 hours) of experience of Venusian weather. It's been a while since anyone tried to send something to the surface of Venus, but the Russians intend to try again in 2029. They hope for a "lifetime" of 3 hours on the surface. Perhaps special electronics made of diamond instead of silicon can be developed. And don't leave any air pockets inside your craft so it doesn't get crushed.

Another quibble, sorry to say: In the chapter "An Exoplanet we thought was made of diamond might be lava instead", the planet 55 Cancri e (the letter "e" indicates 5th body in the system, or 4th body that isn't a star) is "twice as physically large as the Earth, and eight times more massive, which tells us it's substantially more dense…" As stated, this is nonsense. 2×2×2 = 8, so the sentence would only make sense if the last phrase were "exactly as dense". However, here we find that the diameter isn't twice that of Earth, but 1.88, and this number cubed is 6.64; we also find that the mass is indeed 7.99 that of Earth, so now, we're in business. 7.99/6.64 = 1.2. The same article states the density of 55 Cancri e as 6.66. The average density of Earth is 5.51. Now the numbers work together properly. This error shows the danger in over-simplifying science when writing for the public. The early thought that this planet might be made of diamond was based on an erroneous measurement of the diameter. Diamond has a density of 3.5, or less when it is impure. And diamond doesn't compress well, so even under great pressure inside the planet, it's not going to rise to 6. Iron-rich silicate magma/lava also has a density near 3.5, but is much more compressible.

In spite of occasional minor blunders the book is delightful. I like the author's writing style.

Studying tartan designs

 kw: analytical projects, plaids, tartans, statistical distributions, scale free, lognormal

Guess what this is? It isn't quite what it looks like. It's a printed plaid, a plaid-like pattern printed on white flannel, the backing for a comforter we made many years ago. Until I looked at it closely (microscopically), I thought it was a woven plaid.

Close inspection also reveals that the weave is single-over-under, rather than the over-2-under-2 of most plaid fabrics. Nonetheless, it is an attractive pattern, one of my favorites!

Some time ago I began to wonder about the distribution of stripe widths on plaids. Long ago I wrote, in GWBASIC, a "screen saver" program that produced plaid patterns on the screen. I used a scale free distribution because it is easy to program. It would generate a bunch of width values and then scramble them by sorting against a set of random numbers; it would assign colors and generate a plaid pattern.

I don't know how plaids are designed. The Scottish tartans such as Black Watch or Douglas can be centuries old, and were selected with aesthetics in mind, and an eye for being imposing because they were worn into battle. Today I suppose artistic designers pick the colors and stripe widths in a purely aesthetic way.

I decided to study the statistical distributions found in my own shirts and other fabrics. I figured out how to wrap a shirt around a dictionary to hold it on a scanner, and did so for 17 flannel shirts and two plaid jackets, plus the pattern above which I photographed because the comforter is large and very thick. I have a number of plaid summer shirts, which I may analyze in the future, but they are not included here.

The large variation in stripe widths led me to consider three model distributions: Normal, Lognormal and Scale Free or Log-Log. When graphed with appropriate coordinates, each of these is a straight line, but, for example, a Normal distribution will graph as a curved line on either Log-Log or Lognormal coordinates. First, we need to see the shapes of these distributions:

The Normal distribution is frequently called the Gaussian distribution, because it was first proposed by the mathematician Carl F. Gauss in the early 1800's. When several random variables are added and measured repeatedly, the distribution of the sum tends toward the center-weighted shape shown in orange. A mathematical proof of this additive tendency is called the Central Limit Theorem.

The Lognormal distribution results when an exponential function is taken for a set of values that have a Normal distribution. The Lognormal shape is shown in green. Also, when several random variables are multiplied and measured repeatedly, the distribution of the sum tends toward a Lognormal distribution. The logarithmic form of the Central Limit Theorem describes this tendency. Furthermore, when an area or extended object is fractured or divided into many pieces via a random process (such as dropping a pane of glass), the areas or weights of the pieces closely approximate a Lognormal distribution. I verified this once in the laboratory using a small piece of glass I broke with a light blow of a hammer, and then weighed a couple hundred pieces. The mathematical proof of this is called the Theory of Breakage, which was propounded by A.N. Kolmogoroff in 1941.

The Scale Free distribution results when a series of measurements are taken of the reciprocals of a uniform random distribution. This is also called a Fractal distribution, based on the work of Benoit Mandelbrot in the 1980's. A theoretical continuous Scale Free distribution has no limit in either direction; no largest or smallest member being predicted. Discrete sets of values that have a Scale Free distribution, however, do have a largest and smallest member. While the theoretical, continuous Normal and Lognormal distributions also have no limits, the probabilities of extreme values are vanishingly small (for a Lognormal distribution, "extreme" means either a very large positive value, or a value that is positive, but very, very close to zero).

Each distribution can be rectified (made to approximate a straight line) by sorting all the values and graphing them in order in an appropriate coordinate system. Idealized examples of these three distributions are all shown together in the three coordinate systems that are relevant to this discussion:

These charts each rectify one of the distributions. Firstly, for "Probability Coordinates", the horizontal axis has units of standard deviation and the vertical axis is linear. The sorted values in a Normal distribution (orange) follow a straight line here. Secondly, for "Log-Probability Coordinates", the horizontal axis is the same, while the vertical axis is the logarithm of the values, which straightens out the Lognormal distribution (green). Thirdly, for "Log-Log Coordinates", the horizontal axis is the logarithm of the ordinal number of the sorted values and the vertical axis is the logarithm of the values. This rectifies the Scale Free distribution (blue). Note that in each case, the "other two" distributions display a distinct curvature.

Now, for sets of more realistic distributions, created by appropriate random processes, we see the same three graphs:

The three coordinate systems are the same as those above. A straight line has been added to each graph to emphasize which set of values has been rectified.

How does all this apply to a study of plaids? I gathered data from the scans of the 20 plaids, measuring each one in both directions. This is because the warp and woof of the weave have different pitches, so the plaid designers adjust the number of threads of each color so the resulting plaid will not look distorted. Here is an example of a set of data for one of the plaids. I used rather generic color names, because the widths of the stripes were the meaningful parameter, not the color pattern.

Note that, while the order of the colors is the same in both directions, the number of threads is seldom the same in direction 2 as compared to direction 1. This enlargement of the pattern shows the threads; it takes a careful look to see that the spacing is different between horizontal and vertical. Look at the white square. It has 9 horizontal threads but 6 vertical threads, yet the "square" appears pretty close to a square.

One benefit of the over-2-under-2 weave is that it makes counting threads in wider bands easier, because I could count by 4.

This is a more overall view of the pattern. Although each "unit" of the pattern contains 5 white stripes, 4 black stripes, 2 navy stripes and only 1 gray stripe, gray dominates because its stripe is so wide, with navy blue running a close second.

What did I do with all these numbers? There are a lot of them. A few patterns had 38-40 stripes, and many had quantities in the 20's. Some plaids have mirror symmetry, a smaller number don't.

I copied all the data, sorted each set (each direction for each plaid), and set up both ordinal and probability axes for them all. I charted them in groups to see how they looked. I was looking for rectified distributions. As we see below, with a few of them as an example, the results are not clear-cut. I had been hoping to see a clear indication that the distributions were primarily either Scale Free or (my preference) Lognormal. The reality is a little of both. The graphs that follow pertain to six non-symmetrical patterns.

The overall view is that many of the lines have a downward curvature at the right, but not all. In particular, the yellow line and the gray line mostly hidden behind it (#16), and the lighter blue and lighter green lines in the midst of the scrum (#10), don't curve down.

The downward curvature indicates that most of these are better modeled as Lognormal. The next graph shows that presentation.

Here many of the lines appear straighter, while some either flatten out or curve oppositely (not really "upward"). We also see that the dark red line and the dark blue that accompanies it also flatten out, even though they have a bit of downward curvature in the other graph.

None of the patterns showed a hint of being closer to Normal than to Lognormal or Scale Free, so I didn't pursue that any further.

"Eyeballing" the charts proved unsatisfactory, so I used a mathematical measure of linearity, relevant to either Log-Log or Lognormal coordinates, to more clearly discern the trends.

I saw from this that some of the patterns were more Lognormal in one direction and more Scale Free in the other. I found the following:

• 7 patterns were Lognormal in both directions.
• 4 patterns were mixed, but leaned Lognormal more than Scale Free.
• 2 patterns were mixed, but leaned Scale Free.
• 7 patterns were Log-Log in both directions.

Here we have, from left to right, #3, which is the most Lognormal of them all, #8, which is the most ambiguous, and #6, which is the most Scale Free of them all.

As it happens, #3 and #8 are favorites of mine, and if the red plaid from our comforter were made into a shirt, as a pattern, it would also be a favorite (although my wife doesn't like me to wear red shirts); it is also a mixed-distribution pattern. I care less for #6; I consider it almost ugly. Just to show that Scale Free patterns are also attractive, another of my favorites is shown here, #10, which is more Scale Free in both directions:

A characteristic of Scale Free distributions is a greater number of narrower stripes, and this one shows that. It illustrates that what we like doesn't have a very strong mathematical basis. I had been thinking just the opposite, but I don't mind being proven wrong.

In the future I may scan my plaid summer shirts and analyze them, to see if these tendencies hold up. This has been an enlightening exercise.

Bacteria hardly any of us know

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, science, bacteriology, surveys

Behold the largest species (so far known) of bacteria. Thiomargarita namibiensis, the "sulfur pearl from Namibia", at 300 or more microns in diameter, can be larger than the smallest parasitic wasp, shown for comparison. It is visible without a microscope, being the size of the dot of a printed "i".

This is the first species of microbe described in The Curious World of Bacteria, by Ludger Wess (originally in German, translated by Jamie McIntosh). The author made many difficult choices to select just 50 species of Bacteria and Archaea for this book. Although Bacteria and Archaea are different domains of life, most of us, specialists included, usually use the term "bacteria" to speak of them all.

If they think of them at all, most people consider bacteria to be primitive life forms. Few realize that they have been subject to the same 4+ billion years of evolutionary history as every other kind of life on Earth. Most are less than 10 microns (or 0.01 mm) in their longest dimension. A few are smaller than 1 micron. But they come in a wide array of sizes and shapes.

Even more various are their metabolisms. Many species don't need oxygen—some are killed by it—and "breathe" sulfur or hydrogen plus carbonate, or even iron oxide. The author points out that life is energized by the transfer of electrons, by oxidation and reduction reactions. I learned a mnemonic in chemistry class: LEO & GER. LEO = "Loss of Electrons is Oxidation". Leo is the Lion, who says "Grr" (GER), which = "Gain of Electrons is Reduction".

When we use oxygen to oxidize chemicals in our bodies to get energy, the oxygen is reduced: Electrons move from some molecule to the oxygen. This rod-shaped bacterium, Desulforidis audaxviator, reduces sulfur instead of oxygen. The rod-shaped cells are about 5 microns long, but very narrow, 1/3 of a micron. This critter is found in deep mines, where some populations have been out of contact with Earth's surface for 25 million years.

Many folks only know about "bad" bacteria. By the way, the Archaea are not pathogenic. None of them. So all disease-causing "germs" are Bacteria. 

Certainly some great plagues have arisen from specific Bacteria. "The Plague", or the Black Plague, is possibly the most famous. The cause is Yersinia pestis, where "pest" means Plague in European languages. Like many bacterial diseases, these need a vector, or in this case, two vectors: The rat flea and the black rat.

The Plague changed the course of European history, twice, once in the late Roman Empire ("Justinian Plague") and once again some 700 years later. It still crops up here and there, and is a lot more deadly than COVID-19, but because of indirect spread (fleas+rats), it doesn't pose as much of a threat.

This is a book to read right through, as I tend to do, or to browse here and there for interesting articles. Either way, it's very well written and very informative. The author is young enough to write a few more books; maybe he'll pick another 50 (he has thousands of interesting species to choose among!) and write a sequel. Luscious thought!

A fine mind ruined by Marxism

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biological evolution, philosophy, social justice, polemics

I was raised to care for what people can do, not what they look like. This was during the era of Jim Crow. I was 15 when Dr. King made his "I have a dream" speech. Once it was fairly reported (a chancy thing in 1963), I embraced its core idea: to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. For most of the sixty years since, I have seen the systemic racism I grew up within gradually abated. Progress in this area halted sometime after 2008 when our first black President showed by his actions that he liked to poke a stick in the eyes of anyone who wasn't a Leftist or Marxist. Overt racism began to rise again.

Judged against the past 15 years, racism in America has been on the rise. Judged against the prior 45 years, tremendous progress was followed by a significant pullback. However, there was a parallel trend that I have watched for more than the past 60 years, of creeping leftism that has gradually taken over the Democratic Party.

When I was in college during "the Sixties" there was radical activity all over the country, particularly on campuses. It was very visible for a few years, and then seemed to vanish. Later I realized that the wiser radicals didn't go on the stump, they went to Law school. Bill and Hilary Clinton exemplify them. They also exemplify the utter amorality of leftism.

I am a classical liberal, which means "conservative" in America. I am for smaller government, the greatest amount of freedom for the greatest number of people, for the rule of law and not by fiat ("executive orders" for example), and for a strong social attitude that supports personal responsibility and eschews blaming others for our own errors. The Left is against all these.

I was taught to be color blind; now that's called racism. It is the opposite of racism!

I was taught to treat everyone fairly; a few percent of people demand to be treated better than fairly. I decline.

Most particularly, I learned from the Bible that the people of God are not called to destroy the wicked (Jesus called them "tares", or "weeds") but to leave that to God. The Left is intent on destroying the good, and they began by demonizing everything that is good about America and vilifying "ordinary Americans" who happen to not be leftist. Leftism is the enemy of all that is good.

There is huge hue and cry about "white supremacy" and "institutional racism". One would think that all white Americans (except, of course, the Left) are arrayed in a crusade against all "people of color". Not so. Consider this: All the "institutions" have been taken over by the Left, including most news organizations, universities, and a growing number of businesses. If there is institutional racism, guess who is running the institutions? Not conservatives.

During World War II my father trained a squad of primarily black soldiers. He and they were all in the Corps of Engineers. His previous squad was primarily white. He told my brothers and me that the white soldiers were better educated, but neither squad had any engineering background. The two groups learned equally fast. Having grown up in a racist family, Dad got re-educated that "race" didn't mean anything, from his own experience. He took that lesson to heart.

Let me also mention that I am about as White as they come, without being Scandinavian. Most of my ancestors that immigrated to America were from England, Ireland or Scotland; none that I know of were Celtic. Throw in a bit of German and Welsh, and that almost completes the picture. I also have a grandfather who was between a quarter and half Cherokee, and a great-grandfather who had a black grandfather or great-grandfather. European Americans who don't hail from the British Isles are descended from Roman citizens and Roman slaves, which in both cases were 10% African. My nonwhite ancestry is about 15%. I am neither proud of it nor shamed by it. I am descended from serfs and kings, merchants and pirates, soldiers and criminals. What I am is what I am, no more, no less.

This is just a taste of my background, so you have a chance to understand my reaction to A Voice in the Wilderness: A Pioneering Biologist Explains How Evolution Can Help Us Solve Our Biggest Problems by Joseph L. Graves. The book is half memoir and half social observation with a strong "social justice" flavor.

Dr. Graves is the first African American to earn a PhD in Evolutionary Biology. He is seven years younger than I am, so when I was on campus heckling leftist radicals, he was in Jr. High School, not yet sure if he would go to college. As he tells it, he experienced pervasive racism all his life. Interestingly, his primary mentors were white; of course, there were nearly no black role models for him. Once he did enter college, before long he read Karl Marx and became a Marxist. It seems he still is.

I reserved judgment through the whole book. By the end, though, I became clear. Dr. Graves is a brilliant biologist, a leader and mentor in his field. Equally clearly, he is politically blind. The only sources of news he cites are CNN and other outlets of genuinely Fake News. He claims that the fakery is all on the right, but I've observed every trace of truth drain out of the "mainstream media" since midway through the broadcasting career of Walter Cronkite, about the time the Huntley-Brinkley Report went off the air in 1970. By the time Cronkite retired, the decline of "the media" was well under way.

The last chapters of the book are full of diatribes against Donald Trump and those who voted for him. This is what I would expect of a Marxist, and of someone who believes the extremely gross and misleading caricature of Trump found in nearly all the media. In one sentence he groups Trump with Stalin and Hitler. Seriously?!?!? Stalin assassinated several political opponents and upon achieving power he exiled hundreds to Siberia, where most soon died. He was later responsible for the deaths of more than 15 million Russians. And we all know Hitler's history. 

If Donald Trump were actually the man "the media" (and Joe Graves) think he is, the day after his inauguration he would have had Nancy Pelosi, both Clintons, James Comey, Chuck Shumer and probably several others arrested and summarily executed. Three years later, after his first weaselly speech about COVID-19, Dr. Fauci would have "disappeared". I could go on, but what's the point? Here's a plain fact that seems to have escaped Dr. Graves: During the Trump administration, unemployment fell to the lowest level is decades, and to record low levels for people of color. Donald Trump was the best thing that ever happened to "the Blacks and Browns among us", to use an oft-repeated phrase. Biden and the Left are their worst enemies. Those whom they can't gaslight they denigrate, sideline, and if possible indict.

I am wholly opposed to Marxism in all its manifestations. Of the four biggest mass murders of the 20th Century, three were committed by Marxist rulers (Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot), and the fourth was perpetrated by "national socialists", abbreviated Nazi. The other genocides of the same Century were nearly all by Marxists. Dr. Graves wrote, "…Karl Marx was probably one of the greatest theorists of human social activity…" Idiocy! Mark's "theories" have always been carried out via enormous bloodshed and oppression.

I was hoping that the phrase in the title, "explains how evolution can help", would be followed up by a clear, cogent explanation with workable suggestions. That ought to have been the subject of the last 2-3 chapters, not diatribes against conservatives. What a pity. The idea that evolutionary thinking can help us solve great problems is a good one. A proper treatment of the subject would be very helpful. But the book is instead a screed in favor of Socialism. As Churchill wrote, "Capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others." Socialism is a formula for misery. Always has been, always will be.

How many EV batteries can we make?

 kw: analysis, lithium ion batteries, cobalt, resource limits

When I lived in South Dakota I sometimes visited the sites of abandoned mines. A number of these had mined spodumene, a lithium-bearing mineral that is famous in the Black Hills for forming gigantic crystals such as this one in the Plumbago pegmatite. It is 12 feet long and 3-4 feet wide (~4m x 3m). Crystals approaching 50 feet long (~15m) have been reported.

A pegmatite is a special igneous (crystallized from molten rock) deposit that formed in the presence of high-pressure water and cooled slowly, so large crystals were produced. Many gemstone mines are in pegmatites. For example, while there are often ruby or sapphire crystals in granitic rocks, they are usually microscopic. It takes "pegmatite conditions" for large (cm size) gem crystals to form.

Spodumene is the primary source of lithium around the world. Pure spodumene has the chemical formula LiAl(SiO₃)₂. To understand the physical economics of lithium mining, it helps to know just how much lithium the mineral contains. This table will help:

This presumes the pure mineral. Elemental lithium content is less than 4%. Ore grades are reported as the oxide, Li₂O, which comprises 16% of the pure mineral.

Spodumene in bulk is seldom pure. Its gemstone varieties, hiddenite and kunzite, are nearly pure and transparent, with coloration due to trace impurities. The "log" of spodumene shown in the image above is probably no more than 60% pure, containing iron oxide and iron silicate and other impurities. Spodumene ore is considered "good" when its composition of Li₂O is above 8%.

Also, a spodumene pegmatite seldom contains more than 15% of such "good" spodumene. The best spodumene ore in the world, found in Australia, has a Li₂O content of 1.6%. About 1% is more common. See this Wikipedia article for more detail.

What is needed to produce an EV battery? From a number of sources I find that a "typical" EV battery contains 8 kg of lithium, 14 kg of cobalt, and 20 kg of manganese in its cathode, the + electrode. Such a battery as a whole weighs about 250 kg, much of which is the casings (metal shells of the cells). By contrast, the battery in a Tesla Model S contains 62.4 kg of lithium. I haven't discerned whether the proportions of cobalt and manganese are the same, but that is probably so. The packaging is more efficient, so the Model S battery weighs 900 kg (about a ton).

What do the cobalt (Co) and manganese (Mn) do? They are part of the cathode, and increase its energy density. Much experimentation and optimization have resulted in this composition. One restriction is the scarcity of cobalt, seen in figures for known world reserves for these metals:

• Li: 89 billion kg
• Mn: 1,700 billion kg
• Co: 8.3 billion kg (9% compared to Li)

A battery made with Li and Mn but without Co is less efficient, but it appears we'll need to go that way anyway; batteries aren't the only use we have for cobalt.

So, what are the implications of replacing every vehicle with an electric vehicle? In the US there are nearly 280 million registered vehicles; worldwide, about 1.4 billion. Let's assume as an initial estimate that each one needs 8 kg Li, 14 kg Co, and 20 kg Mn. That works out to

• Li: 2.24 billion kg for the US and 11.2 billion kg for the world. So far, that's doable (NOT easy!)
• Mn: 5.6 billion kg for the US and 28 billion kg for the world. Ditto.
• Co: 3.92 billion kg for the US and 19.6 billion kg for the world. OOPS! Almost 2.4 times the known supply.

Using all known cobalt to make EV batteries using the currently-accepted technology, the number would be 590 million. Almost half of that would be snarfed up by the US, if that were allowed.

Extracting the elements produces lots of waste. In the case of Lithium, each kg produced is accompanied by 27.3 kg of waste if the spodumene is pure, and usually by 98-99 kg of waste. Cobalt and Manganese are heavier and their ores are a bit richer, but their production also yields enormous piles of waste material. By the way, seabed mining can't help much. The "manganese nodules" do contain a lot of manganese, but usually a nearly equal amount of iron; they contain less than a percent of cobalt.

All this is big, but it is actually the tail wagging the elephant in the room. Transportation uses about 30% of US energy consumption, and half of that is for private autos. In the world, the figures are 25% and 12%, which means for the non-US countries, private auto transportation is even less of the total, around 10%. Electric generation would have to increase mightily to support another half billion or billion EV's. What could be done to replace petroleum and coal used for electric generation, the other 80-90%?

Burning coal, oil, and natural gas are three of the four stable forms of electric generation. The fourth is nuclear fission. None of these depend on daylight, or wind, or tides. I am disregarding geothermal because its practical, widespread use is two or more generations in the future, at the very best. Hydropower is comparatively stable, but nearly all the hydropower available in the US is already being used, and worldwide, it cannot provide more than a few percent of the need.

The two big technologies that seem able to produce large amounts of electricity are solar and wind. Solar reached energy breakeven 10-20 years ago, and improvements continue. Wind power does not yet generate enough new electricity to replace what is used to manufacture, transport, erect, and maintain the equipment. Wind turbines also kill birds, lots of them, including eagles and numerous endangered species, but the industry gets a pass because of climate-change activism. Both technologies have variable output that depends on the time of day and the local weather. Thus, utility-scale battery storage is required. Tons and tons and millions of tons of batteries.

I could get into a rant here, but I'll stop with this admonition: we need new battery technologies that depend on neither lithium nor cobalt nor any "rare earth" elements (which aren't rare, just hard to separate from their ores). A 10x-100x increase in funding for battery research is definitely worth pursuing.

Scientific questions answered enjoyably

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, answers, science, humor

Want to know the easy way to convert between °F and °C? On page 192 of  What Einstein Didn't Know: Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions by Robert L. Wolke, he explains the 40-40 method as clearly as any I have seen. We just need to remember 2 things:

1. A Celsius degree is 1.8 (or 9/5) as big as a Fahrenheit degree.
2. -40°C = -40°F.

Because the meeting point of the two scales is -40, first shift the zero point by adding 40. Then, if it's °C, multiply by 1.8, and finish by subtracting 40. If you're starting with °F, divide instead of multiplying: add 40, divide by 1.8, and subtract 40. Examples:

• Starting with 68°F: 68+40 = 108. 108/1.8 = 60. 60–40 = 20°C.
• Starting with 40°C: 40+40 = 80. 80*1.8 = 144. 144–40 = 104°F.

To do it without a calculator, if you can multiply and divide in your head but find 1.8 a hard number to use, to multiply by 1.8, multiply instead by 9 and then divide by 5; to divide by 1.8, multiply by 5 and then divide by 9. It's easiest to do the multiplying first. It's even better if the result won't be in even degrees. For example, to convert 56°F, add 40 (=96), multiply by 5 (=480), divide by 9 (=53.33...), then subtract 40, to get 13.33...°C.

Dr. Wolke passed away last August at the age of 93. I suppose this book is his last legacy. He wrote a number of books in the same vein. He liked to write about "Kitchen Science." In this volume he confines The Kitchen to one chapter of 24 pages, including the answer to "How does a simmer differ from a slow boil?" (Quick answer: The bubbles in simmering water seldom make it to the surface, but their presence lets you know the temperature is the same. Simmering saves energy.)

When explaining chemical and chemico-physical processes he takes us right to the molecular or atomic level. Even below boiling, for example, some water escapes into the air because the temperature represents the average of a range of molecular speed, and the faster water molecules find it easier to escape the liquid water into the atmosphere. Boiling means we've added enough energy to raise all (or most) of the volume of the water in a pot to the boiling temperature, so more energy just goes into driving water molecules into the air. They gather into bubbles on their way up from the bottom of the pan, where the heat is being added.

I remember when kids could get a Chemistry Set for a birthday present. Just about everything in those sets is banned today. Even in Chemistry class in high school, I've been told the teacher does nearly all the experiments in front of class, wearing lots of safety gear, and the students hardly have any lab time. You just can't learn chemistry by watching it!

Here and there in the book we find bits called "Try It". They are safe little experiments anyone can do with little or no equipment. Here is one from page 124 (next to a discussion of sublimation, or the evaporation of ice directly without passing through a liquid stage):

Measure the length of a convenient icicle during a cold spell. Then come back in a few days and measure it again. Make sure the temperature hasn't gotten above freezing in the meantime, so that there hasn't been any melting. You will see that the icicle has gotten smaller by sublimation.

I my experience it takes only a day or two for a noticeable change to occur, even in very frigid weather. In addition to answering questions he has encountered during a long career as a professor of Chemistry, he has items here and there titled, "You didn't ask, but..." One is "Why won't a candle burn without a wick?" (p 50) The answer is based on the need to get some of the hot wax above the surface of the pool of melted wax, which would cool it too much to burn.

The author encourages us to browse or even hop about, and many readers may enjoy doing so. I am a straight-through kind of reader. Either way, it's a great introduction to many less-well-known subjects, and offers a new take on some better known ones.