The darkness follows

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, fbi, law enforcement, criminals, criminal behavior, memoirs

This is not a scene you want to see through your peephole. The SWAT Team members in this image could be FBI or any other (It's a generated image, so it's generic). When an apparent threat rises to the right level, these guys show up to make an arrest…at the very least.

I say "guys" advisedly. While there are female tactical officers, they are rare, in part because of the physical strength and stamina required. Some policewomen are big and strong enough to meet the requirements. Years ago, I had a good friend of mine whose wife was a policewoman. Karen was about an inch shorter than my six feet, we weighed the same, and she was probably stronger than I. We took judo and jujitsu at the same dojo, and she was definitely better than I was at both skills. A formidable sparring partner!

Jana Monroe is, by her own admission, petite. She still might be able to whup me; my mother could. Mom taught at the same dojo, and weighed almost 100 pounds less than I did. So she was also petite. Slow practice between Mom and me was hard on her because she couldn't hold me up during a "slow throw". But let her move fast, and watch out! In the case of Mrs. Monroe, she excelled at both enforcement and detection/profiling.

As she tells us in her memoir Hearts of Darkness: Serial Killers, the Behavioral Science Unit, and My Life as a Woman in the FBI, after several years in city policing, her 22 year career in the FBI culminated in a term as an SAC (Special Agent in Charge) of the Phoenix office. Along the way she broke through more glass ceilings than I could keep track of. It took a huge amount of grit. She describes the barriers the "old boy networks" and institutional suspicion of women put in her way, and the determination and self-proving she had to undergo over and over again.

It seems she is proudest of the five years she spent with the Behavioral Science Unit, the "profiling" group that tries to get inside the minds of the most serious offenders: serial killers being first in line. In a chapter that switches back and forth between a couple of real cases and the film Silence of the Lambs (for which she was a consultant, training Jodie Foster), we learn that the worst serial killers are fully the equal, or more, of the characters portrayed by Anthony Hopkins and Ted Levine.

More than this I decline to say. Mrs Monroe tells of the growing unease in her, that she was partaking of the darkness in the hearts of the country's worst criminals. I am reminded of the proverb, "You can't rassle with a skunk and come out smelling like a rose." Given a stunning opportunity, she took it, retiring from the FBI a bit earlier than the mandatory age of 57. She and her husband, Dale, also an FBI agent, are happier "on the other side". I found myself quite happy to finish this fascinating book. It is all too easy to be drawn into the darkness.

A bit of advice. The book will get into you. Some parts you wouldn't want to read while eating (I read when I eat alone).

Compost turnover

 kw: projects, spring cleaning, compost piles, yard maintenance, photos, photo essays

It has been several years since I did more with my compost pile than pull back the top layers and dig out a few shovelfuls of older compost to add a little top dressing to our vegetable garden. Time for a complete turnover. I set aside two days for the task, and I decided to document it. Home garden do-it-yourselfers may have suggestions for how I could do things better, and some may learn a thing or two.

The compost pile is about 4x7 (1.2x2 m) feet and it is 3 feet (~1m) deep in this picture, taken at 8:30 am on Friday (4/26/2024). I've just opened the fencing at the near end. Previously I set out two tarps, one on either side. They are plasticized tarps from Harbor Freight; I bought six of them years ago on some special deal. They are better suited to this than cotton or sailcloth tarps.

I used a pitchfork to remove about 8" (20 cm) of the top, mostly dried leaves and some weeds and grass, throwing it on the tarp to the left in this photo. The next layer of similar thickness, slightly rotted material, was then forked onto the other tarp. Time: 10:00.

This material was heavier, so about halfway through the layer I climbed atop the pile to more easily reach and move material to the tarp. My wife took this picture. Time: 10:20.

The next task was to move a suitable amount of better-rotted compost to the vegetable garden.

The garden is 6x12 feet (1.8x3.6 m), and is surrounded by rabbit fencing plus about a foot of chicken wire to keep out the baby bunnies (we seem to get a new rabbit family every year). In the fall we raked up some of the fallen leaves, primarily from a maple tree; oak leaves have tannins that slow the growth of plants. Our back yard has two 150-foot (45+ m) pin oaks and a 90-foot (27 m) maple. This garden is in the side yard, outside the backyard gate.

Before adding compost I raked the leaves in the garden into piles and ran the mower over them. I did my best not to disturb a strawberry plant at the left (a volunteer that invaded from a different garden adjacent) and a daikon radish that has begun to flower. My Japanese wife loves having a few daikon to harvest every year. Time: 10:35.

Here is the garden after the over-wintering leaves have been mowed and spread back over it. Time: 10:40.

I used ramps for car maintenance to span over the chicken wire at the "gate" to the garden; really a section of rabbit wire that can be swung back, but the chicken wire is more permanent. I could then shovel a load into the wheelbarrow and trundle it into the garden. You can see a garden of day lilies that is kind of in the way. I managed… Time 11:00.

At this point 8 wheelbarrow loads have been piled at the end of the garden. I decided that would be enough. It is only about 1/3 of the better-to-fully-rotted compost below the two top layers I'd forked off. Time 11:40.

Spread evenly around, the compost is about 4" (10 cm) thick. That's enough. Time: 12:07.

Here is the remaining compost. You can see that I dug top to bottom, from the front end, to obtain compost at all levels of decomposition. Photo taken right after the prior one.

I laid out two more tarps and began shoveling compost into the wheelbarrow to take to them. I put four barrowsful on each tarp, which came to about half the remaining compost. Time: 1:15 pm, midway through this task. Then I stopped to have lunch.

After lunch I dragged the tarp with the top layer, the youngest stuff, closer to the pile and shoveled most of that in front of the remaining more mature compost. Then I put about half the middle layer stuff from the second tarp on top of it. Time: 2:45, partway through the process just described.

I used a stiff rake to pull some of the compost from the back of the pile over the newer material. Then I dug out the rest of that back third and put it atop the stuff in the front 2/3 of the space. After that I put the rest of the material from the initial two tarps into the hole in back, and used the stiff rake to even out the more finished compost over everything. Time: 3:40.

At that point I called it a day. I folded the two emptied tarps, keeping the dirtier side in, raked up any material from in front of the compost area, and put all the tools and tarps into the wheelbarrow, which I rolled to the back yard. We had dinner and went to a home meeting that evening.

Saturday morning I had meetings until nearly 11:00 am. Then I changed into the dirty clothes from Friday and went out to move the rest of the material from the third and fourth tarps onto the pile.

Here, I have put one of the original tarps partway under #3, and raked about 1/3 of the four wheelbarrow loads onto it. Time: 11:15.

I dragged the tarp to the front of the compost pile, folded it around the compost, manhandled it to the top, and then emptied it into a pile as far back as possible. 

Here a second load of similar size is ready to be pulled atop the pile. But I found it was heavier. I shoveled off about half of it, then lifted the rest and emptied it. After that I dragged tarp #3 over and shoveled part of it off, then hoisted it up and emptied it. Time: 11:25.

Here is the same process beginning for the unloading of #4. You can see how far this was from the compost pile. That daylily garden is such a joy, but here it is in the way! Time: 11:35.

After removing just one portion from #4, I found I could drag it to the compost pile. Here it is ready for some short-range shoveling. Time: 11:45.

Here all the compost is back on the pile. It's time to clean the area in front, close the fence, and even out the top. Time: 11:55.

Aaaaand, all done! The pile is less than half as high as before, in part because the stuff that was on top has been compressed by the overlying, denser compost. Time: 12:05.

After a little more cleanup I put all the tools away and we had lunch. After lunch I unfolded the tarps and washed the dirtier side, then hung them to dry. Two fit on our clothesline, and the other two fit on a fence at the other end of the back yard. Later in the day, when they had dried, I turned them over and washed the other side. They were dry and I could put them back in the garage about dinner time.

Before planting I'll add some fertilizer to boost and balance the nutrients. I did soil testing last year and found that the garden is low in phosphorus and potassium, with just barely adequate nitrogen. The compost will add some of all three, but it takes more to get a strong vegetable garden.

For the next few years, whenever we want some compost, we can peel back part of whatever gets put on this pile after today and dig stuff out. More than half of this pile is pretty well decomposed into humus, and after a few more years, the material below it will have finished decomposing also.

Following nature, and an SI experiment

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, biomimetics, simulated intelligence, evocative images

You may have heard of the Lotus Effect. Nanotexturing on lotus leaves prevents or greatly reduces the ability of water to wet them, such that it beads up and easily runs off. This also makes the leaves self-cleaning. This principle is being used to make self-cleaning windows—imagine if you hire someone to clean house who says, "I don't do windows," and you can answer, "No problem!"

This is one of the examples in the book Biomimetics: How Lessons from Nature can Transform Technology by Brian Clegg. Another is Velcro^®, which was inspired by cockleburs.

When you get right down to it, these two examples are the two primary biomimetic products that have proven to be economical and widely useful. Others have not. For centuries, flying machines were attempted, based on the flapping flight of birds. There are toy ornithopters, but nothing large enough to carry people has become practicable. Frankly, riding a large ornithopter would probably be unpleasant: Surge, surge, surge. Vomitorium country! The first true powered aircraft, by the Wright brothers in 1903, had fixed wings. However, it did use wing-warping for steering, which is based on the flexing of the pinions on birds' wings. Soon, wing-warping was replaced by ailerons (flaps), which are easier to control, and a rudder was added for further control.

If there were no flying animals, no birds, bees (nor flying insects of any kind), or bats, would humans have yearned to fly with such intensity? The idea of flight was based on biology that we see daily, but its implementation has moved far from what biology can produce. Thus, the author makes the point repeatedly in this little book (~150 duodecimo-sized pages), that biomimetic engineering and technology may use a biologically/evolutionarily developed mechanism for inspiration, but must move rather far afield, conceptually, to be realized as a practical product.

For example, robots in fiction, beginning with the Golem of 16th Century folklore, and moving through the robots in R.U.R. by Karel Čapek and the "positronic robots" of Isaac Asimov, all were more or less human-like. Yet practical robots such as those used by the millions in manufacturing, are seldom more than articulated arms of various sizes and other specialized shapes. Human-appearing robots such as Asimo are still pretty much sideshows, although Boston Dynamics is having some success producing humanoid and canoid (doglike) robots. It turns out that, for most uses, a wheeled vehicle is more useful than one with legs and feet. And while a legged robot can traverse terrain that defeats wheels, it appears that flying drones will take over that niche. It's questionable whether a legged robot uses less energy than a drone, except where there would be the need to carry a heavy load (such as rescuing a person). And, as we see in a later chapter of Biomimetics, a self-driving car is a robot, one that has to see and perhaps feel to do its job.

Neural networks, the technology behind "AI" these days, are inspired by the way neurons interconnect in animal brains, but are only glancingly similar. Such a network relies on raising or reducing the strength of each of millions or billions or trillions of connections, either literally wired connections or, much more commonly, simulated in software. "Machine learning" is nearly all accomplished nowadays with software-emulated neural networks. For comparison, the "neural network" we call the cerebral cortex has more than ten thousand trillion connections, and they have more complex action than just "on/off" with various strengths.

Just by the way, I object to the term "artificial intelligence". While the mechanisms are indeed artificial—that is, produce by artifice—they are not intelligent, having no insight or understanding of what they perform. I much prefer the term "simulated intelligence", or SI. These mechanisms simulate activity that is similar to activities of animals, including humans. But we are no closer to producing AGI, or artificial general intelligence, than the Rabbi of Prague was, when he put a slip of paper bearing the name of The Lord into the mouth of a pottery humanoid figure. Well, enough on that for the moment.

This is the first book about biomimetics that I've seen (there are many) that doesn't go all goo-goo-eyed about the subject. Slavishly following nature doesn't produce useful results. For one thing, evolution doesn't fully optimize any of its "designs" (to anthropomorphize a bit). Consider the human body, sometimes called the "pinnacle of creation": an underdesigned back that is prone to slipped disks and muscle spasms; eyes that get myopic when we read or spend too much time doing close work; muscles that require constant exercise to retain their strength and flexibility… On that last point, most other primates don't need constant exercise, not just because they are more active than sedentary westerners; even when an ape is sedentary in a zoo setting (and usually bored out of its mind!), its muscles retain their tone. Somewhere along the way, humans lost the maintenance mojo, so that "use it or lose it" applies to us more than to nearly all other animals!

What a refreshing and informative book! Much recommended.

Now, to add a bonus subject: The image at the head of this article was produced by Dall-E3 from the prompt "An image that captures the essence of biomimetics." It was the best of eight very diverse images based on that prompt. Another by DE3 is shown here.

One great thing about the generative art programs is that most of them give you four images at each try. So, I "hit" DE3 twice and picked two from the eight. Having several other options, I ran the same prompt by the newest, Google's Gemini. Just below are two images, of eight produced, that I particularly liked.

Note that Gemini tends toward photographic realism, and has to be told to be fanciful. It caught the "bio" part, ignoring the "mimetic" part. Also, Gemini images are 1536x1536, and it tells me that "soon" we'll be able to ask for any size up to 2048x2048. I reduced these to half size.

Then, the Playground AI environment has three "engines". This pair of images came via the Stable Diffusion XL engine:

The second image used the Mysterious filter. One can request different aspect ratios, so these are 1024x576, a 16:9 ratio. SDXL also aims at photorealism unless told otherwise.

Now, with the Playground v2 engine:

No filter was used for either of these. All the images from which these were selected had a whitish theme. Lastly, using the Playground v2.5 engine:

This engine is deliberately more "creative" and produces more colorful images than the others. The second image used the Masterpiece filter (Mysterious is only available for SDXL). Whatever goes on with the Masterpiece filter, the result is the least "biomimetic" of the bunch.

Simulated Intelligence can do wonderful things. I suspect it is more free than a human artist would be, because the artist would have a lot of background knowledge that the generative art programs lack.

Volcano viewing is going on my bucket list

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, earth science, geology, volcanology, planetology

My uncle was a professor of geology. He had a "volcano fund". Whenever he got news of an interesting volcano beginning to erupt, he would try to go to see it. This often required getting someone to fill in for him to teach a few days of classes. He had to be selective, with 20-40 or more active volcanoes spouting off on any given day. For example, "interesting" included "rather safe" and also, erupting day after day to give him time to get there and have a good chance of seeing the eruption in progress.

On the other hand, although I have degrees in geology, I have never seen a volcano erupt. Time's-a-wastin'! I'm not getting any younger, so I'd better get on the volcano grapevine. A big component of that grapevine is the Current Eruptions page at the Smithsonian Institution, something not available when my uncle was alive. The map shows the current situation as of April 15, 2024, of volcanoes that are "in continuous eruption", but you need to read the definition of continuous…

Dr. Robin George Andrews is certainly on that grapevine. He's in the enviable position of being able to go see volcanoes pretty much at the drop of a hat. His book Super Volcanoes: What They Reveal about Earth and the Worlds Beyond brings us very informational stories about what volcanoes are, where they are to be found, and how they help us discover the dynamics of a planet. By the way, note that the title is not Supervolcanoes but Super Volcanoes, as in "Volcanoes are Super" but with a less juvenile connotation. Supervolcanoes, including Yellowstone caldera, occupy one chapter.

An example of seeing the dynamics of Earth is quite visible in the map above: the "ring of fire" around the Pacific Ocean. This has been known about for centuries, but it was only explained after the discovery of plate tectonics in about 1960 by Marie Tharp and others. The Pacific Ocean is slowly shrinking, being "subducted" under moving plates bearing the continents all around it; the Atlantic is growing at the same rate. The motions are mostly in the range of 2-5 cm/year, about the speed a fingernail grows. The very different style of (now extinct) volcanism on Mars and Venus indicates that plate tectonics did not happen on those planets, or if it occurred very early on, it didn't last long, and hasn't operated for at least three billion years.

By contrast, this image of the moon Io shows us a smallish body with a surface that consists entirely of volcanoes and lava flows. The blue plume is an erupting volcano. Although Io doesn't seem to have plate tectonics, it is kept hot (about the boiling point of sulfur: 445°C or 832°F). How? Its orbit around Jupiter is elliptical, and the orbit is kept from being "rounded out" by resonance with the orbits of its sister moons. The elliptical orbit results in tides that stretch and squeeze Io, heating it halfway to boiling in the process. For the curious, Io is pronounced "EE-oh".

You may have heard that some of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn have subsurface oceans, probably of salty water beneath a thick (20-50 km) crust of ice. Io has a subsurface ocean of molten rock! Actually, it is kind of a slushie with crystals of high-temperature minerals in a broth of lower-temperature mineral melt.

Earth has three ultra-famous volcanoes. One of these is Kilauea, in Hawaii. It is huge, and it tends to erupt more than half the time. For the past several days it has not been erupting, but mini-earthquakes are going on all the time, indicating that magma is moving around beneath the crater. It could start again any time, and it might then erupt for a few days, or months, or even several years.

The most beautiful volcano, in the eyes of many including me, is Fujisan in Japan. It is often called Fujiyama, but in Japan most mountains are given the suffix "san" rather than "yama". Both suffixes mean "mountain". This view is from the southwest end of Ashinoko ("foot-shaped lake"), in the Hakone area, a national park. I have seen this view from this spot, but in the springtime, when these maple trees were green. Fujisan is considered dormant, but it is not entirely inactive. Its most recent eruption was in 1707.

The most feared volcano by many, the one usually called a supervolcano, is the Yellowstone caldera in northwestern Wyoming. This is one of several, probably at least 20, on Earth. The Supervolcano page of Wikipedia states that at least 60 "VE8" eruptions are known to geologists. The Volcano Explosivity Index is logarithmic, and the biggest events, dubbed VE8, yielded at least 1,000 cubic km of ejecta, either lava or ash or both. The most recent such eruption was 26,500 years ago in New Zealand. Of the five known VE8-size eruptions by the Yellowstone hotspot, which has moved across the northern US for 40 million years, the most recent was 640,000 years ago, and barely makes the grade as a VE8. The largest known eruption from this hotspot occurred just east of southern Idaho, and was about three times that size, 2,800 cubic km. That makes Yellowstone a rather small supervolcano! At least four supereruptions elsewhere exceeded 5,000 cubic km, and two, one in Canada (half a billion years ago) and one in Indonesia (75,000 years ago), may have exceeded 12,000 cubic km of ejecta. For reference: the abyssal plain of the Ocean has an average depth of about 4.5 km, so 12,000 cubic km would fill 2,650 sq km of the ocean, or about 40% of the area of Delaware or 65% of the area of Dubai.

The author discusses the Yellowstone hotspot and other hotspot supervolcanoes for a full chapter, and tells us we have little to fear from Yellowstone. The hotspot's current location is at the eastern edge of the Yellowstone Caldera, and it is moving eastward a few cm/yr. To be accurate, hotspots don't actually move, the continents above them move. The North American Plate is moving almost due westward, while the Yellowstone hotspot periodically pushes magma into the crust and starts a new volcanic province, at intervals of about a million years. The current motion is bringing a thicker piece of very resistant crust over the hotspot, and it may not be able to cook its way through the crust again until the rest of the continent crosses over it, in 60 million years or so.

There is much, much more, but this is a taste. Super Volcanoes is super fun to read. A final volcano image, this one imaginary:

Speculative synthesis

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, popular culture, history, conspiracies, paranoia

Paranoia begins in the cradle. It is our natural, honed-by-evolution response to the unknown and particularly the unexplained. What's the message of numerous fairy tales? That they really are out to get you. But who is "they"?

• "Jack and the Beanstalk" among many others: giants.
• "Little Orphant Annie" (by James Whitcomb Riley): goblins ("…the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef you Don't Watch Out!"), one of the first poems I learned.
• "Lord of the Rings": Sauron, orcs, balrogs, etc.
• "Snow White": the Queen.
• Many "Knights of the Round Table" stories: dragons, black knights, wicked kings, etc.

Then there's "stranger danger", which is nothing new; 60+ years ago we were told not to accept candy, or anything else, from a stranger, particularly a grownup.

In the Bible: Satan (= the Devil), demons, fallen angels, Nephilim (and several other names for "giants").

A more nuanced view is found in the lyrics of "Somebody's knockin'", sung by Terri Gibbs:

Somebody's knockin',
Should I let him in?
Lord, it's the devil,
Would you look at him!
I've heard about him
But I never dreamed
He'd have blue eyes and blue jeans.

Akin to this is the semi-joke: "Who wins in a lawsuit? The lawyers."

And this from Ronald Reagan: "The ten most frightening words are, 'I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.'" <emphasis supplied>

Which brings us to a wonderful book, Stuff They Don't Want You to Know by Ben Bowlin, Matt Frederick and Noel Brown, who produce a podcast by that name. The subject is conspiracies and conspiracy theories.

I have long since learned that, in nearly all cases, the words "…don't want you to know" is a preface to a scam. And these days, the most common goblins out there are scammers. In the case of this book, the authors want to equip us to discern fact from fantasy…at least a little.

It is a sad fact that genuine conspiracies abound, and sadder still that the views so frequently denigrated as "conspiracy theories" are so frequently based on facts. The trouble comes when people connect the dots and get it wrong. Dot-connecting is what we do, for example, when a spaced series of odd noises gets our attention; the cave dweller deep in our brain goes on the alert, "Is it a tiger?" Even when it turns out to be two birds and a squirrel, it takes a while for our adrenaline to subside. The cave dweller of 100 generations ago did well to be prepared for a tiger, because sometimes it really was a tiger! People who didn't go on guard became tiger lunch and have left no descendants. We're all descended from those who outwitted the tigers.

What do we do when confronted with a purported conspiracy? In each of the nine chapters the authors dig into at least one genuine conspiracy. The perpetrators are very often in government; others are big businesses; and some are genuine cabals in the shadows. In the latter case, the authors conclude that there really isn't a deeply conspiratorial group "pulling all the strings", but that there are plenty of shadowy groups out there who would do so if they could. They proclaim this book as "an important tool, a way to further our argument that the world is both understandable and worth understanding." It's just work to do so, and most folks are too lazy. Thus so many take the easy way of believing the next paranoiac to come up with a new "theory".

The authors are dissatisfied with the term Conspiracy Theory. In science a theory is the synthesis of a set of tested and verified hypotheses, backed by observations and experiments, and it explains some collection of phenomena in a way that one may make predictions about the behavior of a system. Conspiracy theorists connect dots—and there are plenty of dots to connect—but find gaps; they get into trouble when they "invent" a few dots to fill those gaps. Thus I prefer the term Speculative Synthesis.

It is very hard for a scientist who has formulated a few hypotheses into a germ of a theory to set it aside if new information, the results of new experiments or observations, contradict the formulation (synthesis). Much of scientific training is aimed at developing habits of mind that help a scientist divorce feelings from facts. In my experience, it works part of the time, but less than half the time. Thus scientific journals are full of royal battles over conflicting views of how certain "findings" are to be understood. Without the benefit of a scientific education, or the blessing of a wise mind at the outset, most folks simply cannot back away from a comforting, if scary, "theory". They get an emotional attachment, which seldom is broken.

So, to pick one example, does the US government engineer "regime change"? It has apparently made more than 50 attempts since 1945! Some have succeeded; a detailed case of the overthrow of the government of Guatemala in 1954 illustrates just what it entailed. That was a business-led operation in which the government willingly cooperated "for the good of the country" (and for the banana company).

From another chapter: has it occurred to you to wonder where the word Propaganda came from? Of course, the word is Latin, and sure enough, it traces back to the Medieval Catholic Church, which in 1622 set up Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or Sacred Congregation to Propagate the Faith. Propaganda is for propagation of an ideology: gain people's minds and one can affect their actions. But, wait a minute! What about salesmanship? What about persuasion in general? Formally speaking, propaganda is salesmanship, it is persuasion, with a political rather than mercantile goal. Under the banner, "All is fair in love and war," propaganda is recognized as a kind of lie, at least by omission. Otherwise known as "shading the truth" by leaving lots out. "Blatant propaganda" may contain no truth whatever.

In the ultra-polarized America of today most of us are on one side or the other, looking with intense suspicion at "them", the other side. The fact is, on both sides of the divide, small numbers of the most committed people really are carrying out, or attempting to carry out, some kind of conspiracy to ensure that "their" side wins the next election, or takes over this or that school board or county council, or gets a certain law enacted, or gets an otherwise forgettable product a larger market share. I feel sorry for the always-offended snowflakes out there. We all need to grow a thick skin, and develop near-infinite sales resistance. For most of us, the worst we'll have to contend with are the phone calls about solar energy "for free" (don't make me laugh), or extended warranties for car or house, or multitudes of "charities" you've never heard of.

But if you get involved in the "truth" business, learn to resist going down some infinite rabbit hole. Reading this book is a good start.

Numbers that forced us off the number line

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, mathematics, complex numbers, introduction

It is rare for me to post the cover of a book I am reviewing. In this case, when I saw in the subtitle "square root of minus fifteen", I just had to show it. The picture made me think, "What is the bee^th root of a yellow tulip?" That's a lot harder to imagine than any even root of a minus number!

I found Imagining Numbers: (particularly the square root of minus fifteen) by Barry Mazur to be a very thorough leading-by-the-hand-gently introduction to "imaginary" numbers (those based on the square root of minus one), and the "complex numbers" that derive from them, . A Complex Number is a two-part quantity; one part is "real" and the other part is a real number times the square root of minus one, called i or j. Thus 1+j and 3-2.4j are complex numbers.

I was introduced to the concept of a number named i (for imaginary) in a high school math class, but in college I primarily studied engineering, where I learned that engineers prefer it to be named j, to get away from the notion of "imaginary." However, for the graphical expression of complex numbers, the horizontal axis is equated to the number line, and is called the R or Real axis, and the vertical axis is called the I or Imaginary axis; there's no getting away from it. One may call the R part the "scalar" part of a complex number, but the other part just doesn't have a good alternative to "imaginary". This paragraph touches on concepts that occupy 2/3 of this book. The latter third focuses on graphical representation.

I was introduced to the graphical expression of complex numbers this way: First it was emphasized that 1 has two square roots, 1 and -1. Then, by analogy, we learned that -1 also has two square roots, j and -j (which is -1×j). Before going further, we got to experiment with multiplying various quantities with j. Then we were asked to imagine how j or -j could be "halfway" between 1 and -1, without being equal to zero. Finally, someone asked, "Then where does that go on the number line?" At that point we were shown that a second number line crosses the usual number line at right angles, forming a Cartesian coordinate system in which the x-direction was the R part and the y-direction was the I part of a complex number. Furthermore, going from 1 to j to -1 to -j and back to 1 again was seen to be a rotation. Doing some multiplication and addition of various elementary complex numbers with one another showed us how they had graphical analogues. Complex numbers are an alternative notation for a polar coordinate system, one based on distance-plus-angle rather than horizontal-plus-vertical. This fixed the concept in our minds. Understanding this was essential to getting the hang of engineering calculus.

Dr. Mazur's genius is in understanding that anyone who can do basic algebra can learn to understand complex numbers. This book takes elementary, easy steps, first through the history of how i was very gradually understood to be something very useful, and not at all "imaginary," and then through the way graphical representation that helps us get the concept and fix it in our minds. Complex numbers and complex analysis are essential for engineering, particularly when cyclical processes are being designed or analyzed.

I must admit to a bit of ennui at times. The author tells us several times that the book is really written for those who don't already understand complex numbers. Anyone who has not delved for decades into engineering math, as I have, will probably find the book a bit challenging, but not boring, and it will draw one along to take in concept after concept.

I must admit, I never did find out why the square root of minus fifteen is emphasized in the subtitle…

Food, Food, (not so) Glorious Food

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, food, secrets

OK. The title is The Secret History of Food: Strange but True Stories About the Origins of Everything We Eat, by Matt Siegel. Right off the bat I would replace the word "Everything" with "a Few Interesting Things".

Mr. Siegel seems to be torn between celebrating food and suspicion about it. He tells us of the process of making vanilla (Ch 6), with a side note about saffron, which is an even more arduous process. The description itself takes no more than a couple of pages, and then we are treated to a history of the uses of vanilla, which remains the most popular flavor of ice cream, as it was in the time of George Washington. It is also the basis of a great many popular perfumes. I learned from a realtor that a few drops of vanilla extract on a piece of cotton, placed on a sunny windowsill during house showings, can lead to larger offers for a house purchase. Of course, vanilla is so popular in so many foods that the natural product can supply only 15% of market demand. The rest is produced chemically. The word "vanilla" has become a metaphor for "ordinary", for example in the sex trade: an "alternative" sex act, one that cannot produce a pregnancy, is something besides "vanilla". When I was a software engineer, my colleagues and I would refer to a program or system that we used right-out-of-the-package without modifying it as "vanilla"; usually we modified stuff.

The second chapter of the book brings us the history of pies in the West. We may remember nursery rhymes such as "four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie." Prior to a century or two ago pies in England, Europe and America were mostly meat pies of numerous varieties—seldom fruity desserts—with a thick, inedible crust that was used as a container and dinner plate. The crust would be discarded. The more recent "chicken pot pie" is a slightly more edible remnant of this tradition…and a shuddery memory of my childhood. The light, flaky pie crusts of today, which are not only edible but can be good for you if made with liquid oil (the way I make them) rather than lard, were an innovation that began in the 1700's.

Many of the stories are about things done to food to make it more profitable for the seller, and often more dangerous for the eater. The scandal about melamine in dog food in 2007, and similar scandals about "fillers" in food for pets and humans, are just recent cases in a centuries-long list of things like chalk in milk, water in wine, and motor oil in "olive" oil. 

The author doesn't get much into food poisoning due to contamination such as E. coli in lettuce (and a whole lot of other kinds of produce). There's a limit to the size of such a book. He has a goal: to show certain trends over time. Foods once considered toxic, such as tomatoes and potatoes (which are nightshades), are now "healthy choices". Of course the Keto crowd eschews potatoes because they are so starchy, so the "progress" is a mixed bag. The leaves and flowers of nightshade-family plants are very toxic. But the fruits (tomatoes) or roots (potatoes) are not, with the caveat that if potatoes are green from sun exposure, they are toxic.

In Chapter 8, titled "The Choices of a New Generation", he starts with the notion of Cockaigne, introduced in Ch 7. As a child I learned the song "Big Rock Candy Mountain", about the bubble-gum trees and the lemonade springs, and so forth. It is in the tradition of fantastic places of plenty, hedonistic heavens. He says, "We're living in a modern-day Cockaigne, a utopian fantasyland where food has no limits and our choices defy natural order." Giant container ships such as the one that recently destroyed a major bridge in Baltimore usually include foodstuffs in their cargo, so we can have oranges from Chile in the wintertime and "winter melons" in summer.

Food, which once required much of our day to earn, obtain, and prepare, has become super-abundant in at least the First World. A typical grocery store stocks 50,000 to 100,000 distinct varieties; so much so that certain store chains such as Aldi pride themselves on a much reduced stock—20,000 varieties or so—of items that are touted as more carefully chosen and better values. Even 20k varieties would shock the leggings right off of our Colonial ancestors (or our great-great grandparents in the Old world).

The book is great fun to read. Perhaps a few parts, such as those about what gets into adulterated food, aren't such wise reading at mealtime. Otherwise, enjoy!