Sex, Gender, and Newspeak

Looking for work (as I am wont to do), I was taken to a Canadian website and wanted to leave them a message in their Contact form and I faced this:

 The company was Sprypoint in Prince Edward Island. I would loved to have seen this
in French, but I could not find a francophone form on their website.

Even back in the 1960s, science fiction suggested species with more than two sexes. Since then, we have decoupled gender from sex. Gender is grammatical; sex is biological. And even before there were seven billion humans on Terra-1, hermaphrodites happened. Now we call them "intersex." And, now, we all have the right to choose our genders within those sexes. The problem with nine pronouns is that we have no social linguistics to support it.

We learn language by hearing it and repeating it. You heard the tones, rhythms, and accents of your native language before you were born. You did not learn it by reading a grammar and copying out the declensions. Until people start talking like this, there is no way to enforce it. In the second declension, why is the possessive of the second person singular hir and not zir or zer? And who decided this?

I do not know French well enough to help them out with this, but if this were German, I would suggest: er, sie, es;  ger, gie, ges; zer, zie, zes; fer, fie, fes; and so on.

Note, also that they allow a Custom choice: you can make up your own. How you enforce that (or any of this) without a name tag is difficult to imagine. If we may craft our own appellations, then I like the clicks of Xhosa and other Bantu languages. 

"Hello, 

I am Michael

!e, !im, !is." 

However, I can see where that might cause some people to yell back at me. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Reflections on Sex and Gender

Linguistics Debate: What Colors are Your Rainbow 

The Living Fish Swims Under Water 

As You Speak So You Think 

The Roots of Language

I call the inflection point in human history when thinkers gave structure to the words in their heads the Grammatical Revolution. 

We easily find the roots of science fiction in mythology because we commonly accept that people - perhaps protohumans - told wondrous tales around the campfire. However, that may not be so. The IndoEuropean languages are no more than eight thousand years old, and perhaps only half that. Estimates for the oldest possible forms of Chinese (protoSinitic) are perhaps half again as old as protoIndoEuropean. It may be easy to accept that the purpose of language is communication with other people because human language evolved from animal calls. Ravens and crows are notorious talkers with large vocabularies, including gestures. However, that is not the primary purpose of language. 

The primary purpose of language is to enable thinking. Thinking is private. Alone on an island, you would have no one to talk to. Your survival would depend on the contents of your mind. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_grammar
It has been said (not in Wikipedia) that Lithuanian has retained
more proto-IndoEuropean forms than other IE languages.

And there had to be a "first thinker." I believe that rather than solitary they were a pair of females who invented their own grammar to deliver nuance to their speech. Then they taught it to their children, preferentially to their daughters. Succeeding generations added complex rules in order to better explain their sensory perceptions and mental conceptions. "I see them take your new food to her yonder fire." 

Counting only 1-2-Many, the PIE Caucasians all borrowed their word for "seven" from their Semitic neighbors.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Linguistics Debate: What Colors are Your Rainbow?

Sandor Kőrösi Csoma

Spoken American Grammar

Visualizing Complex Data

Money as a Crusoe Concept

Limerick

Unlike theorems in geometry and proofs in algebra the forms of speech and literature are open to ad hoc change by their users. Therefore, ultimately, human communication depends on context and analogy which then allow misunderstanding unless you are "in" with the in-crowd. Thus, we have weak verbs and strong verbs, regular and irregular.  In English grammar we learn “singular” and “plural” but our plural is only a dual: bird, birds; ox, oxen. English lost the true plural form (1-2-Many) though Russian and other Indo-European languages kept it. Over time some forms stabilize. 

 

The sonnet can be 12 lines (Petrarchan) or 14 (Shakespearean). See the Poetry Foundation at  https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/shakespearean-sonnet . 

In English, the limerick is a stable poetic form. “Typically, the first two lines rhyme with each other, the third and fourth rhyme together, and the fifth line either repeats the first line or rhymes with it.” -- Academy of American Poets here: https://poets.org/glossary/limerick

 

There once was a gal from Nantucket. 

From the Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror.
She has a website: http://www.dorothydstover.com

 Previously on Necessary Facts

 

Forbidden Planet 

Linguistics Debate: What Colors Are Your Rainbow? 

As You Think So You Speak 

Spoken American Grammar 

 

TECHNICAL WRITING: COMPLAINING AND EXPLAINING

“Never complain. Never explain.” is the unofficial motto of the British royal family. It expresses the stiff upper lip attitude which is stereotypical of the people of modern England. I am not sure how much of that we Americans inherited. The continent was settled (invaded) by malcontents who formalized the political structure of their society with a revolution, opening the land to others of their kind. So, we tend to complain a lot and explain even more, whether anyone wants to listen or not. 

Two years ago, my colleague, CJ, posted a comment in response to “The Origins of Technical Writing.”  I tend not to reply to comments, but I am working my way through the same sort of resistance on my present assignment.  CJ wrote: 

“I have a somewhat negative view of tech writing because they seem to just restate things verbosely. Sometimes there's a a button labelled Var Osc Mode. I look in the manual, and they've padded it: "The Var Osc Mode control toggles variable oscillator mode. " It's unlikely anyone who understands exactly what that means would not have understood by reading the button.” -- CJ December 18, 2017 at 7:08 AM

First, you never know who will be using your work and reading your explanations. That is why Scientific American follows the same inverted pyramid structure as The New York Times. The “5Ws and an H” provide an easy framework for the opening paragraph. From there, you have to explain from broad, general truths, down to the supportive details. When I write, whether it is about machinery, software, state government agency policies, numismatics, or astronomy, I want the reader to care about the consequences of this new information. 

 Second, you do not know how your invention will be applied, or how the reader intends to adapt the information. One of the consequences of technical progress is that scientific theories, new discoveries, and innovations find novel practices. Time-traveling back to 1920, how would you explain to an astronomer from Harvard that today's markets provide computer controlled telescopes to hobbyists for less than the relative cost of a trip in that time across the Atlantic by ship? The hobbyist astronomer today is not necessarily a computer programmer. 

Similarly, the clever search algorithm committed to Github could be used by a lawyer for a music publisher needing to search for studio performers who are owed royalty payments. The 21st century lawyer may well have learned programming in some earlier education, but without good internal documentation your routines will not become her methods.

Third, you do not know how your reader came to your language. English is the universal second language of Earth. I believe that by the middle of the century, Indian English will surpass the American vernacular in global popularity and therefore, ultimately, in technical writing. In the meantime, my focus is on North American English. I think about my readers who are immigrants from India, China, and Mexico. I write in the language they hear at work, on TV, and on the street. (See, Spoken American Grammar here.) However, my work is always grammatically correct because grammar provides the rules of language; and language determines how we think.

Fourth, you do not know the literacy level of your reader. English pushes the limits of vocabulary at almost one million words, having absorbed mulligatawny, moccasin, mullah, and mutton. I change the engineer’s “utilize” to everyone’s “use.” My worry is for the motivated but underpaid lone operator on a midnight shift. The engineer who knows how the Var Osc Mode functions is home asleep, enjoying the privileges of their false class consciousness as a white collar employee while someone else is on the front line and in the trench with a machine in a variably oscillating failure mode.

The reason that my user manual only defines var osc mode as “variable oscillating mode” and says nothing more is that the engineer does not consider it important enough to make time for me. I try to interview subject matter experts. They claim to be too busy. I recently had one engineer flat out refuse to put in writing what he just told me verbally, expecting me to have instantly memorized the pearls he was tossing. 

Recently, one of our field service engineers used MS Word Track Changes to make extensive notes in the margin. I thought that he could have just as easily put them into the body of the document in the first place. But the formatting failed when I cut-and-pasted them in. The previous engineer who designed the form must have invested many hours in tweaking MS-Word to get this to print out the way he wanted. It does look nice, printed on A4 paper. But it is unsupportable. The overbuilt formatting in the table cells is hard to use, hard to maintain, and hard to change. And in America, we use 8 ½ x 11 paper. That speaks to my role designing forms. 

The other side of that coin comes from the people who never got over the typewriter. They try to line up text using the spaces and tabs. I create a table and then turn the borders invisible. It looks nice; and it is easy to maintain. 

Moreover, our on-site technicians are as likely to use a tablet or a phone, rather than a desktop computer. I have been aware of that since 1990 when I published an article in Credit Union News about new platforms for computing. Hughes Aircraft was experimenting with a 1-inch screen worn on a headband. The little box projected a standard page. It would enable a technician to bring a service manual into a turbine engine without actually dragging a rack of manuals into the engine.

I came to technical writing by way of computer programming. I was on a database project at General Motors; and no one wanted to write the user manual. Having sold two small books and half a dozen magazine articles, I gave it a try. 

I never left programming completely. All computing is programming, even for Facebook. Through the 1980s, I tweaked the codes in WordPerfect and learned to set type with Donald Knuth’s TeX/LaTeX. TeX became SGML, the Standard Generalized Mark-up Language. SGML became HTML; and now we have XML, the eXtensible Markup Language, leading to YAML (yet another…). Most of the computer people I socialize with think that CSS is Cross-site scripting. But in my work, it is Cascading Style Sheets. We do not have them in MS-Word, but the concept is helpful when thinking about documentation across manuals and departments.

I can make MS-Word sit up and bark. And it’s a good thing that I can because the cliché that I hear when I try to explain how many extra hours, days, or months something will take is: “That’s OK. We have a budget for manpower, but we do not have any extra money for software.” 

What I really get paid for is the Index. Back in 1966, when Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, was released, I understood and appreciated the fact that the Index was written by a philosopher (Allan Gotthelf) following the epistemology of Objectivism. I have three copies of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology. Over the decades of my productive working life, I have worn them out by reading them and marking them up. 

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Documentation is Specification

For the Glory of Old Lincoln High 

Art and Copy

Linguistics Debate: What Colors are Your Rainbow

Astrophotography: What He Meant by What He Said

Having retired from the Texas State Guard and leaving numismatics to take second place, I have been giving more attention to astronomy. I participate in The Sky Searchers discussion forum for amateur astronomy. The moderators launched this after their first site, The International Astronomy Forum, was overwhelmed by malicious software seeking user information (“malware bots”). After a few posts in the original forum five years ago, I left it and only returned to the new forum in November. 

One aspect of a hobby is that the learning is often informal. Even though astronomy is taught in college, how it is practiced by those who earn their living in other areas brings a lot of jargon. Numismatics is like that, also. I just earned my 25-year pin from the ANA, but also just figured out that on discussion boards, LCS stands for “local coin store.” 

Earlier this week, on the Sky Searchers, I read a post that sent me on a five-hour homework assignment  It started here:

https://www.theskysearchers.com/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=5650

Contact: jmt92130

Soul Nebula - bicolor with RGB Stars

Post  by jmt92130 » Sun Dec 22, 2019 6:43 pm

Thumbnail image

Image title: IC 1848 / Sh2-199 in Cassiopeia

Link to Image: http://www.jthommes.com/Astro/IC1848--SH2-199.htm

Here is a bicolor narrow band image of the [sic] The "Soul Nebula" (IC 1848, Sh2-199). The full IC 1848 (cluster plus nebulosity) seems to be a widely studied star forming region - the Simbad database turns up many young stellar objects and candidate YSO's. There are three Collinder clusters, several LBNs, and several Sharpless objects in this image field. 

The narrow band integrated images (Ha and OIII) were converted to starless and combined with pixel-math. Stars were processed with RGB data and later combined with the narrow band result using pixel math. 

Image and details are accessed from the link below. The annotated image can be linked from the main image page but I have also provided a link below for convenience. The full size image (2.4 arcsec/pix) can be accessed from the image webpage links

Decryption by Michael E. Marotta

The SkySearchers username mikemarotta

(jmt92130’s original comments are in Helvetica. Explanations are in Georgia. Citations follow quotations.)

Jmt92130 wrote: The Soul Nebula

The Heart and Soul nebulae are seen in this infrared mosaic from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. The image covers an area of the sky over ten times as wide as the full moon and eight times as high (5.5 x 3.9 degrees) in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Located about 6,000 light-years from Earth, the Heart and Soul nebulae form a vast star-forming complex that makes up part of the Perseus spiral arm of our Milky Way galaxy. The nebula to the right is the Heart, designated IC 1805 and named after its resemblance to a human heart. To the left is the Soul nebula, also known as the Embryo nebula, IC 1848 or W5. The Perseus arm lies further from the center of the Milky Way than the arm that contains our sun. The Heart and Soul nebulae stretch out nearly 580 light-years across, covering a small portion of the diameter of the Milky Way, which is roughly 100,000 light-years across. 

The two nebulae are both massive star-making factories, marked by giant bubbles that were blown into surrounding dust by radiation and winds from the stars. WISE's infrared vision allows it to see into the cooler and dustier crevices of clouds like these, where gas and dust are just beginning to collect into new stars. These stars are less than a few million of years old -- youngsters in comparison to stars like the sun, which is nearly 5 billion years old.

Also visible near the bottom of this image are two galaxies, Maffei 1 and Maffei 2. Both galaxies contain billions of stars and, at about 10 million light-years away, are well outside our Milky Way yet relatively close compared to most galaxies. Maffei 1 is the bluish elliptical object and Maffei 2 is the spiral galaxy.

All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this image. Color is representational: blue and cyan represent infrared light at wavelengths of 3.4 and 4.6 microns, which is dominated by light from stars. Green and red represent light at 12 and 22 microns, which is mostly light from warm dust.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/multimedia/wiseimage20100524.html

Westerhout 5 (Sharpless 2-199, LBN 667, Soul Nebula) is an emission nebula located in Cassiopeia. Several small open clusters are embedded in the nebula: CR 34, 632, and 634[citation needed] (in the head) and IC 1848 (in the body).  -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westerhout_5

jmt92130 wrote: (IC 1848, Sh2-199).

IC — Index Catalogue

IC I — Index Catalogue I

IC II — Index Catalogue II

The first major update to the NGC is the Index Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars (abbreviated as IC), published in two parts by Dreyer in 1895 (IC I,[5] containing 1,520 objects) and 1908 (IC II,[6] containing 3,866 objects). It serves as a supplement to the NGC, and contains an additional 5,386 objects, collectively known as the IC objects. It summarizes the discoveries of galaxies, clusters and nebulae between 1888 and 1907, most of them made possible by photography. A list of corrections to the IC was published in 1912.[7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_General_Catalogue#Index_Catalogue

(My turn to apologize: I already knew that NGC is the New General Catalog, a 19th century compilation of sky objects.). 

The Sharpless catalog is a list of 313 H II regions (emission nebulae) intended to be comprehensive north of declination −27°. (It does include some nebulae south of that declination as well.) The first edition was published in 1953 with 142 objects (Sh1), and the second and final version was published by US astronomer Stewart Sharpless in 1959 with 312 objects. Sharpless also includes some planetary nebulae and supernova remnants, in addition to H II regions.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpless_catalog

jmt92130 wrote: Simbad database

The SIMBAD astronomical database provides basic data, cross-identifications, bibliography and measurements for astronomical objects outside the solar system.

SIMBAD can be queried by object name, coordinates and various criteria. Lists of objects and scripts can be submitted.

Links to some other on-line services are also provided.

Statistics

Simbad contains on 2019.12.28

10,905,523      objects

35,587,649      identifiers

365,712           bibliographic references

20,522,365      citations of objects in papers

If the Simbad database was helpful for your research work,

the following acknowledgment would be appreciated:

This research has made use of the SIMBAD database,

operated at CDS, Strasbourg, France 

2000,A&AS,143,9 , "The SIMBAD astronomical database", Wenger et al.

http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/

jmt92130 wrote: Collinder clusters

In astronomy, the Collinder catalog is a catalog of 471 open clusters by Swedish astronomer Per Collinder. It was published in 1931 as an appendix to Collinder's paper On structural properties of open galactic clusters and their spatial distribution.[1] Catalog objects are denoted by Collinder, e.g. "Collinder 399". Dated prefixes include as Col + catalog number, or Cr + catalog number, e.g. "Cr 399".[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collinder_catalog

The Collinder catalog was published originally in the Annals of the Observatory of Lund.

Jmt92130 wrote: several LBNs,

Lynds' Catalogue of Bright Nebulae is an astronomical catalogue of bright nebulae.

Objects listed in the catalogue are numbered with the prefix LBN (not to be confused with LDN, or Lynds' Catalogue of Dark Nebulae), though, many entries also have other designations, for example, LBN 974, the Orion Nebula is also known as M42 and NGC 1976.

It was originally compiled in the 1960s by Beverly Lynds.[1] Objects in the catalogue include (among other things) the coordinates of nebulae, brightness from 1-6 (with 1 being the brightness), colour and size and cross-references to other astronomical catalogues if listed elsewhere.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynds%27_Catalogue_of_Bright_Nebulae

The Lynds' Catalog of Bright Nebulae lists the coordinates of the center of the cloud, the dimensions of the nebulae as measured on the photograph on which it appeared at its brightest, the area of nebulosity in square degrees, color as compared between the blue and red Palomar plates, a brightness index on a scale from 1 to 6, an identification number that indicates the complexity of the nebulosity, and a cross reference to NGC (Cat. <VII.1>), Index Catalogue (IC), Sharpless (1959) Catalogue of HII Regions (Cat. <VII/20>), Cederblad (1956) Catalogue of Diffuse Galactic Nebulae, and Dorschner and Gurtler (1963).

https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/W3Browse/nebula-catalog/lbn.html

jmt92130 wrote: Sharpless objects

See above Sharpless Catalog.

jmt92130 wrote: The narrow band integrated images (Ha and OIII)

[MEM -- O III is an astronomical term for what chemists and others call O++ doubly ionized oxygen. (It was originally thought to be evidence of a new element, dubbed “nebulium.”)]

Viewed in a narrow slice of the spectrum centered in the ruby-red H-alpha line, the Sun throbs with activity.

H-alpha filters work by rejecting all but the narrow sliver of H-alpha light. 

https://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/guide-to-observing-the-sun-in-h-alpha092321050923/

H-alpha (Hα) is a specific deep-red visible spectral line in the Balmer series with a wavelength of 656.28 nm in air; it occurs when a hydrogen electron falls from its third to second lowest energy level. H-alpha light is the brightest hydrogen line in the visible spectral range. It is important to astronomers as it is emitted by many emission nebulae and can be used to observe features in the Sun's atmosphere, including solar prominences and the chromosphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-alpha

jmt92130 wrote: pixel-math. 

PixInsight's PixelMath performs a series of pixel-level arithmetic and logical operations between images.

https://www.pixinsight.com/doc/legacy/LE/22_pixel_math/pixel_math/pixel_math.html

Pleiades Astrophoto is a software development company based in Spain, Europe. We work to provide cutting edge image processing and analysis tools for a broad range of technical imaging applications. We design and implement novel paradigms and innovative methodologies.

PixInsight is our main development project.

https://www.pixinsight.com/about/index.html

jmt92130 wrote: … bicolor… 

Modified Bicolor Technique for combining Ha and OIII images

All Images and Content  Copyright Steve Cannistra unless otherwise noted.

Brief overview:  Ha is used for the R channel, and OIII is used for the B channel.  The synthetic green channel is created by multiplying the OIII layer with the Ha layer.  Construction of the color composite is done using the layer method in Photoshop CS and should be followed exactly as described for best results.  http://www.starrywonders.com/bicolortechniquenew.html

jmt92130 wrote: RGB data 

[MEM - Red-Green-Blue Image processing in both astrophotography and Earth-based geographic information systems (GIS) rely on a well-developed theory and technology based in the physiology of sight and the physics of light. (I completed my MA in social science with two graduate classes in geographic information systems, then worked the following summer as a contractor, writing laboratory learning instructions.) Another system common in our office printers is CMYK: Cyan Magenta Yellow Black. Recall that the primary (“rainbow”) colors are Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Violet. The primary pigments (paints, crayons) are red, yellow, and blue. Pigments reflect one color and absorb all others. We get green pigment by mixing yellow and blue. In color processing from light in RGB, yellow comes from mixing 100% Red with 100% Green.]

jmt92130 wrote: Image and details are accessed from the link below. 

Following that link led to this summary:

Scope: FSQ-106N at f/5, Location: DAA Observatory, Shelter Valley, CA, 31 July and 7 August 2019,  Camera: Atik 383L (Astronomik Gen 2  Ha OIII LRGB Filters)

Exposure: 12 x 8 min  (1x1 bin)  UV/IR block Lum filter, 24 x 10 min (1x1 bin) Ha filter, 18 x 10 min (2x2 bin) OIII  filter, 8 x 4 min (2x2 bin) each RGB filters.

Processing: Data Collection -  Sequence Generator Pro (as FITs).  Subframe calibration and registration - PixInsight. Subframe integration (Median combine -  Winsorized Sigma Clipping) - PixInsight.  Non-linear stretching, normalization and gradient removal - PixInsight.  Generation of starless nebulosity images - starnet++.  Starless color mapping and LRGB stars color mapping - PixInsight. Stars and Starless combine - PixInsight. Final finishing  - Photoshop.  RGB calibration - eXcalibrator. Annotation - PixInsight, Aladin (Simbad and NED), and PhotoShop. This image is a modified HOO narrow band mapping with RGB stars.  Images processed at 3354 x 2529 resolution. Final Image size is approximately  3000x2250.

jmt92130 wrote:  Scope: FSQ-106N at f/5, 

TAKAHASHI FSQ-106EDX4 F/5 PETZVAL REFRACTING OTA TELESCOPE

Takahashi FSQ-106EDX4 f/5 Petzval Refracting OTA Telescope

ITEM #TK-TQE10630

88mm medium format sized image circle

ED Glass Elements

178mm of back focus 

4-Inch heavy duty focuser with anti-torquing draw tube

Airline Portable smaller than 17-inches with dew shield retracted

Multiple focal reducer options available that can make the scope as fast as f/3

Tele-extender available that makes the focal length 850mm

https://optcorp.com/products/takahashi-fsq-106edx4-f-5-petzval-refracting-ota-telescope

jmt92130 wrote: Location: DAA Observatory, Shelter Valley, CA,

(Desert Astronomy Association - DAA)

Desert Astronomy Association Observatory Campus

March 1, 2019      

DAA is a small association of astronomers who have established an astronomy campus in the East San Diego County high desert area. DAA location is in a small privately held community property in the middle of the Anza Borrego Desert State Park. The park is the largest in California at 585,930 acres and listed in the top ten state parks in the United States (InterExchange.org). The skies are reasonably dark (Bortle 3) at the DAA location. A Dark Sky community (Borrego Springs, Bortle 4) is located about 15 miles away and is also surrounded by the state park.

http://www.jthommes.com/Astro/Observatory.htm 

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/652570-daa-observatory-campus/

jmt92130 wrote: Camera: Atik 383L (Astronomik Gen 2… 

The Atik 383L + features the Kodak KAF-8300 CCD with a huge number of good-sized pixels. This sensor has redefined mid-range astro-imaging, making multi-megapixel cooled cameras much more accessible. Atik prides itself on providing cameras offering the very highest deep sky imaging quality at a reasonable cost.

https://www.atik-cameras.com/product/atik-383l-plus/

CCD is a charge-coupled device, a semi-conductor chip.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge-coupled_device 

jmt92130 wrote: LRGB Filters

Luminance, Red, Green and Blue filters.

[MEM - Luminance filters just block all white light unselectively. The common “moon filter” is an example of that. We use them on our telescopes to reduce the brightness of a full moon.] 

jmt92130 wrote:  Winsorized Sigma Clipping

Winsorizing or winsorization is the transformation of statistics by limiting extreme values in the statistical data to reduce the effect of possibly spurious outliers. It is named after the engineer-turned-biostatistician Charles P. Winsor (1895–1951). The effect is the same as clipping in signal processing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsorizing

Suppose you have a set of data. Compute its median m and its standard deviation sigma. Keep only the data that falls in the range (m-a*sigma,m+a*sigma) for some value of a, and discard everything else. This is one iteration of sigma clipping. Continue to iterate a predetermined number of times, and/or stop when the relative reduction in the value of sigma is small.

Sigma clipping is geared toward removing outliers, to allow for a more robust (i.e. resistant to outliers) estimation of, say, the mean of the distribution. So it's applicable to data where you expect to find outliers.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/45666970/what-is-sigma-clipping-how-do-you-know-when-to-apply-it

jmt92130 wrote:  non-linear stretching, normalization and gradient removal

Non linear stretching is the work horse for producing "pretty pictures" with astrophotography.  This process completely destroys the data for any scientific use and is frowned upon by some purists.  However, this is the only way to simultaneously show the faint and bright detail. Here's how to do it.  http://bf-astro.com/non-linearCurves.htm

[MEM - Normalization and gradient removal are manipulations that take out extreme data, such as objects that are much brighter than others nearby.] 

jmt92130 wrote: HOO narrow band

HOO is really H-sub infinity.
H∞ techniques have the advantage over classical control techniques in that they are readily applicable to problems involving multivariate systems with cross-coupling between channels; disadvantages of H∞ techniques include the level of mathematical understanding needed to apply them successfully and the need for a reasonably good model of the system to be controlled. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-infinity_methods_in_control_theory

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Linguistics Debate: What Colors Are Your Rainbow

The Living Fish Swims Under Water

Backyard Astronomy 

Physics for Astronomers: the Works of Steven Weinberg

Forbidden Planet

Forbidden Planet influenced my passion for languages. I first saw it on television as a movie special when I was in my early teens. Professor Morbius was a philologist in a genre whose common characters are physicists, chemists, astronomers, and engineers, all in the plural. Morbius unlocked the language of the Krell, and doubled his intelligence with one of their machines. Psychology was the other underutilized science that drove the plot of Forbidden Planet to its conclusion. The “id” is called an archaic idea, long since abandoned, but the construct does explain the action, as surely as the other technobabble describes the ship’s hull, engines, navigation, and weaponry. As interesting as it is, I never had the drive for studying psychology that I have for words, their meanings, origins, and uses. 

 

Blade and blood share a root meaning.
Many of the "bl" words do.
When Mom bought the house a new dictionary, 
I spent hours reading etymologies. 

 My mother’s family was Hungarian. Although English was the official language of our home, Hungarian was impossible to avoid. My brother and I were encouraged to take foreign language classes in school as soon as they were offered. He started with French in the third grade. I had to wait until the seventh to begin German. At that same time, when telephoning my friend, John, I learned to get through to his mother in Ukrainian: "Mazhu ya hovoriti do Vanya?" And to listen for the reply, just in case, "Yo ho ne ma doma." (He is not at home.) Over the years of junior and senior high school, I spent hours just browsing the foreign language stacks in main branch of the Cleveland Public Library. It was a moment for me when I read the title Szep Uj Vilag and understood the meaning: Pretty [Brave] New World, itself another reference to The Tempest.

Decrypting the language of the Krell

At Lansing Community College in 1990, I had two classes in conversational Japanese for business before going to work for Kawasaki. The writing was not as much of a challenge for me because when I was about 12 I found a book at my neighborhood branch library on Chinese characters. In it, an American boy whose father is an engineer, learns from an Old Master how to write about 20 characters. Around that time, I began collecting Berlitz and other guides for tourists. 

The Monster of the Id

Fifteen years later, I was a campus safety patrol officer while majoring in criminal justice at Washtenaw Community College. Once a month, on Sunday night, one of our classrooms was used by a Persian Poetry Group. They were ethnic Iranians from Detroit and Grand Rapids who met to discuss world affairs. The building had to be cleared and locked by 11:00 PM. I began with “Welcome,” “Good evening,” and “How are you?” and after a few months, I was up to “It is getting late, is it not?” One of them asked me if I was Turkish. “No,” I replied. “Why do you ask?” “Because,” he said, “you speak Farsi with a Turkish accent.” Not bad.

Oh, brave new world
that has such creatures in it!

Here in Austin, I found myself waiting at the bus stop several mornings a week with neighbors who looked almost Oriental and spoke something that sounded almost Arabic. I inquired politely. They were Uzbeks. No problem: the Austin City Library has books for tourists on the languages of central Asia. 

The IQ Test

My first computer language was Fortran. I followed it with Basic. Lansing Community College had an IBM 5100 that was programmable in APL. The school library had books about computer languages; by 1976, there were over a hundred. Ten years later, I was setting type with TeX/LaTeX, the foundation of SGML. I met a computer literacy requirement for my bachelor’s with a class in Java. When I moved to Austin, I took a community class in Ruby.

As for the movie, it has held up well over time. With The Tempest for its model, the plot was tried and true. The writing and acting were competent. The special effects were innovative. In fact, live action shooting took only a couple of months and the artwork required another eighteen. The high-quality workmanship continues to deliver value.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Monsters from the Id 

Teaching Science with Science Fiction 

Philologist Sándor Kőrösi Csoma

The Living Fish Swims Under the Water 

Linguistics Debate: What Colors Are Your Rainbow?