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PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
NYC, Covid-19, and Conservative Business Interests
All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights
Thursday, September 14, 2023
Saturday, September 9, 2023
Stem Cell Collection
In preparation for autologous blood stem cell transplant after 2024, I had my red blood stem cells harvested. The procedure was successful and that is the bottom line. That final tally was the result of very many debits and credits. Even though we had this planned months ago, when I was wheeled from the transplant clinic to the main hospital to be taken to radiology for the placement of a catheter, the main desk asked if I was a walk-in. It took them a couple of hours to find a file folder with papers that then were entered into a computer file. That was just one event.
I went to the Sarah Cannon Clinic at Methodist Hospital in San Antonio about 68 miles from home because the Sarah Cannon Clinic at St. David’s Hospital in Austin about 18 miles away will not harvest and store. At Methodist they were proud to tell me that they store stem cells for the other clinic. I do not know why that treatment was denied to me in Austin but it was. “We do not harvest and store. If we harvest, we use them.” So, we scheduled treatment down the road.
I met Methodist Hospital last year, after my initial diagnosis because the arithmetic of chance favors the second opinion. I have been happy to be treated here in Kyle because the office of Texas Oncology here is a short walk through a city park. It is very convenient. Even so, the second opinion has been helpful. (See “The Monty Hall Problem” on Wikipedia and elsewhere.) It validated the treatment regimens and provided additional insights. So, I have been back half a dozen times for lab tests and consultations.
All along, I have taken as much charge of my treatment as I have bandwidth for. I bought textbooks and a microscope just for orientation because I never paid much attention to life sciences. I got a book from the UT library on oncology nursing just to read twenty pages on myeloma and Revlamid® (lenalidomide). You really have to ask the right questions to get any answer and many doctors control the flow of information according to their own standards. My primary oncologist assured me that this will not require chemotherapy and we will do it with monoclonal antibodies. He sounded like Dr. McCoy. Well, it is chemotherapy; I just don’t lose my hair (yet). And right now the FDA approves monoclonal antibodies only when two other courses have failed. So, OK, I got over that last year.
This time, the sugar coating was on the collection catheter, a Quinton line. I should have looked it up. “Oh, we’re just going to put a tube in your neck to collect blood...” In my neck, indeed, it went into my jugular and down to my superior vena cava. That much was fine, after all. It took two imaging systems (CT and fluoroscope) and an MD to place it. (I enjoyed listening to him cluck as he drove the twisty turny lane. I knew that he could do it.) “So,” I asked, “they can just take this out at the clinic?” Oh, yes, I was assured, after they remove it, they just hold the place shut for five minutes. Well, it was ten minutes and 30 minutes no talking lying flat to make sure that it is not bleeding out and I have dressings to wear for 72 hours and I cannot lift more than five pounds. All of which is going to impact my first day of work on a new job Monday. Who knew?
All in all, there are worse outcomes. I am reminded of a comedian I saw on a late night show who told of a woman seated next to him on an airliner, on a telephone, telling her friend about having “the worst day of my life” while reclining in a cushioned couch at 38,000 feet, traveling 80% the speed of sound.
My daughter reminded me of Adm. William H. McRaven’s parable of the sugar cookie. (See "Make Your Bed.") Other people tell it differently but for McRaven the point was that being chosen to be hosed down and rolled in the sand and spending the rest of the day covered like a sugar cookie has nothing to do with any choice you made. You could not have seen it coming and you could not have avoided it. It just happened to you. Sometimes, life is like that. So, get over it.
And on the assets side, every one of the nurses and assistants who were my direct caregivers were capable, informative, engaging, and supportive. I enjoyed talking to all of them. Not only do I like talking about myself but I am pretty good at interviewing and I ask a lot of questions. One of my radiologists was injured in college sports and went back for a second degree. One of the consulting oncologists was a Navy doctor. I had at least a dozen great interactions over the past three months.
I have been told that there are many ways to view multiple myeloma. “This is not like breast cancer. You don’t have a lot of options here. This thing is just going to run its course.” On the other hand: “Think of it like diabetes: just something you have to manage for the rest of your life.” When I was diagnosed my initial research warned me that almost half of patients have an expected end-of-life of less than one year. It is also true that the other half, 52% or more, live ten years and more. The statistical tail on the right is getting longer.
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Disruptive Diagnostics and the Business of Science
Saturday, August 26, 2023
The Cultured Carrot at Wheatsville Co-op
The Cultured Carrot was founded by Palak Sadarangani, a health coach practicing an Ayurvedic lifestyle and Kristin Simpson, a pharmacist with a holistic lifestyle approach. Both busy moms of young kids were blown away by the research and study of the microbiome. Up to 80% of our immune system is found in the gut. Eating fermented foods adds good bacteria to our guts to help maintain the balance we need for a healthy immune system. -- https://theculturedcarrot.com/pages/about-us
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| https://theculturedcarrot.com |
We pick only the best organic veggies and preserve them like grandma used to, with salt and time. We transform these little jars of sunshine, mixing with herbs, quality oil and pure love.
Each is bursting with color from the diversity nature gives us and loaded with a unique biodiversity of nutrition and microbes. Getting your daily dose of prebiotic-probiotic packed nutrition has never been easier. -- https://theculturedcarrot.com/pages/our-process
I bought the Beleafing with cabbage, turnip, and herbs. We generally eat salad for dinner and the leafy foods often benefit from a helpful dressing. I am just not a foodie. I do not remember a moment when I lost interest in it, but like smoking tobacco and drinking alcohol, food just got less and less compelling.
Right now, my best meal is probably a handful of mixed vitamin pills and five or six tablespoons of yogurt. Well, that, and pizza. I hardly remember a bad slice. I really wish that Whole Foods found some skilled people to work their ovens. I look at the pies and slices and just shake my head and walk away. We have a new vendor here in Kyle promising "313" style, but I have not tried them out yet. (313 is the area code for Detroit and I miss that style of deep dish pizza heavy on the mozzarella and no skimping on the sauce. So, we'll see... And Detroit pizza beats Chicago pizza.)
Be that as it may, I have never commented on the ingredients or processes of any Wheatsville vendor. I understand that there are constraints to commercial food production. That said, my challenge here was to find a blend that did not have water as its second ingredient. $10.99 for a significant fraction of 8 ounces is a lot to pay for water. I have the same problem with mustard. Some years back, I finally bought ground mustard and began mixing it into commercial preparations such as Sir Kensington, Annie's, Woodstock, etc., etc. But you are looking at a guy who tips the scales at 60 kg and never crossed 70 kg. Then, again, there's that 313 pizza waiting for me.
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
(Just put "Wheatsville" in the Search box for more.)
Coffee at the Co-op Tradition and Novelty
Awesome Austin Foods at the Wheatsville Co-op
Cultured Carrot Fermented Foods (2021)
Sunday, August 13, 2023
Pedernales Falls Public Star Party 12 August 2023
About a dozen of us Austin Astronomical Society club members were there with instruments. The Perseid meteor shower was the main event. Advance publicity across social media promised the best live sky spectacle of the year; judging from the oohs and aahs of the crowd starting at first darkness, the promise came true. I left at 11:15 PM. As a regular backyard enthusiast, I see meteors all the time in my telescope, binocular, and naked eye. And, I own several meteorites. So, my focus was on talking about the stars while standing at my telescope.
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| Brian Lippincott explaining eyepieces to guests. A good fabricator, Brian has been the Equipment Chair. |
Brian Lippincott was first on the field when I arrived, all set up with his solar viewing binocular rig and large Dobsonian reflector. He went off to place the entrance signs and I set up my Explore Scientific 102-mm achromatic refractor on a Celestron AVX computerized (“go to”) tripod and mount. At home, I rely on a much simpler and easier Explore Twilight 1 manual altitude-azimuth (“alt-az”) mount but the AVX with automatic tracking and menu selections supports public engagement very well. The only ocular (“eyepiece”) was a 14-mm 82-degree Meade 5000 for 47X. It was sufficient. Soon after Brian returned, other club members trailed in and found their places.
I stopped counting visitors at 125, and I estimated 200 overall, which was the headcount that Joyce and Jim Lynch at the greeting table said that they expected. At the Sky Theater mini-megalith Ed Labelle and Jim Lynch welcomed our guests. In the growing darkness, Ed devoted about an hour to explaining our local Stonehenge and highlighted the basics of viewing the sky, measuring distances with your hand, the general mechanics of celestial motion, and how to dim your cell phone.
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| Austin Astro Outreach Chair Ed Labelle at the Obelisk talking to the visitors. |
I began a four-star alignment and soon had guests. For most of my audiences for most of the night, I was focused on Messier 22. It is large and bright and I was able to talk from memory about the astronomy and physics of globular clusters without getting lost in the narrative while showing people where to look and how to focus for themselves. Over the course of the night, stargazing from the scopes of other members, many guests got to view the Hercules Cluster, (Messier 13) and they remarked on that view while visiting with me.
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| Overture! Curtain! Lights! This is it: the night of nights! |
But I started with Messier 11, the Wild Duck cluster because I aligned on Arcturus, Antares, Vega, and then Altair; and it was a short drop to Messier 11. For myself, this was a first sighting. I had tried two nights before from my backyard, but the view was unremarkable and I did not log it. This time, I could see the cluster and its red and orange stars. The guests were also happy. “Wild Duck” is a cooler name than “Messier 11.”
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| Fixin' to Start: Many club members brought large Dobsonians. |
A steady stream of people in small groups and families, came and went and lined up again until about 11:00. We also looked at Beta Scorpii (Graffias) because some had seen Albireo at another instrument. They easily remembered the stunning yellow and blue pair. I explained that this is not as pretty, but these stars are truly gravitationally locked whereas Albireo is an accidental arrangement. I then talked about the 200 years between Galileo and William Herschel when it was assumed that the stars are more or less randomly arranged and are more or less alike with differences in color perhaps relating to their temperatures by analogy with an iron bar heated in furnace. Then, about 1810 William Hershel changed our paradigm. My groups viewed Messier 7, Messier 80, and Messier 4. After I pointed to Mizar and Alcor naked eye, we viewed the system in the telescope, and I indicated Mu Scorpii, the Eyes of the Lion, another naked-eye double. I suggested that club members with larger instruments could show them that Polaris is also a double star.
Then, I went searching for Messier 51 (another first light for myself). My three guests agreed that they could see the small grayer patch in the middle of the field of view. And, again, I recommended that more aperture would be rewarding. Finding myself alone, I packed up.
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Austin Astro Public Star Party
Kyle Astronomy Club Observe the Moon Night
Thursday, August 10, 2023
The Universe of 1962
Laurel found a Sears 6307B 60mm F=700 (f/11.67) from 1962 on the street. I brought it home and I bought 0.965 inch eyepieces for it from The Surplus Shed.
The next night, I split the double star beta Scorpii (Graffias) with the Kellner at 43X. The view was not wide enough to take in all of Messier 7 the Ptolemy Cluster but I was satisfied. I could not locate Messier 80 or M22 which was disappointing. I believe that the optics would do it, but fussing and fiddling with the over-engineered and under-built mount was frustrating.
I will nod to the engineering, however. Unlike a modern telescope, you focus this well enough with the eyepiece draw tube and then finely tune the focus with the controls. Similarly, the altiude and azimuth are found roughly close and then, with those bolts tight, you adjust the alt-az settings with knobs on the fine tuning engagement. With more practice, I could learn to do it.
The next morning I viewed Jupiter’s bands, its polar band – a pleasant surprise; why we call long focal length refractors “planet killers” – and noted that three of its moons were visible.
I then turned to Messier 42, the Orion Nebula, found it easily, and (another surprise) the Trapezium was clear and bright and sharp.
Happy with the experience, I put the telescope away very carefully. My current instruments are much better, of course, but if I had to live with only this, I could. And just to note, I do have two Celestron Huygens oculars with standard 1-¼ inch barrels. Putting them into a 70mm refractor, I kidded online at CN that I was viewing the universe as it looked in 1650. It looked OK. Better instrumentation is better, of course, but double stars, open clusters, a bright globular were all truly visible and enjoyable.
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
An Online Class in Astrophysics
Monday, August 7, 2023
ArmadilloCon 45
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| This year's poster was designed 'by Gonzalo Alvarez who also created an RPG based on Aztec mythology. This year, there was no t-shirt. |
Laurel and I attend because of our shared interests in the craft of writing. She is a murder mystery fan and has edited for Bantam Doubleday. For myself, writing non-fiction, the break-out sessions on plot, structure, and character help me to bring my public into a document which they really do not want to read. I also benefit from learning about marketing, advertising, contracting, and other business issues. And it is a good time to be surrounded by other creatives, to socialize, listen, and chat.
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| Special Guests. Charles Siros was this year's FGoH. |
Returning this year, NASA flight trainer Bill Frank led a panel discussion on the many ways in which space tries to kill you. How do you deal with a fire on a space station? You wake up and find everyone else unconscious: what are your priorities? You are on the Moon, a mile from the station and your air supply valve fails closed: what do you do next?
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| "Space Tries to Kill You" filling up early. |
“Still Persevering on Mars” was presented by NASA/JPL scientist John K. Gibbons. With my own small journal filled with background for a story I have not written, I took a lot of notes.
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| Persevering on Mars |
I know Rob Pettingill from the Austin Astronomical Society, but I met him first through a computer guy coffee klatch that Laurel attended. Rob’s engagement in astronomy is through astrophotography and I have two of his works printed on steel and glass displayed on an office wall. Rob’s presentation was about the established techniques and new technologies in astrophotography for amateurs. The main attraction for me was in the mapping of image data to visible colors.
David Afrarishad of Baen Books led a panel session with Stina Leicht, Dantzel Cherry, and C. S. "Seth" Humble on religion. It is deep in human culture and except for special cases such as Dune and planet Bajor, we seldom consider it in character building or world building. Science fiction tends to default to the Star Trek assumption that we have evolved past all of that. But that is just not likely for any foreseeable future. Even atheists grow up in families and cultures where religion is at least present and often important. And why is Catholicism the default in stories written by people who grew up in Protestant America? Seth Humble pointed out that religion begins with mystery. Stina Leicht called it “the big, black unknown.” She also said that most people confuse morality and ethics and those two with religion. However, Leicht said, religious people do not confuse morality and ethics. Danzel Cherry said that she grew up LDS (“Mormon”) and that gave her a different perspective.
The History session was disappointing. The showguide asked: “How does a horsedrawn carriage get down a mountain?” But nothing like that came of this. Each panelist complained that their self-identified minority was unfairly presented or under-represented in popular history. There were some takeaways. Scrivener was touted as better than Word because it allows keeping backstory notes in the document. Wikis have pros and cons; some people like them. The writers agreed that research can be a rabbit hole that prevents productive writing.
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| The Future of Publishing. |
The Future of Publishing was a wide-ranging discussion on the business of writing today. Barbara Ann Wright, Alexis Glynn Latner, and Rick Klaw spoke for self-published and small press markets. Stina Leicht is published by Saga Press of Simon and Schuster. Writing is a business and the craft of authoring is the easy part. Leicht recommended getting an agent, advice she gave in other sessions and chatting in the lobby. Your agent will protect your legal interests and be a buffer for any discussions with the publisher. Rick Klaw said to always negotiate the contract. He said that even if a small press cannot offer more money, they can always provide you with more copies of the book. The others all agreed. Early on in the hour, everyone nodded when Klaw said that they have no idea what the future will be like. (In the car on the way home, Laurel said that they said the same thing last year.) Toward the end, Latner said that so much as changed in the last five years (or three)—from Twitter to TikTok and Booktok—that no one knows what is coming next. They did agree, however, that history is cyclic and vampire stories are popular again.
Laurel and I do not buy more “stuff.” We have too much already and need to get rid of it. But we bought stuff anyway. She got a new coffee cup and I came home with seven books.
- Loki’s Ring by Stina Leicht (Saga Press Simon & Schuster) (autographed)
- Rich Man’s Sky by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books) (autographed)
- The Collapsium by Wil McCarthy (Baen Books) (autographed)
- Fugitive Spark by Matt Levin (Self)
- Guided by Starlight by Matt Levin (Self)
- The Year’s Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 4 edited and published by Allan Kaster (InfiniVox). (This was an informative discussion. Allan reads sf magazines and contacts the authors he likes for his hard science fiction anthologies. He explained that authors sell first serial rights to the magazines. So, after publication there, they can resell the work. I replied that I knew the phrase “first serial rights” from my own contracts but no one ever asked me to republish so it did not sink in. Now I know.)
- Commune 2000 A.D. by Mack Reynolds (Bantam, 1974). I got this for an interesting look at the present but it is really about the world of 1974. That is always true of all speculative fiction whether horror, scifi, fantasy, or alternate timeline romance. The best immersion in the world of 1810 is found in Jane Austen. As for the future, see above from the experts: We have no idea what will happen three years from now.
[1] Kurt Baty has been on the organizing committee often and one year was the FGoH (Fan Guest of Honor). Kurt wrote an article for me about the Antikythera Device for the Historical Astronomy Division of the AAS. I wrote up his discovery of the first coins struck by the Denver Mint. The accepted narrative had been thin; Kurt did some digging. I placed his story in the E-Sylum of the Numismatic Bibliomania Society, my blog at the ANA Member pages (abandoned in 2021), and the Michigan State Numismatic Society MichMatist. (The MichMatist paid 10 cents a word up to $100; that made my life easier when I edited the magazine because it set a natural limit on lengths. In the wake of Covid, they stopped paying and I stopped writing for them. Anyway, astronomy took me away from numismatics).
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Armadillocon 44 Day 1 and Day 2
Sunday, July 9, 2023
Austin Astro Public Star Party
According to the registration desk, about 100 visitors came to the Austin Astronomical Society public star party at Pedernales Falls State Park last night (8 July). The club works closely with Texas Parks and Wildlife there and also at Inks Lake State Park. Half a dozen of us have been vetted with background checks to be volunteer docents. Pedernales extends their closing time from 10:00 PM to 11:30 PM for these events and beyond that we can take the time we need to pack up and close up. The club maintains a cargo container converted into a lecture room and storage for our largest telescopes.
Club members bring a wide range of instruments to these events. This time there was a plethora of large Dobsonian reflectors, with apertures of 18, 22, and 24 inches. I brought a 130mm (5-inch) tabletop dob mounted on a altitude-azimuth mount. The other AWB 130 on the field came with two new stargazers and this was the "first light" for their telescope. They had hoped to view Messier 101, Messier 81 and 82 galaxies in and around Ursa Major but the fish were not biting. You really need to understand what you are looking at and looking for. A couple of star parties back, another stargazer and I were laughing about the times we went back and forth looking for the thing we kept passing up. Nonetheless, I told our new friends about the Astronomical League: membership in the AL comes with your membership in Austin Astro and the AL offers mentored, self-paced observing programs with certificates and pins. One of the AL programs is pursuing double stars and I helped Manfred and Melissa find Albireo, Zubenelgenubi, Mu Scorpii, and Alcor-Mizar. "See, you have four down and 46 to go."
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| Terry Phillips explains how a reflector telescope works. Terry has served as vice president, secretary, and president. |
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| Tracy and David Urban brought their 6-inch Newtonian on a Dobsonian mount. |
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| Abhir Joshi and his large Dobsonian. |
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| The key to Jim Gardner's astrophotography rig is the very nice Takahashi refractor (white at left). |
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| Manfred Trent with his 130-mm tabletop Newtonian from Astronomers Without Borders. He built a light shroud. His wife, Melissa, is encouraging him to add an alt-az mount. |
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| Collimating the other AWB 130 on the field last night. (Explore Scientific Twilight-1mount.) Retail from Astronomers Without Borders is $249. Celestron donates some of the wholesale price to support the not-for-profit mission of AWB. |
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| Austin Astro stalwart Ron Carman brought a telescope that he did not make. A brief biography ran in Sidereal Times for April 2016. |
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| Jamie Canfield worked the registration desk along with Joyce Lynch. Jamie is the VP this year. She previously served as secretary. Joyce has been the editor of Sidereal Times and the club president. Before Covid, when she was the Outreach chair we did events at schools and libraries as often as three times a week. |
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Physics for Astronomers: The Works of Steven Weinberg
Kyle Astronomy Club International Observe the Moon Night
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Bayou City Hemp Company
I met the local sales rep at the Wheatsville Co-op last Sunday. It has been perhaps six months since any vendor was set up when I was in, so it was a good opportunity to chat and find out about their products.
“We want to take hemp products out of the shadows,” said Sam Curtiss. In that, he succeeded at Wheatsville. He told me that while he was there, he restocked his shelves in the cooler twice. Bayou City Hemp is working on becoming totally vertically integrated from growing to canning and from non-alcoholic beverages to tequilas and beers. In their view, you should not be stuck with just one beverage.
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| https://www.bayoucityhemp.com |
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Funky Mellow: Feel Good Marshmellows
Sunday, June 11, 2023
INVISIBLE CHEATING AND VISIBLE RIGHTS
How do we decide who is worthy? How do we select for competency? A recent Grammarly advertisement hinged on an application for residency. I took that to mean medical residency. Grammarly is helping him with his personal statement and curriculum vitae. I found that disturbing.
Of course, no one test is sufficient. Doctors must be approved by government and professional licensing boards. In the USA, the AMA enjoys quasi-governmental status. So, even if this nice young man is letting Grammarly do his writing, his promotion from hospital intern to hospital resident is not assured.
Right now, so-called “artificial intelligence” products are bringing into question what it means to be original.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/03/tech/ai-art-fair-winner-controversy/index.html
AI won an art contest, and artists are furious
By Rachel Metz, CNN Business
Published 10:54 AM EDT, Sat September 3, 2022
CNN Business
—
Jason M. Allen was almost too nervous to enter his first art competition. Now, his award-winning image is sparking controversy about whether art can be generated by a computer, and what, exactly, it means to be an artist.
In August, Allen, a game designer who lives in Pueblo West, Colorado, won first place in the emerging artist division’s “digital arts/digitally-manipulated photography” category at the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. His winning image, titled “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial” (French for “Space Opera Theater”), was made with Midjourney — an artificial intelligence system that can produce detailed images when fed written prompts. A $300 prize accompanied his win.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/03/tech/ai-art-fair-winner-controversy/index.html
On the Cloudy Nights discussion board, which is mostly dedicated to chat about observational astronomy, in the forum for “Science! Astronomy, Space Exploration, and Others,” a topic title was the question “What can’t artificial intelligence do?” The introductory post started: “We have made machines that can play chess better than we can. We are close to making machines that can write novels better than we can. Threshold question. Is there a limit? I can see no reason that there should be. The interesting question. What happens when we can make machines that can do everything better than we can?” In 100 replies, I was the only person who pointed out that while an AI could write a better novel, the novel itself was an invention. I received just one "like" for the comment.
"(As far as we know) only humans can invent something new. You can say that an AI can write a novel better than a human, but the novel is an invention. As a form of narration and history, the novel is relatively recent. Poetry - epic poetry - was first. And before poems were invented, people made lists of things. ... Painting as we know it evolved in a series of quantum leaps. By the 4th century BCE graphical realism had achieved what we regard as modern techniques. The "Renaissance Masters" of Holland painted in a hyper-realistic style that violated "natural" vision. See The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan Van Eyck. If you were in the room where the painter stood, you would not see the image in the mirror at the back the way it is presented in the painting. It is hyper-real. Impressionism, Expressionism, Abstract, ... Performance Art.... Even John Cage, an intellectual fraud*, carried out original ideas not requested of him by someone else. That is the essential distinguishing characteristic that explains the difference between human intelligence and machine intelligence."
The question remains unanswered because it is a slippery slope. Grammarly targets two markets: college students writing homework essays; young professionals writing business memoranda. Is it wrong to have someone (something) else proofread your work before you turn it in? I often get red squiggly underlines warning me that I miskeyed or misspelled a word. Whatever the gradient of that slope, we know the difference between having someone (something) else check your work and taking work that was not yours originally. That is plagiarism, and in business, it is theft and fraud.
Whether the impulse to sue for rights originates spontaneously within the plaintiff or was learned by the plaintiff from observing others is irrelevant. The deeper question is how the laws of various geographies will view the action when a computer program insists that it is alive and has rights.
*Having read from his Silence: Lectures and Writings, I changed my opinion of John Cage.
PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
All Volitional Beings Deserve Rights
Objective Intellectual Property Law
U. S. Patent Law Does Not Add Up
Wednesday, June 7, 2023
Globular Clusters
Despite the shorter nights, summer is great time to pursue globular clusters. Messier objects 4 and 80 are in Scorpius. M22 is in Sagittarius. The Hercules cluster M13 is high in the sky overhead at 11:00 PM about July 15. Under truly dark skies, M13 can be a naked eye object. On the other hand, from the city, even with a moderate telescope, M4 can be hard to obtain as will be the less well known M92 in Hercules. Even so, with the milder nights, if you want to stay up or go out early, you can catch M15 in Pegasus on the meridian about 4:00 AM on July 15. Whether easy or challenging to enter in your observation logs, better appreciation for the success of finding them comes from understanding what you are looking at. (This entry is from my notes collected for an article to appear in the June 9 issue of Sidereal Times of the Austin Astronomical Society.)
“Though the clusters show in their arrangement, a definite relation to the galactic plane, they are not concentrated close to it; indeed, there is a conspicuous absence of globular clusters near the central line of the Milky Way in the sky, and within about 2000 parsecs from the galactic plane in space. There is no known reason why globular clusters should not exist near this plane, and it is probable that those which are there are hidden from us.” [6]
“The globular clusters in the Milky Way are all estimated to be at least 10 billion years old and therefore contain some of the oldest stars in the galaxy. They contain an abundance of low-mass red stars and intermediate-mass yellow stars, but none greater than 0.8 solar masses. There are about 150 known globular clusters in the Milky Way. It is thought that globular clusters formed very early in the vast halo surrounding the nascent galaxy before it flattened to form the spiral disc. Star formation would have stopped in these clusters maybe 13 billion years ago, so only old stars are expected to be found there.” http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/Astro/globular.html)
Excellent introductions to the hobby of observational astronomy such as NightWatch by Terence Dickinson all tend to give the same easy explanations. Of 150 or so globular clusters orbiting the Milky Way, about 30 are readily found by dedicated observers with telescopes of larger aperture under darker skies. When it was accepted that the Milky Way is just another galaxy the examination of other galaxies led to new understanding of the nature of globular clusters and to new questions about them.
Globular clusters are far more prevalent in elliptical galaxies than in spirals and it is accepted as likely that many are in fact the cores of elliptical galaxies. [3.b] Elliptical galaxy M87 (Virgo A) is often available to 60-mm refractors, given dark skies suited to its 8.6 magnitude, second brightest in the Virgo Cluster. It has thousands of globular clusters.[3.b] [3.c] perhaps 15,000 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messier_87]. Close studies of the motions of globular clusters have revealed tidal trails of stars being left behind. [3.b] Globular clusters are also known “in the field,” meaning in the otherwise unorganized free space between galaxies where they are detected by instruments seeking the farthest (oldest) galaxies. [3.c]
Blue Stragglers
In the dense cores of globular clusters, a typical star has a significant chance to undergo a collision. The velocity gradient within a globular cluster is one to two orders of magnitude less than escape velocity. Therefore, almost all of the mass in a collision is retained. Moreover, the velocities of the materials are less than the escape velocities from stellar bodies of the original masses. Therefore, the mass is retained to form the merged product. If the sum of the products is significantly large (more than 1 solar mass), the merged product will remain on the H-R main sequence but will be positioned bluewards on the turnoff from the Main Sequence. These have been labeled “blue stragglers.”[5]
Blue Stragglers were first identified in 1953 by Alan R. Sandage. His data came from examination of Messier 3 and Messier 95, which are often available to small telescopes and M71 which usually is not. So far, over 400 Blue Stragglers have been identified in 20 globular clusters. They still do have a completely integrated theoretical explanation. Available data strongly suggests a causal link between the unperturbed evolution of binary stars and the existence of Blue Stragglers. [3]
REFERENCES
1. The Complex Lives of Star Clusters. David Stevenson. Springer. 2015.
2. The Ecology of Blue Stragglers. Henry M. J. Boffin, Giovanni Carraro, Giacomo Beccari, editors. Springer. 2015.
3. Extra-Galactic Globular Cluster Systems. M. Kissler-Patig, editor. Springer.. 2003.
3.a “Globular Cluster Systems of Spirals” by Pauline Barmby
3.b. “Globular Cluster Systems of Spiral Galaxies Beyond the Local Group” by Katherine L. Rhode
3.c. “The Morphology of the Radial Velocity Distribution of Globular Clusters in NGC 1399” by Tom Richtler, Boris Dirsch, and D. Geisler.
4. The Gravitational Million-Body Problem: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Star Cluster Dynamics. Douglas Heggie, Piet Hut. Cambridge University Press. 2003.
5. Stellar Evolution at Low Metallicity: Mass Loss, Explosions, Cosmology. Henry J. G. L. M. Lamers, Norbert Langer, Tilt Nugis, Kaljiu Annuk, editors. Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series volume 353. 2005.
6. Astronomy: A Revision of Young’s Manual of Astronomy; volume II Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy. Henry Norris Russell, Raymond Smith Duncan, John Quincy Stewart. Ginn and Company. 1927, 1938.
7. Discovery and Classification in Astronomy. Steven J. Dick. Cambridge University Press. 2013.
FROM MY LOG BOOKS
Messier 4 - 14 July 2015, 11 and 13 June 2020, and 31 July 2021. 15 March 2022, 26 March 2022.
Messier 13 - 12 July 2015, 11 September 2021, 3 December 2021,
Messier 22 - 14 July 2015, 15 March 2022, 26 March 2022
Messier 31 - 1 December 2018, 5 November 2020,
Messier 80 - 14 July 2015, 11 July 2020, March and 26 March 2022
Book Review - Seeing in the Dark: Your Front Row Seat to the Universe
Measuring Your Universe: Alan Hirschfeld’s Astronomy Activity Manual
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