Category: Ramble

Just writing stuff about things, and things about stuff.

Surfing, Crawling, or Riding the Cosmos

Pavowski11 Comments

socs-badge

The prompt for the week is “information” over at Stream of Consciousness Saturday. And technically the goal of the prompt is to engage with it spending as little time in planning as possible, but rather to dive in and just let the mind wander. Still, I couldn’t help noodling on this one for much of the day: while mowing the grass, while walking around with the kids in the stroller, while sitting on the crapper… at first it seemed so small, so insignificant a topic, such a minute and overspecific little thing, what could I possibly write about it? But the more I thought, the bigger it got, until it struck me rather like a 50lb sack of concrete tossed from the flatbed of a rusted-out Nissan on the freeway, generally fargoing up my mental vehicle and much of my worldview: information is everything.

That’s not metaphorical, of course. From a scientific standpoint, everything in the universe is simply a collection of information. This particle occupies this space relative to that other particle, and as a result this atom shifts into this alignment within this molecule, and because of the presence of said molecule, proteins can form, and with the preponderance of those proteins come cells and body structures and blood and bone and brains and everything else that makes us us. The tiniest deviations from the blueprints are all that make up the myriad differences between not just humans, but chimps, fish, trees, and the very earth we walk on (my sorry-not-sorry apologies to the creationist lot). And given enough time, money, and concern, those differences — that stream of information that makes us who we are — could possibly be chronicled. And that’s something.

But it doesn’t stop there. The movement of the heavens is relayed to us through information; much more so than simply the information we’re able to decode with our flimsy senses. Satellites capture the movement of one star past another, the bend in the gravitational field of a planet illuminated by the slowing of the light around it, the Doppler effect of interstellar debris, and translate this — this stew of raw information indecipherable to all but maybe a tenth of a hundredth of a thousandth of a percent of us — to paint the picture of our known universe, even looking back through time itself to map out what the universe was like in its primordial state.

And then, of course, there’s information in the traditional sense: the information that we doddering bipeds build our world around, the collection of the relative movements of the species across the face of our particular bit of space rock that cause economies to rise and fall, forces at war to invade or withdraw, and a million other decisions to swing this way or that in a flicker of firing synapses. Information drives the world, and that information has to come from somewhere for it to make me decide whether to get up off the couch to get another drink, or sit and suffer with a dry mouth while I watch another episode of Aquarius (which I’m not sure if I care for yet).

The internet. Right? When we say “information,” that’s where it comes from, for most of us. In the Western world, at least, if you’re getting your information from anywhere, odds are that it passed through a computer on its way to your face holes, if your own personal computer wasn’t the last stop. An interview conducted over Skype. Documents e-mailed from a presidential candidate’s personal, totally-legal-no-matter-what-anybody-says server. A record of purchases that you may or may not have made from websites of dubious repute. Whether it be legitimate information, ill-guided misinformation, or maliciously-intended disinformation, there’s a flood of it coming at us through the internet all the time.

So I took a pause from writing and googled one of those questions that I felt very dumb typing into a search engine: “how much information is on the internet?” And I ended up trying to grasp what I found on the wikipedia page: Exabyte. An exabyte is a million terabytes, or a billion gigabytes, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, which is one of those numbers — like the size of the universe — that your brain just sort of goes fuzzy thinking about. And estimates in 2010 showed that in a month, about 21 exabytes of information are passed along the internet. A MONTH.

And for all that, it’s estimated that a single gram of DNA could contain over 450 exabytes of information. So if you think those construction instructions from Ikea are complicated, well…

Now, your sources might differ from mine, and I’m not here to pass judgment on what sort of information you invite into your home (though given the size of, for example, the anti-vaxxer movement, some of you are receiving and believing some decidedly poor information). I’m only here to ponder the ramifications of such a system, and I will do so vis-a-vis a surprising moment we had driving home from the beach yesterday.

I pulled into a gas station in rural Alabama and swiped my card at the pump. I received an error message telling me to see the attendant.

Frustrated, I pulled to another pump (kids were in the car and there was no sense unloading them, and god knows you can’t leave them in the car on a hot day in Alabama) and got the same result. I called my wife on her cell phone (a fantastic tool for delivering information, and a little ironic if you’ll bear with me) where she was standing in line to buy some snacks for the road and asked her to check with the attendant.

Turns out, the gas station runs its internet connection on dialup, and the phone line was in use at the moment.

Now, there’s two funnies in this situation from where I stand.

First is that a business in the Western world is still operating off of a dialup connection. (Actually, first is that dialup connections are still offered at all, let alone to businesses.) But then, that’s Alabama for you, I guess. (My apologies to any readers from Alabama, except you already live in Alabama, so my apologies won’t help you.)

Second is that a person was using a phone that wasn’t in his pocket or in any other way connected to the internet. I thought we’d moved past that as a society, but you learn something new every day.

Point is, there is a literal uncountable ocean of information flowing in, around, and through us every instant of every day. Some of us simply ride the wave faster than others.

Again, my apologies to the readers from Alabama.

On Leave

PavowskiLeave a comment

Communications may be somewhat interrupted this week, because this is the view that I’m waking up to:

wpid-20150531_205233.jpg

We arrived Saturday, and will be back later this week. It is perfect summer weather here in Florida, with the scorching sun overhead during the day giving way to cool breezes in the evening. Absolutely ideal for washing the school year off. Not bad for inspiration either, if I could find a free minute to park my keester and bang on the laptop for a while. But if you have kids, you know that a free minute on vacation is a little like a Bigfoot sighting: gone the moment you realize it’s there, and impossible to plan for.

That said, there are few delights more satisfying than the peals of laughter and overhyped shouts of glee as your kids splash around in the ocean, root around in the sand, jump into and out of the pool, and stuff down piles of junk food. I don’t recall vacations being this much work when my parents would take my three siblings and me to the beach, but then it’s a whole different animal once you’re the one who has to care for the little monsters. Being on vacation with a toddler and an infant is almost as much work as actually being at work.

But the key word there is almost. When the sun is setting amidst a skyscape of purple clouds and temperate breezes, the kids are snoring in their beds like they’ve never slept a day in their lives (running around on the beach will do that to them), and you’ve got a lovely glass of wine and your lovelier wife next to you, it’s hard to even remember four-letter words like “work”.

So I’ll leave with this image of the most complete rainbow I’ve ever seen firsthand, because, you know, that’s happening here, now.

wpid-20150601_092314.jpg

Suffer.

Almost Didn’t Make It

Pavowski8 Comments

socs-badge

Is there a sadder word in the language than “almost?”

I read this week’s stream of consciousness prompt — the word, almost — and my head began to fill with almosts. He almost won the gold medal, but his ankle snapped in the last hundred meters. She almost got the job, but they found out about her side business selling pygmies as house pets. We almost got married, but my ex showed up at the last minute, burned the church down, and impaled my bride-to-be with my collectible Wayne Gretzky hockey stick, broken off at the handle.

Almost is the language of failure, it’s a word of defeat. But it’s not simply a coming-up-short, it’s worlds worse than a didn’t-quite-make-it, it’s an age away from never-really-had-a-chance. Why? Because with the almost, you can taste the victory.

There’s something comforting in not reaching for the dream, in admitting to yourself that you don’t really have what it takes to even start down the path. The blankets on the bed are warm, after all, and these reruns of Law and Order, Criminal Justice Unit for White-Collar Executives who Only Get Slaps On The Wrist aren’t going to watch themselves. You never start down the path, you never really think of how victory might feel, so you never miss out.

Image result for couch potato

Or, okay, say you start; you make the resolutions, you block out the time, you hold fast for a few weeks, but then you bow out because it’s just too hard. That happens. Nothing to be ashamed of. This failure stings a little, because you “wasted” that time trying the thing, but it’s better to see you’re not cut out for it early than to change who you are, because change is fargoing scary. Nope, this one is a lesson learned, and that lesson is: stay home.

Right, so maybe quitting after just a few weeks isn’t your bag. You’re really determined to make this thing work this time, and you plug away at it for a few months or even maybe a year or so. Maybe even start to think it could happen. But you know what happens to everybody, eventually? LIFE HAPPENS. And work gets hectic, or you get that long bout of mono, or your deadbeat brother moves in, and god almighty, how are you supposed to deal with this thing that MUST be dealt with and that other thing you wanted to do? Something has to give, and we know what it’s going to be. At least you have something to blame this failure on, and blame is good, because you don’t have to own up to the fact that maybe it wasn’t that important to you anyway.

Which brings us to the almost. The saddest of the sad. Because with the almost, you do the work. You feel the change in yourself. You create or you achieve or you conquer or you otherwise get done the things you’re trying to get done, and little by little you gain on that big goal, that overarching thing that looked so monstrous when you first started, until it’s just a leap away… and then the catastrophe strikes. Broken ankle. Rejected manuscript. New guy gets the promotion over you. And you’re so focused on winning that you maybe don’t even realize that you’ve lost until the parade has started, and then it slowly dawns that the parade is not for you. How do you cope? How do you throw yourself at the wall again? How do you find the strength to go back to the beginning and start over?

But see… that’s one way to look at it.

The other way to look at it is that the almost is just a whisker away from the Mission Accomplished. The almost is one favorable gust of wind away from the parade being in your honor instead of the other guy’s. The almost is the difference between your boss or your book reviewer or your opponent skipping breakfast on the day that matters because he didn’t get a good night’s sleep instead of coming in with guns a’blazing. If you can get to the almost… well… how can you stop there?

I changed my mind from the beginning of the post. Almost isn’t the saddest word in the language. It’s maybe the most motivating ever.

What’s almost within your grasp? What have you almost achieved? And what’s to stop you from going back and trying it again?

The Deuce Horizon (Where did my life go wrong?)

Pavowski2 Comments

I sat down tonight to write a blarg, and all I could think about was poop.

Not my poop. Let’s get that right. Baby poop, cat poop, dog poop… I’m inundated by Poops Which Are Not Mine, and inevitably, regrettably, it oozes over (ew) to my recreational writing. And as I sat here, pondering the poop I was trying hard not to ponder, I realized that my life has taken a series of unfortunate turns to bring me to this point.

To be clear, that point would be the point where I feel compelled to write entire blog posts about poop.

It wasn’t always this way. My life used to be ordinary. Go to work. Talk to some friends. Party hard on the weekend and reload on Monday, then do it again. There’s very little about poop in the cycle that used to be my life, except of course for the unmentionable one or two per day, and it certainly didn’t occupy my thoughts the way it does recently.

But then I got married. And we got some cats. And some dogs. And now we have a couple of kids. And at some point, my life changed over from never think about poop even when poop is happening to poop is the gravitational sun at the center of my universe.

Cleaning poopy diapers. Trying to get the sprout to poop on the toilet. Baby sticking her foot in the poop while I’m trying to clean the poop. Cat poop in litter boxes. Cat poop out of litter boxes. Letting the dog out to poop. Dog pooping on the carpet because we were at work all day. Cats dragging their poopy butts on the carpet. Carrying kids’ poopy diapers straight out to the curb because they’re too horrific to keep bottled up in the house.

Didn’t the Talking Heads have a song like that? This is not my beautiful life! Who knew I would hear that lyric and think only of poop.

Here’s a true statement, without embellishment: I have to deal with Poop Which Is Not Mine at least four or five times a day, which is enough, I think, to cause anybody to fixate a little bit. In short, for me: poop is a problem.

And the problem goes beyond the poop itself (which, let’s face it, is more than enough problem in its own right). Since I deal with it so much, I fixate, as I believe I may have mentioned. And that means it’s floating around in my subconscious, not unlike turds in the crapper, just waiting to back up the septic system of my brain. So I sit down to write a blarg topic, and all I can think of is crap. Literally.

There’s the second problem. Who wants to read a blarg about poop? Nobody, that’s who. To be honest, I don’t even want to be writing about the poop. Even thinking the word makes me feel icky, let alone typing it out over and over again as I’ve done tonight. Sure, I’m desensitized to it in a sense, but then it all comes bubbling back up while I’m sitting here trying not to think about it.

This is not a blarg about poop. This is not my beautiful life. I want this blarg to be a place where I write about writing and funny and quirky and interesting things that happen to me and that flit through my mind like butterflies through a fragrant meadow, but the percentage of posts about poop is really skewing the numbers around here.

And here, I’m exacerbating the problem by writing an entire post solely about poop.

If there’s a poop event horizon, I’m pretty sure I’ve crossed it by now. The poop in my life (Poop Which Is Not Mine, I hasten to add) is taking over, and I am not okay with that.

But the fact is, I don’t know if I can be saved. I have several years yet before I can stop thinking so much about these particular biological functions in my children… and let’s be honest, even when these functions are done, there will be an entirely new host of biological functions I will have to worry about.

If nothing else, I can perhaps serve as a warning.

If there’s Poop Which Is Not Yours in your life… in any capacity at all… run. Get out now, while you still can. The word “poop” appeared thirty-five times in this blog post. That’s too many for any sane person.

Only Off By a Minute or Two (or 14.4)

Pavowski2 Comments

The topic for the week in Stream-of-Consciousness Saturday is “ke”.

Which is crap, innit? It’s not a word, certainly not a concept. But it’s more than just a letter. It’s a sound, sort of, though it depends on how you use it. It sounds like itself sometimes: KEy, KEep, KEen; but throw it at the end of a word and its sound disappears entirely: faKE, liKE, smoKE. It vacillates between setting the tone for the thing it’s a part of and being entirely subservient to the rest of the thing.

So I took to the Googles, typed in “ke” and I guess not surprisingly, the first thing to pop up was a wikipedia page, and that seemed promising.

KE is a postal code for Kildare, Ireland, which sounds lovely.

KE is the abbreviation for kinetic energy in physics. Now, I like the thrust of that, but we all know I do more than my share of nattering on about the importance of momentum and doing things and I already feel the gravity of more nattering on the topic, so I will do us all a favor and drive that train of thought into the ditch and move on.

Then you’ve got Ke, which has its own attributions: It’s a translation of a common surname in China, it’s the elimination rate constant (or the rate at which drugs are removed from the body, a topic I know nothing about), it’s also an electrical constant called Coulomb’s Law, which I would have loved to tie in here in clever fashion but ye gods, I had a partial stroke just trying to read the formula:\oiint\mathbf{E} \cdot {\rm d}\mathbf{A} = |\mathbf{E}|\mathbf{\hat{e}}_r\int_{S} dA = |\mathbf{E}|\mathbf{\hat{e}}_r \times 4\pi r^{2}

And I apologize for whatever ill effects it might have had on your system. Finally, a Ke is also a Chinese unit of decimal time measuring either 14.4 minutes or 15 minutes.

Wait a minute.

It’s a unit of measure — those things that we use to determine how much of things there exist in a given system, or the distance between things, or the purity or contamination of things, or in fact any of the myriad of methods we have for making meaning out of the world around us — but we don’t know exactly how much of the thing it sets out to measure that it actually measures.

I thought more about this, and it only made my brain hurt even more, and it was already reeling after trying to read that formula up there. (HALF OF IT IS JUST WAVY LINES.) Think about it. The difference between 14.4 of something and 15 of something is 4%. 4% doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you start doing math of any consequence, 4% becomes enormous. 4% of the world’s population, for example, is 284,000,000 (that’s 284 million) people. 4% of the distance from the earth to the moon is almost ten thousand miles. It’s hard to imagine any measurement having a grey area you could sail the earth itself through.

But that’s the way of things, innit? The Ke is not a contemporary unit of measurement. It doesn’t get used anymore, except perhaps by Chinese authenticists (the measurement, it turns out, was based on the sundial), in large part because we’ve come up with new, better, more precise measuring sticks. So are we always redefining the rules, fine-tuning the specs on our tools, rejiggering the machinations that control and that build our lives. As our goals and, by extension, our accomplishments grow, so too must the means by which we measure them. An “A” in high school chemistry might have been the most important thing in the world to a past version of myself, but today it means precisely bupkis.

I got up for a drink just now, and on my way back to my seat, I had the thought that just about the only yardstick that has meaning in my life at the moment is money, and as I thought that thought, my blood started to simmer. My head filled with insane, tinfoil-hat kinds of ideas and notions that money isn’t real yet our lives and our livelihoods depend on it, that some people in the world can just invent all the money that they want while others live their lives in the shadow of its absence, and ultimately I decided that my blarg is a whole lot more lighthearted than that and the best thing to do was just to wrap this stream of consciousness up.

And to think, it only took me a couple of Ke’s to write all this.

This post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday.