Jeff Duntemann's Contrapositive Diary

…you’ll forget what you have, and buy more of the same. This has happened to me any number of times down the years, usually for things like small tools and electronic components. But it doesn’t have to be physical goods. Yesterday I heard a piece on our local classical station KBAQ (AKA KBACH) that I had heard before. I like the third movement. The first two are melancholy (one is an adagio, a dirge-y musical form I simply will not touch) but the third is brisk, upbeat, and borderline sprightly. I thought, “Gee, I oughta have that on my mix thumb drive.” So I went up on Amazon and bought it.

The piece is Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (1939) with Christopher Parkening on classical guitar, backed by orchestra. The performance I bought is not on YouTube, but can be had on Amazon here. I had to buy the whole album; they don’t sell tracks individually on that one. I bought the album anyway and simply won’t play the dreary parts. The third movement really is that good. I was a little surprised I hadn’t bought it before.

I downloaded it, unpacked the .zip, and extracted the third movement, which I dragged and dropped onto my mix thumb drive. When I put the drive back in its USB port on the Durango and went off to do some errands, I searched for the piece.

And found two.

Not of the same file. I found two performances by different artists. I had bought the performance by the Venezuela Symphony back in mid-May of this year. I stopped being surprised that I hadn’t bought it before, because I did.

Ok. Why didn’t I remember that I already had it? Just this: I have 584 tracks on that drive. With that many tracks (and in truth I don’t do a lot of driving) playing tracks randomly gives rise to statistical artifacts. it’s a virtual certainty that a few won’t come up very often. This one was at the far end of that curve: I bought it five months ago and it’s not come up even once since then.

Wotthehell; they’re both good, and now, with two performances in the mix, I may hear at least one of them semiregularly. That curve has an opposite end: I hear the Small Faces’ song “Itchycoo Park” it seems like every other day. (It’s from 1967, when my musical tastes were a lot less discriminating.) Once a month would be plenty.

The lesson here is that we live in The Age of Stuff. The first commandment in the Age of Stuff is Know Your Stuff. If you don’t know your stuff, you will almost certainly buy duplicate stuff.

One way to do this is to keep your stuff in some sort of order. I do that with books by having category areas on my bookshelves: History, Math, Science, Astronomy, Biography, SFF, and on down to things like Model Railroads and Global Warming. Every time I pull a book down, if I have a few moments to spare I scan the category. That keeps me from buying duplicate books.

Usually.

It also triggers memories of books that might be useful in whatever line of research I’m pursuing at the time.

Part of this is, of course, to keep your stuff put away in its usual places. I bought a second small ratchet screwdriver set once because the original one was tossed under a pile of odd lots on my workbench and not seen for literally several years.

I try to keep my workbench clear these days.

Know your stuff. Review it now and then. Keep it in order. You think that’s easy? Try it sometime!

The last ice age might have killed us all. All of us, then and now and for all time. It might have been the end of all multicellular life on Earth. We came close. Way close. I’ve always been surprised that almost no one else talks about this. (I’m reading a book that talks about it—a little. I’ll review it as time permits.)

I’ve been planning to write about this for at least five years, when the idea first occurred to me. I didn’t because almost nothing gets Certain People more screamingly upset than challenging any least part of the Climate Catastrophe narrative. If reading this makes you furious, please go somewhere else. I’ve decided that it’s about time to bring it up.

The bullet we dodged during the last ice age was the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. As you may know from high school chemistry, cold water absorbs more gas than warmer water. Cool the oceans down, and the oceans will suck up a lot of atmospheric gas, including carbon dioxide. And what do ice ages do? They cool the planet, including the oceans. A lot.

At the depth of the last ice age, atmospheric CO2 went down to 180 parts per million. We know that at about 150 ppm CO2, photosynthesis just stops. Plants die, and in a plant-based ecology like the one we live in, so does almost everything else.

The missing CO2 was dissolved in the oceans, and as the oceans warmed, the CO2 returned to the atmosphere. This is pretty simple stuff. But there’s a problem: CO2 is also being removed from the atmosphere, constantly and permanently. This happens in a number of ways, but a lot of it goes into the carbonate shells of ocean plankton and other carbonate-shelled species. The organisms die (as everything dies eventually) and their shells sink to the sea bottom and stay there.

What this means is that every time we get an ice age, there’s less CO2 in the air to begin with, and therefore less CO2 in the air once it dissolves in the colder oceans. If a future ice age takes that atmospheric CO2 concentration down lower than 150 ppm, it’s all over for life on Earth. I call this the Ratchet of Doom.

But…but…we fixed that, right? Yes, we did. But if homo sapiens hadn’t evolved an industrial civilization, the next ice age could well have destroyed the ecosphere.

There’s a well-known graph of atmospheric CO2 concentration over the last 500 million years. It’s interesting, as it graphs CO2 concentration against temperature. Take a look:

This is usually used to demonstrate that CO2 levels are not closely related to global temperatures. But it also demonstrates that we are living in an age where the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are about as low as they’ve ever been. The little uptick at the end of the purple line is us, now. We’re up a little, sure. But compared to earlier geological history, not by much.

There’s another graph that highlights the effects of the ice ages on CO2 levels. I have some quibbles with the scale of the concentration line, but if you look closely, you’ll see that each ice age’s peak brings the CO2 line down a little lower. That’s what gave me the idea: That a planet’s ecology brings CO2 levels down gradually but inexorably. At some point those levels cease to be able to support photosynthetic life.

Obviously, we are no longer in this particular danger. We’ve released some of the carbon that was laid down during the aptly named Carboniferous age. My point is that it was a pretty narrow escape, which got narrower with every passing ice age.

I’ve often wondered (and this is mere speculation that can’t be proven) if the Little Ice Age was actually the infancy of a Big Ice Age, which we aborted by burning coal, oil, and methane in quantity. The upturn of temperatures is weirdly coincident with the time period when the Industrial Revolution rose to full roar.

It’s possible to argue that more CO2 is beneficial in terms of crop yields and even good weather, or at very least not dangerous. Again, I’m reading a book that makes all those points in detail far better than I ever could, and I’ll review it when I can.

The Ratchet of Doom is no longer ticking. Let all of us who believe in the future—even the distant future–at least be glad of that.

I had some dead time today, but not enough to start writing on the novel. So I went to my spam bin and pulled out a message that came in earlier this morning, offering me that canonical “one weird trick” to get rock-solid sleep. Do this 20 minutes before bedtime and you’ll be a new man!

You’ve seen that sort of thing in your spam bin. These days it’s hard not to see it.

The spammer was bloodsugarfit.com, which sells all sorts of natural remedies. I didn’t click their link but went to the web site, which looked reasonably legit. As best I could tell, they had an affiliate relationship with an outfit called Fisico, which makes a sleep aid supplement called PhysioSleep. The site says Fisico was founded in 2009 by a Greek MD named Dr. George Karanastasis. Good grief! It was one weird Greek ritual! (I get spam pitches for those almost every other day.)

They have a video about PhysioSleep. I said wotthehell and started it. Dr. Karanastasis introduced himself, and he talked…and talked…and talked…

…and talked…and talked. He repeated himself a lot, told us his life story, and mentioned that he was a bad sleeper and grouchy to the point his wife almost left him. I sympathize, though lack of sleep in the wake of the Coriolis collapse did not make me grouchy but depressed and lethargic. He mentioned a conspiracy by the Ivies to prevent natural remedies from being taken seriously. I’ve not seen anything about that, though I could certainly believe it. And he talked…and talked…and talked…

The video window had a run/pause button, but no progress bar. I had no idea how long the video was. So I just let it run. While it ran, I opened another tab and looked up whatever might be out there on PhysioSleep. Turns out it’s an OTC sleep aid with two active ingredients: melatonin and zylaria, which is an extract from some fungus or another. I get pitches all the time for supplements containing Turkey Tail extract and several other fungal extracts. Haven’t tried that one and probably won’t.

Every minute or so I looked back at the tab running the video.

It was still running. He talked, and he talked, and he talked…

I didn’t find anything crisp on Dr. Karanastasis. There is a Dr. Georgios Karanastasis, an internist in Tinley Park, Illinois, who mostly treats headaches and joint pain. No mention of Fisico or PhysioSleep. I looked for product reviews, and found none. Amazon does not sell it.

Glanced back at the video. He was still talking. It was going on twenty minutes by then, and still hadn’t mentioned the product itself. I finally said to hell with it, this is a total waste of my time.

For me, the big puzzle is this: Why did somebody think that a long monotonous video would sell a sleep supplement similar to (if not identical to) stuff they sell on Amazon? Is it due to the sunk cost effect? Are people who watch until its end (whenever that might be) figure, “Well, I sat through half an hour, so to keep it from being a total loss, maybe I should buy some?”

Note well that I didn’t buy any and have no opinion on PhysioSleep or Dr. Karanastasis. I tried melatonin back in 2001 and it didn’t help me sleep. Mostly it messed up my biological clock. Zylaria, well some people who use it in other formulations from other companies think it works, judging by reviews on Amazon. Maybe it does. If so, I wish him well and hope he sells a bunch.

But boy, for busy people like me, that video would be a total showstopper.

Yes, I know I haven’t posted since the end of June, but I had a very busy July. So bear with me; I’m trying to get back in the Contra saddle on a much more regular basis. A fair bit of good stuff has piled up in my notes. Perforce:

• WordStar 7 for DOS can now be had as a free download, thanks to the work of SF author Robert J. Sawyer. The product has changed hands a great many times down the decades, and as best we can tell it’s now abandonware. Caution suggests that if you’re a retrocomputing fan, better snag it now, before somebody pops up with a copyright objection.
• The Heartland Institute has a very nice free 82-page full-color PDF overview of climate issues from a skeptical perspective. Beyond global warming it covers sea levels, droughts, violent weather, crop yields, and much else. A lot of the data cited comes from the NOAA, which I still consider a reliable source.
• There’s a new image-generating AI called FLUX from Black Forest Labs that apparently knows how many fingers and toes humans have. Sorry, guys: I’ll believe it when I test it.
• Chris Martz put together a map displaying the record hottest day in August for all 50 states. The hottest August temp we’ve ever seen in Arizona was in…1905. Not much of a climate apocalypse, eh?
• Solar cycle 25 has handed us the highest sunspot count in 23 years. This cycle was supposed to be weak. And we haven’t hit the likely peak yet. We may not see that peak until 2025 or 26.
• New research shows that elenolic acid, found in olives and olive leaves, brings down blood sugar and reduces body weight. I have to wonder if this is why the Mediterranean Diet appears to work. Elenolic acid is available OTC, and I’m tempted to try it and see if it will trim a little fat off my waistline.
• Here’s a nice BBC piece about an obscure British clergyman who predicted the existence of black holes in…1783. The guy should be way better known than he is, given that he also identified the inverse square law in 1750.
• For any of several reasons, electric vehicles are dangerous. [Link removed by me; see comments.]
• Copyright issues in training AIs are ongoing. MIT summarizes the use of "copyright traps" that embed nonsense sentences into text by hiding it somehow. (White text on white?) This allows software to determine if a piece of text was used in training. (Just how is too complex to explain here. Read the article.) My response is that finding "invisible" text in blocks of text is an easy challenge for software, especially with Web content. I envision a Web crawler that checks for copyright traps and either refuses to add trapped content to an index, or else scrubs the traps outright before copying the scrubbed text to a local database used for AI training. Bottom line: There is no easy solution to this problem.

72 today. I am quietly rejoicing for having logged another year. Each year we survive is a win. But each year I ask myself: Am I old yet? and every year, well, I can’t in all honesty say yes. I used to think that 65 was the border separating middle age from old age. But when I turned 65 in 2017, I couldn’t shake the feeling of still being middle-aged. So I shoved the border back a few years, to 72. Here I am. And damn if I don’t feel a whit different than I did at 65.

I’ve written about several of my birthdays at some length, and make a few points in those entries that I don’t intend to make again. Here’s 58, 60, 66 (I didn’t do an entry when I turned 65) 69 and 70.

So when does a person become old? My hypothesis: There comes a point when it becomes impossible to live without a little (or maybe more than a little) help. That’s when you become old.

It’s not a dumb question. As we age, things lose functionality. Little failures accumulate, with an occasional larger failure as a sort of quantum leap. A lot of those you can see coming and dodge; I’ve never smoked nor done drugs and don’t drink much. Low-carb has kept my weight down. It’s unclear how much getting plenty of sleep helps, though from all I’ve read it’s a lot.

A few you can reverse with medical help. I’ve been told I’ll need cataract surgery eventually, and whereas my sight isn’t strongly impaired yet, I’m not looking forward to the surgery itself. Joint replacements exist for knees and hips and probably a few others. So far, my joints are in reasonably good shape. Carol and I have been doing some intense weight training since 2003, and I’m pretty sure I now have more muscle than I did when I was in my 40s.

As I’ve written before, sure, I’ve been lucky. That said, a lot of luck you make yourself. Simple caution and not doing stupid things have kept me from spraining or tearing anything essential. I practice sanity, refuse to engage in tribal screaming matches, and don’t take myself as seriously as I might. Laughter feels good, even if you’re laughing at yourself. I keep my brain busy.

Yes, I now have a certain amount of metal in my mouth. In truth, that metal works better than the teeth it replaced. The rest of me is still original stock. I still have my tonsils and my appendix, granting that neither buys me much beyond peculiar bragging rights.

All of which suggests that I’m not old yet. I may someday need a cane or braces of various kinds. 75? 80? 85? Who knows? I’ll take it as it comes. As a grade school friend of mine often says of life, Enjoy the ride. I’m a contrarian optimist. I am enjoying the ride. And as long as I’m enjoying the ride, I suspect I will not think of myself as old.

• Spooky or creepy music in SF/Fantasy/Horror flicks is assumed to rely on the theremin. I just discovered the Ondes Martenot, which sounds like a theremin but is easier to play. Furthermore, it’s been around for most of 100 years. Not sure how I got into my 70s without ever stumbling on it. Good link on YouTube.
• Carol and I don’t go out to the movies much anymore. We stream or buy a DVD for anything we want to see. This writer offers a cogent explanation for why theaters are largely to blame for this phenomenon. (Crappy movies are the rest of the explanation.)
• This sounds a little (or more than a little) grandiose: A meteotsunami subjected the shore of Lake Michigan in Holland, Michigan to—oh, no!—a 2-foot wave. When I was a kid this phenom was called a seiche, and Chicago got its share, rare though they might be. Certain types of bad weather including strong winds and rapid changes in atmospheric pressure are to blame. Again, I’m surprised I made it to my 70s without ever seeing the word.
• No small number of people have claimed that "return to office" mandates are back-channel layoffs, a way to reduce headcount by having heads quit voluntarily. Now some research seems to indicate that this is the case.
• Ok, this is mondo weird: I spun through the McD’s drive-thru not long ago for an iced coffee and got two pennies (and some other coins) in change. Both pennies were 1981-Ds. What are the chances?

  

• I was looking for Revolutionary War flags and stumbled upon a list of flags on Wikipedia that would do Sheldon Cooper proud.
• Beethoven was a classical music composer, but his body was full of heavy metal, specifically, lead. The Mayo Clinic analyzed a few strands of the maestro’s hair, and found 64 times the lead found in a typical American today. This likely led to the many medical problems Beethoven had, including deafness.
• Lazarus 3.4 is now available, built with FreePascal 3.2.2. It’s a bugfix release and there isn’t a lot of New Stuff, but get it anyway! There’s nothing else quite like it in the OSS universe.
• A few days ago I received an email inviting me to the—wait for it–Lane Technical High School Milwaukee World Naked Bike Ride. I thought it was a hoax but no—naked bike rides are evidently a thing in big cities. Now, Lane Technical High School (which I attended 1966-1970) is in Chicago, not Milwaukee. There is in fact a World Naked Bike Ride in Chicago on my 72nd birthday tomorrow, but they didn’t invite me. I don’t own a bike, and I’m a long damn way from Milwaukee, or Chicago. That said, I doubt there will be a World Phoenix Naked Bike ride any time soon. It was 113 the other day. People would die.