Who First Ate Cheese?

             Who First Ate Cheese?

 

            Somebody had to be the first to eat cheese. I feel sorry for that someone, but admire that someone’s courage and luck. Surely there had been nothing else to eat, for miles and miles around, and for a long time too. All that was left was this smelly gunk at the bottom of the milk jug. But our heroine ate it, and survived.

             Do you think our heroine’s tribe thought cheese to be health food? Not at first, and rightly so; no doubt her tribefolk had all sorts of bad reactions to cheese, starting with lactose intolerance and going on up to obesity and heart disease. But evolution proceeded, and now lactose intolerance is a rarity, and Frenchmen eat cheese yet stay thin.

             I wonder about the origin of other healthful foods. Yogurt, for instance. Somebody had to be the first to eat that. Again, it must have been hard times. 

             Evolution continues unabated, even within civilization; for now civilization is the environment our genes must adapt to. If milk and cheese are cheap, then lactose intolerance is a genetic defect, and milk becomes health food. If you need readin’, writin’ and ‘rithmetic merely to survive on these mean streets, then so long dyslexia. If flu, measles and the common cold regularly go pandemic in the cities, then your grandchildren, if any, will have kick-ass immune systems.

             I predict that in 10,000 years, Cheetos will be a health food.

 

 

 

On Orthopsychology and Parapsychology

          On Orthopsychology and Parapsychology

            My cat Charles can appear to teleport. Once I turned around in my chair to see him coming out of the wall. “I saw that!” I said, and he winked at me. I turned my head and there was Katniss sitting there like she had been there all along. I said, “You’re good!”

            Some friends of mine have observed similar phenomena and concluded that cats are psychic; but to me, a “psychic” power is “parapsychological” -  i.e. one where the practitioner outwits the witness. I define ‘orthopsychology’ as psychology where the investigator is smarter than the subject, ‘parapsychology’ as psychology where the subject is smarter than the investigator. Therefore orthopsychology tends to be Classical; its logic is rationalist and its results are reproducible; whereas parapsychology tends to be Romantic; its logic is surreal and its results are... elusive. “Psychic” powers are “mental” powers, where ‘mental’ comes from the Latin “mentir”, to lie.

            So yes, by that definition, cats are definitely psychic. So are Penn and Teller. But though Penn, Teller and cats are parapsychological to us, they are orthopsychological to themselves. Disillusionment is the price of mastering illusion.

 

 

One of Mother Nature’s Little Jokes

          One of Mother Nature’s Little Jokes

 

          Amongst humans, ‘race’ is an illusion. Except for obvious genes like skin color and bone structure, the genetic differences between the so-called races is less than the differences within the so-called races. Genetically, skin color is skin deep; it is not a good predictor of pretty much anything else.

          This should not come as much of a surprise, given the evolutionary time-scale of skin color. It takes only a few thousand years for deep tan Asians to become pasty white Inuit; or for palefaced Central Asian horse raiders to become swarthy Indians. Basically what we call race is a genetic tan.

          It’s not even a matter of color but of hue. As I noted in another essay (“Do White People Exist?”) the color of Caucasian skin is not even close to the color of clouds, paper, milk and cloth. A glass of milk the color of Patrick Buchanan would clearly be undrinkable. All humans, except possibly the rare albino, is in fact a shade of brown. To say one sees white people is to literally confess a hallucination.

          So race is an illusion, both genetically, and if you inspect the visual evidence objectively. And yet even infants react differently to people of different skin hue. Babies are born racist!

          Racism is genetic, even though race itself is not! Another one of Mother Nature’s little jokes.

 

Olber, Meet SETI

Olber, Meet SETI

 

 

Recall Olber’s Paradox: why is the night sky dark? If the universe were infinite and static, then a look in any direction in the sky should eventually intercept a distant star; so the sky should be a solid sheet of sunfire. Why is it not?

The answer now given is that the universe is expanding; so it is finite in age, so only a finite amount of light has reached us; and also that distant light sources are receding, and so their light is doppler-shifted to the red. So, for instance, the 3 degree background radiation is the redshifted light of the Big Bang fireball. So in a sense the night sky is a solid sheet of sunfire!

Now recall Fermi’s Paradox: where are they? Meaning, if there are extraterrestrial civilizations, why do we not see them? A special case of Fermi’s Paradox is the Silent Universe. Try as the SETI people might, they have yet to detect radio transmissions from alien civilizations. Why not? After all, in an infinite static universe, no matter which way we point our radio telescopes, we should find in its field of view a radio-transmitting civilization. Therefore the night sky should be a solid sheet of intelligent radio sources. But it isn’t. Why not?

No doubt you see the similarity of the Silent Universe Paradox with Olber’s Paradox. The latter wonders why the sky doesn’t glow in light; the former wonders why the sky doesn’t babble in radio. Therefore they have the same resolution; the expansion of the universe, which gives the universe a finite age and hence only finite time to beam light or radio; and which also redshifts distant light or radio sources down to invisibility.

 

So riddle me this: why is night dark and quiet?

Answer: because the universe is expanding.

 

On Cousinhood

            On Cousinhood

 

          Assured of Man’s supremacy?

          Oh silly sibling, don’t be smug!

          For great and wide’s our family tree;

          Dear sister seaweed, brother bug!

 

        First cousins are those who share a grandparent; second cousins share a great-grandparent; in general Nth cousins share an great^(N-1)-grandparent; or in other words share a parent N+1 generations back.  Therefore siblings are zeroth cousins, and one is one’s own negative first cousin!

        For what value of N are all human beings Nth cousins? This is a matter of evolutionary history. The present human species is about 200,000 years old, and at about 20 years per generation, that comes to 10,000 generations; so I would guess that we are at most 10,000ths cousins of each other; and probably much less.  There is some genetic evidence of genetic bottlenecks in human prehistory; so I would guess that we are at most 7000th cousins of each other, probably much less.

        And what of other species? I found the following figures at the site   www.evogeneao.com

        chimp      =  240,000^th cousin

        gorilla        = 310,000^th cousin

        cat            =  27,000,000^th cousin

        cow          =  28,000,000^th cousin

        robin         = 170,000,000^th cousin

        frog          =  175,000,000^th cousin

        fish           =  195,000,000^th cousin

        snail           = 300,000,000^th cousin

        dragonfly  = 300,000,000^th cousin

        octopus  =   300,000,000^th cousin

        According to that website, one can’t properly define cousinhood for bacteria. If we did, then I suppose that we’d be zillionth cousins to redwood and mildew, for some absurdly high value of zillion.

        In any case, it’s nice to have such a big and talented family.  Blessings, cousins!

 

Hominid Thermostat

Hominid Thermostat

 

The North Pole is melting. The Northwest Passage will soon be open on a regular basis; expect shipping patterns to change accordingly. So long, polar bears. What other little surprises does dear old Mother Nature have in store for us? That’s the trouble with climate change; you can’t predict just what the changes will be; but civilization needs predictability. 

I’m philosophical about it all. I have a theory, which I call the Hominid Thermostat. It goes as follows; Gaia, the planetary biosphere, noticed that that it’s been suffering from periodic ice ages lately. This will not do; so the biosphere evolved a species of semi-intelligent fire users (that’s us) to dig up and burn gigatonnes of coal and oil, and thus warm the planet. In typical Gaian fashion, the process is self-regulating; for as soon as we put enough CO2 into the air, then the seas will rise, drown out most of our cities, and thus end the process. How ecological!

The fish will like Florida; but Al Gore is anthropocentric enough to try to stop the process. He will probably fail because he’s trying to counter human political disunity, plutocratic greed, and ideological stupidity. Contra Naturam! 

Oh, by the way; according to New Scientist, part of the long-range  global-warming forecast is that certain areas will each year experience a combination of heat and humidity high enough to kill an unprotected human within hours. (Unprotected as in; naked, sopping wet, in the shade, sitting in front of a fan, drinking water constantly, but you die before the day is done. Only air conditioning or a deep cave would save you.) These heat-stress areas include parts of China, parts of Africa, parts of South America, all of the USA’s South and Eastern Seaboard; and all of the Indian subcontinent. So India had better  plug in the AC (and hope the power stays on) or dome over the cities, or dig in like hobbits. Or leave, or die. And they, and the rest of us, will have at most three centuries  to prepare.

 

Computer Laws

          Computer Laws

 

          Moore’s Law: Computer hardware doubles in speed and capacity every 18 months.

 

Gates’s Law: Computer software doubles in languor and bloat every 18 months.

 

The Cyber-Siesta: Computer boot-up time remains a constant 60 seconds over many computer generations. Show me a petaflop machine, and I will show you a machine that must do 60 quadrillion floating-point operations to turn on.

 

          Hellerstein’s Limit:  If you keep your computer loaded with the very latest software, then over its lifetime it will do at most twice as much work as it did in the first 18 months.

          Proof: 1 + ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16 + …  =  2

 

          The Digital 90-10: Analog systems are 90% effective, and 10% ineffective, 100% of the time; but digital systems are 100% effective 90% of the time, and 100% ineffective 10% of the time.