My Quiet Life

There have been a lot of weird emergent side-effects of twitter's unique 140 character limit, e.g. the viral spread of @[name] as reply shorthand. I think one of the more bizarre, though, is the nameless phenomenon that I am now calling the "hashtag parenthetical".. What is a hashtag parenthetical?

This is a good example of a hashtag parenthetical. #maybenot #badexample #usuallyfunnier

It's this emergent form of derived humor by adding in a hashtag on twitter what would, in a more traditional form of writing, be placed in a parenthetical of some sort. But I see it cropping up all over the place lately. Weird, isn't it?

Hilarious preface: I just found this draft sitting unpublished from 6 months ago. Ironic that I'd write a long post about the brain, memory, learning and information ability and then ... forget about it entirely. I rule.

I've joked with friends a lot in the past about how smartphones have become the ultimate conversation-killer. Gone are the days of yore when over a casual beer with friends, hours of conversation could be stoked by asking a trivial question: "Who was it that played Frankenstein's monster in Young Frankenstein again?" Hours of conversation later, you've argued about who it was or wasn't, you've covered Mel Brooks' films, discussed the best and worst, and embarked down countless tangents, before finally coming around and remembering who it was. (Peter Boyle, by the way -- RIP) These days, it's more like "Who was it that played Frankenstein's monster in Young Frankenstein again?" Everyone whips out their iPhone, googling furiously. "Peter Boyle." "Ah.. Ah, yeah. yeah, that's right." *awkward silence* *checks twitter* "Alright, you guys are boring, I'm outta here."

I'm jokingly focusing on the negative aspect, and obviously information availability is not inherently a conversation killer (although anyone that has sat down to a table full of people staring at the iphones checking into 4square, twittering, or googling something can quickly make you long for the days before the smartphone). But really, the whole phenomenon actually fascinates me. Like anyone else, I consider myself a pretty curious person.. I'm motivated by, if nothing else, the desire to constantly keep learning. Most of my shower time is spent mentally iterating through the list of trivia/questions I keep meaning to look up but always forgetting. (This morning: does the Coriolis effect actually affect drain spiral direction or not, I can't remember!) (Answer: no). Unfortunately I've inherited my father's capacity for memory, so I usually forget I even wondered about it between the shower and the computer.

So, it's one thing now to be able to sit down at a computer or whip out a device and look up basically anything I'd ever want to know -- but can you imagine what a gamechanger this will become once the dawn of embedded/wearable/integrated computing really breaks? When the answer to "I wonder ...?" is literally instantly available to your brain? Further, forget what this means for an old, used-up, caffeine and booze-addled brain like mine -- can you imagine what this means for children with brains that soak up information like a sponge? It fascinates me. Scientists have been forever hypothesizing on the information capacity of the human brain in various ways (a straight neuron-to-bit analysis puts estimates at somewhere between 500 to 1000 terabytes), but I think we're on the verge of actually being able to test this out via sheer information overload.

Also, think about the weird social dynamics this changes. When you're sitting around shooting the shit with someone, and someone asks "Who was it that played Frankenstein's Monster in Young Frankenstein again?" and the douchebag across from you answers, is it because he's actually seen and appreciated the majesty of Young Frankenstein, or did he just google it on his Apple iBrainSync? Do those sorts of conversations even happen anymore? What's the point, if it's a given that everyone has the world's knowledgebase at their fingertips? Is there even a point to actually learning facts at all? Or, to put it less despairingly: how does this change the approach we take to true learning? Anyone familiar with computer programming can tell you that there's a difference between programming skill and knowledge of programming language specifics. A good programmer will probably have no idea if PHP's strstr() argument order is needle/haystack or haystack/needle. Actually learning this is hard, because of PHP's woeful inconsistency. Looking it up, however, is trivial. (Unsurprisingly, this makes interviewing/hiring a good programmer difficult -- it's not something that is easily tested for via evaluating trivial minutia/specifics. I'm looking at you, Brainbench.) Now imagine this sort of dichotomy applied to ... everything. How do we decide what's important to actually learn versus merely knowing how to look up?

The future's gonna be weird, man.

This is one of those blog posts that I'm only making because it didn't fit in 140 characters. So, I went to the "Way Late Play Date" at the Cumberland Science Museum Adventure Science Center. It was fun. A few thoughts, though:

• I thought serving food was dumb. It wasn't really even food -- it was chips, salsa, veggies, fruit and cheese. Hardly worth wasting your time grazing on, and it encouraged people to sit down, wasting valuable time that could have been better spent on SCIENCE!!
• Either ditch the booze entirely or beef it up a little. They only had beer (as far as I know?), and some people don't drink beer. The staff also had obviously never poured a beer from a keg in their entire life, resulting in cups of foam and awkward "yyyyyeah, could you do this again?" type conversations.
• The Sudekum planetarium is pretty amazing since its revamp in 2003 or whenever. The last time I saw it was in 6th grade, and it's come a long way -- although I do not approve of getting rid of the full arcade version of Lunar Lander they used to have. I do not approve of this AT ALL.
• If you didn't do the planetarium show, however, and feel like you missed out on something, don't worry: you didn't, really. It was a brief tour of the astronomy capabilities (which are amazing and awesome) and then a couple of commercials and two stupid laser shows (which were not amazing or awesome). I will never really understand the appeal of a laser show. I guess I could sortof see the appeal, if I were on acid. and 14. and .. stupid. and had terrible taste in music. Plus doing it in a cool facility like that planetarium -- I dunno. It's kindof like building a world-class stage theatre and then instead of doing Beckett and Shakespeare and stuff, you make shadow puppets on the wall and drool on yourself. More astronomy, less Floyd.
• UPDATE: Lastly, I forgot to mention: the Skies over Nashville show does actually sound really cool -- and they should do these shows (and more) on a schedule that is more adult-friendly as well.

SCIENCE!!

Foreign Policy has a great photo essay detailing Afghanistan in the 50's and 60's -- highlighting a harsh contrast between the modernizing Afghanistan then to the Afghanistan of today, after a half-century of imperial meddling and religious idiocy. I think it's important that people see this, because a lot of people seem to have a very short memory when it comes to things like this. Afghanistan wasn't always a war-torn medieval hell-hole. I encounter this sentiment a lot with regards to Ethiopia, as well. For everyone in my generation that grew up with We Are the World and other benefits, the mental image of Ethiopia seems to still be of some primitive famine-stricken wasteland. It's important to remember that it hasn't always been that way -- and I don't just mean that in a "it was the cradle of civilization!!!" sense. As recently even as the '60s, Ethiopia was a relatively progressive scene -- complete with a booming jazz/R&B music scene that rivaled and paralleled our own. This is why I cringe when I hear people making jokes about Ethiopians being starving ha ha -- because for one thing, that's not even the case anymore (Ethiopia is the largest economy in east africa at this point -- it's Sudan, among others, that is truly fucked right now), but western imperialism and communist encroachment are largely responsible (combined with the famines) for everything going to hell.

I know it seems like I'm stating the obvious to point out that Americans have a particularly short-lived geopolitical/historical memory, but it's incredibly annoying to see people characterize Ethiopia as a starving wasteland, Afghanistan as a barren haven for cave-terrorists, or Haiti as some backwards autocracy, without even a remote understanding of the history behind it, or a smidgen of acknowledgement of responsibility for how things got that way.

(And before I get attacked for it, I realize that the US is not entirely or even predominantly responsible for all of the things I've mentioned above. This is not an "AMERICA SUX" post, it's a "know history, and take responsibility" post.)

[Insert standard nerdy photography post disclaimer here.]

So, I stumbled across this post, which is billed as the ultimate beginner's guide to exposure. It's actually not a bad little intro, but I did notice something extremely hilarious.

If you go to the actual section called "Exposure", you'll note that they've provided three examples for "Overexposed", "Underexposed", and "Exposed well". The funny part? I am 99.9% confident that the "Exposed well" example is just a composite of the first two (or more) pictures. How can you tell? Look at the lows of the Overexposed and the highs of the Underexposed -- they're both at the same level in the "well exposed" shot. If this were truly a well exposed shot in between the two, you'd see an image that was more of a compromise between the two. Combining highs/lows in this way to get greater dynamic range is a fundamental benefit/function of HDR compositing. I'm not sure if it's actually HDR/tonemapped, but it's definitely a composite of some sort. Ironic that a tutorial on fundamental photography basics resorted to digital manipulation to provide the "exposed well" example. Fail.

I took some before/after pics of the fairgrounds prior to the last roller derby bout this weekend and made this overlay thing. Be sure to roll over the image.

Unfortunately, it's not a pixel-perfect overlay because in the spot where I originally took the before picture there was a guy videoing during the bout and I didn't wanna screw up his stuff.. Oh well. (And yes, I tried re-aligning/rotating the two images -- unfortunately it's an angle-of-view issue. amazing what a difference a few inches can make.) Nerd alert!

Last year I went to see the symphony at the ampitheater at the bicentennial mall, where they did a nice selection of Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Cole Porter, Tchaikovsky, and maybe some other stuff. A perfect summer evening in the grass listening to awesome music. Who could ask for more? Did I mention it was free? I was shocked by how few people knew about it, and how I had a hard time getting anyone to go. (Also, it'd probably make an awesome date idea -- you know, if you're into that sort of crap.) Well, they are doing it again this year.. Do yourself a favor and go to at least one of these.. From the email I got:

As the days get longer and the weather turns warm, the Nashville Symphony is ready to step out of the concert hall and enjoy the outdoors. We're offering free admission to all of the events in our summer parks concert series, thanks to the "Regions Free Days" program. Whether you live in the bustling heart of the city or in an outlying community, we'll be paying you a visit with an inviting program of well-known classics that listeners of all ages are sure to love. So pack a picnic dinner, bring the whole family and celebrate summertime with an evening of great music. A list of upcoming events follows:

June 10 at 7:30 p.m. - Centennial Park Bandshell, Nashville
June 13 at 7 p.m. - Crockett Park, Brentwood
June 14 at 8 p.m. - East Park, Nashville
June 15 at 7 p.m. - Cumberland University, Lebanon
June 22 at 7:30 p.m. - Centennial Park Bandshell, Nashville
June 23 at 7 p.m. - Key Park, Lafayette
June 29 at 7:30 p.m. - Centennial Park Bandshell, Nashville
June 30 at 8 p.m. - Bicentennial Mall, Nashville

Click on the name of the park to view a map of the location. You can also enter your starting location to get driving directions.