William Quincy Belle

3,125 words, 10-minute read

Over the past few years, especially during this era of t****, I have watched dismayed at the rise of opinion. One person's opinion is equal to another person's knowledge. Faith triumphs over facts. Belief is the same as reality. To paraphrase Winston Churchill:

Never have so many, knowing so little, said so much.
I remember a U.S. senator was being interviewed about global warming, and a journalist asked how he was going to vote on an up-coming bill. He said, "I don't believe in climate change. But I'm not a scientist." I don't believe it but I'm stupid? I don't believe it, but I refuse to spend any time correcting my ignorance? Our worldview is the sum total of our life experiences but what if our lack of life experiences leads to a faulty worldview? This is a U.S. senator voting on a critical piece of legislation which impacts our future, and he admits in front of the world he doesn't know what he's talking about.

• J. K. Rowling
  She pens a four-thousand-word essay where she takes the stance that biology dictates we are all born male or female; any other variation is invalid. She declares herself a TERF, a trans-exclusionary radical feminist and voices concern about transgender women being allowed into women's restrooms afraid they may molest other women. Needless to say, she got a lot of flak.
• Dave Chappelle
  In his 2021 comedy special The Closer, he makes a number of jokes about the transgender community. The reaction was mixed with some LGBTQ groups boycotting the film. Like Rowlings, he sees the issue as a question about biology; we are born either male or female. He also declared himself a TERF.
• Ricky Gervais
  In his latest comedy special he bemoans the current state of affairs, missing the good ol' days when women had wombs instead of cocks.
• Jordan Peterson
  His stance like the others seems to be about biology. I note he got himself in hot water on Twitter for criticizing the physician who performed the sex reassignment surgery on Elliot Page.

What does anyone do when they are confronted with something they've never seen before, with something they know nothing about? They do a double take. They doubt it's very existence. And if they're a comedian, they make fun of it, mocking it as not being real.

It is apparent that not one of the above people have heard of The Third Gender, a concept which has existed for thousands of years and has been accepted in other cultures, but which is, according to Wikipedia (referencing Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History (2007) by Richard Warms, Richard L. Warms, R. Jon McGee), still somewhat new to mainstream western culture and conceptual thought. I return to our initial reaction: We don't believe it exists and ridicule the idea.

How did my views about this develop? Let me recount a number of events in my life from the past fifty years.

I, like the rest of the world, was amazed and enthralled in 1968 by the release of the album Switched-On Bach by Walter Carlos, proof once again of the genius of Bach but proof that this modern electronic instrument was more than just an experimental fad.

Fast forward to 1979. I walk by a display rack of magazines and see the latest copy of Playboy, announcing an interview with Wendy Carlos. I always thought Playboy was a good magazine and would have bought it without the pictorials of naked women. I paged through the mag to read the opening of the interview where they always gave a short bio of the person being interviewed. Holy cow! Wendy is Walter or was Walter. I bought the Playboy and read the entire interview. Had I ever heard of a man transitioning to a woman? I don't remember but because of my love for the original album, I certainly paid attention to this person's story of their life journey.

I was vaguely aware of Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989), an American trans woman who was the first person to become widely known in the United States for having sex reassignment surgery.

Throughout the 1980s and the 1990s, I followed the rise of gay culture and the horrors of HIV. There was a world out there I personally knew nothing about but just because I had no personal experience with it, didn't mean this world didn't exist. It was very much real.

I saw the 1992 thriller The Crying Game and was surprised by the reveal of the lead woman being a man. This was completely foreign to me. I had no personal experience with such a situation, and it was surprising to discover such a thing was even possible and existed in the world.

In 1997, I got a call from the wife of a high school buddy I had not seen in twenty years. Would I come visit him? He was dying from AIDS. Bobby completed university, got a career, got married, and had two children, a normal, typical life. But he confessed to me that he had had unprotected sex in a bathhouse with a man, a total stranger. Now, he was paying the ultimate price, and six months later, he was dead. Was he secretly gay? I suddenly remembered that while the rest of us dated in high school, he never did. Was there something I was unaware of all those years? In looking back on high school, there was homophobia. It was part of the culture. Did Bobby keep his true self hidden from the rest of us?

I was fascinated by the 1999 movie The Matrix. The Wachowshis brothers had produced an entertaining and profound film experience. Hats off to them.

Today, it's the Wachowskis sisters. Larry transitioned to Lana in 2008, and Andy transitioned to Lily in 2016.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, RuPaul rose the fame, presenting quite a different lifestyle and personage from the mainstream. There was more to life than the traditional man, woman, husband, and wife, white picket fence in the suburbs with 2.5 children.

In researching for my blog, I ran across the story of Casa Susanna. In the early 1960s, cross-dressing men and transgender women would gather at this weekend destination and spend time together, all as women. In 2005, a book of photographs was published which led to a stage play. It's curious to look at these mostly black and white photos showing dozens of men dressed as women sitting around, eating, playing cards, reading, behaving as normal human beings, their only exception is that these were men dressed as women.

I also discovered that the American Psychiatric Association (APA), in their book the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), classified homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973. (Wikipedia: Homosexuality in the DSM) Even then, the manual listed in one form or another various terms to describe distress over homosexuality, and it was not until 2013 that any reference to homosexuality was removed. It would seem our views on human sexuality, whether anecdotal or institutional, are deeply ingrained.

From my blog What the @#$%^* do I know about sex?, Sep 27/2011:

Back in the early 90's, I'm watching one of the talk shows, not quite as elevated as Oprah but not as low as Jerry Springer. A couple is being interviewed but we're given to understand they have a secret. Commercial break. We return to see two women. I look closer. Woman number two is the husband; he's dressed up in drag. The wife explains that her husband has always had a fetish for women's clothes and once a month he dresses up and the 2 of them go out for a drink together as 2 female friends. She goes on to say that her husband is a wonderful man, a great husband, a good lover and an excellent father; he just seems to have this one special quirk and it is the only oddity out of an otherwise exemplary human being.

Now just mull that one over for a minute. We have a gentleman who has a fetish for woman's clothes. How in heaven's name did this couple arrive at a point where the man could bring this up with his wife? Who knows, maybe he told her about his fetish before they were married, and she married him anyways. The point is that their relationship was open and honest enough that they could discuss this. But look at the alternative. What if she had reacted to this discovery with, "Eew. Get away from me your goddamn weird-oh pervert!" Well, there's one relationship which would have come to a screeching halt and there's one guy who would say to himself that he would never, ever again speak frankly with anybody about "his secret".

At some point she must have weighed the pros and cons and felt the balance sheet showed more benefits than liabilities. But picture what would have happened if the man felt so ashamed of his feelings that he never talked about them with his wife; he kept them hidden. Do I see a potential headline? "Respected family and businessman Fred Schwartz, seen here dressed up in drag in a photograph taken in the local bar Tom's Eatery, was arrested this past Saturday."

In 2017, on a social media platform, I run into a person identified by a female avatar, Alice. We chat, the usual small talk. But then, things turn serious, and Alice decides to tell me her story. Alice is actually Frank, a 55-year-old man transitioning to a woman. Frank was born male. He grew up male. He went to school, graduated, and found himself a career as a male. He got married and had two children. At the age of fifty, he decides to come out. His wife is accepting but she said she couldn't live as a lesbian, so they get a divorce, remaining good friends and still co-parenting. Frank sends me a real-life photo of himself. I see a man, wearing makeup and a wig in a dress. He looks nothing like a woman; he looks like a man in drag. He looks very much the men dressed as women in the photos of Casa Susanna.

Our conversation came to an end, and we went our separate ways never to see one another again. However, I've thought about this story on many occasions. What trials and tribulations was Frank going to face? What ridicule? Obviously, this was important to him, or he wouldn't risk it all, but I still found it incredible that he gets through fifty years of his life as a man but now feels it is of the utmost importance he finds the real him in a woman.

Moving into the 2010s, the question of transgender became more visible in the media. I was aware of Laverne Cox (b 1972), an actress and transgender advocate who rose to prominence in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. I noted Wikipedia's list of transgender people, bringing attention to the extent of the phenomenon.

What does all this mean?
In light of the above, with the controversaries about transgender over the past few years and not delving into the differences between transgender, transvestite, gay, etc., I did some research and ran across The Third Gender. I like to say that if something happens once or twice, it could be nothing more than a fluke. But when it happens repeatedly, there has to be a phenomenon, something real which I'm unaware of. For years, I knew about the shemale niche in porn, males who appeared as women but with male genitalia. It was all titillating but my curiosity about the topic had led me some time ago to the conclusion there was more to this than meets the eye. I had heard of the ladyboys of Thailand (Kathoey), some, because of discrimination, are forced to work in the sex trade. I could ask why men would be attracted to a ladyboy, but I could also ask why a man would want to become a ladyboy.

I return to an earlier statement: [The Third Gender is] still somewhat new to mainstream western culture and conceptual thought. The Wikipedia article, with references in the footnotes, describes this concept as dating back thousands of years. Human sexuality can be more than just the traditional binary of male and female with various shades of gray, feminine males, masculine females, androgynous, hermaphrodite, etc.

All of us are faced with something we've never seen before; with something we know nothing about. It's disconcerting. It upsets the balance of our world. But is this thing really new, or is it merely new to us? Is the problem that we're confronting something unseen or is the problem that we're confronting our ignorance? I'll be the first to recognise that it's a big world out there, and there's a lot going on I know nothing about. My problem is not falling into the trap of dismissing something if I, personally, know nothing about it. My ignorance doesn't make something invalid.

J. K. Rowling
I just finished reading once again the entirety of the June 10, 2020 essay which supposedly got Ms. Rowling into trouble. It's heartfelt and brings up important points about the transgender issue. Nevertheless, her belief in the innateness of gender doesn't explain all of the previous examples I've mentioned. She admits to being "triggered" by her own bad experiences, and I question how much this has clouded her judgement. She says she's worried about men being granted access to women's washrooms, forgetting when referencing the leader of the free world’s long history of sexual assault accusations and his proud boast of ‘grabbing them by the pussy’, that any man can walk into the women's washroom right now without having to pretend to be a woman.

I can't help feeling that like water, this issue will find its own level. The pendulum has been on the side of denying transgender, keep it in the closet, ignore it, and it will go away. Activists have pushed the pendulum to the other side and now, everything is about transgender. (I see a parallel with homosexuality in our society.) I'm sure there's a middle ground. There is a third gender.

Dave Chapelle
I've watched a number of clips about Chappelle's transgender jokes taken from the comedy special The Closer. (YouTube: here, here) In my piece The S Word, I talk about how the N word can only be used by blacks and go on to conclude that the S word (slut) can really only be used by women. Chapelle is a comedian. He's trying to make jokes. However, Chapelle is not transgender, and his jokes come across as homophobic and cruel. Yes, homophobic. In one piece, he talks about Caitlyn Jenner possibly posing nude in Sports Illustrated. After making comedic faces of surprise and disgust, he states that he's going to say it for everybody, "Yuck!" Every joke has a premise, and the premise here is that somehow Caitlyn's female genitalia are not just inferior but disgusting. Why? The only conclusion is that Chappelle is still thinking of Caitlyn Jenner being Bruce Jenner, and being a heterosexual man, Chappelle is saying yuck to a man. In another piece, he says, "I'm not saying trans women are not women. I'm just saying those pussies they got... You know what I mean?" I'm sorry, that's not funny. It's cruel. I'm sure a transgender woman as a comedian could impart humor in some of these ideas but hearing a man, Dave Chappelle say them, it comes across as mean. So, for me, the real controversy is not Chappelle stating his opinion about transgender issues, it's that he's a professional comedian who's failed at his job. He's not funny. And I find his opinion to be uninformed. It's obvious he has no idea of what The Third Gender is.

Ricky Gervais
In his Netflix special, Supernature, Gervais speaks longingly of the old-fashioned woman, the ones with wombs but says he enjoys the new women, the ones with beards and cocks. (YouTube: here) He's trying to be funny, but his joke is based on the premise that this issue is something new. It's like he tells a joke about machines in the air that fly like birds. Well, hello! Did somebody just wake up from a hundred-year coma? Gervais is a professional comedian. It's his job to be funny. I'm not going to discuss possible transphobia, woke culture trying to cancel him, etc. I'm merely going to say these jokes aren't funny. He's failed at his job. The reference to the old-fashioned confirms what was said above: This is new to western culture. There is a third gender.

Jordan Peterson
I don't really know Mr. Peterson. However, I have run into his public pronouncements through media and have found that for whatever reason, he has not clearly thought through the implications of what he's said. (Peterson talks about Canada's response to the pandemic, and I wonder, if he had been in charge, how many Canadians he would have killed.) He criticizes Elliot Page and his transition from Ellen to Elliot. Twitter suspends Peterson's account. (here) I have no idea what Peterson thinks he's going to achieve with his adamantly opinionated stance, but I repeat what I said above. There is a Third Gender.

Final Word
Something is going on. There's a phenomenon happening. I've never had doubts about my gender. I'm a male. I've always been one; I will always be one. However, I've seen enough to realize I'm not looking at a few isolated incidences, flukes as it were, but something significant in the human race as a whole. I can no longer look at the world purely from my own life but must conclude there are things going on outside my realm of experience.

I can't help thinking the above mentioned four public figures will sooner or later revise their opinions. It's obvious to me none of them know anything about The Third Gender. I repeat they are each giving their opinion as opposed to saying what they know. Belief trumps knowledge. In my piece Cancel Culture, Supposedly, I talk about those who complain about woke people trying to cancel them. I then go see why they've incurred the wrath of the crowd and have found on far too many occasions the individual in question deserves their wrath by being sexist, racist, xenophobic, ill-informed, misinformed, or just plain stupid. If what anybody believes ostracizes another group of people, I'd say they desperately need to reassess their beliefs. They complain about being cancelled, not realizing how they themselves are cancelling other people.


References

Wikipedia: TERF
TERF is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. First recorded in 2008, the term originally applied to the minority of feminists espousing sentiments that other feminists considered transphobic, such as the rejection of the assertion that trans women are women, the exclusion of trans women from women's spaces, and opposition to transgender rights legislation. The meaning has since expanded to refer more broadly to people with trans-exclusionary views who may have no involvement with radical feminism.

Those referred to with the word TERF typically reject the term or consider it a slur; some identify themselves as gender critical.[5] Critics of the word TERF say that it has been used in an overly-broad fashion and in an insulting manner, alongside violent rhetoric. In academic discourse, there is no consensus on whether or not TERF constitutes a slur.

Wikipedia: Casa Susanna
Casa Susanna was a popular weekend destination in Jewett, NY for cross-dressing men and transgender women in the early 1960s. The bungalow camp was run by Susanna Valenti and her wife Marie, who also ran a wig store in town.

A Safe House for the Girl Within By Penelope Green, NY Times, Sept. 7, 2006
There was a pilot and a businessman, an accountant, a librarian and a pharmacologist. There was a newspaper publisher, and a court translator. By day, they were the men in the gray flannel suits, but on the weekends, they were Felicity, Cynthia, Gail, Sandy, Fiona, Virginia and Susanna. It was the dawn of the 1960’s, yet they wore their late 50’s fashions with awkward pride: the white gloves, the demure dresses and low heels, the stiff wigs. Many were married with children, or soon would be. In those pre-Judith Butler, pre-Phil Donahue days, when gender was more tightly tethered to biology, these men’s “gender migrations,” or “gender dysphoria,” as the sociologists began to call cross-dressing, might cost them their marriages, their jobs, their freedom.

2022-07-13

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Published on Feb 7, 2020 by TEDx Talks
YouTube: What I learned from parents who don't vaccinate their kids | Jennifer Reich | TEDxMileHigh (13:00)
Why do some parents reject vaccines, despite evidence that they've helped generations of children stay healthy? When sociologist Jennifer Reich started interviewing parents about this growing trend, she realized it wasn't as simple as being ignorant or anti-science. In this fascinating talk, she explains why this movement is the symptom of a much bigger problem -- our broken beliefs about parenting & health. Jennifer Reich is Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research examines how individuals and families weigh information and strategize their interactions with the state and service providers, particularly as they relate to healthcare and welfare. Over the last decade, she has examined how parents come to reject vaccines for their children, in dialog with physicians, complementary healthcare providers, activists, and researchers. She wrote Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines. She & her husband have three children.


References

Wikipedia: Jennifer Reich
Jennifer Anne Reich is an American sociologist, researcher and author at the University of Colorado Denver. Her research interests include healthcare, adolescence, welfare, and policy. Her work on vaccine hesitancy gained widespread attention during the 2019 measles outbreaks. She is the author of three books and numerous journal articles.

Vaccine hesitancy
Reich spent nearly ten years exploring what motivates some parents to decline inoculations for their children, or delay them. Her interviews with parents and subsequent research are presented in her 2016 book Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines. She sees vaccine hesitancy as a consequence of societal pressures on parents (especially middle-class mothers) to make choices that are uniquely suited to their own children in terms of health and education, to maximize their chances of success in life: "We do vaccines in a way that has been shown to be scientifically the most efficacious and the safest and also the easiest to distribute at a national level. But for parents who really prioritize each child in their family as an individual, they don't accept this kind of logic." Working full-time on their kids, these parents are inclined to disregard generic advice dispensed by health professionals.

Facing a steady stream of misleading information, pediatricians and public health professionals have to know what motivates parents to be reluctant about vaccines, and to adjust how they communicate, says Reich. She suggests pediatricians have more success having a fruitful dialogue when they can communicate with empathy, parent-to-parent. How to put the focus on collective benefits - explaining own inoculation better protects all children - may be a way for public health authorities to overcome the reluctance of many parents.

2021-12-03

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For as long as I can remember, I've found certain sounds to be mesmerizing. It could be the sound of the rain or the surf. It could be something repetitive like a fan or a piece of machinery. New Age music can also fit in this category with its soft sounds supposedly helpful for meditation.

I ran across the term ASMR, autonomous sensory meridian response, a deliberate attempt to evoke this sensation, this hypnotic state of mind through the use of soft sounds like whispering, tapping, or scrapping. I have no idea if everyone "gets it", but this term certainly describes what I've encountered. When people have talked about an altered state of consciousness, this is it but without the use of drugs.

Wikipedia: ASMR
Autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR), sometimes auto sensory meridian response, is a tingling sensation that typically begins on the scalp and moves down the back of the neck and upper spine. A pleasant form of paresthesia, it has been compared with auditory-tactile synesthesia and may overlap with frisson.

ASMR signifies the subjective experience of "low-grade euphoria" characterized by "a combination of positive feelings and a distinct static-like tingling sensation on the skin". It is most commonly triggered by specific auditory or visual stimuli, and less commonly by intentional attention control. A genre of videos which intend to stimulate ASMR has emerged, of which over 13 million are published on YouTube.

Published on May 31, 2018 by The New Yorker
YouTube: How ASMR Became an Internet Phenomenon | Annals of Obsession | The New Yorker (7:57)
How the sounds of crinkling, whispering, and tapping induce euphoria.



Final Word
As the Wikipedia points out, there are a zillion ASMR videos published (over 13 million). Maria is but one of many.

YouTube search: ASMR

In researching this, I also discovered the following:

YouTube search: Unintentional ASMR

Unintentional? An activity, a tone of voice, meant for one thing but has a hypnotic quality to it.

The landscape painter Bob Ross produced a number of TV episodes which are classified by some as ASMR-like.
YouTube: Bob Ross

Videos of the "Alexander Technique" are also seen that way.
YouTube: Alexander Technique

I find this video of the instructor Richard Walker to be quite hypnotic. Oh, that voice!

It would seem that anything can be interpreted as ASMR by anyone.

My blog: Suminagashi: Painting on Water

Relax. Meditate. Or just drift off. Happy journeys!



References

Wikipedia: Maria Viktorovna
Maria Viktorovna, (born July 22, 1986), professionally known as Gentle Whispering, is a Russian-born ASMR practitioner and YouTuber. She has a YouTube channel called Gentle Whispering with over 1.8 million subscribers.

Twitter: Maria Gentlewhispering ASMR @GentleWhisperin

YouTube: Gentle Whispering ASMR

Vox - May 25, 2018
ASMR, explained: why millions of people are watching YouTube videos of someone whispering By German Lopez
Here’s what you need to know about the strange, tingly sensation that could help you relax.

The Washington Post - Dec 15, 2014
A whisper, then tingles, then 87 million YouTube views: Meet the star of ASMR By Caitlin Gibson
ASMR is described as a pleasurable tingling that begins in the head and scalp, shimmies down the spine and relaxes the entire body. Maria — she asked that her last name be withheld for safety reasons; her videos have sometimes attracted unwanted attention — experiences ASMR, and her YouTube channel, GentleWhispering, melds her personal tingle-triggers with others suggested by her fans. The resulting videos have drawn more than 87 million views, making Maria the premier celebrity of a controversial but increasingly recognized phenomenon.

Published on Dec 14, 2015 by Gentle Whispering ASMR
YouTube: What is ASMR? (2:00)
Hello there :) (originally requested by The Washington Post) this video is a short welcome into the online world of ASMR and my channel as a tiny spec of it. If you find yourself drawn to certain sounds, actions, voices in real life and experience a wonderful bliss while witnessing it you might be ASMR sensitive. CONGRATULATIONS! :D You might have a very unique gift in the way that you can experience the beauty of sounds, visuals and human connection by feeling pleasure/euphoria/tingles/chills/vibrations/sleepiness/deep relaxation by just having a contact with a certain trigger. There are unlimited amounts of triggers and their combinations that can be pleasant for YOU personally. EXPLORE! (check out my favorite ASMRtists on my channel side bar for guidance) :) If you feel like this applies to you and you feel excited/interested in learning more about this phenomenon, then welcome to our community :)



Above, I suggested that music can also be ASMR-like. Here are some examples of electronic music I've found mesmerizing. Enjoy.

My blog: Peter Kuli: Life Moves Pretty Fast

My blog: Malefique: Don't Go

My blog: Birocratic: Orientation

My blog: Danosongs: Mars and Stars

2020-05-11

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"Today, around 55 percent of the world’s population is thought to be living in an urban area or city, with that figure set to rise to 68 percent over the coming decades, according to the “Population Division” report from the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs." -CNBC, May 17/2018


Published on Oct 14, 2016 by John Ramos
YouTube: MUST WATCH - Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity - A Pentagon Video (4:55)
According to a startling Pentagon video obtained by The Intercept, the future of global cities will be an amalgam of the settings of "Escape from New York" and "Robocop" — with dashes of the "Warriors" and "Divergent" thrown in. It will be a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers.

At least that's the scenario outlined in "Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity," a five-minute video that has been used at the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations University. All that stands between the coming chaos and the good people of Lagos and Dhaka (or maybe even New York City) is the U.S. Army, according to the video, which The Intercept obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.


References

Wikipedia: Megacity
A megacity is a very large city metropolitan area, typically with a population of more than 10 million people.

Largest cities
This is the list of the world's largest metropolitan areas by population as of 2016.

1. Tokyo = 38,140,000
2. Shanghai = 34,000,000
3. Jakarta = 31,500,000
4. Delhi = 27,200,000
5. Seoul = 25,600,000

Megacities and The United States Army: Preparing for a complex and uncertain future (PDF)
Chief of Staff of the Army, Strategic Studies Group
Cities with populations of ten million or more are given a special designation: megacity. There are currently over twenty megacities in the world, and by 2025 there will be close to forty. The trends are clear. Megacities are growing, they are be-coming more connected, and the ability of host nation governments to effectively deal with their explosive growth and maintain security is, in many cases, diminishing. Megacities are a unique environment that the U.S. Army does not fully understand.


2019-04-22

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LAWs (Lethal Autonomous Weapons): Dystopian science fiction or future reality?


Published on Nov 12, 2017 by Stop Autonomous Weapons
YouTube: Slaughterbots (7:47)
Many of the world's leading AI researchers and humanitarian organizations are concerned about the potentially catastrophic consequences of allowing lethal autonomous weapons to be developed.

Wikipedia: Slaughterbots
Slaughterbots is a 2017 arms-control advocacy video presenting a dramatized near-future scenario where swarms of inexpensive microdrones use artificial intelligence and facial recognition to assassinate political opponents based on preprogrammed criteria. The video was released onto YouTube by the Future of Life Institute and Stuart Russell, a professor of computer science at Berkeley, on 12 November 2017. The video quickly went viral, gaining over two million views. The video was also screened to the November 2017 United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons meeting in Geneva.




An Observation
At first glance, this seems far-fetched: It's more of the realm of science fiction, a dystopian interpretation of the future. However, can we extrapolate from current events a logical progression to such a scenario?

* Drones or UAVs (Unmanned Air Vehicles) have been used by the United States for over a decade in its war on terror.

* A.I. is well-known in commercial products such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and various cell phone systems.

* Drones or quadcopters are the staple of videographers and aerial surveyors.

* Facial recognition is used by Facebook and Google in the detection of people in photographs.

The pieces of the puzzle are all there: The technologies currently exist. The idea laid out in this video is within the realm of possibility. Like landmines, will we see an international treaty banning LAWs? Then again, will such a treaty stop them? I note that Mine Ban Treaty has 32 non-signatory states including the United States, Russia, and China: the top three largest arms exporters in the world.

What will the future hold? I can't help noting that a person without a gun can't shoot you.


References

Ban Lethal Autonomous Weapons
Take Action
The development of lethal autonomous weapons would be catastrophically destabilizing to society, and time is running out to prevent them from being developed.

Wikipedia: Lethal autonomous weapon
Lethal autonomous weapons (LAWs) are a type of autonomous military robot that can independently search and engage targets based on programmed constraints and descriptions. LAW are also called lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS), lethal autonomous robots (LAR), robotic weapons, or killer robots. LAWs may operate in the air, on land, on water, under water, or in space. The autonomy of current systems as of 2018 is restricted in the sense that a human gives the final command to attack - though there are exceptions with certain "defensive" systems.

Wikipedia: Stuart J. Russell
Stuart Jonathan Russell (born 1962) is a computer scientist known for his contributions to artificial intelligence. He is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley and Adjunct Professor of Neurological Surgery at the University of California, San Francisco.

Published on Mar 26, 2019 by Future of Life Institute
YouTube: Why We Should Ban Lethal Autonomous Weapons (5:43)
Top AI researchers -- including deep-learning co-inventor Yoshua Bengio and AAAI President-elect Bart Selman -- explain what you need to know about lethal autonomous weapons. Thanks to Joseph Gordon-Levitt for the narration.


2019-04-21

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How do we know what we know? We talk about "common knowledge" — beliefs held by most people — but can we prove anything?

If I'm sitting with someone in a coffee shop, I can take two packets of sugar and put them on the left side of the table. I can take another two packets and put them on the right side. I can then move to two groups of two packets into the center of the table and say, "Voilà! Two plus two equals four!"

For those philosophically inclined, we could also arrive through discussion at "Cogito, ergo sum", I think, therefore I am. That is, I can prove the point I'm making right at the table, while sharing a Triple Venti, Half Sweet, Non-Fat, Caramel Macchiato.

But other assertions may be difficult, if not impossible to conclusively demonstrate.

• The Earth is not flat.
• Vaccinations do not cause autism.
• For every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows.

And thus starts the argument. — What is common knowledge for one, may not be true for someone else. — But is there such a thing as a fact?

Independent scientists doing independent research independently arrive at the same results.

But I'm not a scientist. I can't prove diddly-squat. As a consequence, I must rely on other people to prove stuff. Then I have to make a decision: Who do I choose to believe?

Published on Sep 13, 2017 by TEDx Talks
YouTube: Why do we believe things that aren't true? | Philip Fernbach | TEDxMileHigh (15:50)
It seems like we're living in an epidemic of false belief. Clearly the other side just doesn’t have all the facts, right? Or are they really that stupid? In this fascinating and hilarious talk, cognitive scientist Philip Fernbach peels back the layers of what we really know and reveals some surprising truths about the human mind. Philip Fernbach is a cognitive scientist and professor in the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Co-author of The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, Philip's research focuses on why we think we know more than we actually do and the implications this has on individuals and society.



Final Word
In the era of Trump, The Right versus The Left, I see more than ever we are all debating our beliefs. We believe something is true, but do we know something is true? We rely on other people, but do those other people believe something or know something?

My Boiling Spaghetti Story
When I was growing up, Mom taught me to put a little salt in the water before boiling pasta. However, later in life, when I was out on my own, and being lazy about cooking, I dropped this step from the recipe and always boiled pasta without salt. Personally, I found no difference in taste, and nobody ever complained about my spaghetti.

I ran into somebody who was taken aback by my lack of cooking skills, adamantly demanding I use salt. I got curious: What did the experts say?

my blog: Boiling spaghetti: to salt or not to salt - Nov 11/2010
[Two students] set up a controlled experiment where they cooked pasta in 3 pots, one with no salt, one with 5g of salt and one with 10g of salt. They cooked the pasta then tested the water for salt content.

The results of their 3 tests were that there was more salt in the water after cooking the pasta than before. Their conjecture is that pasta releases salt into the water and that salt must come from the flour.

Let me repeat that as it certainly baffled me when I read their paper. There were 3 pots, one without salt, one with 5g added and one with 10g of salt added. They cooked the pasta then tested the water afterwards. In all 3 cases there was more salt in the water than before the pasta was cooked. In other words, the pasta did not absorb salt; it released salt into the water.

My mother's mother taught her to put salt in the water. My mother taught me to put salt in the water. I run into somebody else who was taught to put salt in the water. But here's an experiment showing that pasta does not absorb salt from the boiling process, but releases it into the water. We rely on other people. We rely on the knowledge of other people, and we believe them. We choose to believe them. But are they correct? Who among us is going to take the time and effort necessary to experiment and prove objectively whether or not salt should be added to the water?

Common knowledge. Is it common knowledge or is it common belief? You don't think the Earth is flat? Okay, prove it!


References

official web site: Philip Fernbach
Bio: I am a professor of marketing in the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, Boulder. I am a cognitive scientist who studies how people think, and I apply insights from my research to improve public discourse and help consumers and managers make better decisions. I am co-director of the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making, an affiliate of the Institute of Cognitive Science, and the Center for Ethics and Social Responsibility, and an external advisory board member for McKinsey & Company. I teach data analytics to undergraduate and Masters students.

Wikipedia: Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Cognitive scientists study intelligence and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information. Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention, reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology. The typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. The fundamental concept of cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."

Wikipedia: B.o.B.
Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. (born November 15, 1988),[5] known professionally as B.o.B, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and conspiracy theorist from Decatur, Georgia.

The Flat Earth Society (theflatearthsociety.org)
The Flat Earth Society mans the guns against oppression of thought and the Globularist lies of a new age. Standing with reason we offer a home to those wayward thinkers that march bravely on with REASON and TRUTH in recognizing the TRUE shape of the Earth - Flat.

According to my research, there was a schism in flat Earth movement. As one put it, the following is the Protestant church versus the above Catholic.

The Flat Earth Society (tfes.org)
The Flat Earth Society mans the guns against oppression of thought and the Globularist lies of a new age. Standing with reason we offer a home to those wayward thinkers that march bravely on with REASON and TRUTH in recognizing the TRUE shape of the Earth - Flat.

The Illusion of Explanatory Depth
This complementary talk further explores our knowledge: What do we know and how do we know it.

Published on Nov 14, 2013 by TEDx Talks
YouTube: The Illusion of Understanding: Phil Fernbach at TEDxGoldenGatePark (13:03)
Professor Phil Fernbach discusses the "illusion of understanding" in this riveting TEDxGoldenGatePark talk that sheds light on how our understanding of things may not coincide with the depth of our opinions.


my blog: What are the epistemological implications of indeterminacy? - Mar 27/2013
Ever since I attended university (for the first time), I have used this grand question to mock those who pontificate about esoteric erudition. Exploring the meaning of life comes crashing back to Earth when you discover you've run out of toilet paper.

2019-04-17

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replicate (transitive verb): to duplicate, to repeat

replicator (noun): a fictional technology from Star Trek:The Next Generation. This machine was capable of reproducing objects, originally seen synthesizing meals on demand.

3D Printing or additive manufacturing is the process of making a three-dimensional solid object from a digital model. The "additive process" puts down successive layers of material in manner resembling printing. Unlike a printer which puts down one layer of ink on a piece of paper, this process puts down a layer of material (heated plastic or powdered material mixed with a solidifying resin) then returns to put the next layer on top of the previous layer gradually building up the three-dimensional object. Normally we would think of complex objects being made up of a series of components. We would produce each component then assemble them to create the complex object. However, more sophisticated 3D printers can produce complex objects consisting of multiple parts such as gears that actually move and interact.

This isn't quite the replicator from Star Trek but to view what 3D printing technology is currently doing is astounding.

3D Gun
What prompted me to look at 3D Printing were the headlines about one Cody Wilson who has 3D printed a gun, the Liberator .380 single shot pistol, and successfully test fired it. His non-profit organisation Defense Distributed was intent on publishing open source gun designs but has now come under the scrutiny of law makers. As of May 9, 2013, the U.S. Department of State ordered Defense Distributed to remove the download links for the STL files of the gun's design. Nevertheless, the plans had already been downloaded from the company's web site thousands of times so they are now out there in the world.

Is this a wake-up call? Has this brought to the forefront a technology which is probably unknown to the average person in the street? Is Wired Magazine justified in calling Wilson one of the 15 most dangerous people on the planet? (Wired)

A Manufacturing Revolution
Picture what the Internet has brought us: access to information. What's playing at the movies? How about a new recipe for banana bread? I wonder what the Jones have been up to lately. The sky's the limit. All you have to do is find out the right keywords to type into your search whether on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, then you have pages, no hundreds of pages to sift through to find precisely what you want. It's no longer a question of going to the public library; it's all there at your fingertips.

Now imagine this. Instead of going down to neighbourhood hardware store to buy an adjustable wrench, you downloaded a design file for one then made it. Yes, you made it. Right in your home!

Uploaded on Sep 9, 2011 by FunTheoryVideos
Amazing 3D Printer (4:27)


Development of objects is done in CAD software which outputs a STL file, STereoLithography, read by a 3D Printer. However, another file format is in use, an AMF or Additive Manufacturing File, is more advanced and allows for support for colour, different materials, and other intricacies of 3D design. I think of downloading, for instance, a PDF which contains a document. I print the file and then hold in my hand the document. I download an STL or AMF file, I print the file in a 3D Printer and then hold in my hand the object.

Additive vs. Subtractive
Traditionally, we have worked with a subtractive process. If I take a piece of wood, I whittle it down until I get what I want. If I take a piece of metal, I grind it down to make the necessary piece as you would see in a tool and die shop. 3D Printing on the other hand is an additive process. You add material layer by layer building up the object you want.

While this may at first seem to be limited, there are examples like the wrench above, where the final object is made up of component parts. Those parts, like gears, can interact so the resulting object does not necessarily have to be a single thing; it can be a complex object made up of individual parts.

Cost
It would seem that 3D Printing was not cheap and might have been strictly the domain of companies. However, there are now 3D Printers specifically made for the home user in the range of one or two thousand dollars. It is also possible to purchase parts and assemble your own 3D Printer and reduce the overall cost of the machine to under a thousand, maybe only a few hundred dollars. As with anything, as the demand goes up, manufacturing competition will become greater and hence prices will come down.

Rapid Prototyping
Industry seems to have taken a shining to 3D Printing as a fast and inexpensive way of prototyping designs. Rather than machining a part, you could 3D print a part and assess in three-dimensions if your design works or not. The plastics used in the layering process might not be as hard as metal, but as you see in the above video, those plastics can in some cases be hard enough to produce a working wrench. That's today. What are the developers of this technology going to come up with tomorrow?

Printed Firearms
It would seem that technology ends up in two things: war and sex. Printing a gun seems like an obvious objective of this new technology and a quick search of the web returns a number of articles talking about 3D Printing is also found its way into the sex industry. Instead of buying a sex toy, you could download the design file and make your own. (Google: 3D Printing and sex)

Is this the apocalypse? Or is this the collective we panicking at something new that it doesn't understand? Is Cody Wilson a bad man or just a rebel wanting to push the boundaries of society? There is no doubt about it. Whether it's Cody Wilson or not, somebody was going to try to do it. With any new technology comes new issues. But you are not going to be able to stop it. Cody has proven it's possible. This is going to happen. (Below, the 3rd video is a documentary about Cody Wilson by Vice Magazine. It's worth a look to understand what printed guns mean for society.)

Final Word
Wow. Like really wow. Okay, this isn't anything like the replicator on Star Trek but heck, can you see the potential? Do you see what this means? This is going to transform the definition of making things, of manufacturing. What did home computers, home printers, home faxes, and home scanners do for remote work, for home offices? What is 3D printing going to do for home workshops? What is it going to do for home life? If I don't have a wrench, I can go to the Internet, download a file then make a wrench for myself on the spot.

I've only scratched the surface in discussing 3D printing. It may not be like a replicator but I can certainly see where this is headed. What are we going to see ten years from now? We won't be able to create things out of thin air but we are going to have something capable of creating things from base materials even in our own home. The future does look exciting.

3D printed Valve Handle

References

Google image search: 3D Printing

Google video search: 3D Printing

Wikipedia: 3D printing
Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is a process of making a three-dimensional solid object of virtually any shape from a digital model. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, where successive layers of material are laid down in different shapes. 3D printing is considered distinct from traditional machining techniques, which mostly rely on the removal of material by methods such as cutting or drilling (subtractive processes).

Wikipedia: Cody Wilson
Cody Rutledge Wilson (born January 31, 1988) is an American law student and self-proclaimed crypto-anarchist and free-market anarchist. He is the founder and director of Defense Distributed, a non-profit organization that develops and publishes open source gun designs, so-called "Wiki Weapons," suitable for 3D printing.

Wired Magazine - Dec 19/2012
The 15 Most Dangerous People in the World By The Staff of Danger Room
There used to be an established order to the world. A structure to things. You couldn't print a gun like a term paper. It was impossible to wreck a nuclear production plant with a few lines of code. Flying robots didn't descend on you in the dead of night and kill you in your home.

But that order has been upended. Cheap videos in California help spark riots in Cairo. Lynchpins of the Middle East now rant about 'Planet of the Apes' in public, and Iranian generals trash-talk David Petraeus over SMS. The world has gone a little haywire — sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Here are our choices for the 15 people most responsible for making it that way.

[Like me, I am sure some of these names are going to be unknown to you. Nevertheless, Wired's reasoning behind the selection of each of these names to their list of the most dangerous is quite eye-opening. This is an article worth reading. Today's world is truly a different world.]

15: Paula Broadwell
14: Cody Wilson
13 and 12: Matthew Dooley and Mark Basseley Yousef
11 and 10: The Stealth Jet Whistleblowers
9: Ahmed Abu Khattala
8: Eugene Kaspersky
7: The Men Behind the China Aviation Industry Corporation
6: Sheikh Ahmed Madobe
5: Mohamed Morsi
4: John Brennan
3: Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman
2: Bashar Assad
1: Qassem Suleimani

Published on Apr 5, 2012 by ObjetGeometries
3D Printed Snake, Gears, Art, Wrench and more.. (8:05)
Sam Green of the Objet blog explains the whole range of capabilities enabled by Objet's advanced 3D printers - from full assemblies (movable 3D printed snake and brain gear), to multi-material art and product prototypes to ABS-grade functional prototypes (adjustable 3D printed wrench and even a working 3D printed peeler).


Uploaded on Jul 19, 2011 by ObjetGeometries
Printing a Giant Wrench with a 3D Printer (4:21)
3D printers can be used to create virtually any object directly from a computer aided design. This video shows how an Objet Connex 3D printer can produce 6 different size adjustable wrenches from 5cm in size to 50 cm in size - all in one print run. All the wrenches contain fully-movable parts and were created with no assembly. The wrenches are made of Objet's ABS-like material which has the strenght and toughness of ABS-grade engineering plastics.


Published on Mar 25, 2013 by vice
3D Printed Guns (Documentary) (24:10)
Cody R Wilson has figured out how to print a semi-automatic rifle from the comfort of his own home. Now he's putting all the information online so that others will join him.
--
This is a story about the rapid evolution of a technology that has forced the American legal system to play catch up. Cody Wilson, a 25 year old University of Texas Law student, is an advocate for the open source production of firearms using 3D printing technology. This makes him a highly controversial figure on both sides of the gun control issue. MOTHERBOARD sat down with Cody in Austin, Texas to talk about the constitution, the legal system, and to watch him make and test-fire a 3D-printed gun.


Treehugger - Sep 10/2012
10 Tools You Can 3D Print for Your Garden
1. Birdhouse
2. Plant Pot
3. Fence Post Cap
4. Trellis Hooks
5. Hand Rake
6. Slug Trap
7. Valve Handle
8. Watering Spout
9. Seed Spacer
10. Question Mark Planter

2013-05-13

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Okay, now just how geeky is this? The mathematical constant Pi is equal to three point one four one five nine yadda yadda yadda. - Some clown in the audience is going to impress us all by reciting this to 20 decimal digits. Geeks rule! - Well, who would have guessed? Pi has its own day and that day is March 14. I can see the perplexed looks now. March is the third month of the year so that gives us 3/14, the first three digits of Pi. [slaps forehead] Oh... my... gawd! I have to add here that the U.S. shows dates in the format month - day - year. Britain shows day-month-year and Japan shows year-month-day. Only in America!

Yes folks, it's Pi Day, a holiday commemorating this most unusual of mathematical constants. Well, is it the oddest? Maybe the know-it-all geniuses may disagree but I would come back to Pi being the most commonly known of all constants, at least for us lay people and/or dunderheads.

FYI: March 14 is also Albert Einstein's birthday! (1879) Pi and Einstein? Coincidence? I think not! Ha ha.

What is Pi?
Just what the heck is Pi anyway? π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any Euclidean plane circle's circumference to its diameter; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius. (Wikipedia) [stunned silence] Ah, but what exactly does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

Pi is represented by the Greek letter π, and it is the most important constant in mathematics. You can find out the area of a circle of radius r, using πr2. The perimeter of this circle would have the length 2πr. Without pi there is no theory of motion and no understanding of geometry. Likewise, the volume of a sphere of radius r is 4/3πr3 and that of a cylinder of height h is πr2h. Pi occurs in important fields of applied mathematics such as Fourier analysis. It is used throughout engineering, science and medicine and is studied for its own sake in number theory. (ABC Science)

Well, didn't that just clear things up nicely! Oh boy, am I in over my head. However, the fascination with this mathematical constant goes on to the nutty and the funny.

Piphilology
This oddball word (read made-up) is the creation and use of mnemonic techniques to remember the digits of Pi. The word derives from Pi (natch!) and philology which is the study of language based on historical sources. A "piem" (Pi and poEM) is a poem which represents the constant. The trick is that the number of letters of the word must correspond to a digit. For example (supposedly the most famous):


If you look back at Pi, you find 3.141592653. How = 3, I = 1, want = 4, etc. Funny, eh? But some have even gone further in pushing the limits of this mathematical slash artistic creativity:

Sir, I have a rhyme excelling,
In mystic power and magic spelling,
Mystical spirits elucidate,
For my own problems can't relate.

That one takes you out to the twentieth digit of Pi. I see though that some have gone nuts. Wikipedia gives an example of a poem to the 75th position written in iambic pentameter and talks about texts going on for thousands of digits. That's a lot of free time on your hands. Then again, I appreciate the challenge of creatively working within certain constraints.

And speaking about working creatively, I just happened to run across two creative guys who put together an amusing musical number about Pi set to the tune of American Pie, the 1971 song written and sung by Don McLean. Here is "Mathematical Pi" by Ken Ferrier and Antoni Chan.

The following YouTube video by Steve Toner, a teacher, is his version of Mathematical Pi by Ferrier and Chan. (A MP3 of Ferrier and Chan singing their own song can be found below.)



A long, long time ago
Long before the Super Bowl and things like lemonade
The Hellenic Republic was full of smarts
And a question resting on the Grecian hearts
Was "What is the circumference of a circle?"
But they were set on rational numbers
And it ranks among their biggest blunders
They worked on it for years
And confirmed one of their biggest fears
I can't be certain if they cried when irrationality was realized
But something deep within them died
the day they discovered pi.
They were thinking

Pi, pi, mathematical pi
3 point 14 15 92
65 35 89 7
932384 62
6433832 7 (not rounded)

Well this kind of pie is different than most
It hasn't got berries, ain't spread on toast
And that's how it's always been
We keep extending its decimal places
Pushing our computers through their paces
But we'll never reach the end

So why the fascination with
A number whose end is just a myth
Whence the adulation
For mental masturbation
It might have something to do with the stars
To calculate distances from afar
But that's just a guess 'bout the way things are
Regarding the precision of pi
I am pondering

CHORUS:

Now I feel that I should mention
Pi is applicable in any dimension
At least as far as I know
If there were no Pi we'd be missing things
Like marbles and mugs and balls of string
And sports such as soccer and curling
The orbs in their celestial paths
Navigate along elliptical graphs
Ellipses have pi in them too
Just one side of them has grew
You can see pi in most everything
It's in Cornell's Electron Storage Ring
And also in slinkies and other springs
And that's why it's important to know pi
You should memorize

CHORUS:

Once one night I had a dream
That pi was gone and I had to scream
Cause all pi things had disappeared  (pause)
Can you imagine a world like that
Circles aren't round and spheres are flat
It's the culmination of everything we've feared
'Twas a nightmare of epic proportions
One that gave me brain contortions
Oh wait!  I mean contusions
They put me in some institutions
But then I escaped and now I'm free
To sing of the virtue of pi

CHORUS

Pi itself set to music
Phil Tulga has some unique offerings to teaching on his web site. In one of them, he has put together a little music using the digits to select notes. Look at "part 2 Sequencing with Pi" and listen to "Phil's Pi song". Starting with middle C as 1, he creates some harmony, adds some timing and manages to come up with something quite pleasant to the ear based on 3, 1, 4, 1, and 5. Hmmm, does nature have a lot of surprises? A lot of connections between mathematics and music? It's uncanny.

Another oddity about Pi: The Feynman Point
The decimal representation of Pi goes on forever and the current world record (as of October 17, 2011) is calculating Pi out to 10 trillion digits. An oddity of these numbers is that starting at the 762nd decimal place, there is a sequence of six 9s. It is called the Feynman point after physicist Richard Feynman who once stated during a lecture he would like to memorize the digits of π until that point, so he could recite them and quip "nine nine nine nine nine nine and so on", suggesting, in a tongue-in-cheek manner, that π is rational. (Wikipedia)

Final Word
Some miscellaneous references:

There are all sorts of references to Pi on the Net especially ones making use of the homonym pie. Hats off to Larry Shaw who created Pi Day in 1989 at the San Francisco Exploratorium where he worked as a physicist.

The U.S. House of Representatives made it official on March 12, 2009 recognising March 14 as National Pi Day.

July 22 or 22/7 (day/month) is Pi Approximation Day as the fraction 22⁄7 is a common approximation of Pi.

I can't wait until 2015 when we can all really go all out as then Pi Day will consist of not three but five digits of Pi (3.1415) as 3/14/15 in the month/day/year format.

Now, I think I'll go cut me a slice... of pie. Hmmm, now where is the whipped cream?


References

Wikipedia: Pi Day
Pi Day is a holiday commemorating the mathematical constant π (pi). Pi Day is celebrated on March 14 (or 3/14 in month/day date format), since 3, 1 and 4 are the three most significant digits of π in the decimal form.

Wikipedia: Pi
π (sometimes written pi) is a mathematical constant whose value is the ratio of any Euclidean plane circle's circumference to its diameter; this is the same value as the ratio of a circle's area to the square of its radius. It is approximately equal to 3.14159265 in the usual decimal notation. Many formulae from mathematics, science, and engineering involve π, which makes it one of the most important mathematical constants.

Wikipedia: Piem, Piphilology
Piphilology comprises the creation and use of mnemonic techniques to remember a span of digits of the mathematical constant π.

Wikipedia: Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics).

Mathematical Pi by Ken Ferrier and Antoni Chan
The following link is to a MP3 of our two troubadours giving their rendition of their own opus. Please note that unlike YouTube videos which are set up to stream (they start playing without you having to wait for the whole video to download), this MP3 is not streaming so you have to patiently wait for the whole thing to come down to your computer before it starts to play. You are forewarned. Enjoy.

MP3 of the complete song

All Too Flat
Welcome to All Too Flat. Prepare yourself for some serious time-wastin' and (hopefully) a fair amount of laughing.

Alright, so what is this site all about?
I think Yahoo describes ATF the best: "A web site that takes its name from a Monty Python sketch seems like the natural place to find oddities like The Bible According to Cheese and scientist trading cards. At alltooflat.com, quirky humor is the name of the game. The ATF Squad tries to debunk myths such as don't overfeed your goldfish, although tragically, this turns out to be sound advice. They play some vaguely funny pranks on their friends and offer tips on how to stage your own. They even get pretentious and spout off poetry -- don't miss the haikus about bowling, NAFTA, tech guys, raves, NYC, and Law and Order. And if you have questions or need some advice, just ask the fish."

So then what is all this "Too Flat" nonsense anyway?
It's an obscure Monty Python reference:
"He is an halibut. I chose him out of thousands.
I didn't like the others; they were all too flat."

Pi and Google in the (humorous) News

Mail Online - Feb 2/2013
A piece of the pi: Google offers $3.14159 million in cash rewards to any hacker who can crack its Chrome operating system
Google is so confident in security on the company's Chrome operating system its offering $3.14159 in cash rewards for successful hacks of the system at this year's Pwnium hacking contest. The figure is a nod to pi, an irrational number that has intrigued mathematicians for thousands of years. Previously the tech giant has offered reward of $1 million and $2 million to crack its systems.

Reuters - Jul 1/2011
Dealtalk: Google bid "pi" for Nortel patents and lost
At the auction for Nortel Networks' wireless patents this week, Google's bids were mystifying, such as $1,902,160,540 and $2,614,972,128. Math whizzes might recognize these numbers as Brun's constant and Meissel-Mertens constant, but it puzzled many of the people involved in the auction, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation on Friday. "Google was bidding with numbers that were not even numbers," one of the sources said. "It became clear that they were bidding with the distance between the earth and the sun. One was the sum of a famous mathematical constant, and then when it got to $3 billion, they bid pi," the source said, adding the bid was $3.14159 billion.

2013-03-14

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