Halfway down the Danube

The Mountain of Moses

So we went for a drive today, Jacob and me. We weren't going anywhere in particular. Drove out past the airport, in the direction of Echmiadzin. Leaving Yerevan that way? The first thing you pass is the US Embassy, which is a mile or so outside of town. It's huge -- three large buildings set on several acres of green campus, all surrounded by a wall. It's much bigger than the US Embassy in Romania. Why do we need such a big embassy? Well, one, the influence of the Armenian diaspora, and two, the fact that Armenia's a friendly country that borders Iran. It's a bit depressing that it's a walled compound, but that's SOP for US embassies these days. Anyway. A few miles past the Embassy is the turnoff to the airport (after first passing through a village full of garish casinos, the peculiar welcome for everyone flying into Armenia). And a mile or so past the airport is the village of Musa Ler. Musa Ler was originally the name of an Armenian region in Turkey, far to the south and west of here. It means "Mountain of Moses". It's much more widely known by its Turkish name: Musa Dagh.

I blame the painkillers.

After extensively analyzing recent reader response (18 replies to a post on theoretical nuclear physics, zero replies to a post on kittens), I've determined that Halfway Down the Danube's core demographic is actually Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, former guitarist for the Doobie Brothers and current defense consultant for the US government.

In his spare time, he wrote a five-page paper on a primitive Tandy computer that proposed converting the military's Aegis program, a ship-based antiplane system, into a rudimentary missile-defense system... "Skunk really blew my mind with that report," Mr. Rohrabacher says. "He was talking over my head half the time, and the fact that he was a rock star who had basically learned it all on his own was mind-boggling."

Okay, who here among us hasn't done this?

Of course, on the opposite side of the political fence, there's Grand Funk Railroad.

While GFR may be best remembered in the West as Homer Simpson's favourite band ('the bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher,' eulogised Homer), their impact in poorer nations should not be underestimated: Cuban maestro Juan de Marcos Gonzalez told me GFR and Steely Dan were his favourite American bands in the 1970s, while Mohammed Sacirbey, Bosnian Ambassador to the UN, loved the Funk so much he inspired them to briefly reform in 1997 and play benefit concerts for a Bosnian children's charity.

From Garth Cartwright, Princes Among Men: Journeys with Gypsy Musicians.

Wow, Sacirbey definitely has the Yugoslav male pattern baldness thing going. Honestly, if minoxidil had been discovered before the Constitution of 1974, the Balkans would look very different.

I blame the painkillers.

After extensively analyzing recent reader response (18 replies to a post on theoretical nuclear physics, zero replies to a post on kittens), I've determined that Halfway Down the Danube's core demographic is actually Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, former guitarist for the Doobie Brothers and current defense consultant for the US government.

In his spare time, he wrote a five-page paper on a primitive Tandy computer that proposed converting the military's Aegis program, a ship-based antiplane system, into a rudimentary missile-defense system... "Skunk really blew my mind with that report," Mr. Rohrabacher says. "He was talking over my head half the time, and the fact that he was a rock star who had basically learned it all on his own was mind-boggling."

Okay, who here among us hasn't done this? Of course, on the opposite side of the political fence, there's Grand Funk Railroad.

While GFR may be best remembered in the West as Homer Simpson's favourite band ('the bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher,' eulogised Homer), their impact in poorer nations should not be underestimated: Cuban maestro Juan de Marcos Gonzalez told me GFR and Steely Dan were his favourite American bands in the 1970s, while Mohammed Sacirbey, Bosnian Ambassador to the UN, loved the Funk so much he inspired them to briefly reform in 1997 and play benefit concerts for a Bosnian children's charity.

From Garth Cartwright, Princes Among Men: Journeys with Gypsy Musicians. Wow, Sacirbey definitely has the Yugoslav male pattern baldness thing going. Honestly, if minoxidil had been discovered before the Constitution of 1974, the Balkans would look very different.

Kittens

img alt="fpi_glasses.jpg" src="http://www.bookcase.com/~claudia/mt/archives/fpi_glasses.jpg" width="50" height="50" border="0" /> We got 'em.

Lot of cats in our neighborhood. They range from someone's pet to purely feral, with most sort of in between. Last year we found a couple of young kittens in our yard. We took them in and tried to keep them alive, but it didn't work out.

So. But there are still plenty of cats around. Our neighborhood is really designed for them... lots of trees, lots of walls and fences, lots of low houses that are close together. Invisible cat highways crisscross our yard and our roof.

Kittens

img alt="fpi_glasses.jpg" src="http://www.bookcase.com/~claudia/mt/archives/fpi_glasses.jpg" width="50" height="50" border="0" /> We got 'em. Lot of cats in our neighborhood. They range from someone's pet to purely feral, with most sort of in between. Last year we found a couple of young kittens in our yard. We took them in and tried to keep them alive, but it didn't work out. So. But there are still plenty of cats around. Our neighborhood is really designed for them... lots of trees, lots of walls and fences, lots of low houses that are close together. Invisible cat highways crisscross our yard and our roof.

The shores of the island

This is one of those random stories.

The other day I was looking for something online, typed too fast, and entered the capital letter "S" into the search engine. After a moment's thought, it directed me to the Wikipedia page for Sulfur: chemical symbol S.

I was about to navigate away, but the pretty periodic table caught my eye. (Yes, I am easily distracted.) So I clicked on it for a closer look.

The shores of the island

This is one of those random stories. The other day I was looking for something online, typed too fast, and entered the capital letter "S" into the search engine. After a moment's thought, it directed me to the Wikipedia page for Sulfur: chemical symbol S. I was about to navigate away, but the pretty periodic table caught my eye. (Yes, I am easily distracted.) So I clicked on it for a closer look.

The Road to Ptghni

Really, its the road through Ptghni. Sorry.

Ptghni is a village on the road that goes north from Yerevan to Lake Sevan. It has nothing to do with anything except, come on... "Ptghni"? How can you not love that?

I was driving north with Jacob because I wanted to go hiking. We have a book of hiking trails, and it showed one in the village of Fantan -- right, I should make a list -- Fantan, about 30 km north of here. I have one of those baby-backpack carrier things, and Jacob still fits in it. So I thought, hey, Sunday hike.

The Road to Ptghni

Really, its the road through Ptghni. Sorry. Ptghni is a village on the road that goes north from Yerevan to Lake Sevan. It has nothing to do with anything except, come on... "Ptghni"? How can you not love that? I was driving north with Jacob because I wanted to go hiking. We have a book of hiking trails, and it showed one in the village of Fantan -- right, I should make a list -- Fantan, about 30 km north of here. I have one of those baby-backpack carrier things, and Jacob still fits in it. So I thought, hey, Sunday hike.

Late night thoughts on "Well, I read..."

Two weeks of a chest cold, and one of bronchitis. It's a wonder I can even type. Some quick thoughts on the recent post:

The fastest form of learning I know of is the Garcia effect: taste aversion after one trial of a nauseating substance. Individual vocabulary terms during language acquisition can be that fast. Acquiring and learning to use new concepts, however, tends to take rather longer.

At least two types of bad knowledge acquisition seem to happen among readers. In the first, the reader trusts the author to present accurate knowledge about the world, and the reader extracts new but incorrect knowledge from the material by context. However, the reader might lack the skills to evaluate the correctness of the knowledge, or the reader might overvalue the reliability of the author. An infamous mainstream example of this would be Robert Browning's use of the word "twat" in his poem Pippa Passes, which he thought meant "a nun's headgear" from its context in an earlier poem. (NB: it doesn't.)

There's also the "double bind", described below, which -- hypothesis -- induces psychological stress in order to convince the reader of a counterintuitive premise. (A stage magician will "force" an audience member to choose the three of clubs during a card trick.) This is not a simple extraction of (incorrect) knowledge from context. Note that if one already accepts the premise, the double bind acts as a reward, not a stressor. Note, too, the meaningful content of the premise is not closely related to the form of the double bind.

The knowledge learned from the double bind appears to be more deeply held than knowledge taken naively from context. Is knowledge learned from the double bind more quickly learned than knowledge learned from context? Anecdotally, texts with double binds appear to be texts readers are prone to re-read. Perhaps because these crucial passages are read multiple times, the premise is 'naturally' reinforced in the mind of the reader, rather than any deeper psychological association caused by the method.

(The ideas in the last two paragraphs could, in principle, be tested experimentally, I think.)

I feel like there's something important just below the surface here: learning theory, theories of mind and autism, structuralism, and psychological projection all seem connected. It'll be interesting to learn what the neural correlates are, if any. Hopefully the physical functioning of the higher processes of the brain will be able to be understood by the higher processes of the brain, i.e., there will be a high level of abstraction. But that's just a hope, and if anything there's empirical evidence against it.

Late night thoughts on "Well, I read..."

Two weeks of a chest cold, and one of bronchitis. It's a wonder I can even type. Some quick thoughts on the recent post: The fastest form of learning I know of is the Garcia effect: taste aversion after one trial of a nauseating substance. Individual vocabulary terms during language acquisition can be that fast. Acquiring and learning to use new concepts, however, tends to take rather longer. At least two types of bad knowledge acquisition seem to happen among readers. In the first, the reader trusts the author to present accurate knowledge about the world, and the reader extracts new but incorrect knowledge from the material by context. However, the reader might lack the skills to evaluate the correctness of the knowledge, or the reader might overvalue the reliability of the author. An infamous mainstream example of this would be Robert Browning's use of the word "twat" in his poem Pippa Passes, which he thought meant "a nun's headgear" from its context in an earlier poem. (NB: it doesn't.) There's also the "double bind", described below, which -- hypothesis -- induces psychological stress in order to convince the reader of a counterintuitive premise. (A stage magician will "force" an audience member to choose the three of clubs during a card trick.) This is not a simple extraction of (incorrect) knowledge from context. Note that if one already accepts the premise, the double bind acts as a reward, not a stressor. Note, too, the meaningful content of the premise is not closely related to the form of the double bind. The knowledge learned from the double bind appears to be more deeply held than knowledge taken naively from context. Is knowledge learned from the double bind more quickly learned than knowledge learned from context? Anecdotally, texts with double binds appear to be texts readers are prone to re-read. Perhaps because these crucial passages are read multiple times, the premise is 'naturally' reinforced in the mind of the reader, rather than any deeper psychological association caused by the method. (The ideas in the last two paragraphs could, in principle, be tested experimentally, I think.) I feel like there's something important just below the surface here: learning theory, theories of mind and autism, structuralism, and psychological projection all seem connected. It'll be interesting to learn what the neural correlates are, if any. Hopefully the physical functioning of the higher processes of the brain will be able to be understood by the higher processes of the brain, i.e., there will be a high level of abstraction. But that's just a hope, and if anything there's empirical evidence against it.

Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem.

Biblical literalists are widely recognized as not the sharpest knives in the drawer. But do you know what group is even dumber? Written science fiction is dying demographically anyway. But sometimes, I want to give it that extra push into the rendering truck. Leave the most stupid ideas people have gleaned from science fiction novels in the comments. (Or stories, either.) I'll start it off: "Think of it as evolution in action." (New stuff below the fold.)

Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem.

Biblical literalists are widely recognized as not the sharpest knives in the drawer. But do you know what group is even dumber? Written science fiction is dying demographically anyway. But sometimes, I want to give it that extra push into the rendering truck. Leave the most stupid ideas people have gleaned from science fiction novels in the comments. (Or stories, either.) I'll start it off: "Think of it as evolution in action." (New stuff below the fold.)

Single parent again

Just me and Jacob. David's in Germany with the grandparents. (He loves it. Doesn't seem to be missing us much, either.) Claudia should be landing in the US with Alan right about now. So, for the next week, it's just me and the kid. So far, so good. He clearly notices people are missing, but he seems to like the undivided attention. Domestic life posts are almost as boring as weather posts, though. So what do you guys want to talk about?

Iran, closer and closer

So the gas pipeline from Iran opened today. There's a lot of backstory to that pipeline. Here's the short version. Armenia has no energy sources of its own -- no coal, no oil, no natural gas. They used to get oil and gas from Azerbaijan, but then they had a war with Azerbaijan, so no more oil or gas. There's a gas pipeline from Russia. Unfortunately it goes through Georgia. The Russians and Georgians don't always get along, and that gas pipeline is prone to mysterious explosions. (The Georgians say the Russians do it; the Russians say it's Chechen rebels in the north Caucasus.) Also, Russia has been jacking up the price of natural gas in the last few years. Armenia used to be able to buy gas from Russia dirt cheap, well below world prices. No more -- now they have to pay like everyone else. Fortunately for Armenia, there's a friendly country, rich in oil and natural gas, right next door. So the Armenians could turn to Iran for gas. Simple, right? Ah ha ha ha.

The Return of Squirrel Boy

So we've been dosing our son with drugs. All for his own good, of course! Alan has mild ADHD. It's not crippling, but it's definitely an issue. It's hard for him to concentrate. When he's having a bad day, he can't stop moving, wiggling, talking -- and he won't meet your eyes, which drives his mother crazy. We've tried various things. Routine, routine, structure. That helped some. Dietary supplements -- fish oil, for the fatty acids. That helped a bit. Avoiding certain triggers. (7-Up soda. Makes him totally manic. No idea why.) But there are limits to what you can do, and more limits to what you can do in Armenia. There are some wonderful new physical therapies out there for ADHD kids. Not available here. (Hell, Armenian doctors aren't really aware that ADHD, like, exists.)

Serbia: still no government

Serbia still has no government. (I haven't blogged about Serbia here in forever. Well, that's because I've moved my Balkan bloggging over to A Fistful of Euros. But the Fistful is in limbo at the moment, with comments closed because of a nasty spam attack, so I'll go back to posting this stuff here.) They had elections on January 21. In a typical European parliamentary democracy, it takes a week or two of haggling and horse-trading after an election to form a government. In Serbia, it takes much longer... after the last election, back in 2004, it took them seventy days. This time they're up to fifty-six days, and counting. This comes at an interesting time for Serbia; the Ahtisaari plan for Kosovar independence has gone to the United Nations, while Serbia's hopes of EU membership have been blocked by their failure to cooperate with the Hague Tribunal. Not an ideal time to be without a government, but there it is. More on this in a bit.

Buzz

It's International Women's Day today. Some countries take this seriously, some don't. The US does not. Armenia does. It's a no-kidding holiday: shops closed, no school. Men are supposed to turn up with small gifts -- chocolate, flowers. So yesterday the streets were full of flower sellers. Don't know where they came from, but there were daffodils and cut roses everywhere. And I saw my first bees of the season, buzzing sleepily, still dopy with the cold, over the bouquets. I'd forgotten about the bees. April is a month of blossoms here, and the bees go wild. A few more weeks, and all the trees in our back yard will be bent down under masses of blossoms, and each will be surrounded by a humming halo of busy bees. I'm looking forward to that. But also: today, after lunch, I took the boys out for a long walk. I wanted to get them out the door quickly, so Claudia could take a nap while the baby slept. So I didn't clear lunch off the table. And when I got back, a single, solitary fly was buzzing slow circles in the air above the dirty plates. The flies are a curse here in summer. I'd forgotten that. By August there'll be hundreds of the filthy things in the house -- more coming in every time the door opens -- and the kitchen a perpetual battlefield. Still: spring. I can't feel bad about it.

It's about time

My sister, who is off to Berlin -- glamour! -- has accepted her boyfriend's proposal of marriage. Woo Cam and Mike! Note: Mike is a very nice Chicagolander who likes Vienna Beef hot dogs, Mike Royko, and Studs Lonigan. He does not have a robot sidekick named Skeets yet. My father once made him eat a bug. He'll fit right in.

Ou sont les nerds des antans: Wargaming

My friend Sydney Webb (1) recently wrote this over on soc.history.what-if:

When I think of 'wargaming' I think of 16mm hexes, 1/2" counters, zones of control and odds-based CRTs. And rule books that did so much to prepare me for the intricacies of the Income Tax Assessment Act. Yet in 50 years time when I'm dead and Doug and Claudia are enjoying a well-earned retirement at a coastal spa I don't think *anybody* will be playing John Edward's _The Russian Campaign_. Is wargaming dying? Of course not! Traditional miniatures - Napoleonics and Ancients - are as popular as ever, at least in the UK. The younger generation have their Orcs and their Robots as well. 30 years later RPGs are still going strong, albeit more sophisticated that the D&D and EPT of the mid-70s. And gaming takes new forms - CCG and the German fluffy games that have an elegance that we could only dream of when we played _Monopoly_, _Squatter_ or _Careers_. In particular, there are the computer games. There must be a 100 times as many people playing _Call of Duty_ now as were playing _Sniper!_ a third of a century ago. So wargaming will live on. The channels of delivery, to use biz-speak, may change but the experience of "You are in command..." will live on.

(1) Not an actual person. I wish this were so, but it isn't. Nerdy stuff follows.

Project Orion at the Guggenheim, teaser

Saw Freeman Dyson last night at the Guggenheim. "How We Might Have Gone to Mars in 1965". It's taking an effort of will not to quote Dave Chappelle.

Note to self

Someone secretly replaced my brand-name caffeinated coffee with decaf. Okay, it was me not looking at the label. Thought I was bitten by a tsetse fly or something. Some content: Olin Shivers describes, acknowledges. Dan Everett gives a talk on the extremely unusual Amazonian language Piraha through here (unfortunately, it's not streamed, Doug). YouTube: improbable jam, buzkashi. (No, I don't know what Hogun the Grim is doing with Bruce Willis. Are you going to ask Hogun?)