Uncertainty

 As we cruised US-2 back from vacation, we passed through Rugby, ND, pop. 2,509.  Rugby is billed as the geographic center of North America, and has a cairn set up to that effect.

    Exceeeept...

    More modern analysis with more accurate maps have recalculated the geographic center to be closer to Center, ND (named in 1902, incidentally, so not called that because they thought they were the center of the continent.  Sometimes such things simply happen.).

    This isn't surprising, of course, modern cartographic techniques and improved surveying equipment will always revise the findings of earlier generations.  One of my favorite creators, The History Guy, did a video on The Great Trigonometric Survey.  While the error was incredibly small, especially given the equipment the survey was using, the error was there.

    The dispute between Rugby and Center came up a couple years ago during a family discussion on vacation, and driving by it this year reminded me of that discussion.  During the discussion, one of my family members was adamant that there had to be a real geographic center of North America and there had to be a way to figure that out.

    Truth is, though, there's really not.  The assumption that there is an objective center is a product of enlightenment thinking, which, while useful, is nevertheless incomplete.  And that's what one must always remember when talking about any science:  science is uncertain.

    Couple reasons for that.  As aforementioned, you have instrumental uncertainty.  This is why astrophysics has long made me raise my eyebrows.  I am, among other things, an analytical chemist, and therefore have to both calibrate and QC all my instruments before reporting any results.  Tell me, how precisely do you calibrate instruments to measure past anything we can actually reach?  Originally, they trigonometrically calculated distance using the apogees of the earth's orbit around the sun as the base of the triangle.  But that's analogous to trying to trigonometrically calculate the distance across the Grand Canyon by setting up two transits about a foot apart.  How accurate is that really going to be?

    Even trying to calculate off the speed of light isn't quite as straightforward as we might assume, as Veritasium pointed out.

    I mean, calibrating a chemistry analyzer is about as straightforward as you can get:  you use NERL-grade water mixed with known masses of analyte to make a calibration set, and even then, we recognize that there is uncertainty in the actual amount of analyte in each calibrator, which we acknowledge in, for instance, out use of significant figures.  But we also recognize that there is uncertainty in the instrument itself, and we tailor our reporting to that.  I can run the exact same sample a hundred times, and if I carry out the decimals far enough, I will get a hundred different answers.

    A second reason is methodology.  What definitions are we using of the landmass here?  Are we assuming an ideal flat plane?  Or are we taking into account the Rockies adding many miles to the distance between the center and the western coasts?  A triangle can, in fact, have more than 180 degrees, after all.

    But the third reason, and one that especially hit me this year, is that things simply change over time.

    Our favorite beach in Da Yoop is Miners.  Normally, there is a massive rock that juts out from the beach, with a small, rock-bottomed cove on the east side and a big sandy beach on the west.  This year, however, a good storm or two over the winter blew in enough sand to completely bury not only the cove under several feet of sand, but the rock as well!  Meanwhile Sand Point, another beach, had it's series of little sand islands from last year turned into a solid strip that you can wade to.  And anyone who has lived in Da Yoop can tell you that it only takes one good storm to completely undo both of those changes.

    That's just Lake Superior.  Imagine the power of the Atlantic and Pacific to rearrange the borders of the continent.  Think about the 1999 Cape Hatteras Lighthouse move.  When you add a couple feet (or miles) of land on one side and take away a couple on the other, that is going to move the center.  Those changes--sometimes small, sometimes massive--are always happening.

    Einstein famously observed, “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.”  This is not a denial of objective truth, simply a caution to be careful how much stock one puts in one's belief that they have it.  And especially what they are willing to vociferously defend.

    In 1848, the border between America and Mexico was set as the Rio Grande.  There was just one slight problem:  depending on rainfall, the river can change course dramatically from year to year.  That farm was Mexican last year, but is it American now?  And will that change next year?  Eventually, the two governments built concrete channels to keep the river from shifting in sensitive areas, but outside those places, the river can still change the "border."  Turns out, nature doesn't really care what squiggly lines men make on paper.

    Borders or numbers, it's always best to continually recognize the fact that reality is not as neat as we would like.  The way things were, are, and will be may or may not be foreordained by a Deity or Fate or what have you, but one thing is for sure:  our perceptions, individually and collectively, of the way things were, are, and will be certainly is not.  Especially that last one.  The human mind is an incredible predictive engine, but history is replete with examples of persons--and even more damaging, peoples--who projected a trend into the future and acted on that prediction.  Some saw a utopia and tried to make it happen (Communism).  Some saw an apocalypse and tried to prevent it from happening (Nazism).

    Turns out, a little humility goes a long way towards not killing millions.  We would do well to remember that whenever anyone calls for en masse action.

Albums and Attention Spans

     During the Great Regasketing of the AMC360, I had the pleasure of deep discussion with the Dot regarding music.  We were listening to the Awakening Compilation, Vol 2.

    Some background here, the Dot has listened to the same album basically every night since her colic days.  In order, too.  She came out one night in traumatized tears because "Music not working!  Texas barbecue song 'posed to be first!"

    Oh, for the good old pre-diagnosis days.

    The conversation turned to covers and singles, concepts which utterly shocked and horrified her young sensibilities.  She was relieved to hear that her favorite songwriter was at least getting paid well by all the people covering his songs, but the idea of a person recording a song they haven't written (or at least co-written) offended her.

    Which is, of course, an interesting reaction.  I have mixed feelings on the topic.  On the one hand, I thoroughly reject the notion that Jimi Hendrix's recording of "All Along the Watchtower" is the definitive cut, whatever Dylan's opinion may be.  On the other hand, I agree with Reznor (and most people) that Johnny Cash's "Hurt" is a far richer version than Nine Inch Nails'.  I tend to like musicians who write at least half of the songs they record, but then Cash only wrote 54 of the 1500+ songs he recorded.  Of course, those 54 include "Folsom Prison Blues," "The Big Battle," "The Man Comes Around," "Give My Love to Rose," and "Man in Black."  Perhaps I just like to know that any artist I listen to is capable of deep reflection and expression.

    More baffling to her, though, was the idea that anyone would ever listen to a song without getting the greater context of the album.  She's already learned the ebb and flow that is present on well-crafted albums; how each song builds on the previous, weaving themes throughout.

    Again, I have mixed feelings.  Let him who has never burned a mix CD cast the first stone.  I do enjoy mixing songs of different artist--or for that matter, the same artist from different albums--into new works.  I recently ran across one of my old study mix CDs, where I mixed slow songs conducive to concentration together with more upbeat numbers to keep me awake.

    Of course, this is a case of Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the message."  While most people who read Neil Postman tend to concentrate on the way TV with its 10 minutes between commercial breaks made political discourse basically ADHD and prone to soundbite philosophy (if any) and inflammatory affirmative slogans, I think a more interesting and personally relevant example is talk radio, which was popular among blue-collar workers, because--as I can attest from my childhood--it can be listened to while framing, plumbing, roofing, and wiring.  Did talk radio hosts shape the blue collar culture, or did blue collar culture shape the talk radio hosts?  Well, that's probably a chicken or egg question.

    Back to the question at hand, radio stations do not play whole albums, and while streaming services--with the capacity to listen to a whole album straight--have largely supplanted radio (and physical albums, for that matter), in order to listen to an album straight, you usually to pay for premium service to get the album without ads (YouTube music) or to have access to the album instead of a curated random playlist (Pandora).

    Granted, this is sort of what the public wants.  In college, I had the great opportunity to take Late American History from Dr. Birdwell.  One of the assigned books was Flowers in the Dustbin:  The Rise of Rock and Roll, 1947-1977 by James Miller.  It's one of the few books from college that still has a place on my shelf.  In it, he tells the genesis story of the Top 40.  Two radio DJs were talking shop in a diner.  The patrons kept playing the most popular radio hits.  They talked until past closing time.  They noticed when the diner employee starting to clean up, she first went to the jukebox.  They expected after listening to the same songs for the last 8 hours solid, she's be sick of them and choose something else, but she still chose the same songs the patrons were listening to.

    Of course, much like disjointed political tirades, one might think that the reason people listen to singles is because they want disjointed background music they can largely ignore while doing their job.  The woman in this example was engaging in manual labor cleaning the diner.  That is not the time to listen to a thoughtful, well-crafted album.  It's rather like my study mix CDs, or the fact that my preferred work music is one of Pandora's classical channels (preferably strings or piano).  I certainly don't listen to Andrew Peterson or Fernando Ortega albums.  And J Lind is right out, along with The Antlers' Hospice.  

    This also explains the content of the songs themselves.  The Beloved has introduced some of her friends to our favorite songwriters, including the Dot's favorite, Andrew Peterson.  Universally, they observe that they cannot listen to those artists while doing housework, driving, or anything else that requires concentration.  Not only  must the arc of the song conclude by the last note, you really have to have relatively mindless fluff to make background music.  Certainly nothing deeper than your girlfriend or boyfriend running off or vowing vengeance therefore.  

    While I do listen to thoughtful podcasts while I work, I also have been doing essentially the same motions for almost four years now, so I can usually coast through instrument maintenance on muscle memory.  Plus, once there's an exception to my task, I pause the podcast to give full attention to the new job at hand.

    Podcasts, though, bring up an interesting trend that many have noticed in recent years, which is the switch from ADHD media consumption to long-format.  Podcasts start at around half an hour discussing a single topic, and many go into the multiple hours territory.  Narrative fiction has likewise changed with weekly, designed-for-syndication episodic shows losing ground to sweeping epics that most people binge all at once.  I credit Harry Potter.  Those books taught an entire generation in their formative years to appreciate stories that build and characters that age, rather than the previous generations' childhood books about perpetual adolescents by author stables like Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Bobbsey Twins, et al.  

    Maybe, just maybe, if we continue this trend of reversing our nation's collective ADHD, we'll even see a decline in the popularity of basketball and football in favor of soccer.

    At any rate, I am glad for my daughter's ability to enjoy well-crafted albums.  And her preference for long-format books like the Redwall series (and Harry Potter, for that matter).  I think the capacity to thoughtfully follow a story arc--in any format--will serve her well throughout life.  And perhaps she will be in good company, too.

A Tale of Two Gearheads

After repatriating Theseia, I had to find a replacement engine for her.  I hit up Craigslist in Billings and located an AMC 360 for a whopping $250.  I borrowed the vambulance from my friend and scheduled a trip down to Billings to pick it up.

    In between the time I scheduled the trip and the time I actually took it, I saw a second engine, an AMC304, pop up in Roundup for $200.  Deciding my time was worth that much and then some if I had to make a second trip, I decided to buy it, too.  The decision was eased by the assurances from my friend that he would buy the spare off me if it wasn't needed.

    The big day arrived and I headed down pulling a trailer with an engine hoist.  Complete side note, but it is extremely hard to find parking with a trailer in Billings.

    Anyway, what I ended up being struck by was the difference between the men I purchased the engines from.  The first address took me to an upscale suburb of Billings.  The house was probably seven figures or at least pushing it very hard.  The yard was immaculate, as were the yards of all the surrounding houses.  There was a shop bay in which the engine was residing attached to two-car garage in which the donor vehicle was.  The owner was a former software engineer in the early days of LIS's and had obviously chosen a good manager for his IRA.

   The shop was organized, all the tools hanging up, the workbenches clean.  The engine I was buying was mounted on a roll-around cradle, which let us roll it right to the rear door before having to lift.  My only gripe was the amount of coolant still in the block, which made a bit of a mess in back.  After we got it loaded and paid for, he invited me into his garage to look at the donor vehicle, a late-'70s/early-'80s J10 in stunning condition.  The engine compartment was spotless and held a beautifully overhauled V8.  Sparkly-flecked block paint.  Chrome valve covers.  Not a spot of grease anywhere.  I could have eaten off the air intake.  I've never really wanted a J10, always planning on getting an FC150 or -170 if I want a Jeep truck, but I had to admit that one was a sight to behold.

    I had a little additional running around to do, plus the second guy worked nights, so he wouldn't be up until early afternoon.  That was fine, as I had forgotten my checkbook and had to hit an ATM for cash.  The first guy had PayPal.

    When I rolled into his neighborhood south of Roundup, it was obvious that I was in a different world from the first.  Instead of a palatial house, this man lived in a singlewide.  Rather than a roll-around cradle sitting on smooth enameled concrete, the 304 was sitting on a tire on a gravel shed floor.  We ended up having to lift it onto his pickup tailgate, put the lift back into the trailer I was pulling, then back the pickup up to the trailer and lift the engine off the tailgate and into the trailer.  It was a mess, but eventually I had it strapped down and ready to roll.

    At which point, this guy, too, invited me to check out the donor vehicle, in this case a early-'70s AMC Javelin.  Again, the vehicle was in immaculate condition.  Beautiful red, white, and blue racing scheme.  Reupholstered leather interior.  Correct badging.  I personally prefer sleeper cars, my dream being the 1963 1/2 Ford Falcon, but once again, I could appreciate the time and effort this man had put into the vehicle.

    As I drove away, I couldn't help thinking about the stark contrast between the two men's lifestyles.  One lives a bleached-white-collar retired life in a suburb, while the other is continually grinding away at his blue-collar job.  I can't imagine those two ever even meeting in casual life.

    Yet I can easily imagine them crossing paths at a classic car show.  They share a passion for restoration.  And while I am less interested in faithful restoration and more interested in adapting to function (AMC never stuck a 360 in a CJ after all, and that's the least I intend to do to her eventually), they each crossed my path because of a shared love of tinkering with old rigs.

    I think part of the problem in America today is that interests are assumed to be polarized.  A software engineer?  Oh, he must drive the latest Tesla so he doesn't have to get his hands greasy.  He probably doesn't even know how to change his own flat.  

    The big problem is that feeds into the way people pick their hobbies.  It's interesting to note that young boys like to draw at the same rates as young girls, yet within a few years of being told by teachers not to draw violent pictures, boys en masse refer to drawing as girly.  So if it's assumed that gearhead-ing is a blue-collar pastime best accompanied by cheap beer and country music, white-collar kids will be less and less inclined to take it up, choosing other pastimes instead.  And vice versa.

    But if we can learn to disassociate hobbies with demographics, then maybe we can return to white-collar and blue-collar workers bowling in the same leagues, belonging to the same pick-up hockey teams, and going to the same gyms.  And who knows, maybe if more of that happened, we'd see people of other lifestyles as teammates first rather than enemies.

The Road

The Road has been in the To Read Pile for years.  I’m a big fan of Art of Manliness, and Brett McKay reads it annually.  The AoM store even has a “Carry the Fire” zippo, which I intend to eventually treat myself to as a reward for making it through this book.  Brandon Hale, author of the Prince Martin Epic (our son’s favorite books, and frankly, some of mine) lists The Road as one of the most influential books he’s read.  Andrew Heaton, host of several of my favorite podcasts, calls it the “ultimate dystopia” and “simultaneously the most beautiful and hideous post-apocalyptic prose ever written.”

I’d been putting off reading The Road, because I knew the hideous nature of the narrative.  I get heavily invested in characters I read (I cried when Dobby died), and knowing the wringer they go through in the book has been off-putting to me.  The final straw came when Andrew Peterson in one of his recent books confirmed my suspicions that his song “Carry the Fire” was, in fact, inspired by The Road.  I decided that if a guy who often can’t make it through his own concerts without shedding tears can make it through the book, so could I.  But I wasn’t doing it during my daughter’s recent surgical adventures.

Once we got back, however, I dutifully checked the book out from the local library and dove in.  It wasn’t what I expected.

*****SPOILERS AHEAD*****

For one thing, it was short.  I expected it to be about twice as long.  And I expected more purple prose.  Instead, it’s very direct and sparse.  I really appreciated that.

But far more than that, I was surprised with how little I consciously identified with the father, especially given how much many men I respect do.  Part of it might be knowing that he dies at the end, so perhaps I kept the character at arm’s length.

Mostly, though, I think I just disagree quite strongly with the man’s choices in life.  He is a man with tunnel vision and a Malthusian outlook.  He repeatedly has chances to help others and instead concentrates on his own survival and that of his son.  Instead of treating strangers as opportunities to expand civilization, he assumes them to be threats, or at best, an extra mouth he can’t feed.

I think it’s the hypocrisy that gets me.  He tells his son that they’re carrying the fire–the values (like "don't eat people") that make up the kernel of civilization–, yet when they have chances to be civilized, they aren’t.  He claims that they’re looking for good guys, but he’s so paranoid that not only does he never take a risk to find out if some individuals are good guys, the eventual good guys who do take in his son can only do so after he dies.

That’s the great tragedy of the book.  He spends so much time making sure he survives to euthanize his son if need be, then can’t summon the resolve to do so and dies with no hope of his son’s survival or peaceful passing.  Whereas if he’d been more willing to take some risks, he could have passed in good company knowing his son had a secure future.

I’m sure I object so strongly because I have those tendencies in my own character.  I’ve spent much time in my adult life trying to cover contingencies that I’ve failed to take opportunities that could have obviated the contingencies I’ve been planning for.  It’s only been recently that I’ve finally started to plan for success in some of my endeavors.

There’s a really great example of this in the book.  One of the main problems he faces is that he starts the book with only two bullets in his revolver.  Then he uses one.  Later, he finds a bunker with food, water, and a couple boxes of .30-30 and .45 ACP rounds.  He observes that he could have potentially pried the primers out of the pistol rounds and trimmed the bullets down to the rough diameter of his revolver, but…he threw away his old casings.  He treats anything (and anyone) not immediately useful as baggage, never considering that value is often not immediately visible.

I think that sort of zero-sum, short-term thinking has become all too common in America today.  Several years ago, there was a fascinating article on the philosophy of The Walking Dead and what its popularity said about America.  The article is well worth the read, but the short version is that we’re seeing a reversal of values in the country.  The counterexample given in the article is The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, where John Wayne’s rough and tumble cowboy–while respected for his masculine traits that pave the way for civilization–is seen as a relic that must be supplanted by Jimmy Stewart’s civilized lawyer.  Both men are held in high regard, but it’s accepted that in order for society to flourish, the bourgeois virtues must supplant the law of the jungle (or prairie as the case maybe).  The Walking Dead, on the other hand, ridicules those bourgeois virtues as incompatible with the strength needed for survival.

Yet what does The Walking Dead existence offer?  Survival for the sake of survival is circular.  Without a telos, existence is meaningless.  And that’s the father’s dilemma in The Road.

But that doesn’t seem to be the way I hear it presented much.  I sometimes hear it presented as an example of existential philosophy, which is to say, the father, in a world in which survival is meaningless, is making his own meaning by choosing a burden to carry.  I think that works to some extent.

More often, though, I hear it presented as a father/son story about fighting to hand down values to the next generation.  I don’t think that works very well, though.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned both as a child and as a parent, it’s that kids pick up what is displayed far more than what is didacticized.  The father in The Road is telling himself that he’s teaching his son moral values, but what’s the actual lesson his son is going to learn?

And maybe a critique is exactly what McCarthy is intending.  The son certainly seems to feel bad about the times they don’t help people.  Maybe the point of the book is to ask the question,  “What good is fire if it’s lost its heat and light?”