Tr-r-r-radition!

At quite a deep level, tradition and originality are incompatible.

Onestone

One of Einstein’s big ideas was that (to put it in a nutshell) we can’t ultimately tell if we are in the moving train leaving the station or in a motionless train with the station sliding past us. There are many cool elaborations of this idea (Are we moving through time one second per second, or is it that we are stationary and time is moving past us?) but it's worth recalling how counterintuitive the original version is. Because deep in our bones, so deep it's almost impossible to shake, is our belief: 'but surely ... the station is stationary! The train is en train! Look at the names!'

Repellent Affinities

The wisdom of OK Go: 'nothing ever doesn't change, but nothing changes much.' I wonder.

'Of the Blue Colour of the Sky' is, I discover, an album that was recorded in reaction to A J Pleasonton's weird 1876 booklet, The influence of the blue ray of the sunlight and of the blue colour of the sky: in developing animal and vegetable life; in arresting disease and in restoring health in acute and chronic disorders to human and domestic animals.

It has much to say on the subject of change, including this from p.180: ‘the slightest change in the angle of incidence of the white light of the sun as it falls upon vapours, clouds, or gases will excite their repellent affinities, and resolve them into the varied and brilliant tints of primary and composite colours.’ Now, Repellent Affinities would be a great title for an album … or a novel?

Categorical Imperative

It sometimes seems to me that Kant's Categorical Imperative is a sciencefictional conceit. From Grounding:

Kant asserted that lying, or deception of any kind, would be forbidden under any interpretation and in any circumstance. In Grounding, Kant gives the example of a person who seeks to borrow money without intending to pay it back. This is a contradiction because if it were a universal action, no person would lend money anymore as he knows that he will never be paid back. The maxim of this action, says Kant, results in a contradiction in conceivability (and thus contradicts perfect duty). With lying, it would logically contradict the reliability of language. If it is universally acceptable to lie, then no one would believe anyone and all truths would be assumed to be lies. The right to deceive could also not be claimed because it would deny the status of the person deceived as an end in himself. And the theft would be incompatible with a possible kingdom of ends. Therefore, Kant denied the right to lie or deceive for any reason, regardless of context or anticipated consequences.

It's the absolutism here that is SF, I think; the argument from Bizarro world ('argumentum ad Mundo Bizarro'?). The world is this way; imagine what it would be like if it were the exact opposite.

One problem is that this is predicated upon a sort of one-to-one mirror transformation. If everybody always told the truth, then one would always know where one stood; but if nobody ever told the truth, then one would still always know where one stood. The real ethical problem comes in a world in which some people are always truthful and some habitual liars and you can't be sure which is which, and more to the point where most people sometimes lie and sometimes tell the truth. The key here is inconsistency, precisely the thing absent both from Kant's Categorial moral alternate reality and its Mirror-Universe evil double.

The Crapulous Individual

"It is always the crapulous individual that best executes the infamous deed" - de Sade (The 120 Days of Sodom, apparently), So strangely wrong that it gives pause. Hunger, not satiety, is the motor for infamy in deed.

Olympic Sports that Are Not

It surprises me that there's no Olympic medal to reward really fast winding. It could be competitive reel winding, or winding down the shutters on a shop window, or turning the handle of a mangle ... but winding is a basic human activiy, which some can do faster and more powerfully than others. The Olympics ought to acknowledge that.

There's some winding, I suppose, in some of the sailing medals. That's by no means the same thing.

The Clearly Seen Ones

I wouldn't want this blog to become a mere conduit for interesting facts derived from wikipedia. But, having said that ...

The English word "dragon" derives from Greek δράκων (drákōn), "dragon, serpent of huge size, water-snake", which probably comes from the verb δρακεῖν (drakeîn) "to see clearly".

What's nice about this is the ironic etymology in naming an imaginary, and therefore (strictly) invisible, beast 'the clearly seen one.' But it's right, isn't it? Dragons are clearly seen, in cultural imaginarium at any rate.