Strive to always fall on the bittered side.

Aphorism, Philosophy | No Comments »

I hate to bitch. Okay, that’s a lie, I love to bitch, sorry. But at least I can spare you my prefacing this newest bitchfest with the qualifier that the book I’m bitching about is great otherwise. We’ve been over that already, it’s scorched earth. There, spared you. Considerate me.

What is going on with the Wallacester and the math? I’m now about halfway through Infinite Jest (what’s half of infinity? Am I done, then?), and as of yet there is nought in terms of indication that his shortcomings in the land of numbers are a jester’s crown worn for some – however obscure – purpose of Jest, finite or otherwise.

The newest item from DFW’s confoundry: Eschaton’s rules are only touched upon tangentially in the main novel’s text, vague hints at complexities of being hit, influenced by weather and all sorts of other variables, which is fine. But then we are taken into lengthy details in an endnote about how the First Mean Value Theorem of Integration allows Lord to get by without calculating complicated integrals for setting up the game. In some rather unspecified way the initial allocation of resources to players for a game’s new round depends on the average value of some equally underspecified ratio, and so Lord needs to calculate the integrals of this variable over previous game time. Except that apparently he doesn’t, because this magical Theorem allows him to use a shortcut right out of the convolved space of higher math into a paradise of simplicity. Which sounds quite nice. And is quite untrue.

The average value of a variable over an interval of time will be it’s integral over said interval divided by the interval’s length. Now, the First Mean Value Theorem indeed guarantees that the integral comes to the same as the intervals length multiplied with the value of the function at a point within the interval, and so that the average itself is identical to the value of the function at this point within the interval. The logic of this is nicely developed in the lengthy endnote’s lively interchange between Incandenza and Pemulis. But nohow does this integral theorem allow you to infer which point within said interval you’d have to choose, and thus for all practical purposes of setting up tennis socks and buckets of bald nuclear balls, this little piece of abstract mathematical wisdom, rather than being the prized insight allowing young kids to cheat the forces of nature Pemulis wants to sell it to us as, is utterly useless. Plus also, in the sloppy plot nicely labeled Halsadick, the supposed average value doesn’t even look like the actual average value, for crying out loudly in complicated semantic structures.

A bit later we read that computer discs squeeze whole high definition movies into 4.8 MB of binary space, which claimed figure must have been ludicrously and unrealistically low in the B.S. 90s already. Such a disc wouldn’t hold two single uncompressed HD images of finely rendered water (assuming 24 bits of liquid color shades). A typo, one hopes. The DVD was introduced in 1995, by the way.

They still are a puzzle, these oddly shaped holes in the otherwise beautiful fabric of this tome, and I’ll keep on logging them. It amuses me.

English, Geekstuffs, Good, Infinite Jest, Satire, Science Fiction | No Comments »

Maybe it’s because I’m cranky today, maybe it is because the represenation, or lack thereof, of mathematics in popular and high culture is a constant annoyance to me. Or maybe it is because it is deeply mystifying to me how someone as learned as David Foster Wallace can screw up so badly with numbers; anywho.

I’ve advanced to page 259 of Infinite Jest now, the book gets better and better, but then this: “a 54 match conclusion [of a 108 match tournament] is extremely unlikely – odds being 1 in 2²⁷“. Whoa, hold on. Really?

So Wallace gets the binomial distribution wrong, big deal, you might say – the correct probability for a draw is about 0.0766 or 1 in 13, by the way – but that’s not what irks me. How could a number so wildly implausible sail unchecked past both his and his editor’s critical skills? In a tournament with 108 matches, there is 109 possible outcomes (from team A loses all, to team A wins all). The average probability of each outcome then is 1/109. Now if the two teams are equally matched, a draw is the most likely of all these outcomes, making their average (1/109) a lower limit on the actual probability. For this kind of reasoning you need no binomial, no probability distribution, just a little bit of mathematical common sense. Which, for some odd reason, seems to be a rather rare commodity.

English, Good, Infinite Jest, Nonfiction, Science Fiction | No Comments »

Andere Hunde,
andere Nachbarn,
selbe Strasse.

Die Familie von der anderen Strassenseite sitzt auf und um die Stufen unseres Gebäudes, als ich die Haustür öffne. Die beiden Teenager auf der Treppe rücken an den Rand, um mir und meinem Klapprad Platz zu machen, der linke hält einen kleinen Hund an der Leine. Unsicher, wie ich auf die sonderbare Belagerung reagieren soll, murmle ich einen Gruss. Die dicke Familienmutter, die in einem Faltstuhl vor ihren Kindern sitzt, erwidert neidisch “I bet that bike was expensive”, und sagt dann nichts mehr. Schnaufende Staunenslaute kommen von den Sitzenden, als ich in der drückenden, schwülen Hitze das Fahrrad entfalte. Der Bullterrier, den der stehende etwas ältere Mann an der Leine hat, sieht interessiert und freundlich zu. Dieses Tier hat den Mops eines befreundeten Paares, das damals im Haus wohnte, halb zerfleischt, die dicke Mutter sich trotz Gerichtsbescheid um die horrende Tierarztrechnung gedrückt.
“Have a good day”, sage ich, als ich losfahre, der Bullterrier geht zugleich auf mich los. Während ich aus dem Vormittagsschatten, den unser Haus spendet, in die grelle Sonne rolle, höre ich ihn noch ein paar Sekunden lang sich würgend in seine kurz gehaltene Leine legen.

Animals, Deutsch, Jersey, Jigsaw Pieces, Miniaturen | No Comments »

I am reading David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and I need to complain. If you haven’t read it, and plan to, don’t worry, I won’t spoil it for you. If you hate nitpicking, on the other hand, maybe do worry a bit, because I will pick nits. Three of them.

Overall, the book is fabulous so far (page 100), and I love the combination of low brow comments with language so erudite it often borders on the pretentious. This is a great stylistic game to play, and it is enhanced by esoteric factoids, partly made up, partly accurate. But for it to work it needs to stay on the light side of the pretentiousness boundary, and the author needs to be in control of the pieces of knowledge he’s throwing around. Now lets pick some nits.

Nit the first. In a discussion of the philosophical aspects of tennis, Hal’s father is cited, obliquely, as telling people about how a tennis move affords n responses, and how there then are 2^n responses to that move, soon spiraling into “a Cantorian continuum of infinities”. Now, firstly, the correct formula for this is n^2. Wallace might have done this on purpose – somewhat suggestive is the fact that the date of Cantor’s diagonal argument is given in the endnote as 1905 (Einstein’s two seminal papers came out that year) instead of the actual 1891. This is probably a purposeful mixup put into the mouth of the fictitious narrator to highlight the distant past-ness of it all – but if so, I fail to see the point of giving the wrong formula. On top of that, however, talking about a continuum of infinities is not quite accurate. The number of replies approaches the number of elements in the continuum only for games with countably infinite many moves, and any transfinity beyond that (the actual family of infinities Cantor discovered and Wallace alludes to) is unreachable by any tennis match. Overall, the passage sounds like a bit of finitely hot air to me, unlikely to come out of the mouth of an MIT educated polymath with an actual interest in Cantor.

Nit the second. When we first meet the assassin Marathe on the mountainside, he watches his shadow wander out in the setting sun toward the city of Tucson and, as the sun gets low enough, eventually reach it across the plains. This can not happen. A circular object of 20 cm diameter (a human head, say), has the same angular size as the sun (about half a degree) at a distance of roughly 22 meters (or yards). At distances greater than that, the object can no longer fully block the sun and casts no total shadow, or umbra. Moreover, the darkest point of the penumbra actually cast rapidly loses contrast and definition. At 44 meters, the darkest point will have 75% of the luminance of the surround, at 88 it’s up to close to 94%. A shadow of a human or anything smaller, cast by the sun and reaching out visibly for kilometers, is a physical impossibility.

Nit the third. Again concerning shadows, in that same scene: when the sun finally sets, Marathe sees his shadow return to him up the incline. This would happen with a rising sun, not a setting, and of course he’d have to face west, not east. If the sun were a point, the shadow cast out by a sunset would retain definition across large distances and grow longer and longer until it hits the advancing terminator and fuses with it. It would not shorten back toward the object casting it.

Is it sloppy writing and editing? Or a deliberate ruse to tick off obsessive compulsive physicists like me? It doesn’t really matter, because the book is still great, and these are tiny complaints.

Later Addition: The term Bröckengespenst Wallace uses for his fictional shadow is a) inappropriate, since a Brockengespenst is actually a shadow cast into fog or clouds, and b) has false diacritical marks on the o. This German spelling SNÄFÜ is in tune however with his german character later on calling his students “mein kinder”, which sports the wrong numerus of the possessive. “Meine Kinder” would have been correct. I’m leaning toward the sloppy writing hypothesis.

English, Good, Infinite Jest, Nature, Philosophy, Science, Science Fiction | No Comments »

The dead are well
They have ants for eyes.
A million facets
Where we living
Only see one
And dislike it.

Animals, English, Poetry | No Comments »

When it brains, it bores.

Aphorism, English | No Comments »

Fragmente eines Verrisses des unterirdisch schlechten “Auf der Spur des Engels” von Herbert W. Franke:

“[…] Science Fiction, das Universum, in dem Autoren und Leser sonderbare Welten umkreisen[…] Vier Hefte Perry Rhodan wöchentlich durch das Austragen von Perry Rhodan zu finanzieren: Anfängerdealerfehler […] naiv und reaktionär […] schon heute veraltet […] hier stimmt rein gar nichts […] Romanzen auf Pennälerniveau […]”

Laßwitz-Preis für besten deutschsprachigen Science-Fiction-Roman 2007. Das hätte einem vor dreissig Jahren auch keiner geglaubt.

Crap, Deutsch, Science Fiction | No Comments »

Der Flachbildschirm auf dem Bahnsteig zeigt einen Mann in einem goldenen Jäckchen. Er steht auf einer schwarzen Scheibe, die sich langsam dreht, im Hintergrund die Basketballkäfige an denen ich bis eben noch erst stand und dann lehnte. Hin und wieder guckt er in die Kamera und schmunzelt dann. Mein Zug kommt lange nicht.

Ein seltsames Gefühl im Magen. Enttäuschung, Schmerz, Wut; auf die Bazillen, auf M., auf mich selbst. Auf den Treppen zum Institut liegt ein totes Vogelbaby, den Kopf flach an den Stein gepresst, die winzigen Rippen stossen durch abgewitterten Flaum und Fleisch. Einen Moment lang verwechsle ich das Tier mit einer Metapher, dann schliesst sich die Tür.

Animals, Deutsch, Jersey, Miniaturen | No Comments »

“Du kriegst die Motten”, eine Redewendung, die bei mir im Kopf gleich neben dem mir lange ähnlich enigmatischen “bis in die Puppen” ihr Zelt aufgeschlagen hatte, scheint vordergründig weniger rätselhaft. Die Motten kriegen, Frass am Gewebe zeigen, Verfall, ausfransen, die Metaphern fliegen nur so, und die Bedeutung ist klar. Die Puppen, andererseits, sind so lange rätselhaft, bis man dann halt mal nachliest, dass es um die Statuen im Tiergarten geht, die man so nannte, und die einen ordentlichen Fussmarsch entfernt waren, sodass alles, was sich bis in die Puppen erstreckte ganz schön weit ging. Oder aber so ähnlich, selber googeln, wo samma denn.

Heute erfahre ich jetzt, das die nebenan hausenden “die Motten” eine volkstümliche Bezeichnung für die Tuberkulose sind, weil die Lungen auf dem Röntgenbild kammansichjadenken.

Na sowas.

Deutsch, Jersey, Miniaturen, Pseudocode | No Comments »