No, I'm not that smart

I realize I haven't blogged here at ScIn for a number of months. Which has led me to blog.

INSCITIA:

Where has Elliot been for so long, and is he really no longer ignorant?

COGITATIO:

I think he swallowed an Omniscience Pill and hasn't stopped floating.

RESPONSUM:

It's not that I have no more ignorance; it's just that apart from a phase of groggy anti-blogging-itis, I also have been very busy offline. My "flashes of ignorance" still do come, all the time, in fact, but then wash away in a stream of more mundane knowns, leaving this blog as lifeless as a black hole.

I have a few inscitiae lined up soon, though, so stay tuned.

Spiritual boquets?

As my anything more than random readers will know, my other blog, FideCogitActio, is heavily theological and spiritual. This blog, however, is virtually "atheological" -- until now. By George, I have a case of theological inscitia!

Several weeks ago, months in fact, I was reading St. Francis de Sales Introduction to the Devout Life when I saw him encourage making a "spiritual bouquet" to the Lord. "Make a what?" I asked myself. I gathered from the context of St. Francis's counsel that this "bouquet" was some kind of offering to God as a symbol of thanksgiving, amended life, a vow, etc. But I really couldn't tell what such a bouquet was materially: a real bouquet of lowers? a paper cut-out bouquet of flowers? a cluster of fragrant prayers? This left me wondering, and then blogging:

INSCITIA:

What is a spiritual bouquet in Catholic piety?

COGITATIO:

I think it's a series, or cluster, of prayers either in a journal, written on slips of paper, or prayed.

RESPONDUM:

Aqua boom?

Do you dream? I almost never dream. (And, to head you off at the pass, I know, I know, I know, I hear it every time: since ALL people dream, I actually DO dream, but just don't REMEMBER the dream. I know, I know, just humor me!) For the past decade or so, I am aware of remembering dreams, even aware of remembering having had a dream, perhaps a dozen times. A few nights ago made it a baker's dozen. I had a bizarre adventure dream. I'll spare you the details (mainly because my memory seems also to have spared me of them over the days), but I ended up under water, chasing a wicked fast, super-intelligent squid. Which led me to wonder, and then to blog.

INSCITIA:

Can you break the sound barrier underwater? Has it been done? What speed would you need to do so? And what would happen if you did it?

COGITATIO:

I think it is possible, but would require an incredibly fast speed. My ancient and rusted-out physics acumen reminds me altitude and air density are directly (or is it inversely?!) proportional to the sound barrier. (Something like 967 mph at sea level?) The higher you go, the thinner the air becomes, and the lower the sound barrier becomes. This is, I think, partially why planes make sonic booms at such high altitudes.

Despite my supersonic optimism, a major snag in the possibility of a subaquatic sonic boom, as far as I can see now, is the physical limits water resistance would put on a potentially supersonic subaquatic vessel (PSSV). It may be possible, for engineers to develop and pilots to handle a PSSV on the drawing board and in simulations, but I have a feeling the relatively enormous density of water, coupled with its friction and inertia, would top out any PSSV's velocity below the sound barrier.

A mere James Bond pipe dream?

RESPONSUM:

Fuzzy lasers?

Believe it or not, I'm a bit of a tech nerd. I like gadgets. One of my lingering day dreams is one day to build a droid or android. (Of course, the paradox is that I'm also a bit of a Luddite, insisting, for example, the Internet is one of the greatest spiritual challenges for modern humans and preferring simple, older-fashioned gizmos to overly ornate, multi-purpose thingamajigs. I don't like all this technical jargon, but I use it.) Being a gadget man, if a laser pointer comes my way, I'll take it. And who wouldn't? Who doesn't like shining red dots onto far buildings at night? Or making your little dog chase a bobbing red light on the floor? Or turning off the lights and making your fingertips and nostrils glow red in the darkness? Or imaginging shooting laser Morse code to aliens? These are the highest joys of any bored and precocious man (or, uh, so I hear...).

At any rate, a laser pointer did fall into my clutches a few weeks ago and I have had red fingertips ever since. I've also had more time to observe the little red light beam dangling from my key ring. Which made me wonder, and then blog.

INSCITIA:

What makes laser light look the way it does? I mean, when I focus on it, the light seems to shimmer and vibrate, like I can actually see clumps of photons swirling. Why does it look like red "TV snow"? All around the center of the laser beam, I note a sort of "photo fuzz", like a small patch of red "light fog" -- why?

COGITATIO:

I did a little reading about lasers today (the More How Stuff Works book) and suspect the visual "fuzziness" of laser light has to do with the "coherent" nature of laser light. Laser light is coherent, as far as I understand it, in that its photons have very similar, very close wavelengths. Mirrors within lasers help laser quanta converge, unlike incandescent light, which spreads its photons into many directions. As such, laser light's coherent quanta would appear clumpier to the naked eye. Unlike the wave fluctuations of incandescent photons, which escape our notice, coherent laser quanta tumble together in an apparent way. I think it must have to do with wavelength interference, but I'm not sure how.

It's a very wobbly lay-cogitatio, but hey, that's why I have this blog! Have at ye!

RESPONSUM:

Thought experiments?

I once read somewhere, somewhen, that Galileo (or someone) disproved Aristotle's theory of force and gravitation without even moving or measuring projectiles. Now, as you can see, every detail about this recollection is beyond fuzzy.

INSCITIA:

Can anyone out there fill me in on this thought experiment? Who did it (if not Galileo)? What was its content?

COGITATIO:

I've tried to recall how the pure-thought experiment disproved Aristotle's theory (i.e., it was a reductio ad absurdum about the latter's claim that bigger objects fall faster), but it's just so hazy and I'm not so smart. All I remember clearly is that the author was illustrating how science is not primarily or even necessarily a mathematical endeavor. Good science depends fundamentally on observation and logic.

RESPONSUM, care of "c" [pending Cogitator analysis]:

www.ligo-wa.caltech.edu/...sci_method_9t12.html

Waking bears?

I was watching Will Farrell's (sp?) Anchorman (again) with some friends this Saturday. The climax of the film has much to do with Kodiak bears, presumably angry to have been woken from their hibernation. Which led me to wonder, and then to blog.

INSCITIA:

Is it even possible to wake hibernating bears? Is not hibernation a deep, nearly catatonic, seasonal and hormonal "coma", which makes the bears totally and irreversibly unconscious? Or is it just a really long and sometimes fitful sleep? Do bears wake up naturally from time to time, or, as I recall from elementary school, do they load up for winter (lots of berries and a plug of pinecones) and then hole up in caves literally until winter breaks?

COGITATIO:

I am fairly certain the bears can be woken, if for no other reason than that lying for months as sleeping, vulnerable hunks of waiting meat for any non-hibernating predators probably weeds out that flaw. Then again, hibernation is from all I know, a profoundly deep and immobile lifecycle. What do I know? Ah, I'll sleep on it.

RESPONSUM:

Tea pot?

FACT 1: I was a huge Aerosmith fan in my teen years. I used to know all their lyrics, albums, track names, band members and riffs by heart.

FACT 2: Now, I live in Taiwan, where I've cultivated a taste for, if not "fine", then at least good tea (especially pure green tea).

Today a peculiar connection formed between these two facts. As I added more hot water to my tea bottle, I imagined the green leaves releasing their strong, amber riches as if on command, as if they were made to dissolve into fluid delight in the mere presence of hot water (oh, wait...). The image of green leaves releasing a pleasing consumer harvest reminded me of - why lie? - pot, marijuana, the ganja.

Now, I'm not a pot head; I've never even smoked the stuff. (Maybe green tea is as botanically rebellious as I get.) But, thinking of my tea as pot instantly reminded me of the lyrics from Aerosmith's (1976?) song, "Mama Kin." In that song, Steven Tyler euphemistically describes a rock-bohemian as "sleepin' late and smokin' up tea," tea of course being a code name for pot (both have green leaves, etc.). These mental meanderings led me to wonder, and then blog.

INSCITIA:

Can you make marijuana tea? For that matter, can you make tobacco tea? If not, why not?

As I daid, I'm not an admirer, smoker nor dealer of either plant, so the profits for me in this question are all but nil. It's the idea, though, that intrigues me.

COGITATIO:

I understand marijuana is weed, and therefore probably all too planty a plant to do anything but cut, dry, press and smoke. The same must certainly go for tobacco. Even so... some of the Chinese herbal medicines I've seen can't be any less bitter, raw, planty or unpleasant than boiled weed juice. It seems to me if you added some honey or sugar or some flavor enhancement, you could get past the acrid bitterness and enjoy the, eh-hem, more reputed aspects of either weed. Further, bypassing the smoking of those plants would remove the inherent health risks of any sort of smoking, as well as, I am certain, enhance the potency of the weeds. No flavors, chemicals or minerals would be lost as when the plants are processed and burned, so I imagine "tea pot" and "teabacco" would enhance their respective markets.

Are there serious medical dangers in boiling pot and or tobacco? In any case, why haven't I heard of this before? (Maybe because I'm not a pot head or a smoker...) As always, I welcome instructive comments. For those who may respond, there's no need to explain how you know the ins and outs of the pot world. :emoticon: It may just be a matter of time till we see cans and bottles of "Tea Pot" and "Teabacco"!

RESPONSUM, care of "c":

Don't try this at home kids, I'm a plant physiologist. The medium length answer to your question is that it all depends on the solubility of the active ingredient. Nicotine is water soluble, but but doesn't taste very good. That's why the nicotine gum tastes horrible. The main reason for that is that it is highly alakaline. THC, me thinks, is lipid soluble, and does not readily dissolve in water. I'm sure it's possible to make your proposed pot tea, and I'm almost certain that it's been tried. My guess is that it would take a lot more of the stuff to have the same effect. Smoking a substance delivers the chemical directly to the lungs, as with nicotine and THC. People could start making pot tea and nicotea, but they would end up using a lot more and paying a lot more. The bodily cost of consumption lost from the lungs would certainly be taken by the digestive system, and we would, perhaps, see an increase in stomach cancer. It seems to me that man has figured out the most pleasurable delivery methods for all his vices. That is, until recently, when people started vaporizing liquor. Quickly becoming illegal across the US, liquor vaporizers allow the consumer to breathe in alcohol vapors, which goes straight to the lungs, bypassing the digestive system, for a quick and powerful dose of alcohol. I remember the good old days when tasty ale was enjoyed in moderation. Kids these days.

Broad zoom?

Things are advancing slowly but pleasingly here at ScIn. For one case I've gotten two responsa to my inscitia from real live people in the past week or so, and for a second case, was able to dispel my inscitia with a little googling.

Now, having just read some cinematic analysis, I've got a film question. Calling all film students and movie buffs!

INSCITIA:

How do they do that zoom in which the person stays stationery at center and gets closer and tighter, while the (unfocused) background widens and moves around him? (This effect is commonly seen at moments of surprise or panic, to highlight the character's sense of vertigo and isolation.)

COGITATIO:

I think I once deduced or heard this effect is achieved by keeping a tight lens-focus on the person while physically moving the camera in towards him. The lens-focus stays tight, clean and immobile while the background moves into greater unclarity. That sounds legit, I guess, but still doesn't help me understand how a camera can register such disjunctive perspectives. (If this is right, I only thought of it in a burst of covering my arse, where trying to look knowledgeable may have flushed me into a cinematographic epiphany.)

RESPONSUM:

Fidgety stars?

Piggy-backing off my earlier post about “star streaks,” I’d like to add the following.

INSCITIA:

Given that stars appear immobile due to their tremendous distance relative to us, why do they still appear to shimmer and twinkle and twitch?

This question bothered me the night I was up in Da Keng.  I was surprised to (re)discover how animated the stars looked, thinking that one of them was as close to a UFO as I'd ever seen.  Happily, I was able to get a responsum to this inscitia just by googling.  (Which, of course, raises the question how viable this whole ignorance blog is, since I may be able to find responda to all my inscitia just with enough googling.  Even so, I like the idea of admitting on ScIn when I’m ignorant.  This blog is, as I say, as much a discipline of learning as a forum for cultivating humility.  Plus, I really would love to hear from knowledgeable readers, thus bringing collective wisdom to me in a personal, interactive way.)

RESPONSUM:

[A]tmospheric turbulence produces continual small changes in the optical properties of the air between the star and our eyes. The light from the star is refracted slightly, and the stellar image dances around on our retina. … Astronomers use the term "seeing" to describe the effects of atmospheric turbulence. The circle over which a star's light is spread is called the seeing disk. On a good night at the best observing site, the maximum amount of deflection produced by the atmosphere is slightly less than 1 second of arc. The seeing disk of a star is only a small fraction of an arc second. The point-like image of a star is seen as scintillating. (c/o the Singapore Science Center)  

So, there you have it.  The “UFO” twitching I saw New Year’s eve in Da Keng was atmospheric, not astronomic (a fact which I suspected at the time, since the most dramatic twitching came when clouds passed over and past stars).  Ironically, this atmospheric “interference” is actually a key part of our enjoyment of stargazing.  if we saw stars “as they really were,” without any “seeing” (atmospheric disturbance), we might just find them boring.  Twitching, disturbed real stars are and always will be much more enthralling than perfectly observable, static glow-in-the-dark sticker stars.  

Along the same lines, I recently read how the coffee-table-book photos we have of our galaxy and of other astronomical entities get nearly all their beauty and splendor from photo filters, digital touch-ups and, most important, prolonged shutter exposure.  The pictures we see of the Milky Way as a lush, swirling mass of stars and planets is actually due to immense light saturation, basically galactic photographic steroids. If we saw a true “snapshot” of the Milky Way, or of any part of space in general, we’d see an unimpressive huge black matte peppered very lightly with stars and asteroids.  Regardless how dramatically PBS animates it for public education, emptiness and darkness, not fullness and brightness, are the chief attributes of space.  

An irony for me was that I read about this in a book defending the likelihood, if not biological necessity, of extra-terrestrial life.  I find this ironic, incongruous, because a key premise in the SETI movement is that, even if we leave aside intrusive comic-book “grays” and “Martian men,” virus- or bacteria-laden space debris flitting from plane to planet, suffice to pollinate the whole cosmos with low-level life.  Oh, really?  The fact is, as this book pointed out, if you sent even a large rocket through space, it would in all likelihood travel “billions and billions” of light years without a single collision.  Presumably, SETI’s hypothetical life-rocks have better odds of touching down.

An added bonus?

I am currently revising an FCA article. I wanted to write "As an added bonus..." but then backtracked to write the leaner, seemingly non-redundant "As a bonus...".

INSCITIA:

Does is it make any sense to say "an added bonus"? Isn't the very meaning of "bonus" something that is "added"? Does an "added bonus" amount to a "bonus bonus"?

COGITATIO:

I know (I think) that in Latin "bonus" simply means "a good." But I think in modern English, "bonus" carries the idea of an extra, even gratuitous, good. As such, it is redundant to speak of an "added bonus." An unadorned bonus is bonus enough, no?

RESPONSUM:

Star streaks?

I was in the mountains last night for New Year's. Finally above Taiwan's smogline, I was actually able to see -- stars! Seeing them again for the first time, I was amazed at how "fidgety" they all seemed to be. No matter how hard I stared at them, and in fact, the harder I stared at them, they seemed to twitch and in some cases even change position. ("No wonder there are so many UFO sightings," I mumbled.) Thinking with such wonder about starlight, I recalled that the starlight we see is in fact old news: the light currently being emitted by the stars has not yet reached earth from so far away, so when we look up, we only see stars' old, well traveled photons.

INSCITIA:

If the earth is moving and if starlight reaches us in a stream of photons, why don't we see stars as streaks across the sky? Indeed, isn't the North Star so very bright just because earth 's axis moves in line with it, and therefore more photons from the star can hit us directly, without any terrestrial shift?

Imagine a man spraying a hose to the side while running: the water bends back as he runs forward. How or why doesn't the same go for starlight? Or imagine taking a photo of moving cars at night, with a long shutter exposure: as the photons collide into the camera's retina, the moving lights form streaks in the final photo. In both cases, the dynamics are reversed (the stars spray and are stationary, while the earth gets sprayed [with photons] and is in motion), but I think the analogies holds.

COGITATIO:

I assume the answer has to do with the immense distances of the stars from earth, and that from that far out starlight somehow "equalizes" around its originating point, so that we see the mean amount of light and recognize it as a star. In other words, the stars we see are like visual "statistical averages" of photons, and they appear to contract into one star. Since the only thing consitstently producing light is the star, it is the only thing that will reach our eye on a "statistically mean" frequency. Any twitching by the stars, then, would just be the batches of photons outside the star's statistically mean core.

RESPONSUM PRIMUM:

As of 4 December 2006, my co-workers quickly disabused me of my ignorance on this one. "It's distance versus speed, dude," they said. They reminded me that if we leave a camera shutter open a while at night, we will indeed see streaks. I am supposed to understand that because the stars are so very far away, we simply can't perceive their motion. It's like sitting on a train watching the far mountains "stand still" while the nearby grass, fences, ground, etc all zoom by.

This explanation is obvious and simple. Even so, I can't shake my sense of curiosity - which I'll say is so inchoate as to amount to ignorance - as to WHY such a phenomenon occurs. It still seems there must be some kind of perceivable alteration of the stars based on our terrestrial motion, much as the sun changes appearance just in relation to our orbit of it. "You can lead a fool to wisdom..." I suppose? I accept the explanation, but something elemental still tantalizes and eludes me at a deeper level about this phenomenon. Hmmm...

RESPONSUM SECUNDUM, care of "the other e.b.":

We can see the stars move due to terrestrial motion, paralax, dude.

Some practical explanation. Close an eye (any eye) and raise your thum to a fixed point on a far wall... now switch eyes, your thumb appears to have moved relative to the fixed point, right? Yeah baby, paralax.

And if you think about it this would work for "closer" objects as the earth moves around the sun. For instance durring summer a certain relatively close star would apper distance x away from a "fixed" star (one whose distance is so astronimically far that it appears unmoving even relative to our solar orbit). However, as the year progresses to winter the earth moves around to the other end of its orbit (like "switching eyes" in the previous example) and we now see the "close" star from a slightly different angle and it now looks as though it has traveled to a distance y from it's "unmoving" neighbor.

This only works for stars that are on the order of "astronomical units" away from us (one astronumical unit (au) is the distance from the earth to the sun, or thereabouts [using a base line of "1 AU" made some of the math easier given that, at the time, astronomers had no idea what the true distance was])

So, if we know the distance the earth has moved (roughly 2 au's), and we can see how much the "close" star has "moved" agains the relatively fixed background we can then extrapolate a distance using simple geometry (the earth's orbit is a base of a right triangle and the angle can be deduced from the amount the "close" star travels, apply the pathagorian theorem and there you have it).

pax

Volo scandeo inscitia mea!

"I want to mount my ignorance!"

The idea of this blog is to voice any and all areas of my ignorance. Astronomy, history, languages, biology, politics, theology, etc. -- anything I recognize as a dark spot in my mind, I'll post here.

Why?

Two reasons.

First, admitting and then broadcasting my ignorance cultivates humility; and humility is key to spiritual growth. I, like many people, glibly devote so much of my blogging to announcing what I think, presumably because it's what I think I know. How sobering it is to devote whole blog to what I don't know! If I were really alert and honest, this blog should quickly swell to tenfold the size of my other writings. Hence the title: mounting ignorance.

Second, while I must face my vast ignorance, I won't wallow in it. By posting quandries here, I am genuinely seeking knowledge. Hence the title: mounting ignorance [to overcome it].

The format of Scandendum Inscitia (ScIn, "skin") is as follows: I'll provide a context for my ignorance and then lay down my ignorant query (INSCITIA). Then I may or may not offer some thoughts about how to resolve my ignorance (COGITATIO). Either way, the post will end with space for readers, or my own subsequent learning, to resolve my inscitia (RESPONSUM). (I'll transplant the responsa into the post from emails or comments readers offer.) Hence, this blog in no small way depends on readers willing and able to help me mount my ignorance. May my inscitia yield unto God's sapientia.

Finally, I resist the common stereotype of the Middle Ages as a dark and mindless, as a dead and lifeless, age. The longer one studies that era, the more one is impressed, even stunned, by the medievals' voracious desire for learning. Plus, if you read St. Anselm or other medieval giants, you can't miss their humility. While they may pontificate and explicate about the highest mysteries, they all the while make it clear they do so as weak and ignorant mortals walking by the humble light of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding). Given my sympathies for the Middle Ages, and given that age's utterly Latin composition, I hope to use Latin frequently here at ScIn in a true medieval, voracious and humble pursuit of sapientia. Besides, using Latin here will help me maintain and regain my middle-school Latin.

INSCITIA:

Have I left anything out?

RESPONSUM:

INSCITIA:

Where is my Latin wrong?

RESPONSUM: