gulp

Glug glug glug

I finished 'Amerika' by Kafka. I learned a lot of disturbing things, not by reading Kafka, but by reading some of the notes in the book. Like this guy Max Brod, who shamelessly promotes the book, was asked by Kafka, to burn all the writing that Kafka had not published. That is, Kafka wanted no posthumous publications. Of course, a large part of his work was unpublished. And it wasn't burnt... So I feel really bad about reading something a dead guy didn't want read. But the book was given me by my request and I was compelled to read it. Also, Kafka never actually went to the US. So it was fun to see what sort of things he could come up with. Actually, I wasn't alive when the book was supposed to take place, which was in the first half of the twentieth century. The was a lot of sort of inter European struggling. The book is a comedy and, accordingly, the main character got himself into so many situations that did not reflect his inner experiences. The last chapter seems slapped on for it is not mentioned how the protagonist gets from his lowly position at the end of the second to last chapter to the more agreeable position at the beginning of the last chapter.

I read a King Solomon's Ring, by Konrad Lorenz. I found it in the library at the British School. I grabbed it while waiting for someone, intending to put it back soon after. But the library was closed after I met with my colleague in translation. Anyway this book is a wild sort of diary about keeping animals. It is written by a military doctor turned zoologist who likes to read poetry. Now this guy really understands certain animal calls and that lets him make sort of a commercial claim in the book. But the anecdotes in the story are what makes it worth reading. He can tell a story well, but his narrative notes are a bit intrusive, like he is taking too much care of his reader.  I really like his account of the water shrew, which is an animal that navigates primarily by muscle memory. He ends with a brief comparison between the wolf and the dove, asking which will be the example humans follow. The wolf, though, is the more civilized. The evidence of this is that a vanquished challenger to the position of the leader of his pack will present its neck to a leader who is unable to make the kill whereas the caged dove may kill one of its own kind.

I listened to The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and read by Alex Foster. It is such a sad story. But actually the language seems so classic. I recommend this version to those who want to hear 'What the deuce?!' said properly. Anyway, the book left me feeling like we really ought to forgive. If the person who wrongs you does so for the sake of something you can't yet understand, and that thing turns out to be very important to you and others, you will want to have not retaliated. The case is exaggerated because of the outstanding genius of the main character and the outrageousness of his consequent discovery. And though, someone of this nature does need to be forgiven, my sentiment is that even people who are not, on the surface, so remarkable, also need to be forgiven, since it cannot be known what is under all surfaces.

I hope one of my readers can clarify this issue for me: if some particles are shot an immensely far distance at an incredibly small hole in a barrier and are caught on a second barrier a relatively close distance from the first, then a component of the momentum of each particle say, the vertical component, that hits the second barrier is known at the time the particle passes through the hole. I think this is because the hole is so small that if the particle were moves vertically when it comes upon the first barrier, it will not get through the first barrier. So that the vertical momentum of all the particles that hit the second barrier for the whole time before they passed the first barrier is known, but once they go through the hole, you learn something about the position of those particles and you forget, so to speak, everything you knew about the vertical momentum. I believe the result of such experiments is a spread of particles on the second barrier. Anyway, the spread is a function (which I don't know) of distance, speed, and type of particle so that if you put a hole in the second barrier you will be able to accurately predict the spread on a third barrier. It is probably not important to keep the distance between the barriers the same, since sometimes it will be desirable to keep the spread the same. But is the amount of vertical momentum really a function of distance? Like, when you shoot a bullet, the farther it travels, the more it diverges from the horizontal. But with a particle of light, is that true? And if the hole really is so small that any vertical momentum of a particle at the moment it is crossing the barrier will cause it to hit the barrier, then does the vertical momentum after crossing the barrier come from spin? If not, where? I guess the conditions of the medium through which the particle travels can sort of start to affect its vertical moment at any point in its path. But if either spin or the medium deflect the ball from the horizontal, then suppose they, or one of them, does so when the particle is flush with the barrier, with its center at the center of the vertical position of its hole. If the barrier has thickness greater than its radius plus the vertical distance it deflects over the horizontal distance of the barrier, then the particle will hit the first barrier in the hole, instead of the second barrier. This will hold for any deflection that begins while a particle is within the thickness of the barrier. So, it is advantageous to have a thin barrier unless the inside of the hole in the first barrier collect data on the collisions. If that is the case, and if the conditions of the medium affect the vertical momentum of the particle, a tunnel will serve the purpose of the experiment. Then, if a steady stream of particles is sent down a tube, do you expect collisions to increase with distance?

I am quite torn about the future. I am constantly worried about how I will spend my time three or four years from now. It is really silly and really frustrating. When I first left Madagascar, I went on a meditation retreat in South Africa. I planned the trip to South Africa to get another three month visa into Madagascar. Now, three or four days in, I really wanted to go to China right away. I was ready to cancel my flight to Madagascar. But as the retreat went on, I rebuilt my plan to go to Madagascar. I did not talk for the ten days I was on the retreat. Still, it was a social process to convince the world that I should go to Madagascar. There is a big debate you know. If you have a lot of juice to do something, some people say you need to put everything else aside and chase your dream. That is all well and good and to a certain extent, I don't think you can be happy if you don't. But think about the difference between the brute force approach and the calculated approach. That is one point. Another point is how often desire takes precedence over necessity. Then when the object is attained, the satisfaction is disproportionately small compared to the amount it was desired since satisfaction is related to necessity.

I don't understand what the difference is between syntax and semantics. Right now I think that semantics is useful for comparing two languages. If there is only one language, then syntax will be semantics. But when there are two languages, there will be two syntactical formations for the same semantics. OK, but that answers my question, go blog! Synonymous expressions in the same language are syntactically different but semantically the same. Wait, but is there a language, perhaps a programming language, in which no syntactically different expressions have the same semantics? Well, different code that produces the same output doesn't cut it here. It needs to be different code that results in the exact same computation. For me, there really is no strict sense of synonymy since the use of different expressions has a different effect. Like, I might consider an ESL student to have a bad vocabulary but a good command of grammar if, in talking about George Clooney's marital status, the student repeatedly refers to him as an unmarried man, but never as a bachelor. I don't really know the answer for computers though. Also, I guess two results that produce the same output for every input but require different computations are neither syntactically nor semantically equivalent. They won't be syntactically equivalent because the computer should do the same computation when given syntactically identical code. The will not be semantically equivalent because they will have different execution time and they will require different amounts of memory. But now, I am not really comfortable with the statement that the computer will perform the same computation twice, since the memory might be configured differently, that might effect run time, and there may be relevant environmental factors that are different for each execution.

The most important thing for the internet tycoons is to invest in is getting the internet to more people. I don't know where electricity is good or bad but it is necessary for the internet. Also, I am pretty sure that means we will need more electricity. Now, that means some of the super rich have a vested interest in the global use of electricity. The first thing to do is distribute the internet. The second is keeping information free. The 5/7ths of the world that doesn't use the internet is probably pretty poor. Poor people will not use the internet any more than they do now if everything costs money. So it doesn't really cut it to spread the internet without free information. But for the people that do use the internet now, we already know that free information is awesome.

I finished reading The Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Casteneda. It is about the apprenticeship of a Peruvian anthropologist who studied at Berkeley to a Native American, Don Juan. The first part is an account of the events of the six year apprenticeship. The second is an attempt to conceptualize the apprenticeship. The second part was a lot less fun to read than the first. They use three drugs: a guide, Mescalito, and two allies Psilocybus Mexicana and Datura inoxia.  Some pretty elaborate rituals surround the consumption of these drugs. In there use there is some emphasis on pragmatism; they are used to gain useful knowledge. In fact, they are tools for a man of knowledge. What I took from this book is that to take a drug is to have a relationship with that drug. Well, the idea of having a master sorcerer watching over you is kind of cool to, but it was pretty downplayed. The author said that a portion of the teachings were in the form of visual cues given by the master. You know, imagine the difference between learning mathematics from body language instead of chalk dust. The author ended up having his sense of reality shaken and so he stopped the apprenticeship. But that is where the good part of the book ends. The conceptualizing stuff may be useful for something, but I am not sure what. It does have a very clear and dispassionate quality to it, but the ceaseless introduction of new vocabulary really detracted from my enjoyment of that part of the book. Oh, thanks to a nice man in a nice hostel in Cape Town for recommending this book to me.

I watched 12 Years a Slave, Endless Love, Dallas Buyers Club, and Frozen. I liked 12 Years a Slave and Dallas Buyers Club. Endless Love did seem like an idealized version of my high school love. Frozen had a bit of the magic you expect from a great movie, but the plot is so terribly depressing that the movie isn't that good. I appreciated McConoughey or whatever in DBC. He went a bit Machinist but the movie was short on one liners. While I was watching 12 Years a Slave I wondered how it was going to turn into a movie. I haven't read the book, but it seems more real life than fiction.

Anyway, I talked to a lot of people today on the 13th of March. I talked to Mado about the history of the internet and keeping languages isolated as a teacher. I talked to Zoely about Ambatondrajaka. Chancelle showed me some pictures from various CNELA parties and helped me read a book she gave me. I talked to Lalao about Phoenix and Nanja about English. All in all, I did very little work today. My left knee has bothered me for a few days now. Oh, I talked to Wells and Sam on fb chat.

There was a party for CNELA in Andranovelona last week. I talked to Billy Head, an Englishman who has been here for five years, on the way up and back. He teaches at CNELA and at the university. He is a writer. I also played ping pong and pool, and I swam and sang a tiny bit of Karaoke. I told Daniel that I came here to learn about traditional culture. Zoely gave me some loaka. We went near the spring where the two main bottle water companies get their juice.

Now, after training for two days, my knee seems OK. I just finished watching the 37 episodes of Death Note. It is pretty great. It depicts how one can gain from a being adventurous and then how one can take it too far. The moment when I knew it was going to far was when lovers are treated like rivals.

Some observations. Fruit sellers pass through neighborhoods yelling out what they carry on their heads in a big basket. Bottle collectors also walk though with huge sacks. Despite having felt the first chills of winter, today must have been the hottest day of the year here in Tana. Or maybe it is because we felt the cold that it just seemed like the hottest day. Hmm...

I, uhh, wrote this over a long period of time without trying to make it to coherent so...well, I just want to put that out there.

And, I am planning a three month excursion to a language school in Japan. But today I played soccer with the Ramamgamihanta family. After, I talked with a boy who is in his early twenties about his math education at the Univ. of Antananarivo. I am pretty sure there is enough for me to do here for a while. But I can't live here because of the pollution. He inspired some confidence in me about staying in Madagascar. Actually, I am pretty keen on going to Japan. But I am certain that I want to learn math. I can't really afford to do that in Japan or the US, but here it is possible to be a full time student, living on savings from first world minimum wage. I'd appreciate some advice. Let me dish out some background. I planned to study some physics and computer science with an aim to improve my mathematical abilities. In fact, I have done that at Scottsdale community college and online. But now, I am putting this feeling of doing the most important thing first from the meditation session in South Africa on top of my desire to learn math instead of my desire to go to China.