Aug 28 2022 - Ask the Oracle

 

As things start up and we "go back to school", the choir that I joined will be getting together.  I'll be finding out if we fall into the category of the "Whooperups" - those "inferior noisy singers."  I haven't heard the choir sing, but that doesn't seem to bother me at all.   If it did concern me, is that a question I might ask the Oracle of Delphi?   That does seem too small to ask the Oracle such a question. I should be asking about conquering other lands and trouncing my enemies.  To find out more, I go look up  the Oracle of Delphi, and the answer list includes  "Your SEO journey starts here".   There's a throw-back.  Perhaps I would have paid attention when we were using Oracle 2.0 in the early 1980s and invested in the stock.  Actually, it is likely we were using the original version, but there wasn't one named 1.0 as Larry Ellison decided no one would want a first generation product.  So 2.0 was the original.   Who would have guessed that the Oracle of Delphi would evolve into  information storage systems today.  It seems a perfect evolution - the answers that were mysterious can all be stored and accessed. However,  the name Oracle did not come from a reference to the Oracle of Delphi. It came from the code-name of a CIA-funded project Larry Ellison, one of the founders,  had worked on while formerly employed by Ampex. I had imagined something more interesting.  Whaat else has the Oracle of Delphi evolved into?  Video games - Oracle on Steam, The Legend of Zelda:  Oracle of Season and Oracle of Ages.  There's a Jewels of the Oracle -another adventure game.  There is Battle Brothers - with a segment named The Oracle (the remains of a temple that once housed an oracle in an age long past...), and so on. So  back to the Oracle of Delphi and the prediction the future: what question could  one ask today?   Take our current day equivalent leaders who might want to know the future.  Would Putin or Trump ask the Oracle such questions on war and conquest that were asked in the past?  Not likely is my answer.

St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Niagara-on-the-Lake makes a good stand-in for the Temple of Apollo where the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi presided.  Columns and columns - that's the critical feature of an ancient temple. Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Feb 16 2022 - How Does a dog fall asleep so quickly (and snores)

 

Millie's head hits the pillow and snoring starts.  Well, that's a figurative pillow.  Could she really fall asleep that quickly?  My question has been asked:  Do dogs fall asleep instantly? Here's one Quora answer: They don’t have anything to worry about. And dogs don’t have a REM sleep cycle so their sleep is light and lengthy. A non-working dog will typically sleep about 20 hours per day. This seems like a stupid answer to be posted:  The question isn't answered, goes off in another direction than the question, and it takes up all the retrievals - coming up over and over, the way Reddit answers do.   I find out that Quora's questions and answers come from anyone as long as they get hits and comments. Here's the story on how this works.  It is HERE.  (And I've corrected the grammar.) "I joined Quora about the Year 2020 with no intentions to make money out of it. Asking Questions just felt natural and interesting to me. So I asked about 20 Questions that I thought I needed an answer. After about 2 months from the point I started, I got an Email from Quora that said I was invited to be added as a Quora Partner. As a Quora Partner you get a share of ad revenue from your questions. Unfortunately the program is invitation only. So you need to be one of the lucky ones to get invited. Soon I started asking questions daily and my daily earnings went from 0,1 to 8 dollars a day in about 1 month."   "The amount you make on Quora can vary greatly, but on average I get is $40-$50 for 100,000 views. Factors like keywords and topics can go into how much ads pay, but the best way to make the most out of your question is to present it in an interesting and intriguing way." So back to Millie snoring - I know there's a  difference between her nose and Dezi's - she has what is known as a snub nose and that's a snoring dog nose. How she falls asleep so quickly and starts snoring, or just simply snores while awake, that remains to be solved another day. I am not searching any more - I am definitely not giving any more money to people who ask questions and answer them in a silly way in a mostly grammar-free zone. Compare the cute little noses of Dezi and Millie.

Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Oct 29 2021 - Same Science Everywhere?

 

Is this a stupid question:  Are the laws of science the same throughout the universe?  Is this another stupid question:  Have we identified all the laws or have we missed some? September 9 2010, Swinburne University of Technology A team of astrophysicists based in Australia and England has uncovered evidence that the laws of physics are different in different parts of the universe. The report describes how one of the supposed fundamental constants of Nature appears not to be constant after all. Instead, this 'magic number' known as the fine-structure constant -- 'alpha' for short -- appears to vary throughout the universe.  Find it HERE at Science Daily.  "The implications for our current understanding of science are profound. If the laws of physics turn out to be merely 'local by-laws', it might be that whilst our observable part of the universe favours the existence of life and human beings, other far more distant regions may exist where different laws preclude the formation of life, at least as we know it." What about these simple things that science can't explain right now?  These from Mental Floss HERE: 1. Why we cry 2. How to cure hiccups 3. How general anesthesia works 4. How tylenol (acetaminophen) kills pain 5. Why we sleep 6. Why only thunderstorms produce tornadoes 7. Why we itch 8. How we age 9. Why we laugh 10. How and why animals migrate back to their birthplaces 11. What dreams are for 12. How turbulence happens Except for turbulence - one of the Millennium Problems known as the Navier-Stokes Equation, and a prize associated with it, I doubt there are any prizes for figuring out how we laugh.  But wait:  The Ig Nobel Prizes have been handed out by actual Nobel laureates every year at Harvard University since 1991. They are awarded to scientific research that “makes you laugh, then makes you think”. Here, have a laugh; I was wondering why the ball kept getting bigger and bigger… And then it hit me. These train models have a lot of parts - there could be thousands on each one.

Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Aug 19 2021 - Carl Sagan's Thoughts on the Most Asked Questions

 

Carl Sagan: “I promise to question everything my leaders tell me. I promise to use my critical faculties. I promise to develop my independence of thought. I promise to educate myself so I can make my own judgements.” What would Carl Sagan say about the most asked questions in the world?   Google has lots of them and lots of information about them.   Here are the top questions: when are the nba playoffs – 5,000,000. what is my ip address – 4,090,000. where's my refund – 3,350,000. what is love – 1,830,000. how to draw – 1,500,000. where am i – 1,220,000. how many weeks in a year – 823,000. when are the early signs of pregnancy – 673,000. Google displays them equally -  from the stupid to the sublime. Are the top 3 questions hilariously mundane?  Can you imagine so many people wanting a refund? Or is it one persistent person/bot hitting the return key over and over?   Google has analysis on the "what", the "why", the "who", "when", "where", "how", and then also these: "does", "is", "can" and "are" questions.   The #1 "why" question is: "Why were cornflakes invented", followed by "why you so obsessed with me".  Just to be clear, the full question is this:  "Why were Kellogg's Corn Flakes invented and was it to stop masturbation?" Now that's quite a question!  The top "who" question is: "Who do i look like?"  followed by "who am i".  The first may refer to look-alike celebrity apps, and the second could be a Casting Crowns video or life's unanswerable question. There is a tie for "how" questions: how to draw how to make slime how to screenshot on a  mac how to tie a tie Aren't these such tidbits of entertainment, tumbling out in different shapes and sizes.  Some the province of children learning about the world, and others the rants and rages of possibly immature adults. Why scrutinize the questions?  I keep thinking they point to the decline of basic faculties.  I've been looking through Carl Sagan's words. He is quoted so much because he said so many profound things.  In relation to our most asked questions, I think they reveal his "foreboding". A year before his death, in 1995, he wrote this: I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness… And our photos today?  I had an enjoyable trip through the photo archives of St. Louis, 2010.  I thought you might enjoy some of the model railroads.

August 18 2021 - World's Silliest Questions

 It popped into my head:  what are the silliest questions we might ask?  We've looked at life's unanswerable questions.  Is there an overlap?  Not according to the Thoughtcatalog.com website.  And typically, the internet portrays questions as "silly" or "crazy" while they often fall into ignorant and stupid.  I expect that the majority likely come from children using the internet as an encyclopedia.  And the minority come from people posing to be stupid so they can ask such outrageous things.  the questions that are circulated come from Yahoo Answers.  Here are a few stand-outs that made me laugh:

• Should I tell my parents I’m adopted?
• Do midgets have night vision?
• If I eat myself will I get twice as big or disappear completely?
• Does it take 18 months for twins to be born? Or 9?
• Do you think NASA invented thunderstorms to cover up the sound of space battles?
• How big is the specific ocean?
• Why are the holes in cats fur always in the right places for their eyes?

The questions I consider non-silly and no laugh happens move over to the list of ignorant and stupid,  Most often grammar and spelling are deficient, punctuation is ever-present, and swear words  limit the content significantly.

There is an entry in Wikipedia about stupid questions.  It begins with Carol Sagan's words: "There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism.  But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question".  

Carl didn't experience the full force of the internet and Yahoo Answers, did he?  He died in 1996. Since then the pile of stupid questions has grown large enough that they've been classified: 

• Those questions that have already been answered, but the asker wasn't listening or paying attention.
• Questions that can be answered on one’s own with complete certainty. After all, information found online or from other sources can be wrong, so it never hurts to check.
• Questions of which the answer should be painfully obvious to any person with a pulse who has lived on this Earth for more than a decade.
• Questions that include ridiculous or hypothetical assumptions.
• Questions asked by someone who already knows the answer but is trolling the person they are asking.
   

So I moved on, and went cherry picking in the list of silly/stupid questions and to find these two and think we might move them to unanswerable /existential questions:

• What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?
• If the world is going to end, do you buy, sell, or hold stocks? 

On to our picture of the day: we're again visiting the Grimsby Beach Painted Ladies today.  This is 13 Fair Ave. Here's the story of the area's houses:

In 1846, Methodists gathered on the shore of Lake Ontario on land owned by J.B. Bowslaugh in a ten day temperance rally that evolved into a significant Chautauqua site.   
 
Grimsby Beach continues to echo with the charms of its storied past. In fact, these cottages built for the summer residence of a temperance camp, remain the most prominent connection to the rich history of the area. Now, the intricate fretwork and colors of the cottages inspire a vibrant mood at the beach which is a reminder of the spirit that inhabited the area.

 

Feb 9 2021 - Alien Driveby?

  

It has recently occurred to me that there are unanswerable questions that I don't want or care about getting answered. Take a look at just a few of the dozens of unanswered / unanswerable questions:  How exactly did life begin?  Why do we dream? Is there a pattern behind prime numbers?  Can we travel through time?  Is our universe the only one?  What exactly is consciousness?  Where is all the antimatter? As soon as you ask for "exactly" something answers then it is going to get difficult to answer.  A question I don't consider important the unanswerable realm:  Where did I come from? But then I see a NY Times article and my curiosity is engaged. Did an alien life-form do a driveby of our solar system in 2017? The particular circumstance is a cigar shaped thing out there that was given the name Oumuamua — Hawaiian for “scout” — it was first noticed by a telescope on the island of Maui on Oct. 19, 2017, when it was already on its way out of the solar system, having passed closest to the sun a month before. It had come from outside the solar system, from the direction of the star Vega. Author of the book The First sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth, Avi Loeb argues that it is no more preposterous to suppose that Oumuamua was a lightsail, a thin material that gets its propulsive boost from sunlight or starlight, either launched in our direction or anchored like a buoy in space, where we ran into it on our planet’s travel around the galaxy. In which case the age-old question — are we alone in the universe? — has been answered. The NY Times quotes from Loeb's book “But the moment we know that we are not alone, that we are almost certainly not the most advanced civilization ever to have existed in the cosmos, we will realize that we’ve spent more funds developing the means to destroy all life on the planet than it would have cost to preserve it.” The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth  By Avi Loeb   Here are more montage images - I didn't have to bury the pictures in salt and vinegar potato chips to get the blue green copper verdigris colour.  Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

So Many Questions!

Google covers the top trending searches.  For example, the number one searched-for animal is Giraffe, then Brahma chicken.  "The most Googled "What is..." and "How to..." questions of 2016 both revolved around one thing: Pokémon Go." I found the website covering the World's Most Popular Questions -  Martin Kryzwinski, science art, staff scientist, Bioinformatics, Genome Sciences Centre, Vancouver.  He is willing to take them all on:   "Even before we explored outside our caves, mankind has been plagued by unanswerable questions. How do I heal a broken heart? Why do I never see baby pigeons? I don't understand how Lost ended." In the section Examples, he lists these questions as  General Issues: How could I ask for more? How do people do extreme couponing? How can I sell my soul? Who can I sue? Why can't I hold all these limes? Why can't I sell my kidney? Why don't people like me? Why do people hear voices in their head? Why do I always feel like murdering everyone? Why do I never see baby pigeons? I don't understand how Lost ended. I don't understand where I went wrong. One might want to click on these questions to see what the answers are.  Alas, they don't have links. There's enough on his website to keep one busy, though.   These pictures come from a farm burn pile beside the road on the escarpment.