What is a wife?

     One of the activities I engage in with my free time is the perusal of my dictionary, or now, my dictionaries. I own the 3rd and 5th editions of The American Heritage Dictionary, which were published in 1992 and 2011, respectively. There are some interesting differences between the two, such as the exclusion of the word “internet” from the 1992 edition. However, I find the differences between the definitions of “wife” and “husband” rather compelling.

Consider the 1992 definitions of “wife” and “husband”:

wife - A woman joined to a man in marriage; a female spouse.

husband - A man joined to a woman in marriage; a male spouse.

Now consider the 2011 definitions:

wife - A woman joined to another person in marriage; a female spouse.

husband - A man joined to another person in marriage; a male spouse.

     I find the definitions compelling because they make me wonder what they will be 20 years from now, since they have already changed within a span of less than 20 years. Take keen notice that one simply needs to be joined to another person; gender of the other person is not specified, as it is in the 1992 definitions.

Ted Chiang's science fiction.

I want to mention that Ted Chiang's science fiction is better than exceptional. As Greg Bear stated, I agree that it is essential.

I read "Stories of Your Life and Others" this weekend and my attention was frozen, immobilized, by his erudition and exploration of complicated topics. This is science fiction for aggressive readers and autodidactically inclined people.

Category 2 and Category 3

     According to my Philosophy of Reality, which can be found in this blog, there are 3 categories of existence. The first category contains humans, the second category contains things that exist because of humans, and the third category contains things that exist irrespective of whether humans exist or not.
     Many of the things that I dislike or disagree with can be found in category 2. This is part of the reason why I maintain such a low profile in public and make no move to gain a position of power or find a wife. I'm not that interested in the society that humans have made and I do not revel in its wonders as I do with those in category 3. This is also why I do not vote. No candidate has yet shown any interest in improving the well-being of human life.
     These are the things that need to happen in order for me to show a greater interest in category 2 beyond that of science fiction, movies, and music.

• Health insurance needs to be abolished. All health care should be paid for by taxes, without raising taxes.
• All prisons need to be destroyed. If a person is so dangerous that they cannot be allowed to roam free, then they should not be a part of our society. 
• Car insurance needs to be abolished. The tests necessary to grant a driver's license should be far more rigorous than an infantile multiple choice exam and a 15 minute observation by a yawning old person. And, as Robert Heinlein once stated, "If you don't have a gun, then you'll grow eyes in the back of your head." No insurance will create better drivers, as a man lost in the woods with no weapon will make better choices.
• All professional athletes should be capped at $250,000 per year. Too much money is given to people that play games. The extra money should be re-routed into health care or NASA. $250,000 is an unthinkable amount of money and will still offer a very, very high quality of life. Any athlete that complains about the salary cap should be kicked out immediately and forced to work for minimum wage at a fast food restaurant.
• Teachers should have a base starting pay of $100,000 per year. The status of teachers should be higher than that of doctors and lawyers, since they influence the future actions of humans. Doctors fix people that have been unlucky or have been stupid. Lawyers are involved in a game that should be handled by scientists. 
• All U.S. soldiers should be ordered to leave their foreign posts. We have nuclear weapons. Any foreign nation that gives U.S. citizens trouble should be repeatedly tapped with mushroom clouds until they learn how to behave.
• There should be no penalty for using illegal drugs. None at all. Rather, the people that make and distribute illegal drugs should be executed without hesitation. 
• Adults should not be defined by age. Why are a 17 year old and an 18 year old classified as two completely different kinds of people? Why isn't the split at age 24? Why not 35? Why not 42? Who the hell decided to declare that 18 year old people are suddenly adults? 

     My last suggestion or veiled complaint is something of interest to me. A guy a know named Brandon (nickname Idolores) once stated in response to a recovery of old forum comments:

Idolores wrote:

Oh God. I so don't want to see how I was back then.

         I stated: 

     Or, more precisely, your semaphoronts. "Semaphoront" is a word I find to be very interesting. I learned about it through my studies of phylogenetic systematics. I would imagine that all graduate students in biology are familiar with that word, and it is probably rarely used outside of that specialty.
     The philosophical implications are never ending, since I can't come to a decisive way of thinking about it. It is clearly defined within biology, but in plain English, it refers to an individual that exhibits life processes during a period of time (not a 'point in time'). The period of time itself is not defined. This is most useful for creatures that have different forms, such as insects. It is easy to see their semaphoronts, since the structural changes are distinct.
     It's more complicated with humans, since we retain the same basic shape throughout our lives. This is why I tend to think of it in terms of psychology. But I have no concern for whatever psychologists have invented, such as 'adolescent' or 'adult', since people of vastly differing ages can act roughly the same or completely dissimilar. The laws we have invented are even less satisfying, since they claim we are adults at age 18. I don't like any of it, so I have to make up my own classifications. I believe the semaphoront is a good start for reclassifying the stages of people since it focuses on individuals and not large groups of people. Each person changes at a different pace and it is wrong to use pre-defined ages to determine what a person is.
     The bottom line is that you don't want to "see" your younger self anymore than a fly wants to see itself as a maggot.

     That's enough of category 2. Onward to category 3, which I enjoy with heartfelt enthusiasm. You got a taste of my love when I was writing about the concept of a semaphoront. The word exists because of humans, but the stages of a life-form are quite real, which makes it category 3. But wait a second...isn't politics real? Isn't health insurance real? Of course they are, but if we humans suddenly disappeared, then politics and health insurance would also disappear. All the category 3 phenomena would be quite content whether we existed or not, such as protons and neutrons.
   

The Science Fiction of Doris Piserchia

     I have a stack of novels that I'm going to read and it represents the complete works (minus short stories) of Doris Piserchia. I can confirm beyond any doubt that she is similar to R.A. Lafferty. This is marvelous and I am thrilled to the point of busting a few neurons. Piserchia wrote 11 science fiction novels and 2 horror novels, using the name Curt Selby. These were all published from 1973 to 1983.
     I have found an interesting and antiquated website in which Piserchia's fiction is referred to as feminist. I have found other sites that classify it as feminist. I don't know why people usually refer to female writers that create female protagonists as "feminist", when it is nothing but a natural bias. All people have a race and gender bias, in which they are naturally preferential to, and view themselves as, belonging to a certain gender or certain race (skin color). I would expect a black man to create a black male protagonist; it would not be racist for him to do so. It would be his natural bias to do so. I would likewise expect a Korean to create a Korean protagonist, an Eskimo to create an Eskimo protagonist, and a female to create a female protagonist.
     It is thus of no surprise that Piserchia chooses to use a female as her protagonist, at least in the first two novels. I would expect her to do so, as I would expect a male to create a male protagonist. There is nothing in her writing that would conjure the word "feminist" in my mind. It's just really bizarre science fiction in the vein of R.A. Lafferty.
     Honestly, if public schools gave students Mister Justice, then more people would probably read. I remember being bored to the point of madness in high school, due to the required readings of so-called "important" or "classic" novels. Mister Justice is about a man that can travel through time, yet is unable to physically affect anything; he may only take pictures. Thus, he chooses to take pictures of unsolved crimes in progress in the past and apprehends the offender in the future. He ties up the offender and drops him off at a police station, with the pictures attached.
     I also want to mention that her work is OOP (out of print), yet cheap and easy to find on abebooks.com
     Here are her novels:

Mister Justice (1973)

Star Rider (1974)

 

A Billion Days of Earth (1976)

 

Earth-Child (1977)

Spaceling (1978)

The Spinner (1980)

The Fluger (1980)

Doomtime (1981)

Blood County (1981), using alternate name "Curt Selby"

Earth in Twilight (1981)

The Dimensioneers (1982)

I, Zombie (1982), using alternate name "Curt Selby"

The Deadly Sky (1983)

Two Powerful Korean Films

     I will never forget the first time I watched a movie by Hong Sang-Soo. I had started at the beginning of his filmography, with The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996).

The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well (1996)

Front Cover

Back Cover

      My first 3 viewings of The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well were not good enough. I was still recovering. By now, a full 5 years after having had watched it for the first time, I am able to cope with it. What the hell are these people doing? What is the plot? What is happening!? And that's it! This film is about regular people going about their regular activities. This is a masterstroke of psychological film making. One deep powerful stroke into your ephemeral thought center that caresses your neurons for days, weeks, months, years. This is definitely specifically designed for the INTP personality or for anyone that values thinking. Most people will not be able to watch this film and feel that anything truly remarkable has happened. And you, the reader, might be wondering how a film showing regular people doing regular things can be so powerful. 

     The second film by Hong Sang-Soo I had watched is the 2nd in his filmography:

The Power of Kangwon Province (1998)

Front Cover

Back Cover

     The plot of The Power of Kangwon Province does exist, provided one sits through the whole film and pays very close attention. This is not a typical movie, where one can accept phone calls, grab a bite to eat, leave a swirl in the toilet, pick their toenails, etc. You have to sit there and shut out everything else in your life and pay attention. You will be rewarded. 

QUESTIONS

     I'm going to use this posting space to keep track of some of the questions I have in reference to science and philosophy. One of the earliest questions I had was:

     CAN THERE BE A SMALLEST THING?

     It seems logical to me that there cannot be a smallest thing, but there is a smallest theoretical length at which new science would need to be developed in order to explain. That is called the Planck Length and it's many orders of magnitude smaller than atoms or their constituents.

     Another question I had formed, in my early 20s:

     SINCE MASS BECOMES INFINITE AT LIGHT SPEED, WHAT HAPPENS AT ZERO VELOCITY?

     Light speed makes no sense for objects that have mass, so my answer to this question is that zero velocity also makes no sense. Using logic, an object that came completely to rest would lose all its mass, have infinite length, and not last long enough to witness the birth of the universe. Since time slows as velocity increases, then that implies that time speeds up as velocity slows. If somehow, one could achieve zero velocity, then one would experience such a fantastic rate of time that the birth of the universe would never happen.
     One might wonder what I'm talking about, since zero velocity is so easy to achieve. But that is not the case. While you are reading this blog post, you are on the Earth (very likely). Since the Earth is moving around the Sun and the Sun is moving around the core of the galaxy and the galaxy is moving through space, you are not even remotely close to zero velocity. And it gets worse. Space itself moves.
     Gravity is definitely something to consider while pondering this question. The one thing that locks your velocity is gravity. You are "locked" at around 66,000 miles/hr because that is the orbital velocity of the Earth. You can escape that lock by leaving the influence of the Earth's gravitational field. But then you must escape the Sun, and then, you must escape the Milky Way.
     At what velocity would one be locked outside of the gravitational field of a galaxy? That is something I do not know. One thing is clear: from your point of view, everything would be moving. If you found something that was not moving, then you could determine your velocity to be zero, with respect to that object. But since everything is moving (in reality), you are automatically moving at the same velocity as that object. Your next task would be to determine the velocity of that object and then escape its lock. Good luck achieving absolute zero velocity!!!

     WHAT WOULD YOU SEE WITH X-RAY VISION?

      I am perturbed by the laziness of many writers for TV and movies, as well as with the developers of video games. But in their defense, I am also perturbed by the name given to energetic photons. In particular, the suffix -ray is what I find so bothersome. Photons of all energy levels are waves, whether we see them or whether they kill us. X-rays and gamma rays are "rays" as much as "fat" makes one fat. ("Fat" is another poorly understood word.) Why am I calling some writers lazy?
     Because they should know that our eyes collect photons; they do not emit photons. Anyone that thinks a person with x-ray vision could look through walls or see a woman's breasts has not advanced much beyond what the ancient Greeks thought. They thought that our eyes emitted light.
     Just like with visible light, if one wants to see anything with x-rays, then one needs an x-ray source. I am curious as to what one would see if they could detect x-rays. I wrote the following on 5-25-2010 and posted it at a physics website:

      "I couldn't sleep the other night because I was thinking about photons and their ability to penetrate materials. It can be argued that humans are photon detectors. This is true in more than just the sense of visible light because photons don't just enter our pupils. As an example, our bodies can detect x-rays (our bones stop them). But we can't form an x-ray map of our surroundings, as we can with visible light, unless computers assist us. 
     Imagine for a moment if our eyes were unable to detect visible light. For some reason we evolved to detect x-rays. If I were in a building, away from all windows, what would I see? Assume that all light sources (in this case the sources would emit x-rays) were turned off. Since x-rays have greater penetrating power than visible light, would I still see the Sun if I were inside a building? If one had eyes able to detect x-rays would there be a need to make artificial x-ray sources?
      But then I thought about much longer wavelengths. As you know, if you step outside of a building and shine a flashlight against the wall, the photons will not pass through the wall and be detected by any humans inside. Interestingly, I asked, 'Why can radio waves pass through the wall?'
      Since radio waves have less energy than light waves, how are they able to penetrate materials that absorb and reflect visible light? I used to think that radio waves were made of photons, but I read recently that they are not. It just seems logical to assume that the carriers of electromagnetic radiation, the photons, waved at all wavelengths.
      Since radio waves are not made of photons (are they made of electrons?) why are they put on the same chart as visible light, ultraviolet, x-ray, gamma-ray, etc.?"

     Wow. Everything was fine until I got to the end of what I had typed. What made me think that radio waves are not made of photons? I must have read a really bad forum answer somewhere else. Luckily, someone responded to what I had typed....

      "Radio and Visible light are exactly the same phenomenon.

Long radio waves can be explained "classically" because the wavelength is so much larger than the size of atoms, and because they have low energy: you have many many many individual photons each very subtle so you only see the overall effect. The atoms of the radio antenna don't stop and absorb a photon and change state; instead, quantum effects mix displacements of the free electrons with the photons and when it all comes out in the end you say "electric field" etc.

Short visible waves don't do all that because they are very small compared to the atoms. Your eyes work by having a molecule stop (absorb) photons which causes a change to the electron's energy level in the atom. Visible light's energy is a good match for the available energy levels in organic molecules... so no coincidence that we use it to see with!

Just at the edge of visibility and into UV, individual photons knock individual electrons out of a metal, which is what lead to the realization that photons exist. Radio waves, in huge numbers, gently sway the electrons in the metal instead, like water molecules in the surf making small seashells dance on the edge of the beach.

The two things are extreme ends of a continuous range of phenomena. Just like water is "a liquid" in bulk, but individual hard and solid atoms on another scale. Radio and Visible light is like the difference between a pile of sand and a large slab of stone. Different things happen if you drop each one onto you. "

     Honestly, I'm kind of embarrassed about my mistake. Anyway, I still want to know what would happen if our eyes could collect photons in the x-ray energy range. My guess is that hospitals would be sources of light, as well as dentist's offices. How many x-ray photons from the Sun penetrate down to ground level? Would the Sun even be visible?

    For now, this is my answer, based on my research. The sun would probably be hard to distinguish amongst the more powerful and unusually ubiquitous x-ray sources covering the entire sky. The whole sky would probably be "visible", but I can't even guess what "color" it would be. X-rays don't penetrate to the surface of the earth, so a life-form that could detect x-rays on the earth would need to develop artificial sources and carry around flashlights that emit x-rays. Even so, regular objects and other life-forms would look pretty odd. A lot of things would also be transparent.

     Updates to come randomly.

Korean Movie - The Customer is Always Right

     I take enormous risks when I watch movies. I haven't sat down and figured out the ratio, but the amount of bad movies I watch exceeds the great movies. I consider the bad movies the price I have to pay in order to find the gems. I don't consider the money to be the price I have to pay - no. The actual price is all the crap I have to be exposed to. This is the same with books, music, and to some extent - women.
     I won't be telling you about the crap because I don't want to talk about it or even think about it. The other night I sat down and watched The Customer is Always Right, completely unaware as to whether it would blow me away or ruin my day. The best word I can use to describe this movie is "magical", but with a caveat. If you're not really into Korean movies and haven't seen the early works of Lee Chang-Dong, then you might be less entranced. I don't want to potentially spoil anything, so I won't name the exact movie you should watch first.

The Customer is Always Right (2006)

DVD Front Cover

DVD Back Cover

     I'm going to tell you about the actors.

• 성지루 (Seong Ji-Ru) is the barber in the scan. He is gullible and timid; he breaks down and is thwarted easily. It took me a long time to recognize him, since he acted very differently from his role in A Good Lawyer's Wife. In that movie, he played the seriously mentally disturbed person that rambled nonsense. 
• 이선균 (Lee Seon-Gyun) is the man blowing the bubble in the scan. I was very surprised to watch his role in this movie because he was essentially an alpha male; very calm, assertive, assiduous, easily able to kick the crap out of people, successful with the ladies, etc. A total bad-ass. He normally plays a sexually frustrated character that can't talk to women without stuttering, or he's psychologically abusive to women.
• 명계남 (Myung Gye-Nam) is the man with the sunglasses. He's the mystery character, he's the customer, and he's always right. 
• 성현아 (Seong Hyeon-Ah) is the woman in the picture. I remember her playing a psychologically disturbed person in Time who used plastic surgery as her source of paramount satisfaction. She also played the mother in the closed-loop paradox horror movie Cello. In this movie, she is a manipulative sex-crazed maniac that is content with nothing and upset with everything. 

     Sadly, I can not tell you why I loved this movie so much. There is much I can not reveal, due to the fact it's spoiler-heavy. The fact that I have seen so many Korean movies definitely made this a far more interesting experience, because I was able to compare how these people act compared to what else I have seen them in. Ultimately, this movie is mysterious. The man in the sunglasses had me stumped beyond hope. Well, here's the gist of it. I can tell you this much...the barber did something very bad...and somehow...the man in the sunglasses found out.