Farm News 01-21-07
Sunday morning, after chores, 36°, 4” of new snow
Ad Astra
Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of the death of Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. He grew up near Burdett, out on western edge of the Smoky Hills, where he could look up at night and see a lot of stars. Burdett's current population is a little under 250 people, so there isn't a lot of light pollution around there.
Thursday was the New Moon, the time when the moon passes between the earth and sun. Now the moon is a thin, waxing crescent. Next Thursday will be the First Quarter, when the moon is exactly half a circle. After that it will be a waxing gibbous moon.
In the winter the constellation Orion is clearly visible in the southeast sky. Orion has three stars in a row and close together, called Orion's Belt. A little above them is the bright star Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle juice), a star made famous in Douglas Adams' Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Open Source Software
A great deal of open-source software is developed either in universities or hobbyist's homes. When I started with computers the first open source word processing programs were the big frontier. Half the geek world was trying to create a better word processor. Even I wrote one, the files for which have long ago been erased, and all the different word processors competed for space on user's lists of useful programs.
We weren't trying to make money, we were after glory, or at least some recognition as being worthwhile, so we not only gave away the software we created, we also published the source code, the original programming language contents, so all of our fellow geeks could see how clever we are.
Such challenges do not stand unanswered for any length of time in the land of the geeks. Other programmers start saying, “I could have done that, except I would fix this problem with the gadget wiggler,” and so on. By the time the initial fuss settles, it might be only the fixed gadget wiggler that remains, is incorporated into a library of useful routines, and enters into general use by other open source programmers.
All this activity seems to me to match up fairly well with William Calvin's Six Essentials for a Darwin Machine. Lines of code are replicators competing for space in an environment of computer programs just as our genes compete for space in an environment of plants and animals.
A Darwin Machine creates complexity. The Darwin Machine based on genes created the biosphere. The land of the geeks created an evolutionary environment that emulates both biology and memetics and is self-directed to increased complexity. An interesting phenomenon: we humans, the products of a Darwin Machine, have, by thinking, created a virtual Darwin Machine that is itself creating complexity. What's next?
A Reader Writes
Winter news from Colorado:
It requires a special kind of craziness to live in the country and keep animals. Paula and I once lived about 150 miles north of where the reader lives, and we got up lots of mornings before the sun was up to do chores in -15° temperatures. It seldom gets that cold here, but I'm much older now and 15° above zero feels awful cold some mornings. Why do we do that? Well, I like to have baby goats in the spring so I can watch them play in the pasture. As I said, it requires a special kind of craziness.
Friday evening I received a telephone call from Calvin. He was in Lyndon, a town a little over 60 miles from here, with no way to return home. Boy, was he lucky. I had just prepared a nice alcoholic beverage for myself but had not yet partaken. I do not drink and then drive, period. So, instead of enjoying the effect of ingesting ethanol, I drove about 125 miles round trip to rescue a dumb teenager.
Calvin and a friend had cut a cord or so of firewood for which they had a buyer, they thought, in Lyndon. They loaded the firewood and drove to Lyndon where they ran out of gas for the truck before they could sell the firewood. Calvin's friend had a place where he could spend the night in Lyndon but there was no place at the inn for poor Calvin. Poor Calvin couldn't find anyone to take him home and, though dumb, he wasn't dumb enough to try walking 60 miles in winter weather, so he called me.
I had just finished Terry Johnston's Blood Song, a novel about the Powder River campaign of General Crook, which was conducted in what is now Montana in the winter. The high temperature for some days was -15°, and some days it was colder. I shivered all the way through the book. I couldn't let poor Calvin spend the night freezing his dumb butt off, so, like one of Johnston's characters, I rode off to the rescue.
Terry Johnston died several years ago, but his books will last for a while, I hope. In his books the plants are real and native to the area, the animals act don't talk, and the moon phases make sense. When a writer has a full moon rising at midnight, I put down the book and find another one; Johnston's books offer historical, environmental, and celestial accuracy. I recommend his Plainsman series, with their hero Seamus Donegon, as entertainment as well as an overview of the wars against the Plains Indians.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict contains echoes of the red-white wars of the late 1800's. That seems to be the way of wars, they all have much in common: the suffering of the innocents and the callousness of the leaders. I was raised to believe that WWII was a 'just' war. My uncle Steve brought back horrifying pictures of the Nazi concentration camps, and, after seeing them, I knew that the war was justified, but later I also 'knew' that the war in Viet Nam was not. Then there comes the time of the year when we remember Dr. King, and I wonder how any war could be justified. Just more craziness.
Ad Astra
Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of the death of Clyde Tombaugh, the discoverer of Pluto. He grew up near Burdett, out on western edge of the Smoky Hills, where he could look up at night and see a lot of stars. Burdett's current population is a little under 250 people, so there isn't a lot of light pollution around there.
Thursday was the New Moon, the time when the moon passes between the earth and sun. Now the moon is a thin, waxing crescent. Next Thursday will be the First Quarter, when the moon is exactly half a circle. After that it will be a waxing gibbous moon.
In the winter the constellation Orion is clearly visible in the southeast sky. Orion has three stars in a row and close together, called Orion's Belt. A little above them is the bright star Betelgeuse (pronounced beetle juice), a star made famous in Douglas Adams' Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Open Source Software
A great deal of open-source software is developed either in universities or hobbyist's homes. When I started with computers the first open source word processing programs were the big frontier. Half the geek world was trying to create a better word processor. Even I wrote one, the files for which have long ago been erased, and all the different word processors competed for space on user's lists of useful programs.
We weren't trying to make money, we were after glory, or at least some recognition as being worthwhile, so we not only gave away the software we created, we also published the source code, the original programming language contents, so all of our fellow geeks could see how clever we are.
Such challenges do not stand unanswered for any length of time in the land of the geeks. Other programmers start saying, “I could have done that, except I would fix this problem with the gadget wiggler,” and so on. By the time the initial fuss settles, it might be only the fixed gadget wiggler that remains, is incorporated into a library of useful routines, and enters into general use by other open source programmers.
All this activity seems to me to match up fairly well with William Calvin's Six Essentials for a Darwin Machine. Lines of code are replicators competing for space in an environment of computer programs just as our genes compete for space in an environment of plants and animals.
A Darwin Machine creates complexity. The Darwin Machine based on genes created the biosphere. The land of the geeks created an evolutionary environment that emulates both biology and memetics and is self-directed to increased complexity. An interesting phenomenon: we humans, the products of a Darwin Machine, have, by thinking, created a virtual Darwin Machine that is itself creating complexity. What's next?
A Reader Writes
Winter news from Colorado:
More snow this weekend--but just a paltry 2-3 inches (so far) of very dry fluffy stuff. Cold? It was 15 below zero Friday night and had warmed up to 13 below when I went out to do the chores. Best money I ever spent was on automatic waterers (heated) for the horses.Craziness
Its supposed to clear up tonight and I'm betting it will be colder than -15.
It requires a special kind of craziness to live in the country and keep animals. Paula and I once lived about 150 miles north of where the reader lives, and we got up lots of mornings before the sun was up to do chores in -15° temperatures. It seldom gets that cold here, but I'm much older now and 15° above zero feels awful cold some mornings. Why do we do that? Well, I like to have baby goats in the spring so I can watch them play in the pasture. As I said, it requires a special kind of craziness.
Friday evening I received a telephone call from Calvin. He was in Lyndon, a town a little over 60 miles from here, with no way to return home. Boy, was he lucky. I had just prepared a nice alcoholic beverage for myself but had not yet partaken. I do not drink and then drive, period. So, instead of enjoying the effect of ingesting ethanol, I drove about 125 miles round trip to rescue a dumb teenager.
Calvin and a friend had cut a cord or so of firewood for which they had a buyer, they thought, in Lyndon. They loaded the firewood and drove to Lyndon where they ran out of gas for the truck before they could sell the firewood. Calvin's friend had a place where he could spend the night in Lyndon but there was no place at the inn for poor Calvin. Poor Calvin couldn't find anyone to take him home and, though dumb, he wasn't dumb enough to try walking 60 miles in winter weather, so he called me.
I had just finished Terry Johnston's Blood Song, a novel about the Powder River campaign of General Crook, which was conducted in what is now Montana in the winter. The high temperature for some days was -15°, and some days it was colder. I shivered all the way through the book. I couldn't let poor Calvin spend the night freezing his dumb butt off, so, like one of Johnston's characters, I rode off to the rescue.
Terry Johnston died several years ago, but his books will last for a while, I hope. In his books the plants are real and native to the area, the animals act don't talk, and the moon phases make sense. When a writer has a full moon rising at midnight, I put down the book and find another one; Johnston's books offer historical, environmental, and celestial accuracy. I recommend his Plainsman series, with their hero Seamus Donegon, as entertainment as well as an overview of the wars against the Plains Indians.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict contains echoes of the red-white wars of the late 1800's. That seems to be the way of wars, they all have much in common: the suffering of the innocents and the callousness of the leaders. I was raised to believe that WWII was a 'just' war. My uncle Steve brought back horrifying pictures of the Nazi concentration camps, and, after seeing them, I knew that the war was justified, but later I also 'knew' that the war in Viet Nam was not. Then there comes the time of the year when we remember Dr. King, and I wonder how any war could be justified. Just more craziness.
posted by The Geezer at 8:45 AM
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