Interplanetary fructose

I'm rereading right now Schaub's The Year of No Sugar and it inspired me to write some verses.  What if other races on the comos subsisted on fructose instead of glucose? Here's my Calvin & Hobbes-esque take on it:

So they finally came Set to fulfill their aim Their presence long suspected Narrow-minded for a change In no cultural exchange Were they interested Advanced in technology Pastry cooking and what-not-logy They also loved sweets Tarts and cakes Smoothies and crepes These were their feasts Their biology different (this much was evident) Could only process fructose Scoured for it the universe

Glucose made them fat None of them wanted that Fructose was their stuff of dreams Sugar they knew Was unhealthy to not a few Made them burst their seams Piled their ships with Earth cookies, Soft drinks, candy and licorice All high with high fructose Promised they'd come back No fear of them to attack Peace and sweetness their cause And back they came  No longer tame Their spoils had spoiled Earth's reputation was now soiled

The final couple of verses need some rework, which I'll figure out later. For the actual chemistry check out Schaub's book (Two word summary: avoid fructose!). BTW, the documentary "Fed Up" pairs real well with it.

Chess books: when more isn't

My old chess teacher used to say that of all that has been written throughout history the most belongs to human health. The runner-up is chess. I'm not quite sure about the authenticity of this, but the fact is that chess literature is huge, and if one adds the software that has been published over the last couple decades, the amount of learning material is staggering.

It appears to me that there is a very strong, yet subtle, temptation to assume that drawing more from this fountain of material translates to actual improvement. If you're anything like me your eyes go wide open when you browse that chess section in your local library or online, or looking through a catalog (USCF has one). One wants to just grab a basket, make a list and pile on. Ask around and you're bound to find without too much trouble a person that can have well over a hundred books solely devoted chess. There are even some pretty impressive private chess libraries out there. The biggest in my hometown that I know of had 5000 volumes belonging to a local master. An uncorroborated story I heard is that the Polgar sisters toured it with glee when they  happened by once. (for the record my chess library currently has about two dozen volumes + 7-8 software titles)

Now the problem, as you already know, is that one cannot digest all the material. One has the pure honest intention to read each book right away or 'some day' when one is handing the cash, but somehow one never gets around to it. Sure, some titles do get completed, but the chess library grows even faster. And not to mention non-chess responsibilities have first dibs on one's time. One of the RPPR podcast hosts not long ago said something to the effect that when one buys books, one kinda thinks that one is also acquiring the time to read them. Put another way, there's a famous quote that says that life is too short for chess.

Still, even if we know or suspect that the book won't be read soon, there's an urge to own. A fuzzy feeling wells on oneself by just knowing that we have the title at hand and that their contents can be had at command. A closely related aspect is that of collecting. There's no chance in the completion of this set, but just building the library like a deck of (trading) cards gives a perhaps no small amount of pleasure.

Notable titles are also morale boosters. After playing some player on a tourney he bragged just to see my reaction that he had Dvoretsky's manual. He may have had it, but I doubt that he had actually gone through it and it certainly didn't help him on that game. Remember how in one of the Calvin & Hobbes strips Calvin tells Hobbes he wears branded shirts because it gives him the psychological advantage of believing he is sponsored? I find that likewise having chess books gives you the psychological advantage of believing you've read them (same idea with owing the Great Books).

Of course it doesn't really work that way. My high school physics teacher once told us of certain student that had the most basic of calculators and how he routinely got better grades than those who had space-age ones with all the bells and whistles.

In closing I'd like to take the opportunity and call on the Chessbase/Fritz people to aim future efforts to the enhancement of their Fritz Gui Full analysis function. The engine arms race can be considered over and now some of the only distinguishing features and value of chess guis is their natural language analysis. At their time, Fritz 4 and Fritz 5.32 came up with pretty interesting nested output. Nowadays it seems to me that Fritz 13 (the latest I own or fiddled with) just spits out single liners and has become stingy with variations, exclams and useful commentary. What's the use of having a personal GM, when he doesn't express himself as we would wish? Maybe it is my settings or my hardware, but this looks downhill. If they could bring back the old magic to just this feature, that would be pretty revolutionary once again. I'd overpay for that.

Beholder logic

I found this argument in the I Tyrant AD&D supplement and decided to try it out in symbolic form just because I could. Beholders are both seekers of knowledge and power and are also paranoids.

It is necessary to acquire knowledge at any cost.  I have knowledge others do not; some of these ignorant creatures are of the ideal breed; therefore, others of the ideal breed are out to get me.

Paraphrasing:

1. For everyone and for all knowledge these don't have, then it is necessary to acquire it
2. For everyone and for all knowledge  If I have it and it has to be acquired by them, then they are out to get me
3. There's knowledge  I have and there are members of the ideal breed who don't have it

Therefore, there's a member of the ideal breed who's out to get me

Symbolizing:

Me=m

1	∀x(∀y[(Ky˄~Hxy)→Axy])	Premise
2	∀x(∀y(Ky˄Hmy˄Axy)→Gxm)	Premise (enthymeme)
3	∃y(Ky˄Hmy˄∃x(Bx˄~Hxy))	Premise
∴	∃x(Bx˄Gxm)	Conclusion

Alternate:

1. For everyone and for all knowledge they don't have, then it is necessary to acquire it from anyone
2. For everyone and for all knowledge, If it has to be acquired from anyone then they are out to get those
3. There's knowledge  I have and there are members of the ideal breed who don't

Therefore, there's a member of the ideal breed who's out to get me

1	∀x(∀y[(Ky˄~Hxy)→∀zAxyz])	Premise
2	∀x(∀y∀z([Ky˄Axyz]→Gxz))	Premise (enthymeme)
3	∃y(Ky˄Hmy˄∃x(Bx˄~Hxy))	Premise
∴	∃x(Bx˄Gxm)	Conclusion

Both prove valid

Why I don't own a telescope

Look ma!

Time to spread one of my heresies around.

As any warm blooded enthusiast I love hardware for its own sake and telescopes are no exception especially those that are all shiny and computerized. However I've decided not to own one. I have concluded that the cost and hassle of owning one do not match the results one obtains from it.

The realization finally came to me the day I peered into my local college's 16'' Meade Schimidt-Cassegrian to look at Jupiter. It was there all-right with some of the Jovian satellites, but it appeared so small. Maybe I had gotten my expectations unreasonably high by magazines and the like, but if such a big and expensive telescope could offer so little, what hope was there for small more affordable ones? Another notch against is that, unless one takes astrophotography as well, most of the objects up there will appear so faint as to not excite the eye cells, meaning they will be devoid of any color and appear only as  misty gossamer threads. 'Sky lint' is what some of the astronomers at the center there call them. To make things worse I live within a major urban area.

I want the colors, the details, the drama.

There's also the joy of the hunt. Amateur astronomers can make contributions to science. There are still some discoveries to be made as well; most of the top prizes have already been taken, but there are still fair probabilities for amateurs to make discoveries on their own. Ever heard of the McNeil Nebula? Jay McNeil of Kentucky discovered the nebula that now bears his name with unostentatious equipment. Am I one to discover something that one day bears my name too? Seems highly unlikely. If discoveries are made, chances favor amateurs as a group, not as individuals. McNeil himself had a couple decades of experience under his belt before making his mark.

Shoot. I'll settle with the zoo. This way I'll never find a comet or anything, but I'll get most of what I want. I'm looking into buying a book or books with better images than I'll ever experience on my own (considering Michael Benson's series). And these are cheaper too.

There's still some room for maybe a pair of binoculars. These not only are highly portable, but can cover large swaths of sky. Plus no squinting is required.

How the Purge button works

In The Cabin in the Woods movie the need for the Facility to have a purge button is unexplained. Given the ultimate consequences of its use, what is its logic?

(If you haven't seen this one before, you're doing yourself a disservice by not watching the real movie first. Go get it!)

Basing my opinion on that of an anonymous contributor to the Cabin wiki and what one can see on the theatrical release, I think that the elevator lobby was not meant to pour out the army of nightmares. The area can be described as a capital letter 'T' with the vertical line having the elevator doors with the guard booth at its bottom. On either side of the horizontal we have two exit doors  one leading to Administration  (the one towards the giant snake slithered away) and one to Engineering (from where the two security squads came from). Both these doors, along with that of the guard area look entirely unsuited to hold off anything, so one can safely assume that the Purge was not intended to be directed towards this lobby, but somewhere else, only resulting in what we saw in the movie to malfunction, quite possibly due to Marty's tampering with the wires to make the cubes run backwards. Or maybe to an oversight, for once Dana's and Marty's cube was located, it was directed to the lobby area for their retrieval, but so were the rest. This would also explain the small interval between activation and release.

So what for?

The Purge, judging by its name, was meant to get rid of everything on one go. Possibly, the creatures were not immortal in the sense in that they had an 'expiration' date and had to be renewed from time to time. Possibly then the current batch of creatures might get all tainted at once from 'something' as to make them unsuitable for the Ritual making it necessary to vacate their quarters  offseason for a new batch of nightmares (bred? captured?) from the Facility's departments (Zoology a top candidate). The elevator lobby would be then the loading area and quite sensibly the the Purge button would be there and not in the main control room, which monitored the Ritual proper.

So where to?

Maybe a safe disposal place within the Facility where the creatures could be controlled and dealt with. Or as the  anonymous contributor said, to the surface. Maybe there, they would turn on themselves saving the trouble to exterminate each one, or they would just die off by themselves (daylight? their expiration date?) . Releasing them all to ensure the Ritual's completion seems like an overkill, but maybe still an option.

Defeating the true Scotsman

It seems to me that there are four ways of beating the True Scotsman self-sealing argument. This fallacy is notable for being impervious to counterexamples; once one is given, one of its components is redefined by the other party to hold his ground. Still, this gives us enough of a foothold to pry a way in.

Symbolically the Scotsman's argument can be presented as:

~∃x(Sx˄Cx)

Read as "There is no Scotsman who does a Crime like that" or  alternatively "All Scotsmen refrain from committing such crimes".  Let's stick with the first reading. Once a counterexample is offered the patriotic Scotsman might reject it by redefining Cx (The chap is a Scotsman but what he did is no crime) or Sx (That's a crime all right but he is not a True Scotsman).

Overall, informal fallacies are best dealt with by bring them out to the open and exposing them by explaining why they are so. A first way then to beat the true Scotsman is to highlight that the argument at hand is a known fallacy and then offering Flew's prime example. This should suffice for most cases, since addressing the self-sealing argument by name shines light squarely on it and the absurdity of its general form adds close to decisive weight to your side.

One can go further in, for the sake of exposition, or to win over the skeptics,  by  directing  attention to the change of definition on which the fallacy hinges to a wider or narrower scope which in any case is different from the intended common use.

Secondly, we can can highlight that no counterexample is possible under the self-sealing strategy which makes the argument a no-go. Whatever is thrown at it can be conveniently redefined away.

Thirdly, this can be further clarified by offering a patently True assertion such as  "There are no triangular circles"  and showing that it even that could allow a counterexample by drawing a figure, showing how to reproduce it or writing down the appropriate equations, while the self-sealing argument offers no such courtesy. Furthermore, one can ask the patriotic Scotsman to offer a counterexample of his own and watch him squirm (though I think this one can backfire as one is more likely to receive a blank stare in return).

Lastly, the best defense is to settle & agree on the definitions before embarking on any discussion. This is especially true when dealing with a known or suspected weasel. One can still act midway by asking what he means by this or that term: "What do you mean by Scotsman?" Ask him to be thorough. Once he or she commits he or she  cannot go back without losing face. Of course it helps having impartial witnesses that can attest to the facts or the ridiculousness of the explanations resorted to by the Scotsman.

More examples of self-sealing arguments that follow the same general form can be found in Critical Thinking: Consider the Verdict (4th) by Waller

Trim Intel X-25m on Windows 10

Okay, the situation with the Windows 7 update became so untenable for me (the updates would get stuck) that I was compelled to move on to Windows 10. I hate to admit it, but the move was not as bad as I feared it would be. My legacy programs worked, for the most part, as they should, which is funny, since I had tried installing some of these very same programs from scratch on another machine and they wouldn't work. So, the first lesson I guess is to have those programs installed already before upgrading to 10.

For some reason, Yahoo wouldn't login using Microsoft's new browser, Edge, nor even with the dedicated app from the store. Internet Explorer 11 was horribly slow. Switched entirely to Chrome.

The biggest possible showstopper with the Windows 10 upgrade was my very trusty Intel X-25 160gb SSD. My old Intel solid-state drive toolbox (ver 1. something) wouldn't optimize the drive using TRIM. Without TRIM I anticipated that sooner, rather than later, the drive would become unusable. Here is what I did to solve it:

Deleted the refuse left by the old toolbox on the root C: drive (*intel*.bin) 

Downloaded and ran the latest version of the Toolbox:

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/26085/Intel-Solid-State-Drive-Toolbox

Updated the firmware (had to cross my fingers on this one):

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/18363/Intel-SSD-Firmware-Update-Tool

When I found that the Toolbox optimization still wouldn't complete (I was getting error 100), I dug around a bit and found this solution, which only consisted in deleting a hidden folder:

https://communities.intel.com/thread/44443

Success!