Category Archives: Random Blatherationings

Regarding nothing at all other than my brain is mush, I’ve spent the last few days wrestling with a couple of reasonably large data sets (42K+ records and 46K+ records) and trying to winnow out a much smaller subset of data that’s not explicitly encoded.

In other words, I’m looking for needles in haystacks and trying to be clever.

It’s not rocket science, but it does require some care of you’ll go straight off into the Twilight Zone and have to go back a couple of steps to recover. Sort this, search for that, pull these records, but don’t do it in the wrong order!

My group did this during my MBA about 15 years ago. (It’s astonishing to me that it’s been that long, truly, but yep, double checked, I graduated in 2007.) We had to do an analysis on a data set of our choosing and we chose one from one of my classmates’ companies that was monstrous! I’m not sure we got results on a third of the things we were supposed to be looking for, but we did show what wasn’t there for a bunch of things and got great grades for displaying awesome audacity in even trying.

This project isn’t anything like that big, or audacious, but it is making my eyes and brain bubble and bug out. However, tonight I’ve got some fantastic Jean Michel Jarre on the headphones, so that helps a lot. It also helps that the Angels sort of suck really bad this year, so I don’t feel bad about not watching them.

How was your Monday?

If you think there should be rules you obviously are new here, but if you have to have them so you’ll know when I’ve broken them, they’re here,

Tonight’s three random seed words are “incertitude”, “scrupulosity”, and “ayegreen.”

ONE: Incertitude is defined as, “Uncertainty, doubtfulness, doubt.” Can I use it in a sentence? “I was full of fluid so the doctor was forced to make an incision and incertitude to drain it.” (That would be wrong, wrong, oh so very wrong.)

Looking for something on Google using “incertitude,” I find the first page of hits are just dictionaries to define it, or give synonyms, or antonyms. (Surprisingly, no homonyms, even from Gray’s Anatomy, despite my previous use of the term.) (Wait, you thought that it was just a TV show? That’s “Grey”, not “Gray.” How could you confuse them?) But then I find page after page of entries in French.

Like this one, which apparently is talking about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Having studied physics, I know about this one. Quantum mechanics, very weird stuff. The tl;dr version here is that in the quantum world, very freakin’ tiny, you can know either where a particle is or how fast it’s going, but never both. In addition, the more precisely you measure one value, the more uncertain the other becomes.

That’s all you need to know to get this joke. “A policeman pulls over a quantum physicist and says, ‘Sir, you were doing 100 miles an hour back there.’ The physicist says, ‘Great, now I’m lost!'”)

TWO: Scrupulosity is defined as, “The quality or state of being scrupulous; respecting decisions or actions; caution or tenderness from the fear of doing wrong or offending; nice; regard to exactness and propriety precision.”

Is anyone ever referred to as “scrupulous” any more? My gut feeling is that it’s far, far more rare than its opposite, “unscrupulous.” Now there, there you your choice of people to label.

Politicians, first and foremost. Reading the political news is even worse than “reading the comments,” and just about as likely to raise your blood pressure or hone your cynicism to a fine point.

The stereotypical lawyer, sales person, or business owner, although I believe that’s probably not true nearly as often as we imagine it to be. It’s just that getting screwed by some business person or lawyer tends to stick in your memory far longer than getting treated well.

Too often, unfortunately, religious and social leaders. Maybe we put them up on a pedestal and expect them to be better than normal or to lead by example, but if you’re going to make your paycheck that way, it comes with the job. If you think being a priest is only a fast way to be alone with pre-teen altar boys or having your own congregation is the ticket to having a free Gulfstream jet (you know who I’m talking about), then maybe you’re seriously lacking in scrupulosity.

THREE: Ayegreen is defined as, “The houseleek Sempervivum tectorum.” Thank god for Google – I never would have guessed that it’s an odd little plant that’s a cross between an evergreen and a succulent, and apparently edible. They’re commonly known as “hens and chicks”?

The pictures make them look like something I’ve seen around, usually in some sort of decorative, desert-like, low maintenance, low water display, or in a rock garden. Rock gardens and “drought-friendly yards” are becoming a big thing around here as we head into the fourth year of the worst drought in recorded history for California. We haven’t had our sprinklers on for almost a year, and our yard looks like it.

They’re apparently native to the mountains of southern Europe The USDA map shows that they’ve been introduced in North America in spots along the East Coast, up into eastern Canada, and into Utah. (What the hell is up with Utah?) I suspect the USDA is only keeping track of where they can be found growing out by the roads or in the woods on their own, not where they’ve shown up in decorative planters at Home Depot. That might be all fifty states.

And do we really want to be “drought-friendly”? Not that I’m nearly as obsessed about a “putting green lawn” as most of our neighbors, but I’m more of a “suffering through as best I can” sort of person instead of a “friendly” person when it comes to droughts. It’s not like I’m going to invite the drought over for a BBQ or to watch the ballgame and have a beer.

Plus, I don’t much like beer.

Another game we haven’t played since October. What happened? Oh, yeah, NaNoWriMo, then other writing and the holidays, and now all of that plus my volunteer work with the CAF.

What kind of writing do we get tonight? Gold? Silver? Bronze? Aluminium foil? (Extra karma points if you pronouned that “Al-You-MIN-ee-um” instead of “a-LOOM-in-um”) (If you think there should be rules, they’re here, but the first rule of Random Blatherationings is that there are no rules in Random Blatherationings.) In the spirit of those cold international snow and ice games going on along the Black Sea coast, tonight’s three random seed words are “polynia”, “iconodule”, and “sentine.” (The fact the three words have nothing to do with those snow and ice games is wonderful. And, yes, I am listening to the “Saturday Night Safety Dance” again tonight as I write. Tasty!)

Polynia: When I first saw this word defined as “the open sea supposed to surround the north pole”, my immediate assumption was that it must be something like an 18th Century word, from a time when the planet hadn’t been mapped to within an inch of its life and the explorers of the age thought that there might be a huge sea up north, instead of unending ice. The Northwest Passage and all of that.

You know what they say about “assumptions.”

On further review, it seems that it’s a Russian word that has been “borrowed” by English and it has nothing to do with the north pole in particular. So, the first definition was only partially correct and was entirely misleading. Kids, this is why you check more than one source, especially on the internet!

Polynia (or “polynya” in American English) are large patches of open sea surrounded by sea ice. They can occur either in the Arctic Ocean or off the coast of Antarctica. They can be caused by localized thermal upwellings, where warmer water rises and keeps the surface from cooling enough to ice over, or by katabatic winds or currents that sweep ocean ice away from the coast, leaving an open area between ice masses swept away in successive years.

Of course, two hundred years from now this could be a totally archaic term, along with “sea ice.” As much as that will suck for our great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren, it will suck a lot more for the polar bear, walrus, and penguin species that will be extinct in the wild.

Iconodule: The dictionary says, “one who serves images opposed to an iconoclast,” which would have been massively confusing even if my brain weren’t half fried. I’ve got a vague idea what an iconoclast is, but does “serves” in this definition equate to “worships” or “delivers?” Time to dig further.

Wikipedia is of limited help at first, defining “iconodule” as “someone who espouses ‘icondulism’.” Really useful, that. Does it logically follow then that a “digwopadoodle” is “someone who espouses ‘digwopadoodlism’?” Asking for a friend…

They then point out that I really didn’t understand what an “iconoclast” is. There was a religious war in the 8th Century over whether or not you should have pictures in churches? And I thought that WE argued over stupid shit! Anyway, it seems that an “icondule” was someone who wanted pictures in churches, while an “iconoclast” was someone who wanted pictures forbidden from churches.

You would think with planet-wide starvation, poverty, and an average lifespan that didn’t reach puberty they could find more worthwhile ways to spend their copious free time — but I guess you would be wrong!

It also occurred to me that if a philosophical division of such import were to break out today, the guys in favor of the paintings would be “iconodudes.” At least in Southern California.

Sentine: Finally, a definition that I can understand! “A place for dregs and dirt in a sink or sewer.” Isn’t that what we lay folk refer to as a “trap,” that U-shaped pipe under the sink?

Not quite. Further research (again!) shows that it’s an obscure and outdated term for “a sink, a sewer, a bilge hold, or a place for dregs.” We should have a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to be used to send some punctuation to whoever is writing definitions for that first website.

My last semi-lucid thought for the night is that Sentine would be the perfect name to use in some sort of spoof or comic version of “Les Miserables.” Sentine could be the Parisian whore with the heart of gold, born with a silver spoon in her mouth but forced into a life of sin and squalor by some evil archbishop or cardinal who was actually her real father. If you’re doing the Disney version, Dregs and Bilge would be the friendly animated cat and parrot who help her expose the scoundrel and win the true love of the prince. If you’re doing the Matt Groening version of the Disney version, immediately after the wedding, the peasants will rise up and behead them both.

I either need sleep, food, or both. For some reason I’m finding that completely hilarious. Madness approaches…

How ranty and silly and stupid can we be with a headache tonight? Let’s see. (If you’ve forgotten the rules, they’re here.) Tonight’s three random seed words are “wine”, “trick”, and “limit”.

Wine – OK, first of all, putting this into Google generates an estimated 620,000,000 results. That’s just a bit nuts, no? Anyway, more randomization to cut it down to a more manageable number leads us to the web site for the Napa Valley Wine Train. We’ve never been on this one specifically, but we went on something similar that heads off out of one of the Seattle suburbs a few years ago. It was a fun experience as I remember it, and I don’t doubt that the Napa Valley train is also fun.

What I haven’t ever quite “gotten” is the snooty connoisseur view of wine. I guess it’s like trying to explain rainbows to a blind person. We’ll be generous and allow that the folks who can tell an ’85 Whatchamallit from an ’83 Thingamading blindfolded by smell only just have some superpower that I don’t. On the other hand, it might just be that the emperor has no clothes and the whole wine snootiness thing is bullshit.

Which is not to say that I don’t like wine. A glass here and there, once a month or so at most, works fine for me, as long as it tastes OK. I don’t care about “fruity”, “full-bodied”, “nutty”, “aromatic”, or any of the other thousands and thousands of adjectives that get bandied about. I just like it to not taste like turpentine and give me a bit of a buzz. (As long as I’m not driving. NEVER have a drink and then drive!)

Trick – Aside from the simple dictionary definitions, movie titles, and music albums, apparently filmmakers like the word “trick” in their names. I see “Trick Dog Films“, “Cat Trick Films“, “Trick Pony Films“, and “Dark Trick Films”. This last one has me the most curious, since it doesn’t seem to have a web site (hell, even a simple dude like me has three of them!), just a Facebook page (with almost no traffic), yet seems to be talked about now and then by almost every trade publication in Hollywood.

When I think of Hollywood and tricks, I think of The Magic Castle. It’s a bit hard to get into (you can only get an invite if you’re with a member, and you only get to be a member if you can qualify as a performing magician) but if you ever get the chance, TAKE IT! We’ve been there two or three times (one of Ronnie’s former co-workers is a member) and it’s spectacular. We’ve seen a few of the stage shows there, but the best I’ve ever seen is in one of the close-up magic rooms, where there are only ten or fifteen seats and you’re within arm’s reach of the magician. Even when I saw these tricks that close, I was baffled. An incredible treat!

Limit – Lots of links (millions and millions) to articles about the “debt limit”, many about the mathematical term “limit” used in calculus, but my favorite is the speed limit. I’m a really good driver and have the record to prove it – not a single ticket or moving violation or accident that I caused in over forty years of driving. I’ve gotten two or three parking tickets for expired meters or parking in a marked zone – but no moving violations or tickets for speeding, running a red light or stop sign, reckless driving, drunk driving (see above), texting while driving (ditto!), or any of that. I’ve been rear-ended by someone else three times, each time while I was stopped in traffic or at a red light – but the closest that I’ve ever come to causing an accident was putting a dent in the Long-Suffering Girlfriend’s car in a parking lot at some point before she became the Long-Suffering Wife. (The kids were in the car and laughed their asses off, and still give me grief over this incident, so I have to include it here.)

But the speed limit? One of my pet peeves is people who drive at it in the fast lane. On the Los Angeles freeways, nothing screws up traffic more than some clown doing exactly 65 MPH in the fast lane on a wide open, traffic free freeway, while everyone else is trying to 70, 75, 80…

Even worse, on the I-5 between LA and San Francisco, for over 300 miles it’s two lanes in each direction with tons and tons of traffic. The right lane is full of trucks, doing 55 MPH (or less on hills). In the left lane are the folks in cars who just want to get from place to place. With 300 miles of straight, dry, flat, and BORING in front of us, we just want to make tracks. These folks are usually doing about 80-85 MPH, despite the 70 MPH speed limit. At least, until they get behind the yahoo doing 69.99 MPH because it’s the law.

Who died and put these folks in charge? Who deputized them? Do they not realize the incredible hazard that they represent as one car after another has to try to find a space between the trucks to pull over into the slow lane, gun it, and slip past them? Even the CHP says that they need to move over, and I’ve heard (it might be an urban rumor) that the CHP can and will ticket someone doing this for reckless driving.

I’m not saying that you need to be driving at 90 MPH, 95, 100+! That would be even more dangerous and stupid. But the 65 and 70 MPH speed limits are politically based, not engineering based. (Jerry Ford’s 55 MPH speed limit was even more so – I’m with Sammy Hagar on this one! Especially if I get to wear that jumpsuit…)

As a side note, when I ranted about these guys on Facebook a couple months ago, my brother pointed out that my dad would have been one of those guys, and probably actually WAS one of them. That’s true, he probably would have been. But that’s one point where he and I would have to agree to disagree. Vehemently. Honking and flashing my lights in his rear view mirror.