Friday Seminar Series: Why I Teach

Image via WikipediaDear Readers,

   Teaching is important.
 

   It is so important, in fact, that I have given it its own line.  My need to say it was inspired by a time-normal blog post that came through the Augur Box this morning.  University teaching in your time stream, it seems, is a big problem.


   One of the great problems that I hear cited is the emphasis on research, grant money, and tenure.  These three things push professors in your time stream away from research and into working without their students.  In some ways, it forces them to be grant-writing drones who focus solely on the work their graduate students have done.

   Not so at the University of Constantinople, and not because we don't have to worry about tenure and our research.  We are focused on teaching because teaching leads to inspiration.

   Learning requires rehearsal, understanding, and questioning.  These are also things that are key to research, but in a way that requires far less awareness.  Though it is possible to do so, we cannot just scurry about moving through the motions of research without paying attention to the information that we're getting from it.  Research is a long crush that throws loads and loads of information into the human attic, the upper levels of the brain that we are so cruddy at accessing.

   Many researchers feel that it's a pain to communicate, to crack open that attic, wander up there, and start sorting things out.  It might mean digging through old love letters and prom dresses, rusty armor and rustier neurons, but it must be done.

  A professor must profess, it is not simply enough to investigate.

  Of course, one must ask, why do I say "must"?  Perhaps it's good for humanity, perhaps it will help others advance their science.  Perhaps, in the case of a class, it will help students learn.

  Those altruistic things are nice, but we all need our selfish reasons too.

   So what is the selfish reason to teach?  It's simple.  You clear off the cobwebs.  Each lecture, each moment spent in preparation, and most importantly each instant you are talking to your students is full of reassessment, rethinking, and processing.  Processing is that "rehearsal, understanding," etc. thing I referred to above.  Without it, we do not know where we came from, and if we do not know where we came from, we do not know which questions to ask.

  Research is about questions.  Teaching makes you think of questions.  It allows your students to think of questions.  It presents you with questions to ask and questions to answer, in these routes.

  It should be clear by now that there's no excuse for not teaching.  It makes me a better researcher, I know that.  If you're a professor, it will make you a better researcher.  If you are a student, even, it will make you better.  Teach your peers, and furthermore, teach them to teach others.  You can change the distressing trend to under-teach by injecting teaching into the social network of your Universities.

  And when you encounter a professor who doesn't do his homework, don't whinge and moan.  Don't complain on forms and wait for the University to make it all better.  Go to his or her office hours and badger that professor with questions until they themselves get curious, get out into the literature, and start searching.  When they start searching because of you, you haven't just noticed a bad teacher: you've made them a better one!

  Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Particles are Two-Faced Liars, the Lot of Them

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,
   I admit, I've been on kind of a quantum time kick lately.  I like time, I like quantum mechanics.  Sometimes.

   Sometimes I like cheap puns too, so I hope you can look past that.

   There is rather a serious issue about the interaction of quantum mechanics and time, though.  In my post about WD-36, I talked about the idea of "spooky action at a distance" taking place within a time dimension.  Aka, the future affecting the past via quantum science.

  If you start adding length, width, and depth into the mix you get some damned strange ideas.  Things from one part of our four dimensional space (one's a time dimension, so don't get too bent out of shape, ladies and gents) can pop into other parts of it with some kind of probability.  Bit wacky, but it presents the idea that there's no reality of time, just a continuity of it with particles buzzing about every which way while we try and think that our actions are somehow happening in a straight line.

  It's sort of like the straight line where you're going to the store to buy milk, but you forget your keys and you have to go back down the line to the keys, which were perfectly content to stay where they were.  I'm sure from the keys' perspective, getting picked up and taken about is rather surprising.

   Now imagine, for a minute, that you've gone and done something rather silly, like say, starting in a faculty position at a University that happens to run parallel to every other time ever.  Suddenly you've got all kinds of particles that are buzzing through your brain, entangled partners to the particles in all the brains you've ever had in all the lives you've ever lived in all the places you've ever lived them.  Half the particles tell the truth about where they came from, half don't.  Your brain is half your evil twin, half a nest of vile wasps, and there's a couple more halves in there that I can't even think of.  It's the best high you've ever had with the worst downer stuck on the side, and a whole lot of trivia.



   Some days, that idiotic decision makes you into a brilliant researcher, fighter, leader, whatever, amongst a whole host of other people who are resurrected renaissance men and women by virtue of the grand quantum composite personality they get to have.

   Other days, it gives you one hell of a headache, leaves you confused, and you forget your keys in every house you ever owned.
  I need a pint.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

The Night Faculty: WD-36

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,
  You might have heard of WD-40, a "water-removing" chemical with hundreds of strange household uses.  It means "water displacement - 40th attempt."
 
    In your time stream, attempts 1-39 failed.  In many, however, there were unintended products of the Rocket Chemical Company's research into water displacement.
  One of our Night Faculty is the product of just such an attempt.  We call it Woody, though its proper name is WD-36.
   WD-36 is a literal sponge.  It can absorb almost anything, and devour it in its entirety.  When it does this with information storage media, it can almost internalize the information.  WD-36 was a most efficient graduate student.  It's also, as you might imagine, quite formidable in combat.
  Unfortunately, WD-36 also has a rather volatile freezing/melting point.  It needs to be somewhat solid in order to function, and the daytime temperature at the University is just slightly too high for it to maintain coherence.  Therefore, we had to place WD-36 on the Night Faculty.

  Now, WD-36 may sound something like a B-movie villain to you.  Fiction is often inadvertently inspired by something like what your time stream's Albert Einstein used to call "spooky action at a distance."  The existence of an all-devouring monster that resulted from industrial accident in one time stream leads to thought patterns in the people who react to that monster.  We can use augury to read those thought patterns, but the human brain itself can pick up on that.  People in other time streams can learn about what's going on, whether they mean to or not.  And then, they can make horror movies.
   So next time you're watching something scary, consider that somewhere, somewhen, somehow, that thing is happening.  And if it ever gets the chance to break down the barriers between worlds, you might just find it's coming to eat you.
   Then you'll have to turn to a friendly professor who's been watching all along, a friendly professor who knows how to frighten the monster.  And I and my Night Faculty will be here for you.
   Happy Hallowe'en.
   Always,
   John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Night Faculty: Cassandra, a Hawking Siren

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   Here is the next part of my series on the University's Night Faculty.

   If you thought Professor Raven was unusual, I'm happy to introduce you to Dr. Cassandra Hawking, a name which we gave  to her and she graciously accepted.  "Cassandra" comes from her vast and uncanny knowledge, which I will explain in a moment.  "Hawking" comes from her nature.

 
    Cassandra is what her time stream calls a "Hawking Siren," a being that dwells in space and can warp light around itself.  At her core, cleverly concealed within her biology, lies a small singularity, event horizon and all.  Hawking Radiation from its gradual evaporation powers her entire metabolism as well as her consciousness.  Surrounding it is a complex network of matter and light.


   The singularity itself is maintained within a vacuum, to protect her outer body from its pull.  In her native time stream, Cassandra existed in a constant state of collapse.  The tiny singularity within her consistently approached the final point of its evaporation, at which point it would release a tremendous amount of "information" into the surrounding space.  In her time stream, that happened to be the solution to the black hole information paradox.  This process would destroy her outer body as well as her mind, effectively killing her.

   So, like all members of her race, Cassandra needed a steady stream of matter in order to maintain herself.  Her energy-matter matrix allowed her to transit around the universe collecting such matter, but, as with every species, there were pitfalls in her existence.  Certain civilizations loved the idea of a race of singularities to conquer, beings that they could enslave and use for a source of energy for all time.



   Over time her species developed--you will understand in a moment why I do not say "evolved"--the ability to shift their matter/energy matrix to mimic the appearance of other objects.  Using their matrix along with their internal singularity, they could use a combination of gravitational lensing, position, and shape to look like anything.


  
  For certain members of her race, this allowed a new strategy for matter acquisition.  The hunters became the hunted, and many careless ships drew themselves into the heart of a Hawking Siren when it appeared to be a grand bonanza of salvage or a pleasure ship in distress.  Once it had trapped its prey, the Hawking Siren would absorb its mass and feed off the energy released as Hawking Radiation.  Thus, they would go on to live further.  Other Sirens chose to stay hidden and consume only inanimate matter, but in the end most of them settled on an omnivorous life.

   This might make Cassandra seem entirely too dangerous to work with here at the University, but we have found a way to keep her sustained without needing to fear she will begin to devour her coworkers.  The process by which she is kept fed also results in excess energy that can be used to sustain University operations, so it is a beneficial scenario for all.  It does keep her occupied during the day, however, which means she must be a part of the Night Faculty.  However, we did not anticipate that benefit when we began to work on bringing her here.

   You see, in their final moments in her time stream, small singularities contain arbitrary amounts of information, a necessary consequence of the immediacy of their evaporation.  Literally, whenever she gets hungry, Cassandra's knowledge of time and all times expands to immeasurable amounts.  Any information she chooses to share with us is cherished.  In theory, she could tell us everything about everything.  Yet she often holds back, and it is beyond me to wonder why.  Perhaps she fears to live up to her name.

   At times, in the night, a graduate student will disappear, and then be resurrected with no knowledge of some previous stretch of time.  I wonder if, perhaps, Cassandra roams the halls and prunes those avenues of investigation which might lead to our ruin.  I am not certain how to feel about this possibility, but the thought does not help me sleep.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Related articles

• Physicists may have observed Hawking radiation for the first time (physorg.com)

The Night Faculty: Raven

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,
   I promised in my last post to offer you more information about the University's Night Faculty, and I've decided to make good on that this week.

   Today I want to talk to you about Raven, who is a member of a somewhat unusual class of our faculty even outside of his "Night"status.  Each of us here is drawn from some body of records, from a personality derived via Augury, the discipline upon which the University is founded.  Usually this requires some sort of fame, and often an unusual means of demise.  There is a trick to Augury, and getting a whole personality is often the trickiest.

   This means, sometimes, that we can get personalities that existed mostly in minds and stories rather than in physical reality.  Most, if not all, stories and characters really happened in some time stream or another, by some unlikely consequence. Still, there are personalities here who are built more from myth and legend than "reality."  Whatever that means.

  Many of these personalities come from cultures with strong mythic traditions, or are amalgams of a few such cultures.  Most, like White Buffalo Calf Woman (PtesanWi), have a coherent identity formed from at least one "real" life and many stories from just one culture.  Miss PtesanWi is almost entirely well adjusted here at the University, and should be getting her PhD a few years ago.  She'll be a full professor quite soon, I'm told.  And she's quite coherent about her origins; fights with the Virgin Mary over who gave birth to Jesus are rather infrequent these days.

  Then there are the truly fragmented, almost insane personalities.  Professor Raven is one of those.  We might have gone back to the drawing board with him and tried for something more coherent, except that his fragmentation is entirely fitting to his character.  Raven believes he created the world, stole the moon, and created death itself.  He may have stolen the moon, actually, but it's unclear if that was a later eponymous character inspired by Raven myths, or if it was in fact the Raven of myth.
  As for the creation of death thing, I believe our good Professor is still having a bit of trouble with that one now that he lives somewhere that death is irrelevant.

   At any rate, Raven is an amalgamation of things you know as Native American Indian and also Siberian, of cultures I wish you could know and cultures I hope that you never encounter.  And he loves American Football.

   Professor Raven is a trickster, a prankster, and a creature who swoops through the night and beyond the moon here at the University.  He's also written an excellent book about English punk cultures in the intensely divergent 1980s.  I couldn't have picked a better faculty member for the job.

   Furthermore, he's quite formidable in battle.  Raven can form himself from shadows and swoop down onto our enemies.  The ones he hates the worst often leave here alive, but blinded.  His misdirection has foiled many a raid and preserved the University through much strife.  He is our prime nightwatchman, and during the times when I am not frightened of him, I am glad he is on our side.

   Always,
   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Night Faculty

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   Since I've been kind of dry and informational of late, I want to move away from that a little and give you a bit more information about how things work here at the University of Constantinople.

   The University is at such a strange level of temporal dynamics and technology as to be a near-mystical place.  It's often to tell where the technology ends and the spookiness begins.  More on this spookiness next week, you can be sure.

 
    Your spooky quotient for today will be filled by the concept of the Night Faculty.  No doubt, the idea has crossed a few of your minds that there might be an entire other society in the places that you live, societies that operate when you are sleeping, full of people who are on a different shift and with whom you never interact.  Perhaps, even, they have their own businesses, storefronts which shutter just as your eyes flutter to begin the next day.

 
   Here at the University, I know there is just such a set of people.  The Night Faculty are a group of people whose cultures or biology leave them unable to operate during the day, as most of us do.  Either they are from time streams where evolution has produced something like vampires, or they learned to exist in a nocturnal culture, or any of many other reasons.


   That might seem "freaky" or "creepy" to any of you, that in thenight there might be people who you never see that wander the halls of your workplace.  For me it is a matter of great comfort.  There is always worry that we will be attacked by some other ex-temporal force, especially the Puppeteers.  To know that at all times, our halls are stalked by creatures of daydream and nightmare is to know that we are at all times safe.


   More on the Night Faculty next week.


   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar

   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Pinkness of the Unicorn, and Other Stories

The Invisible Pink Unicorn; Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   There's been quite a lot on my mind with regards to Science, experimentation, and philosophy of thought.  You can blame a couple of people I've run into around your time stream lately, who have gotten me into discussions of hypothesis testing and what makes knowledge "knowable."
   
   This post is mostly provoked by discussions of theism vs. atheism, but that question is one that I'm unwilling to settle for you.  Suffice it to say that in the time streams where there are gods or godlike beings who directly interfere with the affairs of the less powerful, I find this to be somewhat unprofessional behavior on their part.
  
   At any rate, the notion of a deity is fascinating from a Philosophy of Science perspective.  Science relies on the ability to formulate, and then test, certain hypotheses, which then allow the formulation of further hypotheses and more experiments.  By this method we have learned to push the boundaries of sentient knowledge of the universe.

Sexual Selection: Bells, Whistles, and Running Away

Image via WikipediaDear Readers,



I found this in some old notes from a past, time-normal me.  Thought you might enjoy it, if you're looking for something to read on a slow Sunday.  I was less reserved in my wording back then.

It concerns the difference between Sexual Selection (where evolution is driven by arbitrary things that males or females happen to find attractive) vs. Natural Selection (where the selected traits are determined by their ability to help you survive the environment around you).


A classic example of Sexual Selection would be birdsong.  Females are attracted to the songs of male birds, but to sing is actually quite risky for the male as it alerts predators to their location.  Your scientists think it to have evolved because it helps the males get noticed, which has a slight net benefit over how much it helps them get eaten.


Text below the cut.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Warfare in Space, Part 3

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   This is the third and final in my series on space warfare.  It has been an exciting ride, between conventional warfare in space and inertia-negated warfare, but it's time to bring it to a close with my third and final assumption, one that occurs in many of the time streams I study:


One or both of the belligerents have invented a means of traveling faster than the speed of light.

  I do not mean a vehicle that moves between points A and B while passing all the points in between, because that's going to be lead to all kinds of causality violations.  Rather, I am talking about devices that utilize either teleportation or wormholes to transfer a craft between one point in space and another in faster time than it would take for light to travel between those two points.  Ideally, the transfer would be instant.

   So, how does that affect warfare in space?

Warfare in Space, Part 2

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

  I have taken it upon myself to write a short series on warfare in space, given some attention that topic's gotten lately around the Internet.  The first in this series dealt with warfare using technology contemporaneous to you, and this second piece will operate under a different assumption.  The third, and final post in the series, will show up later in the week.

   Let's take the technology a little further into the imagination in this post.  Last time, we were bounded by the nasty problem of inertia.  Objects in motion prefer to stay that way, in the same direction, and that ruled out the kind of combat that is seen in movies like Star Wars.

   But what if you could eliminate inertia?  Would that mean we start to see X-wings that swoop down over vast battleships?  Today's assumption: A device has been invented that allows you to negate the inertia of a space vehicle.   You'd be surprised what that assumption does for the overall layout of the space battlefield.

Warfare in Space

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

   I think that in the future, the direction of this blog will be less oriented towards provision of primary sources, and more to the discussion of relevant topics in futurism, alternate realities (to yours), and alternate histories.

   That's not to say that I will stop sharing my research with you, but in this format I can share more possibilities with you at once, freed from the restrictions of a primary source.

   Therefore, today I want to discuss how warfare will change when the primary arena of combat changes to be outer space.  There are a variety of different options, which all depend on how the societies in question have advanced their technologies.

   The spacecraft that you are used to are incredibly simple.  They are unable to withstand the wide variety of attacks that your militaries have come up with, and certainly would not be able to stand up to more advanced weaponry.  Let's not dress it up: space warfare in your time stream is a neglected area of research.

   Really, I find that kind of refreshing.  Wars in space are nasty things, and it is good that so far your society has managed to keep space a peaceful zone of international collaboration and economic competition.  However, I do not believe that even your contemporaries expect that situation to continue forever, especially as more private interests enter the space arena.  This article should provide you with some idea of what space combat will and won't look like, given a few assumptions.

   Just so that we're all being realistic: space warfare is not going to look like STAR WARS.  The action depicted in STAR WARS, probably your most memorable imagining of space combat, is also woefully ignorant of what space is actually like.  No matter what assumptions are made, I can't find a time stream wherein space combat resembles World War II-era naval air combat.  In no small part because there isn't any air resistance in space, so the long, banking turns you see in such films are wholly unnecessary.
  
  There are, however, a few different frameworks for space combat.  Each has a prerequisite technology associated with it, so I'll go through one by one, in a series of posts.

Friday Seminar Series: Exoplanetology

Neil DeGrasse Tyson; Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,


   This Friday Seminar is a special one, written given the buzz from Gliese581g, which has found its way to me from my time-normal Twitter friends Exoplanetology and Intellectual Pornography.  They've both kept me up to date on advances in your time stream's understanding of this world has expanded.  I'll stick to what you know in discussing it.  Gliese581g is interesting for a variety of reasons, the one that I'm most focused on being what it means for human expansion.


   A lot of words get thrown around at times like this.  In the words of time-normal astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, this should be seen as "...an important turning of the page..." in the search for planets like Earth.  However, it "...doesn't mean there are oceans and beaches and resorts..."  Gliese581g isn't exactly Earth.  You don't know that much about it.  I see words like "habitable" and I'm inclined to remind time-normal science journalists how little you really know about life within, let alone outside of, the solar system.  Habitable?  The odds are low.  Inhabited?  Well, I'll leave that for you to discover on your own.

   What this represents, and what I mean to discuss, is that discovery.  Gliese581g isn't likely to represent a second chance for humanity.  The gravity there may be a little too high, depending on the precise composition and density of the planet.  It's a ribbon world, which limits its settlement potential.  There are...issues, to say the least.

   One issue I shouldn't have to remind you of is that it may already be inhabited!

   Instead of being a complete critic, however, I want to take this in a productive direction.  Every scientific discovery, in astrophysics, anachronism, or biology, has two effects.  First, it tells us something we don't know before, installing a firm rung for us to step on as we ascend the ladder of knowledge.  Second is all about that ladder.  Think of it as a tall, tall ladder in the midst of a vast wilderness.  With every rung, our lantern casts more light, even farther, so that we can see newer and newer things.  Some of these things, the edge of these things, are encased in shadow, left for us to ask questions about.  Those questions are the edge of knowledge, the things that will be answered to build the next rung.



  You must not look at Gliese581g and say, "this is a new thing that we know."  You must look at it and ask, "What new questions can we ask?"  You must turn the new page that Dr. DeGrasse Tyson talked about.  I'll suggest a brief list:

• Does Gliese581g have a breathable atmosphere and/or liquid-phase water?
• Is there life on Gliese581g? (The link leads to an article about the discovery of a strong signal coming from the Gliese581 system)
• Can we communicate with Gliese581g?
• Can we get to Gliese581g?
• What are the ethical hurdles that come into play when we reach a possible contact with Gliese581g and its potential inhabitants?

   These are the questions that you have to answer, time-normal Earth.  There's a lot of conflicting information on this one.  I wish you the best of luck.  Please leave thoughts in the comments on this one.  I'll be watching it closely.

   Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The Freedom to Die

Image via Wikipedia
Dear Readers,

    I know it has been a little while since I last wrote to you.  It was considered best that we evaluate our communications with your time stream more carefully before we proceeded with this project.  There are larger concerns, now, especially with the war on.

    I am writing today to talk about an issue that might seem foreign to you, that of "Freedom of Death."  In your time stream, there's much ado about end of life procedures and assisted suicide, but this is a little different.

   When you are effectively immortal, and you can go to the library and cross-reference your achievements in thousands of different time streams, the ideas of life and death become somewhat more nuanced.

Impostor!

Dear Readers,

  Something funny crossed my path today.  Via the Internet, I have discovered a person who may be an as-yet undiscovered version of myself!  I have no idea "who" this person is.  It makes me chuckle.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

A Potential Graduate Student?

Dear Readers,

  I found this earlier today.  As the artist says, he's not a time traveler!  But he's certainly good material for an Anachronist.  I can think of a particular time stream he might even want to study.

  Always,

    Dr. John Skylar
    Chairman
    Department of Anachronism
    University of Constantinople

Book-Rhyme

Image by levar via Flickr

Dear Readers,

  Today I've decided to share something with you that I've been scrawling inside the covers of my books since I first became a graduate student: my book rhyme!

  Book rhymes were popular in your 19th and early 20th century, to warn people against stealing others' books, or to help a lost book find its home.  Losing books is not so large a problem for me, with the resources we have here at the University, but I still like the idea of the book rhyme, partly because of Alfred Bester.  Furthermore, I have always offered dinner to anyone who finds a book I've lost, and without a rhyme, it would be hard for them to collect their reward.

  Thus, I've decided to share my book rhyme with you, my readers.

John Skylar is my Name
Byzantium, my Nation
Forever is my Stopping-Place
And Always, my Habitation

Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Back in the Saddle Again

Dear Readers,

  I've been away, working on a few different projects, and my bandwidth to your time stream has been taken up with academic correspondence and students' work.

  That period is now over, and I have begun to reevaluate the sorts of things that I put here.  My seminars will remain, as well as at least one narrative/source-style post per week.  However, I am considering adding at least one of two potential new components:

• Music: Might Have Been.  This would be a column where I examine interesting musicians from your time stream and tell you what their lives could have been like if they had not chosen to become such artists.
• City Salons: When I was a graduate student, I often had my friends and sometimes even my enemies over for frank discussion on strange issues.  I still have the records of these events, and I may share them with you.

   If any of you, my readers, have thoughts on either of these new ideas, I would be happy to hear them.

  Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

Outlaw Blogger Gangs

Partial Map of the Internet: Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

The Internet is one of the greatest inventions of your time stream's society.  You know this as well a I.  It connects everyone with the information they desire without judging that information (at least, in situations where free speech is allowed and there is net neutrality).

With all the possibilities that are created by the Internet, it would take the complete and combined efforts of time normal statisticians, physicists, biologists, historians, anthropologists, and archaeologists to assess the full potential impact of the Internet on the future.

Fortunately, you have Anachronists like me who can use Augury to "cheat" and this and tell you what's out there.  This week, I want to focus on a few different possibilities that we know will come out of the Internet.  The Internet Age encouraged the move from modern to postmodern.  What happens when we move on from that?  One option is below the jump.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Sunday Seminar Series: Misunderstanding

Easy to misunderstand. Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,


In your own time stream, exploration is a thing of physical locales and geographic or astronomic travels.  At the University, we are instead explorers of temporal distances.  This sort of work is more stationary, but hazards its own perils.

Join me for this week's Sunday Seminar, adapted from my lectures for our introductory Anachronism class, CHRN/AUG 100.

I think the main hazard that we face as Anachronists is misunderstanding.  With our new ability to manifest whenever we would like, the danger is doubled.

Let me tell you the classical problem of misunderstanding.  It is best related through the anecdote of Clinton IV, a space  colony I have studied.

The colonists of Clinton IV learned early on that they were not alone on their world.  They found this very excitig at first, but as attempts to contact the local humanoid lifeforms failed or ended in disaster, they became discouraged.  It took a century for the xenobiologists to realize their mistake:  just because a creature looks and acts intelligent, does not always mean it is.

There are many classical misunderstandings we can make. One of them is to use our own cultural framework to read a source.  Thankfully, Dr. Bacon's mindset simulator is helping somewhat with that.  But you must be ever vigilant.

There are other sorts of misunderstandings we can make as well.  These aren't based on cultural frame problems, but instead on simple bad "facts".  Sometimes we just have the wrong assumptions, and we assume that a source says a society was at war when in fact they were playing a sports game.  Hint, hint, football fans.

These two classes of misunderstanding lead to bad conclusions and pollute the literature when they appear in our sedentary activities.

But, if you make these mistakes on assignment to a time stream, they can be deadly.  So watch out.

There's one last class of misunderstanding that is unique to being on assignment, though: that's where you don't consider your own effect through your presence.  When you visit, you're in a unique offshoot of the time stream that is affected by your presence.  It's almost the same, but not completely.  If you're going to collect evidence, make sure you didn't accidentally create that data.

And with that, I leave you to your sports games.  Hopefully the referees have had a good class on misunderstanding.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

The Academy for Cultural Guardians

Image via Wikipedia

Dear Readers,

  In my research I have turned up a number of bizarre time streams, as you no doubt know.  This week, I've tried to focus on some of the stranger among them, at first the wolf-people, and now today a world where culture has taken on something of a life of its own.

  This is one of the odd time streams where the laws of physics are ever so slightly different, in ways somewhat too complicated to go into in detail here.  The bottom line is that culture has become something of a tangible and measurable thing.  I consider it to be something like the Ley Lines suggested by archaeologist Alfred Watkins in your own time stream.  Different cultures somehow converge around pathways of something that I think of as a sociological ether.  Consider it a sort of addition on to the laws of physics that you are used to.

  Horrible things can happen, however, when there are strange convergences of these cultural ley lines.  Across the world of this time stream, there are places where the smallest living thing can be transformed into a hideous monster.  Perhaps a wayward squirrel outside of Copenhagen could become the grand monster Grendel and terrify the countryside, all through the effect of this cultural ether.

  To combat this problem, the people of this time stream have instated a cultural exchange program.  This system ensures that at least there will be several people in every community who are able to rise to the challenge of the strange creatures that come out of the woods without balking when they meet their culture's greatest nightmares.

  But these cultural exchange students, "guardians," as they are called, must first be trained.  Below the jump is a primary source from one of the classes at their Academy for Cultural Guardians.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

Temporal Tuesday: Dances with Wolves

Image by Colin Purrington via Flickr

Dear Readers,

  Imagine with me for a moment something that I think you won't accept as real.  Imagine a world where hominids did not win the evolutionary race to dominance.  It's not the most likely time stream after the hominids develop opposable thumbs, of course, but then the idea that evolution can diverge across time streams might be something you hadn't considered yet.

   When I was earning my second undergraduate degree, the one I got from the University itself, I took a class on evolutionary biology.  The professor cited Anachronism data that showed a time stream where humans' primary evolutionary competitors came to the forefront instead of humans.  This other animal had an intelligent mind, a social mentality, and was a most effective hunter.  This animal was the wolf.  The main reason that wolves and humans did not turn out the other way around in your time stream is right on the edge of your hand; they lacked the opposable thumb.

  Today, imagine a time stream where they did not.  I have (mostly) translated this species' quirks to make the piece more accessible.  The only word I cannot translate is the name "Rolf," though it's curious that this name appears in both wolven as well as German, though they have very different meanings.  Since the wolves are deeply religious, it's been easy to find analogs for other names.  For example, a wolf name meaning "the first wolf" is easily replaced with "Adam."

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Julie [Orig: "Young One"] clambered up the ramp outside the temple. [Reversed knees would not handle steps well]

Sunday Seminar Series: Resonance

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Dear Readers,

  When Sundays roll around for you, I like to post a seminar based on my class, CHRN/AUG 100, which is the University's Introduction to Anachronism.  Here's this week's edition.

  Last week we talked about mindset and how we use the emotional and cultural context of a mind to understand the sources that wrote it.  That's kind of the small scale of the situation, though, because in the long run we're not just studying individuals but trends in society over time and to some degree we're even creating predictive models.

  To do this, we need to think about the motivations of various people and groups of people around time.  I like to think of it as sort of examining a cultural fossil record.  In paleontology, when you find successive organisms with specifc body plans that are shared, you gradually develop "taxa," or groups of different species that form up a branch of the Tree of Life.  Those groups, like "dinosaurs" or "birds" have certain shared characteristics.  There is what I would call a certain resonance between their physical forms which arise in common over time.

  Similarly, there are shared mindsets that arise in the data from augury, both when you move forward in time and when you look across concurrent time streams.  People resonate their beliefs.  A good example from your time stream to consider would be the sudden surge of support for Barack Obama prior to his election.  This happened because many people out there had a mindset that agreed with Obama and when he began to broadcast his views, these ideas resonated with an untapped aspect of the American, and even the global, mindset.  The collective consciouness vibrated to the beat of his drum.

  Another example comes from World War II, when around the world there was a flocking on people with like mindsets to two prevailing systems of government: the Free Society and the Fascist Society.  Hitler and Mussolini did not help each other to power; they formed their own groups of mindsets, from people who resonated with their viewpoints.  Then, when they had come to power, they met each other and felt that same resonance in themselves.  A dark alliance, the Axis, took root.  Resonance can sometimes be a bad thing.

  But it is through resonance that ideas and trends in ideas begin.  Movements and revolutions are born on the backs of mindsets that resonate with one another.  It starts small, but then can snowball into significant trends.  Much of my time is spent trying to determine what the critical mass is for an idea to resonate across all of a geographic location or time stream, and to echo into the future.  Even more of my time is spent looking for situations where different time streams resonate so strongly with each other that despite their temporal separation, they share a possible future!  By the power of the mind alone, sentient beings can bend probabilities to create something nearly impossible.

  That is resonance.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Special Edition: Trying out the Mindset Simulator

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Dear Readers,

  As I mentioned earlier on Twitter, one of our professors, Sir Francis Bacon, has worked with Professor George Sphrantzes to build a device I call a mindset simulator.  It's not quite finished, but they let me test it out today.  It leaves a weird ringing in the mind.

  At any rate, I wanted to put myself into the mind of a personal hero, Mr. Samuel Butler, a Victorian novelist who was a contemporary and commentator of Charles Darwin.  He wrote an essay called Darwin amongst the Machines that I heartily suggest you give a read.  I set the Mindset Simulator to put me into his mind toward when he wrote that essay.

  Anyhow, below you'll find selected parts of a transcript of what I experienced with the headset on.  Enjoy!

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part III

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Dear Readers,

  I think we've gleaned about all we can from the primary sources.  Let's turn this into a narrative, shall we?

  Always,

   Dr. John Skylar
   Chairman
   Department of Anachronism
   University of Constantinople

The deck's constant pitch and roll made Stephen wan to grab one of the plastic bags off the litter and vomit into it on the double.  He could handle flipping a kayak with just his stomach muscles, but this damn ship and its slow waves out in the Gyre drove his anxiety and motion sickness into overdrive.

He punched the railing and cursed, "Why do I gotta be out here?"

Though he mean the question to be at the sea and the circumstances, he got an answer growled from behind him, "Because ain't another's got the chick-hands we need to use the machinery, that's why.  Not getyerass back to work.  They need this plasty soup back on the shore, maggot."

Stephen knew that voice.  Blogston, the asshole first mate.  Stephen stared at the rail in front of him, where he'd punched a moment before.  When they got back to port, he would hire the first person he could find who could make Blogston's death take more than 24 hours.

He stowed his fury, however, and just answered, "Fine."  If Blogston did not know Stephen hated him by now, then the first mate would have to be the thickest meathead in the butcher's shop.

"That's what I thought." the first mate huffed and the  walked back down the deck.  Stephen started to sigh his relief, but then he noticed a rope coil right in the first mate's path.  His eyes followed it back to the main plastic processor.  If the first mate stepped wrong he would get sucked into the machine and die in seconds.  Not that Stephen cared.  Instead, he felt his guts sink when he realized that if the first mate went into the machine, their entire catch would be ruined and his father would be furious.  Maybe even furious enough to send him out on another of these punishment missions.

Stephen dashed down the deck like a man possessed, and slipped on a water spot in the process, just as the first mate stepped closer to the rope.  They collided, and Blogston went down right next to the rope.  His nose broke the fall.

It took a couple of seconds for the large, bearlike superior officer to gather what happened.  He stood up, with a guttural roar from deep in his gut, and picked up Stephen by the sealskin collar.  No simple feat, at Stephen's size.

"You little shit!" Blogston growled through the blood that streamed down his face, "I'ma break your face too!"  A little blood flecked onto Stephen's shirt.

He meant it.  Stephen kicked out into Blogston's chest, which freed him from the hulk's slick grip.  Blogston yowled and tried to throw a punch out at Stephen, but the younger man ducked.

"I just saved ya from trippin' on the damn lead-rope, peasant sealcrap."  He placed a jab right into Blogston's cheek.  Strength wouldn't beat skill.

Blogston roared, "I wasn't gonna-"

The loudspeaker roared to life, "You wasn't gonna do shit, Blogston.  Kid's correct, this time.  Kid- get up to the wheelhouse, I'm gonna whip you for hitting my first mate.  Bein' correct don't make you in the right for hurtin' my man.  Captain's orders."

Blogston got in close to Stephen's face and hissed, "We'll finish this later."

The loudspeaker crackled again, "Like hell you will, Jeff.  I'll take care of the kid.  You get the damn plastic."

Stephen glared back at the first mate.  Perhaps they wouldn't kill each other.  Today.

Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part II

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Dear Readers,

   On Friday I gave you some primary sources and a little bit of analysis of those sources.  Now today I'm going to synthesize those sources into a story about the various characters.  I'm going to draw on some other sources that I know of for this time stream that would have been too complex to include, but the important thing here is that you'll see how it is I draw from clues in the sources to write something that gives a clue about what it feels like to live in one of these time streams.

  This experiment is becoming something longer than I expected, so here I'll give some further analysis and then the full narrative will post on Wednesday.

  See below.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Sunday Seminar Series: Mindset

Dear Readers,

Image by wallyg via Flickr

  Each time your Sunday rolls around, I post a short piece coverted from one of my lectures for CHRN/AUG 100.  It's my introductory course for students just starting out in Anachronism.

  I want to discuss mindset, because it is such an important part of the translation discipline involved in Anachronism.  I started to work on analysis of a primary source on Friday, and I'll post the conclusion on Monday.  Here I want to discuss how our understanding of mindset affects the conclusions that we make.

Image via Wikipedia

  The most basic way to explain this principle is to take some arbitrary event, like spotting an eagle as it makes a kill, and then thinking about how different mindsets would respond to that event.

  Someone from your time stream would see an eagle and be likely to think about a bunch of disconnected things: feelings about the United States or other countries that use eagles as their symbols, the freedom of flight, the violence of the kill, the helpless little animal, maybe even dredged-up images of food webs from ecology texts that you read in college.  The bottom line for you would be, though, that you are watching an eagle kill an animal as eagles are wont to do.  Maybe it would evoke the power of nature.  Maybe you would not bat an eye.

  Let's step out of your shoes for a moment, shall we?  In Ancient Greece, bird omens would evoke a god associated with the bird, or a god to whom the viewer of the bird had recently devoted.  To see it kill something could mean anger from the god, or a wish for victory in battle.  The nature of the bird's appearance as an omen would be the Ancient Greek's main response to the sight.  To determine the meaning, it would take a priest and a good understanding of the context.

  Likewise, context is important for us.  In this case, however, it's temporal context.  We have to think about what is normal for the society that our source comes from in order to establish the mindset of the author.  We have to think about profession, education, economics, culture, religion, all of it.  And we have to think about our own mindset, which is biased by every experience we have ever had.  There is a big difference between the writings of a monk whose only safe beverage is beer and the writing of an academic who lives immortally in a University outside of time.

  And, as you'll see on Monday, I bring these considerations to the forefront in my translation of primary sources.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

Translation Walkthrough with Plastic Farmers, Part I

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Dear Readers,

  I often discuss how I "translate" sources into narratives.  Those of you who read regularly know that I post both personal accounts and "stories" which put you into the shoes of someone in one of the various time streams that I study.  When I do put up a primary source, it's carefully selected to be something that I know can read like a real tale rather than a tax register.

  Do you have any idea how many tax registers Augury pulls in?  It's more than a lot.

  But those sources are some of the most useful things in my work.  They help me establish continuity and understand how people lived their lives.  It's not easy, but sometimes the most boring sources can give me an idea of someone's day to day life.

  But, I'm a trained Anachronist, and it takes that training to try and extract a hypothetical narrative from a book of government petitions or otherwise census-type data.  I try to save you the time through the stories that I write, so that you get the world without all the work.

  I think, though, you might all like a little insight into how this works, so I've decided to give you an example today.  See below as I take you with me to the Pacific Gyre during the 28th century, then have a great weekend.

  Always,
 
  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

 

(Last) Friday On My Mind

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Dear Readers,

  If you've been keeping up to date, you know that I've started to collaborate with a time-normal historian from the 27th century named Dr. Wendell Howe.  His work is called "Temporal Anthropology" and involves literal time travel.  That's pretty different from what I do, and it's brought some ideas to mind.

  What I've been working on with Dr. Howe on is related to his effect on the past.  I've never been very concerned about changing the flow of time, because I know that all roads eventually get traversed.  That's easy for me to say, though.

  I've discussed the idea of likely and unlikely events in the past, and this analysis is confounded by the idea of time travel in a couple of ways.  One potential way is that if time travel exists and people are willing to change the past, then the likelihoods of certain time streams taking place would change based on the fickle passions of the future.  Thankfully this creates a paradox, and when a paradox occurs in a physical situation, it suggests that the situation is not possible.  I expect that time travelers do not change the past, they simply shunt themselves down a different temporal path when they alter what came before them.

  Therein lies a problem, however.  Personal paradox is not impossible. If you go to the past, change Event A, and then this shunts you to a time stream where the future you came from looks very different, you're stuck.  You can't go back and change what you did.  You can prevent yourself from doing that, but you might fail, or worse, the damage might be too severe for you to fully prevent.

  I can see why the latter would be a problem for Dr. Howe.  No doubt Cambridge University's temporal enforcers are worried about altering the course of history for more general reasons, but I think it's fair to say those are not concerns worth worrying about.  In some realm of possibility, they will still exist.  It is, however, existentially threatening to Dr. Howe if he should inadvertently shunt himself to a time stream where his future life is utterly destroyed.  He would become lost in time, perhaps even without an idea of what he did to become lost in the first place.   There is only one Dr. Wendell Howe, and so if he wanders among the time streams, he can be lost forever.

  Now, I just started to experiment with a device that can allow me, at great energetic expense, to travel to any point in any time stream.  Why don't I have Wendell's problem, wherein I can become lost in time?  The answer, my dear readers, is that I am a copy.  The "real" John Skylar lives a life spanning the 20th and 21st centuries.  Across at least one time stream, I die in a fashion interesting enough to be able to generate a personality impression for the augurs.  Then, my personality and material composition can be copied with exactness.  I am me, but I am another of many versions of me that exist across the multitude of time streams.   I have knowledge belonging to a variety of those versions.

   This means if I go somewhere and "change" the past, and that mosaic version of me is shunted to another time stream, I can just be fetched right back the University (it, too, being such a copy that exists "outside of time), and I am perfectly fine.  All the versions of me are still possible.  You can't make a person impossible.

  I'll sum up with a metaphor.  Dr. Wendell Howe has a poker hand.  It happens to be a royal flush.  With that hand, he doesn't want the dealer to change how the cards were dealt.  He has a vested interest in his royal flush, because it creates the world he is part of.  I, instead, am a spectator from outside the game.  I could care less what hand a specific player has; they're all interesting hands.  What I care about is, instead, what the odds of a certain hand are, and that each player has a hand.  If all the cards changed, I'd still care about the game.  But in a different way.  And the price I pay for that detachment is the knowledge that in some sense, I am just a facsimile of the "real" John Skylar.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

P.S. (my first postscript!) My guest blogging adventure over at 2log.biz is going well.  I have over 3000 "points," for what it's worth, and have just posted a short essay on the purpose of the University.

More Ways to Read About the University

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Dear Readers,

  I just thought I'd do a quick round-up of the various ways I'm getting the University of Constantinople's name out into your time stream.

  For one, I'm working closely now with Dr. Wendell Howe, a Temporal Anthropologist from a somewhat time-normal university in the 27th century.  This is my first real academic collaboration with a researcher who is time-normal!  I am excited.  And Dr. Howe leaves such lovely thank you notes.

  Another effort I'm working on is my guest appearance as a "challenger" on 2log.biz, where I will be posting all of this week.  2log has a weekly "points" competition that's all in good fun, and I'm hoping I can be a strong contender (you can help me out if you like).  Expect to see background on the University as well as short pieces from the time streams I study.

  If anyone else is interested in collaborating with me, I always like a good opportunity to work with time-normal historians, bloggers, and other writers.  I'm even thinking about a project where I work with musicians.  Let me know if you have any ideas, readers!

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople

How to Save History: Australia, 1874

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Dear Readers,

  I recently connected with a colleague, Dr. Wendell Howe, who works in a time-normal discipline similar to Anachronism.  In his time stream, the contemporaries have discovered time travel and have begun to use it in what they call "Temporal Anthropology."  It's an exciting field, especially because Dr. Howe can travel backward in time with ease.  This is an ability I envy.

  Now, Dr. Howe's institution is quite concerned that they will change the past somehow.  Since my data indicates all possibilities play out and the past cannot be changed, rather only your experience of it, I find this rather pointless, but I am willing to entertain the possibility that I am wrong on this matter.  Perhaps it is important to avoid changing the past.  Therefore, I have decided to offer my help to Dr. Howe in his efforts to preserve the past that he knows during his journeys there.

   Currently, Dr. Howe's travels take him from 27th century England to 19th century Australia, a country which at the time straddled the gap between wilderness and modernity.  Almost a hundred years separated from its inception as a prison colony, Australia of 1874 struggled to gain an agricultural and political niche within the vast British Empire.  This led to the introduction of dozens of species and numerous attempts to transform the country into a larger, more economically powerful version of the British Isles.  For the most part, these attempts ended in ecological disaster, though Australia would still rise to the forefront among nations.

  In light of Wendell's visit at a critical time for Australia, I provide below a bulleted list of ways he can avoid affecting the flow of time during his visit, along with the consequences, based on "aberrant" possibilities my Department is aware of.

Sunday Seminar Series: Corporeality

Dear Readers,
  This week is a special edition of my Sunday Seminar Series relating to my recent adventure in corporeality.  If you recall, an attack by the Puppeteers left the University with a new technology that could allow direct transmission of matter to a time-normal location.  We were all pretty impressed by that.

  Therefore, I hatched a plan to make a time-normal appearance in Brooklyn, New York.  It is rather unusual, to be able to say I was with you all last night.  I am so rarely contemporaneous with my readers!  It is very exciting.

  The venue that I chose is called the Lost Horizon Night Market, and this secretly located traveling bazaar contains all manner of wonders in a uniquely mobile format.  It is a place where the most unusual city-dwellers find expression, and I am happy to have been there.

  I have to comment on the experience of traveling in the fashion that I used last night.  I'm sure it will be no strange story for the likes of my new acquaintance Dr. Wendell Howe, but for me the use of a physical appearance is a strange feat indeed.

  I brought everything that I thought I might need: camera, University dress, a device to link me with Twitter throughout, a pill to acclimate me to the normal flow of time, and an open mind.  Oh, and olives.  I cannot do without olives from the University's groves.  There is nothing like them, in this world or any other.

  I managed to take the pill before the nausea set in.  This is key.  When your body is not used to the normal flow of time, it can be very jarring for it to revert to time normality.  The olives helped, also.  I was pleased to discover that they maintained their flavor through the transmission.  Actually, I was generally pleased that the very act of stepping through the machine did not kill me.  Today, I tell you, my students: This is possible!  We embark on a new journey for Anachronists.

   The wonders I saw last night will feature in a new work of mine, but I believe I shall save that for a reputable journal rather than this collection of my work notes that I call a blog.  The market's organizers pride themselves on their secrecy, and I do not want to be the one to break it.  What I really want to impress on you is that this new technology is going to change our field.  We can now visit the possible time streams, albeit at a huge expense of resources.  As the first pioneer of this technology, I am excited to report that it works, is safe, and can bring back the most exciting data I have ever seen.

  Always,

  Dr. John Skylar
  Chairman
  Department of Anachronism
  University of Constantinople