Dear Readers,
I am sorry about the glitch that leads to this post's late release. I place the blame squarely on bad software created by the Augury Department. I do not think, as their Chairman does, that the graduate student responsible should be sent back to a time-normal existence, but I imagine that Provost Notaras will talk some sense into her.
At any rate, it is now your Sunday, and we have managed to fix the problem, so here is the Seminar that I hoped to post on Friday. It is, as per usual, drawn from my lecture materials for CHRN/AUG 100, my introductory Anachronism class here at the University.
Today I want to talk to you about the idea of likely and unlikely events, and how we can use them to get at the "big idea" of my last few seminars. That idea surrounds the various "tricks" that we as Anachronists must use to put together the raw text that we get from Augury. Remember that because data comes from distinct choice paths, it can be nigh impossible to correlate two datasets and say that they come from the same time stream, or that one follows the other temporally.
Unless you use these tricks. Last time I talked about how to use linguistics. This time I'm going to talk about probability.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
A Day in the Life: Naegling's Heroes
Dear Readers,
Monday brought you the Song of Naegling, a poem which I am convinced was written by the weapon itself. How this is possible I am not sure, though I can imagine there are a number of mundane technical explanations for the creation of an intelligent weapon. While your time stream makes a certain effort to provide itself with scientific explanations of things, I will leave that to my colleagues on the other side of the quad, and just remain impressed with Naegling's autobiography.
I find it interesting that I can find outside sources that confirm the weapon's existence. For one, Naegling survives in your time stream's versions of Beowulf. Personally, I recommend the Seamus Heaney translation of the ones that are available to you and your contemporaries.
My own work intersects with Naegling when she/he/it finds James Strongman, a personality who has yet to appear in your consciousness, but will become quite important in one of the time streams that branch off from your current temporal position. Strongman is a warleader for a troubled age, and one that I hope you do not have the opportunity to visit. Below you may find one of Strongman's journal entries during his rise to power. I caution you that Strongman was never one to avoid profanity.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
Monday brought you the Song of Naegling, a poem which I am convinced was written by the weapon itself. How this is possible I am not sure, though I can imagine there are a number of mundane technical explanations for the creation of an intelligent weapon. While your time stream makes a certain effort to provide itself with scientific explanations of things, I will leave that to my colleagues on the other side of the quad, and just remain impressed with Naegling's autobiography.
I find it interesting that I can find outside sources that confirm the weapon's existence. For one, Naegling survives in your time stream's versions of Beowulf. Personally, I recommend the Seamus Heaney translation of the ones that are available to you and your contemporaries.
My own work intersects with Naegling when she/he/it finds James Strongman, a personality who has yet to appear in your consciousness, but will become quite important in one of the time streams that branch off from your current temporal position. Strongman is a warleader for a troubled age, and one that I hope you do not have the opportunity to visit. Below you may find one of Strongman's journal entries during his rise to power. I caution you that Strongman was never one to avoid profanity.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday Muse: The Song of Naegling
Dear Readers,
I have exciting news to share. Something came in from the Augury Department that spans such a long thread of history that I am stunned. It is, apparently, an inscriptional squeeze. For those unfamiliar, a squeeze is a type of impression made when you take specialized paper and press it up against a carved inscription, thenuse a "squeeze brush" to produce a copy of the inscription and inscribed surface. It is a lot like when you take tracing paper and use the edge of a pencil to copy a texture underneath, however, this method is less rough on the original.
At any rate, this source comes from a squeeze made of what must be the most exciting weapon in history, a weapon that according to the poem, Hrothgar called Naegling. However, the text, which I have worked nonstop to translate, seems to differ from your time stream's established account of Beowulf. Furthermore, the weapon's records go far past the end of that story, and even into your future.
I thought it would make a most excellent pick for Monday Muse. See it below the cut.
I have exciting news to share. Something came in from the Augury Department that spans such a long thread of history that I am stunned. It is, apparently, an inscriptional squeeze. For those unfamiliar, a squeeze is a type of impression made when you take specialized paper and press it up against a carved inscription, thenuse a "squeeze brush" to produce a copy of the inscription and inscribed surface. It is a lot like when you take tracing paper and use the edge of a pencil to copy a texture underneath, however, this method is less rough on the original.
At any rate, this source comes from a squeeze made of what must be the most exciting weapon in history, a weapon that according to the poem, Hrothgar called Naegling. However, the text, which I have worked nonstop to translate, seems to differ from your time stream's established account of Beowulf. Furthermore, the weapon's records go far past the end of that story, and even into your future.
I thought it would make a most excellent pick for Monday Muse. See it below the cut.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Friday Seminar: Genetic Linguistic Analysis
Dear Readers,
Quite some time has passed since my last Friday Seminar, the series in which I adapt some of my CHRN/AUG 100 course materials for your time stream. So, forgive me if my post today is innappropriate in its complexity.
That said, today I want to tell you about a "back door" method to determine continuity between disparate augury datasets. If you recall, it is notoriously difficult to connect two datasets collected separately, because it is always hard to establish causality at the limits of quantum uncertainty.
Like I've said before, it takes rigorous standards to say two sources come from the same time stream. But there are easy ways to at least group time streams together based on common cultural features.
One such feature is language. Languages mutate based on a variety of factors, and so if you observe two sets of data that are in the same language, you can say with nearly one hundred per cent certainty that the two datasets are either contemporaneous OR they share a common "ancestor" time stream. In fact, since all you need to know for this sort of analysis is how similar the languages are in their written form, you may not even need to know the language. It can be very useful for an Anachronist whose specialty time stream has a language that is not well understood.
This sort of analysis has more advanced forms, too, and they are quite similar to how your contemporary scientists do evolutionary genetics. These scientists can take two different species and compare their DNA to determine their probable common ancestor. That is, the extinct species from which they both evolved.
Languages are not so different from DNA. DNA tells cells how to make components for their life machinery. Language contains rules and components to give rise to communication machinery. And languages also mutate.
So if we have two languages with similarities, we can analyze and compare their differences to figure out a rough timeline for their divergence. This is timeline only in terms of probabilities, but it is better than nothing. Though we often find these language ancestry trees are inaccurate when we finally decipher the words, many working conclusions based on this analysis remain valid.
While it's a crude tool, it's very useful. I will try and expand more on this complicated topic in a future Seminar.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
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Quite some time has passed since my last Friday Seminar, the series in which I adapt some of my CHRN/AUG 100 course materials for your time stream. So, forgive me if my post today is innappropriate in its complexity.
That said, today I want to tell you about a "back door" method to determine continuity between disparate augury datasets. If you recall, it is notoriously difficult to connect two datasets collected separately, because it is always hard to establish causality at the limits of quantum uncertainty.
Like I've said before, it takes rigorous standards to say two sources come from the same time stream. But there are easy ways to at least group time streams together based on common cultural features.
One such feature is language. Languages mutate based on a variety of factors, and so if you observe two sets of data that are in the same language, you can say with nearly one hundred per cent certainty that the two datasets are either contemporaneous OR they share a common "ancestor" time stream. In fact, since all you need to know for this sort of analysis is how similar the languages are in their written form, you may not even need to know the language. It can be very useful for an Anachronist whose specialty time stream has a language that is not well understood.
This sort of analysis has more advanced forms, too, and they are quite similar to how your contemporary scientists do evolutionary genetics. These scientists can take two different species and compare their DNA to determine their probable common ancestor. That is, the extinct species from which they both evolved.
Languages are not so different from DNA. DNA tells cells how to make components for their life machinery. Language contains rules and components to give rise to communication machinery. And languages also mutate.
So if we have two languages with similarities, we can analyze and compare their differences to figure out a rough timeline for their divergence. This is timeline only in terms of probabilities, but it is better than nothing. Though we often find these language ancestry trees are inaccurate when we finally decipher the words, many working conclusions based on this analysis remain valid.
While it's a crude tool, it's very useful. I will try and expand more on this complicated topic in a future Seminar.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Back in Business
Dear Readers,
Today marks my triumphant return to your time stream. I've spent quite some time hogging the Departmental bandwidth with manuscripts that I hope to publish time-normal to you, and now I am back to writing here.
For the next two weeks, I may not return to my daily schedule as I still have some communications to make, and there is a backlog of transmissions work that my graduate students wish to send out. Eventually, you will see my posts ramp up as we work through that delay.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
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Today marks my triumphant return to your time stream. I've spent quite some time hogging the Departmental bandwidth with manuscripts that I hope to publish time-normal to you, and now I am back to writing here.
For the next two weeks, I may not return to my daily schedule as I still have some communications to make, and there is a backlog of transmissions work that my graduate students wish to send out. Eventually, you will see my posts ramp up as we work through that delay.
Always,
Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople
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