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Burning Libraries

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A Saucy Roman History Book

We have Commodus killing animals (classical serial killer behaviour), and then getting himself strangled by a wrestler in a bath. We have Caracalla who allegedly enjoyed incest with his mother and certainly had his brother killed at a meeting arranged by this quondam lover: worst of all he wore a hood and a blonde wig and he gave Maximus several jobs. Macrinus got Caracalla’s mother to starve herself to death and then got himself killed in a temple. Then, best of all, what fun Suetonius would have had, there was Elagabalus ,,,, more Eurovision performer than Roman emperor. He divorced five women in his short life, married two men, worshipped a meteorite and used to hold competitions to see who could pimp themselves for the most money in the Imperial palace. He naturally took part.

“Winter is Coming”

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Notes from A Song of Fire and Ice and SCIENCE: A panel on George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series. Saturday, July 5, 2014, at Convergence 2014.

One of the distinctive features of this world is that the seasons last for multiple years, and the length of each season is unpredicable. How can this happen? Not by axial tilt, as on our Earth. Nicole Gugliucci said it could be achieved by planetary dynamics and referred us to “Winter is coming”. This paper (and I strongly recommend a look at the full paper as well as the abstract) suggests that the planet is orbiting a double star, in which case the orbit could be chaotic, leading to unpredictable seasons. Apparently (I have not finished reading the series) GRRM never explicity wrote that there was only one sun. In any case, one of the stars could be a roughly solar mass black hole, and hence invisible. Contrary to popular culture, black holes do not suck up everything around them. If you are in an orbit that stays well outside the event horizon you will never fall in. I asked about the long term stability of such a system. You want to be sure your planet stays in the “Goldilocks zone” — not too hot and not too cold. From “Winter is coming”:

To study the long-term stability of the CBP, we embarked on a long voyage of integration.
The orbit was stable after integrating for one million days. On Day 1,000,001 the Andals invaded. Funding cuts to all research projects promptly followed. We were unable to continue our work. Those of us who expressed strong opinions against the cuts were sent to the Wall.

You have to use days as your unit of time here because the years would vary in length. In winter they would be longer. I think these would also have to be sidereal days, certainly if both stars of the binary system are visible suns.

Clicking Their Way to Outrage

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On Social Media, Some Are Susceptible to Internet Outrage

…anger is the emotion that spreads the most easily over social media. Joy came in a distant second. The main difference, said Ryan Martin, a psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, who studies anger, is that although we tend to share the happiness only of people we are close to, we are willing to join in the rage of strangers. As the study suggests, outrage is lavishly rewarded on social media, whether through supportive comments, retweets or Facebook likes. People prone to Internet outrage are looking for validation, Professor Martin said. “They want to hear that others share it,” he said, “because they feel they’re vindicated and a little less lonely and isolated in their belief.”

Ultimately, Internet outrage is the milquetoast cousin to direct action, a way to protest by tapping and clicking rather than boycotting and marching. It is a noble endeavor to become incensed about a cause and risk arrest or toil without acclamation for one’s deeply held beliefs. Less honorable is joining a digital pile-on as a means of propping up one’s ego, even if it comes in the form of entertaining zings.

Avoiding “Sagan Syndrome.”

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Nathan Taylor, Why Astronomers and Journalists should pay heed to Biologists about ET.

Years ago I wrote something that mentioned similar issues: Extraterrestrial Intelligence: A skeptical view. This was long before the Kepler space probe. However, Taylor seems to be saying the fundamentals of the issue have not changed.

As Taylor points out, there is an ad hominem issue here. Frank Tipler, who was a forceful advocate of the no-ETs view in the early and mid 1980s, subsequently became a “crackpot” (Taylor’s word, but I agree completely). However, this does not invalidate Tipler’s earlier work.

Taylor also points out that for practical (creating life) purposes, the universe is still very young. Star formation will continue for a long time, a necessary condition for life. ETs may yet turn up, but you will need to be very patient.