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The Hanging Problem

Where are we going to hang? That's the essence of the hanging problem. And it's different for every person, and, because of this, for every group of people it is defined by its constituent members and milieu within a macrosystem. In this post I will be talking about collective hanging, but reverse engineering to individual theory isn't hard.

To formulate the hanging problem in any given environment at any given time, we can represent the constraints as a series of monadic formulae, the possible locations as variables, and the satisfactions of those formulae as sets of those variables.

This is less imposing than it appears. Take the following example, chosen to illustrate the timelessness of the hanging problem.

Julian W. W. Coddleswarth: I say!
Jean-Pierre-Claude Frogelé: Indeed! Where shall we ang to-day, ma eenozently Eenglish frond?
JC: Well, of course, one must consider the certainly unsportsmanly modern pricing of suitable tobacco due to the entire globe not being presently subjugated by Her Majesty's Empire.
JF: Ah, ah, but ov caurse. On zee ozzer'and, tobacco eez ardly not a nezzezzitee, wouldn't you zay?
JC: Hardly incorrect, dear chap! And let us not forget that our mutual acquaintance Ozzel will be dropping in this tea time's antecedent hour!
JF: Ozz-elle? Oh dear, we moost caunzeedar a chezzbard.
JC: He will most unequivocally not allow our souls to go unchallenged on the board this day.

All that text, and all it boils down to is this:

• They want to hang at a place that sells tobacco.
• They would prefer to hang at a place that sells tobacco cheap.
• They need to hang somewhere they could play chess when Ozzel shows up.

Then, all they need to do is compile a list of the places at which they are able to hang, and add members to the sets, subsequently choosing at will from among the list of locations that satisfy all conditions.

Of course that's hardly a problem. Frequently, there will be no item that satisfies every condition, and this is when the tough, touchy, friendship-annihilating, morality-wrenching questions start flying like flying fish that can and do actually fly. Does the high price of tobacco warrant that our two fellows reconsider their consideration of that clause? Will Ozzel definitely show up? And why are they bending to his will anyway? Have Ozzel bring his own chess set!

(It's because he's just so cool. I heard he joined the Royal Society at age fifteen... and wears sunglasses to meetings. Sunglasses! I wish I was as cool as Ozzel.)

And so, why am I so interested in this? Consider this modern dilemma. (For the purposes of example, we can use the old stalwart standby, the Venn.)

A, B, and C are, respectively, the set of places that are open late, that have wi-fi, and have soft drinks in free-refill form. My comrades and I have still not managed to track down what place, if any, goes in the center that I have marked with the off-putting green question mark. For instance, the 'H' is the Herman B Wells Library in Bloomington, which is in A because at least part of it never closes and B because it has wi-fi but not C, because it's no restaurant, it's a library, silly. The 'P' is Panera, which is in fact not a library, but closes at 9 pm or earlier daily and so though in C it is not in A. Both, though, are and always will be members of D because, well, I'll get to that in a minute.

For the most part, we don't need wi-fi, so unless someone needs to study or we need to work on an internet-integral investment, we can count the intersection of A and C as universally available. With one exception...

See the big red 'S'? That's Steak 'n Shake. Arby's (the 'A'), Donato's, Pizza King, and many other places are open until 11 or 12 or even 1, but only 'S' stays open for 24 hours a day, every day (it would be helpful to have in this analysis included a distinction between "late" and "hella late" but I didn't). In fact, Steak 'n Shake is so exclusive in their owlhood that they've acquired a reputation for it. Before you know it, you can't hang out at Steak 'n Shake. It's just... formulaic. Or, well, I guess. I'm not the one that has the allergy to blasé (though the reaction I have to unoriginality approximates it in this case, I suppose).

So, we can add D, which is the set of all places to go that are not Steak 'n Shake. I should probably have considered this before I drew the diagram because, since 'S' is already placed and it can't go in more than one spot, all that extra space out there is assured to be eternally empty. Indeed, why don't we just go ahead and use this replacement chart. It's marginally less correct, significantly more informative, and on the whole just darn sad.


What a... ... problem.

Time Flies Like an Arrow, Fruit Flies GET NO SYMPATHY FROM THIS HIGHER LIFEFORM

Fruit flies are trying to molest my bananas. I have yelled at them repeatedly, but they do not understand that since I am a mammal, I deserve the banana more than they do, and that I am millions of times more important than any of them, and just plain better, and so on, but they don't get it. I'm going to have to eat all of my bananas tonight and it's just because of these sickly insects. I tell you, what's the point of inheriting the earth after the death of the dinosaurs if arthropod revivalists keep trying to reestablish the glory days of lesser invertebrates? Take a look at this:

Without delving into the issue of extra-human spirits, can we say unequivocally that this image alone is enough to strike terror into any chordate's soul? What if this creature, the Jaekelopterus rhenaniae, comes looking for me because I beat up on its kid brothers? Or, even worse:

ARTHROPLEURA!!!

Lucky for us, our species' global manifest destiny isn't really in peril because of these guys. Among the reasons I'm not extremely concerned is that neither of them has existed since at least the Devonian period, i.e. millions of years before even dinosaurs showed up. (The picture of the "ARTHROPLEURA!!!" above is from the BBC special "Walking with Monsters". Also it is greatly exaggerated because, hey, television is demanding.) And even though arthropods and such can evolve much faster than, oh, all vertebrates thanks to immensely greater reproductive rates, modern atmospheric oxygen content and other factors pretty much set a physical limit for the largest possible arthropods to be around the size of what they are now:

So the next time that you think twice about swatting that pesky Drosophila, don't. It had its time. We've totally got another few million years coming to us and I'm going to use the next few hours of said inheritance to eat my rightful spoils before they are, well, spoilt.

END ECTOTHERMIC WELFARE
VIVA LA VERTEBRAE
I ♥ MY K-SELECTED POPULATION
etc.

Eno's Drowned Eden Words (one).

Llama

Die!
Rosy ace decays.
Ore-Ida mall.


Ms. Agrot is a He?!

Halo, berets, bolt lobster.
Ebola—he has it.
Orgasm!

addspacedone

anyquillisthere

imachocolatestandinfortheiridescent

manifesthersashairyouridearwandafallsapart

templeadabsurdumothersoutherethinkittenfoldsherman

An Hour, Its Might, the Power of Light!

Well, everyone, I can hardly believe it but it's true. It's over. It's finally over.

Hard to believe that just one month ago it was all worsening and the metrics that alerted us to the crisis in the first place were just climbing and climbing without respite. We looked at our fellow earthlings, unsure of what to do, where to go with our species and the mountains of civilization that no individual had constructed yet which certainly existed, spewing out carbon dioxide as a volcano spews lava. Would we all die a tragic, self-imposed heat death as the planet grew warmer and warmer until the trees melted and the ocean burned and all the lovable things in the world unjustly paid the price for corporate greed?

Thank God it didn't come to that. Today we celebrated in the streets, weeping and shouting, that global warming was over. This must be what winning a war feels like. This feels damn good.

The victory, I dare say, could not have been possible were it not for the relentless efforts of the good people at Earth Hour, the crusading organizers that had the courage and fortitude to bring an end to the climate catastrophe.

As the lights turned off slowly, I felt calmness pervading me. Every flick of a switch bade my heart to turn to liquid joy so much more. Our parents caused this, but it took this generation to fix it, and to that I say: it feels good to fix things.

Now documentaries can return to pertaining to important things people don't know anything about and environmentalism can return to being a wack discipline most of us only care about when approached by that one friend whose thing is that she recycles everything. Green can stop being a trendy color and corporations can relish in finding new ways to sell their products to consumers. Americans can buy whatever cars they want without a hybrid-pushing minority cramming Priuses down their throats. Perhaps best of all, today's youth, the heroes of the climate war, can look up at the pollution-free sky and think to themselves, "you know, I can't wait to tell my children about the spectre that was global warming and the glorious victory that was achieved with Earth Hour 2009."

Nations came together, no! People came together, and we crushed carbon in its tracks. Were I only able to dry my eyes for any considerable length of time and see the new world before us! I don't think I can fully comprehend the miracle yet. Maybe I'm still living in a world before we all turned off our lights for half an hour. Maybe I'll be struck with the majesty fully here in a day or so. God I hope so.

And so, in closing, America, world... Earth... congratulations are to be had everywhere. Good job everyone. It's... it's all over now. I'm going to go let my car idle for the next week. Who's with me?

Hannah's Formula..

My state with my girlfriend
forthwith with ball point penned
is simple to describe.

If she's a labyrinth,
I'm lost and convicted.
If she is a novel,
my book club has picked it.
If she is the war,
my mind is solely spite.
If she's Mammoth Cave,
I'm a troglodyte.

Were I ten units sharper,
were I a mathematician,
were I a psychosomething,
were I a word physician,
I'd isolate the pattern
that makes me from my ma'am.
I'd input who she is
and output what I am.

My girlfriend is just her;
the function acts on me
and I am f of (she).

There's Life Everywhere; In Pictures, In Photos; In Galaxies, In Photons

Panels: "Okay. You're God. So what."

TV Pitch: "Resurrection Catacombs"

February 12, 2009

Dear studio execs and other producer bigwigs:

Hello! No don't stop reading! You're probably thinking to yourself, "here's just another kid from Indiana with a lame idea for a television show so let's just ignore him." I don't blame you! You probably receive hundreds of ideas a day for new thises or new thats and it must be trying to spend money on the salaries of people that root through them all for you, especially in these desperate financial times we find ourselves in. HOWEVER, if you simply give my pitch (located below this paragraph) a read, I sincerely doubt you will be disappointed with the way you spent your time [vicariously through an underling, of course].

Okay well I haven't settled on a name for it yet but I'm tossing around something like "Resurrection Catacombs" or "Cryojinks". If I haven't sold you quite yet, please read on.

The setting is late twenty-first century America. An offshoot of the Illuminati have decided that the world situation is dire enough to begin the process of bringing famous and talented individuals out of cryosleep. See, it turns out that ever since the invention of suspended animation in 1728 (just one year too late for Newton), this organization has been preserving the world's greatest minds for such a time as, I guess, late twenty-first century America.

At the start of the show only two people have been brought back to life—Thomas Edison and Lord Byron, however over the course of the episodes, more and more historical figures enter the plot and contribute to the overarching goal of defeating the unnamed antagonist(s) that are causing whatever is going down to go down (I have not determined what this is yet but with a crack team of computer animators I sincerely believe we could make some awesome shenanigans. Who loves vocanoes!).

The main characters, though, are those currently in the organization that are doing the reanimating; after all, it's up to them to decide under what circumstances to use the power they have been given. This could be comprised of any typical team of archetypes (the leader, the renegade, the woman (the woman renegade?! Emmy anyone?), the black dude, the scrawny computer whiz, etc.) but I've got my own ideas. We can talk this over at one of many meetings which I would be glad to bring donuts to.

Here's a list of questions you may have.

Who are you anyway?
I am a distinguished author of many a blog post and winner of the Ball Elementary School fourth grade spelling bee (no joke) but seriously I'm a college student with maybe one too many SPECTACULAR ideas.

Why are you sharing this amazing idea with us for free?
After a tedious selection process I have decided that your company is the only one that can accurately bring my vivid, revolutionary vision of a historical figure/cryogenics/worldwide conspiracy to life the way it deserves. The idea deserves your company's flair and reputation.

So what are some possible ideas for episodes?
I'm glad you asked! Here are a few I've thought up:

• The team revives Nikolai Tesla, much to the chagrin of Thomas Edison, who views him as a threat and much tension commences. This episode would have to culminate in an electricity battle, only to be stopped by a recently-awoken J.P. Morgan who then delivers a heartwrenching monologue about joining forces to fight the evil that lurks on the horizon.
• The organization is almost discovered by the United States government (embodied in the investigator tasked with cracking the case). They relocate to a new headquarters but this episode sets up a long feud between the vigilantes and the corrupt government.
• Goethe is revived. Everyone is excited to share ideas and talk with him, but he pulls away and we are all confused about the source of his antisocialism. At the same time, weird occurences start happening around the compound and J. Robert Oppenheimer and another team member are murdered. No one can explain why until the leader deduces that who they thought was Goethe is actually Adolf Hitler! Some kind of battle probably ends this one as well and they stop Hitler before he can kill any more Jews.
• This is more of a stand-alone twist, but perhaps we have someone still alive play him or herself? Perhaps, say, Patrick Stewart plays Patrick Stewart brough back in eighty years.
  

Great! What are some other possible sources of conflict?

• The inevitable love that blossoms between members of the team and the historical figures. Perhaps one of the women falls in love with someone brought back and one of the modern men becomes jealous?
• All those resurrected now must live without knowing anyone in the world. Do they have any stake in saving a planet that they don't even recognize?
• Obviously we are not aware of the evil that lurks below the surface's identity. This will be a big reveal when we finally get around to addressing who, in fact, the protagonists are battling. This might not happen until the third season or so.
• The audience has no knowledge of the list of people that have been preserved. When one is brought back, it is therefore always a chance for a twist or fun plot element. "Is Einstein frozen?" is the buzz question we want people asking around water coolers.
  
• The modern team must try to understand the reasoning behind the selection process. Why did their forefathers decide to freeze Byron and not Keats? Why Patton but not Eisenhower? One member of the team has more problems accepting the wisdom of the past than the rest of them and there could be an episode devoted to this.
• There are ten unmarked chambers at the back of the resurrection catacombs. We don't know who they are and neither do the characters; under what circumstances will they be opened?! Stay tuned!

Do you have any casting preferences?
I would like to meet LeVar Burton at some point

In short, I'm confident that under the auspecies of a well-paid auteur and my creative mind (I swear, these things just come to me) we can bring this vision to life in a way that no one yet can imagine. If you have any questions regarding the mechanics or implementation of what you see on this page, feel free to contact me. Thanks for taking the time to read this (I'm confident you're satisfied and excited about the future of this program) and I will undoubtedly be hearing from you through your people soon. I don't have people yet (my career is still nascent) but hopefully this enterprise will allow me to acquire some.

Your partner in this plainly successful endeavour,

Eli T. Drumm
Artist

Visting Presence.

A and B are in a Episcopalian chapel.

A: So why do you come to church anyway. I never thought of you as a religious person.
B: Well obviously not. I guess I like the atmosphere.
A: What, all this quiet and artwork? I mean I guess you could study here.
B: Yeah but I don't study. I kind of, well, exist. When there's not a service going on Lamar opens up the sanctuary for anyone that wants to come in and not a lot of people do, and even if there are a few others they're all pretty observant of the quiet. I can study anywhere but this environment is precious, it really is.
A: Okay but you're a self-avowed atheist.
B: And you're a nihilist.
A: What's that got to do with you.
B: Well nothing, but I'm curious as to why you care.
A: I'm not that much of a nihilist.
B: (soft) All right fine.
A: That's another discussion. What I'm curious about is why you don't feel nervous or get all angry around all this iconography and biblical, you know, stuff.
B: Why, because these are the people that inquisited and crusaded and persecute everyone?
A: Essentially.
B: Why do you see it as a problem?
A: Generally people don't like being around things they don't like.
B: Okay fair. But I've got nothing against this church. I don't not like this church.
A: But all these images stand for something you can't.
B: Okay so I don't believe in God. That doesn't necessarily precipitate a hatred of Christia-
A: HA. Like you've never voiced anti-Christian sentiments before. We all know what you think of religious people and their institutions, B, don't try—
B: Yeah yeah all right you're correct there. What you don't get, though, is that I'm able to separate my political and ethical views from what I enjoy, or the atmospheres I like to exist in, or the media I consume. If there was an artist that, oh, sang his heart out for Jesus, but the music was incredible, I'd have no problems listening to it.
A: I'll believe that when I see it. Of course considering the state of Christian music it's not something we have to worry about testing any time soon, so you're off the hook there.
B: Ha. All right.
A: You know what I think?
B: What do you think.
A: I think that you're a hater of convenience. You have morals and principles and if something that runs up against them is dopey and stupid and discordant and downright wrong you have no problem, you know, whisking it away and debunking or denouncing it, usually quite vocally, but if what you're exposed to is still wrong according to your own laws or whatever but has plenty of redeeming qualities, like this here sanctuary, you're hesitant to be against it.
B: I think if that was the case I'd be a bit more ansty around this environment. Honestly, I swear I'm completely at peace in this place.
A: Hm. I guess I'm skeptical that you can completely separate this beautiful imagery and magnificence and glory and all from the religious impact it conveys.
B: Perhaps not completely. But I'd like to think I'm good at it. I think of myself walking and meditating in this grand room we're in like, like maybe a visitor from the future would examine the present, or that we're in the future and this is a museum of what was once called religion.
A: Eh... I get what you're talking about. I don't like it though.
B: You wouldn't.
A: No I wouldn't. You're more cultural than me anyway, maybe that's it.
B: I'm just better than you.
A: Maybe that too.

Panels: "Must you be so egotistical in your thought experiments?"

Notebook Options: Managing Oneself.

Notebook Options: 200 Characters.

Data and Counterparts.

Today I signed up for Twitter and Blip.fm, two Web 2.0 sites you might have heard of.

Really I'm not constructed for character limits and rounded edges and whatever, but it looks fun and maybe I could find something out about myself.

You know what. I miss whatever came first on the internet more than I'm excited for what's coming next. The leap from no internet to email and websites was much more exciting than the leap to superfast connections and colorful graphics and instant content is and will be.

Now I check my email to see if I have a Facebook message which has supplanted email as some fucked up de facto online communication medium. Information gets repeated to the point of ludicrous redundancy and really I don't mind for the sake of the work but for the information everywhere it gets in my teeth and on my clothes and it frustrates me.

I'm acting and talking as if the internet has something to teach me about my life and all life. Does it? I mean, it very well could. I don't know.

I really really believe there's a message in all of this and I'm trying to figure out what it is.

Living with Cold..

What cold.

In desperate climate my ligaments freeze,
in forlorn displeasure I fall to my knees,
in terrible height the gale sails through the tress,
it collects autumn's entrails, it decimates leaves,
glossing my eyeballs, at last each one sees
a girl materializing amidst the breeze.

Though! I am certainly not tired of this weather. I figure it's going to be hot quite a bit in the summer especially if I'm in locations without air conditioning...

but enough times during the day the hypercold temperatures hovering outside exit my consciousness to make room for more important business, whatever that is, until I'm ready to leave the building and I see my coat and scarf and hat and am reminded why I have them. Though it's a ritual to put all of it on, it's not something I ever mind doing.

Today should be a good day. The winter should help me forget about the clear skies.

Said the man to the mouse, "Could you scroll slower than 1000 lines per second, please?"

There's no music I want to listen to. This is unfortunate for my last.fm play counts which I must keep up with, but there's nothing I can do about it directly. I flip through collections of Calvin & Hobbes or The Far Side and despite the fact that there are thousands of panels and strips and I can't remember the majority through brainstorming, I know every comic and am not surprised whatever comes on the next page; in the same way, though I have over a thousand albums listed in my library I can't remember many and intensely know all of them, the words that follow. It seems I'm always on the Ls when I'm looking at the Ls, there's no word I haven't seen before, there are albums I haven't listened to in years, EPs I've only downloaded and haven't gotten around to the actual listening of. Obscure live sets. Now they all start with the letter H, because I'm there. I start something, double-clicking. I can't get more than twenty seconds in before I feel distaste and either press stop or, more likely, double-click on another album because the mouse has less distance to cover, but then it's the same problem over again. It repeats itself, I've heard all these beginnings before, I'm deeply familiar with the first two seconds of every album in the library. Isn't it too predictable and modern to say that digitizing music cheapens the experience, or that when there's not a jewel case and album art physically being held the music loses something. Maybe that's too, oh, I don't know. I don't think I believe that.

More likely it seems to me that because I have to do nothing in terms of conscious choice I end up with too many options and dislike all of them for being so cheap. I remember back when I was twelve waiting around to record songs off of the radio onto cassettes because downloading Napster was illegal and unethical. Once I even bought an entire soundtrack just to get ahold of one particular track. I hadn't and haven't seen the movie it's from.

In fact, it's always seemed to me more enjoyable to hear a favourite song on the radio rather than playing it yourself from whatever method you wish. I sure don't know the rationale behind that one, but I have a few guesses.

Maybe I need to back off. What if I started listening to CDs through the computer? CDs I own, and instead of just scrolling and clicking I actually insert the physical disc and take it out when I'm finished. D'y'think some kind of "there's only one thing you can listen to at any one time" paradigm would be reinforced, and I'd be all musical again?

But there I go, acting as if there's a step I need to be artistic again. I haven't stopped being artistic, surely. Perhaps I'm more aware of my lack of intense listenings, active, seizuresque. That doesn't happen as much anymore...

Maybe I should move on to something else. Should I pick up a martial art? Should I memorize poetry? Should I practice writing without anaphora? Should I rehearse meta? I need my keyboard fixed.

This semester will be interesting regardless. Surely scrolling through the blurred nameless wastes of album titles is interesting, in a way, ironically maybe?

I have secret weapons.