Showing posts with label dialogues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dialogues. Show all posts

Thursday, March 05, 2020

A dialogue! (old but good)

I ask you to point your eyes up towards the clear sky and to tell me what you see. “An expanse of blue,” you say. I nod and say, “Ah, so simple. Blue is just one thing – your visual experience is so simple. Is that surprising?” 

This doesn’t sound right to you. You shake your head. “No, it’s not simple. There’s blue everywhere. Every location is blue; every part of the space is blue. It’s clearly not simple – it’s a vast structure of blue spots. I’m not even sure how to describe it to you.”

“Well,” I say, “you’re most likely confabulating this description. Through your life experience with using vision, you know that the sky is extended spatially, and that if you move your eyes around you’ll still see blue, and you know from moment-to-moment that the last thing you saw was what you’re seeing right now – simple blue – so you are illuded into claiming you see an expanse of blue. But you actually see no such thing.”

“How can you claim this?” you ask. “Why should you doubt what I tell you?”

I shake my head sadly. “Subjective reports are known for their fallibility. People often claim to have seen things that they could not have seen; they claim their experiences have qualities that they cannot have. But I’ll suspend my disbelief for a bit. Can you convince me?”

You seem a little annoyed, but you nod. “Perhaps.”

“Okay. How many parts are there to this blue expanse?” I ask. You don’t know. We go through some basic tests and it seems that you can’t really tell me about more than a handful of spots at once – yet you persist in claiming that the actual number of blue ‘spots’ is vast.

“Are they all there at once?” You seem to think that they are. “Could it be that the parts are there only when you look for them?”

“No,” you say, “it feels like a big, continuous expanse of blue. It’s not a little searchlight.”

I proceed. “But I’m asking you to convince me of that, not just to tell me again and again. As far as I can tell, you can only report the color of a few spots at a time – a big ‘sky-sized’ spot, or a few little ‘point-sized’ spots. But your momentary capacity seems to be extremely small – where is this huge expanse? And how does it make any sense that you should experience such enormous complexity, but be able to interact with only a vanishingly small portion of it?”

You seem unsettled: “Why,” you ask, “would I claim to see an expanse of spots when I only see a few at a time? What do I gain by confabulation?”

“But it’s a meaningful confabulation – you are unaware of the limits or boundaries between your momentary visual experience, your memories of recent experiences, and your expectations of what future experiences will be like. The reports you generate are more a confusion of these different processes, rather than a confabulation.” I concede a word, but little else.

“Well then,” you say slowly, “what does this confusion feel like? Might it feel like an expanse of blue? Or do you assume that only the perceptual process constitutes experience?”

I miss your point. “But we’re exactly talking about perceptual experience – of seeing blue – don’t try to shift the goal posts.”

“No, we aren’t talking strictly about perceptual experience, though I do think my experience is fairly categorized as perceptual rather than memorial or expectative. You’re the one who introduced other ‘processes’ into the conversation.”

“Well, this can’t work,” I say. “I can concede the process thing, but this doesn’t address the reportability issue at all, and it’s highly implausible, even worse than if you put everything in ‘perception’. Are you claiming that you experience all your memories or all your expectations, at once?”

“No no,” you dismiss the idea with a wave of your hand. “I was just asking – what do you think such confusion should feel like?”

“Like what you’re feeling now,” I say.

You roll your eyes. “Come on. Clearly the confusion you’re suggesting should feel very different from what I am feeling – or no, from what I claim to be feeling. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this debate.”

“Well, I can’t say exactly. You are experiencing what you have access to, and you can report what you have access to; so your experience must be of a narrow set of blue spots. And you claim otherwise because whenever you check other spots, you immediately begin to experience them – so you mistakenly believe that they were there all along. Your experience isn’t what you think it is – and it isn’t what you claim.”

You seem perplexed. “Does that mean that unless I am queried about my experience, I am not under this illusion? I only become mistaken when asked to describe what I’m experiencing?”

“Maybe?”

You decide to change tack. “Okay. Can you tell me what substantive difference there is between this illusory or mistaken experience and an actual experience of a blue expanse?”

“Well, it would be a huge difference – the illusory experience is actually very limited and consists of very few parts, including the few blue spots and a particular set of expectations and memories that lead you to claim that you see an expanse of blue. The actual experience of a blue expanse would be just that – many many more spots, and no necessary memory or expectation aspects, though you’d probably also have those in addition.”

“I can’t help but think,” you say carefully, “that you’re doing something slippery here. You want to know why I claim to see a blue expanse, and your explanation has to do with these non-perceptual processes and how they seamlessly support my very limited perceptual process. And you reject my explanation for my claim – that I really am experiencing a blue expanse – because I can’t report the whole expanse to you. But can I report all my memories and expectations to you? Do you know how to collect such data?”

“I think that the fact you’re able to so quickly report on what you see at randomly cued locations suggests that those processes must be at work.”

“Surely they are, and I can tell you that I do indeed have experiences of memory and expectation. But I’m wondering why you think you must reject my explanation but are satisfied with your own.”

“Certainly I’m not satisfied – there is much to learn. We really understand perception etc rather poorly at this stage.”

You shake your head.

Friday, July 19, 2013

cat vision

Sharpness is, really, an illusion. It doesn't represent anything about the world, it's just an indication that the limits of resolution of the visual system have been met. In that sense, it's relative. I've thought about sharpness a lot, starting in graduate school, when I first wondered whether, having learned the quantitative difference in visual spatial resolution between cat and human, a cat could see stars. My first thought was no - stars are so small, if blurred they can't be seen; then I recognized that human acuity is nothing special (a sort of Copernican principle for vision), and that sure, cats should be able to see stars just as humans can. But they would look different, wouldn't they? Blurrier? No. To see blur implies you have the acuity to see what is missing. So then, they would look larger? No, for the same reason - if a star appears as a disk, that implies its edges are seen separately, which implies acuity to separate them. So to a cat, whose acuity is almost an order of magnitude worse than a human, stars must also appear as points. How to make sense of this?

This gets at a more general sort of paradox about visual resolution. Lower acuity isn't the same as blur, not at all. Acuity is an ability or a capacity; blur is a state or an affordance. A certain acuity enables you to see a certain amount of blur - that is the relationship. But we easily confuse the two by trying to represent the effects of acuity as blur. This is a common demonstration: illustrate the spatial resolution of the visual field as round window with a focused center and increasing blur towards its boundaries. This kind of demonstration is useful in that it shows what is lost in peripheral vision (in terms only of 1st-order resolution) relative to central vision. But it is harmful in that it conflates blur with this relative difference in visibility. Because really, no matter what the resolution is, there is finer content that cannot be seen.  We can think of this kind of demonstration, of comparing resolution at different visual field locations in terms of blur, an 'isometric' demonstration, since space is kept constant or symmetric over the whole field, though apparent sharpness falsely appears to change. This demonstration doesn't violate our intuitions about space - space seems, and is, symmetric to translations across the visual field - though it does fool us regarding blur.

Another way of demonstrating the same variation in resolution across the visual field is to reverse this relationship; that is, with an isoambylic representation of the field. This representation would have equal sharpness everywhere, but would vary metrically across the field, giving something like a fish-eye lens view of the scene. For some reason, even though the isoambylic representation is just as 'fair' as the isometric, its distortions are more disturbing. Maybe it's because the spatial asymmetry is unfamiliar, whereas blur asymmetries are more familiar.

So now we go back to cat vision. Imagine that you and a talking, scientifically interested cat, are discussing the topic at hand, and wondering how to explain to one another the differences in your spatial acuity. I think it's time for a dialogue!

Tacitus: So, here we are.
Otho: True.
Tacitus: We're supposed to demonstrate to one another the differences in our visual fields, in terms of spatial acuity. How do you think we might do that?
Otho: Well, for starters, let's use pictures.
Tacitus: That's kind of a given.
Otho: Good. Here are two copies of a scene. The one on the left represents your acuity: you see that in the center, the image is sharper, and it gets blurrier as you go out towards the edges.
Tacitus: I do see that. Nice and sharp in the center, blurrier toward the edges.
Otho: If you stand right here, and look at the center of the picture, you shouldn't be able to tell that there's any blur, because the blur is matched to your acuity. What do you see?
Tacitus: It's just as you say. Interesting!
Otho: Good. Now, this picture, on the right, represents my acuity. It's similar in that in its center, it's sharper, getting blurrier towards the edges.
Tacitus: I see that, but...
Otho: But what?
Tacitus: But it looks just like my picture. I can't see a difference. Maybe.. it's not quite as strong a trend, from the center outward, but I can barely tell.
Otho: Well, the difference is obvious to me. It's because my acuity is so much better than yours, all around.
Tacitus: Well, then this isn't fair. Why can you see so clearly the difference between our visual fields, while I can't see it at all? I feel left out.
Otho: Hm.
Tacitus: Here, let's try this. Instead of using blur to represent acuity, let's change the size of the images. We'll transform the images so that the acuity limit, which is just a measure of distance within the visual field, will be a fixed distance.
Otho: So that means that when acuity is high, the image will be relatively magnified, since you're taking a small distance in the visual field and stretching it to, let's say, one centimeter. And when acuity is low, the image will be compressed, since you're taking a big distance in the field and squeezing it into that same centimeter.
Tacitus: Exactly!
Otho: The images will look funny, though.
Tacitus: Well, the funny-ness will be our explanatory tool. We should both be able to notice changes in size, right? I can see a spot a centimeter across from this distance, and so can you.
Otho: It does seem fair.
Tacitus: Okay, here we go.
Otho: Wow! My visual field is so big! And look at the distortion, it's like a fish-eye lens! Why is your field so small?
Tacitus: Didn't you just explain it to me?
Otho: I know, I was just surprised.
Tacitus: And mine also looks like a fish-eye lens, just a bit less extreme. Yours is interesting, I can see so many details there that I can't see in mine. I didn't realize you could see such small things!
Otho: I'm sure you did, you just haven't realized it in a visual sense.
Tacitus: Well here it is.
Otho: Can I go back to bed now? It's 3am.
Tacitus: Go ahead and try. We'll see how it goes.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

ALL NEW DIALOGUE, FIRST IN FIVE YEARS

Ezek: You came so close. I can appreciate that.

Imelda: You know, I did. I really did.

Ezek: And you really didn't have a plan?

Imelda: I didn't. I just sat down, wrote out a title - all in caps, -emphasizing my commitment - and then started to improvise.

Ezek: I sense a bit of weaseling there.

Imelda: Yes, started to. You know, you always hear that starting is the hardest part.

Ezek: Yep.

Imelda: So, you think that, if you just start, then the job is half done. You've gotten through the block, broken the ice, established a front, and then -

Ezek: I know.

Imelda: You realize that you've only started to start.

Ezek: And that you haven't actually started. You've been through this before, haven't you?

Imelda: Oh, so many times. In fact, most times.

Ezek: It's a kind of purgatory, isn't it? You're not in the empty expanse, staring at the blank sheet, wondering how to fill it, or waiting for it to be filled, but you aren't filling it, either.

Imelda: It's an illusion. You're filling something, but not the sheet before you. It's like the sheet was there, but you put another, false, sheet on top of it, and set to filling it instead.

Ezek: But it's so close.

Imelda: So close.

Ezek: Well, if I had to choose from amongst the different ways of missing a target, the trick start is a good one. At least you have something to show when you're done.

Imelda: But it's just navel-gazing. It's you sitting there, talking with yourself, about a failure, and only very transparently as if it's a sort of new beginning, some sort of accomplishment.

Ezek: In your line of work, navel-gazing is worth something, isn't it?

Imelda: Not if you show it off. These things are supposed to broil for a while.

Ezek: Huh.

Imelda: Come to think of it...

Ezek: What is it?

Imelda: What was it that I was going to do, but did this instead?

Ezek: You were going to write a dialogue. First in five years!

Imelda: Isn't that what I'm doing?

Ezek: But it's about your immediate failure to do so, isn't it? Right away, from the very start, you declared it a failure and then went on to explore the phenomenon of failing in that specific fashion.

Imelda: So why does that make for an invalid dialogue? I can just decide, here and now, that it isn't a failure.

Ezek: That would make a sort of fiction out of everything that came before, wouldn't it?

Imelda: I think that for this sort of thing, all we need is a consensus. A consensus on success.

Ezek: That our dialogue isn't just an avoidant anti-dialogue?

Imelda: What do you say?

Ezek: It would justify our presence, to a degree...

Imelda: It complicates the subject, but it creates an interesting symmetry to the whole thing. Do you see?

Ezek: Ah. Ah! I do!

Imelda: Then you agree?

Ezek: We'll say that this was the plan all along.

Imelda: That was a close one!

Ezek: It really was.

Thursday, September 01, 2011

1k/mo

Got over 1000 page views for the month of august, basically because last week was HUGE for my classic comedic dialogues and self-indulgent essays. No no no, really, it was MS-WBT server. Observe:
Yeah, I don't know what's going on. Whatever it is that causes people to google "MS-WBT server", and wind up here for a few seconds, got a little worse last week - visits increased by something like 30%. Google is weird, the internet is weird, MS-WBT server is weird.

Going to Nashville tonight!

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

a short play

McQueen: still working on prelim.

Sorensen: should be done any hour now.

McQueen: still need a paragraph or two on 'transient and sustained mechanisms'.

Sorensen: need to cut down on the long bits.

O'Leary: figures. need figures.

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Introducing Elgar and Stern

Elgar: It's interesting that, still, no one is able to explain the nonlinearity of contrast detection for human observers.

Stern: Why is that so interesting?

Elgar: I mean, academically it's interesting. In an everyday sense, it's probably not as interesting as most things that-

Stern: I understand. So, why would you say it's so interesting?

Elgar: It's just something that people have been talking about for a long time. Very weak contrasts seem to be brought into visual awareness by an expansive nonlinearity.

Stern: What does that mean, exactly?

Elgar: Basically, it means that input is being raised to a power greater than one, as a part of the detection process.

Stern: Input being contrast.

Elgar: Right. Specifically, it seems as if contrast is raised to a power of around 2.5. The thing is, your brain is not an equation. Even though we can write an equation to perfectly describe your perception of different signal intensities, we really don't have a good idea of what, physically at least, that equation is describing. There are several candidates.

Stern: I can't wait for you to describe them to me.

Elgar: The simplest one is just to say that the transducer is simply built in such a way that it transforms input into output as a power function.

Stern: Like a neuron, maybe?

Elgar: Could be. Or maybe a networked population of neurons. Maybe for low signal intensities, a contrast-detection neuron just has an accelerating response to increasing input. Then, you still have to explain why that particular nonlinearity goes away for higher contrasts, but people love to suggest different sorts of gain control, so it's not really a problem.

Stern: Wait, it goes away? Are you talking about transducer saturation? Weber's law, that kind of stuff?

Elgar: Right. Once you've detected a signal, and intensity continues to increase, the apparent increase in response, as well as your perceived intensity, increases as a power less than one. So, for example, the stronger the signal is, the bigger the difference in intensity you're going to need to notice an increase. That's kind of like Weber's law.

Stern: I thought that was Weber's law.

Elgar: Strictly speaking, Weber's law is where you need a constant fraction of the current signal intensity in order to tell a difference. If I need to add 1 pound for you to notice a difference in a 10 pound load, and I also need to add 5 pounds for you to notice a difference in a 50 pound load, the fraction is constant, and that's Weber's law behavior.

Stern: Okay, I get it. So, an accelerating transducer is one explanation for the detection nonlinearity. What else is there?

Elgar: Well, it could be that all of your neurons transduce linearly near the detection threshold. Plus, it's certainly true that you have lots and lots of neurons. If both of these are the case, and if you're monitoring lots and lots of neurons waiting for a signal to pop out against the background noise level, then uncertainty theory suggests that as intensity increases your sensitivity to the signal will increase rapidly as you become more and more certain as to which neurons are the best ones to monitor.

Stern: So why does uncertainty theory predict an accerating increase in sensitivity? That's not exactly an intuitive idea.

Elgar: I know. It's a mathematical thing. 'Certainty' is kind of just an ad hoc way of describing an outcome. If you're making decisions based on the biggest responses you see over a set of neurons, you effectively have a variable noise source. When the signal is weak, the important noise is a combination of all those neurons that don't matter, and the ones that do. When the signal is strong, the only noise that matters is what's in the relevant neurons, because those will always have the largest responses. The transition between weak and strong signals, then, basically corresponds to a transition from high to low noise, which is equivalent to an increase in sensitivity. An increase in instantaneous sensitivity with increasing signal strength appears as an acceleration in overall sensitivity! For strong signals, the observer's behavior will just follow whatever the transduction function of the neuron is. In this case, maybe it saturates as a power less than one.

Stern: Man.

Elgar: There's one more explanation, one that I don't know much about.

Stern: So this will be a brief explanation.

Elgar: I hope so. The nonlinear transducer and uncertainty theories both abide by standard assumptions of signal detection theory. So, they assume that even below 'threshold', the neurons, or whatever, are actually responding to the signal; the response is just hopelessly buried in noise.

Stern: What if there is no noise? Why do you keep mentioning noise?

Elgar: All systems are noisy, and usually the noise has a number of different sources. In the visual system you have photon noise, metabolic variability, eye movements, thermal noise, and other things. All of these, we hope, combine to produce basically Gaussian noise. But there's no chance at all that there could be no noise, and in fact every model of signal detection, perceptual or otherwise, implicitly contains terms for performance-limiting noise.

Stern: I think I knew that already. I should have known that this wouldn't be a simple idea.

Elgar: Actually, noise isn't what I'm talking about. My point is that the first two theories assume, sort of, that the signal is always transduced, and that uncertainty or noise limit detection. The last option is that this isn't true; that there is a true, 'hard threshold', which has to be acheived before any transduction takes place.

Stern: I see. Kind of like overcoming friction to get something moving across a surface. Up to a point, you may push and get no result, but with enough force you'll get it moving.

Elgar: That's it! So, maybe the transducer is linear, but it has a real zero-point. Some intensities just fail to evoke a response, but at some point the neuron gets turned on and starts transducing. If it's a steep enough function, depending how the noise is implemented something like this might just appear from the outside to be a sudden, brief acceleration of response to an input.

Stern: Okay, I agree with you that maybe this is kind of interesting. But if I had to hear it more than once, I don't think I could take it.

Elgar: That's understandable. So, aren't you going to ask about how the ways in which noise can be implemented in a hard-threshold theory are especially interesting?

Stern: We'll save that for later. Can I just have my hamburger now?

Elgar: Alright. Did you want fries? I can't remember.

Stern: No fries, just a burger.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Introducing Frederick and Rollo

Frederick: I thought of something a few days ago, that I wanted to write down here.

Rollo: But you've forgotten it?

Frederick: That's right.

Rollo: Why didn't you write it down then, when you thought of it?

Frederick: I was probably falling asleep, or driving.

Rollo: You should have remembered.

Frederick: I know. Then this would be about something.

Rollo: What is this?

Frederick: It's true that it's not nothing. But I know that it's not interesting, and to most people something which isn't interesting may as well be nothing.

Rollo: You could take interest as a measure of the extent to which something exists to a person.

Frederick: That's kind of a truism, isn't it?

Rollo: I guess so.

Frederick: Hm..

Rollo: Yeah.

Frederick: Have you seen the Transformers movie?

Rollo: Right, I can't believe Megatron went down so easy.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Out of character

(Argo is sitting quietly, staring into space. Bellboy enters.)

Bellboy: Thinking about something, Argo?

Argo: I'm thinking about my screenplay.

Bellboy: You're writing a screenplay?

Argo: I'm thinking about a screenplay.

(Nina enters)

Bellboy: Did you know Argo was thinking about writing a screenplay?

Nina: I didn't know you were a screenwriter.

Argo: I'm thinking about a screenplay. I'm not writing anything.

Nina: What's it about?

Argo: It's one unbroken shot, the whole thing. It opens on a guy, or a girl, it doesn't matter, sitting at a desk. There's a lamp on the desk, and he must be in an otherwise dark room. He's writing something with one hand. His head is in his other hand. He's thinking very hard about something.

Bellboy: What's he thinking about?

Argo: It doesn't matter. We watch him for a while. He writes for a few seconds, then stops. Then he writes for maybe a full minute. He takes his glasses off and rubs his eyes. He leans back and stares at the ceiling. We watch him for another minute. He sighs and stretches his arms. Maybe he squeezes his eyes shut. We notice a weird shudder in the image, like the cameraman must have stumbled or something. Also, periodically there are these flashes, like there are blank frames inserted into the film. They're random, but there's at least one or two every minute.

Nina: This sounds like a fascinating movie. Does anything actually happen?

Argo: This is just the beginning.

Bellboy: When did you decide to make a screenplay? You haven't gotten tired of making sandwiches, have you?

Argo: This may be related to my lack of interest in sandwich making, yes. But I'm not sure. I need something to think about when there's nothing else to do.

Nina: So, does anything happen, other than the guy sitting at his writing desk?

Argo: It does, do you want to hear it?

Bellboy: Sure, entertain us.

Argo: I'm not sure it's very entertaining.

Nina: I'm pretty sure it's not, as the opening indicates.

Argo: Okay. So, we're watching the guy at his desk, right? And we sort of assume that he's in a room, like a study or something, right?

Bellboy: I guess so.

(Nina shrugs)

Argo: But he's not, see? The camera creeps back, slowly. The guy leans back onto his desk, starts scribbling again. It should be obvious to us that he thinks it's very important, what he's writing about. The camera keeps creeping back, and we realize he's surrounded by darkness, like he's in a huge soundstage or something. The contrast increases a bit, and we can see that the darkness surrounding him seems to be speeding past. He seems to be surrounded by something, like a dusty bubble, and the bubble is set on another dark spot, which is speeding across some black surface. Somewhere, in another corner of the frame, we can see another light.

Nina: This is fascinating, Argo.

Argo: So, the camera swings over to that other light, and zooms in on it. It's a ballet dancer, spinning around on a hardwood floor. There's music coming out of a portable stereo off in the corner somewhere. It's something a ballet dancer would dance to. This is the only music in the movie. The camera doesn't linger here very long, and starts to pull back. As it does, it drifts down toward the floor, and we see the threshold, between hardwood dance floor and blurred, rushing asphalt.

Bellboy: Is this still the beginning of the movie?

Argo: No, we're well into it. As the camera reaches the threshold, it slows, then pauses- and begins to drift upward, and we can see that it's tracking along a transparent bubble, which encases the room the dancer is in. It's clear, but there are specks of dust and stuff that make it just barely visible. This is shown just long enough to be apparent to the audience, then suddenly the view retracts sharply, speeding away from the dancer, into the darkness. Only, it's not darkness.

Nina: Are you depressed, Argo? I don't think this is something you should be thinking about all by yourself.

Argo: It's not darkness, because as the camera pulls back, we catch glimpses of hundreds of little rooms, little carts-

Bellboy: Hundreds?

Nina: How are you going to to that? It's got to be a really, really long pullback.

Argo: It's a few minutes, I guess. There's a lot of noises. Like, train noises, and lots of whooshing and in the distance you think you can hear crashing, like when there's a garbage truck out in the alley early in the morning.

Bellboy: So, we're in a giant soundstage, with hundreds of little pod-rooms driving across the floor-

Argo: Ah, they're not driving, they're falling. There's a slant to the ground. They're all rolling downhill.

Nina: I don't like this movie.

Argo: Kids will like it.

Bellboy: Does something happen next? Does anything change?

Argo: Right. Finally, the camera slows, passes through a final bubble, and we find ourselves inside another room. The pullback continues beyond what we see was the source of the images we were viewing, some sort of telescope contraption. It continues behind a person, guy or girl doesn't matter, who is sort of staggering backwards, obviously shocked at what he's seen.

Nina: I like your gender neutrality.

Argo: It's only because it doesn't matter. I'm not trying to prove any point.

Nina: Anyway, I have to get back inside. I think your break was up like 10 minutes ago, Argo.

(Nina exits)

Argo: You like it, Bellboy?

Bellboy: I think you spend too much time here, Argo. You need to find a new job, or go on a vacation.

Argo: I don't think you like it.

Bellboy: Am I supposed to like it?

Argo: If people will watch the Matrix, they will watch my movie. It'll be short too, so they can show it ten times a day in the theaters if they want. Or, they could show it as a double feature with something else, like a documentary on kids playing in the park. Maybe they find a weird looking caterpillar, or make a kite.

Bellboy: That might help to cancel out the dread of the black soundstage movie.

Argo: Anyway, I've got to finish so I can get back inside.

Bellboy: Go ahead.

Argo: So, the guy with the contraption, he's sort of staggering backward, like he's just seen something terrible. We see his face, and it's pale, and he's sweating like crazy. We look around and see that he's in a room like a laboratory, with white floors, and a bunch of workbenches and white counters with junk piled everywhere. It looks like the contraption is something he built. He wanders around for a few minutes, looking it over, walks around the front of it and looks confused, puts his hands on something. We realize, of course, he's looking at a solid wall, which is all he sees. He doesn't see the bubble, even though now he knows he's inside it.

Bellboy: That's heavy, man. This will appeal to a certain crowd.

Argo: It get's better! He goes back to the contraption, sticks his face back into the view-hole, and we zoom back out of the bubble. He seems to swing it around, pointing it downhill, zooming and zooming. We see something looming in the darkness. Zooming. Zooming and looming. We approach it, and hear terrible crashing sounds, louder and louder, screeching, and we can see that the looming something is a pile of trash, a pile of crashed pods.

Bellboy: I saw this coming.

Argo: You're like the guy with the thingie. You can empathize with him. Anyway, we see the giant, looming pile of doom, and see pods crashing into it at super high speeds. Crash, poof of dust, crash, crash, crash.

Bellboy: Argo.

Argo: The camera swings a bit, and next to the doom-pile is a gaping void, and pods are racing off into it, zooming right off the edge.

Bellboy: You need to see a doctor, Argo.

Argo: We focus on a pod, zoom into it, and see that it's a guy, sitting in a car, and he looks terrified. He's clutching the wheel like his life depends on it. He's all strapped in like it matters, and suddenly he's clutching at the belt, trying to pull himself free. We zoom out, in time to see him shoot over the edge, into the void. We keep zooming back, until we're back at the contraption pod, we zoom past the guy, stumbling back again, we zoom away from the pod, just in time to see another pod collide with it, and they both explode into a pile of auto parts and plywood.

Bellboy: Isochrony, Argo, did you ever get that figured out?

Argo: We keep zooming back, right past a guy, and then the zoom slows, but doesn't stop. The guy is striding right across the blacktop, toward one of the bubble things. He stoops and crawls through a hatch or something, then it takes off, slow at first, but accelerating, as we continue to pull back.

Bellboy: Is there another guy with a contraption?

Argo: Maybe, but probably not. It doesn't seem likely that too many people could invent one of those.

Bellboy: So, the movie is about mortality? Or inescapable fate?

Argo: I wish. It's really about my cool idea for a blacktop soundstage crash-pod derby.

Bellboy: You mean demolition derby.

Argo: I couldn't think of it. I gotta go back inside.

Bellboy: Okay, see you later.

(Argo exits)

Bellboy: ...

Bellboy: I could write a screenplay.

Friday, March 09, 2007

oh gosh i'm sorry

Argo: The last week has gone by really fast, hasn't it?

Bellboy: I know.

Nina: I think it took forever.

Argo: Somebody always says that. What bothers me is that I keep saying that the last week has gone by really fast. I mean, every week recently, I keep saying that.

Bellboy: Have you? I think I have too.

Argo: It seems like I said it last week, and that then I was really struck by how quickly I had gotten from Monday to Friday. It seemed odd. But then, I remembered that I had thought the same sort of thing the week before. Now here I am again, thinking the same thing again.

Nina: Maybe there's something wrong with your brain.

Bellboy: Like you've gotten miscalibrated somehow. Maybe time seems the same as it always has seemed, but you've started comparing it with months, or two-week periods.

Argo: That doesn't make sense. Why would I do that?

Bellboy: I don't know.

Nina: Yeah, what's your point, Argo?

Argo: My point is, I don't like it. It makes me feel like if time is shorter, less has gotten done. And it worries me that if it keeps up, pretty soon I'll lose track of the weeks altogether. I kind of feel like I'm already starting to do that.

Nina: Maybe you just can't remember anymore. You're getting old.

Argo: You mean, like, I can't remember as much from the previous week, so it seems smaller?

Nina: Maybe. Or you really are doing less, so there's less to remember.

Bellboy: Or, what you're doing from week to week is getting more and more the same as what you've done the previous week, and so it just seems like what you remember from this week is an old memory.

Argo: But that's the opposite of "time flies when you're having fun", right? If what you're doing is entertaining and new, time passes quickly; if it's boring time goes slowly.

Nina: Maybe the saying is wrong.

Bellboy: Maybe it's that if what you're doing requires little new thought, time seems to go more quickly. Maybe remembered time is measured in thought-hours. Sometimes fun things are easy things, which don't require a lot of thought. If you're sitting in a waiting room with nothing but 'no smoking' signs to read, there's nothing to do but think, and so time seems to drag on.

Argo: So I haven't been thinking recently? So I'm not consuming enough thought-hours?

Nina: Or, you're forgetting how much you've thought about. Or maybe you just haven't done anything but stand outside and smoke and talk about stupid boring nonsense with your coworkers.

(Nina leaves)

Argo: Maybe I've reached a new level of thought; I do so much hard, serious thinking that it's automatic, and it takes no effort. I'd have to think about what I was thinking about to actually remember the time spent thinking. Maybe I should be writing it down.

Bellboy: I'm sure that's it, Argo. You're full of crap.

(Bellboy leaves)

Argo: Maybe I'm getting old, and I'm going to die soon. That would be good.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Moving On:

Adolph: Vat ist dat?
Andrew: This is data from my experiment.
Adolph: Vat are you doink vis it?
Andrew: I am making pretty plots out of it. Look at this one. Isn't it pretty?
Adolph: Vat does it mean?
Andrew: I don't know.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Cold War II

"Donkey:
ole, ole!"
Wow!

Wow...

What do you...

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Introducing Bongo and Jingo Jango

Bongo: Man, that new library addition is so cool!

Jingo Jango: What are you talking about, Bongo? We spent 14,000,000 dollars to build a robot to do things for us which we've been doing for ourselves, for years, without even thinking about it!

Bongo: You mean taking a book off a shelf?

Jingo Jango: Right! Just a couple of years ago, if you wanted to get an article from the journal Vision Research, all you had to do was go up to the third floor, take the volume off the shelf, and go to the copy room. The copy room on the third floor had lots of tables, and three copiers.

Bongo: But now you can ask a robot to do it for you! Isn't that just cool?

Jingo Jango: No, Bongo. Now I have to ask a robot to do it for me. If I climbed into that giant, gymnasium-sized room with all the stacks of metal crates, and tried to find the metal crate with the volume of Vision Research I wanted, a security guard would probably shoot me.

Bongo: Come on, Jingo Jango. You're just a Luddite. Do you miss the days of the card catalog?

Jingo Jango: No, Bongo, and I don't miss riding a horse to Wal-Mart either. Putting the card catalog online made things easier, as long as you had a computer. And, naturally, libraries nowadays always have a few terminals with immediate access to the online catalog. But that was cool; it wasn't even that big of a change. A card catalog is naturally a type of database, so why not just make it a computer based one rather than a paper based one?

Bongo: But this thing is so cool! And it saves so much space! Now you don't have to walk to the engineering library across campus to get issues of the Journal of the Optical Society of America. Isn't that convenient? Plus, isn't the library itself like a big database? Isn't it natural, even, just to put all those books online and do away with the 'place' once and for all?

Jingo Jango: They could do it right. They could do more than put one crappy, old, half-operational copy machine on the first floor, halfway across the library from the 14,000,000 dollar robotic librarian. If I go to the kid at the desk with my list of 6 volumes of some journal, and say, "Hey, this journal isn't registered properly in your big gizmo over there. Get these for me", I could, in theory, wait fifteen minutes while they figure out how to get my books and wait for the robot to respond, and then carry all 4000 pages across the first floor to the copier, dump them on the floor, copy my articles, and then carry all 4000 pages plus copies back to the kid at the desk, and leave.

Bongo: You sound pissed.

Jingo Jango: But I don't. I make a point of saying, "I'm going to leave these here, on your shiny desk, while you sit and watch cartoons, and I'm going to take them one at a time to the copier, and don't you think it's silly that there aren't any copiers around here, given that that stupid machine is full of thousands of volumes of journals which no one is allowed to check out of the library, and please don't do anything with them while they're there."

Bongo: Stop complaining. You're such an asshole. I'm sure one of these days they'll tear down the new Starbucks next door and spend the next 14,000,000 dollars on a room full of tables and new copiers.

Jingo Jango: You're funny, Bongo.

Bongo: Anyway, they'll work it out. And I'm right, you know. A lot of journals aren't even printed on paper anymore. Eventually everything will get scanned, and it will all be online. The library will be nothing but kids sitting at desks watching cartoons.

Jingo Jango: They could at least let me into that room so I can get my books myself. If it's so simple, anyone should be able to use it.

Bongo: I wonder what happens when the license on the software runs out. I remember a story about a robotic parking lot in New Jersey, which worked just like the library robot, and the city was refusing to pay yearly software licenses after a new council got elected, something like that.

Jingo Jango: So everyone's car gets stuck in the garage if they don't get it out by the license expiration date. That's nuts. What if the Russians detonate an EM weapon over the library? How will anyone know what's inside all those metal boxes?

Bongo: No one will care, they'll be too busy eating their cellphones.

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Thobal Glermowuclear Nar

Theo: It's going to happen again.

Nina: What's?

Theo: Going to happen? A dark age, that's what.

Nina: How do you figure?

Theo: It's all trajectory. History works in trajectories. Something goes up, and maybe a part of it gets left in orbit, or floating in the atmosphere, but a lot of it falls back down.

(Argo enters)

Argo: Oh, no.

Nina: Theo was telling me about the coming dark age.

Argo: Right, right. Theo, what's up?

Theo: Who are you?

Nina: It's Argo, Theo. You know Argo.

Theo: Who are you? Where am I?

Argo: Ms Sandy's looking for you, Nina. Something about a birthday cake.

Nina: That's not fair. Argo! Tell her you can't find me! I went home sick!

Argo: If you're not here, then I have to something about a birthday cake.

Theo: Bring me my jacket!

Nina: Okay Theo, I'll tell Bellboy to get your jacket. Thanks a lot, Argo.

Argo: No problem.

(Nina leaves)

Argo: Theo?

Theo: Argo? Who am I?

Argo: See you, Theo. Watch out for those dark ages.

(Argo leaves)

Theo: Maybe shipbuilding brings you up, but then cities fail you. Then, maybe armies bring you up, but governments fail you. Then, maybe science brings you up, but technology fails you.

(Bellboy enters)

Bellboy: Nina told me about your jacket, Theo. You didn't bring a jacket today.

Theo: What brought us up this time, Theo?

Bellboy: You're Theo, I'm the Bellboy.

Theo: This time, communication brought us up, but democracy is going to fail us.

Bellboy: What's that?

Theo: We'll have it all. Bellboy. Ships, cities, armies, governments, science, technology, and communication. It will be a new dark age.

Bellboy: That's pretty grim, Theo.

(Bellboy leaves)

Theo: We'll also have global warming. That's not really related. How did I get here?

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Introducing Yodekl and Waldekl

Yodekl: I can't think of anything to say.

Waldekl: Me neither.

Yodekl: I hate this.

Waldekl: Me too.

Yodekl: How was your flight?

Waldekl: What are you talking about?

Yodekl: I don't know. Nevermind.

Waldekl: How was your flight?

Yodekl: It was awful, I tell you, the plane was packed, and they ran out of peanuts, and a baby threw up on my pants, and I got in a fight with a stewardess, and they put me off the flight in-

Waldekl: What are you talking about?

Yodekl: I don't know.

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Fine Structure

Argo: Do you know what I've always had a problem with?

Bellboy: What's that?

Argo: Timezones. The way how, if you go east into another timezone, you have to set your clock to a later time.

Bellboy: What's wrong with that?

Argo: It just confuses me sometimes. The Earth turns east, so things always happen earlier there. Which means it's always later, since everything happened earlier.

Bellboy: That's not so confusing. Instead of saying 'earlier', say 'already'. Then, things happen already in the east, so it's later there. That's better than saying things happen earlier in the east, so it's later there.

Argo: I think I get it.

Bellboy: It's confusing because you're using earlier and later both in a positive way in the same sentence. But 'earlier' is referring to when things happen, while 'later' is referring to what time it is.

Argo: But that implies that 'what time it is' is always later than 'what happened'. Though that does kind of make sense...

Bellboy: Don't worry about it.

[[[HAPPY 200,000 miles, car! You will live forever!]]]

Car: I am legend.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Save as draft

Nina: Argo, you look depressed. Did Walmarto get to you?

Argo: You know, sometimes I think, the last great change to the human experience was the telephone. I mean, cars and planes let you get places faster, but it's just a quantitative thing. You get to a place sooner, but you could have walked there if you wanted.

Bellboy: What about computers? Or the internet? People love that stuff.

Nina: Not this again.

Argo: Yeah, but they didn't add anything new. People could already read and write. People already could do math and science. Now they can do it a lot faster, and without wasting paper. So what?

Bellboy: So what's so great about the telephone? People could already talk to eachother, right? What's so new about that?

Argo: Because now they could talk to eachother and not have to be in the same place. It was like, suddenly, you could be anywhere you wanted to be, or at least your intellect could be there, and you could interact with any other person in the world who also had a phone. That's not quantitative, it's qualitative. That's new.

Bellboy: No it's not, it's just like shouting across the yard. Have you heard of yodeling?

Argo: Right, I thought of that. So I decided I was wrong. It's not the telephone that was the last great thing people came up with.

Bellboy: So what is it then?

Argo: I thought, maybe it's reading and writing. That way, you could communicate with the dead if you wanted, or at least hear what they had to say; and it's kind of like the telephone, where you can talk to someone who's not there, and have them talk back. So really, the telephone is just a high speed postal service.

Bellboy: I have a feeling you didn't settle there either.

Argo: Right. Reading and writing is just like talking. Replacing a human being with a sheet of paper is neat, but it's just a bigger delay, a coagulation of soundwaves. A person speaks, and maybe he's heard a few milliseconds later. Or maybe no one's listening. A person writes, and maybe he's read a few years later. Or maybe no one's reading. Writing is to paper as speaking is to air. So I went back further, and thought, maybe it was like in 2001, where the monkey picks up the rock and hits the other monkey with it. Maybe it was the first time one guy realized he didn't need fists or fangs, he could just take a sharp rock and do his buddy in. That was a big advance, right?

Nina: That was a dumb movie.

Bellboy: But just a quantitative advance on fists and fangs, right. One weapon is as good as any other, just faster or sharper or heavier. So did you come to any conclusions?

Argo: I almost decided that there was nothing new, nothing that people had done in all their existence that made them different from all the other monkeys and the other rats. But, then I realized I had forgotten about global isochrony! Surely, that's something new! That's people doing something they've never done before!

Bellboy: But?

Argo: People had kept time since sundials, and before. Waking up and killing something and going to sleep is a sort of keeping time. What's so special about everyone keeping the same time? Why is that different from one person keeping his own time?

(Long silence)

(Ms Sandy enters)

Ms Sandy: Argo, kitchen. Now.

(Ms Sandy leaves)

Argo: Tonight, I am going to set this place on fire.

Bellboy: That will be something new.

Nina: I'll say.

(Argo leaves)

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Emblem. Emblem emblem emblem.

Dr Walmarto: I have a problem.

Argo: What is it, Doc?

Dr Walmarto: Often, I-

(Nina enters)

Argo: Go on, Doc, what's the problem?

Nina: Walmarto has a problem? What's wrong, Doc?

Dr Walmarto: See, often I am unable to-

(Bellboy enters)

Bellboy: Man! That guy won't stop talking! When is this thing going to be over?

Nina: Shush! Walmarto's telling us his problem!

Bellboy: Is it about his father? Doc, you don't have to do this.

Argo: And why not?

Bellboy: Because you and Nina will laugh at him, that's why.

Nina: Will not! How can you say that?

Argo: I think you undervalue our respective capacities for empathy, Bellboy. I am an excellent listener, and Nina can be very perceptive. Combined, we will make this very worthwhile.

Nina: Right, now Doc, what's going on?

Dr Walmarto: Often, too often, I am unable to discriminate between Tracey Chapman and Dan Fogelberg. They peaked twenty years apart, are of different gender, and of different racial makeup, and yet-

Argo: That's pretty lame, Doc.

Nina: Yeah, that's a pathetic problem. I wouldn't tell people about it.

Argo: You suck, Doc.

(Argo leaves)

Nina: Anyway, Bellboy, the speaker stops at eleven, that's what Ms Sandy said. Then they're giving out awards, then it's all over.

Bellboy: That really is a silly problem Doc. I wouldn't let it bother you.

Dr Walmarto: My father always told me he wanted-

Nina: Doc, we're not falling for it. It's eleven, Bellboy, you should get ready for the escapees.

(Nina leaves)

Dr Walmarto: He always told me he wanted to go to Sweden, to see the ice foxes.

Bellboy: Are there ice foxes in Sweden?

Dr Walmarto: They're lovely! Beautiful white fur, like a snowy flame enveloping a puppydog. They eat only snow, and they never, ever urinate.

Bellboy: O, eleven comes! And I, trapped, with Walmarto, sigh to Great Heaven.

Dr Walmarto: Sad, it's so sad.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Head on a string

Argo: Where is the cheese?

(Nina enters)

Argo: Where is the cheese? The cheese I put right here, just a minute ago?

Italio: Non so.

Argo: Italio, what did you do with the cheese? We have a full platter of GCSs on order, and you're hiding the cheese?

Nina: Argo, we have to get the food out before the invocation at ten. Ms Sandy is going crazy!

Argo: I know, I know! Italio! What's your problem?

Italio: Non sono buono, Argo. Ho un dolore della stomache.

Argo: Speak English, Italio! Where is the cheese? Where is the cheese, man!

Nina: This isn't working.

Italio: I know.

Argo: Oh, here it is. The cheese.

Nina: My god.

(Nina leaves)

Italio: Have you ever had the thought that people just sort of float around, like those trains that crawl up the sides of mountains, except that the body is like the train-

Argo: You mean a cable car?

Italio: That's it, a cable car.

Argo: So what's the cable, then? The brain?

Italio: Sort of. I mean, I guess I was thinking that the cable is the wanting to do things in the future that we all have. Or that we all sort of have. If you stop wanting to do things in the future, the car falls down the mountain, and that's the end of it.

Argo: Are you depressed, Italio?

Italio: Someone told me this story the other day, about a guy who breaks a really important promise, then has to kill himself. And everyone understands.

Argo: Nina! Nina!

Italio: So now, I walk around, and everyone I see is like a floating head, with legs and arms just sort of dangling underneath, and the head just drags them all around, on some invisible cable that's always extending off to the future somewhere.

(Nina enters)

Nina: What is it? Señora Plankton almost spilled her coffee when you yelled out like that!

Argo: Talk to Italio, he's talking about killing himself.

Italio: Not exactly, Argo. You see, Nina-

Argo: Biscuits.

Nina: What?

Italio: I wasn't talking about killing myself, Nina. I was just telling Argo about this idea I had.

Nina: I had a dream last night, Italio. I dreamed that you were telling me a boring story, and that you had just told it to Argo.

Argo: Ha!

Italio: That's strange.

Nina: It just went on, and on, and on. And Señora Saladmaker was screaming for coffee and carrotcake, and you just kept on talking.

Italio: What was I talking about?

Nina: It was something about how people are just like those cars that drive around in grooves in the ground, and-

Argo: The Tin Lizzies!

Nina: I don't think that's it.

Italio: You know, I was just telling Argo about something very similar. You see, I had suggested that people were just like-

(Nina leaves)

Argo: Italio, where is the butter?

Italio: Who's there?

Argo: I don't have time for this.

(Ms Sandy enters)

Ms Sandy: Boys! Where are those sandwiches? It's ten o' clock, and the invocation has started! Which of you is going to apologize to Sñr Pluto for this foul up?

Italio: Maybe that's not it at all. Maybe we're all just like balloons, but we're tied to the ground because we can't get out of our shoes. Maybe when my watch says 'Italio, it's 5 o' clock, it's time to go home', it's actually saying, 'Italio, you fool, don't go home! Go to Mexico and get in a fight with a Guatemalan! Go down the street and buy a bottle of strawberry milk and drink it and cry, and cry, and cry, because it's the last strawberry milk you'll ever have! Live, Italio! Live!'

Ms Sandy: But watches don't say such things. They rule us like the cowards we are, they don't free us to drink milk and go to Chiapas. Sandwiches, boys, sandwiches!

Argo: I don't wear a watch.

Monday, March 27, 2006

Antonymity

"Wow, things really are hard."
"This is what I was thinking. Or, it was the first thing that came to mind."
"Also what came to mind, is how different this would look spelled phonetically."
"Or with a different alphabet."
"A phonetic alphabet."
"All alphabets are phonetic."
"No they aren't."
"I see, by your ironic example of the '."
"That's not really a referring to a sound though, so it's not an example."
"So I perceive irony where there is none."
"That is often the case."
"Anyway, things are hard."
"Right, they are hard. Sometimes they are hard."
"No, they always are hard. Never easy."
"I disagree, for me things often are easy."
"It is hard for me to believe you."
"Perhaps this is a problem of perception."
"I think that easiness and hardness are always things that are perceived."
"True enough, though you evade my true meaning."
"Is it interesting how you can have linked antonyms?"
"What do you mean?"
"Like rough :: smooth :: difficult :: easy :: hard :: soft :: crunchy :: squishy."
"I've never thought about that."
"So, is it interesting?"
"In a pointless sort of way, yes."

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Yes.

{Due to the slight, in fact nearly zero, yet real possibility that the topic/s of this post's previous incarnation might read it and kill me, I instead bring you the following vignette:}

Toby: Morning, Bellboy! Quite a morning!

Bellboy: Yes sir, Toby sir.

Toby: What's the special today, my boy?

Bellboy: You'd have to ask Nina, Toby sir.

Toby: Well, get her in here.

Bellboy: Nina! Fat rich man to see you!

Toby: What was that?

{Nina enters}

Nina: Yes fat Toby?

Toby: You, Bellboy, you call Ms Sandy in here right now! I won't stand for this!

Bellboy: Argo! Argo! Fight between fat rich man and dinner jacket!

Toby: What?

{Argo enters}

Argo: Did I hear... Dinner Jacket Fight?

Nina: Hurrah!

Bellboy: Now, sir, your jacket!

Toby: What are you doing! Unhand me, you scalawag! Ms Sandy! Ms Sandy!

Argo & Nina: Jacket! Jacket! Jacket!

Bellboy: Taking bets!

{Ms Sandy enters}

Ms Sandy: Bellboy! Nina's brunch tips on the jacket!

Bellboy: Taken!

Toby: Someone help! Help me!

Nina: Wherever you go, there you are.

Argo: 10 o' clock, and the cows have placed their bets.

Ms Sandy: Nina, Argo, inside! Soon the banquet guests will begin to arrive!

(Argo, Nina, & Ms Sandy): Jacket! Jacket! Jacket!

Bellboy: Jacket, TKO on the big staircase!

(Argo, Bellboy, Nina & Ms Sandy): Hooray!

(Argo, Nina, & Ms Sandy leave)

Toby: Little did we know, setting out, that isochrony would prove to be a device for the enslavement of mankind. Living to the pulse of mechanical monstrosities, living and dying to numbers and dials, dying without a thought to time, except that there was more to be had. Curse this jacket! Curse isochrony! Curse these slaves!