Uncategorized – Page 20 – Auxiliary Memory

Is Science Fiction Wrong About Space Travel?

By James Wallace Harris, Sunday, May 24, 2015

A good case could be made that science fiction inspired space travel. Few people contemplate space travel without exposure to science fiction. Science fiction is so embedded in our culture that it would be very rare to find a young child that doesn’t know about science fictional ideas. Traveling to other worlds is science fiction’s most successful concept, and believing humanity’s future involves exploring the final frontier is practically wired in our genes.

What if science fiction is wrong about space travel? What if manned space travel to the planets and other star systems is just impractical? What if the final frontier is just a big fantasy? After one big leap we’ve chosen not to go anywhere for over forty years. What does that say? The more we learn about how dangerous it is for humans living off Earth, and how long they’d have to travel to get anywhere, it seems more and more practical to stay home and send machines.

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s science fiction was all about space travel. Kids today embrace dystopian stories set on Earth. Has there already been a psychic shift by the young? Do the kids growing up today no longer see space travel in their future? Have young people decided that space travel is only appealing to geologists and robots?

I saw Interstellar for the second time last night, and although I really loved the film, it was all too obvious that it’s a fantasy on the same order as those offered by religion and children’s stories. This made me wonder if science fiction can envision humans living millions of years on Earth without going anywhere. I think it’s possible to send people into space, even to the stars, but will we?

Humans aren’t very farsighted, otherwise we wouldn’t be destroying the Earth. We’re big on fantasies, and small on reality. Is The Game of Thrones a better oracle about future humanity than Star Trek? Is science fiction wrong about space travel?

What if we don’t go to Heaven or Alpha Centauri? What if Earth is our final destination? The faithful give meaning to their lives by believing in Heaven, and many humanists found meaning in the final frontier. If we never leave Earth, can we find meaning staying home?

JWH

Should I Buy An iMac?

By James Wallace Harris, Saturday, May 23, 2015

I regularly use the following computer applications: Chrome, Outlook, Windows Live Writer, Word, Spotify, Photoshop, Xmind and Excel – pretty much in that order. The application I spend most of my writing time in is Windows Live Writer, a tool for writing blogs. Microsoft has not updated Live Writer since 2012, and it looks like it will be abandoned when Windows 10 rolls out.

I’ve been using a personal computer since 1979. My life since then has been one long history of learning new programs, getting attached to them, and then having them ripped away from me. This pisses me off. Windows Live Writer is considered by most reviewers as the best blog editor by far. I now need to decide if I want to cling to Windows 7, or upgrade to Windows 10. Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for its first year, that’s a huge enticement to switch.

The obvious solution is to start using the web based editor built into the WordPress. I’ve spent years using Live Writer, so that’s going to be a painful. I’ve been looking at reviews of other standalone applications for blog editing, and nothing comes close to the web application WordPress offers.

Is the lesson here to give up on local applications altogether and switch to web applications? I just bought a Chromebook and that’s also forcing me to work in the cloud. But if I do switch to all web apps, then it won’t matter what computing platform I use – Windows, Mac, Linux or Chrome. Does that also tell us something about the future? These changes could portend big changes down the road.

I decided to stick with Windows because of Windows Live Writer. For years I’ve thought about buying an iMac. That urge became a craving when that beautiful 27″ 5k iMac came out. But I’d always think, “What about Windows Live Writer?” Nothing is stopping me now.

Yet, I have to wonder, “Why buy a Mac?” If I do everything inside Chrome, why care about an OS? Won’t it be overkill? Does the OS x or Windows 10 even matter? If I buy an iMac, won’t it just become a very expensive Chromebook?

Will we stop buying computer programs like we’ve stopped by music CDs? I already subscribe to Office 365. I mainly do it for Word and Outlook, both of which are free if you use the web versions. The free version also includes Excel. Google Docs has me covered too, for those programs. And I’m sure I could find web applications for the other programs I use.

The two programs I’d miss the most are Live Writer and Outlook. I’m writing this post in the WordPress web app, and it’s not bad. I could adjust to it if I had to. Is this the future of personal computing? Are computers just going to become different sized screens with the operating system becoming invisible? I understand why Microsoft is pushing so hard to get market share with its phone and tablet. Since I have an iPhone and iPad, why shouldn’t my next computer be an iMac? Microsoft really should have kept supporting Windows Live Writer.

Hold on though. If the need for Windows and OS X is disappearing, why do we need iOS and Android? Is it possible to have a future where we buy phones, tablets and desktops without reference to the operating system? When we buy a television we don’t think about how it does its magic.

JWH

Discoverying 1950s Music with Spotify

by James Wallace Harris, Wednesday, June 21, 2017

I was born in 1951 but didn’t really get into popular music until 1962. The 1950s is mostly a mysterious world of unknown music to me. As a little kid, I remember hearing some 1950s music while riding with my dad in his 1955 Pontiac. Then in 1962 when I got my first radio they played “Oldie Goldies” from the 1950s on the weekends, but those were mostly early rock and roll hits. When I discovered Bob Dylan in 1965 I jumped back into the folk music revival that started in the late 1950s. In my twenties, I got interested in jazz and dipped into the 1950s via some famous jazz albums. But for the most part, the 1950s is an undiscovered territory.

The web has become an amazing place for virtual time travelers. There are many sites devoted to identifying the most popular music of the past. The World’s Music Charts (Tsort) has collected 225 music charting services and put them all into a database that spits out wonderful reports. I particularly like this graph of theirs showing the coverage of all those charts.

aentry_years

As you can see the 1950s are the sprinkles before the deluge. The LP was introduced in 1948, and most of the chart tracking services started after the 1950s, so information about that decade is sparse. Discogs references 161,954 records for the 1950s. Compared to 552,784 (1960s), 952,231 (1970s) … 2,148,365 (2000s). I figure I might own/heard 25-50 albums from the 1950s, so this is a potentially rich territory to explore.

Spotify has much of this old music. You don’t know that it’s there until you know what to go looking for – that’s where all the top album lists sites come in. I recently took a list of the top jazz albums of the 1950s off the web and converted it to a Spotify playlist, Best Jazz 1950s. I’d say about 90% of the albums were there. Of the albums not there, most of the songs from the original recordings are now in compilations of the artist’s work.

Here’s the thing, when I was growing up in the 1960s I hated the music my parents listened to, and they hated the music I and my sister loved. They resonated with the 1940s and 1950s music. What I’m now trying to do is get into the music headspace of my parents. I don’t think I could have done that when I was younger. It’s taken me until my sixties to start liking that kind of music, and it’s growing on me. My parents were in their forties when I was in my teens, so I don’t know why it’s taken me to me sixties to like their kind of music. But I now find it easier to move backward in time to find new music I like than searching the present.

There are many ways to measure time besides the ticking of a clock. Some folks mark periods of their lives by the houses they have lived in, or the fashions they wore, or the television shows they loved. One way that amuses me is to measure the years by the beat of popular music. By using Best Albums Ever and Spotify I can recall a specific year in music. We hear old music today in hit song compilations albums or the radio, but it’s another thing altogether to listen to the albums those hits came from.

Now that the past is being digitized, I can pick a year and then read the books, watch the movies, listen to the music, view the television shows, and sometimes even read the newspapers and magazines from that year. Wikipedia is a fabulous tool for remembering the past, suggestion artifacts of a pop culture past to consume.

I’ve been a subscription music subscriber for years, so I no longer buy albums. I have access to millions of albums online. Creating this collection of 1950s hit lists is a way to organize my memory of music and help me to discover songs to play on Spotify.

I’m going to link to a Spotify album for each year, and if you’re a subscriber or even have a free account, you should be able to play them. Make sure you’re logged in to your Spotify account.

Each year contains a hyperlink to Discogs, Best Ever Albums, List Challenges, Top Songs, and Tsort sites for that year’s list of top album or songs. I’ve also added the Wikipedia page to read a quick history of that year in music.

1950

1951

1952

1953

1954

1955

1956

1957

1958

1959

JWH

The Inspiration of Pain

By James Wallace Harris – September 28, 2014

I haven’t been writing this week because I have a pinched nerve in my neck that makes my arm ache if I sit at the computer. This has been very depressing. What’s that old saying about not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone? Man is it true! One reason I haven’t hated having the spinal stenosis and not being able to walk much or stand for long periods of time, is because I could sit and work at the computer to my heart’s content. I hope some physical therapy will solve my neck and arm problem, because my dream years of retirement are planned around sitting at a computer.

Another old saying comes to mind – “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” It’s funny how so many of these cliched old sayings mean so much more when you’re in pain. Since I can’t sit in a regular chair I wondered if I could type with a computer in my La-Z-Boy. Since I don’t travel I don’t keep a laptop handy, but luckily I had my wife’s old one in the closet. I spent all day yesterday and the day before trying to get a version of Linux on that old laptop. Every version I tried had trouble with the video or wi-fi card, or the system would flat out crash. I eventually discovered that an older version of Ubuntu, 12.04, would work, and I could make it work with the video and wi-fi. I also learned that even though I think Elementary OS is more beautiful than Ubuntu, Ubuntu is more suited to my needs because of the apps it runs.

I’m now writing in my La-Z-Boy with the laptop on a cutting board and me reclined. I needed the cutting board because this old HP laptop runs so hot it burns my legs. But the experiment works, my left arm doesn’t hurt nearly as much as sitting up. It’s one temporary solution inspired by pain.

This morning I watched “Building a monument to wounded warriors” on CBS Sunday Morning about a new monument on the Washington Mall devoted to permanently disabled soldiers from all wars. They interviewed a number of solders and they each explained how their disability inspired them to overcome obstacles and to become even better people. That really made me feel wimpy. I don’t want to not write, so I have to be like them and think of ways around the obstacles. Even this solution is wearing on my arm, but I can’t stop.

I’m also reminded of the book, The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks, about people who suffered visual problems because of a stroke. Sack’s book is far scarier than anything Stephen King has ever written. It’s one thing to overcome pain and disability, it’s another thing altogether to overcome altered states of being. The thing is, unless your dead you have to keep moving forward, and it’s surprising how much a human can adapt.

Besides fixing up an old computer with Linux, writing this essay has forced me to learn to write with the WordPress editor under Chrome. That’s good because I’m thinking about getting a Chromebook. It would be much lighter and cooler to use when writing from my lap, but it means giving up all the Microsoft Windows tools I’m so used to using now. And that’s part of the lesson of adapting – doing things in a new way.

When I first configured this Ubuntu Linux machine I also found software to replace all my Windows applications. Then it occurred to me that Chromebooks mean doing everything in Chrome and I could try that now. This has been an excellent lesson. It’s so damn annoying not to be doing things my old way, but I’m learning that there are many ways to do something and I shouldn’t be so attached to any particular way, especially if my body is going to keep changing on me.

JWH

Read Like You’re Stranded On A Deserted Island

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/01/only-read-2000-books

The Guardian ran an article that I have written several times on my blog. Multiple the average number of books you read in a year, times the number of years you think you’ve got left to live, and that gives you how many books you have left to read in your lifetime. I figure I have 500-1,000. I already own over a 1,000 unread books, and I buy new ones at the rate maybe 5 a week. So, I’m buying another 2,500-5,000 books before I die, even though I’ll only read 500-1,000 more books.

This brings up all kinds of problems, beyond the obvious stupidity of buying books that I’ll never read. The math is simple! I read one book a week, and I buy five? Could I be any more stupid?

Each week I read a book—and that week might actually be my last week on Earth. Or it might be one of a 1,000 weeks I might have left. Either way, should I ever read a so-so book? Or even a merely very good book? I’m pretty sure there are way more than 1,000 excellent books out there that I haven’t read. So, each week, should I think to myself, “Hey, let’s pick a mediocre book and read it this week!”

Everyone loves to play that game – “What one book would you take to a deserted island?” Isn’t that how we should be think every time we pick up a book to read? Read every book as if it was our last?

I read one book a week. I should always think to myself that this week could be my last. Shouldn’t the book I pick to read be one that’s at least deserted island worthy?

It’s not like we’re short on great books.

I should do two things. First, don’t buy books until I’m ready to read them. Second, don’t read anything less than a great book.

JWH – 6/1/14