Repetitive Sense
Those bugs are back! Cicadas, not the ones in the movies about aliens and secret service guys. I have not seen any around here but I note an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [Link] on their return. But then I am up on top of Brindlee (one of several spellings for which wide disagreement prevails) Mountain and the local variety seems to be more of a lowlands dweller. But there has been an increase in the insect noise amplitude lately, so I may be hearing them.
I have to admit to having seen very few of the beasts. What I have seen considerable of are their molt skins. In fact, they were the basis of a science fair project back when I was a youngster. My family had retired for two weeks to a fishing camp on Lake Guntersville for my father to recharge himself and for the rest of us to go quietly mad. We were residing in a small cabin that did have electricity and piped water – in and out flows – but lacked any other exceptional comfort. Since my father was either asleep, eating, or out fishing, my mother, my brother, and I were left together all day. I ran out of books to read about halfway through the period and so my only alternative to solitary boredom was to tramp the woods.
As it happened, this was when the cicadas were molting, and I was exposed to the sight of their molt skins. I ran about trying desperately for a couple of days to observe one either pre-molt or better yet, in the process, but to no avail. Finally I combined my search with a collection effort which was made challenging, and thus distracting, by the problem of removing the molt skins intact from the bark of the pine trees they tightly clutched. In all I think I collected several hundred, of which only a few survived the trip back to Huntsville and later incorporation in a kind of pin sticking display to satisfy a then irritating requirement for a “science” project. Since this was at an age when children have neither the knowledge nor the sentience to be trusted with soldering irons or chemicals, the run of the mill of these projects was some plagaristic extract from the encyclopedia.
Not so obvious is a statistic that I noted about flu vaccine. [Link] It seems that such are only effective in producing antibodies in about half as many seniors as younger adults. The obvious conjecture is the the systems of seniors are getting exhausted or otherwise apathetic to such excitations. Such would certainly fit with the general idea of an impending failure of a complex system of systems. If enough of the subsystems fail you expire; hence the idea that the subsystems, like the components of an automobile, degrade or fail catastrophically. This seems more a matter of “graceful” degradation in that the production of antibodies does not suddenly cease but just decreases and eventually falls below an effective concentration. (For more on the mechanics of graceful degradation of systems, see the work of “Griff” Callahan, emeritus professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and retired colonel, Yankee army.)
I also observe that people are becoming less amenable to distraction on the internet. [Link] Seems that by some measures the success rate of avoiding distraction has risen from 0.6 in 1999 to 0.75 now. The reportage is somewhat turgid, unusual for the BBC as compared to American traditional media, and there is no mention of any statistics on those who deliberately get distracted on the ‘net by such appliances as “Stumble Upon”.
What this does tend to indicate is a possible reason for the fall in advertising revenues as noted by Gooey and other search engines. What is not at all clear here, and is unremarked, is the impact on all this of advertisement blocking instrumentalities, such as the banned Ad Block Pro, and the dispersion away from Windows OS and its browser; I know my browsing experience is much more satisfying since I switched to Firefox and installed NoScript. Now I have complete control over bandwidth vampires like videos, at least those that Hardy Heron will even show. But I am not quite ready to accept an epidemic of rationality among users; more likely one of ennui.
And lastly, I see that the Japanese government is warning parents to restrict their children’s cellular phone capabilities and usage. [Link] In particular they are urging that children only be permitted cellular phones with audio capability and GPS tracking.
I have to admit to mixed view here. On the one hand I have to agree with the outlook that children, at least the ones I see here in Nawth Alibam, have phones with entirely too many capabilities that have to be paid for continually. And as far as I can tell text messaging has no positive benefit that comes anywhere near equaling its negatives. The division however is not so much about technology as human nature. I have my doubts that there are very many parents who have the strength of will, and in two parent households the strength of unity, to restrict their children from these fripperies. I suspect the warnings of government will fall in vain as parents opt for the immediate peace of avoiding confrontations over depriving children of what they feel are peer guaranteed rights.
But at least we can give the Japanese government a kudo for being more relevant and realistic (?) than the Yankee government.
