C.J. Cherryh's Blog, page 122

New Books have gone up on Closed Circle…

…Lynn Abbey’s ‘Time’ books are up—new stuff, likely you’ve never seen before—Go see!

Ok, dear readers—I have another question for you.

Babsidi—Ilisidi’s mecheita—male, or female?

Jane has just gotten through her read/edit of Protector. Now I go back in to do suggesteds and maybes and to smooth the flow (she found one section where I’d inserted raw outline…)

and it’ll be off to Betsy!

Weirdness continued—or, welcome to an hour in my thought-patterns…

Re color being in the eye of the beholder: definitely. That’s indeed the point…that I think the road to our color-perception began in the sea, at depth, very, very early. That it was somewhat accidental—caused by thin-skinned creatures who have hemoglobin, the red pigment in blood…and who, circulating it through that skin, became red. Blushing. The redder they were, my theory runs, the safer they were from the very primitive eyesight of very primitive predators. So being ‘red’ was survival positive.  ‘Blue’ parts of the solar spectrum can go deeper in the water than ‘red’, —physics: length of the light waves: the energy of blue long waves goes deeper into the sea—

This means that the reflected color our eyes read as ‘red’ in sunlight (red flowers, blood, roserock, etc) is nearly impossible to see in the ocean depths. These ‘red’ creatures never surface—the vampire squid and its ilk are deepwater dwellers.

My point is that the survival advantage of prey BEING red in the depths may have helped the survival of red color in creatures that eventually made it to the upper reaches of the ocean, and ultimately onto land. The survival advantage of a predator being able to SEE red may have started where actual sunlight reaches. No more invisibility cloak—the prey that is invisible at depth is not invisible to a certain predator who can perceive that color, ergo eats better, breeds more often, and survives.

Of course perception in hunters could be pressure-sensitivity: ie, feeling the waves of the prey swimming. But that dissipates over distance. Limited usefulness. Could be what we call ‘hearing’ —sensitivity to pressure waves hitting little bones in the skull — the ears…has a longer range, but is subject to fading with distance and likewise echoes; or the ‘stellar-magnitude’ problem—is that a bright star, or a near star? Is that the vibration of a big thing far off or a little thing real close?

Elephants have been talking for ages—and we’ve only recently heard it. Those big feet are picking up vibrations in the earth made by what we call subsonics. Their rumbling can communicate over great distances. And it’s too low for our ears. We have to use instruments to pick it up.

And speed. Birdsong, if played at very slow speeds, has a lot more content than we can sort out with our hearing. Scientist have also found a lot of compression in dolphin squeals.

Scent? Disperses over distance, but dogs have developed it marvelously. To follow an air scent hours old is far more than we can do. We cannot easily imagine the texture of the world of a dog.

The fact that hemoglobin, which gets its color from iron, is the distinguishing feature of a rich food source AND the source of the first color would make a certain sense. Color was not important per se, but color as camouflage might begin there—and color as a predator sense might begin there. The red things are the richest. We who can be prey didn’t grow a thicker skin until our distant ancestors rose out of the ocean depths into the sunlight: then we had to hide that hemoglobin, because it tempted predators.

If you’ll recall, I had the majat seeing colors humans can’t, seeing patterns imperceptible to human eyes. Their recognition of these patterns matters to them. That’s why the Kontrin graft majat jewels into their skin.

We humans have a very highly refined ‘color sight’ and it has come to take up a lot of neural circuits. But trying to determine whether animals perceive certain ranges of the solar spectrum is harder. Clearly bees don’t have rods and cones, yet they see something we can’t see well: we have to enhance it. How do you tell whether the neural network IS perceiving a color? You can map electrochemical changes going on…you can say…it’s reacting. But when the electrochemical changes get to the brain…and trigger something…what is the nature of that reaction? And do we call it color?

Synaesthesia is the evocation of, say, blue, by a smell. Certain psychoactive drugs can do that—hence the ‘trip’ in which the senses are scrambled and the brain is trying frantically to get its normal input. We intellectually know blue isn’t a smell. When you get into the soft tissue of the brain—we have an organization, a normal routing, that discriminates and orders our universe.

How does a person recognize a smell? It’s rather interesting: the olfactory bulb sits down at the brain stem…early, early architecture, and unlike the higher brain, it’s not bilaterally divided: it’s THAT old, and it’s absolute. If you’re exposed to a smell, certain neurons in it fire. It’s like a constellation. It’s unique. So if you smell it repeatedly, the receptors run out of energy and have to recharge; but the neurons of that pattern will fire again when those receptors are triggered in that pattern: it’s basically a hardwired, programmable chemistry-analyzer installed at the base of the brain, responsive to tissues in the nose and mouth (we do some smelling with the mouth). It’s why the first scent (or taste: the senses are linked) of things is strongest. We have the wiring to discriminate more than we do. But the intellect dismisses its importance. You smell nutmeg. You intellectually know what that is and how it tastes. A year later you have a pudding. And a lot of smell-taste neurons are firing at the base of the brain. You taste eggs. Cream/milk. Sugar. And the ‘nutmeg’ constellation has also fired. It shares some neurons with other things. But you start rummaging for associations that have to do not with damp wood and moss, but with spices. And the brain queries the olfactory bulb as the body takes another mouthful of pudding. Yep. Re-fire that. The conscious brain remembers, now, but the olfactory bulb never ‘forgot’. The pattern, chemically mediated, is always that pattern. We share that with the bloodhound, whose nose is amazingly convolute and who has far, far, far more tissue inside it. Its brain is constantly in touch with the olfactory bulb: it’s got that territory mapped. It lives in a constant bath of sensation and recognition. If the receptors didn’t get tired (run out of energy) the poor dogs would probably stand sniffing the same daisy lifelong. But those neurons give it up—and the dog moves on. We have our mouthful of pudding, and the experienced cook, used to accessing that area of the brain, says: “Nutmeg! That’s what it is!” and thinks he can probably, by the time he finishes this pudding, tell ‘in what proportion’ everything in it may be. He could go home and cook that recipe. And when he does, he’ll be tasting his work, accessing that old record in his olfactory bulb and saying, “Just a single shake more. That should do it.”

Smokers do lose so very much. I always wonder on those cooking-competition shows just how on earth these chain-smokers can possibly operate as chefs. And they usually DON’T win. A master chef’s brain has quite a library of tastes stored—and using that fabulous human frontal brain, he can assemble a construction of air and imagination, and ‘taste’ and ‘smell’ it in his head before he even reaches for the spice rack.

Senses are how we contact the universe. And yet we, and most matter, are stretched so very thin that atomic particles can pass through us constantly with the figurative room of a football field on all sides. We’re empty space, mostly, that can interact with other moving empty spaces and gather information into an architecture that is definitely ‘us’ as opposed to, say, Fido, or a table. We’re a constant wonder, protoplasm that ‘made good’ in our cosmic neighborhood.

Weird scientific theory of the week

I just got to thinking—I love watching The Universe, How the Earth Was Made, etc…and I remember arguing with Don Wollheim about the origin of flowers and colors (two separate debates, actually.) Today I’m thinking about color, and the tendency of many biologists to assume color perception had to do with mating display.

I don’t think so. I think the first ‘color’ other than white, black or brown, was red.

Why? Because in the deep sea, it’s a great advantage to be red if you’re not going to be transparent. You’re invisible. And many modern (but ancient) deep sea creatures are red…the vampire squid. etc.

The first evolution of sight was the ability to perceive light and dark and react to it. Since many corals have photosynthetic elements (zooxanthellae) that give them sugars via sunlight, I’d think that the ability to crawl into a sunnier spot (and many soft corals crawl, or grow ot a certain side)—is advantageous. It likely started because, like the little robot, things need input—in this case—of energy.

There followed the development of the ability to see motion. Many primitive creatures still register only movement against a still field. If you aren’t moving, you’re not there.

From that, the primitive brain developed the complexity to ‘expect’ or ‘track’ that movement and ‘store’ the position to track it down. Predictive tracking requires a few more dedicated neurons.

Beyond that I think camoflage became big business. The ability to look like your background.

I think red was the first ‘color’, and it was a protective pigmentation. I have a red coffee cup…and if I set it down in the darkened kitchen, I need to find Marvin the Martian’s eyes, because the red cup is just not visible. It’s no-color. It’s not there. And it’s not just my aging eyesight.

Redness developed in, I think, the early, early ocean. And when redness came up into the sunlight…predators found it advantageous to see red. Ergo (and we can’t prove this, since soft tissue doesn’t fossilize) the first development of color vision would have have come along as an evolving system for detecting red.

Genetics is a crap shoot. You tweak one thing and a dozen others tag along and get tweaked with it. Develop red, and pretty soon you’ve got weak red (pink) and then the zooxanthellae and their photosynethesis give you greens. And then you get some strange chemistry combos through mutation and you’ve got a yellow. If you’re a coral nibbler, seeing some of these  wavelengths is good. Now—we’re not always talking 20/20 vision here…and there’s the possibility of creatures seeing way over into spectra we don’t visit…eg, insects picking up uv. [Jane and I have had interesting arguments as we drive regarding how we see certain landscape, what predominates, and we’ve decided she sees more blue than I do. I think humans do see a bit into the high and low edges of the spectrum.)

I also think that colors in their origin are about biochemistry. There’s something in the makeup of flowers that makes yellow and purple ‘popular’ colors. Blues are hard to get—in flowers. Not hard in birds. and I think it’s about life process, chemicals of a certain sort in abundance: for instance, stony coral slurps up calcium and magnesium by the tablespoonful and builds what we call bone. In fact—animals (and corals are animals) are really fond of calcium (which not only builds our bones but powers our contractile tissue.) But plants—are really fond of phosphate and nitrogen—which in general, animals don’t like to bathe in. And we’re not green, and plants are. Its that chlorophyll thing—but it’s also what lives inside your skin, whether you have hemoglobin, and whether or not you were up near the primeval surface collecting light and making sugar, or down in the depths either trying to be red or to find what IS red. If our ‘blush’ hadn’t been an advantage, the survivors would have been the ones with thicker skin.

So there. I don’t think it’s mating displays, well, not for millions of years. I think it’s survival.

 

 

For those who love rice…and hate fussing with it…

Zojirushi.

http://www.amazon.com/Zojirushi-NS-ZC...

This never fails. Brown rice, sweet rice, white rice, mixed rice, sticky rice—perfect. You can cook a week’s worth at one go, keep the extra in the fridge, and microwave what you need for the current dish, or an individual serving. Fill to appropriate water line, add rice by measure (included)  This is a cooker popular in Asia, Thailand to Japan, and there’s a reason. Spoon, cord, spoonholder all detach and store in the interior, and the little handle lets you lift it and put it away with no fuss at all. Load it, push cook, walk off and leave it. THere’s, I believe, also a timer.

I love this thing.

This, while I’m at it is my other kitchen machine:

http://www.amazon.com/Cuisinart-CBK-2...

Between these two, predictibly fresh bread and perfect rice of any type. That eliminates a lot of ‘surprise’ dinners as you have to cope with what didn’t work.

 

 

 

Flirtation with nightshades, or what Bren and Jane and I have in common…

I don’t do this when I’m traveling, but at home, with access to meds, just occasionally…

Recipe: Taste of Thai Red Curry Paste packet, Taste of Thai light Coconut Milk…

5 robust red potatoes. Pkg chicken strips, frozen is ok.

Olive oil in pan, low heat,  lidded pan, cook sliced and diced red potatoes and chicken strips, with curry paste. About 20 min. Do not inhale the fumes: you will cough your head off. It gets better after the coconut milk goes in.

Add coconut milk. Stir. Increase heat just a little, til it bubbles. I cook rice in a rice cooker and do enough for several meals: it reheats well in the microwave. So it’s just about 3-4 minutes to reheat. Serve curry over rice. Serves 4, or serves 2 meals for 2 people.

Yum!

Tax time and the computer’s dying…

This one owes us nothing, but it’s the desktop catchall in the net—we built this one from scratch, as I recall, and it’s got multiple disks and a lot of really outmoded software. It runs Win7 but it’s far from fast…and Jane and I took the day to try to figure the last part of the personal taxes, to get those off to the accountant.

We decided this time we’re SO late we’d either have to Express it all or just get clever, scan documents into pdf and get our accounting program to output to pdf and then ship all the pdfs down to our faithful accountant. It’s a lot of data. And the machine began to creak, if not to smoke. One disk was full. We moved to another. And the accounting software itself is so aged it threw the (newer) printer into frantically printing the same page over and over and over, more than 50 times, with me swearing all the way, before I could find somewhere in the software to pry its electronic fingers off that notion—I mean, ordinary cutoffs weren’t working. The thing would just lay back and wait its next chance to run more page 8′s. That’s when we decided that sending the files electronically would be cheaper and easier, and our accountant was ok with it.

So the next job is the business taxes, and we’re going to have to do something about that computer. I think I’ve found a reasonable one that’s certainly going to be better than what was state of the art in 2001. D’ya think?

3 year on site service policy, hd monitor, 500 gig hd, 4 gig ram, both our accounting softwares and Word included, Win 7 64 bit. And for less than half what we paid to build the creaking old monster ourselves back in 2001.  Knowing the computer won’t crash with your data before you get the business taxes done? Priceless. One offering (extra charge) is a terabyte drive—I could be wrong, but seems to me it could actually slow you down. Finding anything on the 3 terabyte drives we have floating between computers is an artform. I think 500 gig should do it.

Lord, I remember the great fuss over the 20 g Winston drives our weather station had: I came into the news station for something or another (interview, I think) and we had literally to tiptoe past those fragile machines sitting on their carts in the hall, lest any vibration jar them…

Now one of our terabyte drives gets shoved flat by rampaging cats and we just set it up and keep going. I understand they’re a bit fragile…but so far, not.

This is our year to have our oldest electronics go. Jane’s laptop was a spring chicken, but she’s now up to speed, and the other, once repaired, will be a travel machine; the Panasonic 1000w microwave went; replaced that; now the 2001 computer. I wonder how long until the telly in my bedroom explodes…

 

 

A brief period of Pond Hell…

Startup is always a pita, and more so than usual this odd year, with cold weather—and my local store deciding to stock chlorine remover instead of a remover for both chlorine and chloramine, my feed store people complete clueless as to what chloramine is, or does, (it's a stable, ie, hard to remove, form of chlorine) and stocks it in 14.00 bottles of a pint. A pint!, 1 teaspoon treating 100 gallons. I have a 5000 gallon pond that I need to do so major work on!

So until my Amazon order gets here, I'm just going out every two hours and washing out the filters. When I can actually run the pond vacuum, I can help this a lot—but until then—every 2 hours. At night I just leave the filter canted up a bit to let water enough get through to keep it from clogging off the water flow and overheating the pump.

Scuze me—I have to go out there and hose out the filter again!

Jane has been working since you first heard me say that Chernevog was ready…

..changes in the software, a computer crash, a new computer, and more changes in the software…and issues right now plaguing everybody who works with e-books, have kept Jane busy through tonight just trying to format Chernevog so that it looks right in ALL displays. You get Kindle right—and Nook refuses to display correctly. You get Nook—you guessed it. She's done nothing from 7 AM to 11 PM and beyond, sometimes to 2 AM…and the beast is full of dodges, hidden code, and dastardly schemes to prevent files from working — just WORKING sanely. The covers on which she has labored long and hard—want to stretch. Or shrink. The software folk are paying no attention to the long-held book industry standard for cover size. Oh, no. Amazon wants one size. Nook wants another. Calibre, the conversion software, produces yet another, sideways-stretched. Mobipocket creator, deliberately bought and orphaned by Amazon, is still reasonably good. Sigil is hiding code somewhere. I'll tell you, it is NOT just push-a-button and convert. These companies are fighting each other…I strongly suspect…doh!…and the idea of giving the creator control with easy, visible toggles is not on the horizon. Sigh.

So when you do see the new things, note very long hours by Jane and by Lynn working on these conversions. Think of them, please. I wish I could do something to help—but at this level of computer chicanery, all I can do is play librarian, searching the internet for answers to very specifically posed questions.  9 times out of 10, they're ahead of them. Just rarely I can find something useful. But alas…not often enough.