More on the Untergang

Ads You Would Be Unlikely to See Today

First, from Fox News, a couple of ads that are a hoot:

Picture phones before Jobs thought of them.  Yet, my granddaughter has a webcam on her computer and makes calls via VOIP.  Doesn't need the phone because it's built in.


Anyone having read James Blish's Cities in Flight books knows what a spindizzy was.  What a surprise to find them advertised. 

"Lightspeed smooth"?  A Dillon-Waggoner Graviton Polarity Generator?  Someone tell me Rigid Tool sold these......

But other ads may not make you laugh.  

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WE MEAN IT

The (1 Cousin -1) Wedding

I was traveling yesterday, but I ought to mention that my cousin's daughter was married on Saturday.  (That would be first cousin once removed.)

This would ordinary pass with little notice - I have a lot of cousins and many of them have children - except for the peculiarity of her husband, Steve. 

Steve and Amy were born on the same day, in the same hospital, barely minutes apart. 

Their mothers recovered in the same hospital room. 

They attended the same school, same high school. 

Now they will be married in the same church on the same day, not even minutes apart.... 

Hey, wait a minute.  That's true about all marriages, isn't it? 
+ + +

The families had already known each other before the kids were born.  It's kind of hard  not to know one another, since the Greater New York Metropolitan Area Easton PA is not.  Apparently, the national news thought this was "cute" and for a while poor cousin Harry was inundated with media calls. [Our common grandfather appears on the earlier post regarding Memorial Day.] 

They were married in the local church and the celebrant was the vicar general of the Diocese.  How'd they snag you? my father asked him.  I'm a cousin to the groom's mother, he replied.  [I think it was 'mother'.]  Well, it's the South Side, and as one of my other cousins - she who shared the same, ah, milk bar with me - once put it: "Whenever I was introduced to people as a kid, I assumed I was related to them somehow."  It wasn't called German Hill because of all the Italians.  And the part where I grew up wasn't called Schwar-Town because my grandmother's family was sparse.  So geht's, as we say, im Leben. 

Their reception was held in the State Theater, an old vaudeville cum movie palace back in the days when movie-going was an experience.  This is the same theater where the annual Freddy Awards are given for high school musicals, named after Fred the Ghost who haunts the theater.  (J. Fred Osterstock is also of German extraction, though not a relative so far as I know.)  A visual tour of the theater is here.  I used to go there to actually see movies. 

Anyhow, they did up the reception in a retro movies way.  A Playbill was printed, featuring the photo to the right on its cover.  The name of the play was "Happily Ever After."  Inside: "Act One: The Wedding" followed by a list of the musical numbers and readings.  Then "Act Two: The Reception" followed by the "Cast Members" (bridal party, etc.)

I thought it sounded like a hoot.

This Gödel is Killing Me

I really wish I could take credit for that pun; but no...
Some years ago, J.R. Lucas formerly a mathematician and philosopher of Merton College, Oxford, wrote in "Minds, Machines and Gödel" (and later in The Freedom of the Will) that Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems imply that mechanistic theories of the mind are false. 
Gödel's theorem states that any consistent system strong enough to produce simple arithmetic contains unprovable, though perfectly meaningful formulae, some of which we, standing outside the system, can see to be true.

Example: Consider the statement G: {This formula is unprovable-within-the-system}. 

• If G is false, then the formula is provable-in-the-system and G is true.  A contradiction.
• If G is true, then G is unprovable-in-the-system.

• If G is provable-in-the-system, then it is false; but if it is false then it must be provable; again a contradiction. 
• If G is unprovable-in-the-system, then G is true. 

Thus we see that G must be true and must also be unprovable-in-the-system

(It could be argued that G might be true and unprovable in a system S, yet provable in some larger system S*.  But then there must be a Gödel sentence in S*, and so on.)

Word has Reached My Ear

that Tor will be reissuing the 4-book "Firestar" series in trade paperback, starting with Firestar in August 2011. 

The Auld Problem

James Chastek comments on Stephen Pinker's refutation of the soul (as envisaged by S. Pinker). 

How does the spook interact with solid matter? How does an ethereal nothing respond to flashes, pokes and beeps and get arms and legs to move?

Ah yes, the interaction problem. Is that still around? Apparently so.

D-Day is Tomorrow

I posted this last year; but the message is eternal.