A synthesized synthesizer

Some Google Doodles are better than others, but today’s is my favorite so far. It is a synthesizer in honor of what would have been Robert Moog‘s 78th birthday (he died in 2005). I’m sure it’s quite simplified in comparison with real synthesizers (doesn’t that sound a bit like an oxymoron?) today, but it’s certainly good enough to have fun playing around.

An article at the Christian Science Monitor explains how to play the Moog Doodle. I was very frustrated when I tried to play it earlier in the day, on a computer where I use Internet Explorer as my browser. I don’t know if the problem was IE, or the settings on my computer, but I couldn’t play a single note. All that happened when I clicked anywhere on the graphic was that it performed a search on “Bob Moog.”

Now I am using Firefox, and it works just fine. (It did take me a few moments to find the link to do the search on Bob Moog, which is to the right of the picture of the synthesizer.) Using the computer keyboard, rather than using the mouse to click on the synthesizer keyboard, makes it possible to play the notes more quickly. But it does require remembering what letters and numbers play what – or (as I do) just playing notes kind of at random.

It’s been a very long time (almost forty years) since I played around with a synthesizer. One of the choices in music class in sixth or seventh grade (I forget which) was a brief course in electronic music. We learned how the synthesizer worked, and got to try using it. I wasn’t interested enough in the subject to try to really understand what I was doing, but I liked being able to produce weird electronic noises.

Today I have a slightly better understanding of what the oscillator controls, filters, and envelope controls do. But I still am more inclined to just play around and enjoy the strange sounds I can make than try to methodically produce any particular kind of sound. If I had lots of time on my hands, maybe I’d try out some of the examples given in the CSM article.

But at heart I like words even better than music. So instead I’m writing a blog post.

What produces trust?

I recently read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the biological basis for trust. Paul Zakon explains how the hormone oxytocin promotes feelings of trust. Higher levels of oxytocin correspond to a greater degree of caring and generous behavior. And being the recipient of such behavior increases one’s own oxytocin, as does participating in group activities.

As Zakon acknowledges, there is a lot more to trust than a particular chemical. I found myself thinking about how my own thinking about trust has changed over the years.

When I was growing up, my ideal was to be self-reliant. I didn’t want to have to rely on anyone else. My parents expected me to act and think independently, rather than being told what to do and how to think.

It didn’t come at all easy to me – I hated having go places on my own (other than school and the familiar stores around town), and I lacked confidence in my ability to make certain decisions on my own. But I wanted to be able to be independent, and my heroes in the books I read were people who were like that.

Movies: The Avengers

I initially had no interest in seeing The Avengers. I only knew it was coming soon because it was advertised on the Diet Dr. Pepper bottles I buy for my husband. I’ve never been a big fan of superhero movies, and if I watched the movie at all, it could be on DVD.

Then I saw all the positive comments (and only positive comments) from various friends in cyberspace. Maybe it would be worth watching, I thought. So I read a review in the Wall Street Journal, which described “a slow start, a single star performance surrounded by indifferent acting and an onslaught of computer effects.” OK, back to waiting for the movie to come out on DVD.

Our older son is coming home from college today (just finished with his sophomore year), and I knew he’d want to see it. I could send my husband and the boys to the theater and have the house to myself for a while. Except that our son posted yesterday on facebook what an amazing movie it was. So when my husband suggested the three of us go see it yesterday evening, I agreed – it was something we could do as a family, and I had been working hard cleaning the basement most of the day.

Anatomy of a knee

My husband has been having pain in his right knee, the result of a fall while playing racquetball back in February. (He also pulled the hamstring group of muscles in his left leg, and the pain from that was so bad that he did not notice the problem with his right knee for some weeks.) The doctor tentatively diagnosed a torn meniscus, which was confirmed last week by an MRI.

I remembered from ninth grade science that a meniscus was the curve at the top of liquid in a cylinder (such as a test tube). Obviously the term means something else in relation to a knee, but I figured (correctly) that it probably had to do with the shape. It comes from the Greek word for “crescent.”

Despite having injured my own knee back when I was 22, I never had any clear idea just what the inside of a knee looks like. After all, back in 1984 we didn’t have wikipedia, and I wasn’t interested enough to go to the library and find a book about knees. Now I can see just how complex the knee is, and I’m not surprised that the doctor who treated me was never able to determine exactly what was wrong with my knee.

A look inside the larynx

As the doctor explained to me yesterday how my vocal cords were inflamed because of the constant postnasal drip (which could be due to either a virus or allergies, he couldn’t say which was more likely), I had a mental picture of my larynx with two thick white cords covered in mucus. Something like this, but with more realistic flesh color and oozy mucus.

Then I remembered the pictures we had been shown in a class in Voice and Diction that I took in college. At the time, I was amazed that it was possible to take pictures of the larynx – in color, no less! Somewhat to my disappointment, there were no “cords” as I had always imagined them. (Our professor told us it is more accurate to call them vocal folds – but if even my doctor calls them vocal cords, I guess the change is unlikely to catch on.)

Some of the pictures showed a larynx that was inflamed, and I tried to imagine my larynx looking that way, as it no doubt had on a number of occasions when I had laryngitis. Our professor emphasized how important it was to take good care of our vocal cords, by not straining them (e.g. from too much yelling at sports events) and not smoking. I’ve never smoked, and I’m not the sort who tends to yell, at sporting events or anywhere else. But I probably don’t rest my voice enough when I get laryngitis, which is at least once a year.

I decided to look on the Web to see if I could find pictures of the larynx like those I had seen in that class over thirty years ago. There are lots available, including videos. This one shows a healthy larynx, and you even get to watch the tiny camera snaked through the person’s nose and down her throat (a procedure I had to have done before my sleep study, to see if the opening in my throat was small enough that apnea was a reasonable diagnosis). You’ll have to wait until about the one-minute mark to see the larynx clearly.

Here is a (much shorter) video (scroll down to Example 5) showing someone with laryngitis caused by a virus. (You’ll have to have QuickTime installed in order to watch it.) I’m guessing that’s about how my larynx looks right now. And according to the doctor, it will probably keep looking – and sounding – that way until I give it enough rest so it can get better. (The laryngitis often lasts quite a while after the virus itself is gone, probably because once people feel better they want to talk again.)

Books: People Will Talk

I came across a reference to People Will Talk: The Surprising Science of Reputation when I was looking for quotes about reputation, for a post I did some weeks ago on valuable possessions. I was intrigued by the idea that science could have insights on something like reputation, so I promptly requested the book from the library.

I’ve wondered for a long time – probably since my teens – why the thought of public embarrassment over some unwitting mistake or misunderstanding would trouble me more than guilt over having done something that I knew to be wrong. I wondered if other people felt the same way, but couldn’t think of a way to ask without feeling even more embarrassed over the explanations I would have to give in the process.

Lessons from Mythbusters

We spent yesterday on the go all day, traveling to Chicago for the opening day of Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition at The Museum of Science and Industry. (To be precise, we spent all day on the go except for a three-hour wait at the train station. Our train home was delayed due to technical difficulties – the restroom in one car wouldn’t work and apparently it is simply not allowed to set out with a non-functioning restroom.)

We decided that next time we’ll simply have to spend the money to stay overnight, because there is just too much to see in the museum to do it in a day trip. (I had already decided we would want to go back, and purchased us a family membership rather than just admission for yesterday.) But at least we did get to thoroughly explore the Mythbusters exhibit.

It was fairly impressive to see so many of the props/experiments that we had seen used on the show. There was a statue with its head sliced off, one of the test dummies with a gouge through its cheek and clothes that had definitely seen better days. Jon recognized the champagne bottle machine gun; I must have missed seeing that episode.

But what I really enjoyed was the chance to actually try some experiments ourselves. This page lists what was available, and we tried about half of them. Some are purely simulations – dodging a bullet (I’m pretty slow – it took me nearly 0.8 seconds to move once I saw the light flash in front of me) and driving blind (I would have liked to try this but there was always a crowd of people around these computers).

But I did get to try pulling a tablecloth out from under a set of (unbreakable) dishes. There were two kinds of tablecloths available; I chose the one that someone said was supposed to be easier. Most of the dishes moved a few inches but stayed on the table, however the ones closest to me fell onto the floor. Personally I think I could have done better if I had stood a little further away – standing on the X marked on the floor, I didn’t have room to pull my arms back as far as I wanted to.

Why is the bluebird blue?

I used to have a co-worker who refused to eat blue M&M’s. She ate all the other colors, but the blue ones went in the trash can – unless someone willing to eat the blue ones was on hand to take them. I found this behavior very strange – what difference does it make what color the M&M is? But Sue did not eat anything that was blue, arguing that no food is that color naturally.

What about blueberries? She pointed out that they’re not really blue. The skins are more purplish, and the inside is some shade of green. I tried and tried, but couldn’t come up with any food that is naturally a true blue. For that matter, there’s not much in nature that has blue pigment at all.

An example to follow

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has a very interesting article in the on the choices physicians make when it comes to their own end-of-life decisions. In some ways the comments on the article are even more interesting.

What Ken Murray writes simply confirms my own thinking on the topic. But the comments present a wide variety of views, and bring up some of the practical difficulties in making appropriate end-of-life decisions for ourselves or our loved ones.

One thing that surprised me in the comments was the level of cynicism regarding the motives of the medical establishment. Some people accuse doctors of recommending and performing procedures that cost a lot but do little to improve or extend life, simply to make more money. The more reasonable (IMO) comments point out that doctors feel obliged to provide what amounts to futile care, simply to minimize the possibility of ruinously expensive lawsuits.

Is it bigger than a … ?

The first time I discovered I could zoom in and out on a web-based map, I thought it was really cool. By now I take the ability for granted, and I can’t remember the last time I used a paper map except when on the road. (And someday I’m sure I’ll have a tablet of some sort so that even on the road I can use web-based maps.)

It’s pretty impressive that we can easily go from the scale of the entire country down to individual city blocks. But I looked at a website this evening that goes way, way bigger and way, way smaller.

It’s not a map, by any means, just a representative sample of objects of different sizes. But by being able to compare similarly sized objects, and then zoom in and out to much bigger and much smaller objects, you get a better feel for the relative size of things.

The Scale of the Universe 2 goes all the way up to the size of the universe (of course!) and down to a tiny unit of length called the planck, which is 0.000000000016 yoctometers. If you never heard of a yoctometer before, don’t feel bad – I hadn’t either. It is really, really small – but it’s huge compared to a planck.