Month: November 2007

Devils Tower

For several days I pondered the prospect of making the 5 1/2 hour drive to Devils Tower. This is a distance greater than the trip from Little Rock to Dallas, and as I preferred not to stay the night in a motel, I would be going up and back in the same day. Fortunately, the magnificent desolation of Wyoming is infinitely more interesting than the featureless plains of Texas, or even the constant thick of Arkansas trees. I accepted the challenge and set out at 8AM.

The journey was mostly uneventful until I turned onto highway 59 outside Douglas. I cannot describe the magnitude of the roadkill, mostly rabbits in various states of decay, that I saw. In less than a mile, I counted more than 100 remains. For several miles, I could not drive 50 yards without seeing something dead. I noticed the lack of trees, and guessed that there was probably a lack of scavenging birds in this region to pick the roads clean. I’ve also heard that many animals choose to sleep on highways at night for the warmth the roads absorb during the day. And on roads so infrequently traveled, the animals are more likely to be taken by surprise. Not only was this somewhat traumatic to experience, I also was reminded of the scenes from Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the animals near Devils Tower have died as a result of the government coverup.

Fortunately the roadkill tapered off after a few miles. I did see plenty of live fauna along the way – mostly antelope, but also some bison and deer. I reached Devils Tower around 2PM. It was as freakishly magnetic as I had always imagined it to be. For awhile I just sat and stared at it. I went to a couple of different gift shops looking for souvenirs, and took pictures of some abandoned structures nearby[1]. I only stayed for about an hour. It is the geological equivalent of a question mark. Even geologists can’t quite agree about how it was formed, or why it is so rare. I get a peculiar enjoyment[2] out of shifts in my environment, particularly when something that is known for permanence changes – for example, when the full moon gets large in the early evening, or when clouds allow the sun’s outline to be made distinct at sunset, or even just unique cloud formations after a storm. Devils Tower is like that: it’s something that simply does not happen often, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen in life or books.

Not wanting to be tempted to stay very long, I didn’t pay the $10 to enter the park. I wanted to get as much daylight driving on the way back for fear of running into antelope on the roads at night. I got to see a spectacular sunset on the way back to Laramie. The sun is gone by 5:30PM up here, and I got back around 8PM.

1.) One building contained several documents: order forms from Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck, and canceled checks from the late 30’s and early 40’s.

2.) I think this enjoyment is the sense that I’m getting as close as one can on Earth to experiencing life on another planet.

Auditory Shapes

Daniel Levitin, the author of This Is Your Brain on Music, mentions that he once worked for a company that worked on audio recognition software for determining the content of differently labeled mp3 files. Back in the days of Napster especially, the titles of similar audio files would vary widely by user. For example, “One” by Metallica might have dozens of permutations of its title – one.mp3, metallica-one.mp3, one_metalika.mp3, etc. So the software was good at distinguishing identical audio files with different names, but there still is no software to do what the human brain can do, and that is to identify different versions of a song. Humans can recognize melodies irrespective of arrangement, timbre, key, or tempo. Computers have a really hard time with that.

It’s a complex task of course, especially given the vast range of interpretations that jazz musicians[1] offer us. But even when Ella Fitzgerald forgets the words to “Mack the Knife” we still consider it a legitimate version of the song. As yet, no computer can. There’s too much information to weed out, and the underlying question the book’s author presents is “what makes melody so special?”

As I drove back from the laundromat yesterday, I wondered if the answer is “shape.” A melody is a kind of shape. It’s a relationship between intervals, and not notes, or instruments or anything else. I think the brain might most easily process and store basic shapes before anything else. Visually, a triangle is still a triangle regardless of its color, location, shading or background. So the same is true with “Joy to the World” – you can change the instrument, key, arrangement, whatever, but as soon as you alter even one interval, it really ceases to be “Joy to the World.”

A similar visual parallel is CAPTCHA images that prevent spam. You can recognize the letters regardless of the colors, shape mutation and other visual distortions. But thus far computers have a hard time doing the same.

There’s still no solid consensus on how the brain does this. It actually ventures in the realm of philosophy and Wittgenstein’s famous problem with definitions and rules. We define things based on a loose set of characteristics, and computers just aren’t that loose yet. A great example came yesterday when Heath corrected my application of the term “tank” to this picture. It’s actually a self-propelled howitzer, although it carries all the conventional traits one would associate with a tank (treads, turret, armor, cannon). The key difference is their use. A howitzer is a long-range piece of artillery and it doesn’t perform the tasks that tanks perform. Still, there’s always a point at which strict definitions fail us. Nothing can ever be fully, explicitly defined.

So, how does the brain define anything? I wish I knew for sure, but I suspect from my own experience that the brain makes a vague constellation of features and works from that. The esteemed Dr. Odegard pointed me in the direction of what he referred to as “prototypes that represent the central tendencies of a category or stimulus set.” Not quite Platonic forms (one ideal against which all are judged), these are items that more or less resemble each other, and which may fit into multiple categories[2].

Complicating all this is the fact that our brains are great at filling in missing information and making assumptions based on previous experience. The famous email forward that points out that the brain can still read words whose interior letters have been scrambled is a great example. You can sitll udnersatnd tihs sentnece, for exmalpe. So, too, you might recognize “Mack the Knife” when the pianist has created an improvisational intro around the melody.

Simplistically put, I’m guessing our brains recognize general shapes first and add attributes later, factoring in variations from experience. Whether that shape is a triangle or a G# triad, maybe it’s still just a shape to the brain.

1.) Indeed, it seems as though the job of a jazz musician is to see just how much they can get away with in terms of playing around a melody or chord progression and still have people recognize the tune.
2.) This then reminded me of the shopping cart software that we used at Epoch Online. It allowed for the assigning of multiple categories to individual products, as well as various options assigned to each product that the user could select (color, size, version). The actual product exists in one place in the database, but has these variables attached to it.

Overheard

Today at the local coffee shop in Laramie, a young co-ed from the University of Wyoming was talking on her cellphone as she sat down to the table behind me. She said something to the effect of, “You went on a date? Who dates these days? It’s like chivalry and good housekeeping; nobody does it anymore.”

I didn’t get a clear indication of what has taken the place of dating in modern courtship, but I assume it has something to do with text messaging, Facebook and MySpace. I for one welcome our New Courtship Overlords. I was never very good at dating in high school or college. I’d just hang around groups of people until a particular girl and I felt mutually affectionate enough to kiss. It seemed to involve less pressure than the expectations and demands of proper dating.

I Wish to Register a Complaint

As I’ve traveled to places where my Internet connection is less than strong, I’ve noticed what a marvelous thing YouTube is when compared to nbc.com or the recently launched thedailyshow.com. YouTube allows you to see how much of the video has loaded, so if you’re on a slow connection, you can pause the video and come back to it when you see that it has loaded. For whatever reason, this is not how the videos at nbc.com and thedailyshow.com work. And it’s endlessly irritating. I’m trying to catch up on Heroes and The Daily Show and I’m constantly stymied by a buffering process that gives me no indication of when the video will resume. Get it right, people!

Wyoming

I’ve been staying with my friend Heather Cox in Laramie, Wyoming, since late Saturday. Here are some fun facts about Wyoming:

  • It is the least populated state in the nation. Yes, less people than Alaska.
  • The license plates usually have only 5 characters, only one of which is a letter.
  • The high winds in the southern part of the state have been known to blow down 18-wheelers[1].
  • Along Interstate 80 there are numerous snow fences and road-closure barriers, as high winds and heavy snowfall will often close the route during the winter months.

Sunday we went for an easy hike, despite the insanely high winds. We parked some distance from the forest, so we had to walk back to the car across a barren field in what had to be 60mph winds. Had I been wearing a parachute, I would have easily achieved lift. That night we drove down to Ft. Collins, Colorado (about an hour’s drive), to see Old Crow Medicine Show who rock out un-ironically with the old-timey sounds.

Today I did laundry and read books. Semi-rambling blog entry on psychology and music courtesy of This Is Your Brain on Music coming soon.

1.) Or knock over mobile homes; an admittedly easier task.

Utah

I’m in a coffee shop east of Salt Lake City. I stayed the night with Matt and Lori (pictures soon, although I did upload a shot of Zoe and the last two days’ journey plus Halloween with Ben as a spot-on Dr. Strangelove), and am headed to Laramie, Wyoming, today.

A random observation I’ve been meaning to put down but keep forgetting. Los Angeles streets are a mess of Spanish mispronunciations:
La Cienega is “LASEE-a-na-ga” but should be “la-cie-a-NE-ga”
Sepulveda is “se-PUL-ve-da” not “se-pul-VE-da”
BUT…one important exception is Rodeo Drive. The denizens of that region wouldn’t dare pronounce it as “RO-de-o.”

I also neglected to mention an important warning about the Seattle Space Needle. In the path between the door and the ticket-takers, there’s a feisty man with a camera and a cheesy backdrop who will physically prevent you from moving forward by asking how many are in your group and cordoning off everyone behind you as he takes your picture. You pay later if you want to. This sort of sneak-attack capitalism irks me to no end, so I tried to scoot by with the group ahead of me and the man yelled at me, “SIR THERE IS A LINE!” Now, I know this guy’s job has to be rough, but he has to know how sh*tty he’s being to people. He really should just let them go. You can decline his advances, but you need to beware of him beforehand. So that’s why I want to make sure all three of you reading this know about him. Just in case you’re ever in Seattle. And I have to vent.

I had a great time on Thursday driving through Roslyn, Washington, where Northern Exposure was filmed. As a fan of the show, I had a great time eating lunch at The Brick[1] and shopping for gifts in Dr. Fleischman’s office.

Driving through eastern Oregon was quite dull, although occasionally the grass achieved a bright gold color that was really pretty. And Salt Lake City is a beautiful town, very well-planned. I climbed Ensign Peak up behind the capitol and you can see everything from up there.

1.) Turns out The Brick saloon is the oldest saloon in Washington state, built in 1889, with one of only two continuous-flow spittoons in the state. A rush of water runs under your feet at the bar for tobacco chewers to deposit their juice. Nifty yet gross.