Update: Despite my, “I am not really interested in untangling all the structural reasons they would act this way”, it did occur to me on reflection, that my stupid Python quote title actually does a good job of capturing my take on the current state of the media. On the one hand, I think the Manufacturing Consent propaganda model is essentially correct, but it is often applied in an almost cartoonish way, with evil Daddy Warbucks-type media owners being the only ones in the whole system with any agency.  It takes a whole confederacy of wankers to make the system work.

Brad & Janet:
There’s a light…

Chorus:
Over at the GNF place.

Brad & Janet:
There’s a light…

Chorus:
Burning up the human race.

Brad & Janet:
There’s a light, … light … in the darkness of everybody’s life.

 Tangentially relevant mash-up.

As an accomplished master of the obvious, let me point out that we live on a the surface of a sphere.  However, for most practical purposes we might as well live on a big flat world with a rectilinear North-South/East-West grid (and a big mongo Greenland to boot – you know, so we have more ice to raise the sea level with ….)  Very long distance travel is an exception, and especially so when it takes you close to the antipodes of your usual haunts. I just returned from Perth in Western Australia, which is the closest antipodal city to the Eastern U.S. *(I also got down even further south to the fabulous Augusta/Cape Leeuwin area at the extreme SW of Australia, which is even closer to being the anti-NE U.S.) It got me thinking about some of the interesting and somewhat counter-intuitive aspects of antipodes.  [Quick question (verbal and visual answers down below somewhere ) – If you go northwest from your current position, which way does your antipode go?  (assuming you are not at one of the poles.) ]

Note that Australia and New Zealand are often referred to in general as The Antipodes given their position relative to England, although in actuality Counterpane-Australia fits nicely into the North Atlantic between the US and Spain, while New Zealand is mostly over Spain. (The actual Antipodes Islands – windblown specks of penguin and seabird habitat southeast of New Zealand – come in right about at the Channel Islands.)

Between you and your antipode there lies an equally short route in every direction, i.e. from your antipode all directions lead home. And these paths cover every inch of the earth’s surface. In fact, they all follow Great Circles  (so they also encompass every “shortest path” from where you are to every point on Earth. ) The easiest way I find to think about this, is to imagine that you are at one of the Poles, so the other Pole is the antipode, and the paths are then all of the meridians of longitude. This is essentially then the same observation as that you can only go one direction (south) from the North Pole and vice versa. (Since many of the paths go over Antarctica, this got me thinking whether there are any scheduled air flights that pass over Antarctica  – other than ones actually going there. Discussing this with my Aussie mates, the best we came up with was Sydney/ Santiago – which does “bend” south quite a distance, but does not seem to get over the Antarctic landmass. Auckland to Capetown or Perth to Santiago looks like they would do it , but it seems that there are no direct flights   – see this Great Circle mapping page)

Answer to quick question above. If you go northwest the antipode goes southwest. Not too hard – North-South and East-West are quite different concepts when you get to the global scale, (for instance there is no preferred “East Pole” – sorry Pooh**) but if you are like me, it is not obvious and takes a bit of mental  visualization.

But even more intriguing to me is how in my actual visual imaging of this moving of antipodes,  (not just the assignment of directional names “east”, “north” etc.), I find that I chase my antipode in the east-west dimension, while I seem to move opposite to it in the north-south one. After a bit, I can turn  the north-south movement into a “chase”, basically by following my line of longitude up and over the pole and around to the antipode – I chase it along this particular great circle. However, it is much more difficult to turn the east-west into any kind of “oppositional” movement. 

At first blush I thought this came back to  North-South being a very different animal from East-West. When you go north-south you are following a great circle, when you go east-west you are not. (Wait a minute,  didn’t I say up above that every direction gets you to your antipode along a great circle? Yes it does. But the “east-west” great circle that gets you to your antipode is the one that is tangent to your line of latitude, it then “bends away” to the south if you are in the Northern Hemisphere at at a “rate” dependent on your latitude.) But it turns out that the problem is (mostly) in my (and I suspect others) default representation of the world.  If I need to actually take into account the “roundness” of the world, my first representation is as a cylinder – just take that flat rectilinear map and glue it together along the date line.  [And in fact,  in the map-filled bedroom of my youth I had a cylindrical wastebasket with a map of the world on it.] In such a representation  north-south great circles get broken into two parts which go “opposite” of one another.  [Note that general utility of the "cylindrical" representation is greatly helped by the relative lack of the need to identify locations in the Polar regions. You might view this as happy chance,  good timing with respect to our evolution of intelligence and the current climate,   or even make the argument that the polar regions (areas near the axis of rotation) of planets are most likely to be of diminished interest  to newly emerged intelligent species (or even most species ... as opposed to say the representation of most use to an Arctic Tern.)  Elucidation and criticism of this argument left as an exercise to the reader.]

* Perth is actually just about directly opposite of Bermuda.  Nice addition to the “sun never sets on the British Empire” pairs, which also includes Auckland- Gibraltar.  Oh and “the Pacific Ocean is really, really, really big”  winner goes to the parts of the Peruvian and Vietnam coastlines that match up. That’s right it is as far around between them as is crossing SE Asia, Indian Ocean/Indian sub-continent, Africa, South Atlantic and South America combined. See the nice map below or at the Wikipedia article on Antipodes.

** re: East Pole. I am talking about the real Winnie-the-Pooh, not the corporate IP terrorism fraud that Disney rolls out daily in the various Rat Parades around the world.

Watching the piteous national political media at play in so many different fields of the Lord this past week (bloggers, planes, leaks, and my fave: Gosh, there was corruption early in the occupation of Iraq! Why weren’t we told?) brought to mind a somewhat tangential (but apocalyptic!) diary I had posted at DailyKos a few months back.

 The Four Postmen of the Apocalypse

First, after Grantland Rice ( the “Dean of American Sportswriters”, back when being the Dean meant having a clue.)

Outlined against the troubles of a nation, the Four Writers wrote again. In Internet lore they are known as arrogance, pomposity, cluelessness and idiocy. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Broder, Woodward, Howell and Hiatt. They formed the crest of the cyclone before which the reputation of the Washington Post was swept over the precipice these past ten years as a million readers peered at the bewildering panorama spread out on their breakfast tables and computer screens.

And thence on to more Ancient Sources

9. [Broder] And I saw when the rabid lamb opened one of the links, and I heard, as it were the sound of wankery, one of the four courtiers saying, Come and read.

10. And I read, and beheld two fatuous quotes: and he that spoke them knew not his hypocrisy; and many spots on Sunday morning television were given unto him: and he went forth being arrogant, and to show all that he well and truly was a dick.

11.[Woodward] And when he had opened the second link, I heard the second courtier say, Come and read.

12. And there I read another work of stenography: and power was given to him that wrote therein to transcribe the thoughts of the mighty, and that they should flatter one another: and there was given unto him great riches for his efforts.

 13.[Howell] And after she had someone help her open the third link, I heard the third courtier say, Come and read. And I read, and lo, she that wrote it had a pair of balances in her hand.

14. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four courtiers say, A measure of column space for a Democrat, and three measures of column space for a Republican; unless the news is bad and then the measures shall be reversed; and see that thou hurt not the status quo.

15.[Hiatt] And when he had opened the fourth link, I heard the voice of the fourth courtier say, Come and read.

16. And I read, and beheld a mass of distortions and lies: and his name that wrote it was Idiocy, and The wingnuts followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the estate, to mislead with pen, and with words, and with images, and with the shameful iniquity of their lies.

But, Hey! Who’s complaining? at least they’re the Liberal™ Media.

JP Stormcrow

[cross-posted at Mostly Harmless]

.FNG a ni demusnoc kcurt a yb revo nur saw enoyreve ylnedduS

***BREAKING*** *** Web Only Exclusive*** ***BREAKING***

By KIRBY ALTHOUSE, Associated Press Writer

PALO ALTO – Cyber-researchers at the Hoover Institution on Massively Redundant Sucking and Blowing confirmed the discovery of an Internet White Hole in a rarely visited corner of the blogosphere. Long postulated, but never previously observed, researchers traced the source of the White Hole via Internet tubes to a much more significant Internet Black Hole that had developed several weeks prior (see comment #287 here.)

Experts puzzled over the interesting transformations that the content being emitted from the White Hole had undergone. While certain images and in-jokes were unchanged, other content was not: danger had become harmlessness; hockey, golf; French, American; and 2001: A Space Odyssey emerged as Star Wars. Other key elements and content appeared to be missing altogether. A pair of shoes was found as well.

The significant mismatch in size and information content between the two suggests that the connections between them have split and fused repeatedly, and that this particular White Hole probably represents a mere fraction of the total energy consumed in the Black Hole. This led some to predict that other White Holes might pop up elsewhere on the Internet in the near future.

The discovery caused a ripple of excitement among some of the giants of Internet lore. When some Pseudonymous guy who sounded like Indigenous people who had been portrayed in Earth Island Jo heard of the development, his face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale, and he skated off without comment. An earthtone clad Al Gore, however, greeted the news warmly. “Hot damn”, he sighed, “This is the kind of thing we were looking for back at the start. Now we’re cooking with gas!” Internet tubemeister Ted Stevens (R-Dementia) responded by rushing an emergency Appropriations Bill to the floor of the Senate to fund construction of several hundred bridges to locations in his home state where new White Holes might or might not appear.

There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings.

 JP Stormcrow

Dang! Just checked Sitemeter, and so far no one else has read this humble blog. Well, write it and they will come … I hope.

I have had the strangest feeling all day, very dream-like. It is like I am both here and not here, all at the same time. It makes me somewhat apprehensive, as if some important event were about to transp

 Schrödinger’s Cat   – 01/04/61

Starting tomorrow I will be bringing a unique cat’s eye view of the world to cyberspace. And I am not just any old cat! I am the pet of a world famous physicist!

But right now, it is dinner time. Is the food out yet? It may or may not be, the master uses some infernal apparatus of his to decide when to feed me. If I go into the kitchen and check, I will know for certain, but for now it is much more “delicious” to just sit here tasting it in my mind – regardless of the actual state of  food-outedness.

Schrödinger’s Cat - 01/03/61