Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 194 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

The Uncomfortable Talk with the Children

January 23, 2018January 23, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

When my children ask me what I do for a living, I find it hard to explain what a software testing and quality assurance professional is.

They still don’t know, but they do know that what I do keeps me from entering the cool contests that our friends keep winning. Because I’m not allowed to enter because I work there, but the friends can, and they win. True story: Friends of mine have won thousands of dollars in prizes in contests for a company I’ve worked for. So much that the company’s owner wondered if I was somehow scamming him. Since I still work there, he must have believed my protestations of innocence, but there have been no more contests, which has severely limited my friends’ collection of valuable comic books.

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A Little Too Far Ahead Of The Story

January 23, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

The Springfield News-Leader made sure to post someone at Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield to capture the chagrin of people who would find the GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN! PEOPLE WILL DIE, OR NOT GET TO USE THE BATHROOMS IN THE VISITOR’S CENTER!

Unfortunately, since the Senate reached cloture and the government shutdown ended, they didn’t get to write the ongoing story of how the shutdown was causing DISASTER and HARDSHIP for all, but with the story already written, they went with it:

Wilson’s Creek visitors frustrated by diminished experience:

Three visitors from Michigan spent a cold afternoon battling whipping wind and a government shutdown in their attempt to see Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield.

The historic Civil War national park southeast of Republic was nearly empty of visitors Monday afternoon, and no park staff was visible during the short-lived government shutdown.

The popular visitors center was closed, but motorists could still drive through the park property, read the educational signs and listen to recorded bits of history about the first Civil War battle west of the Mississippi in 1861.

In other words, it was about as busy as you could expect on a cold Monday afternoon.

But the journalist was sure to make sure the newspaper’s dwindling readers knew who to blame:

All three, however, laid the primary blame on President Donald Trump.

It’s a shame how many people don’t know that the President signs the bills and the legislature passes or does not pass them. I used to give journalists the benefit of the mendacity when they’d write stories mischaracterizing the political process in this country, but now I’m pretty sure they’re just ignorant, too.

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Book Report: Killer Mine by Mickey Spillane (1965)

January 22, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover As you know, I just bought this book a couple weeks ago. As it so often happens in the Nogglestead library, I pick up the most recent book I bought to read, and things like The Buddhist Tradition in China languish on my shelves for decades.

I started reading Mike Hammer books in high school, probably spurred by the Stacy Keach television portrayal (and the fact that I read detective novels a lot in high school), but I haven’t seen many Mickey Spillane books at book sales in the past couple of decades, so my reading of them are pretty sparse since the dawn of the new century (see Black Alley, a Mike Hammer novel, in 2003 and Dead Street, a non-Mike Hammer novel completed by Max Allan Collins, that I read last year).

Like More Good Old Stuff, this book is old school hard-boiled stuff. The book is from the middle 1960s, but it reads like 40s fiction.

“Killer Mine” deals with a cop returning to his old, rough neighborhood where some of the local hoods he grew up with are getting bumped off. The brass put him in undercover, placing him as the pretend wooer of a policewoman who still lives in the neighborhood. As he does some legwork and starts to win over the population who distrust police, he closes in on the killer. Who was obvious to a modern, sophisticated reader of detective fiction. As a matter of fact, I wondered how the detective would take 150 pages to discover what I knew from very early. Then, on page 75, he confronts the killer, and I thought, “Whoa! Now there is some twist to account for the other half of the book!” But, no, this single volume is two novellas.

The second, “Man Alone”, I had read before. I don’t remember much except they call the protagonist “The Killer Cop.” A cop beats a framed payoff from an organized crime figure and then the murder of the organized crime figure and sets out to find who framed him. Again, the answer is obvious to modern readers who’ve been dealing with these sorts of twists for decades after this was written.

But we’re not in a Mickey Spillane book for a novel twist at this point. Instead, we’re in it for the gritty, hardboiled writing style, which you get here for sure, but as I have grown older, I find it less compelling than, say, John D. MacDonald or Raymond Chandler–or even Ross MacDonald. It’s certainly above most men’s paperback fiction in consistency and punchiness, but not the top tier. Which, I’m sure, Spillane would have accepted as long as people bought his books.

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Not Young, Not Turkish

January 22, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Or Turkic, whichever the people from the tribe predominantly associated with the nation state of Turkey calls themselves:

Dan Rather launching newscast on The Young Turks network.

Perhaps his news magazine will be sandwiched between thirty year old episodes of The Golden Girls.

Although perhaps Dan Rather does represent “young” amongst people who watch television news.

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Good Book Hunting, January 18, 2019: Hooked on Books

January 19, 2018January 18, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

So I had fifteen minutes to kill yesterday afternoon before picking up my children from school, so I stopped in at Hooked on Books. Partly because it has a restroom. But, as you know, I always find something on their sale book racks. Today, they were indoors because of the weather. But I found a couple.

I might have mentioned before that Hooked on Books has the best selection of John D. MacDonald paperbacks in the Midwest. But that was eleven years ago. Now, they have two paper copies of Barrier Island, and I have a lifetime of regret that I did not pick them up when I could.

At any rate, I got a couple sale books.

I got:

Hardball: Aryan Legion, the second volume in a paperback series I’d never heard of. I am pretty sure the Aryan Legion are the bad guys here, and this is not further evidence that this is a Nazi-sympathizing blog. Although linking to it with the hyperlink text “Nazi-sympathizing blog” is probably not helping my case with the search algorithms.
Wheland and Carwin the Biloquist by Charles Brockden Brown. I recognized the Penguin Classics spine but never heard of the book. I wonder if it’s really a classic, or just something that modern English professors want to include on their syllabi. I guess I’ll find out someday.
A Question of Accuracy, something in a series called Exploring Mathematics. It might be a children’s book, but if it’s a children’s book from sixty or seventy years ago, it will be something to challenge modern adults.
Proud to be Right, a collection of conservative voices of the next generation. Which might be two generations ago by the speed of Internet intellectual fads.
The Backward Shadow by Lynne Reid Banks, which is a sequel to the novel The L Shaped Room. Which I had seen recently, so I thought I had it on my shelves. Further reflection indicates that this book was one I bought in my eBay selling days, and that I still have a picture of it from the same that I use as test data from time to time on one of my contracts. So I’ve seen the book cover, but I no longer own the book. But I just bought the sequel.
From Mind to Market by Roger D. Blackwell. It’s a book about rethinking logistics. I like to buy industry-specific books sometimes, but apparently I like to read them less. The guy behind the counter couldn’t find the discounted price on it, so he asked me to verify that it was a sale book. I pointed out that it had a red dot on the spine, and he said they’d never done that. But the young man has only been there three years. I’ve been coming to Hooked on Books for over 20 years (!) since my beautiful wife and I were but dating. The kid behind the counter was probably even born then.

They were sale books, so I spent about $7.50. It’s almost worth it for the story about the last book alone.

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The Radio Shuffle Leaves Brian J. Without Hard Rock

January 18, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Is it time for radio stations to alter their play lists already?

Apparently so, for the “rock” stations in Springfield have changed their formats to chase the local “Jack” station.

So 106 “The River” in Springfield, the local “Jack” station, or whatever they call the variety format that plays a couple dozen hits from the 80s, a couple dozen hits from the 90s, and six or ten songs from after the turn of the century, has shifted its playlist to include Led Zepplin and AC/DC.

So 104 “The Cave,” a classic hits (what we used to call Album Oriented Rock back in the day) determined it needed to compete with that format by playing M0AR POWER BALLADS.

The rock station that played new hard rock and metal, Q102, decided what it needed was alternative music from the 1990s. Friends, most of the rock music from the 1990s sucked. Sorry, but you know it’s true. Grunge corrupted everything it touched, and emogoth really loud is not rock.

US 97, which touts its long-standing rock heritage and pedigree dating all the way back to the Clinton administration, has added some newer songs but has also added more 90s rock and power ballads.

I mean, I heard Green Day’s “Basket Case” twice yesterday, on two different radio stations.

And by that I mean I heard the first two lines (“Do you have the time/to listen to me whine?”) before changing the radio station. Attention, millennial radio program directors: THIS IS NOT ROCK.

I used to be Green Day agnostic. But a couple more spins of this in the near term, and I’ll hate Green Day.

Which leaves poor Brian J. with nowhere to turn to hear new rock. What, YouTube? I’m an adult. I don’t have time to wander around YouTube. Spotify? Meh. Make a radio station on one of your favorite bands, and it will play you songs from four or five other bands. Which will be the same bands pretty much no matter what I pick.

I miss the good old radio days of 2017.

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I’d Like A Word With Your Product Designer, Please

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

So the other day, I’m making hash browns and cottage fries for breakfast, so I pull out my beautiful wife’s expensive Scanpan skillet which I’ve never used before because I’m afraid of expensive things.

So I finish cooking the potatoes at a high heat, and I grab the handle to pour the hashbrowns into a bowl, and….

What freaking idiot thought it would be a good idea to put a metal oval with the brand name right in the handle where you’re going to grab the pan? Don’t they teach the kids in design school that metal conducts heat? It rather makes including a plastic or rubber handle on the pan rather superfluous since the insulating properties are quite rendered useless in that particular area in the middle of the handle where your hand goes.

Unless… the goal is free advertising?

Oh, my God, I’ve just made this a Nazi-sympathizing / racist blog by including a picture of a man giving a Nazi salute. Even though it’s a fictional Nazi illustrating an attempt at humor. What have I done?

Never mind. The important life lesson here is Fear expensive things. They hurt you.

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Book Report: More Good Old Stuff by John D. MacDonald (1984)

January 16, 2018January 15, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover This is the second big collection of MacDonald’s pulp-era short stories. I’ve read the first, I think, sometime in the distant past. I thought I read it in the recent past, but I was thinking of End of the Tiger, which I read in 2015.

Unlike that collection, this one is a collection of pulpy crime stories that appeared in various magazines in the 1940s and 1950s. MacDonald says in his forward that he’s updated them a bit to make them more contemporary (to 1984). However, by now, they’re quite dated, but less so to someone who was sentient in 1984.

The book includes:

“Deadly Damsel”, a story about a woman who kills husbands, and what happens when she meets a grifter in Florida.
“State Police Report That…”, wherein an escaped convict is tripped up by a surprising twist.
“Death for Sale”, wherein a prisoner of World War II hunts a French traitor to New Orleans.
“A Corpse In His Dreams”, a successful investigative journalist returns to his hometown, haunted by the death of his girlfriend in a car accident he survived.
“I Accuse Myself”, a man recovering from emergency brain surgery remembers the murder.
“A Place to Live”, a city employee takes on the city machine with a story of corruption and finds the odds stacked against him.
“Neighborly Interest”, a trio of kidnappers hide out in a nondescript house and are tripped up by a small detail.
“The Night Is Over”, a grieving man hits bottom and is unwittingly enticed into a scheme by a con man and blackmailer, only to find himself trapped.
“Secret Stain”, a hard man plays both ends of an organized crime group against each other for his own reasons.
“Even Up the Odds”, a drunkard gets into a scrap with the local connected bully.
“Verdict”, a hard man is sent out of town to eliminate a crusading police chief but finds more than he expected.
“The High Gray Walls of Hate”, an ex-con looks to even the score with those who framed him.
“Unmarried Widow”, a woman finds an out-of-work journalist in a bar, and mistakes him for someone named Jerry. The journalist finds that some hard men are after her, and he tries to find out why. The gimmick where a mad woman calls the protagonist by another name, you might remember, was used in the film Quigly Down Under. I did.
“You Remember Jeanie”, a former cop hits bottom after his girl is killed in a bar, and he continues to frequent the bar for vengeance.

Overall, a pleasing book to read, and it’s the first book I’ve read this year (!). I might revisit the MacDonald stuff for fun some day, especially if I get to live to 200 and they stop making paper books so I have to reread what I have.

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A Childhood Joy: Withheld Granted

January 16, 2018January 16, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

You know how people like to claim that, if their parents had not thrown out their childhood toys/comics/baseball cards, they’d be rich? Yeah, as I’ve proven time and time again, that’s not true. I still have all my baseball cards and comic books from those days, and they have not appreciated much if at all. Most of the comics I own retail for less than the cover price these days, okay?

Another thing my mother did not throw away (among the everything my mother did not throw away): My old G.I. Joes.

Now, my collection began in like 1983 when my father’s then-girlfriend tried to curry my (and my brother’s) favor by buying us toys–and I got my first G.I. Joe, Flash. This was not the big G.I. Joes, but the four inch figures. But my first three (Flash, Snake Eyes, Rock and Roll) predated the swivel-arm grip, so early eighties through the middle 1980s. As I a bunch of comic books last year, the lot included a bunch of G.I. Joe comics, and I could follow along with the introduction (and my acquisition of) the action figures as they were added to the comic book.

The heyday of my collection must have been between 1983/1984 and, what, 1987? In retrospect, it was a blink of an eye, but my brother and I gathered a bunch of them. We even got some mail-away items that you got if you sent a couple of proofs of purchases and a couple of bucks to Hasbro, including the hooded Cobra Commander and a windsurfing board. The growing collection moved with us from Milwaukee to Saint Charles to the trailer park in Missouri. Did we play with them when we were in high school and lived in the valley? I don’t think so. I remember playing with them in the trailer, though, and envying some of the kid across the street’s collection.

My mother kept that collection in her basement in an old toy box.l At some point, I retook custody of it. The toy box, a cheap thing clapped together of particle board, disintegrated, so I put it in a translucent bin. Which has been in the Nogglestead garage for nine years (?!).

And for a long time, my boys could see them, but I would not let them play with them.

Why? A sense of possessiveness? Perhaps. I am particular about my personal relics, and my children are, well, boys who are a little rough with things. Also, I figured that cleaning up and assembling the various pieces would be a little time consuming.

But I recognized that the time window of my children’s interest is closing, so since the boys had a holiday on Monday, I brought the bin in.

I was right about the undertaking: it took me about two and a half hours to wash the items (with a toothbrush at times!) Most of the pieces were here, and only a couple of things were broken (which made me want to seek out my brother and get into a fist fight because undoubtedly HE BROKE IT!). The washing itself was a bit of nostalgic deja vu–when the boys were two and four years old, I’d sometimes pull all of their toys into the kitchen and wash them because they put everything in their mouths at that age. So, on a snowy day, while my boys played in the living room, I washed toys, and was taken back to that.

At any rate, they started playing with the toys as soon as I washed the individual pieces, and they loved it.

They’ve got a snow day today, so they’re playing with them again.

For the geeks amongst you, my collection includes:

The Transportable Tactical Battle Platform.
Amphibious Personnel Carrier.
Sky Striker.
Cobra ASP.
Cobra Water Moccasin.
Wolverine.
Mobat (one of the reasons I can tell the difference between a tank and mobile artillery).
Slugger (the other reason).
Cobra HISS.
Cobra Stinger.
Cobra Flight Pod.
MANTA.
Check Point Alpha.
Cobra Bunker.

Action figures include:

Duke (the mail-in version).
Scarlet.
Blowtorch.
Airtight.
Roadblock.
Lady Jaye.
Bazooka (to be honest, I’m surprised I have this figure; it must have been a late addition to the collection, as it’s in very good shape).
Hooded Cobra Commander.

And more, of course.

A couple of the action figures had broken bands, which means I’m going to be reviewing on YouTube how to fix them and ordering parts from Amazon sometime.

At any rate, a bit of my boyhood I finally shared with my boys.

And they’ve only broken one thing so far.

Which I’m going to blame on my brother and have to fight him over in one of those sibling fights that is mostly wrestling until we get tired, and then we’re friends again.

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An Acronym You Can Use After You Give Notice

January 15, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

You know how you give notice at your job, and suddenly to do things you wouldn’t do if you wanted to keep that job?

Feel free to say “YOWHO!” for “You only work here once.”

Skip this, though, if you’re a contractor or otherwise plan to seek work from that company in the future.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never been this way. I just wanted to invent something on the Internet.

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Also Florid and Mockable

January 15, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

As I was reading this post by Don Surber, I came across this oft-repeated nostrum:

The pen is mightier than the sword.

By Edward Bulwer-Lyton (more).

You know the other quote Edward Bulwer-Lyton is known for?

It was a dark and stormy night.

(more.)

The latter has spawned annual writing contest.

One wonders if there should be a similar floridly written fiction contest for journalists who think that their keyboards would best an actual tyrant’s sword, guns, or Polonium, or if perhaps those in the trade who quote the first Bulwer-Lyton confuse their own egos with “the pen.”

(Link via Instapundit.)

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Parenting Goal

January 13, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

I don’t want my children to understand the music of Everclear.

My parents split up on October 25, 1981, when I was nine years old. My father pulled me away from a television movie (Twirl) to sit my brother and I down into what was up until that moment my parents’ bedroom and to tell us that my mother had thrown him out. So, yeah, I have known the joy of a welfare Christmas.

Both of my children are already older than that, so I’m already ahead.

That being said, I just picked up an oldies collection: Everclear’s Ten Years Gone: The Best of Everclear 1994-2004. I’m not sure that you can really call Everclear hard rock or metal, so I’m not sure how it affects the balance of my music purchasing.

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Confession Time

January 11, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

The first time I saw Tommy Lee Jones’ name on a movie poster, for the film Under Siege…

…I thought the drummer from Motley Crüe was getting into acting.

Well, no. That would come later.

But if a film wasn’t on Showtime in the 1980s, or if an actor was not in a film on Showtime in the 1980s, I didn’t know about it.

Now, I know who he is: One of the guys who played Harvey Dent.

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Not a Safe Space

January 9, 2018January 8, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

I’ve discovered, as I comb through the archives from the earliest days of this blog, that I used to post more cat pictures. I also used to get hundreds of hits per day. Coincidence? Let’s try it out.

Here’s a picture of Chimera, one of the second generation, pawing at one of my Christmas presents right after I hung it on the wall:

Silly cat. A minute ago, this was blank wall. Now, he’s looking to see if there’s a wall safe behind this particular picture. Clearly, he does not know much about the installation of wall safes.

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Household Tips from Brian J.: Cleaning the Coffee Grinder

January 8, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

You might think, being a humble man of the people from humble origins such as I am, that I do not grind my own coffee. Friends, I can understand why you would think that! I am lazy and prefer to buy coffee pre-ground for me, and in large warehouse club quantities! I am not that particular about my coffee! It just needs to be ~~hot~~. It doesn’t need to be hot, I will drink cold coffee from yesterday or longer (skim the mold first!).

But I do have a coffee grinder. As a matter of fact, it’s not my first! I bought the first after accidentally picking up a warehouse club sized bag of coffee beans, and I didn’t want to waste them! So I got a coffee grinder to use those coffee beans–and to see if I could really taste the difference (Did I? Who cares? I NEED COFFEE, ANY COFFEE, NOW!). But I found it difficult to clean the coffee grinder, so I ended up giving the coffee beans to a co-worker who is a coffee snob and donating the coffee grinder to a thrift store!

But that was ten years ago, and when I recently made the same mistake again, I had a dilemma! Do I send the coffee to the co-worker whom I have not seen in ten years (weird, but a tempting idea!)? No, friends, I bought another coffee grinder, and I discovered this easy trick to clean it out every time!

If you’ve used a coffee grinder, you know that the bits of finely ground coffee cling to the side stubbornly after you’ve emptied it.

You can’t immerse it in water, and the grinder blade makes it tricky to get a moist or dry cloth in there. Especially around the axle of the blade! But I accidentally discovered this fool-proof method for loosening and getting those reluctant particles of caffeination out:

I drop it on the floor!

The impact loosens the covalent bonds between the ground coffee and the grinder, and its position on its side ensure the particles fly all over your kitchen floor, you can walk over them in bare feet and absorb the caffeine from them later! Because these coffee grinder particles are so fine they will slide right under your dustpan edge if you try to sweep them up.

And the coffee grinder?

Spotless!

But, Brian J., isn’t this a little rough on the coffee grinder?

Well, gentle reader, I don’t care, I NEED COFFEE NOW! Also, the grinder only has to last me the duration of this bag of coffee beans, as I still prefer some industrial machine grind my coffee for me (and blend in some protein-rich insect parts that are actually allowed under the Whole30® diet!).

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Preemption: FAILED

January 6, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

So I received the physical CD of Rebecca Black’s CD RE/BL, delayed because she was in Italy or something.

So I announced to my beautiful wife that it arrived:

ME: I got the Rebecca Black CD.
SHE: Who’s that?
ME:: She’s a pop singer that Charles Hill is really high on. She was a viral sensation. She went to a song factory or something that gave her a simple song, made a video for it, and put it on YouTube, and a lot of people hated it. “Friday”.
SHE: I’ve heard of that.
ME: It’s one of those where you’re buying it right from the artist….
SHE: Hang on, I’m going to put this [receipt? Piece of mail? I forget, but it was not the CD in question.] in your office.

A couple minutes later:

ME: …As I was saying, since I bought the Rebecca Black CD directly from her, she sent a little postcard with it.
SHE: I saw that.

Said card was still on my desk. Of course she had seen it.

My now black belt wife did not threaten the card. This time.

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I Got a 0 On This Quiz; I Call That A Perfect Score

January 5, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Linkbait headline is 10 Things That Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago That We Now Can’t Live Without.

Here’s the list (in descending order in the article). I’ve put in italics things I’ve used and in bold things I cannot live without.

Uber
Bitcoin
Instagram
The Selfie Stick
Spotify
“Woke”
Airbnb
Snapchat
Tesla
The iPad

Number of things I can’t live without: 0.
Number of things I use regularly: 0.

I mean, I’ve used Airbnb once, and it’s still not my go-to accommodation. I’ve got Spotify installed, and I use it once in a while to try to discover new music (I found Anna Danes and Lauren Meccia on it), but the radio stations I create based on artists I like tend to play the same bands over and over, so once you’ve listened to it for a while, it’s like listening to a radio station with a small playlist). And I have an iPad, but it’s for testing purposes mostly, and it sits on the desk needing a charge until such time as I need it for testing.

I’m getting to a point in my life where I’m becoming a bit of a Luddite. Technology and its toys and trinkets are not the meaning of life, and as I get older I recognize that you get more satisfaction from real life endeavors rather than endless selfies and incomplete games of Civilization.

So I’m proud not to need the things in the list or I’ll die. I feel justified in trying to steer my children from devices and apps as often as possible, or else they might end up writers of twee listicles mistaking the Internet for life or meaning.

Also, I really hope people can live without Tesla, especially the people who have plunked down deposits for cars that might not ever be manufactured.

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2017: The Year’s Reading In Review

January 1, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Well, 2017 has drawn to a close, and with it, I’ve closed my annual log of books that I read. In 2017, I read 87 books, ish. As you might know, some of them have been omnibus editions, where three novels or five novels are in a single binding, and I count that as a single book for these accounting purposes.

If you’re interested, here’s what I read this year, presented in a nice list with links to the individual book reports.
Continue reading “2017: The Year’s Reading In Review” →

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Book Report: The Tao of Meow by “Waldo Japussy” and Carl Japikse (1990)

January 1, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I closed out my annual reading with this volume. After all, I’ve read books on the various Tao this year (Tao Te Ching, The Tao of Elvis). I’ve read books purportedly by cats (I Could Pee On This) and books about magical cats (The Catswold Portal, No One Noticed The Cat). So this book fit right into my annual reading selections.

The schtick is that the author’s cat wrote 81 poems just like Lao Tzu, and each talks a little about the way. And about being a cat. In the first couple dozen poems, I wondered if the author was really trying to walk a fine line between amusing and actually trying to convey serious elements of Taoism in the book, but it hits one of the poems–I forget which one–where the author basically says that this is a humor book and not to be taken too heavily.

It’s a bit of a stretch to get a full 81 poems out of the conceit, and the results are uneven. Some are thoughtful, some are amusing, and some are sort of pro forma. But I enjoyed it enough for what it is.

Now that 2017 is over, perhaps my cat book binge can be over, and I can start focusing on ferrets or pot-bellied pigs as pets, detectives, and philosophers in 2018.

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The Physics Equation That Proves I Should Eat More Doughnuts

December 31, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

The Bekenstein Bound:

Not to be confused with Broadway Bound.

At any rate, I came across this equation in a book I’m reading on physics. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

In physics, the Bekenstein bound is an upper limit on the entropy S, or information I, that can be contained within a given finite region of space which has a finite amount of energy—or conversely, the maximum amount of information required to perfectly describe a given physical system down to the quantum level. It implies that the information of a physical system, or the information necessary to perfectly describe that system, must be finite if the region of space and the energy is finite. In computer science, this implies that there is a maximum information-processing rate (Bremermann’s limit) for a physical system that has a finite size and energy, and that a Turing machine with finite physical dimensions and unbounded memory is not physically possible.

The universal form of the bound was originally found by Jacob Bekenstein as the inequality where S is the entropy, k is Boltzmann’s constant, R is the radius of a sphere that can enclose the given system, E is the total mass–energy including any rest masses,

To put it more succinctly in a way that I can understand (that is, language that encourages me to eat doughnuts), The maximum amount of information that can be contained increases with mass. Mass/Energy. Whatever.

More doughnuts for me. I must increase gain weight to get smarter.

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