Atlanta Nights

Atlanta Nights is one of the worst books ever.  A bunch of science fiction writers got together to write the worst book they could and trick a self-publishing company into accepting it, and their plan actually worked.  

I may be the only person in the history of the world to read this book from beginning to end TWICE.

Even the people that WROTE the book probably didn't fully read it through once.  They wrote it with each writer taking a separate chapter I believe.

I reviewed it on Amazon many years ago.  But I don't think my review stressed how filthy the book was.  I mentioned it, but didn't stress it enough.  I remember a scene that was quite disturbing involving body parts stored in a room.  Private body parts too.  The book really went out of its way to be tasteless.  

But even with gross stuff like that mixed in here and there it was still quite hilarious for the most part, even during some tasteless scenes.  In one scene, a lady shoots an intruder in her house and then genuinely tries seducing him during his massive blood loss, recognizing him as a former lover after firing her gun.  Pitiful.  

The typos were by far my favorite part.  One guy in one chapter kept rubbing his beard and pushing back his hair.  But "back" was spelled "backs."  So it was a typo.  Only this was written like six times in the chapter.  With the SAME typo every single time.  Also there was one part in that same chapter where someone was told to back off.  But the same typo was present there as well, so it read, "Backs off, you!"  Intentionally hilarious.

Why 26 is a Special Number

I found out a while back that the number 26 is the ONLY number out of all the natural numbers that is immediately after a perfect square and immediately before a perfect cube.  Indeed, 25 equals 5 squared, and 27 equals 3 cubed.  26 is sandwiched perfectly in-between these.  But how do we know there are no other instances of this anywhere?  If we list out ALL perfect squares and ALL perfect cubes, how do we know that no other number will be exactly 1 before and 1 after anything in the two lists?  That's a whole heck of a lot of numbers to test.  Especially since neither list ever ends.

Our first strategy is to write the equation x^2 + 1 = y^3 - 1 and simplify it to x^2 + 2 = y^3.  Okay, that part seems simple.  But where the heck do we go from here?  I was stuck.  So I went to the math stack exchange website, because it had the question along with several answers.  A link is right here:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/874226/y3-x2-2-rightarrow-y-3-27-is-the-only-cube-exceeding-a-square-by

But I couldn't really understand the answers I saw for a long time.  Then after pondering over it for a long while and asking AI questions and stuff, I finally got the main idea.  I tried to post that main idea I had as an answer on the math stack exchange site to supplement the other answers, but it was not well received and was promptly deleted.  Probably because the audience for the site is not comfortable working in imprecise layman terms.  So I'm reposting what was deleted here:

"This is a very interesting question to me, and the path to its answer is even more interesting. Since my formal graduate level education is non-existent in this subject and I'm not comfortable at all with a lot of mathematical jargon, I had to think long and hard to understand the solution, even AFTER looking at the other answers here.

But the simplest way I can communicate the main idea behind the answer to the question is this: while it would be WONDERFUL to get this answer without leaving the domain of the integers, it's pretty darn tough to do. So what you do is you examine a domain that contains all the integers, but is actually LARGER than the integers and you get the solutions there. If you only have one solution in that larger domain, then you're only going to have one or less solutions in the integer domain. That's the main idea.

 

So what you do is you take this equation and look at its solutions in the domain that contains all integers AND all integers with scalar multiples of the square root of negative two added to them.

 

Numbers in this larger domain are of the form a+b(root -2) so rewrite the equation x squared plus 1 equals y cubed minus 1 where both x and y take on this form and then work with the algebra and see what happens. This is pretty much what Adam Hughes already did in his answer - better than I could ever do - but I know I had a hard time even comprehending his answer without understanding the main idea about the larger domains first.

 

For the equation you pose in your question in this a+b(root -2) domain, there's only one answer, and it is an integer, and so there's only one answer in the smaller domain of the integers.

 

This post may seem redundant to those comfortable with the material, but for novices I think it's a vital point to slow down on and emphasize in order to fully comprehend. And to put in plain English with little jargon if possible."

So with that main idea in place we factor the x^2 + 2 in the equation as (x+root(-2))*(x - root(-2)), and we can work in the larger domain.  So x^2 + 2 = y^3  becomes (x+root(-2))*(x - root(-2)) = y^3.

Then we can write the y in the a+b(root(-2)) form and take the cube of that form to see what happens. (a+b(root(-2)))^3 is straight-forward to expand but a lot of effort.  Thankfully the Adam Hughes answer in the site already does that part.  He has a good answer but for people who don't know what norms or integer rings are, they're going to be lost on how to even begin.  I certainly was.

Uncertainty Principles and the Failed Quest for the Worst Movie Ever

When I first started watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the Sci-Fi Channel back in 1997, after several black and white movies and a few color ones, all of a sudden episode featuring the film called "The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies" sprang up and caught me by surprise.  Sure, the movies before this one were quite laughable, but this one clearly stood out.  I instantly thought it was the worst film I had ever seen and that I ever would see.  But then a few months later "The Horror of Party Beach" shows up.  I still thought Incredibly Strange Creatures was worse, but Party Beach was a major contender.

Over the years I was exposed to more MST3K movies, particularly from earlier seasons, and man there were some bad ones.  I kept looking for one that was clearly the worst.  And titles like "The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman" were pretty much on par with Incredibly Strange Creatures.  Then years later Rifftrax comes along and boy, they really found out how to scrape the very bottom of the barrel.  Santa and the Ice Cream Bunny might have actually been worse than Incredibly Strange Creatures.  And of course later we start seeing titles like Rollergator and Birdemic, and more recently stuff like Suburban Sasquatch and The Amazing Bulk.  This stuff is utter trash.  So much of it could really claim to be tied for first place as the worst movie ever.  But the one that made me truly give up my quest for the worst movie ever in earnest was Fun in Balloonland.

Does that mean Fun in Balloonland is the worst movie ever?  Not really.  My exposure to it simply establishes that finding a movie that's definitively the worst ever is too vague of a question.  IS Fun in Balloonland even a movie?  It's slightly shorter than a full length feature, the credits seem to be limited or non-existent, and half of the movie is clearly just parade footage with no story whatsoever.  Fun in Balloonland is borderline a home video.  So can a home video even qualify as the worst movie ever?  I mean, it's not a real movie in that case.  The worst movie ever is not a movie at all.  So definitions start to break down.  It's like the uncertainty principle in physics.  You try to know momentum and you can't know position, and you try to know position and you can't know momentum.  At least that's how my untrained mind understands the principle.  

And with Balloonland, it's like you try to measure its quality and you sacrifice measuring how close it is to an actual movie, and you try to measure how close it is to an actual movie and you sacrifice how you can measure its quality.  Because you'd judge the quality of home movies differently than you'd judge the quality of regular movies.  At least I'd think you would.

For years I tried to put this uncertainty principle for bad movies into more mathematical terms, proving that attempting one type of measurement always disrupts the other, but have failed in my attempts to do so.  So I guess I've given up proving that there can be no worst movie ever, just like I gave up actively looking for the worst movie ever.  This is what Fun in Balloonland did to me.

Strange Bean Novels From 20 Years Ago

When I first read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland I absolutely loved it.  It was wonderfully goofy and weird, and I thought it would be fun to try to write something like that myself.  So I did.  I wrote the weirdest, goofiest thing I could think of.  Long, long ago.  But I didn't actually post it online until fairly recently.  I guess I delayed it because I thought I'd eventually try to clean it up more and make it better and try to market it again.  But I got too busy with other things and decided I probably wasn't going to work on it anymore and to just leave it as it is.  Especially since the likelihood of publication was slim to none, leaning far more towards none.  

But I had a lot of fun writing it and a lot of fun re-reading it even though it has its flaws.  Hopefully I uploaded it with no sections missing and all the sections in order.

I called this unpublished book Boomo the Bean Visits Confusion Country, and a link to it is here:

https://confusioncountry.blogspot.com/

But after I wrote that one I also wrote a crazy sequel, Boomo the Bean Sees Through the Hourglass, and the link to it is right here:

https://boomohourglass.blogspot.com/

Also, if you click on my blog profile, you'll find the links there as well.  I put illustrations in the books too and that was a big part of the fun.

Causes, Effects, and Natural Selection

Science is about causes happening and effects stemming from those causes.  Goal setting is about changing causes to reach desired effects.  In goal setting you are not observing effects as in science.  You are dictating them.  

Natural selection appears to be a goal to sustain life.  Strict cause and effect should have no goals.  I am not arguing that natural selection is false here.  But I certainly don't mind asserting that nature has intended goals.  There's a term already in existence for this assertion - teleology.  And there's also a term for its counterargument - teleonomy.  

When I asked Copilot AI about teleology, it suggested an argument based in teleonomy that variations in species occur randomly, and environments filter out the variations so that only the successful variations survive.  Sure seems to be more of a deterministic argument than a free will argument.  

But I believe that the striving we experience in life goes far beyond unintentional programming.  Can't prove it of course.  But I can assert it vehemently.    

Obligation vs. Preference

It should seem clear that obligation is not determined by preference.  Certainly not at the individual level because it can potentially erase accountability.  But then we have to think, is obligation determined by collective preference?  I would imagine not.  Otherwise books like Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds never would have been written, and peer pressure wouldn't have a negative connotation.  

Why Does EVERYONE Say Their Parents Were Bad?

I don't know if I visit the most representative locations on the internet as far as statistical samples go by frequenting Yahoo news articles and political Youtube videos and such, but I swear, in almost every forum or comment section, for every one person I see complimenting their parents and calling them a blessing, I see about 20 or 30 talking about how toxic their parents were.  And we're not talking about teenagers that are still in the middle of maturing and dealing with discipline issues.  These are people in their 30's and 40's who've had ample time to look back.  

My question is, why the dissatisfaction?  Are there really THAT many bad parents out there abusing and neglecting their kids?  Is there just too much expectation regarding parental roles where they have to be absolutely perfect to even be considered decent?  I mean, WHY do so many people have problems with their parents?  I had awesome parents, so it boggles my mind that so many people apparently did not.  

I can't stress enough that I have NO problems with my parents and what they did in my upbringing whatsoever.  They were good people that tried their very best and did WAY more than they ever should have for me.  Were they flawed human beings?  Of course.  Who isn't.  But once I grew up, and possibly even before then, I could certainly tell that they clearly had my best interests at heart and put in SO much effort and sacrifice for my own wellbeing - particularly my mom.  

This realization is not dampered when I look back and think how scared I was when my mom yelled at me or how mad I was at my dad for using the belt when I got really out of line.  They did these things because I needed correction.  Not because they were on some power trip or thought it was fun.  Because they darn sure didn't seem to have fun correcting me.  Not to mention they bought me more toys than I could even count over those 17 or so years.  And they didn't cheat on each other or spend all night at the bar.  

Are parents like mine really so rare?  If so, I guess I can see why the divorce rate is so high.  But it still boggles my mind that so many parents would be problematic enough to not even be considered decent, much less good.  

Even if I classified mine as phenomenal, that could still potentially be an understatement.  The fact is they deserve more love and respect than I could ever give them.  Thank you mom and dad.  Regardless of how your peers behaved, you were shining examples of a traditional family structure.