Randall's Blog

The last few weeks I have been working on a new deck for our house. It's a fairly big deck for the size of the house - 16' by 28'. This is the deck - complete except for some seating I intend to add:

This is a "time lapse" movie of the construction:

I decided to make a "floating deck" because there were a few concrete slabs off the back of the house that were already floating (no foundation and not attached to the house). I got some "Deck Blocks" as a start. These are pre-cast concrete blocks made to support a deck. I dug down a few inches and filled in the hole with pea gravel to make a stable base for the blocks:

I used a tube filled with water to make sure that the far ends of the deck supports were level:

Fortunately, the slabs were just about the same height. I used a small floor jack to position and level the beams (two pressure-treated 2x8s bolted together):

I cut PT 4x4 posts to the correct length and attached the beams to the posts:

Once the beams were all leveled and supported I started on the 2x6 frame for the deck.

For the top I chose a premium PT wood rather than a composite. I really like the composites and they are easier to take care of BUT they were close to THREE times the cost. I used screws to secure the decking to the frame. It was clear from the start that I needed a special tool for this job. There are 1500 screws holding the decking on the frame and each one has to be driven to the correct depth.

I made a small guide out of scrap wood to position the screws on the decking uniformly. I also used large nails to create a small gap between decking boards.

Screwing down the decking was the most tedious part of the process so I took breaks to assemble some of the deck furniture we got on sale. We picked the right time to shop for outdoor furniture. There is a short window between when they all go on sale and they are all gone. We got a nice swing at Lowes and a table & chairs set (half price) with an umbrella at Home Depot. Debbie also picked up an Adirondack chair on sale.

I had to make steps off the deck on to the walkways as well. The next step is to make some built in (or on really) seating. We don't need any railing as the deck isn't that far off the ground but might put up some in places.

We are pretty happy with how it came out - now I guess we have to have a deck party...

We are coming up on the 40th Anniversary of the original Woodstock festival, August 15-18th 1969. Unlike the moon walk, I can't remember anything at all about Woodstock. My parents weren't the kind of folks that would have even considered going and I had no cool older siblings/relatives to take me. I lived less than 15 miles away in South Fallsburg at the time. Debbie was spending her Summers in Ulster Heights, less than 30 miles away.

However, we had never visited the site and thought it might be nice to drop by. There is a museum and concert venue there now - Bethel Woods Center for the Arts. We headed over with Mr. Duck and spent the afternoon. The museum is very nice with lots of history and videos. The grounds are also very nice. This is a view looking towards where the stage was in 1969:

I believe the view is similar to a postcard I got at the museum shop:

There is a monument where the stage was:

The Duck claims he was at the festival in 1969 helping out with the folks who were having "bad trips" but we don't really believe him. I thought the Bethel Woods signs were funny; one of the rules is "No loud music" - Hummmmm...

On the ride back to Ulster Heights we saw a beautiful double rainbow:

I was just 8 when the Apollo 11 astronauts went to the moon but I remember it well. I had lived in Florida for a while and I watched "I Dream of Jeannie" on TV. I built models of the Saturn V rocket and could tell you all about the engines and how it worked. For an 8 year old kid the Apollo mission to the moon was about the coolest thing I could imagine - until I started watching Star Trek...

It's amazing what we can accomplish when we work together towards a common goal.

Earthrise from the Apollo 8 mission.

Aldrin's bootprint from the Apollo 11 mission.

Reflections - Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean.

Saturn V liftoff.

Thanks to NASA for the images.

The garden is finally starting to look OK. When I first transferred the plants from the greenhouse they really didn't look very good and in fact didn't grow at all. I knew they were getting enough water so I did a soil test. The pH was OK but there weren't a lot of nutrients. I found some fertilizer that claimed to be organic and worked it into the soil. Within a week the change was REALLY clear. The plants perked up and now look pretty good. They are small and weeks behind because of the rough start but I am now feeling like I might get SOMETHING out of this experiment.

We have been getting a lot of nice birds at our feeders:

Finally, here are some flowers from around our house:

The Rosetta Stone is an iconic Egyptian artifact (created in 196 BC) that has the same text written (carved) in three languages. This tablet, when found in the late 1700's, greatly helped in the process of deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. The term “Rosetta Stone” has come to mean a “key” that unlocks an ambiguity (especially a linguistic one). A current computer-based language learning company has taken the name Rosetta Stone. As I understand it, the original Rosetta Stone was not designed to be an aid in translation – it’s goal was to ensure that people understood the law as it applied to the temple that the stone adorned. The actual text has to do with taxes and statues in temples. Other undiscovered copies may, in fact, exist.

Several years ago I read about a project (of the Long Now Foundation) to create a "New Rosetta Stone." This would be a small nickel disk with the same passage written (etched) in many languages but with type that diminishes in size so it would be clear to the finder that magnification would be required to read all the text. The disks are designed to be very durable (last for thousands of years in fact) and store a great deal of information in a small space. It's a clever idea and I was intrigued by the possibilities it presents. Unlike digital media, they would not require any kind of electronic reader (though it would require a compound microscope 500-1000x). Also, unlike the original Rosetta stone, the purpose of this disk would be as an aid in translation.

I was quite dismayed, however, to read further that the translated text that they are going to use is the first three chapters of Genesis (along with other information about the various languages - over 1500 at this point). I had such a visceral, negative reaction to the choice of text that I didn't follow up on the story until recently. The project is moving along and the first five prototype disks have been made.

First, some thoughts on the choice of Genesis for the disk. I understand from the Long Now Foundation web site that there was a lot of discussion about the choice. They claim that this is the only text that has been translated into enough languages and it is for this simple reason that Genesis was chosen. This does little to ease my mind, however. They point out that the text of the original Rosetta Stone is of little importance and people in the future will understand this but I‘m not convinced that this will be the case. There is a reason that the Bible is translated into so many languages - Bible translators want to spread their religious views. There is a long history of Bible translations as an instrument of religious proselytizing. The fact that a certain text was translated into 1,500 languages and made into a durable form may convey to people in the future that this text WAS of special importance. Even though some of the text on the disk includes creation myths in native languages, the use of Genesis is, in itself, a furthering of cultural imperialism – in my opinion. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was considered but is "only" translated into a few hundred languages (religious zeal is a powerful motivation it seems).

Moving this issue aside for the moment, it seems that the Rosetta Project has become somewhat of a language "preservation" project. There is a subtle difference here between translation aid and language preservation. Of the 1,500 languages on the current disk, I would venture a guess that only a few will have a sizable number of written works that will survive for thousands of years. This disk could help in translation but the inclusion of so many languages, many of which don't have any appreciable written works even at this time, is not necessarily helpful. Thousands of years hence will the finders of this disk really care about the languages on it? It's a good bet that many, if not all of them, will not have been spoken in centuries or longer. The main value for the finder of the disk would be if there was a lot of text in one of these languages that was not understandable. The Egyptian Rosetta Stone was of great value because we were trying to understand Egyptian society, there was a LOT of writing that was waiting to be translated and the complex nature of the written form of the language made it hard to decipher. But the Egyptian Rosetta Stone only needed three languages to become an icon of translation.

I'm not saying that the preservation of cultures and the languages that are part of them is not a worthy goal. I just don't know how the Rosetta Disk, as currently envisioned, furthers this goal. Languages are living things that you can't condense into a few pages - if you have a short text in a language are you really preserving the language? In a very long term sense (the organization is called the Long Now Foundation after all) what value is linguistic diversity? I'm a biologist not a linguist - I understand the value of genetic diversity. Genetic diversity is the raw material of evolution - selection can only occur if there are heritable differences that also confer differences in the ability to survive and reproduce. I can understand the value of saving species that represent the genetic diversity of the planet. I can also understand the intrinsic value of cultural diversity. The multitude of human cultures have allowed us to spread all over the world. It's the primary edge that we have as a tropical ape species, especially in a world that is on the brink of dramatic changes. However, the "preservation" of many languages on a small disk may be of limited intrinsic value for the people who find it.

At it's core the Rosetta Project is now a linguistic enterprise and the Rosetta Disk is potentially a wonderful gift to some future linguists but I'd like to take a broader/different view. The Rosetta disks are meant to last for thousands of years. I'm trying to envision just who will pick up one of these disks five or ten thousand years into the future. They will be living in a different world, this much is certain. What will be important to these people, what would they want to know from us/about us? Will they be exploring the galaxy in starships or hunting and gathering after a long dark age? If it's the former, a disk of information from thousands of years past would be a great archeological discovery. It could provide critical information about a long past civilization (but it would have to contain very different kinds of data). If they are hunting and gathering for their daily sustenance we might have a lot to teach them. This is not meant as a statement of arrogance but as a people that have been practicing agriculture for many thousands of years now our insights might be of interest to those who may some day do the same.

To put it another way, if we had a time machine, what would we want to say to humans (our ancestors) at the end of the last ice age. Could we steer them down a path that would be more peaceful and less environmentally damaging than the one we have taken. How would we communicate to them? They had no writing, but they did have forms of symbolic representation. Could we use that to form a bridge across the ages? See this link for some ideas on how to warn people in 12,000 AD about buried nuclear waste. Lastly, is the currently-envisioned Rosetta Disk the best solution to the problem of long term data preservation?

So there are three challenges; How do we communicate with people in the future who may not have a written language? Once we figure this out, what do we say to them? What should we tell them – what should we *not* tell them? What is the most important knowledge we have gained in the last 10,000 years – scientific understanding, technical know-how or perhaps our best understanding of ourselves as a species. This may not be very easy - how could you communicate how humans behave under various types of economic systems to hunters and gatherers or explain radioactivity? With so much to convey I certainly wouldn't waste space with 1500 translations of the first three chapters of Genesis! Finally, what is the best way to ensure that this information will last for thousands of years and will be readable and understandable when found?

I know this may sound a bit gloomy - thinking about what we would say to some descendants after a long dark age - but this exercise may be just as instructive for ourselves as anyone living in the future. Thinking about what is important and what isn't for our long term survival has obvious intrinsic value - better to avoid a dark age in the first place if we can. Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" is one good place to start. I invite your comments...