Spurred on by my own noir musings the other day, I swung by the library Tuesday and picked up The Long Goodbye. Slumming angel and all.

Pretty remarkable evidence of the power of Googlebombing and subversion that a Google search on fair and balanced gives a full page of people dissing Fox News without a single Fox page in the mix.

Buddy at work came in today with his new Christmas toy, a Garmin GPS/palm pilot gizmo. It’s fully cool.

So we got to talking, and I shared with him my fantasy techno gizmo, a small pocket-sized GPS that I could slip in the pocket of my riding shirt. After a ride, I’d download my track to overlay on a digital map, and over time I’d have all these route maps built up. It’d be so cool.

Charlie said most GPS you buy today can do that, so I started my on line fantasy shopping spree, and found a bunch of cool devices that would do the trick. But then it occurred to me that a wall map and a felt pen would also suffice.

The wall map and pen, in fact, have several advantages. No batteries to run out. If the wall map is a topo, more accurate vertical elevation. Less time. (Boot computer, plug in peripheral, start software vs. pick up pen, draw.) Paper maps are pretty easy to look at at large scales. Not so a computer map.

Lord knows I’m no Luddite, but this may be one of those problems, like the book, for which the pre-electronic technology is still the best solution. But man, those little GPS gadgets look cool.

Realized a concordance today between two of my dreams.

I’ve always wanted to be a cheesy lounge pianist, the guy in the corner of the bar at the Holiday Inn out by the airport playing “As Time Goes By” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”, with dark talent and a brooding sense of the inevitable permeating my music, using those familiar melodies to tell a story both dark and redemptive.

I’ve also always wanted to write noir detective fiction, sending my Philip Marlowe into the Hollywood Hills (LA, it’s always old LA) on behalf of a good not quite good enough, but it’ll have to do, ten bucks a day plus expenses and no questions asked, a brooding sense of the inevitable permeating my stories, using those familiar cadences to tell a story both dark and redemptive.

I realized today they’re the same.

(“You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow.“)

Note to self: read this:

Francisco Varela’s concept of intelligence is crucial for the understanding of CI. Varela argues that intelligence, is inter-subjective, embodied and the result of the circulation of ideas, language and thought between people (Varela, 1991; see also Vygotsky, 1978). That is, it is social intelligence, or group intelligence, rather than individual intelligence that is the norm. In such a framework Connected Intelligence, especially in its face-to-face version, is the best tool to enhance what is, per se, a natural process. By creating social environments which are favourable to the circulation and discussion of ideas CI enhances and connects the bodies, and knowledge of the participants. As Derrick de Kerckhove suggested (private communication): “It isn’t thought that is interior language, it is language that is externalized thought shared by many minds”.

(Second note to self: don’t forget to read Smart Mobs.)

Had lunch with friend Al yesterday, a smart guy who I’d called up because I wanted to have him explain some things about the threat of bioterrorism versus the threat of ordinary infectious diseases (an area in which he has some noteworthy expertise).

But Al’s one of those peripatetic intellects I so enjoy, so we didn’t get to bio stuff right away. Before we met, he emailed me some graphs of data he’s been collecting on how much energy he and his wife consume at their house, with statistical comparisons to temperature, history over time, etc. And before I know it, Al’s got his laptop out and he’s explaining to me the statistical tests he uses and the different variables considered and the risks of data mining versus using statsitics to test the hypothesis with which you started.

Statistics has always been a weakness of mine, and Al loves to teach. Al pointed to one of the graphs, a line graph of month-by-month energy consumption over time for the average Albuquerque household, and pointed out that you can kinda see with your eye the generally upward trend amid the monthly ups and downs. I told him a favorite story of mine, about a smart scientist of my acquaintence who I’d asked to look at some climate data I was using for a story. The first thing the scientist did was hold up a printout of the graph at arms length and sort of squint at it. The eye, he explained, can perform some very useful first-order statistical tests.

Al told the story of the typical blood test your GP gives you. Normal for blood work is defined as 95 percent confidence interval, meaning in a random distribution of results, just by chance one in 20 will come back “abnormal”. So if the doc’s typical blood work on you measure 40 variables, just by chance in a normal person two will likely come back “abnormal”. This is why it’s important for at least your doctor to understand statistics, if not you. Better you.

Then I got onto the story I’m working on about the diurnal temperature variation and the signature of global warming, and Al in his usual penetrating way asked me a series of questions that drilled down right to the heart of the issue.

And when we finally got to bioterror and infectious diseases, it was almost an afterthought. I was ready for a bit of a donnybrook over my theme – that infectious diseases are far more threatening than bioterror, and we’re therefore spending our energy on the wrong thing. Al, who I expected to disagree, granted my point up front, wtih the caveat that money spent on the bioterror threat yields equivalent gains on the infectious disease front, so it’s a wash in terms of the overall research effort, and a net benefit if the bioterror threat means more total money is spent.