I saw from the Google Doodle that popped up early Saturday morning that it was Claude Shannon's 100th birthday.
If you read mid-century science fiction, it's distracting that a character will be on some super-futuristic craft moving at impossible speed across some insurmountable distance and the way that the author will demonstrate the mundanity of it all in the eyes of the characters that inhabit this world is that they'll be reading newspapers. The digitization of information wasn't so obvious to future-minded writers as to be portrayed alongside snazzy mechanical innovation. The reason that our present is so much cooler than the most daring peak-Asimov imaginings is because Claude Shannon realized that information could be expressed via the binary states of mechanical switches using Boolean logic and other principals that I'm never going to understand or even look into because the thing I admire so much about Shannon is his juggling.
Juggling is the dorkiest of hobbies. It's really little more than a public demonstration of how much time you have spent not talking to other people. Penn Jillette wrote somewhere (found it!) that juggling fails as art because when a musician spends a hundred hours learning some particular thing, the musician can then apply that skill to some artistic endeavour, enhancing it in some way that was impossible without that investment, whereas the only possible artistic statement of the juggler is "Here is this thing I learned to do."
My relationship with juggling began because I enjoyed watching it, but, in a world with three television channels and no VCR's, I didn't get to see it very often. Learning to juggle was really just a way for me to sidestep the lack of On Demand Video in 1982. So, I found a book at the library, scraped together three balls that were not really the same size or weight, and went to work.
(An explanation more graceful than anything I can muster appears in the blog of László Kozma, found here).
A tattoo I've designed for myself, but which I'm probably never going to actually get, is just four alphanumeric expressions. The first is Shannon's Juggling Theorem, which reminds me of childhood, private victory and our whisper-close proximity to disaster.
If you read mid-century science fiction, it's distracting that a character will be on some super-futuristic craft moving at impossible speed across some insurmountable distance and the way that the author will demonstrate the mundanity of it all in the eyes of the characters that inhabit this world is that they'll be reading newspapers. The digitization of information wasn't so obvious to future-minded writers as to be portrayed alongside snazzy mechanical innovation. The reason that our present is so much cooler than the most daring peak-Asimov imaginings is because Claude Shannon realized that information could be expressed via the binary states of mechanical switches using Boolean logic and other principals that I'm never going to understand or even look into because the thing I admire so much about Shannon is his juggling.
Juggling is the dorkiest of hobbies. It's really little more than a public demonstration of how much time you have spent not talking to other people. Penn Jillette wrote somewhere (found it!) that juggling fails as art because when a musician spends a hundred hours learning some particular thing, the musician can then apply that skill to some artistic endeavour, enhancing it in some way that was impossible without that investment, whereas the only possible artistic statement of the juggler is "Here is this thing I learned to do."
My relationship with juggling began because I enjoyed watching it, but, in a world with three television channels and no VCR's, I didn't get to see it very often. Learning to juggle was really just a way for me to sidestep the lack of On Demand Video in 1982. So, I found a book at the library, scraped together three balls that were not really the same size or weight, and went to work.
Juggling enthusiasts will tell you that it comes quickly to some people and warn you not to get discouraged if it takes longer: days or even weeks.
It took me every bit of a year. No joke.
Although, man. When it finally happened, it happened all at once -- like someone flipped a switch. The day it clicked was one of the best days of my childhood. Once I figured out the three ball cascade, I tried hoops. Hoops were easy. Then, I tried clubs. Clubs were harder than hoops, but I got to twenty catches on the day I first tried them. Then, I tried knives.
Knives were a problem.
There are three things you should know about knives that are made specifically for juggling. The first is, and you probably suspected this, they aren't sharp. And you can tell they aren't sharp because they are designed with extra points and edges that couldn't serve any purpose other than make them appear dangerous.
The second thing is that their center of gravity is in the blade, so when it spins, the handle traces a wider radius than the knife's point does. The juggler can toss the knife high and spin it as fast as possible (a typical final toss in a knife routine) and simply move his hand into the circumference of the rotation. The faster the knife is spinning, the easier it is the catch the handle.
The third thing you ought to know is that most American homes do not have a kitchen full of juggling knives.
The success I was having in my first year, which included juggling mixed objects, gave me the confidence to choose three knives (one carving, one bread and one cleaver), and have a go with them. And mostly, things went well. Even real, sharpened knives aren't terribly dangerous if you're only throwing shoulder-high. Single rotations aren't fast enough to it you in any danger if happen to over spin/under spin and catch a blade. And the larger the knife is, the more inertia it has, which makes it less likely that you will accidentally throw one into, for example, your own face. In fact, the only dangerous place in the whole room is the area directly beneath the juggler. And why would anyone be down there?
Fluffy was a cat we adopted in 1978. She was tiger striped in gray and white with a little bit of tan mixed in. There are three things you should know about Fluffy.
First, she loved being close to people. She'd just climb right up on you and stare at your face until you pet her. Wherever you were, that's where she was.
Secondly, for reasons that are, I promise, unrelated to this story, she only had three legs.
And third, she was not harmed in the event described below. I'm sorry. I should have led with that. Fluffy, within the scope of this story, is going to be fine.
Yeah, well, one cold and snowy Saturday when I was fifteen, I found myself alone in the house and decided, as I often did, to do a little knife juggling. And that sounds stupid and bizarre, but if you really think about the first thing most rural, non-driving teenage boys do when they are left alone for any amount of time, the fact that I mixed in any knife-juggling at all makes me a certified renaissance man. So, back off.
Anyway, I had a nice little run going until I brushed the handle of the carving knife with the knuckles of my right hand, rotating it away from me and making it impossible for me to correct.
Fluffy was lying near my feet. The knife landed on her. She made a sound and took off.
I had no idea if she was hurt, so I chased her. I knew if she was bleeding, that I was going to need to catch her, subdue her and apply direct pressure, and she would be cooperating with none of it. This was going to be really terrible.
And by the way, three-legged cats? Fast. Less mass. More acceleration. And probably, all things considered, jumpier.
I chased her without seeing her, running to where I imagined she'd go -- under my mom's bed. She was there, her eyes wide and her demeanor very "WTF?"
She was reluctant to come out. My voice probably wasn't very soothing. And I don't know if this factored into it, but I was still holding a knife.
I chased her from under the bed to look for blood and there wasn't any. She'd been struck with the flat side of the blade. This whole affair shook me up pretty badly. I could have kabobed her. I put some chipped ham in her dish as a peace offering.
I'm pleased to report that was the last time that happened. Not because I got smarter, but because the cat did. When the knives came out, she'd go sit in the window.
Okay, back to Claude Shannon.
Shannon's relationship with juggling pushes through the dense undergrowth of dorkiness and into the open meadow of brilliance. He built juggling robots. He used juggling as common social ground for otherwise non-social colleagues. And he is the author of The Juggling Theorem. Look at this:
It took me every bit of a year. No joke.
Although, man. When it finally happened, it happened all at once -- like someone flipped a switch. The day it clicked was one of the best days of my childhood. Once I figured out the three ball cascade, I tried hoops. Hoops were easy. Then, I tried clubs. Clubs were harder than hoops, but I got to twenty catches on the day I first tried them. Then, I tried knives.
Knives were a problem.
There are three things you should know about knives that are made specifically for juggling. The first is, and you probably suspected this, they aren't sharp. And you can tell they aren't sharp because they are designed with extra points and edges that couldn't serve any purpose other than make them appear dangerous.
The second thing is that their center of gravity is in the blade, so when it spins, the handle traces a wider radius than the knife's point does. The juggler can toss the knife high and spin it as fast as possible (a typical final toss in a knife routine) and simply move his hand into the circumference of the rotation. The faster the knife is spinning, the easier it is the catch the handle.
The third thing you ought to know is that most American homes do not have a kitchen full of juggling knives.
The success I was having in my first year, which included juggling mixed objects, gave me the confidence to choose three knives (one carving, one bread and one cleaver), and have a go with them. And mostly, things went well. Even real, sharpened knives aren't terribly dangerous if you're only throwing shoulder-high. Single rotations aren't fast enough to it you in any danger if happen to over spin/under spin and catch a blade. And the larger the knife is, the more inertia it has, which makes it less likely that you will accidentally throw one into, for example, your own face. In fact, the only dangerous place in the whole room is the area directly beneath the juggler. And why would anyone be down there?
Fluffy was a cat we adopted in 1978. She was tiger striped in gray and white with a little bit of tan mixed in. There are three things you should know about Fluffy.
First, she loved being close to people. She'd just climb right up on you and stare at your face until you pet her. Wherever you were, that's where she was.
Secondly, for reasons that are, I promise, unrelated to this story, she only had three legs.
And third, she was not harmed in the event described below. I'm sorry. I should have led with that. Fluffy, within the scope of this story, is going to be fine.
Yeah, well, one cold and snowy Saturday when I was fifteen, I found myself alone in the house and decided, as I often did, to do a little knife juggling. And that sounds stupid and bizarre, but if you really think about the first thing most rural, non-driving teenage boys do when they are left alone for any amount of time, the fact that I mixed in any knife-juggling at all makes me a certified renaissance man. So, back off.
Anyway, I had a nice little run going until I brushed the handle of the carving knife with the knuckles of my right hand, rotating it away from me and making it impossible for me to correct.
Fluffy was lying near my feet. The knife landed on her. She made a sound and took off.
I had no idea if she was hurt, so I chased her. I knew if she was bleeding, that I was going to need to catch her, subdue her and apply direct pressure, and she would be cooperating with none of it. This was going to be really terrible.
And by the way, three-legged cats? Fast. Less mass. More acceleration. And probably, all things considered, jumpier.
I chased her without seeing her, running to where I imagined she'd go -- under my mom's bed. She was there, her eyes wide and her demeanor very "WTF?"
She was reluctant to come out. My voice probably wasn't very soothing. And I don't know if this factored into it, but I was still holding a knife.
I chased her from under the bed to look for blood and there wasn't any. She'd been struck with the flat side of the blade. This whole affair shook me up pretty badly. I could have kabobed her. I put some chipped ham in her dish as a peace offering.
I'm pleased to report that was the last time that happened. Not because I got smarter, but because the cat did. When the knives came out, she'd go sit in the window.
Okay, back to Claude Shannon.
Shannon's relationship with juggling pushes through the dense undergrowth of dorkiness and into the open meadow of brilliance. He built juggling robots. He used juggling as common social ground for otherwise non-social colleagues. And he is the author of The Juggling Theorem. Look at this:
(F+D)H=(V+D)N
F is the time a ball spends in the air (Flight)
D is the time a ball spends in a hand (Dwell)
V is the time a hand spends empty (Vacant)
N is the number of balls
H is the number of hands
(An explanation more graceful than anything I can muster appears in the blog of László Kozma, found here).
A tattoo I've designed for myself, but which I'm probably never going to actually get, is just four alphanumeric expressions. The first is Shannon's Juggling Theorem, which reminds me of childhood, private victory and our whisper-close proximity to disaster.
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