Category: entropy

Bronchiectasis

For my 57th birthday I got a diagnosis of Bronchiectasis, a chronic incurable lung condition often associated with Crohn’s disease.

In addition to coughing for the rest of my life and being extremely susceptible to infections, there’s the problem of pronouncing it. The syllabic emphases are like “bronchi-ecstasy,” although it is in fact bronchi-agony.

Bronchi-agony

Or, as my friend Caroline called it, Brontosaurus Ecstasy:

Brontosaurus Ecstasy

A week ago, the day after my birthday, I went to “Convenient Care Plus” because my pinkeye and nosebleeds had returned and my cough never left. They gave me a CT scan which revealed calcification of my airways. I was put on new drugs, and although I am still miserable the pinkeye has gone away and the codeine helps me sleep.

Appointment with pulmonary specialist is in about 2 weeks. I wish it were sooner but that’s what they got.

As I wrote on Xitter:

My job is now being sick, and I’m being sick like it’s my job. I ROCK at this. So many symptoms, so many serious disorders. And I just don’t recover! Shows real commitment. I excel.

I didn’t want to be sick of course. But I got “the call,” and although I resisted, when you’re called you’re called. Being sick is my vocation. I didn’t choose it, it chose me!
I am so good at being sick. I am especially good at hating it. Real passion there.
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Hooray for Entropy!

Remember the days before digital copying? Every copy introduced small errors; a copy was always a degraded, inferior version of its parent. But entropy has a beauty of its own, as in this beautiful film By Alexander Stewart (it’s not embeddable, so you have to follow this link):

Errata is an animation made by photocopying copies of copies. Starting with a blank sheet of paper, each successive copy becomes a frame of animation, meaning that each on-screen image is a copy of the last. All movements, pans and zooms in the film were accomplished using standard zoom and shrink features on copy machines; the animation camera used to shoot the copies onto 16mm film was not used to manipulate or direct the film’s motion. Comprising thousands of copies made on a dozen copiers, the resulting imagery is a moving Rorschach test of analog textures, bleeding ink spots and pareidolic cloud formations.

In contrast, digital copies are perfect – indistinguishable from their “originals.” Compression, however, retains that exciting element of entropy, as artist hadto demonstrates:

Granted he intentionally increased the compression from frame to frame; the discussion on the video page  is enlightening (and led me to Errata in the first place).

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