Year in review

This is the year I discovered Jason Bredle. He introduced me to George Saunders's work. I think I have now read everything both of them have published, and several of those I've read twice.

This is the year I made new and now very dear friends, like the Crabsons and the Cowins, who invited me to the Raconteurs show, whose opening band was The Fiery Furnaces.

This is the year I discovered The Fiery Furnaces. 4 out of 6 of the CDs in my car's CD player are now Fiery Furnaces CDs. I can't remember the last time I became so enthralled by a band.

This is the year I got back into hurling, and this is the year I played for Pat's Saints.

This is the year I really felt single again after spending years in an extremely difficult relationship, although it really ended almost a year before this year started.

This is the year I fell in love and had my heart broken again.

This is the year I traveled alone internationally for the first time.

This is the year I took a boat ride on the Yangtze river, and had fish nibble my feet, and ate real Sichuan, and was given a Chinese name.

This is the year my 156 year-old blue-chip American company got bought by an overseas behemoth.

This is the year Barack Obama was elected to be the first Black American President. I voted for him.

This is the year I spent a lot of money on a new wardrobe and quality haircuts.

This is the year I decided that being fit is not an optional thing.

This is the year I quit smoking... for the most part.

This is the year I took my first trip out on the ocean, and deep sea fished with Damian and his closest friends.

This is the year I learned that I do not get sea-sick easily.

This is the year I saw Tom Waits live.

This is the year I saw my first big "show": it was Wicked, and I saw it with Mom & Dad in Chicago. It was pretty awesome.

This was the year I finally got to see Chicago.

This is the year I was moved out of the Unix administration group. It's the first time since I entered the IT industry that I am no longer actually a Unix administrator. Not sure what I am now.

This is the year I put as much effort as I could into a class and did not get an A.

This is the year I got spontaneous w/an old friend and flew to Estonia. (We're leaving on the 31st - it counts.)

This is the year I paid off my car.

This is the year I got back into ski racing. Although it did start last year with training, I didn't get on the snow with the ski team until this year. I've rediscovered one of my favorite things in life.

This is the year that I was mostly happy to be me.

My cat is into pain

And that's a little weird. Like, when I pet him, he likes to bite me. It's not in a mean way, it's just a firm, but not-too-firm bite on the arm or the finger. It seems to be an expression of pleasure for him. He also likes to pull push pins from the bulletin board and just kind of roll them around in his mouth.

I got my ticket!

Yes, yes, yes I do, got my ticket, how 'bout YOU?

My new favorite artist: Erwin Wurm

I've just discovered Erwin Wurm. It was from this old link I found while searching for a different artist.

Erwin is interested in how people see themselves. His exhibitions seem to be composed mostly of photographs of his sculptures, which are striking, simple compositions which often involve actual people frozen in medias res.

His work embraces sarcasm and absurdity while presenting the dark side of human nature.

Here is an interview with the artist, apparently conducted while he was setting up an exhibition.

Juvenilia

There is no name for this composition. I just found it in an old notebook, and kind of like it. Morgantown, spring, 1997.

'dem fish shure are jumping,
I would be too.
From one of the top ten
dirtiest rivers
in the good ol' U. S. of A.

And the wind
Shure is blowing that river south
though it wants to go north
like the way that rusty pipe's pointing
from out the slimy bottom.

that train shure is a'rolling.
To Fairfax, Naples, Springfield...

The way that water's shining up at me,
you'd think I was the only one
The sun knows.

Ah, but it's not me.
It's the power plan I'm weeded in with
droning and hissing,
'don't think it'll ever stop.

I best get a job.
lessen I want to watch this terrible river
die for all my life.

I'm glad that the big bear hasn't bitten me (us),
   I pray that he will not have, Amen.

Better news: the tree remains standing here,
   Not where you are,            where I am.
                           where I have always been.
Where I will remain.
It stands untouched, but the wind.
   She bends him to the North!
      And he breathes the clean air, New!
   Anew, and like his eyes sparkled,
      She showed him far far away deeds.
   Learnt him right Straight, she did!
And he understands. He listens and sees, and he wants
   to see so bad, but instead
   Grows. And matures,
      Right here.

Word frequency lists

Over the past year, Wiktionary has become my dictionary of choice for online reference. Of course I'm still an OED man when it comes to source material, but as a go-to dictionary, Wiktionary is very good. (My only gripe is that its interface does not play well with my cell phone. In fact it completely sucks, and I can't believe they don't have a better mobile interface.)

Just now I discovered its word frequency lists! Oh yes. These are exactly what I've been looking for. Immediate uses coming to mind include:

1. Creating "soda water bottle"-type sentences from the TV and Movie Scripts lists that use things like
   
   
   
   • the most frequently used sounds
     
   • various even distributions of most frequently used sounds
     
   • new English-like sounds
     
   • a metalanguage that sounds exactly like English but isn't
     
   
   
2. Developing the Layman's Story, which utilizes only the top 20 nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
   
3. Eliminating the top 20 nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverb from my vocabulary for a day
   
4. Restricting my vocabulary to those words for a... as long as I can tolerate it...
   

I'll think of more.

Mawage is wot bwings us togeder tooday.

"What justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples... ?" - Justice Antonin Scalia

I'm not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that. Now let's look at the numbers...

Couples who are allowed the benefits of marriage in America:

1. Man and woman of same race
   
2. Man and woman of different race
   
3. Divorced man and woman
   
4. Divorced woman and man
   
5. Divorced man and woman of different race
   
6. Divorced woman and man of different race
   
7. Divorced man and divorced woman
   
8. Divorced man and divorced woman of different race
   
9. American man and foreign woman
   
10. American woman and foreign man
    
11. American divorced ...
    

Ugh... This would be easier using mathematics. Let's build a tree:

                                        American
                           same race -<             
                          /             foreign
               divorced -<
              /           \             American
             /             diff race -<
            /                           foreign
   person -<
              ...

Too lazy to draw the rest of this tree, but you can quickly see that there are 8 possible combinations for person.

Another way to represent this is by using sets:

  A = {divorced, single}
  B = {same race, different race}
  C = {American, foreign}

Note that the number of combinations is the product of the cardinalities (number of elements) of each set:

  |A| = Cardinality of set A = 2

  Combinations = |A| * |B| * |C| = 2*2*2 = 2^3 = 8

But also note that there's no valid combination that involves two persons who are both foreigners, so there are actually 4 possible types of man or woman of various social statuses and races who are recognized as able to reap the benefits of a legal marriage in America, and they may choose from any of 8 types of the opposite sex. That makes for 4*8 = 32 possible combinations! (Wow, I really didn't realize there would be that many combinations when I started listing them. I'm glad I went to trusty ol' math to do the work for me.)

Anyway, the point is that there SHOULD be 4*8 + 4*8 + 4*8 = 96 combinations. That's 32 combinations for each pairing of man+woman, man+man, and woman+woman.

If you still believe that being a homosexual is a matter of choice, then you have come to the wrong place for an argument, because I'm way past that. I assume you have been paying attention to the research, and weighed the consideration that no sane person would choose to impose a social stigma on themselves.

If you believe homosexuality is a mental disorder, you have not been paying attention to the research. Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. Scientists have found genetic markers that influence the sexual orientation in some animals, which strongly suggests homosexuality is congenital in humans as well, not mental. So any further argument against homosexual marriage is an argument against people with congenital variations, which is a group that YOU are probably a member of. (In fact, one could make an argument that we ALL have congenital variations, because who is to determine what the "baseline" for the human genome is? Isn't that eugenics? And in fact some research suggests (as does common sense) that genetic variation is by design, so it is not a disorder.) So, moving on...

Who can reap the benefits of marriage by law is most certainly a civil rights issue. Marriage in a church is a religious sacrament, and any religious body can decide for itself what a marriage is, but that has nothing to do with the US code of law. Marriage in a court of law is basically a financial union, and denying any couple of legal age the right to form that union is a denial of civil rights.

I also believe that stably married and adequately vetted homosexual partners should be allowed to adopt children, just as easily as stably married and adequately vetted heterosexual partners.

So there.

Shoppers trample clerk to death

This is absolutely disgraceful. What is wrong with these people?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27955316/

A Wal-Mart clerk was actually trampled to death by shoppers this morning. They actually broke down the doors and poured into the store like locusts. What the fuck is wrong with these people? They wouldn't even leave when the police demanded everyone clear out because someone was killed. They were indignant.

It's sick. This is murder. Who is held responsible?

Why not an actuary?

I'm thinking of changing my occupation to actuary. From what I've read it's a very rewarding job and there is a shortage of applicants. There are two guilds associated with this profession, and they require certification by examination to join. The practice exam I looked at reads like a discrete mathematics test. Right up my alley! I think it could be fun, and there are opportunities here in St. Louis.

I will need to graduate first.

The Earnest Politician

This hand gesture, first brought to my attention by President Clinton, has got to be the most ridiculous hand gesture ever invented. I call it the Earnest Politician. It strikes me as something contrived by political strategists as a gesture to demonstrate the strength of a closed fist, but without the menacing impact.

I noticed it again when Sarah Palin started using it during the Presidential races this year. Note the limp thumb cradled firmly and straight by the index finger. Also note the broken wrist. A straight wrist would be too intense. In the photo, I'm wearing my sleeves rolled up to show that I am a politician who likes to "go to work."

Here is a better view of my rolled up sleeve, to reassure all you Joe Sixpacks out there who might be afraid that I'm just another desk jockey. As you can see I'm a non-threatening politician who is earnest about what I'm saying, and I'm not afraid of rolling up my sleeves.

Have you ever seen anyone who is not a politician in front of a camera making this gesture? It is a stupid bit of political correctness. It conjures up nothing but images of test groups to me. "So, how does this hand gesture make you feel? Threatened? Assured? Do you feel like you can trust this person? Now let's compare this hand gesture with an open palm and a closed fist." Blegh!

And woe betide any man who stands before the power of the DOUBLE Earnest Politician, where both hands are poised sternly to deliver a firm but non-threatening message! It's difficult to imagine a more impressive display of patriarchal strength without feeling overwhelmed.

Next topic: the politician's "thumbs-up," which is actually only half of a thumbs-up, with the thumbs pitched forward at a 45 degree angle, for some reason. This one I truly don't even understand. Is a thumbs-up somehow threatening? Why does it need to be modified? See examples...




That one by Obama where he's wearing the jacket has got to be the weakest thumbs-up I've ever seen. That's shameful.

A proper thumbs-up requires a strongly clinched fist with the thumb vectoring orthogonally away from the arm line. What is with these people? Maybe it's that clinched fist they think would just be too much for the public to handle. Could be. Whatever. Seems pretty lame to me.

Unrefined thoughts on b&w photography

Black and white photography tends to make me focus on shapes and spaces more than I would with color. B&W seems more concerned with layout and design than content.

Karl Benjamin shows that color can add a crucial element to the space/shape melange, even when space and shape appear to be all that matter at first.

Karl Benjamin is my favorite of the hard-edge painters. It is his work, in fact, that has raised my awareness of what differentiates B&W photography from color. He focuses on rhythm, space, and shape, as well as contrast, but in a way that B&W work cannot approach. It's like introducing a new dimension to B&W composition.

Black and white photography remains a vital tool in the artist's toolbox. It's an instructive tool. Sometimes a composition cannot be appreciated as readily by the viewer if he/she is distracted by the colors of it. When colors are introduced, the viewer can't help but consider them immediately, like whether or not the palate is agreeable, or how the flesh tones work, or the shades of light. With B&W all this distraction is stripped out so that only the shapes and spaces remain. The subject itself might even become secondary in some cases.

How well would Benjamin's work work if it included anything more than abstract shapes? Not very well, I think. This seems like a flagrantly obvious statement. What is a Karl Benjamin painting that includes an organic figure in it? It must include hard-edge objects. I guess that cubism, which preceded him, included this element. It's as if cubism came first, then its decomposition by different movements into its constituent parts. I guess this is true for all art, as realism came first, then its study by decomposition, which ultimately fell to abstract minimalism.

Unlike painting, photography started out in a decomposed state. Monochromatic photography was invented long before color photography, and the evolution continues with digital photography and supernatural, in the sense of surrealism, additions to realistic compositions.

Change has come to America

We dare to hope.


"To those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you.
"To those who seek peace and security: We support you.
"And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright, tonight we have proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding HOPE."

Your 401k as a stabilizing force

One thing I have not heard any of the economists talking about is how much our 401ks are actually stabilizing the stock market. My 401k is small compared to most, but I have put thousands of dollars into it, and just about everyone I know who works has a 401k, so we're talking about a very large amount of money being poured INTO the stock market every day.

All that money must have some stabilizing effect on the market because we continue to invest every paycheck despite the fact that the market is in a severe slump. This is a GARGANTUAN stream of cash being pumped into the stock market every day. The finickiness of Wall Street's traders is dampened by our constant, escalating investment.

Ha! I just typed "401ks as a stabilizing force in the market" into Google, and sure enough, here is an article from 2001. But why is it not talked about now? What would this "economic turmoil" be if our 401ks were not buffering the market's erratic swings? As much vacillation as we have seen in recent weeks, it's pretty easy to think that we would've seen a full on crash by now of not for the bedrock-like quality of our 401ks.

So, there's a pretty strong argument in favor of the 401k. Whose idea was that? Darn good one.

Also, our 401ks probably saved the market from a complete crash, and our tax dollars will rescue the banks. Really makes you wonder what is wrong with this system and how to fix it.

Good use of pennies

Pennies are pretty worthless to most people. I have asked the Internet how much purchasing power a penny had when it was first issued, but nobody has answered me. I suspect it was quite a bit more powerful than it is now, or they wouldn't've issued it.

Thinking about that thief that died a couple weeks ago for trying to pull the aluminum wiring from a live electrical substation, I wondered how much a penny would be worth in terms of raw materials.

First off, pennies created after 1982 are mostly made of zinc (except for a brief accidental minting in 1983 that used copper). Pennies up through 1982 were made of 95% copper and weighed 3.11 grams, according to this article. 95% of 3.11 is 2.9545 grams. The current value of copper is $1.6865 per pound. There are 453.59237 grams in a pound.


So, with copper at anything over $1.54/lb, it is actually profitable to melt down pre-1983 pennies for their copper, assuming a zero-cost copper recovery operation. $1.54 in pennies sells for $1.69 on the copper market.

The really interesting thing is that the price of copper is actually way down from where it was a few weeks ago. The average price per pound in September was $3.1710 per pound! That means you could have made about $16 on the copper from 10 lbs ($15.40 worth) of pre-1983 pennies. You have to wonder why we still find pre-1983 in circulation.

Perhaps my assumption of a zero-cost copper recovery operation is too drastic. According to this document from WCU, the instructions for a classroom lab to recover the original copper from a penny, several chemicals are required, and perhaps their cost outweighs any potential profits. It would take a chemist to know how much the materials cost, and what quantities of those chemicals are needed to process a given amount of pennies.

Here's some chest hair for ya.

A classic performance by The Jesus Lizard.

I first heard about this band in high school when Eric Gordon Fur offered to trade me his Liar CD for my... something, I don't even know what I gave him for it, Sean might remember, but I do know that when we got home and started listening to it, we soon realized Eric had just fumbled one of the best CDs he owned. 15 years later my opinion has only been reinforced.

This band has stood the test of time. Their complete lack of respect for anything pretentious or fashionable is always refreshing. Their honesty and energy is infectious. You really have to listen to the songs for several years to even make out the words, but it's one of those things where when you do make out some words, they're exactly what you had always hoped they'd be, which is basically a lurching conveyor belt of social criticisms that go down like broken glass, bizarre narratives, and colorful profanities.

Their meaning is not essential to appreciating the music. David Yow uses his voice as an exotic instrument. Not at all like how Jonsi Birgisson uses his voice, or how Ella Fitzgerald used hers, it's more like how a bare knuckle boxer uses his fists. It's angry, flagrant, uncaring. I've seen it described as the sound of someone who's been gagged and forced into a trunk. But it's also infectious, and exciting, and awesome. It's guttural, and disjointed, and it's everything you're missing in life, and every bad night you wish had never happened.

Here's an interesting Jesus Lizard video (not live). It's a good representation of their studio sound, and the video is perfect. It's just a bunch of street fights with an upskirt shot in the middle. Simple, direct, frank, and actually rather informative. If you pay attention you might learn something about the art of self defense.

Hope or Fear?

Which is the more important factor when you make your political decisions: hope of what could be, or fear of what could be?

How does fear of the unknown affect your decision making? Do you prefer to go forward with a system that is known to be broken because you are afraid that the alternative will be worse?

[In|De]creasing American Conservatism

Postulate 1: Conservatism is generally characterized by a desire to maintain the status quo - a resistance to change.

Postulate 2: The more wealth a people have amassed, the more vested they are in maintaining the status quo.

Hypothesis: As the American middle class increases its wealth, it becomes more conservative.

It has often been said that Nixon would be considered a liberal by today's standards, because the country as a whole was more liberal in the past than it is now. I believe it is not merely the money itself that contributes to this result, but the self-imposed isolation that results from it as well.

These two graphs illustrate my point:



These two charts are completely made up. Note how the chart of relative conservatism trends upward in the same direction that the US Median Household Income chart does. As anyone can see, if these two graphs actually represented real data, my hypothesis would be proven.

Craving China's Food

Only a few days ago did I finally download the pictures I took in China from my camera. I know. I was craving the sweet mung bean soup that they eat in Wuhan when it's really hot, which is like every day, because it's so sweet and refreshing, and Wuhan got up to about 104 degrees while I was there. They served that soup every day in the cafeteria at the brewery, and it is delicious. I liked it so much I have actually developed a hankering for it. They call it green bean soup, or 綠荳湯 (lit. green bean soup, pronounced lù dòu tāng). It is served cold and refreshing - one of the few foods that Chinese serve cold, but it's also good warm or hot. It's often consumed as a beverage. You will almost never find a Chinese person eating lunch with anything to drink other than a bowl of soup, or maybe hot tea. Come to think of it, the only cold things I can recall them ever drinking were mung bean soup or beer.

Above is a picture of a cup of cold mung bean soup I had for breakfast on Hù Bù Xiàng (that's the name of the street, I can't translate it, but here are the characters - 户部巷). Note the slivers of ice floating in it. Hu Bu Xiang is a old little alley in Wuhan famous for breakfast food. There are dozens of eateries lining the street that each specialize in one food, and seat about 5 at a time. You get a serving of whatever it is, maybe go inside and sit down to eat it, then move on to the next one. After the cold soup we went for some savory, bread-style dumplings (second picture), along with my very favorite, the soup dumplings! The third picture shows Jarod eating soup dumplings, which are called Xiǎolóngbāo. Those little dumplings are filled with a vinegary broth and a little meatball. I could just about live on them. Next is a picture of the two cooks making the Xiǎolóngbāo.

There's a certain way you need to eat the dumplings when there's soup in them so you don't accidentally pierce the skin before you get it to your mouth. The best way is grasp it with your chopsticks near the top of the bun, where the skin is all crimped together, making it stronger.

So anyway, I got a hankering for the mung bean soup, and it couldn't be easier to make. There's three ingredients, water, beans, and sugar. I went up to Jay's International and got the smallest bag of mung beans I could find (called moong beans at Jay's), which was a 2 lb. bag. Now, as you can imagine, that's actually quite a lot of beans. The bag did not look that big, but suffice it to say when I was done making the delicious soup this evening, after taking it off the heat not once but twice to put more water in it, I actually ended up with about 3 gallons of soup.

But hey, it's a great breakfast food as well as snack, because it takes no effort to make (serve cold), can be poured into a cup and drank on the road, and it's packed with beanie goodness that will give lots of energy in the morning.




Here's a picture of Jarod and Jim standing out on Hu Bu Xiang after eating the dumplings. A few weeks ago someone asked me what people in China wear. I think he imagined they wear some kind of traditional clothing like what you might see in a painting. As you can see, the clothing found on the streets of China is exactly the same thing found on US streets.

Continuing the food gallery, here is a picture of the next stop - peppery gravy on noodles and a pan fried breakfast bread made with several vegetables. The bread was really good, but the gravy was kind of eh. That green bottle is my favorite beverage to get when I'm there. It's just called green tea (綠茶 - lù chá), but I do believe it's actually jasmine tea. I would get a bottle any time I was walking somewhere, and a couple for the room. Here are pictures of the man making the bread.
I have left no room to show the 3 gallons of sweet mung bean soup I made today, so I'll have to save them for another post some time.

Dow covers 1000 pts, McCain musters dignity

October 10, 2008: The Dow Jones Industrial Average rolls from a low of 7883 to 8901, but ends the day only (!) down 128 points. Pretty freakish graph to be looking at after tumbling 20% on the week. It's an alarming situation to watch unfold, knowing that a complete market seizure could be right around the corner.

And while the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan rage on in the background, McCain and his running mate have been whipping up such a frenzy with the conservative base, people are actually believing that Barak Obama is a terrorist, or supports terrorism, or that he's muslim, or that he's an Arab, or at least not an American, or is unpatriotic.

Well, I'm glad to see John McCain finally putting the brakes on this insanity. It's just downright sickening to those of us who don't actually buy into these ridiculous political attacks - those of us who belong to the generation who, as David Foster Wallace put it in his book, McCain's Promise, have been marketed and spun and pitched to more relentlessly than any previous generation.

All this inane dialog about Obama being linked to terrorism and not being an American citizen is just background noise to us. We don't even think about it because the mere idea that the CIA, and Secret Service, and NSA, not to mention the Republican part, did not perform a complete background check on the man who is about to be voted into office as President two years ago, when he entered the race, is preposterous. Or how about the fact that he's already a US Senator. It's just so far beyond even passing the red face test, it doesn't register on our list of considerations. But evidently it does ring with some constituents.

The only bright spot in this whole day was to see John McCain push back against the hatred welling in his base. It was like seeing the man I have wanted to vote for for 10 years back again. A man I had given up on weeks ago, when he brought in his fear mongering "barracuda" of a running mate. A man who had lost my vote because of his allowing this Rove-esque campaign to unfold in all its fact-warping demagogic glory. He is finally back.

It feels good to see John McCain behave like the person I thought he was. Now he shows that he is in fact a maverick. He has turned his face in embarrassment from his own campaign, which is a positive move in my book. I am feeling genuine concern for Barak Obama after hearing some of the horrific things conservative voters have been shouting at these rallys. I hope the real John McCain continues to assert himself as the sincere, honest, decent person that I believe he really is. It's unlikely he'll get my vote back. I can't stand Sarah Palin. She's a Bushie through and through. But it would feel good to feel good about McCain again.

I think this segment does a good job of examining the danger of the McCain campaign's defamatory tactics:

What keeps me up at night

1) Falling asleep on the couch after dinner and then not waking up until after 11pm.

2) What will happen to our relationship with countries like Saudi Arabia if/when we finally liberate ourselves from OPEC oil? Trade is an important factor in a relationship btwn. two countries. If we stop buying oil from them, that's a lot of money lost for them. At $100/barrel, and 1,600,000 barrels per day, that's $160 million per day lost for them. That's $58.4 billion per year. Who knows, it might improve relations with them. I'm sure they'll have plenty of buyers elsewhere. Or maybe we won't stop buying from OPEC, but we'll just be in a position where we're not completely dependent on OPEC, such that we could cut off purchases from them, albeit resulting in a higher cost of oil, but still we would be able to maintain a certain level of energy in the US with or w/out OPEC oil.

3) The Catholic church needs to allow married men to be priests. I believe that it does not because of the people in power now who control those decisions. Until it does, it suffers from a very small pool of males to draw priests from, and, in my mind it seems apparent, that small pool includes many men who are trying to hide from their degenerate sexual preferences by finding an occupation that forbids sex completely. It's unnatural. Once the church allows married men to be priests again, it will find itself in a new era of growth and enthusiasm.

4) Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is an awesome movie. Sam Rockwell's wardrobe is bad ass. How did they manage to make '70s style relevant and cool in this movie? I think perhaps by using contemporary designs with '70s elements to create a convincing and attractive mix. Like in his house, the house is appointed with many things that say '70s, like opaque glass walls, loud stonework and woodwork, and strange lamps, but the colors are all subdued, modern, and the designs are refined in a contemporary way.

5) Modern cryptography is rooted in one simple principle: it's extremely time consuming to perform certain mathematical operations. Like factoring, for instance. Think about it. There's no trick to factoring a number. It's a time consuming process. We know that every composite number (a non-prime) can be represented as two or more prime numbers. Factoring a composite number into primes takes a long time, especially if that number is extremely large, like say 2^128 bits long. In that case, we can just pick two very large primes, and make a secret key based on the knowledge of exactly what they are. Since there's two of them, we can also produce a "public" key part that we can give to other people freely to encrypt things with. There's an infinite number of prime numbers. Even the fastest computers today cannot produce all the possible prime factor combinations of a composite number that is 2^128 bits long in a reasonable amount of time, like 100 years or so, and by then, you've moved onto using a different key, so it's irrelevant.