battling apathy

Here Comes the Future

2009-04-16T21:51:00.005-07:00

The first practical glimmerings of the real information age that lies ahead. MIT's SixthSense project starts to tie virtual content to the real world.

It's nice to see that I wasn't completely off-base a couple of years ago when I authored Edmonton's vision for municipal wireless internet.

Telectroscope

2009-03-30T09:21:00.004-07:00

If you believe artist and inventor Paul St George then his "Telectroscope" connects New York and London via a (very) long tunnel running through the earth's crust, with the images bouncing back and forth using mirrors. The other explanation is that it is all done by optical fibres - take your pick. One end of the "tunnel" emerges next to Tower Bridge on the banks of the Thames in London - the other is next to Brooklyn Bridge on the banks of New York's East River.
It looks like something HG Wells might have imagined. Each end has a giant telescope-like construction which appears to punch its way out of the earth. There are dials, and levers, and thermometer gauges on the side of the 20m long brass and wood construction. Peer into it and you can see people on the other side of the Atlantic. Wave at them, they wave back at you.

This is brilliant. And it is significantly more captivating than you might expect, given a world full of teleconferencing, television, webcams, and skype. Why?

I suspect the appeal has to do with a few things. First, it's public. Unlike most of the other ways that we would connect remotely with someone across the Atlantic, you have no idea who or what you will see on the other end. Second, the artist has done a quality job of keeping the piece "in character". The image is high quality and real time, so you don't feel on a gut level like this is just another gadget. And yet while the image is so good, there's no audio at all, which not only is consistent with the premise of a tunnel, but it avoids all sorts of problems with the quality of the experience. A satisfying reproduction of street life is much more easily accomplished visually than aurally. In the end, the whole experience comes off as being intuitively within the realm of mechanistic physics, no electronic middleman required.

Flickr Account Reactivates

2007-02-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

www.flickr.com/photos/aryn

... not that it ever disappeared, but I hadn't been updating. Now there are brand spanking new photos from my trip to Echo Bay, with more to come.

Still posting...

2007-02-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Just not here. Admittedly, I have been more than a little lax in keeping any sort of regularity to my blogging, however it's more a reflection of what has been monopolizing my time than anything else. This blog isn't intended to be a personal venting space, nor a private musing space, and won't be morphing into that any time soon.

In the meantime I have been working with the Edmonton NextGen project on a number of projects, one of which has been (ironically?) blogging. Feel free to stop by and add your two cents - as long as it isn't a critique of the ugly wordpress template. Suffice to say that has its own history.

I have a new favorite artist

2006-10-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

Well, actually, I found his site over a year ago, but was just cleaning out my web links and found him again.

Jason Sho Green

Eco-Footprint Madness

2006-06-26T13:50:00.001-07:00

According to the University of British Columbia, my eco-footprint is 4.98 hectares, which is 48.85% of the average North American's footprint. For all humans to live the same lifestyle would require 3.38 earths, setting aside 33% of the biosphere for other species.

Some would argue that I should sacrifice more in order to cut down the impact of my lifestyle. I disagree. Great improvements are possible without sacrifice if we as a society adopt some relatively painless change.

For example, though I don't own a car, I do rent one at least a couple times a year, usually for long trips such as skiing or other travel. If those cars were manufactured to be recyclable, and ran with minimal use of fossil fuels, their impact would be mitigated. Similarly, I currently rent an apartment, and so only have minimal opportunity to make changes to the lighting fixtures and appliances, which are currently not particularly efficient - this is the landlord's choice. With regard to food, I would buy many more organic groceries if they were more widely available, and would be more likely to buy local, in-season produce were there some indication as to the source of produce at the grocery store. Finally, while renewable energy technologies are available, it is not possible for me to choose to use renewable energy where I currently live.

On another topic, I can't say that I'm terribly impressed with the new fad of taking the current world population (or even future projections) and saying "this is how many earths we'd need to support our current population the way you live, you fat pig". As I've already outlined above, great progress could be made, even to my 50%-better-than-average lifestyle, through simple, straightforward changes that are beyond my personal control, but well within the grasp of society in general. But even if those changes only cut my current impact in half, we'd still apparently need at least 1.7 earths (and granted that any survey of 13 questions is overly simplistic, let's say we'd really need 2.5). What does that say to me? We need less people on this planet, by a factor of 2.5. At a current population of 6.5 billion people, maybe instead of 2.5 earths we need 6.5/2.5=2.6 billion people. Then let technology and better urban planning increase the standard of living beyond that point.

Urbanus

2006-06-18T10:24:00.000-07:00

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flask. The human question is not how many can survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

Frank Herbert, Dune

I recently discovered an "In Depth" feature on the BBC News website on the topic of Urbanisation. As someone with both a professional and personal interest in the design of the built human environment, I found the various articles to be good insight into what is going on in the rest of the world. I live in a city where new development is primarily achieved through surveying farmers' fields, bulldozing off the bulk of the existing ecosystem, and constructing many inefficient cookie-cutter boxes. As such, the greater part of my fight is to promote and support dense urban, walkable, transit-oriented communities. Many cities have shown that it is possible to do this in a very pleasant manner, perhaps most popularly exemplified by the City of Vancouver.

What is easy to forget is that this is really a 'lesser of two evils' solution. It makes the tacit assumption that population growth is inevitable. Obviously, maintaining a technological society requires cities - the word 'civilization' itself defines societies that build cities. But what is not so clear is how many cities, and of what size and density. However much our innovative and 'smart' designs may be sustainable, the hard reality is that our paradigm of endless growth is not. Sustainable design only serves to mitigate population pressure.

I could argue, on the basis of aesthetics, or happiness, or whatever subjective concept, that there are limits to what is acceptable in terms of city density, or the amount of 'countryside' remaining free. The problem is that these concepts are particularly sensitive to cultural values, never mind personal opinion. What I would argue, as Frank Herbert does above, is that something is lost in the process. Having been raised in an essentially rural community, I have felt first-hand the loss of freedoms inherent to high-density living, perhaps none more harshly than the curbs to creative expression.

I live in an apartment in a tower that I had no hand in designing, whose design I wouldn't understand if I weren't a civil engineer. I work in a cubicle whose layout, colours, and textures I can't change on a floor where I cannot breath fresh air. I have access to "public" park spaces, where I can see and touch trees and grass, but I can't interact with them in any creative manner. That's what it really comes down to - an inability to interact. I cannot interact creatively with the spaces that I live and work in. In our efforts to provide 'public' spaces for everyone, we have instead created cities that belong to no-one.

In some cases, you see an overt reaction to this restriction. Graffitti is an excellent example of such an expression of pent-up creativity. However, I would consider community gardens and farmers' markets to be similar expressions of the same urge. These reactions are the exception.

So it remains to be asked: What effects on the psychological health, happiness, and creative potential of human societies does such a restriction on creative interaction have?

WUF WUF WUF

2006-05-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

It's official... I'm off to the UN-Habitat World Urban Forum III in June. The forum is being co-hosted by the government of Canada and the UN, and will be held in Vancouver. I was already very excited to have the opportunity to go to this event, but just recently discovered that the lovely Raffaella will be able to join me for the entire week! Life just keeps getting better.

I am also excited to be able to spend some time in Vancouver. You'd think that being raised on Salt Spring Island for 18 years would have led to familiarization with the closest real city, but alas that is not the case, and my visits since childhood have been brief and can probably be counted on only slightly more than one hand. Westward ho!

Visited Countries

2006-04-24T14:01:00.000-07:00

I'll credit R with giving me the idea to finally post this to my blog, though I had found it some months ago. Apparently I have visited 2% (5) of the world's countries.

That said, this is a somewhat disingenuous indicator. Within Canada, I have only really spent much time in Alberta and BC, with a single trip to Quebec City, Montreal, Kingston, and Ottawa. Besides late night transit on a Greyhound bus, the only visit I have made to the US was 3 days in New York, my total travel to the UK was 8 hours between flights in London, and my time in France was even less, only touching down to switch planes on the way to Tunis.

But it's still fun. Perhaps I'll build a physical travel map with pins and strings to show my voyages more accurately.

Goin on a Picnic

2006-03-20T13:35:00.000-07:00

I ran into a tech support term the other day that made me laugh.

PICNIC = "Problem In Chair, Not In Computer"

Tunisia (and Flickr)

2006-01-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

IMG_1575
Originally uploaded by Battling Apathy.

Tunisia pics are up (ta da!). Yes, it took months and not weeks, but I'm sure no-one was waiting with bated breath.

As you will notice, I am trying something new. Something new in this case is Flickr, which seems like a rather nicely designed photo sharing site produced by Yahoo!. I won't bother to ask you to be patient while I learn how to use it, as anyone who still checks this blog regularly has already proven their patience.

PS If you're using Firefox, I'm sorry that my blog header doesn't line up - it does in explorer. If you're using explorer, I apologize that my posts don't line up vertically - they do in Firefox. I guess I can't win.

I'm Back?

2005-10-02T15:53:00.000-07:00

As ever, I can't say I know whether this site will receive more regular updates, but I have finally published some photos from my trip in May. I actually took a large number of photos during the two weeks, however I have only posted up those ones that I particularly liked as photos alone - independent of sentiment. As it turned out, that means New York has lucked out - though I was there only three days, and poor Montreal has only one. Perhaps if I were a more skilled photographer that would not be the case, but alas, it is.

In two days, I leave for Tunisia to spend a week there with some friends of mine. My intention, at the very least, is to post those photos up within mere weeks of my return.

Montreal: The Tams

2005-10-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

The Manhattan Skyline

2005-10-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

The Financial District

2005-10-01T15:35:00.000-07:00

In this case, what caught my eye wasn't so much the particulars, but that it captured the feel of being within the New York skyline.

The Museum of Modern Art

2005-10-01T15:34:00.000-07:00

The American Folk Art Museum

2005-10-01T15:33:00.000-07:00

Grand Central Station

2005-10-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

The Chrysler Building at Dusk

2005-10-01T15:30:00.000-07:00

All Hustle-Bustle, with no time for Posting

2005-07-12T10:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not really back - at least not yet anyways.

Successfully graduated, travelled out east, started job, hated job, searched for new job, and moved apartments in the course of the last few months. Is this period of transition over yet? Hopefully not, as I am still hoping to secure more interesting employment. At present that seems to mean waiting with bated breath for the response from a company called Urban Systems who may interview and hire me for an EIT position that would have me temporarily relocating to Kelowna for a year or so. At any rate, unpacking at the new apartment is almost complete, which should return my life to some sort of semblance of normality.

Hopefully some time in the next couple of days I should be able to post up a few of the photos I took on my trip.

A Note of Insanity

2005-04-06T19:50:00.000-07:00

In less than 22 days, I will be finished my degree. Between now and then, I have 6 final exams, 2 final presentations, and 2 final papers. Not to mention a girlfriend's birthday to celebrate, an Orientation team to facilitate, and a new job to locate. Apartment hunting is also on the list. And two days after it all ends I hop on a plane to Montreal for 2 weeks.

Wheeeeeee....

I had two job interviews today.

1. to sit behind a desk and coordinate transportation planning for the province, all for a salary that amounts to peanuts, in a temp position that depends on tenuous funding.

2. to don my steel toed boots again in the service of the University's Department of Ancillary services as a maintenance assistant team leader. Also for peanuts, and in an even more brief temp position.

If the province offers me a job, I should probably take it. I won't. Fuck it. I'm tired of sitting behind desks for tasks that a monkey could do, in a field of 'expertise' that I desire no further experience in. At least the maintenance job will let me work with my hands and see sunshine once in a while.

Of course, my whole dilemma would be rendered moot if I were to get an interview and an offer from the only structural design firm which is likely to do either. For them I would sit behind two desks. But alas, the phone does not ring.

Back to work.

A Note of Sanity

2005-03-05T11:10:00.000-07:00

Anyone paying attention to Canadian news in the last week has by now heard of the disaster that befell the RCMP at Rochfort Bridge. The CBC has put together a good summary of the events, at least so far as is possible with the information released to date.

There seem to be three major responses to the events of last thursday: First, the entire country seems to be absolutely shocked that such a thing could happen and much saddened to find that it has; Second, both the mainstream media and a large number of politicians seem to have taken the opportunity to point out just how evil marijuana is; Third, the RCMP are vigorously defending both their officers and procedures. I'm afraid I have to take issue with the latter two responses.

I have heard arguments that the RCMP followed proper procedure throughout the event; that the officers were properly equipped and backed-up; that no-one could have predicted the outcome. None of these arguments seem to hold any water. Given what they knew about the owner - his drug habits & connections, violent nature, and past incidents with the law - and the fact that almost any rural farm in Alberta is likely to include at least a hunting rifle somewhere, how can they justify leaving two lightly armed rookie officers without backup overnight on private property? I mean, sure, for the purposes of recovering stolen property (the leased vehicle), two lightly armed officers is sufficient, but as soon as they found the grow op they should logically have done one of two things: either get the hell out of there and come back properly supported, or call in the cavalry right away.

Which brings me to the second issue. I can't see how this incident does anything but underscore how ridiculous it make as benign a substance as marijuana illegal. It's nothing but a cash cow for organized crime and a drain on our policing resources. And yet somehow almost every politician who has commented on the issue in the past couple of days is somehow claiming this is further proof that marijuana is a bad influence on our society and should be further repressed. So I was thankful to read the following opinion piece on the CBC. At least someone out there is still sane.

from www.cbc.ca:

MARTIN O'MALLEY

There was something inevitable about the tragedy that happened in Alberta, the shootout that killed four young members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at a marijuana grow operation.

Police and others have been warning us for years that grow-ops in Canada are getting bigger and more dangerous, with the money connected to them rising well into the billions. It is a scourge across Canada, in the biggest cities, the smallest towns, on isolated farms and in basement apartments and suburban bungalows.

It's so big that it's time we used the army to back up police forces across Canada to clean them up, if not the small ma-and-pa operations than at least the billion-dollar operations such as the one in Alberta that had such tragic consequences.

The fact that the deaths of the four Mounties was the biggest loss of life for the esteemed force since the Northwest Rebellion in 1885 should prompt us to look back at other events in history that dealt with – or tried to deal with – the suppression of illegal drugs.

Take Prohibition, the "noble experiment" enforced in the United States between 1920 and 1933, that was supposed to reduce crime and social problems related to the illegal production of alcohol.

Mark Thornton, a professor of economics at Auburn University in Alabama, says that Prohibition, though well intentioned, was a miserable failure.

"The lessons of Prohibition remain important today," Thornton wrote in a policy paper in 1991. "They apply not only to the debate over the war on drugs but also to the mounting efforts to drastically reduce access to alcohol and tobacco and to such issues as censorship and bans on insider trading, abortion, and gambling."

The police have been warning us for years of the dangers of these grow-ups. Former RCMP officer Rene Hamel, who investigated grow-ops in British Columbia – estimated to be worth some $7 billion – said marijuana growers will do anything to protect their operations – including murder.

Grow-ops use bear traps, gas traps and sophisticated weaponry to protect their investments, which are substantial, and growing. The more marijuana is illegal, the more profits there will be, and the more dangerous these grow-ops become.

The grow-ops clearly are out of control and the police do not have the resources to handle it. When Alberta's Anne McLellan was justice minister in 2001 she said she is "quite open" to a debate on both decriminalization and legalization of marijuana. Allan Rock, the health minister at the time, also called for a "frank discussion" on changing the laws prohibiting marijuana.

This is not an argument against marijuana, despite the fact many police forces try to convince us that marijuana is as dangerous as heroin, cocaine, crack or many other genuinely dangerous drugs. Most of the problems associated with marijuana are because it is it an illegal drug.

When young people hear police saying marijuana is in the same league as much harder drugs, they know they are being conned. Worse, when they hear authorities equating marijuana with heroin and cocaine they might be tempted to try them because they know how wrong most authorities are about the dangers of pot.

The latest official statement on the pros and cons of marijuana in Canada came in 2002 from the Senate committee on illegal drugs, which presented a paper that said marijuana is not a "gateway" drug that inevitably leads to harder drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

Those who argue that heroin and cocaine addicts all started by indulging in marijuana are correct only in the sense that heroin and cocaine addicts probably started with beer – or milk.

"Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue," said Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, who headed the committee.

Many thought Prohibition was working when it first became law in the early 1920s.

Alcohol consumption did indeed drop in the first few years. When organized crime realized the profits that would be made by illegally supplying alcohol to customers, alcohol consumption increased, as did crime and corruption in high places.

"Prohibition removed a significant source of tax revenue and greatly increased government spending," wrote Thornton, the economics professor at Auburn University. "It led many drinkers to switch to opium, marijuana, patent medicines, cocaine, and other dangerous substances that they would have been unlikely to encounter in the absence of Prohibition."

Politically Incorrect

2005-01-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

I found this back in November - ah dreams...

Happy New Year!

2005-01-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

Infant TV Viewing Linked to ADHD

2004-12-15T20:47:00.000-07:00

from the kind folks at whitedot.org:

A study from the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that watching videos as a toddler may lead to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD, also called ADD in UK) in later life.

TV watching "rewires" an infant’s brain, says Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis lead researcher and director of the Child Health Institute at Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center, Seattle, Wash. The damage shows up at age 7 when children have difficulty paying attention in school.

"In contrast to the way real life unfolds and is experienced by young children, the pace of TV is greatly sped up." says Christakis. His research appears in the April 2004 issue of Pediatrics. Quick scene shifts of video images become "normal," to a baby "when in fact, it’s decidedly not normal or natural." Christakis says. Exposing a baby’s developing brain to videos may overstimulate it, causing permanent changes in developing neural pathways.

"Also in question is whether the insistent noise of television in the home may interfere with the development of ‘inner speech’ by which a child learns to think through problems and plans and restrain impulsive responding," wrote Jane Healy, psychologist and child brain expert in the magazine’s commentary.

...

In the study of more than 2,000 children, Christakis found that for every hour watched at age one and age three, the children had almost a ten percent higher chance of developing attention problems that could be diagnosed as ADHD by age 7. A toddler watching three hours of infant television daily had nearly a 30 percent higher chance of having attention problems in school.

The study, as published in the AAP Journal "Pediatrics" can be purchased here, and the abstract can be read here for free.

I have to say that I am hoping desperately for the demise of programmed television to occur sometime before I have children. I mean, sure, it's easy enough to decide not to let kids watch until they're 5 or so, but what about the rest of their childhood? My sister and I were raised with planned and controlled television habits, and in the end I forswore it and she's addicted. My intent will be for my children to make the same choice that I did, but I have to ask myself what a reasonable plan of action would be. Denying them all television would essentially be omitting a sizeable chunk of north american culture from their experience, and would likely backfire as soon as they were old enough to make their own choice in the matter. However, the other extreme is hardly more palatable - unregulated viewing seems to lead to excessive viewing. In the end I imagine my strategy will be similar to the one my parents used, although I think I will make a point of being actively involved in the alternatives instead of merely listing them. With any luck they will at some point question why they watch what they do and at least make a conscious decision. If I manage to raise hardcore skeptics I will be a happy man indeed.

Planet Under Pressure

2004-12-14T20:35:00.000-07:00

I just found a rather excellent series of articles on the BBC website, written on the topic of humanity's impact on the earth and the future consequences of it. The series will comprise 6 articles in the end; only the first one (or two) are available as of now. I will update with the new links once those articles are published.

Introduction

Part I - Species Under Threat

Part II - World Water Crisis

Part III - Soaring Energy Demand

Part IV - Can the Planet Feed Us?

Part V - Tackling Climate Change

Part VI - Fighting Pollution

EDIT (8:31pm December 14, 2004): And the final installment arrives!

EDIT (12:52pm December 9, 2004): 2 more...

EDIT (2:55pm November 16, 2004): Yay, another installment!

EDIT (5:29pm October 29, 2004): Aha! An update. There's hope yet that this series might conclude with a full six installments!

EDIT (5:39pm October 21, 2004): OK, Rant time! So despite the fact that I posted this three weeks ago and despite the fact that the BBC claims it will be a six part series, no new parts have been published since October 1st. And while I'm sounding off, I'd like to send a big hearty WTF? to the lovely folks at blogger.com who still haven't managed to get the profiles working, so that mine hasn't been updated in the last month even though I've posted 4 times. Bleh.

Originally Posted: 3:52pm October 4, 2004

Assassin of Television

2004-11-16T14:57:00.000-07:00

Apparently I don't have time to post during midterms. Who would have thought? Anyways, I'll give myself a little pat on the back for not spending the entire day last tuesday writing on 'Why I don't wear a Poppy', which after a little research was fast becoming a masters thesis in itself. It may appear yet.

On to the topic. Who would have thought that an electrical engineer would turn against television? Not I. It would appear, however, that one has. Essentially, he's created a universal TV 'off' remote. It's a little doohicky that you put on your keychain that is programmed with over 1500 infra-red commands that turn televisions off - you just press the button and wait until it finds the appropriate command for the set that is the source of your ire, and presto, the television is dead. Instant peace of mind.

With shipping and tax and exchange rates taken into account it cost me about $40CAN and has yet to be shipped because the enterprising fellow who developed it did not anticipate several hundred thousand orders within a week of releasing them to the public. But I have faith - it will come. And oh what fun I will have.

Visit www.cornfieldelectronics.com to read more or order your own.

You know something is wrong when...

2004-10-29T16:35:00.000-07:00

... the person who seems to have their head screwed on best about the global political situation is the one flying planes into buildings.

Osama bin Laden delivered a new videotaped message in which he told Americans their security does not depend on the president they elect, but on U.S. policy. "Your security is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or al Qaeda," bin Laden said in the video aired on the Arabic language network Al-Jazeera.

from http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/29/binladen.tape/index.html

Parallels

2004-10-28T08:44:00.002-07:00

The culmination of a university career's worth of apprehension drew a parallel in my mind today: I feel the same way about math as I do about spiders.

They're both beautiful, fascinating, and utterly terrifying.

Science Explains the Hangover

2004-10-27T16:13:00.000-07:00

One of my friends was kind enough to send this link to me via email. Considering the number of old wives' tales on the subject, it's refreshing to read a well thought out and researched article.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/hangover.htm/printable

Ephemeral Sorrow

2004-10-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

Artist: Nitin Sawhney
Title: Fragile Wind
Album: Human

haath pakad kar chalte rahe,
saath samundar chod gaye,
andhiyaari se roshni tak,
aa hi gaye hum aa hi gaye (hindi)

inside the dark, deepest part of my mind
through sunshine and rain
idle dreams keep me sane

we're only feathers in the wind
falling from the sky without wings
and though the world may fall
I know I see
sunlight through the rain over me

beyond the dark lie the hopes and the fears
innocent eyes watching as worlds collide

we're only feathers in the wind
falling from the sky without wings
and though the world may fall
I know I see
sunlight through the rain over me

haath pakad kar chalte rahe,
saath samundar chod gaye,
andhiyaari se roshni tak,
aa hi gaye hum aa hi gaye

inside my head i can be anything (x 5 and fade...)

You Just Don't Understand!

2004-10-21T17:12:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of weeks now since I finished the book, but Deborah Tannen's "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation" was an interesting read. In essence, the book is a study of the linguistic differences between men and women in north american society.

Now, if you think anything like me, your first reaction will be something along the lines of: "How can you write about linguistic differences between men and women without generalizing horribly?". Well, you can't. And she doesn't. But in the end it isn't horrible, and in fact she makes note of the generalization and warns readers to be cautious of misinterpreting her conclusions.

Read skeptically, the book boils down to a study the contrasts of various linguistic styles, with the labels 'men' and 'women' applied to their stereotypical roles. Yet even the most traditional of readers will find themselves more than occasionally on the 'other side' of the conversational divide. Unsurprisingly, I found myself empathizing with the 'female' role in many cases; what was surprising was discovering the extent to which I actually use a stereotypical 'male' linguistic role.

What became apparent is that there is much more going on in everday conversation than I was ever aware of. Even if you agree with nothing she says, the process of thinking about it will undoubtedly be a source of insight. I would highly recommend reading this book.

Murphy's Law is just Thermodynamics

2004-10-01T12:49:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in my structural design class today, arguably the most intellectually challenging course I'm taking, and this thought pops into my head. Why it couldn't have chosen some time when I wasn't preoccupied I don't know. Murphy's Law is just thermodynamics. Allow me to explain...

from: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ENTRTHER.html

The first law of thermodynamics says that the total quantity of energy in the universe remains constant. This is the principle of the conservation of energy. The second law of thermodynamics states that the quality of this energy is degraded irreversibly. This is the principle of the degradation of energy.

Essentially the second law is saying that without external influence, the disorder of any system will increase if left to itself. A cup of coffee on a table, for example, will cool down if left to its own devices - it will never spontaneously reheat.

When Murphy's law states "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong", by 'wrong' it means 'not according to plan' or 'not as expected'. Plans and expectations, of course, are an imposition of order upon the world. Thus is should come as no surprise that their order will break down, as entropy increases.

Further to that, Murphy's law gains influence as systems increase in complexity. A round pebble, for example, is fairly simple, and Murphy's law is unlikely to have any effect on it so long as the plan is for it to remain a round pebble. Build a pyramid out of little round pebbles, however, and the chance of something going 'wrong' increases.

Why BSE Isn't Going Away

2004-10-01T12:32:00.000-07:00

Further evidence that humans are doomed by our own stupidity...

BSE-infected cow may have gotten into animal feed

from: http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/10/01/bse_041001.html

Last Updated Fri, 01 Oct 2004 14:20:24 EDT

OTTAWA - The diseased cow that sparked Canada's mad cow crisis in May 2003 was turned into feed and may have been mistakenly fed to other cows, CBC News has learned. Documents obtained through Access to Information show the Canadian Food Inspection Agency had discovered cattle at a number of farms were eating feed intended only for pigs and chickens. That feed may have contained the rendered remains of the diseased cow.

In 1997, the federal government banned the practice of allowing cattle to be ground up and fed back to other cattle, because it could spread bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

By the time BSE was confirmed in the suspect cow, it had already been made into feed. The agency estimated that feed was sold to as many as 1,800 farms and launched an investigation. They visited 200 cattle operations and found several cases where cows were exposed to the feed. Three cattle farms were quarantined and 63 cattle destroyed. Inspectors also learned there was frequent cross-contamination of chicken and cattle feed, and in one case, the farmer admitted he routinely gave chicken feed to cows.

The latest research shows just a milligram of infected feed is needed to trigger BSE in a cow, said Neil Cashman, professor of neurological disease at the University of Toronto. According to Cashman, Canada should not be feeding any animals any material rendered from a cow because feed mix-ups are so common. He adds that the risk to humans is infinitesimal. Cattle remains are still used as pig and chicken feed, but concerns about cross-contamination persist.

In June of last year, a group of international scientists urged Canada to stop recycling the most potentially infectious parts of cows, like the spinal column and the brain, into animal feed. The agency consulted industry, farmers, and trading partners about such a ban, but nothing has been put in place, says Sergio Taluso, spokesperson for the food inspection agency.

One lobby group argued changes must come now. "The only way to stop the transmission is to stop recycling animal protein into herbivores," said Mike McBain, of the Canadian Health Coalition. "And the [food inspection agency] has refused to do that because it's waiting for the signal from industry instead of intervening and telling industry what to do," said McBain.

Cooking for Engineers

2004-09-28T20:52:00.000-07:00

http://www.cookingforengineers.com/

Love cooking? Check. Analytical mind? Check. This must be the site for me. Haven't had a chance to check it out much yet, but the brief glance I took at their recipe charts impressed me already.

Photos

2004-09-19T00:29:00.000-07:00

Of all the differences between the BC coast and Edmonton, perhaps the one that might depress me most is the lack of elevation change here on the prairies. I've been fortunate enough to spend my entire time here in highrise apartments and dorms, facing west. The view can be absolutely breathtaking, as these photos will attest.

Evening sunshine through a thundershower, September 2004

Snowstorm, April 2003

Frozen city after sunset, November 2003

Summer sunset, September 2004

Sunshine through a thunderstorm, September 2004

Burning Man!

2004-09-16T17:07:00.000-07:00

I can't remember the first time I came across a reference to Burning Man: they've been obliquely infiltrating my consciousness for at least the last several years. Well, today the phrase must have crossed some curiousity threshold in my mind, because I spontaneously threw the phrase into google (my preliminary source of all research information). The first site that popped up was, appropriately:

http://www.burningman.com/

the home page of the Burning Man festival. It would be an understatement to say that I was blown away. If I was forced to give some sort of explanation of what Burning Man appears to be, I would say that it's an annual festival of art and expression that is held for one week at the end of August/Beginning of September in the Black Rock Desert. But but but.... it's so much more than that. If you're interested, I would suggest spending at least a couple of hours on their site - I spent the better part of a day and have barely scratched the surface. What I've found... well, suffice to say it has become my latest fascination. I want to go. I have to go. I will go. Maybe 2006...

Other relevant links:

http://www.blackrockarts.org/index.html
http://www.burningman.com/blackrockcity_yearround/on_the_web/index.html

NaNoWriMo

2004-09-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

... is short for National Novel Writing Month (which, incidentally, is November). Some friends of mine brought this event to my attention earlier this year - and had hooked me in 15 minutes. The basic premise is that without written preparation, you produce a novel of 50 000 words minimum during the month of November. You then send this novel in to the coordinators' office, they run a word count, and you either get credit or not for having produced a novel - noone even reads it.

I figure that the trick will be to keep writing. My greatest weakness as a writer is the urge to self-editorialize obsessively. So by the time I've written a sentence, you can be sure that only thing still in draft form is the final punctuation - everything else has been re-re-re-evaluated. For obvious reasons, this makes it hard to produce any volume of work, and ironically hinders the creation of a sufficiently large context to really edit appropriately. So I've been trying to get away from that. Of course, 50 000 words in 30 days means that I will need to produce approximately 1700 words per day minimum, and certainly more if I want time to edit at the end. If that doesn't get the words flowing, nothing will.

http://www.nanowrimo.org/

A Battle in the War on Ethnocentricity

2004-09-14T12:37:00.000-07:00

I wasn't originally going to post this. I transcribed it for a friend of mine, and sent it by email - but by the time I had finished I realized I had spent the better part of two hours typing it up and that it was also 2000 words. I also haven't had anything else to post, as I have been digging my life out of the Orientation hole while getting school rolling. So here it is.

Once again, it's an excerpt from Holy War, by Karen Armstrong (pp 338-343). A couple of things that I will say is that first, it was written in 1988, and plenty of things have gone downhill since then. Second, even the best idealistic movements can get out of hand and grow into something far from their roots (witness the french revolution).

People who come from the Christian tradition assume that the segregation of the sexes and the assumption of concealing dress in both Judaism and Islam springs from a hatred of sex, because Christianity ha been very negative about human sexuality throughout history, as I have shown at length elsewhere. Despite the official teaching that sex and marriage were part of God’s plan, a neurotic hatred of sex grew up that was quite distinct from the doctrine and which meant that marriage was regarded as a distinctly inferior Christian vocation and that sex was a disgusting, unholy activity. The hatred of sex survived the Reformation and Luther brought it firmly in to the Protestant tradition. This distrust and fear of sex is unique among the major religions of the world and there is nothing like it in either Judaism or Islam. Judaism has always stressed the holiness of married, family life, which is why it punishes adultery so severely. Perhaps the Jewish attitude to sexuality can be best understood by considering briefly the commandments that forbid a man and a wife to have intercourse while the woman is menstruating and for seven days afterward, when she takes a ritual bath. This "purification”, as the Hebrew word is translated in English, suggests that the woman is dirty or “unclean”, but in fact this is not so. There is a strong rabbinical tradition that says that the period of abstinence is required in order that the couple will enjoy sex more afterward and that the man does not take his wife for granted as a sex object: “Because a man may become overly familiar with his wife, and thus repelled by her, the Torah said that she should be a niddah [sexually unavailable] for seven days [after menses] so that she will be as beloved to him [afterward] as on the day of her marriage” (Niddah 31b) Before going to the synagogue on Yom Kippur or one of the major festivals, a man is told to take a ritual bath, not because he is unclean, but in order to be more holy for the holy time during the service. Similarly menstrual blood is not dirty or a defilement, but after a period of separation a woman “purifies” herself to make herself more holy for what happens next: sexual relations with her husband. The idea that sex could be holy in this way is quite foreign to the Christian world view.

It is also true, as I have said earlier, that Islam has a very positive attitude to sexuality. The Prophet himself seems to have been a highly sexed and passionate man, who saw no value at all in celibacy and is said to have decreed that there was to be no “monkery” in Islam. Yet in the West we tend today to think that Islam is a sexually repressive religion, because “we” are trying to free ourselves from the repressions of Christianity. The barbaric proactive by some Muslims of clitoridectomy encourage this belief. In the last century this disfiguring operation was performed on English Christian girls, with the approval of society, but it was performed for quite different reasons. A Muslim may insist that his daughter have the operation because he owns her and is afraid that her normal sexual urge might lead her to wander off with other men before she is given to a husband. It comes from a primitive impulse that seems to be common in many societies. It made some Crusaders lock their wives into extremely painful and dangerous chastity belts while they were in the holy land. In Victorian London, however, the girl usually had the operation because she had been found masturbating and enjoying her sexuality, which would have horrified her parents because they were terrified of sex. The practice has not been upheld by a majority of either Muslims or Christians and it must be condemned for whatever reason it is performed. But the difference is important. Clitoridectomy was originally an African, not an Islamic custom: it is certainly not laid down in the Koran, any more than it is in the Gospels. On the contrary, Mohammad is said to have told Muslim men that they have a positive duty to satisfy their wives sexually; some rabbis told the Jews the same. This is quite contrary to the spirit of the Fathers of the Church, who told Christians that if a man enjoyed sleeping with his wife too much he was committing fornication.

The second thing that distresses Western people is that, at a time when the progressive West was promoting the ideal of the equality of the sexes, some Jews and Muslims today seem to be retreating to the old inequalities. It must be said that no religion in the world as far as I know has in practice been very good news for the position of women. Religions have until recently been male affairs like most other institutions. But people from the Christian tradition rather enjoy saying that Judaism and Islam are particularly repressive of their women. Again, this needs qualification. Judaism is a religion that proclaims the holiness of things by separating them. The Torah separates Sabbath from the rest of the week, milk from meat, and Jews from Gentiles. The “holiness” of the land of Israel should probably be considered in this context; it is partly for this reason that the goyim are forbidden in the Torah to live there. The Torah also separates men from women; in Orthodox synagogues men and women sit separately and men and women have different religious duties. As one would expect, the women’s duty centers on the home and the husband’s on prayer and study. The Bible and the Halakah teach that women are blessed by God, but each morning in the synagogue a Jew must thank God for not making him a Gentile, and slave, or a woman. Jewish feminists, who want to preserve the ancient traditions, will argue that the Torah is not wrong to encourage a separation of the roles of men and women because this way it preserves and celebrates the holiness or identity of the sexes as different and distinct. But they still argue that Halakah must be developed so that women are no longer forced to take an inferior position in the community.

In the West people are particularly wedded to the idea that Muslims oppress their women by divine command. But in fact Mohammad’s first converts were women, who found the religion liberating. The Koran gives women divorce rights and inheritance rights, which are not the same as those of men, but which women in the enlightened West would not receive for over a thousand years. In the early Muslim community Mohammad’s wives were very powerful people, and after his death were consulted about religious matters, particularly Aisha, his favourite wife. There is nothing about the veiling or separation of women in the Koran; this practice did not creep into Islam until the third or fourth generation after the Prophet and it has been suggested that it came from Christian Byzantium, which had always treated its women in this way. Certainly a Muslim feels he “owns” his wife, but many Western men would feel the same. The Koran and the hadith both tell men to love their wives tenderly and live with them happily (see, for example, Koran 30:22).

The return to traditional values in Judaism and in Islam today in the Middle East has been for different reasons. In Israel it has been inspired by the desire to establish a strictly religious identity and is just a part of a general return to minute observance of the Torah. Religious women who now cover their heads will also forbid their children to watch television, because of the prohibition of images in Judaism. In Sadat’s Egypt, however, the young people of the jama’at islamiyya who returned to Islamic dress and the segregation of the sexes had a rather different reason. The Muslim student unions were encouraging their members to improve their lot by their own practical efforts instead of waiting for the government to help them, as the Koran enjoined. Egyptian universities are not like their counterparts in Europe and America. They can be heartless, mechanical factories. In Arabic they are called “universities of large numbers” and there is indeed vast overcrowding. Students attending the compulsory lectures would often have to sit two or three to a seat. Only a few lucky people in the front rows would be able to follow a demonstration on a blackboard and if the loudspeakers broke down almost nobody could hear a word that was said. Because success in the examination meant regurgitating these lectures accurately, lecture manuals had to be bought at some cost and learned by heart. There was little intellectual freedom. The students who achieved the best grades when they graduated from high school were automatically placed in one of the “elite” subjects like engineering, medicine or pharmacology. If a bright student wanted to study literature or law, which were not elite subjects, he would have to accept the fact that he would be studying with inferior teachers or classmates and that his chance of success after university was even more remote that it was already. This was a relic of the Nasser period; it was modeled in the Soviet system and was designed to produce a nation of technicians, not scholars. In addition to these other difficulties for the students, there was great overcrowding in the dormitories, which made studying impossible in the evenings, and the students would be transported from these inhumanely huge student blocks on hideously overcrowded buses.

The success of the jama’at islamiyya was that its members addressed these problems effectively and practically, as good Muslims should. They used to hold revision sessions in the mosques before examinations, where students could study in peace quiet, and they issued cheap versions of the lecture manuals. Above all they tackled a particularly distressing aspect of the overcrowding. Because young Egyptians could not afford to marry until very late and because the sexual revolution that happened in the West during the 1960s did not spread to Third World countries, one of the great problems of Sadat’s Egypt was sexual frustration among the young. For young men and women to sit crammed together on the same seat during lectures or jammed together on buses was clearly intolerable for both. Women found themselves harassed by desperate young men, who found they could not stand this tantalizing promiscuity. In these extremely different circumstances, the message of the Islamic segregation of the sexes was music to the ears of many of these strained young people. Women would find themselves freed from unwelcome attentions in the chador and it seemed to make good sense for men and women to live and study apart.

But, given that Islam values sex so highly, why did these young people not use contraception? Why did the women not go on the pill? Some certainly did, but the members of the jama’at islamiyya felt that this was an unacceptable practice. Contraception and the permissive society were Western products and therefore unacceptable for most of the young people, who, with good reason, felt that the West was not their friend. But it was not simply a negative rejection. These Egyptians wanted to keep their own family and social traditions, which would be undermined by this Western way of life. Muslims in the Middle East were not as enamoured as Westerners were of this Western “freedom”. The way sex was used to sell products and was trivialized and commercialized seemed to denigrate an important value. Iranians also had rejected the triviality of the Great Satan and had expressed their separation from it by reverting to their own traditional dress. In the case of women, Egyptians felt that Western clothes were not always liberating. They can reduce a woman's dignity by making her a mere sex object and it is undeniably true that, while we are rightly proud of the freedom and respect that we have begun to give women in Western countries, this liberation has not halted that Western habit of enslaving and exploiting women through a heartless advertisement and sex industry that pays very little attention to human dignity. Many Western feminists would agree with this.

Clothes are, of course, extremely important in expressing one’s identity and it is interesting that in Israel, Egypt, and Iran the assumption of a different costume has naturally symbolized the assertion of a new self. Similarly the relations between men and women could be said to express most clearly the values of a society, so that it is natural when one society feels threatened by another that one of the first signs of a desire to resist this foreign coercion should center on issues of sexual morality and the position of women. Yet the extreme measures to which Muslim men and women have been willing to go to express their distance from the Western point of view is very disturbing to us. This entire rejection of our way of life seems unbalanced because our way of handling the relations between men and women is very crucial to our sense of self. No society has as yet found a really satisfactory solution to these problems. In Western countries we have tended to swing from a period of sexual freedom to and extreme sexual repression. This phenomenon, which is unique to Western society, shows that we tend to be particularly sensitive on this issue and to have ambiguous views. This may make us more stridently convinced that our current way is the “only” way for managing these matters. We should not condemn Muslim people for choosing to go their own way, rather than to follow us in our confusion.

Thoughts on Companionship

2004-08-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

After finally finishing a letter to a friend today, I was in a somewhat contemplative mood. After a little while, I came up with this:

The ultimate marriage, at least in spirit, ought to be one long, open-ended conversation: from first sight to last.

With that thought, someone I knew is forgiven - for motives if not for means.

Bees get the Short End of the Stick

2004-08-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

from Reuters:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Kids throwing rocks stirred up more trouble than they bargained for when they dislodged a swarm of bees from an enormous hive built in the wall of a Southern California apartment building, authorities said on Friday. An estimated 120,000 bees held residents of the apartment building and nearby homes hostage in Santa Ana, California after the children pelted their 500 pound (227 kg) hive with rocks on Thursday, Santa Ana Fire Captain Steve Horner said. Several people, including firefighters, news reporters and a TV cameraman, reported being stung and at least two people were taken to a hospital with multiple stings, Horner said. Firefighters cordoned off a four-block area to allow the bees to calm down and return to their hive. An exterminator later fogged the hive and vacuumed out 40,000 dead bees, then set a trap for returning worker bees, of which about 80,000 were captured, Horner said. The quarter-ton honeycomb, which may have accumulated inside the apartment wall for years, was so big it was threatening the structural integrity of the two-story building, Horner said.

Reading articles like this makes me want to run out onto the street with my STUPID stamp and foam bat and go nuts. Two things bother me about the way this situation was handled:

First, out of all the all the things we might have learned from a quarter ton nest that was home to 120 000 bees, the sole tidbits of scientific knowledge gained are that there were, in fact, 120 000 bees and that the nest did indeed weigh 500 lbs. I mean, honestly folks, bees are pretty interesting to begin with, being hive creatures and all. A nest of 500 bees gives facinating insight into their behaviour - how they interact, how they can tell strangers, how they cool the nest, etc... I don't think anybody knows how such a large hive would work. Certainly you can't say a 120 000 bee hive would function the same as a 500 bee hive. Take a human example - do people organize a 500 person town the same way they do a 120 000 person city? From an engineering perspective alone, the cooling mechanisms/behaviours employed by the bees would have to be fundamentally different. Were the bees all one hive with one queen, or were they several queens? If so, were the several queens related or not? Did they have an aggressive monopoly on neighbouring resources, or did they share and venture far afield? How far within the hive does any one bee travel - do they live in one spot, or is the whole thing a unified community? So many questions unanswered, and I'm sure that a bee specialist would have far more.

Second, how do you condone killing so many bees? If we have approximately 100 billion neurons in our human brains , and a bee has fewer than 0.01% of the neurons that a person does, 120 000 bees must have - collectively - the equivalent neurons of 12 people (or slightly less). Now I realize that this hardly makes for an argument on its own - 10 cats don't have the rights of 1 person - but consider that bees are a hive insect. We really don't have any idea how complex the behaviour of such an entity is. The article quotes the fire chief as saying that the hive must have been there "for years", and yet the first indication that anyone had that 120 000 bees were living in close proximity was when children threw rocks at it! It's a shame that, while the bees were happy (and inoffensive enough) to live with people, people couldn't extend the favour in return.

Excerpts from "Holy War"

2004-08-08T19:41:00.000-07:00

... By the time of Thomas Aquinas ... the Devil was becoming a new force in the Christian imagination and gaining a power he never had in the Bible. He was becoming a monster of enormous power who was also a distorted human being. Often he had animal characteristics or monstrous genitals, aspects of humanity that the Church was teaching Christians to reject. One could say that one of the great problems of ethical monotheism as expressed by Christianity is that it encourages an unhealthy projection. Because it is axiomatic that there is no evil in God, this makes it difficult for Christians to accept what is either evil or what they are told is evil in themselves. They tend to reject this "evil" and, once they have rejected it, it becomes inhuman and monstrous with threatening power. The Devil is the greatest of these projections and is unique in its horror to Christianity... (p. 230-231)

... We in the west were particularly horrified to hear America called the "Great Satan". Not surprisingly we thought of the Christian Satan, a figure of monstrous evil. But actually in Islam, as in Judaism, Satan is not a terrifying and omnipotent monster; he is the tempter, who tries to lure Adam away from true belief. In rather the same way America was seen to have encouraged the Shah to try and tempt the Iranians away from Islam into secular, Western modes of thought. In popular Shiism, Shaitan is a poor trivial creature who asks Allah for gifts man has and is easily fobbed off with frivolous, secular trumpery. It was a triviality that was similar to the casinos, bars and boutiques of the Shah's Westernized Teheran. In other words, when they called America "The Great Satan", Iranians were not saying that America was monstrously evil but, using the Islamic figure of Satan, they were saying something less threatening and more precise. Indeed the depictions of America as the Great Satan showed a politician like Carter or Reagan as an outsize rabbit dressed in an Uncle Sam costume. It was funny rather than terrifying. Later, of course, under Khomeini, the hatred of the United States became exaggerated and frightening but it would be wrong to think that this fanatical loathing was inherent in the ideology of the revolution... (p. 332-333)

Recently Read

2004-08-08T15:59:00.000-07:00

Stephen Baxter - Evolution
Karen Armstrong - Holy War: The Crusades and their Impact on the Modern World
Lynne Truss - Eats, Shoots and Leaves

Well, back from a 'productive' vacation, if holidays could ever be described that way. I certainly managed to get my reading done.

Stephen Baxter's latest sci-fi novel kept me occupied for the flight out. It was pretty good, although Baxter has a way of looking at things across a depressingly vast timescale. I then got caught up in a book, "Holy War" by Karen Armstrong, that my father had just finished and left lying around. The title is fairly explanatory. A couple of things of note about the book: Armstrong is incredibly intelligent, insightful, and objective; additionally it was published originally in 1988 - well before 9/11. I would strongly recommend reading this book. Finally, on my way back to Edmonton, I had a backpack full of books to read, and yet I found myself in the bookstore at the Victoria airport. "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" caught my eye, and after sampling a page or two I decided I had to read it. The full title is "Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation", and is a book true to my heart. Truss has a wit that does not end. If the following quote describes you, consider reading this book.

Part of one's despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except we see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else - yet we see it all the time.

Mystery Artist

2004-07-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

As I walk to work over the last few months, I have noticed the appearance of spraypainted stencil art appearing along the way. The first few pieces that I noticed were quite impressive, and though the rate of production has increased recently, I'm of the mind that some may be a copycat production, as the skill of the designs has been declining. Here are some of my favorites.

Whoever the graphic designer is has obvious skill. I'm of the mind that whoever designed them is painting them too, at least in some of the cases, because they are often situated such that at first sight they are at optimal distance. They are also placed in locations where they will be noticed, but not resented.

The question remains - whodunnit?

Locations:

"Adieu" - EPCOR power box at Garneau Towers, 86 Ave & 111 St (SW Corner)
"The Lady" - EPCOR power box at PC corp, 100 Ave & 109 St (SE Corner)
"The Man in the Hat" - Various; this one on High Level Bridge W sidewalk, S side
"Capitalist" - Various; this one at NE corner of intersection of 104 St and the alley S of Jasper Ave (by the parkade)
"Fresh" - NE corner of intersection of 104 St and the alley S of Jasper Ave (by the parkade)
"Shark" - Various; this one on E retaining wall of the S end of the Ribbon of Steel park, just N of High Level Bridge
"Eat More Fibre" - Various; this one on High Level Bridge W sidewalk, N side

The Pokia: Design Brilliance

2004-07-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

And I thought today was just going to be another boring day. I was scanning through my news links looking for something interesting when Reuters.com's Oddly Enough section delivered. The Pokia!

Apparently some inspired soul in the UK has been custom modifying old landline phone handsets to plug into modern cell phones. He then sells them on eBay - so far they've gone for $40-$140 USD. (His site is http://www.pokia.com/)

I must say I am thoroughly impressed. First, from an intellectual standpoint, you've gotta give the guy credit - it's a brilliant idea. Second, if there's ever been a complaint that I had about the design of current cell phones it's that they are itsy-bitsy, finnicky, dainty little pieces of electronic junk. I always worry about losing or breaking mine, and they've never been particularly ergonomic. Now (but for the lack of $140 USD), I can cradle my cell on my shoulder, and the mouthpiece and earpiece will actually reach.

My hope in humanity is rekindled.

What If: The Physics of Selectively Stopping Time

2004-07-29T07:37:00.000-07:00

It’s a standard sci-fi scenario – somehow, someone is able to bring time to a relative stop for everything and everyone except themselves. They then can move through the paused world, stealing valuables, looking up skirts, moving people into compromising poses, and otherwise taking advantage of the helpless and immobile masses. The mechanism through which this wizardry is most often facilitated is some sort of temporal field, which either protects the wearer from the time freeze or accelerates them until time’s ‘normal’ passage seems sluggish. The key, of course, is that the physical and mental processes of the affected individual seem normal to them, but are much faster than everything else. So what, I asked myself, should the user of such a temporal field be able to do?

I made a few assumptions.

First of all, the temporal field had better travel with its user, or else you don’t have a very interesting scenario – just some bored schmoe watching a frozen universe.

Second, the field should not only ‘fit’ the person using it fairly closely, but also be elastic – otherwise the user will have some severe mobility issues.

Third, time can’t actually stop: that is, the effect is relative, not absolute. The frozen world must still be experiencing time as normal, no matter how relatively slow it may seem to the accelerated individual. However improbable the whole scenario may appear, for it to be possible at all requires the effect to be on the individual and not on the universe as a whole, as the effect is to be generated from within the universe, using the energy of said universe. An effect on the universe as a whole would require a source of energy external (!) to the universe, which is somewhere I just don’t want to go philosophically right now.

Finally, I asked myself, to what degree would the temporal field be impenetrable? Mass transfer is unneccessary, and a complication. Assuming that the force field requires a certain amount of energy per unit mass enveloped to maintain functioning, a mass fluctuation would require a power supply that could fluctuate with it. Much easier to designate a mass to be affected initially. So mass transfer is out, though I will admit this is not a theoretical restraint so much as a perceived practical one. Another practical argument to make against mass transfer relates to events at the boundary. What happens as objects enter the temporal field? Does half a butterfly flap? Does half a heart beat? How about half of a waterfall – water can enter the field, but when it exits it will create a barrier to other water exiting. No, better by far not to allow mass transfer.

But would the field allow energy transfer? As I see things, it must. Since photons, for example, are already going lightspeed - which I will take as the theoretical maximum speed anything can go, regardless of ‘temporal fields’ - they are going as fast a an accelerated individual can go, and thus they effectively see no barrier. So light as a particle, at least, can pass. Additionally, since the field must be elastic, energy as a wave can act on the field which then acts on the contents of the field. Of course, low frequency waves will have negligible effect.

So, having set up the basis for what is actually a simple argument, I think maybe I’ve let my penchant for definition get the best of me. Here goes.

Basically, the faster an individual in a temporal field is going relative to real-time, the less they can interact with objects in real-time. Manipulation of real-time objects requires: applying force over time – tranferring momentum – tranferring kinetic & potential energy. Since an accelerated individual’s interactions occur over infinitesimally short time intervals, mechanical energy & momentum cannot practically be transferred. For example, given KE= ½ mv2, and v=dt, as t approaches zero then KE must also approach zero. No posing of people like mannequins, and in fact, no motion in the air whatsoever once the relative temporal difference is large enough.

There you go – you’ve been geeked. Shady physics and broad assumptions, but that’s what you get for a brief thought at a lunch hour.

Best Place in the World

2004-07-15T13:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe not number 1. The UN Human Development Report came out today, and Canada moved back up on the Human Development Index (p. 153) to the number 4 spot from last year's dismal (?) 7th or 8th place. The CBC is all over it, but I have to ask, does it really matter? Honestly, the people in the top 25 are doing pretty well. I'd feel a whole lot more like celebrating if the bottom third of the list was making more progress.

Last Week's Fascination: The Dvorak Keyboard

2004-07-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

I can't remember what triggered it, but sometime last week I thought to myself "I wonder what the deal is with inefficient keyboards?". Keyboards in the data entry sense - not the musical. I knew there was an efficiency issue, because it always seems to come up as a classic example whenever social inertia with regard to technology is discussed. The story being, of course, that current keyboard designs are inefficient, a better one was once developed, and that it has been ignored simply because the standard was already set.

A quick net search turned up a name: Dvorak. The efficient keyboard design is the Dvorak keyboard. I soon happened across the home page of Dvorak International, which sounds like a pretty impressive organization, until you realize the sad truth is that it's the passion of a single man with a website - like so much of the web. All the same, he's done his homework, and the site has lots of good information. More importantly, it also has links to other Dvorak sites.

It turns out that, in summary, the story goes something like this... In the late 1800's, the advent of the typing machine necessitated the design of a data entry interface. Several designs were proposed, but best of them was the QWERTY keyboard and some derivatives thereof. Why the QWERTY layout? It's not the most efficient design from a typists perspective - the most commonly used letters are scattered all over the place. Apparently the mechanical design of the early typing machines was such that the levers that imprinted the letters would likely jam if adjacent keys were hit in rapid succession. Thus, it was designed specifically so that the most common letters would not sit next to each other. Eventually, these mechanical problems were solved, but the keyboard layout remained. Enter Dvorak.

Dvorak was a mechanical engineer by profession, and somewhere around the 1930's he got it in his head to design a better keyboard. He carefully studied both the english language and the motion of the human hand in order to create a keyboard that required the minimum of effort on behalf of the typist. Shortly afterwards, his layout was pitted against the QWERTY design to determine which was more efficient - from the perspective of productivity. Unfortunately, the debate got personal, the trials got illogical, and the QWERTY keyboard retained its dominance. Whether the Dvorak layout allows faster typing still remains to be proven.

However, the claim that the Dvorak keyboard is less effort to type on is generally accepted, and would certainly be logical. Considering that the QWERTY layout is designed to make keys harder to reach, a layout designed for ease of typing would certainly seem more likely to be most efficient.

Where does that leave us? The Dvorak debate reared its head again in the mid 90's, at which point Discover magazine published an article by Jared Diamond (coincidence, I swear!) extolling the virtues of the Dvorak keyboard. QWERTY, however, is still the format taught in schools, and is the layout your keyboard will be if you buy a new computer. That's not to say you can't switch to the Dvorak layout if you choose - MS Windows allows you to change to Dvorak in the Keyboard settings. You can also buy hardwired Dvorak keyboards. I myself haven't decided what to do. I've typed QWERTY all my life, and I doubt that my future employers are likely to switch to Dvorak for my sake. On the other hand, I'm a sucker for solutions that reduce the stress in my life. Maybe I'll just buy some stickers and try it out some time.

A Case Study in How Computer Games Give You Friends

2004-07-15T07:29:00.000-07:00

I've always been a fan of Sid Meier's Civilization. After the original SimCity, it has to be have been my greatest addiction over the years. My father was none too impressed with my obsession, during the years that I lived at home. "There's so much more in life to do," he'd say, as I sat for hours after school conquering imaginary worlds. He was probably right. At the time, it was just me vs. the computer, locked in epic battles that didn't exist outside of Civilization II.

Upon arrival at university, I'd like to say that it all changed. But it didn't, at least not right away. Not until I got wind of the development of Civilization III. Hungry for information on the upcoming game, I went online - and found Civfanatics.com. Apparently I wasn't the only one enthralled by the game. The site had reams of information on Civilization, and it also had a forum. While I was there, the forum had approximately 20 000 members - of which maybe a couple thousand were active at any given time. And in addition to discussing the game, there were also off-topic discussions on current world events, history, politics, economics, and philosophy. Huzzah! Intelligent debate! Oh, well, yes there was plently of mindless prattle too, but... Intelligent debate! I spent a year or so there, arguing, learning, and listening. Eventually, the dynamic shifted, and now there isn’t much in the way of intelligent debate… or, rather, the noise level has become intolerable.

But, before that happened, several of the major players left and started their own forum – invite only. The Speakeasy was born. So now a couple hundred of the most interesting and least belligerent of us have a friendly space to bullshit and debate. We generally know each other well enough to harass and sympathize life’s goings-on.

Hence: Computer Games = Friends

... at least in this case.

Guns, Germs, and Steel vs. Current World Events

2004-07-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

So I finally finished reading "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond. An excellent book all around. Near the end, I came across the following passages:

… The remaining way for kleptocrats to gain public support is to construct an ideology or religion justifying kleptocracy. Bands and tribes already had supernatural beliefs, just as do modern established religions. But the supernatural beliefs of bands and tribes did not serve to justify central authority, justify transfer of wealth, or maintain peace between unrelated individuals. When supernatural beliefs gained those functions and became institutionalized, they were thereby transformed into what we term a religion. Hawaiian chiefs were typical of chiefs elsewhere, in asserting divinity, divine descent, or at least a hotline to the gods. The chief claimed to serve the people by interceding for them with the gods and reciting the ritual formulas required to obtain rain, good harvests, and success in fishing. Chiefdoms characteristically have an ideology, precursor to an institutionalized religion, that buttresses the chief’s authority. The chief may either combine the offices of political leader and priest in a single person, or may support a separate group of kleptocrats (that is, priests) whose function is to provide ideological justification for the chiefs. That is why chiefdoms devote so much collected tribute to constructing temples and other public works, which serve as centers of the official religion and visible signs of the chief’s power. Besides justifying the transfer of wealth to kleptocrats, institutionalized religion brings two other important benefits to centralized societies. First, shared ideology or religion helps solve the problem of how unrelated individuals are to live together without killing each other – by providing them with a bond not based on kinship. Second, it gives people a motive, other than genetic self-interest, for sacrificing their lives on behalf of others. At the cost of a few society members who die in battle as soldiers, the whole society becomes much more effective at conquering other societies or resisting attacks…

… there are also two other potential advantages inherent in chiefdoms and states. First, a centralized decision-maker has the advantage at concentrating troops and resources. Second, the official religions and patriotic fervor of many states make their troops willing to fight suicidally. The latter willingness is one so strongly programmed into us citizens of modern states, by our schools and churches and governments, that we forget what a radical break it marks with previous human history. Every state has its slogan urging its citizens to be prepared to die if necessary for the state: Britain’s “For King and Country,” Spain’s “Por Dios y Espana,” and so on. Similar sentiments motivated 16th-century Aztec warriors: “There is nothing like death in war, nothing like the flowery death so precious to Him [the Aztec national god Huitzilopochtli] who gives life: far off I see it, my heart yearns for it!” Such sentiments are unthinkable in bands and tribes. In all the accounts that my New Guinea friends have given me of their former tribal wars, there has been not a single hint of any tribal patriotism, of a suicidal charge, or of any other military conduct carrying an accepted risk of being killed. Instead, raids are initiated by ambush or by superior force, so as to minimize at all costs the risk that one might die for one’s village. But that attitude severely limits the military options of tribes, compared with state societies. Naturally, what makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy. Fanaticism in war, of the type that drove recorded Christian and Islamic conquests, was probably unknown on earth until chiefdoms and especially states emerged within the last 6,000 years…

It sums up a lot of my thoughts about religion, and the current world situation, quite nicely. Religion and Patriotism as tools for making the rich richer and providing them with armies... sounds a lot like Bush's christianity. Freedom Fries anyone?

Greetings, Me!

2004-07-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

testing, testing, 1 2 3

2004-05-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

go little photo, GO!

2004-05-02T15:22:00.000-07:00

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