Mirari

New Blog Location... New Website as well!!

2008-01-21T12:09:00.000-05:00

After paying Dreamhost to host my website for 3 years I decided to make the most of it and move everything to my craig.snoeyink.org domain. The new site for the blog can be found here: craig.snoeyink.org/blog , all my pictures will be posted here: craig.snoeyink.org/gallery , and all my old photos can be found here: craig.snoeyink.org/photography.html .

If you are looking for a web hosting service I highly recommend them. The blog and picture hosting software are "one click installs" which basically means they are really simple to set up. Someone else is using a "one click install" bulletin board service for a class and there are many others that are availiable. Its nice for me I think just because then I don't have to rely on other companies changing policy or whatnot (flicker... I'm shaking my fist at you!!!) and all my stuff is still mine since I tend not to read fine print.

If you would like to do something similar send me an email, I don't use nearly all the storage space or bandwidth that comes with my plan so I would be happy to host a website for you. All you have to do is pay for the domain name (About 10$ a year) and I can help you set it all up! I'm all ready doing this for two other people, www.earthglowmasonry.com and www.nettyprovost.org .

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience of switching!

Bread!

2007-12-15T11:34:00.001-05:00

So I have become somewhat obsessed with bread lately. I chalk it up to my engineering need to understand why just throwing yeast, water, flour, and salt into a bowl doesn't result in the artisan bread you see at the store. So, I am going to try to write down what I have learned and at the end I will give two recipes: one for a fairly flavorful stretchy bread and another for flat bread (pita).

Just a disclaimer: This is the understanding that I have come to and it may in no way represent reality!

Lesson 1: Less is more. The less kneading you do the better. The less yeast you can use, the better.

Why less kneading? Well artesian bread is inhomogenious. You can see it the second you cut it open! Small holes, big holes, medium holes... all kinds of sizes and shapes and this gives the bread a great and somewhat complex texture. What does mixing do? it homogenizes the bread resulting in all holes that are the same size (usually very small). This is why the bread you get from the supermarket looks like a sponge. It is far easier to over mix and ensure every batch is the same on an industrial scale then it is to mix just enough. We shall see later how to get the gluten links that give us stretchy dough without mixing!

Why less yeast? We like the byproducts of yeast growth for flavor but we don't necessarily like the yeast itself. If you can start off with alot less yeast, let it ferment for a while, and then use it in your bread that is better. This is called using a "starter" and there are many different kinds of starters that condition the yeast to produce certain byproducts. For instance a wet starter will produce a different flavor then a dry one and the same goes for hot vs. cold.

Wetter is Better: In general your dough should be wetter then you think.

Alot of people (myself included) when they make a dough like to add flour until the dough forms a nice round ball that they can handle with ease. Sticky dough is just a pain to work with! However sticky dough is moist dough and you are about to throw it into a 425 degree oven. And just like Arizona, that is a dry heat! The amount of water in the dough varies alot for different recipes but in general, wetter is better.

Autolysing, who'd a thought? Add water to flour without salt and yeast and gluten forms in abundance.

Some guy in France developed this so props to them! Basically, if you mix the flour and water and lit it sit without the salt and yeast a tremendous amount of gluten can form. It turns out that both salt and yeast inhibit its formation. Ask me why and I won't be able to tell you. Although, I do know that salt can cause some proteins to "salt out" of solution. In anycase, this gives us a route around the mixing problem. If we autolyse the dough we can get by with less kneading.

Now on to the recipe:

"Somewhat Artisan Bread"

Ingredients:

4 c. Flour (I highly recommend "King Arthur's All Purpose Baking Flour")
1 1/2 c. Water (Vary Warm)
Several Pinches of Salt
2 tsp. Yeast

Note: I just got a kitchen scale for Christmas! Stay tuned as I am going to work out the weight proportions of flour and water so that I can do it much more quickly in my food processor.

Ok, take 1/2 c. warm water and mix it with 1/2 c. of flour. This is going to form a kind of pre-ferment. Once they are well mixed together (it will be very soupy) mix in the yeast and let set for 20 min - 30 min. Once that is done take the remaining water and add slightly less then 2 c. of flour to it in a large bowl. Here it is important to not have too firm of dough. If it isn't sticky add alittle more water. If it is to firm then it will make the next part pretty tedious. Let this also sit for 20 min - 30 min. Less if your kitchen is warm and more if you keep your house freezing like I do!

Once the pre-ferment mixture has at least doubled in size we are ready to mix both parts together. This won't be easy as the flour water mixture has become very stretchy. I recommend either getting your hands dirty and squirting the dough between your fingers or using a fork to kind of chop up the dough and quicken the process. If this is too difficult make a mental note to add less flour to the flour water mixture next time. Once the two are mixed you can start adding flour and folding it into the dough. There is no set amount of flour to add, I usually just add alittle at a time until the dough is just not sticky enough that it seems pleasant to work with. Then I stop and put the dough back in the bowl and cover it in plastic wrap.

Wait about an hour.

Sprinkle a little flour on the top of the dough and a little on the table. Turn the dough out on the table and fold it. We are not punching it down because we want to preserve the air in it. Rather at this stage we are trying to massage the dough to encourage gluten formation and to form a skin. This is how we form a skin: massage the dough out flat on the table, fold in in half left to right, massage again, fold top down, massage, fold right to left, massage, fold bottom up. Thats about it. You will notice that the side facing the table never changed. This will eventually be the "skin" of the dough. Place back into the bowl skin side up and recover.

Wait 2-3 more hours depending on how forgetfull you are and how warm your kitchen is. Next we are going to form the dough. Turn it out onto the table like we did before. Cut it into two pieces with a very sharp knife. We want to preserve the skin so for both pieces place the skin side on the table and then very gently fold the dough so that the newly exposed sticky part is back inside the dough and the skin has been stretched to cover the cut. Let this set for about 10 minutes to rest covered in plastic wrap so that we can form it later. After the dough has rested fold it again in half short ways so that now we should have a stumpy rectangle. Gently roll this with the palm of your hands into a longer loaf like shape. Once you are done place on a well corn mealed cookie sheet and recover with plastic wrap.

Wait 30 min - 1 hour depending on temperature of kitchen.

Once the loafs have risen again by about 50% (i.e. we don't want them to double in size just to increase in size by 150%. You can put them in the oven preheated to about 425 F. At this point I usually spray water into the oven with a spray bottle to help humidify the air and prevent a crust that is too dry and thick.

Wait about 30 - 45 min based on the temp of oven and size of loafs.

Once the outside is nice and golden brown you can take out and place on a cooling rack, uncovered! Let cool completely before trying! (Ok, it can still be alittle warm :-) )Remember we made a very moist dough so it needs to cool down and firm up before it can support being cut into by a knife.

Flat bread/ Pita.

Note: This bread is much more forgiving of heavier flours like whole wheat flours. It doesn't change the recipe at all except for you want the dough a little drier then usual after you are done mixing it.

This is done much the same way only after the dough has risen for 2-3 hours we cut the dough into about 8 - 10 pieces. Form each piece into a small ball, again trying to preserve the skin and let rest covered for about 10 minutes. We don't strictly need to do this sense the process of cooking on the skillet takes care of the skin but it helps tremendously in handling the dough. During this time oil a skillet (preferably cast iron) and warm it over medium/low heat. You will have to play with the heat as it is different for each type of burner.

Flatten out a piece of dough using as much flour as necessary to prevent sticking. Once the dough is between a 1/4 and 1/8 inch thick you simply place it on the skillet. Wait about 20 seconds or until you start seeing little lumps appear. Flip it over and do another 20 - 30 seconds on the other side.

If your skillet temperature is too hot then you will have already browned both sides at this point and we still have about a minute of cooking left! If it is too low then the next step, where we cause the pocket of steam to form, wont work. On my electric stove it is about 2.75 on a dial that goes from 1 - 10. If I do 3 it is too hot and 2.5 is too low. Yes, it is that sensitive!!!

After the second side has had its 20 - 30 seconds flip it back over to the original side and press down on the pita with your spatula. We want real good heat transfer to make alot of steam very quickly. After about 10 seconds or even as long as 20 to 30 seconds of this when you pick up the spatula you should start to notice the pita poof up a little. Encourage this by pushing on the bubble and trying to get it to spread.

After the bubble has spread completely I usually flip the pita over again and press down with the pita to brown this side as well. If the bubble doesn't spread completely it isn't a huge loss, just flip it over before it burns. The pita will still taste great!! Each pita does not cook for very long and if you do it right you should barely have enough time to roll out the next one during each 20 - 30 second waiting period.

I have heard of people doing this on a stove with a pizza stone. It is supposedly more reliable and you can do more then one at once but I have never had much luck.

Continued

2007-11-05T21:28:00.000-05:00

"Ah, you seem to be leading me. Quite all right though, the last thing of a professor to die is the will to pontificate. You can still hear them in most drafty universities whispering on ."

"Where was I, oh yes..."

Yip continued on for several hours. They had settled into a certain rhythm and the rule was Yip talked and Chuck listened.

What he heard this time was different. This wasn't a story in the typical sense but rather a recipe for space travel. Space, you see, has 5 dimensions, four for distances and one for time. The four we are all aware of and a fifth which is best understood as a radius. In a very real sense the space we are familiar with is stretched out on the surface of a sphere. Now we see why Yip began talking about inter-planetary travel with ancient drams of intra-planetary travel. In much the same way that one can fall from one point on the earth to any other one call fall from one point in space to any other.

Can you imagine! Early man certainly did and Chuck imagined himself on Earth looking at the stars as once they had looked across the ocean.

"But how do you fall out of space?" he asked, then quickly covered his mouth at the interruption.

"Heh. I will tell you." then Yip smiled.
"And maybe you will understand where many balk and cry"

It is true. The sphere that all of space that we know and see is wrapped around isn't very big. In fact, it is quite smaller then even an atom. Do not ask how, as Chuck invariably did, just accept this, every point in space is theoretically much closer to every other point then you could possibly imagine. Still, it is common knowledge that traveling to the country outside the city requires traversing a distance much larger then is wanted. So, how then can one take the true shortest path?

"Black holes" he said and then paused for effect.

"Only in a black hole where space curves in on itself to an infinitesimal point can two separate locations 'tunnel' through the fourth dimension of space. Only you wouldn't want to fall into a black hole, even if it did shorten the distance considerably!"

Scientists, he continued, eventually solved this through Quantum Mechanics. Specifically Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle which states that you can never know both the speed and position of a particle. Black holes, if they are infinitesimally small, provide a way of knowing the position of a particle perfectly! This means the speed is infinitely large which is impossible.

Day: 1

2007-11-01T18:20:00.000-04:00

Chuck leaped from the platform. Not, of course, because he had to but because leaping is one of the many Chuck does. At times he likes to think that it impresses the ladies. Other times it is simply for the pure joy of it.

So, as I said, Chuck leaped from the platform and then continued walking. Not that this made him stand out any less for he had the particularly nasty habit where his head was not pointed where his body would soon follow. If he was in a larger city or more important planet he might have passed for a naive tourist but this was neither.

No, Chucks planet was functional at best and haphazardly strewn about at worst. One could not call it dirty since mankind had long since learned the virtues of staying out of mother natures way. But it was not clean. Cleanliness entails order and purpose and it is clear that no coherent thought, ideology, or force had shaped this city.

Walking was one of the things that made Chuck happy and it was something he did fairly frequently. He had, what could be called, the luxury of rich yet deceased parents and this afforded him liberties not available to many of the people he passed by. Some might find it ironic that one so well born might find comfort in the vary people this industrial planet seemed to use as fuel. Little nuggets born and brought up to maturity in order to be consumed and eventually exhausted back to the planet they came from.

He couldn't articulate what it was that so attracted him to these people but it was clear to him that they were different from his kind and different was good. He made a hard left and 100 meters or so brought him to the entrance of a vast drainage pipe home to his favorite person in his world. He had only learned his name two weeks or so ago and it still brought him delight.

"Stop grinning, you look like a fool." said Yip

"Sorry, I was just thinking of your name and how much I am sure that dog I saw just 5 minutes ago would love to say it." he said, is grin widening.

Yip only grunted and turned to go into his makeshift home. As he did so it was clear again that he did not belong here. If one were to glance at him no doubt they would see his uncut hair and the ragged edged hole where his right ear ought to be and dismiss him as senile. But his posture, bearing, face were of a man who had experienced far more then a hermits struggle for existence.

At this cold greeting Chuck faultered, as he always did, and asked if this was a bad time.

"For Hiesens sake get inside," Yip spat then muttering "and grow a spine".

Yip shuffled back into his house with Chuck following still trying to absorb as much as he could from the environment.

When Yip had finished the ancient practice of brewing tea for a guest the two settled down into the makeshift chairs and sat in silence. Each would sip their tea, content to be lost in the thin whisps of steam curling upward from their cups. Truth be told, despite having chosen this drain pipe as his home 15 years ago for its lack of neighbors, he enjoyed these visits nearly as much as Chuck did.

"Tell me about the Great Expansion." Chuck finally said.

Yip snorted and went back to his tea. Several small bits of leaves had settled to the bottom of his cup and he concentrated on them.

Chuck though had played this game before and simply waited.

Slowly, he began "They no doubt taught you the structure of hyperdimensional space. Polititions and aristocrats must be capable of conjuring up this image a will when interviewing for the news service."

Chuck ignored this reference and mearly nodded.

"Then what they told you is true. They don't capture the majesty of it all though. The shear arrogance required..." at this he chuckeled to himself.

"Never mind that. For as long as we have understood gravity it has been fun to think about falling through a planet to reach the other side. It is an fluke, or by design if you will, that if you dug a hole straight from you to anywhere else on the surface of the planet it would take the same amount of time to fall through that hole and pop out at your destination. This is true no matter if the other point is straight dead opposite of you or somewhere off to the side. "

Maybe this was why he enjoyed Chucks visits. Sometimes it isn't so much companionship that people need but an audience. The urge to talk about his passion returned though and he continued. Or at least tried. Chuck though took the break as an opportunity for interruption.

"Yes, but wouldn't banging against the sides and such slow you down quite enough so that you wouldn't make it?"

Recycling huh,..... what is it good for....

2007-10-23T10:32:00.000-04:00

So while I wait for national novel writting month and while I work up the energy to finish my last post on the credit crises I'd like to talk about recycling and why it is bad.

Most people get kind of angry when I say that.

I ask you this, can you name a material, besides aluminum, that you don't have to pay to get recycled? The answer is likely no because besides aluminum it does cost money to recycle.

The problem is that the primary cost of most things with suitable competition is energy. It is actually kind of a fun game to go back through the manufacturing and lifetime of a product and to see how much of its cost is related to energy the main premise here is that raw meterials do not technically cost anything. They exist. What costs us is the process of moving them and changing them to suit our needs. However, even the tools necessary to refine a raw material had to come from a raw material themselves.

The end result is that the cost of an item is a fairly good estimate of the amount of energy that went into producing it.

So, if it actually costs money to recycle trash then it must be that it costs more energy then it would have taken to just use the raw material.

Most energy, in the united states anyway, is produced by coal or natural gas. Both of which produce polutents and CO2 in spades. So recycling increases both of these. You are, in a sense, trading one form of polution for another.

The same goes for using hybrid cars. If a car costs more then you would save in gas then you are not doing the environment a favor. The only way to reduce polution is to reduce consumption.

In other words: buy a compact car, don't buy crap, pay attention to redundent packaging (the cost of bottled water is mostly the bottle) and be more frugal with more obvious energy wasters like leaving computers/lights on constantly or running the heater/air conditioner excessively.

Hello, and I guess el mundo de dinero

2007-10-01T13:43:00.000-04:00

Not really sure what I want to write about but I feel like writing. Well, not writing so much as ruminating. I don't really feel like writing about the stuff I think about now'a days. Those things that I am relatively sure about have, I think, been adopted by most sane people. Those things that I am wondering about are so complex that I hesitate to write and expose my naiviete.

For instance, I topic of interest for me recently has been international finance and the Fed in particular. What role does the fed play and what is its purpose? We know that they set interest rates but why do they do so and what is the result. I won't say that I called the sub-prime mortage collapse but I do think that I agreed with the correct people. The most fascinating part about this whole thing though is trying to figure out why the Fed continued to artificially lower interest rates even after the housing bubble became painfully evident.

Whats the big deal? Well, an amazing amount of money gets lent and traded back and forth every day. The fact that there are such things as day long loans between corporations and banks is amazing to me. This is however overwhelmingly a good thing. Money, with the advent of computerized banking, can flow with almost no resistance to the people who need it most. Unfortunately as the flow of money becomes more complex so does cause and effect.

When you purchase a mortage you are agreeing to pay back the money at a future time and with interest. Now, the bank that gave you the loan would really like to use that interest money now rather then 15 or 20 years from now when the loan matures. As a result a niche market has sprung up where a very large bank will "buy" these mortgages from smaller banks. Everyone wins! Smaller banks only get part of the interest that they would have collected but they get it now and the larger bank gets a fairly secure promise of income since the smaller bank assumes most of the risk in this situation. This larger bank then bundles a whole bunch of mortgages together and sells them again to other institutions.

This can happen several times as each bank takes alittle bit of the promised interest for themselves. This practice also reduces the risk associated with mortgages since once a whole bunch have been grouped together the law of large numbers means you can very accurately predict the percent that will default and therefor have a secure and stable income stream.

Here is where it gets even more tripy as far as I can figure it out. Once a bank buys a large hunk of mortgages it then uses this to leverage other more risky investments. In a sense, they are using these promises of future money to be able to inflate the current amount of wealth at their disposal and therefor the amount of loans that they can take out. This is not a bad thing because then the banks or companies can use these new loans to do good things like buy capital for manufacturing or research.

This all works really well so long as one can predict accurately the percentage of mortgages that will default and thus the future value of all this money that everyone is depending on. What happened here is that the small banks stopped caring so much who got loans because it was cheap for the people. Also, the market for mortgages skyrocketed as fully international and computerized money markets came into their own. Lastly, one needs to buy alot of low interest rate mortgages to get a certain amount of future income.

So people were eager to get low interest rate morgages and banks were eager to give low interest rate morgages because larger banks were eager to buy up these low interest rate mortgages. With all this easy *large sum loans* floating about it is not a wonder that the price of homes in many areas became so inflated. As the price of homes continued to rise it became possible for people to take out even larger mortgages backed by the new value of their homes. And I think you can see how this cycle continues.

It all came crashing down as people began buying homes with the expectation of quickly rising home prices and more importantly small banks began issuing loans with the expectation of quickly rising home prices. When interest rates started rising again and people who had variable interest rate loans starting defaulting on their loans the small banks said no problem, I'll sell the home and recoup my loss. But when they tried to resell the home, they couldn't get the price they were expecting. This means that they couldn't give the money they had promised to the larger banks who had bought those mortgages oh so long ago and are now entitled to the money. The larger banks said oh shit because a much larger number of these mortgages were now defaulting then they had predicted.

So, now these larger banks are stuck with future obligations (essentially payments on loans that they took out) that were supposed to be mostly backed by these mortgages that have disappeared. The banks stop taking out loans because they are not sure of what they can pay back and further more stop buying up mortgages because they stop trusting them and the whole system grinds to a halt, which is exactly what happened about 2 months ago.

An interesting parallel is the sight Prosper.com. The premise of the site is that individuals can make loans to individuals. If you want to borrow money you put up an ad saying how much and at what percent interest rate. Then, people willing to loan money make bids as low as 50 dollars at a certain interest rate. As a result, a borrow get money from 50 - 100 different people and a loaner might have money invested in 50 - 100 different people. This spreads out the risk, theoretically, for the loaners. The website, in this case, is actually the one that makes the loan to the borrower and then sells parts of it to the loaners on the site.

What makes it interesting is that many people jumped in thinking wow, I can loan to poor credit people at a much higher interest rate then a bank would give me (15 - 24%) and do good at the same time by giving people with poor credit a chance. In reality enough of the people with poor credit have poor credit for a reason and have defaulted on their loans to dissuade alot of people from lending. Now, the only way to get a loan on the site as a borrower is to have either phenomenal credit or some other aspect of your financial history that is attractive to loaners.

This is what is happening now in the financial markets. It is becoming harder for people to get mortgages because people are realizing that giving loans to people with poor credit is a bad thing. Lucky, this fear seems mostly contained to the housing market at this time because business to business loans are still going strong.

Unfortunately Americans have gotten used to the idea that their house actually makes money for them and even more so is a liquid member of their wealth. As a result, we should see over the next two years a drastic increase in the savings rate. This is a good thing! Currently americans spend more then they make and a large part of this is likely because they feel confident that they can remortgage their house or sell to pay off the debt. As house prices fall due to both a renormalization of prices and a reduction in available buyers (the people who shouldn't have gotten loans in the first place) people will literally see their nest eggs evaporate in front of their eyes and will become much more conservative in their spending.

Simultaneously, oil prices will continue increasing (which won't be helped by the falling value of the dollar) and it is likely inflation will take hold as the increased cost of energy and they value of the dollar move to partially compensate for the over valuation of both the stock market and the housing market. What this means is that instead of housing prices and the stock market falling the dollar becomes worth less so a 300,000 dollar house that should be worth 200,000 dollars might still sell for 250,000 dollars but that 250,000 dollars is only worth $200,000 in 2007 dollars. Basically bad news.

On that note, tomorrow is National Novel Writting Month and I think I am going to give it a shot. I have no plot and no idea of what I am going to write but we will see:-) I am going to be posting what I write each day here on the website in an effort to keep myself honest. In anycase, I have written enough non-fiction here lets see what the other side of Euclid looks like :-) .

Lazie Fare (If I have Errored it is because its <>)

2007-08-10T11:33:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I was walking to a subway station in Boston and a guy with pamphlets caught my eye. Two things were about to conspire against the poor fellow: I am on vacation and have nothing but Time and I relish a good public policy debate. Needless to say I spent the next hour and a half discussing with this individual from the LaRouche Youth Movement the finer points of financial policy.

For his credit I agreed with him on two important points. The first is that we are headed for an economic disaster. Most figures I have seen suggest that in the next two years 7 million people will lose their homes. Millions more will find themselves unable to purchase a new one due to drastically more stringent mortgage qualifications. Millions more will find their retirement fund (their home) devalued. The repercussions of this are pretty much unknown at this point. His second point was that we need to start investing in alternative sources of energy and public transportation. Again, I am a hippie, of course I agree with him.

Where we differed is that the LaRouche group believes that we need to start a new New Deal where the government takes out Trillions of dollars in debt in order to fund a wide array of public service works such as building nuclear reactors, high speed rail, and even a tunnel under the Bering Straight to connect the East and West by rail.

Over the years my stance on how the government should handle ANYTHING financial is to just let it be. My main point is that an economy is a fantastically complex thing and we must resist the urge to believe we can control it. We should take the Law of Unintended Consequences to heart.

I think it is a general tendency to believe that the scrap of paper that is in your wallet actually has worth. Money is and will always remain at its best a passive and universal indicator of value. When this is true money serves to improve the efficiency of an economy by allowing goods and services to be "won" by the person who truly values them the most. Any attempt to manipulate this system will lead to a warping of the value of money and a hindrance in its ability to perform
as a passive and universal indicator of value.

I can say this without qualification because it is true. There are many cases where we manipulate markets by adjusting prices and almost universally they lead to problems. A few text book examples follow.

Price ceilings - A good example are price limits on housing in large cities. This results in a shortage of housing in general because it reduces the incentive to build new housing. High Demand, Low Supply.
Price Floors - Minimum Wage (yes I know, this is controversial) we set the minimum that a person can get paid which invariably leads to less people being employed. More people are willing to work, but fewer people are willing to pay for said work. High Supply, Low Demand
Printing Money - Many governments have tried to do this in order to boost apparent wealth. Unfortunately more money does not equal more grain and invariably prices rise so that the same proportion of money buys the same amount of bread.

Some more subtle examples are what is going on right now. Had not the fed lowered interest rates down to 1% it is unlikely we would be in the crises we are today. Oh, they had a reason. The worry was that deflation would occur which they hoped to counteract by making borrowing easier (collecting interest on money is one way to increase the supply of money. A low interest rate means more people are able to borrow money and as a result of them paying interest money is created. A high interest rate is used to counter act a high inflation rate for the opposite reason. People are unable to borrow money so nobody is around to pay interest. ). A side effect of this tactic is that it made it way to easy for people to borrow money to buy houses and indeed, many people who normally wouldn't be able to purchase houses have.

In our efforts to help a certain segment of the market we invariably cause unintentional harms to other segments. Which can be alright except for the fact that almost invariably the balance is negative and not zero. We do more harm then good.

So what should we do? The government should get the hell out of the market. I know there are exceptions!! Monopolies, and utilities are rather unique problems that I am sure could be solved by the market but not within an acceptable amount of time. Yes, it might take 40 years or maybe longer but I have a feeling Standard Oil and Bell Telephone Company would have eventually broken up. But that is literally two or more generations of people. And utilities pose an interesting problem as who wants two or three power lines running to their house. This might change in the future though as we declining fossil fuels push us away from the centralized utility approach but that is off topic :-)

Remove subsidies, artificial prices, convoluted tax laws, central bank lending, and I will say it again, let taxes be! What does that leave for our government? This gets a little more philosophical as it depends on what you think the point of a government is. I personally believe that the government is there as a sort of insurance policy to protect us and cushion us from the unpredictability of life. You loose your job because someone in another country is able to produce your produce cheaper then your government will help provide training and support while you look for a new one. A country attacks us and our government defends us. That sort of thing.

Minimum wage is still up in the air for me. In a way it is government sanctioned welfare since we all pay the price (in that sense is it any different from taxes?) and yet on the other maybe it is better to tax and supplement income and provide a measure of flexibility in the labor market.

How does this apply the LaRouche? His suggestion sounds future oriented and good to the people but I don't believe that the government is necessarily the best at making the decisions. I do believe that we will have to build the things that he is suggesting but let the market decide when and where is the best place to do so. Additionally, the government taking out 6 trillion dollars in loans is going to have an effect on the economy regardless. All in all not a very well thought out plan full of memes meant to tug at emotions like FDR's new deal, clean energy, and economic crisis.

So in the end I wasn't able to convey my ideas very well and neither was he. But I hope he has spent some time trying to add some cohesiveness.

The real question in my mind now is to ask if such a policy change is even possible in the US and if so how would you go about doing it?

Cropping

2007-07-30T15:22:00.001-04:00

I met an interesting guy a month or two ago. Don't remember his name or anything but he studied something about photography and the publics trust in it. Namely, he said that people tend to take photographs as snapshots of reality, truth on paper as it is. We both agreed that this is true and made small talk of different examples. The basic premise has been bothering me though. What is it that makes photographs so special. Photoshop'ed is now well entrenched in the english language so we clearly know what is going on.

I have to wonder if it is a general tendency to live "inside the box". Be it a television, the boundaries of a photograph, or the lines of thinking drawn by a radio announcer, we have learned as a people to stay within the lines.

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a picture and wondered what wasn't included? I don't mean what was photoshopped out but something as simple as what the photographer chose to include within the viewfinder. I went on a ski trip with some friends in Colorado one year and someone went who didn't really enjoy skiing. At one point we posed for a picture half-way up the mountain and she isn't in it because she is 5 feet to our left on the ground and crying in frustration. There is no hint of this though in the picture... except for her absence.

Granted, if you looked at that photograph I wouldn't expect you to to imagine that she was there but the basic premise that ALL of us were having a blast is clearly false.

I can't watch television now because I am all too conscious of how little we are actually told and how much we trust the people who are presenting the information. For instance I just read an article today on bottled water. You might have heard how Pepsi is now going to start labeling its Aquafina bottled water as coming from a "Public Water Source". The article ends by saying as much as 40% of bottled water uses tap water as its source. Sounds all well and good untill you start asking yourself what 40%. Is that a percentage of companies, or a percentage of actual sales. If 40% of bottled water companies use tap water then the actual amount of bottle water sold that is tap water could be anywhere from 90% to 10%, depending on which companies. The point is we don't know.

More to the point, we don't care.

I have wondered if this is a new thing or of it is something more basic. Obviously one could bring out Nazi Germany as a pre-television example. It is also likely that the catholic church was so successful for so long because it was the sole source of communication. So regardless of the urge to think this something to blame on our current environment, this may be something we just have to deal with.

Which begs the question: how have we dealt with it? Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement come to mind as possible times when we thought outside the box. I don't think I know enough about history/culture that be able to answer that well. Any ideas?

Worst Death Scene Ever Goes To..... The Universe!!!!

2007-06-14T14:10:00.000-04:00

So a general warning, this post is going to have a somewhat nerdy and engineering bent.

Entropy is kind of funny. I have used it alot in my thermodynamics classes. It is one of the state variables that can be used to describe a system and so it combined with the word "Isentropic" is problem solving gold. I first heard about it in chemistry where we learned that the gibbs free energy change is equal to the change in enthalpy minus the change in entropy times temperature. This occured way back in high school and sadly, I think I am only now recovering from it.

What is entropy? I can tell you what it isn't... it isn't a physical thing. You cant touch it, you can't smell it, you cant even measure it but indirectly. In this sense there is no way that entropy can cause anything. Its like saying that the slope of a hill caused the ball to roll down it. Gravity moved the ball, the slope just tells you how fast and how far.

None the less, there is the persistant impression that changes in entropy can cause something to happen and I believe this is a direct result of gibbs equation. And yet, most people ignore the fact that for anything to happen requires energy of some kind. That energy can be in the form of potential energy, kinetic, or whatever. So what then is the entropy term in gibbs energy equation?

Energy! Specifically entropy measures the amount of energy in a system that is unavailiable for work. Sweet. This is a definition we can work with! So in gibbs equation if a change in temperature, or more generally a change of state, frees up some energy to do work. And if there is energy availiable to do work then things can change which is the whole point of gibbs equation.

What are the different ways that we can have energy present but not availiable for work? Well, we know from intro thermodynamics ( and physics I think, but that was probably 8 or 9 years ago at this point so I am not sure if it was in it) that the efficiency of any heat engine has to be lower then that of the Carnot heat engine which relates the max efficiency to the highest and lowest temperatures of the system (kind of). So right there we have the fact that based on temperatures (a state variable) we can vary the amount of usable energy we have. Voila, I give you entropy.

What else? Well, in chemistry we have many different forces and interactions taking place that are irrelevent for power cycles. Namely, inter and intramolecular forces. In both cases we now have a positional potential energy. This energy is kind of like the energy stored in a bunch of magnets that you tacked to a table. Based on the arrangement you can have positive or negative potential energy (to many north poles facing north poles or conversely to many north poles facing south poles). In anycase the arrangement of molecules in a liquid gas or solid can be thought of in much the same way. If there is lots of order in a system then essentually all your north poles are facing other north poles and you can use the fact that the system wants to force itself apart to do work. If, however, there is alot of dissorder then for every north pole facing a north pole there is likely a north pole facing a south pole that cancels it out.

How does this relate to the heat death of the universe? Well there must be a reason that the universe tends to disorder and I like to think that it is the fact that nature abhores an energy gradient. As we have stated, any time we have something that is well ordered it is almost the equivilent of saying that we have energy we can use all nice and localized in one area. So the tendency towards disorder is the tendency to spread out this energy.

But why does energy spread? Why do energy gradients tend towards zero? Thermal fluctuations helped along by a tiny dose of quantum uncertainty mean that any barrior to energy movement is likely to be crossed as time goes to infinity. So any barrier that is put into place to localize energy or equivently to create order is going to be crossed and that energy will spread into the surroundings. Since the probability of that crossing is proportional to the amount of energy present it is more likely for energy to leave then to enter. Maybe only slightly so, but it is inevitably the case.

There are alot of details missing but basically it makes sense to me and I supose that is what counts :-)

Don't read this.

2007-06-06T23:15:00.000-04:00

I don't entirely know why I am writting about this. There is nothing new about what I am experiancing. I suppose it is the oldest and most universal experiance... period. But, I have never experianced it like this.

That, of course, suggests that I have experianced death. My first came when I was pulled out of a line waiting to get on busses for a field trip in eighth grade. It was the end of the year and we were being treated to a day at the local bowling ally / miniture golf / go carts / arcade place. I even remember handing my little zip lock bag of quarters to one of my friends because I knew, in a sense, what the office secretary wanted to see me about. And yet, I didn't. It was still a surprise because I never really saw my great grandfather towards the end. I just knew he was not well and really, death wasn't something that happened to people I knew.

Then there were the car accidents. Each one creeping closer, first someone I barely knew. Then the kid who was cool and bad ass and yet still would talk to me if we had a class together. Adam Rusnak came next. I still remember the shock of losing someone you see everyday. Chemistry class was never the same.

Last was Vasu. I could write for years and still never capture what I felt after he died. So sudden, we were planning on going to India together just two months later. Then walking through a funeral parlor not wanting with every fiber of my body to be seeing and hearing it all.

But Grandpa R... knowing and yet not letting your self know. Little remarks about how its somehow funny that he still thinks that he will be able to drive again (although deep down we think he knows he wont). The daily regimend of pills and inhalers and exersizes and precautions and worries that is wearing down my grandmother. Conversations, if they last longer then 10 minutes, that are about everything and somehow nothing.

I have never felt like this. Death is not supposed to be like this. It is supposed to come up from behind and snatch those things away from you that you care most about. It teaches you to charish life and those around you. It gives meaning and urgancy and beauty to everything.

But how can you find purpose or take meaning from something that hasn't happened yet but already has? You are stuck in a limbo of numbness and purposefull ignorance. Feeling the future fill the present and doing your best to look past it.

And perhaps that is why I am so upset. Death, for me, is not an inevitability but a game a chance. Role two dice and you will be surprised how long you can go before you role snake eyes. You can also be surprised how quickly they can appear. Regardless, there is no explicit end game. You role as long as you can.

That is what is wrong , it just doesn't seem right to role expecting to lose.

Of Presidents and Differential Equations

2007-05-24T10:39:00.000-04:00

I was talking with a friend the other day and he started complaining about how everyone that was for the war in Iraq is now against it, mainly because the media is against it. To him, the way the media was able to control the opinions of Americans is wrong. Which it is. Really though you have to wonder who is actually in control of the beast.

It is kind of fascinating, as a person who has always been against the war (and Bush for that matter) watching opinion turn against him. If you look at the polls there has been a fairly constant and steady decline in Bush's approval ratings ever since 9/11. It would be great fun to fit an exponential decay curve to the data. I sense that there is some sort of fundamental truth wrapped up in the decay constant of the curve. In fact, lets do this.

There was a fairly big bump around the 2004 election but immediately afterword it continued downward and is only now starting to level out. Immediately following 9/11 his approval rating was roughly 87%. It reached 45% on 5/20/2004. That is roughly 2.75 years for roughly one half decrease in popularity giving a decay constant of 0.25 (years^-1). Following the election his popularity again started falling starting at about 50% on 1/20/2005 and reaching an average of 28% on 5/20/2007 giving a drop of 22% over 2.4 years. The calculation is a little more difficult but it leads to a decay constant of .24 (years^-1). Pretty dang close.

Whats great is that we now have a model for the average approval rating over time which is given by the following equation: A = 50*e^(-(date - 1/20/2005)*.25). And with a model we can predict future approval ratings. Lets look at his approval rating in November when General Potreas is giving his report on the effectiveness of the Surge in Iraq A = 50*e^(-2.8*.25) = 25%. Looking even further towards the primary season would give an approval rating of only 23%.

The question is, will this trend continue? To answer this we have to look at our model and ask what could be driving this behavior and if it will continue.

What the models are great for is giving an abstract way of looking at relationships between quantities. What is interesting about exponential decay is it corresponds to a differential equation where the rate of change of a quantity is equal to the the quantity times a constant. In other words, the rate at which Bush's popularity is decreasing is directly proportional to his current popularity.

What popularity is a measure of is the number of people who approve of his performance. So in this sense it makes sense that the rate of change of his popularity is proportional to the number of people who approve. The more people there are who do approve of him means the more people who are able switch and disprove of him. What is hidden in this discovery is that, in reality, there is no one who should approve of president Bush. Given enough time, everyone will come around to the fact that he is a bad president and his approval rating will approach 0%.

Indeed, this is likely the case. Bush's popularity is almost entirely derived from his perception as the boss. I remember a good friend who is very smart saying prior to the Iraq war that we must support our president. And, in a sense he was right. The country thought we were at war with a dangerous and amorphous enemy. Divided as a country we may fall to this threat and Bush did an excellent job of placing himself as a rallying point for people with his strong language, determination, and apparent self confidence. Ultimately though, this is a feeling based on the perception of a threat which has not materialized. Our way of life has continued and indeed has been more threatened by things that Bush has done nothing about such as increasing oil prices, global warming, Katrina, health care costs, apparent increasing gap between rich and poor, and so on. It is hard to name a group of people that actually have benefited from his presidency.

These next few months then should be interesting. Barring any major event that will cause fear of an external enemy his poll numbers will serve as a test of our model. Specifically, if his poll numbers continue to fall at this rate then we can become more confident that ultimately everyone, even the thick headed ones, will come to believe that Bush is truly the worst president we have ever had.

United We Stand

2007-02-15T21:38:00.000-05:00

A friend of mine described her research topic in lit theory (I think) as how our concept of the world has changed through the years. In the fifties and sixties it was a very observational culture where we sat in front of the TV and were told things. The rise of the internet has changed that in many ways that I didn't understand at the time. However, it started me thinking about my own pet interest, group theory.

Briefly my theory of groups is that we need to feel as part of one. The smaller the group the better. About 150 is optimal (there is research in this). The actual size is not as necessary as the appearance, seeing a familiar face on the TV every morning is an alright substitute. Arching over everything though is this need for groups and classifications to feel content and safe.

I can't honestly speak all that well about any time period prior to 1995. Most of what I know has come to be as charactures and hyperbole written by "the victors of history" if you will. On the otherhand there are some really interesting conclusions that we can make without extending ourselves too far.

Throughout the vast majority of human history all news was local news. If you got information it was by word of mouth or through the local religious/social instituion, which were generally one and the same. Even the advent of the printing press and mass literacy only increased one's sphere of experiance by a few miles. Instead of knowing a burrough of London now one heard about the whole city. Regardless, the advent of radio and television soon changed this.

Television and radio differed from traditional media in one very important aspect, they had no mass. Newspapers and other print media must be printed locally so it makes sense to include local information and to put a local spin on things. Indeed, most medium sized cities had their own newspapers. Speaches and sermons are by nature highly local and individualized. Television and radio though could be broadcast across the nation giving something that the other forms of media lacked, a widespread shared experiance.

Suddenly the entire nation could listen to the green lanturn and talk about it at work or school the next morning. Radio was good but still tended to be local as the cost of opperating a radio station is comparably small. Television is a different story. Once television came into its own one had their choice of 3 channels to watch the news or programming. Traditional media still existed but you shouldn't underestimate the remarkable hemogenizing effect this had on society. I believe that America, fresh out of the greatest war ever fought even embraced this. As the number of channels grew of course this image of hemogeny was deminished but not broken. The response to this massive groupthink was the cultural revolution of the late 60's and 70's.

This revolution likely started in print but reached critical mass through the radio. Radio was cheaper and more flexible then television but still had the reach that was required to give the required widespread shared existance that was needed. Music couldn't help but be swept up in this whole tornado as radio was its primary distribution outlet.

The reason we are so concerned with the nature of the media we consume is that it defines us in ways that we don't necessary recognize simply because it is a shared experiance. If you were to take a group of racially or religiously diverse people and isolate them together for a long period of time it is likely that they will split into what makes them common. These splits are more likely to fall along racial or other obvious traits like families with children. Men will group together and talk about the weeks football games and so on.

If prior to this you split them into mixed groups that each watched a different movie it is likely that, for a short period of time, this would overide the traditional groupings. Even the traditional groupings come from shared experiances of some origin. The point is that what we watch, listen to, and read has a profound effect on not just who we are, but on our perception of being part of a group.

What makes the internet so disruptive is that it is difficult at all to find people who have the same shared experiance as yourself. Fairly soon the simple act of being on the internet will no longer be new enough to qualify as a shared experiance. We will take it for granted like we take making toast for granted. Could you imagine someone comming up to you at work and saying, "So, made toast this morning. Ya, took some getting used to but I got it working after a few minutes. Even found thing cool new thing that lets you adjust how brown it gets!" The reason for this is the same as the cultural revolution of the 60's, a group needs outsiders to define itself. Seriously, who hasn't used a toaster?

This has led to the rise of MySpace, Facebook, and a myriad of other "social Insert Blank Here" websites. These provide a way of maintaining a sort of gestalt shared experiance with one's friends. Indeed, one can say it is their reason for existance. Why else would Facebook introduce that creepy list of everything your friends are doing?

There are also thousands of political, philosophical, and other point of view blogs out there. No two are quite alike and each has their own unique audience. The internet has lower the barior to media creation and desimination so low that it is only with great effort that websites like Yahoo can maintain anything resembling a stable and truely wide spread existance. Even these sites are becomming more and more fluid as they grant users more and more control over the content.

In a sense we have returned to the time when all news was local only now we are not limited by geography.

The real question is where will this take us? Already I think it has limited our ability to "rise as one" simply because we are no longer "one" the way we used to be. I also think that it has a tendency to radicallize groups. Before television people were limited by geography and it was difficult to find shared experiances that were acceptable to the relatively random group of people you happen to live next to. Hense the experiances tended to be relatively moderate and conservative in most cases. This tended to mellow everyone out. Even if it wasn't exactly what you belived in you still heard it everyday and that has an effect. Television originally wasn't limited by geography but more by the number of distribution channels. This had the same effect as being limited by geography.

The internet though is limited in neither channels or geography. This is why it will fundimentally alter the way we form groups. No longer will groups be as clearly defined but rather they will form widely overlapping circles like a Ven diagram on crack.

I honestly have not idea how this will affect society but I have a gut feeling that it will be bad. My gut tells me that the most radical and hence "well defined" groups will have the most power, politically at least. There will be a constant struggle to organize the moderates into a coehesive group that can fight back and it will likely only happen as a reflex to damage already done.

In anycase, I have a feeling that governments will adapt rather then the other way around. Those that are less prone to being over taken by minorities will remain the healtiest while the least flexible will simply make too many bad decisions. In a sense the government needs to be able to give as groups a voice as possible so that when it comes time to make a decision they have to work together.

We may also see the rise of the small nation as they are better able to reach the consensuses simply because geography will play a more important role (remember, smaller group is better).

Therefore I make a prediction, 30 years from now the healthiest nations on the planet will be small (US state sized) countries with parlamentary govenrments. Note that this does not include the United States of America.

In anycase, a question to end on: What groups do you take part in? What shared experiances define those groups? Are you ready for the revolution? (Ha! got you on that one didn't I :-) )

PS I have focused on the internet but as cable and radio enter the digital age they will suffer from this too, just to a lesser extent. The rise of the 24 hour news channels is a great example of this.

Potlitical Snapshot

2007-01-14T12:41:00.000-05:00

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I think it is somewhat usefull to spell out, as plainly as possible, one's political beliefs. So as 2007 gets started lets have at it.

Here is the link that started this by the way. It is a short commentary by a man who was a Regan conservative but has now rethought his possition.

I have a hearty mistrust of authority. This might come from growing up politically under G.W.B. but I like to think that I have always had it. In fact, I think it is the main reason I didn't vote for Bush the first time, I just couldn't trust someone who seemed to ACT authoritative. Regardless I believe now that we need to handicap the federal government as much as possible. Give power back to the states! It might seem kind of obvious but what is good for Alabama is not good for Maine. Over the past 40 years the federal government has slowely raised taxes and used that money to bribe states into following federal mandates. As a result the federal government effectively controles much more then it constitutionally has a right to.

My brother told me a month ago or so that he wanted to see an evolutionary form of government. I think that the driving force of evolution, competition, is desperatly needed. Let states compete for skilled workers and citizens. But they can't do that without the freedom they deserve. Yes, there will be mistakes *cough* Kansas *caugh* but what better way to end a contraversy then to show what happens to a state that embraces the teaching of intellegent design. Likewise let each state figure out how to run welfare, social security, and education. The gambit from a state indistiguishable from an EU country all the way to dang near pure capitalism will be represented. The federal government can then step back and act as a second insurance policy should a state fail and become insolvent.

I also believe that such a large military is dangerous to us as americans. I find it difficult to remember a US military operation (not war, although the last couple of those count too) that hasn't has disasterous unintended consiquences. Most of Africa is still realing from our influences and only now has central and south america begun to recover from our medeling in the 60's, 70's and 80's. No, we are not directly suffering but since when is an unstable world a good thing? Some would argue that by constraining these countries to third world status we have been able to obtain the cheap raw materials that feed our factories. The factories which still far outproduce every other country on the planet by the way, including china. Still, one has to wonder how much richer the world would be as a whole, us included, had their advancement not been hindered.

Which leads me to my economic view point which is staunchly conservative. I have seen enough evidence to convince me that all that stuff we learned in macro and micro economics is true. *Gasp* People are better off overall the less economic constraints they have on them. This includes tarrifs, taxes, price ceilings and floors, subsidies, bans, and the miriad of other ways our government keeps a finger on our economy.

That isn't to say that I am completely lasie fare. The goverments first and formost responsibility is to protect its people and that includes from corporite interest. Regulate environmental interests as well as those things which strictly benifit from government intervention such as utilities. Farming subsidies are an interesting case because it is difficult to ignore the argument that we would need all that farming during war time. With this and other "war time vital resources" I would just have to argue that rarely does war come upon us unanouced. Given sufficient time, like durring WWII, our economy could swiftly change gears.

I am however a social libral. While removing constraints on the economy will lead to a more dangerous situation I believe that the government should be there to provide a safety net. This makes good economic sense overall because the more people are willing to take risks the more the country will benifit from increased buisiness creation and competition. Like I mentioned before, if states are allowed more freedom, then I think this would happen naturally.

Thats about it for right now. There are alot of details that I find interesting like if we cut our military spending by 1/2 what could we do with that 400 billion dollars? But those are besides the point.

I am looking forward to the political debates as we near the 2008 election. My goal is to create a summery, akin to this, of every serious political candidate. A sort of political value system of each person. I don't anticipate it being easy but the juxitposition between what they write, what they say, what they have done, and what people say about them should be very interesting.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

2007-01-05T01:55:00.000-05:00

Kind of out of character for this place but I spend some time looking into the whole high fructose corn syrup craze. For some reason in the last year or two fructose has become the "evil food de jouier" (pardon my french!) and high fructose corn syrup has been dragged along with it. In anycase, I hope it is helpful.

I looked into the fructose thing and it seems that it is both good and bad. It is good in the sense that unlike glucose it takes a significant amount of time to be metabolized so that it doesn't stress your pancreas as much. In this sense it may help prevent diabetes but is has the very real benefit of providing a more even energy source then glucose alone. You may have heard of the Glycemic Index of food, it rates the rise in blood sugar immediately after eating that food. Low GI food is supposedly less of a shock to ones system since it is metabolized more slowly. The real benefit of a low GI diet is supposedly in balancing ones energy and mood throughout the day although I have never had the patience to test this out.

Whats funny is that Sucrose (table sugar or cane sugar) is broken down in the intestine into one molecule of glucose and one molecule of fructose and most commercially available sources of high fructose corn syrup also have roughly a 50/50 ratio of fructose to glucose. The higher concentrations require greater processing so are more expensive and since the chief reason for using HFCS is price... your probably not going to get the 90% pure stuff. The end result is most high fructose corn syrup that you eat is no more dangerous then table sugar.

Since fructose is over twice as sweet as glucose HFCS ends up taking less calories to make something as sweet then if you just poured table sugar into it. Where you do find the 90% fructose corn syrup is in "light" foods where sweetness is needed and the extra cost of HFCS-90 is worth the reduction in calories (probably reduces calories due to sweetener by 1/3).

Interestingly, it is difficult to find fruit with a fructose content greater then 50%, the highest being apples and pears. You are better off eating apples and pears a while before a run and say a banana, grapes, or cherries right after as a quick replenishment. The difference between the two is fairly significant with apples coming in at nearly 70 % fructose and the others in the low 40's. Dates are a spectacular 38% ! This explains why I eat them like candy, instant sugar rush...

The evil aspects of fructose are harder to pin down but ultimately it doesn't matter. I think most of the bad rap has come from the fact that HFCS is cheaper, easier to process, and goes bad more slowly then table sugar so it has allowed so many things to become sweeter more cheaply. In the end the moral of the story is eat less sugar, which we already knew. Doesn't matter what you eat, half of it is likely to be fructose so just eat less of it.

Free Will

2006-12-17T21:37:00.000-05:00

Don't ask me how, (benifits of dating a Philosophy major) but I was looking into the subject of free will recently. Oh, I know! "Something as frivolous as free will? Certainly you jest!" or so they say. Well, frivolous in comparison to more practical things like third world hunger or politics and so on.
In anycase, bare with me for a moment.

There are three tiers of free will and each have interesting implications. The highest, most abstract level deals with the environment in which a dicision is made. Essentially it is asking "Has the situation been manipulated to remove options?" The second involves actually physical manipulation of your decision making organ... er... ok fine: mind control. The last deals purely with the decision making process.

Frankly, who cares about the first too. They are alittle to wishy washy for me. Technically no one is ever free from influence on either level. Once the degree of influence begins to be discussed then it is difficult to say anything concret. Ah, but in the decision making process the meat does lie.

Free will commonly means the ability to act freely. This begs the question of what free really is. One would not consider the gentle falling of rain a "free" action but I would argue that really there is nothing else rain would rather do (Baring of course the evil Wind which will sometimes blow the drops back into the cloud or the Cold which will freeze them into hail... but that would be outside influence and more a matter of the first and second tiers :-) Lastly, can we give it up for over extended metaphores! *clap* *clap*) . Concentrating on the decision making process it would seem that free will is the ability to choose the decision we desire. Simple as that.

Or not. That would be a trivial answer that teaches us nothing so lets add in the idea of consciencesness. Or rather the idea of actually "making" a decision. Given the same external circumstances our previous definition of free will alows for us to make the same decision ad infinitum. Is this really free will? Computers are awesome at this and yet I don't think we would prescribe free will to them. Quite the opposite, acting like a computer is ment to imply the complete lack of free will.

If free will is the ability to not make the same decision given the same circumstances then it would appear that free will is the ability to act randomly. This certainly jives with the type of people we call "free spirits" and with what economists are only now comming to terms with, the peculiar irrationality of the human race.

Randomness can occure for many reasons, a certain noisy perception of the world, bugs in the actual decision making process, and mistakes as the decision is carried out. Regardless though, random processes are at the heart of what makes us human.

This is fairly comforting to me on many levels. For one, I see it as a sort of manifestation of the underlying uncertainly inherent in a quantum mechanical view of the universe. (Incidentally this can explain how my girlfriend can be ambivilent about a decision untill the decision is actually made... at which point the wave equation collapses causing whatever decision that was chosen to be wrong and the other right. Just kidding! Seriously, it was a joke.... But... But... awwww, but baby!. heh. It is kind of funny though and perhaps I will find out if she actually reads this...)

I think this also gives reason to get rid of laws that in some way remove our ability to make bad decisions. Our ability to make decisions that are bad for us is fundimental to what makes us human. Taking that away takes away more then we imagine.

The mathmatics of education

2006-10-01T13:47:00.000-04:00

Math is a language with little difference from others. In english I can say, that red ball is larger then yours and we know something about the world without having to experiance it. Mathmatics works the same way. If I write that x+y=3 then we know alot about x and y. In fact, because definitions of x and y are inherent in that equation we know an aweful lot about x and y.

That, though, is litterally childs play. The grammer of math can be extended to many more complex situations with relatively few assumptions. The beauty of this is that if we know alittle something about a number or veriable often we can end up knowing an enourmous amount. So the task of an engineer becomes fitting reality into the mathmatics so that the little that we can say we actually know can be translated into more then we care to know.

The only reason this works is because the gramatical structure of math is so very strict. In english, I can say that pig is flying through the orange sky or that I am terrific beyond comprehension. That flexability is very powerful in terms of description but poor in terms of extrapolating information. There are no rules in english that keep me from telling lies about myself and besides, terrific is a rather vague term that used to mean something quite different. Math though, is timeless and harsh in its rules.

Unfortunately very few of us ever actually learn math. Most of us are those people in spanish class who memorize the important phrases: "Como estas? Muy bien, y tu? Asi Asi...". Moreover, the higher that one gets in math the more complex the memorization becomes. A good example of this is the line Que sera sera, whatever will be will be. The grammer of that phrase is quite complex compared to typical "Donde esta el bano?" but as long as you and the person you are talking to have memorized its meaning then it doesn't require knowledge of the subjunctive verb tense. Most of math is like this, expecually for engineers and scientest. We are memorizing ever more complicated song phrases trusting that our collegues have also.

Which is fine. Like most languages, if you are imersed in it long enough the phrases start to make sense as a whole and eventually, you can speak it. Only, instead of a 6 month study abroad to Spain it took 7 years of college *shakes fists*. The problem though is when those fluent in the language attempt to speak to those who are not.

Spoken languages are a majority vocab and a minority grammer. In fact, I can get across an awefull lot of meaning speaking only nouns if I needed to. Math though is the opposite, it is almost entirely grammer and this is what makes it difficult to pick up through immersion. Recognizing vocab words is easy, you hear the word pollo a few times while someone is pointing at a chicken and its hard not to understand what pollo means. Understanding the rules behind partial differential equations is not easy.

This is the crux of the problem with the undergraduate engineering education. The vast majority of the professors have become proficient in math, at least to the degree that they prefer to talk about engineering in those terms. They have good reason, that is what math is for! The students though must perform a mental translation from math to english and then from english to reality and often that does not happen. They develop reflexive responses to problems without ever really knowing what they are doing. It would be like taking spanish for 4 years and never getting beyond conversations like "Como estas? Muy bien, y tu? Asi Asi...". Its no wonder people get frustrated with engineering.

As the focus of education gets further and further from route memorization the problem will continue to get worse. In the past, engineering students did math problems till it hurt. Indeed, engineering used to be a far more elite major. Now though, with the advent of computers, the emphesis is on understanding the problem and less on solving it. Overall this is a good thing but it robs students of valuable experiance in math that they need to be able to understand their professors.

Math is valuable because it is a uniquely unambigous method of communication. A problem, once formulated mathmatically, has a solution. The difficulty often is not solving the problem but rather formulating it. Granted the quality of the solution will vary based on your mathematical ability but in principle it is true. For the vast majority of the students though the difficulty is seen in figuring out the math problem, the formulation is secondary and besides, you can usually tell which section it came from by the problem number...

What to do? Start teaching math better! Not just college but straight down through first grade. We need to start teaching math like a language and less like... math. How well do you think you would be able to learn a foriegn language if the only exposure you had to it was a text book?

There is a language learning method out there called the Pimsleur Language Learning System. Like I said earlier there are significant differences between math and the spoken language but there is no reason that a similar method, based on cognitive psychology [read:science] cant be developed for math.

Some people are trying, here in Boston and in other places. What we need though is an Apollo program for education. Our knowledge of the brain and developement is not even comparable to what it was 10 and 20 years ago when most of our educational standards and state mandated curriculums were being developed. These curriculums have done nothing but strangle any form of progress that might be made. Teachers no longer have room to experiment for fear of not fitting in some section of the state aptitude test. Failure at the aptitude tests has dissasterous effects on funding.

Somehow, given the current congressional orgy of control, I don't see that happening.

One thing before the end...

2006-09-25T18:44:00.000-04:00

So it is 20 minutes before my last chance at passing the Math portion of my Ph.D. qualifier and I have come to something of an epiphiny... The one thing I want more then anything else is to spontaniously break out in a group dance ala the opening to West Side Story. More then that though I want to break out in dance to a specific song, Thriller by Micheal Jackson complete with the little comb twirl into the pocket he does at some point. Really, I might make that the goal of my graduate career... if I have one.

The More Things Change...

2006-08-15T20:37:00.000-04:00

So alot has been happening lately huh? It seems like the main stream media has begun jumping on the "There is nothing to fear, but fear itself!" bandwagon. Thankfully this also includes the "G.W. Bush is a fear monger." caboose so things might turn out alright after all. Regardless this spells the begining of the end of neo-conservative doctrine to which I think we can all give an AMEN! Ha!

In anycase, I have just moved into my appartment and for the first time in my life I will be living alone.

Alone, sure I have done it for a week at a time but come September what is it going to be like? Will I get used to it like everyone else seems to? Should I get used to it like everyone else does? I have written often about how I deplore the "castleization" of the american home. It is as if we are undersiege my some mysterious enemy which can not cross patches of closely manicured grass. Every night we must tune into the tellie to find out what is happening beyond our castle walls. I have no such mote, but I do have a door with three locks on it.

I guess what I am getting at is I am afraid of losing something. Something that I have held very dear since Vasu died. I guess everyone keeps something with them to remind them of loved ones and I kept a frame of mind. It is a poor aproximation to Vasu's but to me friends and friendship always come first (food and laughing a close second :-) ). I havn't been the best at living this way but I have tried and I think it has made me happy for the most part.

Its not that friends are not important for most people, because they are, but it definatly seems that once people get out into "the real world" there is a definate increase in focus on the "me".

It is funny that I would cling so dearly to a mindset, a philosophy. I say, at least to myself, that if you are afraid to lose something, anything, then you are not free. Traditionally I have always thought of material posessions and, for material posessions it makes sense. If you are not prepared to sell, for example, your car if it becomes advantageous then you are not getting the most out of life.

Can you sell a personal philosophy? Am I prepared to let it go or am I a prisoner?

I think this is a question most people need to ask them selves. It isn't untill you know why you might change your mind that you truely know why you believe in something.

Most of all I think I just want Vasu back.

Insaine In the Membrain

2006-07-08T11:57:00.000-04:00

I wish I was one of those people who can write about anything and keep you glued to the screen. They string together sentances into paragraphs that could say nothing but still leave me satisfied. I think these people, and artists in general, are some of the few people I envy on this planet. In anycase, Icaras again tries soaring...

Religion has consumed a lot of my thinking time lately. Over the last 6 years of college I have passed from psuedo-possibly-christian to agnostic to athiest in my own beliefs. Untill recently though I have remained largely friendly towards organized religion. I don't think I can do that anymore.

The why is not as important as the how but I suppose it is somewhat interesting too. Religion, to me, makes to much sense. I can understand why, in the complete absense of a god a belief system and social machine can evolve into organized religion as we see it today. I can also understand why individuals today would devote themselves to this system. If a god isn't necessary to explain the Church then is there a God? My answer is no.

I think the next 20 years are going to be interesting ones for organized religions and for the world in general. I have mentioned it before but cognitive neuroscience is making breathtaking advances into understanding the mechanics of the human mind. It wont take long till we can pin point, if not the location, then the underlying mechanism that makes us suseptable to religios tendencies.

Suseptable... I read an article recently that I had seen quite a while ago but as so often happens hadn't given much thought. It described how a certain parasite that lives in mice but that completes it's lifecycle in the intestines of cats actually changes the behavior of mice to increase their chances of being eaten by the cats. What it does is makes the smell of cat urin attractive to the mice. The selectivity of the parasite is amazing. It doesn't make the smell of all preditors like dogs and foxes attractive, just cats.

This parasite also infects humans. In fact, the researchers believe that probably 1 in 4 people host the little worm with the chances much much greater if you have had a cat as a pet. Now, the interesting question becomes this: what does the parasite do to us? So far the researchers in the study havn't found anything other then a possible slowing of reacting times, but that wasn't stated with much confidence.

What is more important is the open possiblity of other parasites that can change behavior in humans. The one mentioned above isn't the only one found in nature: parasites have been found in grasshopers that force them to jump into ponds where they drown and in snails that force them to crawl to the top of plants and waggle thier shells so that birds are more likely to eat them. This field is in its infancy and the possiblities are stagering.

I hope you have seen this coming! What if religion is the side effect of a parasite? Researchers have already found the area of the brain that when stimulated gives the feeling of "the pressence of another" and a chemical that when inhaled increases gullibility. Put these together with a few natural human tendencies like the urge to form groups and create hierachial social structures and you have all the fix'ns of a cult, if not full blown organized religion.

Like I said the next 20 years will be interesting ones. Can you imagine what would happen if we found a cure for religion? "Take 1 pill twice daily for two weeks and come see me if you still feel the pressence of 'God'." Would people take it?

In the deaf community cochlear implants have been fairly contraversial. Many adult and elderly deaf people fear the breakdown of their community if fewer people grow up truely deaf. Also, deafness to them was not a disease or a disability but now, with a cure, they are afraid of the change in perception of deafness within their own community. Regardless of this many parents still opt to give their children the implan because of the increased functionality they will have as adults.

With no clear individual benifit and all the cultural disadvantages of a cochlear implant I wonder if such a cure would even be offered. I have no doubt that it will be seen as an attack on religion by science and missinformation will abound. Even if the drug really does just kill a parasite growing in peoples brains there is little chance that the public will see it that way. Could this be the trigger that tips america into a theocracy? Never underestimate the power of strugling for survival to motivate a group of people.

Ok, so that was the why but the how is interesting too. About 15% of the population of Indiana can be considered without religion. The population of athiests is likely alot less then this since there is a difference between being willing to say "I am not religious" and "there is no god". In anycase since there is a negative connotation to athiesm, people don't talk about it and outside of certain circles one would have a difficult time finding others that believe similarly. 20 years ago this is expecually the case. TV, radio, newspaper, and every other source of media that I can think about from that time was dominated, if not explicity, by idea that religion is a natural part of life.

Now though, with the internet, things get very interesting. 15% of 300 million is still 45 million people. What makes the internet so different is the low cost of creating and distributing media. What does this blog cost me? Nothing but my time. Yet, people who searched for "mbti thinking feeling" or "Numa Numa" or "Human need for attention" or even "boyels law" have recently clicked on a results link that brought them to my blog (yes, this actually happens quite a bit. I think it is pretty amusing!). My blog isn't exactly a bastion of athiesm, in fact this may be the first time I have talked about it in length, but there are ones out there such as onegoodmove.org that serve as rallying points or nodes for the web of content out there. Now the minority can hear each other, loud and clear. 45 million people can now connect and communicate in ways never before possible. This is true for any non-traditional minority that doesn't already have an established culture.

There is a tremendous amount of power in the knowledge that you are not alone. The first ammendment of the constitution explicitly protects the right to peaceably assemble because it is such an impowering right that any government would be crazy not to squash it. 45 million people that were disenfrachized now can speak and act as one. As much as I hate to admit it moveon.org is an excelent example of this newfound ability.

As a side note: This is one reason why I don't think those 7 "terrorists" down in Miami should have been arrested. I believe you should be able to plan on bombing a building all you want. It is once you start to carry out your plan that you are no longer peaceably assembling.

And now my favorite part! Religion won't be the only disease of the mind that we find. For example I have always thought that my problem solving abilities came at the expense of my memory. What if we found that creativity was a disease that cured? Would I give that up to be more functional at everyday life? What if you find that some part of you can be cured, would you do it?

Numa Numa And My No Good Very Bad Day

2006-06-13T11:57:00.000-04:00

If you are having a bad day, or even a good one, take a moment and search Numa Numa on google video or youtube. Watching the original never fails to cheer me up! Watching the hundreds of other parody videos out there is nothing short of amazing.

At this kids high school/college there are probably only a few people that wouldn't have thought of him as a complete dork, an outcast to be made fun of. Putting his physical appearance aside, you just arn't supposed to do this, to completely let yourself go, unless you are cool. And he is not. Yet now this guy is a hero because enough people were able to see it who could recognize it for what it is, undistilled awesomeness.

I could launch into a whole "this is why the internet is going to change things once those older people die off" but I won't. I have to get my life back together before I will feel I have the right to pontificate here again.

But please, sometime soon, find this video and dance along:-) You won't regret it! You can even make your own...

V for Verily

2006-03-31T00:03:00.000-05:00

I just saw V for Vendetta. Its unfortunate but the part of the movie that... ok so I am not going to give the ending away but if you havn't seen it... well, I will leave alot of spaces so you can stop reading and not accidentally (you know, pareferally) see the stuff I am about to say.

The part that resonated with me the most... ha! see your eyes naturally jumped here so i am giving you one more chance.

The part that resonated with me the most was when a key person monologed about how they could see it all as though connected by a line: beginning, middle, and end. We/they took part in it all and yet were more actors in a play then writters penning a plot. That is how I feel now about our time and our world.

I spend a great deal of time considering what I or anyone person could do to halt this slide towards despotism. Repeatedly I am brought to the same conclusion that time really is the only cure. A society lives and grows through certain rules and one person can no more effect this then they could slow the turning of the earth by running with all their might towards the setting sun. If we have a spokesperson for our time, someone who is seen as leading us into the future it is because society will be looking for one.

I am not sure what the point is of this post. I know the point it has for me, to make me feel less hopeless. Perhaps each of us does have a role, be it the early radicals, the middle seditionist, or the late revolutionaries. Each part must be played, in full, each no less vital then the last.

Ah, but all is not lost. In fact, there is a great deal of hope to be had. How many science fiction stories of a bleak tyrannis future have you read? Well, I bet very few of them include the equivilent of an internet. Today I read about how a senetorial candidate for Navada (South Dakota maybe, or New York... not important) who placed a photo of a market square in Bagdadon his website that was offered as evidence that Iraq "Isn't as bad as the journalist are making it out to be." In fact the photo was supposedly taken as part of a recent trip that he made there. Several bloggers who are familiar with the area noticed that the clothing and architecture seemed wrong. The hunt was on and I believe within a day or two they not only found someone who recognized the actual area but found a nearly identical picture of a market square in nearby Turky. The candidate blamed it on an underlean and the picture was replaced with a real picture of Bagdad, taken from a rather distant hill. Illusions are getting harder to maintain.

Lastly, there is a family in the story which must decide whether or not to leave the country while they still had a chance. The mother wanted to leave, the father refused to leave behind his country. Ultimately they stayed with the expected results. Would I stay? Would I fight the good fight perhaps knowing how futile it would be? Most, including myself, would probably voluntieer for a part if it was the final act. What though would I do if it was the first?

In life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
~Mother Teresa (I walk by this quote set in the sidewalk everyday on my way to class.)

There are bigger lessons to be learned here but I'll let them stay infured. Its late and I shouldn't be up in my "delicate condition".

Terrorism

2006-02-09T18:18:00.000-05:00

So I am already fried and its 4 days till my qualifiers start...

Anyway, this has been bothering me for some time: is there a time, in all of recorded history, that a goverment has won against terrorism with force? I can't think of one. IRA, Chechnya, Hamas, ETA (separetist group in spain), Tamil Tigers, the stuff in Kashmir,and Hizzbolla are groups that I can think of and there are many many more. The only one that has had relative success as far as I can tell is Isreal vs. Hamas and look what that took, the subjugation of a whole race of people. Well that and the most insane secrete police force in the entire world. In any case it is a unique situation in that it is somewhat constrained geographically compared to many conflicts.

Oh, and what ended the IRA conflict? Economic prosperity. Ireland has become a huge center of computer chip manufacturing.

So anyway, I just wonder why we don't see more discussion on how to deal with terrorism, to minimize its causes. Well, I have heard some but anything but force is seen as weak and conceding to the enemy.

Its just frustating to think that, while 3ooo some people died in the World Trade Center thing we are going to have close to that many solders die before we are out of Iraq. What makes their lives worth anything less then our own? And in the process of killing our own people we are killing 10's of thousands of Iraqies and reinforcing the idiologies that produce terrorism in the first place. Not only that but we are systematically removing liberties and freedom all in the name of this "war". And what do we have to show for it? Supposedly we stopped some attack on a building in LA similar to the attack on the World Trade Center.

From the looks of it this wasn't even us who did most of the work but other contries intelegence and work. It was "a South East Asian country who first arrested a key al-queda operative" and it was Tailand who finally thwarted the attack by arresting Hambali, who ever that is. Since it wasn't mentioned its likely we didn't even help them out but that this was done as part of these contries own anti-terrorism efforts.

What was the plan? To blow open the cockpit doors of a plane with shoe bombs to get at the pilot. Its difficult to say if this would even work and not destroy the plane. And finally, the terrorist would have to get control of the plane in the first place and somehow I don't see that happening.

So ya, just some "middle of studying for qualifiers ranting"... There is alot more I would like to rant about but I have to get back to work. Seriously though, who says we are going to reduce our dependence on forien oil by 75 percent by 2025 and then the next day has a cabinate member say he didn't mean it literally? I really am amazed at how blatently this administration manipulates the press and the citizens of this country.

Me and my Ph.D. It rhymes!! [Warning: Narcisistic Post]

2006-01-26T20:44:00.000-05:00

So I am reinstalling Ubuntu on my work computer because I totally screwed up the permisions for the users. Turns out you can take away your own admin abilities and without them there is no reasonable way to get them back. Still, I couldn't be happier with Ubuntu in general as a work computer. As a home computer I still have a few gripes but thats why I spend most of my time in the windows partition. Actually, I do have a problem. I can't print to the public printer here in Birck because I can't find printer drivers for a cannon imageRUNNER 5570 for Linux. I'll keep looking.

So I wanted to write about me today because studying for the Ph.D. area exams has gotten me focused on how I seem to think differently then most people. The way I have typically described it is almost like a learning dissablility. When I first learn something I usually have trouble understanding and keeping up with whats going on. This is expecually true with math classes *shakes fist*. However, you ask me a year later about the class and it is very likely I can apply what I have learned much better then my classmates. I should qualify that, I know how to apply it much better, the nitty-gritty often escapes me though. But, in engineering the knowing how is usually the hard part. For instance boundry conditions and differential equations can be solved by computer. Picking those boundry conditions is still an art.

I also have a rather weak memory for how far I have gotten in school. I recently gave up playing World of Warcraft because I had difficulty getting engaged in quests. I would pick up a quest, read it, and then forget where I got it and often even that it existed. Despite getting to level 30 (night elf hunter, and I had Humar as my pet :-) ) I rarely knew where towns were and how to get from here to there. It just sucked and was way to much effort because I suck at its main skill, memorizing and keeping track of many different things at once.

I take pride in being able to see connections that others don't see. I am not sure if it is skill or just an almost manical obsession with it (if you spend all of your time trying to do something it can make up for mediocracy). Really this is what this blog has always been about. Its an outlet for various connections and ideas I have from reading news articles and whatever else I have managed to pick up along the way. I have always wondered if there was some connection between this ability and my relatively poor memory (Ha! didn't even realize I wrote that until now when I am reading this over and revising it...) . Well I found an interesting article today that described a direct relationship between an individuals ability to focus and the supposed "size" of their memory. The researchers determined that often people with great memories don't memorize more, they just make sure to get the important stuff. Ok, so thats fine but the interesting part was these last few sentences:

This is not to say that people who can't screen out stimuli are dumber. As Vogel noted, "Being a bit scattered tends to be a trait of highly imaginative people." The more you rattle the marbles around in your brain, the more creative new connections you make, as it were -- connections that might be lost on those focusing intently [on what you wanted to memorize]

Bingo! At least it made me feel good about myself :-) I often find that my creativity and my ability to function are inversely proportional to each other. It seems like the times when I am least functional (forget to pay the bills, have a disaster of a bedroom, and what not) are the times when I have my greatest ideas. Ok, that is alittle egotistic since I really don't have any great ideas that have been proven correct. At least that is when I have the ideas that I enjoy most. Its funny, but my room was probably at its cleanest durring my masters while I was writting my thesis.

I do seem to go about research in a different way then most people. I tend to treat it like design. Start with an intuitive guess and then slowly refine the design, adding and subtracting as needed. Often what ends up is quite different then what I started with. It was funny looking back on some of the stuff that I wrote for my masters thesis on the thermoelectricity of ionic solutions. I suppose it was somewhat confusing for my advisor because I must have come to her with 5 or 6 complete theories of electrolyte thermopower durring the 2 years I worked on the project. Each time I would manage to convince her and myself it was true before finding some new bit of information that made me rethink things. I am quite proud of where I ended up but it was a long road.

Its tough to describe the power that these strikes of intuition have over me. My labmates and friends probably can actually... :-) I will put it this way: there are only two things that make me content, TAing and working on or listening for these gut feelings.

I don't really know where this is going. Mostly I am expressing some doubt as to my career choice. Academia isn't the same beast that it was. Unless you are freaking amazing you have to fight for money, publish papers, network, write books, write grants, and budget what money you have better then thousands of other very intellegent people. I just don't think I can do that and I don't think that I can achieve the reputation neccessary to not have to do those things. Sure, in industry I will also have many of the same responsibilities but I have a feeling that I am more likely to be utilized better. Basically, in academia I have to fit a single job description but in industry I have much more freedom to find a position that I can excel at. Im not saying getting a Ph.D. is wrong, it will doubtless help me obtain this magical job I speak of, but I no longer feel like I am here to experiance my Ph.D. I am here to get it and move on.

I'm not sure thats a good thing. I am a big proponent of always enjoying the journey as much as the destination. Kind of hard to enjoy the journey with your eyes so focused on the prize...

And what ever happened to ending these posts with a question! That used to be my favorite part. Maybe this is part of maturity, not only do you start giving up on your dreams but you start "Tell'n it like it is" with no room for doubt...

(Is that a question?) <--- At least that is!!!!

Productivity

2006-01-21T20:51:00.000-05:00

So I read recently of someone who believes that there will be an economic depression far worse then that of the 70's in about 5 years. Most of the crash will come from a saturation of computers and their ability to increase productivity. If you think about it, for most of the last 20 years our economic prosparity has been driven by our ability to continiously produce more with less. Computers and the robotics they made possible have made all aspects of our work more efficient. More efficient means more wealth can be created per person so all our lives are better then the ones before it.

Once everyone has a computer and every process is automated what happens? Sure, we will have incremental improvements but nothing like what we have seen over the past 25 years. So suddenly our ability to create more wealth platues at just the moment that the size of our work force begins decreasing. The stock market, a classic measure of our economies well being, requires productivity gains to fuel its growth. With the stock market crash that follows the stagnation of productivity people's retirements and savings are decimated. Spending falls, more goods chaising fewer dollars leads to deflation, deflation means people get fired, the massive amount of debt our country has accumulated comes due... a.k.a. not good times.

Ok, so this happens... not alot we can do about it in all honesty. What I am more interested in is how our society will handle this massive change. I am a big believer in the fact that extreme changes in society only occure with correspondingly drastic economic or political changes. The great depression and world wars changed the way our government thought about its responsibilities to its citizens. The end of the roman empire changed the relationship between peasent and king. I probably could go on.

So what happens this time? We are at a unique point in our history I think. Never before have we known so much about how we work and never before has such a potential to learn more existed. Brain research is exploding and, unlike in the past, it is being supported by hard data i.e. like a news article I read this last week. The article discussed how men get more pleasure then wemon when seeing people "get whats comming to 'em". How do they know this? They took FMR scans of participants brains and litterally just watched their pleasure centers of the brain light up. No more asking them clever questions to figure out just how much they liked it.

We are poised to learn just what makes us happy. More then that, we are poised to learn the "right way to live". Just what it is I don't know but i bet it isn't what we have now.

What is funny is just as we may be getting out of this recession we will enter another because of The Revolution (the energy crisis when we run out of fossil fuels). All in all it looks kind of grim for our generation. I think though what I mean to say is that it isn't all going to be bad. This is an opportunity for change and well, we have a chance to do it right. Like they said in Ender's Game, "The right voice at the right time can change the course of history...".

Reset Button

2005-12-26T19:00:00.000-05:00

I have been wondering lately about communication and how it affects who we are and what we do. I think it is fairly obvious at this point that people who religiously watch Fox News are quite a bit different then those that listen to NPR in their cars (did you get the pun?). Beyond that though I get the feeling that what we see and what we hear affects us much more then we acknowlage.

Yes, I am about to talk about the Nazi's but I hope that doesn't mean that this topic should be layed to pasture. I heard a snipit of an interview somewhere where they were talking to professors in the universities of Germany during the rise of the Nazis and Hitler. What was interesting was how they said that yes, in a way they saw what was comming but two things happened: they were kept busy with paper work and the such and two, it was so much easier to surrender their doubts and trust that the government knew best.

Can you blame them? Honestly, who among us would have the will to stand up against someone promising prosperity and dignity to an impoverished and embarassed nation. I doubt I would. Its easy to sit here and "Rail against the nation" when I am warm and well fed and everyone I know has jobs and security.

I don't want to get to far into it but the simularities between then and now are remarkable. We are continually asked to trust that the government knows best. When we are addressed we are hammered with talk of victory and pride in the war in Iraq, both appealing to our national self image. This of course came after Bush tried to convince us that we needed to stay in to prevent Iraq from becomming a terrorist state. His dip in approval ratings showed him the error in his ways.

This administration has always been characterized by very emotional appeals to the public be it terrorism or... well don't worrie about all that other stuff because the terrorist are right at our doorstep. I don't think I will ever forget that ad showing a pack of wolves running through the woods supposedly hunting something at which point the speaker not-so-subtely hints that the terrorist are hunting us and if you elect John Kerry you will feel like whatever it is those wolves are hunting...

There is an interesting phenomena called Blind Sight where a utterly blind person can in a way see very basic things. He has no knowlege of this though. A typical experiment will position a blind person (with working eyeballs, typically blind due to brain damage of some kind) in front of an array of lights. The lights are randomly lit up and the blind person is asked to point to lit up lights. The blind person of course says "I can't see" and the experimenters go "We know that, thats why we are paying you to do this... just humor us and guess". Amazingly the blind person is amazingly accurate in placing the location of the lights despite having no concious knowlegde of them.

I read of something similar where the article talked about why it is so much harder to resist chocolate or any kind of treat when it is sitting out in plain sight then when it is in say a closet down the hall. The article put forth the argument that the the further away the "treat" is the greater the likely hood that there will be some sort of danger in the way (think back to before we had houses with deadbolts on the door). Remember, thinking cost an enormous amount of energy. If there is a treat or anything eddible right in front of you are you going to waste energy thinking about the merits of eating it or not? Of course not, if however there is the possiblity of danger then it becomes worth while to increase the participation of the brain and conscious thought. With consciousness comes the ability to say no.

What is interesting about this is it suggests that the tug of war between concious thought and our feelings like fear, pride, lust, anger, ext... is a costly battle. The further removed we are from the stimulus the easier it is to involve the higher order brain functions because with room to manuver, thinking ahead becomes much more advantagious.

What does this say about our current media? Well, I recently watched Bowling for Columbine and the message I took away from it was that our media is full of death, destruction, and basically fear. Combine this with our tendency to over estimate the effects of bad stuff and you have a potent downword spiral. We are curious about the world so we watch the news. The news is full of bad things happening to good people and we see it and hear it right in our living room. We rely less on rational thought which might be able to tell us that this isn't worth fearing and we lock our doors and live in gated communities. We worry about whats outside our gated communities so we watch the news...

Hence, Bush is able to dominate the national debate by appealing to lowest common denominators while Karry is barely able to talk about other rather important things like the enviroment, health insurance for the poor and children, education, and the like.

If this is affecting who we vote for president what else is this affecting? Arn't things like a propensity to go to war, locking doors, and watching the news properties of a society? Can we gain a metric for measuring the "state of mind" of a society by monitoring it's media and communications for gut reaction language and imagry?

It wouldn't be easy but I think it would be very interesting to use some sort of news aggregater like google.news and somehow as a start analyse the headlines of general news article headlines with special weight for ones from television news networks and a lessor weight for print and web articles. One would look for power words that create a very emotional reaction in people like murder, war, puppies, love, and so on.

Do this on a local and national basis and then look for correlations, who knows what we would find. Could be a high ratio of bad words to a low actual occurance of bad things leads to republicans (just kidding guys :-) ) Note how well too this would fit into my previous idea of finding the "Least Energy Configuration" of a society. If thought takes energy the then lack of it would be the least energetic configuration.

I think it is more worriesome though to think about how this is used in out capitalistic society. Companies usually don't want us to think about our purchases. It is far better for them for us to buy and spend our money before we even consider the other options. Make goods and food easier and easier to aquirer and we will consume more and more and that definately seems to be the case. Target your advertising towards those basic instincts and you multiply the effect.

I think this is why I have the growing feeling that pure capitalism is not a sustainable economic system. The problem is one can make money by reducing people to the lowest common denominator. But lowest common denominators can't do all that much.

Wow, definately having flashbacks to Brave New World.

So, I guess I ultimately have a question I can't answer. Is there a weak link? Is there a way to reverse the trend?

And a bigger question on my mind, is this what revolutions are for, to reset a society by making it favorable to think again?

America

2005-11-29T14:37:00.000-05:00

As I drove home from the Indianapolis Airport two nights ago I listened to the end of a broadcast from the Commonwealth Club of California on how the right stole the 2004 election. The speakers name is Mark Crispin Miller. I highly recommend it.

From what I can tell he basically is saying that the domocratic process is broken in America. Not only was the 2004 election stole (nearly all of the elecronic voting machines were manufactured by companies owned by highly partisan republicans, one of which is quoted as having said "I promise to deliver Ohio to President Bush."

I don't think the main point is actually the machines or even that the election was stolen but more that the whole system must be broken for this to have happened. But I don't want to talk about that. The most interesting point that despite many people knowing about it no one wants to talk about. Why? Because This Can't Happen In America.

This is an attitude that I have felt for some time but I haven't really been able to articulate. I have found that many of my beliefs on the character of our national leaders to be rather extream. I actually believe that they are evil. I actually believe that they are trying to subserviate the democratic process in America. I am sure they are not the Dr. Evil kind of evil who does things for the sake of being evil. They are evil in the same way that many other political leaders, Stalin, Musilini, even Hitler can be considered evil. And no, I do not believe that is hyperbole. Ah, ok I am rambling.

Why are we so unwilling to believe that something that has happened countless times before in countless other countries can not happen here? Is it not a sign that the framers of our constitution took so many pains to prevent the consolidation of power? Even then Thomas Jefferson recognized that the only true prevention of Tyrany is the vigilance of the people. This is why he is quoted so aften as saying that public education is the foundation of a healthy democracy.

This complacency and arrogance is pervasive in our society. Attempt to compare America to some other country in an argument and prepare to be riddiculed for even considering the fact that we are not the best. The signs as to the decline of our educational system have been passed off with excuses of a "Biased Test" and how other countries do not have truely universal education. The war in Iraq and many other actions have been justified under the crusade of spreading democracy and the American Way.

Once the lie starts it grows. Think of the last time you were caught in a lie. Did you own up to it right away? I don't know how many times I have said a little white lie to save face when caught. Time after time I have seen it grow and grow untill the stakes are so high that owning up and admitting your mistakes is impossible now. The same thing has happened here. We have believed with our eyes closed that we are super awesome for so long that settleing for anything else would be admitting the whole thing is false.

This is the tragedy of a revolution, it needs a scape goat. Granted, it could be an evil goat, but it is never the actual problem.

I have no doubt that Bush will go down in flames but it is bringing me less and less joy. We need to address the state of mind and beliefs that have allowed such a thing to happen. In the spirit of such an inquisition I end with the opening the the Constitution of the United States and a challange. Read carefully the purpose of our constitution. Look up words in the dictionary if you have to.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The question is not "How are we doing?". The question is why do we not eat, sleep, and breath this sentance. The United States of America is not set on a piece of paper, it lives in the spirit of those words and the spirit of those words depends on us. I say one must now earn the right to call oneself an American. It is no longer enough to sing

"And I'm proud to be an American, 'cause at least I know I'm free..."

you have to secure that freedom. Being an American is not a birth right, it is a state of mind with the aim to uphold those virtues that this country was founded upon.

I hate to end on such a definitive note but I have pretty much convinced myself of this.

A gab bag

2005-11-19T11:34:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a mish-mash of ideas that I have been thinking about that I just want to get out there. I don't have time to develop every one of them so... here they are:

The 100 dollar laptop
This will create, by force, the next internet and cause the death of Microsoft as we know it. Why? It has no harddrive. They just stuck in a couple gigs of flash memory and a few "Essential" programs like a word processor and an internet browser. Assuming a 10th of the users have access to the internet with this thing there are going to be 1 million people out there dying for internet delivered applications. And, as with most things, if you build it they will come. Other companies will start building 300 dollar laptops with nice screens but that are still basically glorified internet browsers and now computers are finally availiable to the masses. Yes the first users will be poor but there is still money to be made in this. I can tell you this much, I'm going to buy the first laptop like this that is sold because frankly the only programs I ever have open are word, firefox, and AIM.

Republicans and democrats
About a year ago I gave up caring about the fact that President Bush had won the nomination. My reasoning is somewhat Maciavellian but I thought if I am right then what the Bush administration and republicans are doing is not sustainable. There will be a crash and, hopefully, that crash will be so great as to destroy the republican party. At the time I was gunning for complete dominance of the democrats but now I want everyone to go down with this thing. I want politics as we know it to be destroyed because frankly if the public wants to they can find enough dirt on the vast majority of republicans and probably half the democrats to sweep them out of office. This wont happen though untill the media gets more agressive, which we are starting to see.

The Revolution
Ah yes, don't worry, its still comming! Only I am more worried now about the possibility of a real war (not iraq, I'm talking 10s to 100s of thousands of causualties) within our life time. The way I see it the world is segmenting into three regions, the western hemisphere, the middle east, and China. War will only only start due to unstable countries and world wars only occure due to the clash of hegemons. Here we have both. China is gunning to control asia like the USA controls the Western Hemisphere and to a degree Europe. It already has several conflicts that it appears willing to go to war over: Tiwan, Nepal, and the big one Energy (They had quite an argument with japan over oilfields in the sea of japan a couple years ago). So you have ambitios nations (China), unstable nations (mid east), and nations that are willing to go to war to maintain their position of dominance (US and Europe). I hope this won't happen and it probably wont but with the comming energy squeeze...

Finland
It has the most competitive economy in the world and yet it is socialist? They pay over 40% of their income in taxes each year and speeding ticket fines are based on your income. An executive of nokia (I think) payed a houndred thousand dollar speeding ticket a few years ago. The point is that many people make the argument in the USA that low taxes are good for an economy because when you take away peoples earnings they have less incentive to work hard and be innovative and this doesn't seem to be the case in Finland. What Finland has going for it is a very egalitarian society. It is one of the most racially homogenious nations in the world and the harsh enviroment and its small size tend to encourage cooperation as opposed to competition. Also, they use that money to invest heavily in human capital such as education, government funded research, and social services. *sigh* Is it possible for a country to be to big for its own good? Is it hard to learn whatever language they speak there?

I Misanthrope
My faith in humanity is waning. Well, I guess that is not entirely accurate, my hope for humanity is waning. I have come to the conclusion that alot of the worlds problems stem from the social and behavioral changes we have had to adopt to maintain the increadible number of people on the planet right now. This is why, if I make billions of dollars (heh) I am not going to donate it to education or fighting world hunger (loosing battle, you feed people they make more people that need food. Populations will expand to utilize all of the resources availiable and overshooting is inevitable.) I am going to donate it towards world wide birth control. If I become president (not if this blog is still up) I will encourage programs that advocate one child per couple. The fact is we have already reached the world capacity. Yes, technically we can have more people but not without decreasing the overall happyness significantly. I would also write an open letter to the Catholic Church that says basically: "Hey guys, you can stop discouraging birth control and condums and all that. We made it. We hath gone forth and populated the earth and now it is time to think about what to do now. We are not animals, our population doesn't have to be dictated by the same differential equations (yes, I would say that), we can take steps to make ourself happier."

Fourie Approximations
Using an infinite sum of sines and cosines you can approximate any two dimensional curve. Lately all I have wanted to do is find the fourie approximations of stuff around me. Mainly trees. Awesome.

Teaching, why its important.

2005-10-28T17:51:00.000-05:00

I feel like crap so there is little point in working and if I am going to waste time I might as well do something I enjoy:-)

I suppose I am biased but taking 4 classes (Ok, I am auditing one of them...) has got me thinking about teaching. Specifically, is there a right and wrong way to do it?

A seminar on the future of man and machine brought an interesting perspective. He was mainly concerned with the prospect of computers replacing humans at many jobs. The answer is no because while computers are far better at tasks that are either very simple and repetitive or highly complex with lots of rules they are very poor at the middle ground. Luckily, humans are freaking Vikings at the middle ground. That, though, is not what was interesting. To prove his point he made several conjectures: all learning is done by experience, and language is an imperfect way of conveying experience. I will focus on the second point and its importance in science education later but today is all about experience.

It is mind boggling to me that Boyle of the infamous Boyles Law spent years playing with gases and his special vacuum pump before he was willing to publish the fact that pressure is inversely proportional to volume. Think about when a student learns about this though... I think I had to have been taught this in middle school at least. In essence though before I could drive I learned one of the most important physical discoveries of the scientific revolution. If you think about it the average college graduate in science or engineering knows more then most of history's geniuses.

*I will grant that my appreciation of Boyles Law in middle school was not great. But at age 24 I think I understand it and an amazing amount of other physical truisms. My point is more that had you gone back in time and told 14 year old Boyle that pressure is inversely proportional to volume for damn near any gas so long as temperature is held constant he would have a much more difficult time swallowing this little bit of chemistry lore.*

The reason that is not so much that knowledge is necessarily compressed so much as it is experienced in a different way. The key is that while he had to stumble somewhat blindly around till he had accumulated the experience necessary to learn his own law we are taught it with foresight. Before we are taught Boyles Law we are shown the molecular nature of the matter as well as a host of other little tidbits that make these laws seem obvious. The fact that solids and liquids have a pressure vs. volume relationship that is dependent upon composition doesn't conflict at all with the universality of PV=constant for gases.

Boyles law is an extreme case but the lesson to be learned from this is that the quality of the experience can vastly accelerate learning. This is what teaching is all about! Teachers spend time finding and isolating the experiences that will best help you learn that particular truth. Since students are rarely able to see physical phenomena in action or, if you are partial to the liberal arts, witness the truth of the human spirit, teachers have the added task of constructing these experiences in the mind of the student.

So what lessons or Laws of Teaching can be drawn from this?

The basics are all important. If a teacher is to construct an experience within a students mind they can't start from scratch. A teacher must set up a situation in the mind of the student and then that situation is experienced, if you will, virtually. When conveying Boyles law to me in high school I already understood that air was mostly empty space so I could see in my mind the air molecules getting closer together and hitting the wall more often. Just think about the number of concepts inherent in what I just said. Pressure, momentum, molecular nature of matter, and ext... are needed to construct that mental image. I could certainly memorize PV=constant but I couldn't appreciate it without the basics.

A.k.a. you can't teach calculus to a six year old.

More importantly this gives us a point of attack to address teaching plans. The first thing to do is to quantify the "mental tools" that the students have. No matter what, you must present the material in terms of these building blocks. This is the cardinal sin of college professors. They present material given the concepts they have internalized, not their students. I have had some incredable professors, Prof. Prahl and Prof. Alexander immediatly come to mind, yet the students hated them! These professors presented amazing material and in a coherent manor if you already had your batchelors degree. TAing for both of them was so much fun for just that reason, I finally got it. On the other hand, TAing was a challenge because I had to put alot of effort into teaching in terms of what my students had a base level understanding of.

This helps explain why I was able to give up on students. For some I would just give them the answers or formulas they needed because it was pretty clear that no matter what language I used they just didn't get it. These students didn't spend the effort or were not capable of building the basis of knowledge necessary to understand what was being said. Neither of us had time to start from scratch so we were resigned to just memorize and hope for the best.

It also explains why proofs and derivations are often a poor way to teach a concept. Few people have mastered the concept of proofs and derivations so much effort is spent simply grapling with the presentation of the concept. If this approach is to be taken it might be best to spend some time at the begining of the class going over the derivation process and familiarizing students with it so that when the time comes they have that tool.

I could go on but (I'm feeling more sick...) the main take home message is that teaching takes effort. If you are not willing to put in that effort then perhaps the best option is to teach from the book as so many professors do. At least then you are more likely to teach in terms of concepts they understand. Ultimately there is no substitution for getting to know your students and what they know.

Hate Mongers...

2005-09-26T19:36:00.000-05:00

mon·ger n. -

A dealer in a specific commodity. Often used in combination: an ironmonger.
A person promoting something undesirable or discreditable. Often used in combination: a scandalmonger; a warmonger.

So a hate monger is someone who tries to sell hate.

I'll get right to it since I don't have alot of time tonight. I saw a man on campus today with two short extension cords who was using them to demonstrate how plugging them together works and when you do so you get electricity that powers your TV, your computer, and so on... It took him quite some time to get this particular point across because I must have walked from 100 feet before him to some 200 feel after him while listening to this. At this point I heard this:
"This does not work (presumably trying to plug a male end into a male end). This is not right. Homosexuality is not right. Homosexuality is not natural."
He continued but I don't remember any more of it. I stopped where I was and turned around in disbelief. I know this kind of stuff exists but I never thought I would hear it in public, on a college campus. Had I not had a class in 2 minutes I would have gone back and discussed this further with him.

I wonder if this is how I would feel accedentally walking into a KKK rally.

Do these people not realize history will see them in the same way? When, in the course of humanity, has descriminating against a particular group of people for whatever reason ever been a good thing. My heart is racing with anger even now thinking about it.

Being included in society is a basic need of people. Depriving them of this is an act of cruelty that mainstream Christians can't or won't understand. At least I hope they don't understand because if they do know what they are doing then I have truely lost all respect. The sad part is someone must be doing this on purpose because there has been enough evidence for many years now to suggest that there are differences in brain structure between homosexuals and heterosexuals of the same sex. Regardless of how it got there the brain structure aint changing so lets live and let live!

What is so wrong about homosexuality? I am led to believe that they are hated simply because they are different. This makes the right no different then the freaking Nazies who used the Jews and other minorities as foils against which they could strengthen national pride. *gasp* How could I have compared a group of people with someone who used fear and hatred to cloud the judgement of his people.

Arraahhaghhaaaaaaa!!!!!

Why are we so quick to hate and fight?

Oye, I have work to do.

Definitions

2005-08-29T19:17:00.000-05:00

It has been an interesting summer. At the end of it I am now dating a wonderful woman, conducting research I love, and working on my Ph.D.. My absence from the blogging scene can be explained by something I learned; the urge to write comes from angst. Seeing as I am considerably lacking in this quality now (yay!) as well as busy conducting two research projects, taking classes, and spending what time I can with my girlfriend the enthusiasm and time for writing are waning. Never-the-less, I am arrogant and most importantly I need the practice writing. Isn't that the original purpose of this thing anyway?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

There were many things that I did not understand or appreciate about debate in high school. A very specific structure existed that had to be followed when writing your argument. The obvious start was a witty quote to grab the audiences attention and highlight the relative importance of your value, or the reason you care at all about the topic in the first place. Since values are typically pretty abstract things such as justice and truth (although in retrospect they shouldn't be) one needed a value criterion, a.k.a. how you know you achieved your value by taking the pro or con position. The rest of the argument consisted of showing how the value criteria was satisfied by taking whatever side, pro or con, you happened to be on that round. Smushed somewhere in the middle of all of this was supposed to be definitions of key terms.

Of all the unwritten requirements of an argument the definitions were the most trivial. People would pick what they though was the most ambiguous term such as justified in "Capital punishment is justified", and then cite websters collegiate dictionary as their source. So long as you had it points weren't deducted and all were happy.

About a month ago I spent probably an hour arguing with someone over the existence of human nature. Eventually James demanded a real life example and I chose racism. His immediate and justified reaction was to reject it as an excuse. 20 minutes later I realized that we were thinking of two different things. For him racism was discrimination against African Americans while for me racism was hating people outside of one's group. He couldn't believe that the capacity to hate black people was inborn. I couldn't agree more! It is, however, very easy to believe the capacity to hate those outside of your closenit group is inborn. How those groups are defined is then learned.

For instance, the groups in racism as we know it can be defined as white vs. black. Black people are perceived as a separate group and therefore as a threat. The Irish were once heavily persecuted but eventually they were assimilated into the group. Likewise, the Italians, Greek, and Polish were persecuted but eventually alloyed in the great melting pot. They became indistinguishable from the rest of America and therefore no longer outside the circle. The old saying "United against a common enemy..." is also a statement of this very human characteristic. A common enemy can overwhelm the differences that distinguish most groups leading to a bigger Us in the Us vs. Them.

When viewed this way many of the frustrating aspects of racism become, if not tractable, then at least understandable. Discrimination against the Jewish people has persisted for so long precisely because they have such a strong community built around their faith and heritage. This community is independent of its environment and so is easily distinguishable as a Them. It is ironic to think that a community that exist to protect against racism only maintains the status quo. Similarly African Americans can do little to alleviate racism so long as they maintain such as strong cultural identity and remain so geographically segregated in many areas.

There is hope. Who we define as Us is under our control. In this light busing efforts to minimize inadvertent segregation in schools is a worthwhile endeavor. Anything that increases exposure to a certain group will help alleviate the problem.

Nothing is ever that easy though. Even in highly diverse areas racism exists because competition for resources can increase the incentive to define and form groups. If the urge to form groups evolved to aid survival then it is likely that any threat to survival, perceived or real, will trigger that instinct. Why else to gangs wear certain styles of clothing and militaries issue uniforms? Under threat, the easier it is to define Us and Them the less anxiety the members will feel. For gangs, the reduction in anxiety it is an incentive to join. The military however uses it as one of many tacticts to foster and deepen the unity of Us and its separation from Them.

This drive to define Us and Them is pervasive in current politics. Republicans (and their christian constituents) are the masters at this game but the democrats are doing their best to catch up. The problem is many of the worlds problems cant be solved until we expand the definition of Us to include the entire human race. We need the best of human nature: compassion, caring, and self-sacrifice to be devoted to everyone without exception. It is sad, and maybe inevitable, that what is apparently the best politics brings out the worst in us.

My solution? *shrug* Short of an attack by aliens I don't see Utopia being achieved. I do think though that if we each make a conscious effort to expand our circle a little we can make a difference.

And now, quite out of order, my quote:

"All we need is a voluntary, free-spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction. Everybody just gotta keep fuckin' everybody 'til they're all the same color."
~Bulworth, 1998

______________________________________________________________
PS How many other things, besides racism, could use redefining?

Boston: Day 3

2005-06-27T15:43:00.000-05:00

Rebecca had to work today but James and I went for a walk that eventually took us to Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox. We walked through Boston Commons, which is where I think alot of people used to raise cows. It was pretty cool although much more of a large city park then a reprieve from the city like Central Park is in New York.

So, here comes my first complaint about Boston: I can't get away from the city. I suppose Cleveland has been nice because I have always lived near some sort of wilderness. Either Lakeview Cemetary or, recently, the ravine acrost the street have given easily accessable "Getaways". As much as I love this city I have started to feel somewhat claustraphobic. It is just a low level ich to get out and run through the forest. Plop a central park down anywhere in the city and I think the problem would be solved. Could be though that I am really a country boy at heart! In that case I should be right at home in West Lafayette.

City Gardens was directly adjacent to Boston Commons and was groomed like a gardens area. Very nice overall with a pretty cool lagoon in the middle. There were even these boats that held about 20 people with one poor guy in the back pedeling the paddel. I felt so bad because it had to be 80 something and fairly humid. He didn't look to happy either!

Well, the rest of the city after Boston Commons was pretty typical city although it still somehow had the feeling of Boston. We eventually stopped at the Prudential Building, which has a mall at the ground floor, for lunch. The food court offered an Indian option so we tried that having had an excelent experiance at Richmond Mall's equivilent. Um, so ya... apparently not all Indian food is good. It felt very half assed which just doesn't work well with spicy food.

After lunch we found a Barns and Noble and I bought two books, the second and third in the Artemis Fowl series. We then went to the loby of the Sheriden I think and read for a while. Apparently the Indians, who are in town to play the Red Sox, are staying at that hotel because I saw tons of boys running around with baseball cards and baseballs looking for people to sign them. I even saw one player but I didn't recognize him so he must not have been Grady Siezemore ;-) .

Since we were in the area we headed over to Fenway Park after eventually breaking down and asking for directions. We were heading in the right direction!!! Anyway, Fenway was cool and we even briefly toyed with the idea of waiting in line 5 hours to see if there were any free tickets . When else am I going to get the chance to see the Indians play the Red Sox at Fenway?

After a quick subway back I crashed on the couch and James played some Warcraft Worlds. I tried to spend some time on my work for school but had a brain freeze so I went for a walk. I crossed the Charles River and must have been passed by 20 or 30 people walking back from work. I was walking slow because I was deep in thought :P I managed to get undernieth the new bridge that Boston built. A completely unnecessary design that is a waste from a structural standpoint but... wow is it pretty. And, even though I don't agree with the overall approach, many of the parts were beatifully designed.

After drooling over the bridge I walked across the damn holding back the Charles River. Apparently they had to do it to keep the level constant otherwise the tide makes it alternatively flood and dry up twice a day. I managed too to see a boat go through the boat locks which made my day. Seriously, the engineering section of my brain was tickled pink.

After I got back I had a mini-epiphiny related to work and so went out and typed for a while in the park along the harbor. It was a very pleasent experiance and definately got rid of that itch to get out of the city! After I came back to the appartment to type some more it was time for dinner...

ETHIOPIAN FOOD ROCKS OUT HARD CORE!!!! It isn't the best food I have ever had. That distinction still goes to Vasu's Mom's chicken curry. This restaurant, Addis Red Sea, was though on par with Uddipi Cafe, my favorite Indian restaurant. In terms of ambiance though Addis Red Sea won hands down. We sat on these short squat stools around a woven wicker table on which they placed one giant plate with all our food on it. We orded two combo dishes so we had a wide veriaty to taste from. Since all the food was good I deffinately recommend this approach. All the food was eaten with this flat, almost swedish pankake like bread that was absolutely wonderful. It didn't hurt that everything tasts better when eaten with your hands!

Tremont street, where the restaurant was located, was beautiful but quite obviously yuppie central. From there we walked through China Town before getting to the downtown area. Again, I can't stress how much I love from the downtown up through North End. It was quite a pleasant walk except for the fact that we all had to use the restroom before we got back.

Boston: Day 2

2005-06-26T19:05:00.000-05:00

Up and atom at a bright and early 10:30 am! Breakfast of quesadias then off to Harvard Square to see Renee! We left early so that we could go see some of the icecream shops and stuff in the area. There was this Curious George Goes to Warington ( or something like that) that had the greatest collection of childrens books I have ever seen.

Apparently Boston "Takes it's ice cream seriously." To test this fact we went to what is considered the best ice cream shop in the city, Harroll's. Oh. My. God. I tried their Sweet Cream and a Malt Shake and both made my heart skip a beat.

It struck me while walking around Harvard Square that people in Boston seem to walk differently then anywhere I have been in the Midwest. It just seems normal to walk here. I get the impression that if you walk in Cleveland it is with your head down lest you make eye contact with anyone in the cars passing by. There must be some terrible reason you don't have a car because seriously... who would walk if they didn't have to!!! But that isn't the case here. People who drive cars are the anomaly.

I met Renee at Au Bon Pain, a good though overpriced sandwich shop. It was really nice to see her again. Turns out, she loves Boston too! And her job! Good deal all around. We walked around and chatted and after her beauty shop appointment we took the subway back to her apartment. Her mom is staying with her for the month and she made some excellent rice pudding which I had my share of! Her apartment, while beastly expensive, is probably the best apartment I have ever seen. I eventually was dropped off at the subway station and made my way back to the North End and Rebecca and James' place. It rained while I was on the subway but stopped when I got out at North Station. The rain really cooled everything down though so the walk was pretty pleasent.

Dinner of Pesto pasta with chicken, seriously only my second time having it but both have been heaven.

After dinner we escaped the heat of the apartment (seriously, we just boiled noodles and used the broiler in the oven to toast garlic bread. But with a place that small... ) and took a walk down ot the harbor. Eventually we passed by the aquarium and I got to see some seals. I guess as a teaser the aquarium keeps part of the seal exhibit outdoors so that people passing by have something to look at. It mostly just made me sad though. One seal kept swimming in circles around the parimeter of the tank while most of the other seals were occupied with similarly repetitive actions, though less obviously so.

We walked by several restaurants and eventually curled our way through the outskirts of downtown. Again, I absolutely love this city. At least I love the parts that I have seen so far. There has to be some downside to this place, I just havn't found it yet.

Boston: Day 1

2005-06-26T18:25:00.000-05:00

I love this city. The second I stepped out of the subway I knew I just went ya, this is cool. There were people walking around... past midnight... not scared out of their minds. As we walked towards North End, where James and Rebecca live we walked through a good part of of down town and North end and everywhere we went there were people walking around, corner shops open selling ice cream, baked goods, and whatever else you would like. More downtown there were tons of bars open that were packed with people all just sitting around and talking. Most of them had tons of seating outside.

The next day we got up and went to a produce market at Haymarket. It was pretty cool, very similar to west side market only not chock full of yuppies. The prices were very good although all the meat places smelled like rotten garbage.

Next we went and had lunch at the Union Oyster House, aparently the oldest restaurant in Boston. The fish sandwich I had was good and definately fresh fish cooked well. I tried some of James' Clam Chowder. It is worlds apart from anything I have had in the Midwest. I didn't order it myself because of many tramatic experiances I had while working at the retirement home cleaning pots in which the clam chowder had sat all day at a steamy 180 F. *shudder* Before I leave though I will get some :-)

Samual Adams Brewery was next. A relatively easy subway ride and we were there (public transportation here is beautiful). The tour itself was pretty blah as they only showed us some example setups and didn't take us into the factory. However, they did give us a free glass before letting us into a room where for basically about 20 minutes they gave us free tasting of 3 different kinds of beer. I drank my first full glass of beer (only 7 oz. but hey... ) and I have no urge to ever do that again. It was better then any beer I have tried so far but still tasted like piss to me (I found out that is the hops at work). I also tried their Octoberfest beer (actually not as offensive because they added sugar but after a full glass of the lauger... oye) and an oatmeal stout (still gives me goose bumps... and not the good kind). Over all though they treated us very well and I would recommend it to anyone who actually likes beer.

On the way back we got of the subway down town and walked back stopping in several shops and this cool grocery store that was in this building built of granite. Come to think of it granite must be cheaper then water here because they use it all over. In the midwest I suppose the equivilent is limestone... but limestone doesn't hold a candle granite. In anycase we got stuff to make home made pizza which is what we ate for dinner.

There is a lesson to be learned here... do not bake home made pizza in a 800 ft^2 efficiency in the middle of a heat wave. Holy crap was it hot after we were done. We went for a walk after dinner (see previous sentance) and got some gelato. I have a feeling this was real gellato as oposed to the stuff we get in Cleveland. The Italian population here is still going strong compared to Little Italy. After stopping by a fountain/pool to cool are feet we closed off the night watching Shawn of the Dead. A very good movie that I highly recommend.

I have decided that Boston keeps the prices of its subway tokens at a $1.25 just so people can practice their Boston accents and say buck and a qwarta. And on the way from the airport the operator had a pretty good accent and said "Last stop, collect your belongings and exit the train." Which was pretty funny. What I love most about the way they talk here though is something like that sounds like "Last stop, get your stuff and get the f@#k off my train."

Note: I am going to try to post pictures within this entry but we will see how that works out. Did I mention how much I freaking love this city?!

Human nature

2005-06-16T15:32:00.000-05:00

I started reading Blank Slate by some guy. I have not learned anything new as of yet. It turns out that I have a pretty good understanding of cognitive psycology and physiological psycology :-) What is interesting though is how reluctant I am to openly accept what I think is going to be a central tenet of the book: Some people are born messed up, some are born awesome, but we are all born a certain way; get over it and deal.

I might have mentioned this before but I also recently finished Brave New World also by some guy. In it the government has taken extreme steps to ensure the happyness of it's citizens. Everyone is gestated and born from a test tube (called decanting... awesome) but not everyone is born equal. Whole groups of people are deprived oxygen and fed alcohol throughout thier prenatel existance. As a result they are severly retarded mentally and physically. They form the lowest caste of society fit only to sweep floors and run elevators (this is only possible because the elevator will verbally give instructions to the "operator"). What is so facinating and repugnent is that as children they are played recordings of societal norms while they sleep. For example, "I'm go glad to be an epsilon (the lowest caste). The alphas are so much smarter but they have so much responsability! The betas must work so hard! The gamas... " is played to get them glad they were given this lot in life.

I am often swept up by the ideal of universal love of education, knowledge, and a questioning nature. I often think,"If only somehow we could get the ball rolling, somehow show these people a brief glimps of (my) utopia and break the spell of pop culture..." Ok, so that is somewhat more dramatic then my thoughts but you get the idea. Then the question morphes to how to bring about this change which is much more pleasent to think about then the question of if my ideal is even possible.

What if the vast majority of America will not or can not embrace these ideals? It is interesting that our society is based on the perception of equality. We are proud of the fact that everyone may vote regardless of social or economic position. Even the American dream draws on the possibility that anyone can someday own a house with a two car garage, have 2.5 children, mow a lawn every week, and have a dog to poop on said lawn. Everyone is entitled to an education provided by the state and, along similar lines, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

Or not.

I am begining to believe that there are several different americas and I belong to the most oblivious. There is the considerable white anglo-saxon protestant contingency which I grew up with all the way through high school. Along side this are the relatively well off Hippies, my current almamotter if you will. I am sure there are many other groups but I am going to mention one more; the poor. The percentage of people living below the poverty line without health insurance or constant supply of the basic food, shelter, and clothing is staggering and growing.

What about the culture of this group? I wish I had found the series of articles written by Sam Fullword III here in Cleveland on those living in the poorest regions of the city. The excerps that I did manage to read though are worth summerizing. He repettedly states that the poor have a different state of mind. They don't plan for the future. If they get a pay check they immediatly spend it before someone can take that money away from them. I have also heard about how in inner cities there is a deffinate perception of how education is a white man's thing. To strive for American Dream is to turn your back on your culture.

Ever since reading Ishmael I can't help but look at our Culture as some living breathing organizm bent on self perservation. Suddenly it looks like our culture is creating a Brave New World. Nothing so severe as government run baby factories exists but it sure seems as though our culture exists to satiate people at all levels. It is the easiest way to maintain the status quo.

What does this mean then. Well, it means I am currently quite jaded, for one :-). Mainly though it means that perhaps some time must be taken to look for the motivation behind "the way things are now." Maybe, like many physical systems, a certain culture seeks out some sort of least energy configuration. The difficult thing then becomes defining exactly what energy means in a culture. Once this is done, however, a long held dream of mine might be possible: a mathmatical expression for the behavior of society.

The ultimate question though is how do we make the greatest number of people fulfilled/content/happy? Somehow it seems I am drawing closer to the conclusion that, like nature, our culture and society are far to complex to be effectively manipulated by man. Or, at least too complex to be manipulated by the brute force methods I previously championed.

MBTI Personality Types

2005-06-04T16:32:00.000-05:00

I first became interested in the MBTI personality types after taking an online quiz from David Kiersey's website in probably 10th grade. I read the description and was floored. How could they know this about me? The first book I ever purchased with my own money was in fact Please Understand Me II by David Keirsey. His specialty is temperament... but don't ask me what the difference is.

After reading the book I don't know how many times and taking the test I agreed that I was indeed an INTJ. To me the whole concept of being able to sort something so amorphous and complex into 16 bins was revolutionary and I tried to get everyone I knew to take the test and talk about the results. Not many people took me up on this at the time and, like most things with me, it fell to the way side. I'd read it again every six months or so, and even bought Gifts Differing by Isabel Briggs Myers. About sophomore year I started noticing that the INFJ personality type fit me better and I feel that I have now grown fully into that type. This is an excellent example of how environment can effect personality and why it is so important to choose your friends wisely :-D Oh how lucky I was in both high school and college.

The point is that I have thought about this for some time and, true to my type, have developed an intuitive understanding of the subject that I am rarely prepared to talk about when the subject comes up. So, here you go:

Origen of Type:
Practice, practice, practice... Every process described here is a neurological function that grows stronger with use and atrophies with neglect. Sure, inborn genetically determined brain structures might make one process easier then another but ultimately it is use it or lose it.

I(N)tuitive Vs. (S)ensing:
If anyone were purely sensing or intuitive they could not function. Our stream of consciousness is a limited resource for which certain processes must fight for "air time". One mode is the experience of our senses and emotions. The other involves, essentially, day dreaming. There is a distinct difference between daydreaming and reminiscing. Remembering something already sensed is reliving a sensory experiance. Daydreaming involves letting the mind run free to experiance whatever it can create. A totally sensing person then would be increadibly boring, essentially a robot with knee-jerk reactions to its enviroment. An intuitive by contest would be a vegitable or would perhaps even appear psycotic as their actions would bear no relationship to the enviroment. A mix then allows for the optimal being, attentive and responsive yet creative and flexable.

Inevitibly people will "error on the side of caution" and rely on the mode which is most comfertable to them. When this preference arrises and for what reasons I don't know. I speculate that this is largely inborn in the structure of the brain. We learned in Physiological Psychology of people who sense can sense color when they see a certain letter. There is a short, or a connection between seperate areas of the brain. These people are disproportionally artests who tend to be disperportionally intuitives. It is thought that similar shorts and connections between various regions of the brain are what have made us the excelent creative problem solvers we are. The degree to which these connections occure could easily be genetic and as a result somewhat set from birth. Of course, the brain is quite plastic and changible but if something is easier you are more likely to do it, strengthening it further in a positive feedback loop. Parents, of course, can wreck havok upon this process :-)

If this process is introverted or extroverted then the focus is on the external or the internal: current sensations vs. memories and a psychotic vs. vegitable persona. Fairly simple. It is of note however that the internal world of ideas and the external world of perception need not opperate in exactly the same manner. I could easily deal with ideas in a very intuitive fashion yet be relatively concrete when dealing with the outside world. Again, it depends upon the comfert level in using each process in each setting.

Thinking vs. Feeling:
The mainstream perception of these processes is my pet-peeve. Thinkers are cold and calculating while Feeling types are walking talking warm fuzzies. The Thinking/Feeling process is called the judging process for a reason, it is what is used to choose amongst a range of possibilities. There are not multiple ways to make a choice. Logic is something learned and thus can not be the basis of a personality. But the degree to which control is maintained over the process is variable. Thinkers require more or less conscience control over the entire process. To accomplish this things must be ordered and organized in such a way as to make this possible. Thus, thinking types will tend to be very ordered with clear and consice reasons for what they do because they have access to that information. Feeling types in contrast will make decisions based on what their gut tells them. Everyone has these gut feelings and for some they are more reliable then others. I am sure everyone has "slept on a decision". In other words they put off making a decision till the next day. Quite often they will wake up and even if the decision isn't clear their gut tells them that one way might be better then another. I can't think of a physiological reason for this but being able to use it effectively is deffinately due to practice.

Why the names Feeling and Thinking? Well, emotions and the queues that indicate them are beastly complex. Maintaing concious control over a decision in such areas is nearly impossible. Hence the tendency for thinking types to be difficient in dealing with areas of the heart. Feeling types however are more willing to give such decisions over to the subconscience which is likely less restrained by the linear requirements of consciences and can act in parallel. Ask a feeling type why they choose something though and they are likely to shrug and say gut feeling because they don't know why they choose it. They have no access to the decision making process and its steps. Also, note how each description parallels the stereotypes for each of the sexes which could be the cause or result of over 60% of Feeling types being female.

The main point is a Feeling type may not necessarily be a people person, it is just easier for them so they are more inclined to do it.

How is this process introverted or extroverted? It is alot tougher to say. The internal world is the one in which actual decisions are made while the external world tends to be full of decisions on how to react to stimuli. These are two, relatively seperate things and both do not have to be the same. Like the perceptive processes (N vs. S) making decisions and interacting are different skill sets that can be practiced independently.

My conclusion:
Most personality type tests are bunk. Since they test based on things such as, "Do you deal better with people or equations?" they miss the fundementals of each process and thus miss lable a great many people. Intuition and Sensing are also often miss labled expecually in a college enviroment. There you are taught, whether you like it or not, to be a good problem solver. So if a test asks such things as if you are comfertable and able with problems you are more likely then not to be judged Intuitive in college even if you are not. As a result of this I have very little faith in any personality test I have come across. I can typically find at least one letter which is incorrectly labled with every person I meet.

Additionally it is often assumed that given the four letters an entier hierachy of processes can be constructed. Lets assume that my dominant process (the one I enjoy using the most... remember the limited time nature of conscienceness) is introverted intuition. If this is the case then my 4th most prefered process must be externalized sensing. In all honesty I can find no rational reason for this. Using Ockham's Razor these postulates must be thrown out as they are unneccessary and complicate the picture. A usefull analogy can be drawn to engineering... In many cases to make a usefull model things are neglected if small enough. If there are 8 process (N S T F and each can be introverted and extroverted) and one is dominant you would expect it to take up at least half, and probably much more, of the conscience stream. The second most used process very likely the complement of the primary so if one's prefered process is Intuition then a judging process such as Thinking or Feeling is needed to accomplish anything. These two processes are likely to take up the majority of the time of the conscienceness so who cares about everything else. This is why people can theorize to their hearts content and no one can tell if they are right or wrong.

I think I am going to try to make a quiz based on congitive processes that perhaps is more accurate then other thing out there. Like any good scientific theory this can't just explain it has to predict so a useful project would be to develop type descriptions. We will see...

Time, time, time, is on my side, yes it is...

2005-05-30T23:48:00.000-05:00

The other day I was sent this link summerizing the Gita, a biblicesque story of a man strugling between moral virtues and ethical obligations to family. Many of the later chapters deal with spirituality and one's relationship with god, something covered in an earlier post. The first several chapters however deal with how to be happy. I will not attempt to summerize a summery but I did take away the following message: live as though you will live forever.

Given an infinite existance suddenly the daily existance losses it's importance (Chapter 1, 2 , 5 & 6). Likewise, it becomes easier to live selflesslly for others when tomorrow means nothing (Chapters 3 & 4).

Compare that to the message in a song that I heard last night while driving back from the bowling ally:

"he said someday I hope you get the chance
to live like you were dying"

And that famous line from Dead Poet's Society, carpe diem, "Sieze the Day". This message is blazed on every billboard, a theme in television shows, movies, and books. Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today!!!

The difference between the two messages is striking; one preaches self-lessness while the other worships the experiance of self. This is a topic of discussion that I would like to continue on at a later point. For now, the similarities are what interest me. Both cultures advocate a divorce from the constraints of time on the order of magnitude of human existance. I sense another reference to Ishmael, but I will resist.

This appears to be the case when I am happiest. Working on a project with no concept of time passing, being "in the zone" while playing a sport, hanging out with friends and being shocked that it is suddenly 3:00 am, and a miriad of other times when I can forget about my life and just be. What about when I am unhappy though?

I have found that the times in which I am depressed I do seem to percieve time differently. I become fixated on the past and future, essentially mistakes and future possible mistakes. I find it difficult to concentrate and get into my work. Everything, in fact, is difficult to get into.

It is interesting too to look at the number of societal ills that are associated with excapeing time. Drug and alcohol use comes to mind first. Alcohol impares the inhibiatory neurons in the brain freeing one to act without constraint in the present (funny comming from someone who has never gotten drunk...). Drugs too, I bet, alow one to enjoy the presant despite whatever may currently be happening. The remaining sins that I can think of regard the indulgance of primal urges. The seven sins are basically eatting, sleeping, making love with someone, making love with material objects (greed), making love with one's self (pride), and making love with the idea that you were making love with whatever someone else is making love with (envy). No, I wasn't channeling Freud there. I just think it is interesting that most of the sins are lusting over something. Indulging in lust is a very in the moment kind of thing... if you know what I mean ;-)

So I agree, in basics, with the Gita. Why write about it? Letting go of time is scary. Many people, myself included, are familiar with carpe diem and believe that they couldn't possibly actually live that philosophy. What suprised me though is how scared I was of the teachings of the Gita.

My aikido teacher once said that for her, martial arts were a way up the "mountain". The mountain being essentially self-enlightenment. She said that there are many paths up the mountain and your job is to find the one that works for you. The Gita is a path up that mountain and one which I can see finishing at the top. And yet, I can't seem to even consider actually taking that path.

So what am I afraid of? In living as though I will live forever I would be giving up many things. If I did live forever that wouldn't be a problem. There is always tomorrow. But I know my life is finite and despite this I want desperately to experiance all there is. I want my life to be worth while. To take my eyes off of tomorrow, whatever the reason, is to loose sight of whatever grand plan I have to accomplish before its too late.

I wonder if this feeling is fundemental to human nature or if it is something society has whispered in our ear since birth. Can it be true that something so built into our culture could cause unhappyness? Perhaps a better question is, "Can we have our cake and eat it too?"

The revolution

2005-05-25T21:19:00.000-05:00

I am not all that satisfied with my last post... alittle too mystical at times :-)

In anycase, it has been some time since I have discussed the revolution and as far as I know, it is no where in print.

The premise is this: I dislike the way that american society and infrustructure has evolved. We are such a wastefull society and I really believe that our psuedo-capitalizm-at-all-cost mentality has cost us dearly in happyness and well being. I love this country and it's people more then anything but I just think that we have worked ourselves into an uncomfertable corner... More on this in a later post. The main point is that contrary to looking for ways to maintain our current way of life I am looking for ways to end it.

[Blessing in Disguize enters stage right] America has been fabulasly successfull for two reasons: Abundent natural resources per capita and the ingenuity to use them! One of our greatest succeses has been our transportation infrastructure. The interstate highway system combined with the most extensive local road network in the world has made the movement of people ridiculously easy. I drive further over one holliday weekend then nearly anyone traveled their whole lives 200 years ago.

This enhanced mobility of goods and people [read: talent and labor] has helped make us the dominant economic force on the planet. Goods and people are used far more efficiently here then any where else.

The unfortunate side effect of this is the disolution of the community. Untill fairly recently humans lived in relatively small but closely nit communities. The nuclear family didn't really exist, how could it? It litterally took a whole community to survive and independent living of the sort we are used to was unheard of. Children were likely raised as a group by the elders in the community and to use a stereotype, men hunted together and women did everything else necessary to keep the community alive together (bless their hearts).

How different this is from how we live today! I come home from school and it is just me, my brother, mom, and dad. We were amicable with the neighbors but I don't think I could call them friends. The friends that each of my family had were typically 15 minutes away by car at the minimum.

Which brings me to the prolog to my point. People say, all the time, that college was the best time of their lives. "You will never make friends like you have in college," is another oft heard comment. My response to this is why? Why can't it be like that? It sure seems like it used to be like that, people living with each other with no other obligations then to keep themselves alive and to hang out with each other.

It could be like that now. We work 8 hours, come home, and then decide that after cooking and cleaning up that it is too much effort to go hang out with other people. Or, the effort required to maintain an entire house is too much to warrent spending several nights a week with family friends. The fact that we live so far apart just makes it difficult to plan and coordinate things with anyone but your closest friends. Even then it usually ends up being traditions like going to the bowling ally every Wednesday night.

The crux of my arguement: the resources and infrastructure that allowed this culture to develop will no longer exist when the oil become scarce. Suberbia will atrophy and die like the inner cities of the past 30 years. World trade will decrease due to the increased cost of transport. There is still Mexico so I doubt that our manufacturing base will come back but at least we wont have to compete as hard core with china. As a consiquence though everything will be more expensive so we will have less of it. The materialism that has come to dominate american culture will at least diminish. The only thing that won't be affected by the increased cost of energy is the exchange of information. That is perhaps the one commodity that will only get more competitive.

The revolution.

The revolution wont happen over night, but it will happen within our life time. Already scientists are predicting that the oil supply will stop increasing within only a few years. What does this mean for us? A sharp increase in demand (China and India) coinciding with a slacking of supply will cause prices will skyrocket. We can't recast our cities and towns to cope with the increased cost of transportation so we will just have to pay out the nose for energy and cope with less goods and services. Less goods and services means less stuff being bought which means less jobs which means less stuff bought and so on... Pretty bleak except for the fact that it will happen over the span of probably 20 years. In a sense our time will come to be defined by both the excess of energy we enjoy now and the crash that follows.

It is interesting to think of how many times in history severe economic collapeses have led to a remaking of society. It required the widespread hardships of the Great Depression to give Franklen D. Rosevelt the support to pass the New Deal legislation. The idea of the government providing more then order and stability to the point of the people depending upon the government was a new one.

A similar transformation will occure during the revolution but what form it will take is hard to tell.

Night Walk

2005-05-17T23:18:00.000-05:00

Tonight, while walking around aimlessly it occured to me that things seem differnt at night. Not just the physical world around me but the thoughts in my head.

Dr. D told us a story in Physiological Psychology about patients with brain damage who, when shown their own mother, would vehemenitly argue that she was a spy and not actually their mother. The problem was the connection between the region that recognizes faces and the emotional centers of the brain was broken. So, when the patient looked at their mother they saw someone who certainly looked like their mother but created none of the same feelings that their mother used to. To reconcile this situation, the brain created a reality that made sense: it wasn't their mother it was a look alike. Who would do such a thing?... a spy.

There are many more examples. A woman with her corpus colosum, the bridge that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, severed was subjected to several tests in which commands were selectively sent to either the right half or the left half of the brain. Since the language center lies in the left half of the brain, the woman we communicate with is basically now only the left half of her brain since we have no way of interacting with the right half. So, if an image or command is sent to the right half of the brain she will have no knowlege of it. In one such case the command to "laugh" was sent to the right half of the brain. The left half of her brain, in response to a confusing situation, created it's own reality.

Since learning of this I have been very weary of the devices my own brain employes to make the world around it "fit right". The only problem is, how do you recognize when it has happened? You have nothing to compare it to because it is your reality. Its like seeing the world through colored glasses. How do you know the world isn't red if that is all you have ever seen?

There is something about walking at night that makes everything seem a bit odd. Almost as if I were walking through the set of some grand play. This is expecually the case on still nights when the sky is clear. Then, the street lamps light the motionless trees in such a way as to make them look fake and yet all the more substantial and real for it. This psuedo world, I think, jars my brain out of it's comfert zone just enough to get a glimps of the world it has woven for me. It is as if I was walking, with my tinted glasses, and came across something I hadn't seen before. Everything else is, and always has been, red. This I can accept. But why must this new object also be red? a.k.a. A reason to suspect something is not right here.

I never come out of these walks knowing the color of my lenses. But I do come away with the precious feeling of doubt. Its as if I live in a house where people have put up painted screens in front of my windows. Every day, I look out and see the same scene but think nothing of it. One day I go up to the second floor and see the same scene! I don't know what is really beyond those painted pictures but I do know that there is something. That is the feeling I try to hold on to.

What can I do to see reality in the harsh cutting light of truth? Nothing, I suspect. I think the only battle we can hope to win is to know that we can't. We shoud realize that whatever truths we hold self evident are our own personal truths that are exist in a reality that is as unique as the mind that percieves it.

We are lucky that our realities overlap to the degree they do. To a large extent the world serves as a calibration point and the effort to keep ourselves alive drives us back towards that point when reality starts to drift. It isn't to hard to see then how the nation can be so easily and cleanly divided amongst the blue and red. Each has a collective reality that differes from the other and which can sustain different truths. The experiances of a college student living in Cleveland will differ greatly from a factory worker in rural Indiana.

This has great relevency when though of in conjunction with the group think discused in a previous post, Religion II: Posers.

I wonder then, is there a way to creat a common reality? How close is good enough? Do we want a common reality? Can we manipulate the reality of a group and hence the truths it accepts? If yes, how?...

That last one bears contemplation by the Demicratics. Perhaps hope is not lost...

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Why I Blog: This post reminds me of why I chose Mirari for the title of my Weblog. When I started this I ment it as a way of seeing through the BS I have a way of feeding myself. In much the same way as looking in a mirror can surprise you with how different you look in your minds eye. Somehow, the process of both writting to someone and reading what I have written forces me to see my crazyness for what it is. These entries rarely if ever end up how I planned; I have yet to have a single entry for which I don't have to change the title because the point had completely changed by the time I finished. In a way I think this is why I enjoy it. What fun would it be if I knew what I was going to write and then just had to type it? It also serves as a way to have those conversations on deep topics that are so hard have and yet so satisfying. It takes a very special relationship to be able to talk about such things and I have been lucky to have several while I have been at case... although most are gone or no longer that accessable. And I am rambling so it is time to go.

Religion II: Posers

2005-05-11T10:32:00.000-05:00

If you haven't read Mano Singham's Weblog yet, I suggest you do. In one entry he discussed the differences between his Methodist upbringing in Sri Lanka and his change in perspective once he came to the United States. I highly suggest reading this and many other entries.

That entry in particular seemed to sum up many of the concerns I have with Christianity in the US. Read his entry since he is much more eloquent then I am.

As I was running and contemplating Mano's entry a hypothetical situation popped into my head and I thought I would share it. What if you were a god (Einstein asked you to ride a freaking photon... bear with me!) and you had brought into existence a peoples. With no previous knowledge of current religious doctrine, an assumption closely approximated by me, how would you like them to act: A. according to your principles but with no knowledge of yourself, or B. not according to your principles but knowing and worshiping you. Yes, these are extremes, but if there is one thing I have learned from engineering is that the use of extremes can often make a problem blindingly obvious.

The situation as it stands is useless. What is needed is the nature of your principles [1] by which you wish your creation to live by. We will assume, with no elaboration, that you want your creation to be good. To be good to themselves and others. Let the philosophers tell us what good is!

I can't think of any reason, besides vanity and pride, to choose option B. Choice A seems to be the ideal, if unattainable, solution.

So, where does that leave us? I worry that as religion, specifically Christianity, becomes ever more popular with less religious individuals the term becomes a status symbol as opposed to a label indicating a doctrine of self improvement. The influence of these individuals can be great as who among us doesn't desire to be accepted by the group? Focus is gradually drawn from true self-improvement to the appearance of self-improvement. Meditation and soul searching are replaced with reading of books such as the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, listening to all Christian radio programs, watching all Christian television networks, and associating with all Christian friends. A defacto situation B.

A common method used to unite a large, varied, and relatively diverse group of people is fear. A common enemy can unite even the French and the Americans :-). Enter the Liberals: Liberal activist judges, Liberal college students and professors, Liberal hippies undermining our social fabric, and so on. Given something both groups, sinciere and poser Christians alike, can hate focus is drawn away from the differences within those groups. Fear of breaking up the alliance against the evil of Liberality prevents those who are aware from fighting the change.

This is more speculation then I am usually comfortable writting but ultimately how I feel about the situation. Why do I care so much? Many things I believe whole-heartedly in such as tolerance and compassion seem to be selectively applied by the republican party. Examples include: the fight against allowing gay couples equivalent legal privileges, the dismantling of social welfare programs, the war in Iraq, and the role back of environmental protection laws. These seem to be fundamentally Christian ideals and so I am often baffled as to why there would be such opposition to them. Well, baffled in the absence of the explanation I have given above.

So, the question become this: how does one convince a group, united against all opposition capable of being labeled "liberal", that they are being led astray? I am at a loss...

[1] A fascinating read. This compares several different perspectives on the Ten Commandments.

Purdue Visit

2005-05-04T23:00:00.000-05:00

Thoughts on my visit to Purdue:

Night sky... so dark with so many stars... breathtaking.

The students... hm, not to sure. Most seem like high school students. Not all that intimidating once I got used to them.

Campus... Ginourmous. 80% chance my office will be in the nano building which is in the middle of the Ag. buildings and the Vet schools. Pets and Plants... two of my favorate things :-)

Research... fairly straight forward... we will see if I can work some magic.

Advisor... good stuff :-)

My new place... Also good stuff... Nice little three bedroom apartment for two people. 760 a month so somewhat expensive and far from nano building... Above the efficiency of a cute swimmer girl ;-) Good landlord but she gave me the hebbie-geebies. Nice quiet neighborhood.

Roommate... definately going to be a change of pace :-) Going to be good though :-) anticipating a very homie feel.

The town... West lafayette doesn't exist. Lafayette, very typical Midwestern town.

Indiana... god I hate it.

Future... weary... research is entierly experimental and I would like to get some theoretical work to help getting a professorship. Also, classes seem kind of eh. May be taking a math course, a fluid mechanics course, and a microfluidics course... We will see if I can convince him to let me take all of them at once :-D Looking forward to Qualifiers!!!

Teaching

2005-05-01T11:30:00.000-05:00

Teaching is a burden. I have to assume that at some level most teachers are aware of the impact they are capable of having on a students life. With awareness of this ability must come a sense of duty. Much more then the knowledge that is shared.

First, we learn from our parents. The foundation for vital things like language, customs, ethics, and social behavior are layed at this stage. Long ago this would have encompased the majority of an individuals education. In contrast to this children today are sent at a fairly young age to "professionals" to recieve their education. For the majority of their day they are sharing the attention of a single individual in lue of a more intimate family enviroment.

Two things of significance strike me about this situation. The first is that I somehow don't see how it is possible to learn societies custems, ethics, and and so on without constant exposure to those who have the most experiance with these maters, adults. Sure, they have the teacher but as I can attest, a teacher is acting the role of teacher every time they get up there. What you see and understand is not a full human being, just the part that is neccessary for the task. How can we act surprised that our children appear to be taking longer and longer to grow up when we spend less and less time with them? More often then not a parent might spend 2-3 hours with there children a night if they work. Compare that to the 7 hours of psuedo-society spent at school and 2-3 hours of television watched a night. Neither of those are sufficient substitutes for the real thing.

The second is that I feel that it is rare that a teacher formally recognizes this responsibility. I can't blame them. As a TA I could barely handle the knowledge that my grading could be responsible for failing/tanking someones grade point average. I wrote earlier on the frustration experianced by a student, another event that weighed heavily on my concience. I have no doubt that at some point most teachers must turn their back on this responsibility in order to survive.

Would a teacher then continue growing as an educator? Possibly but I doubt it. Likely they will continue with the motions and if they do grow, it will not through experiance but through theory read in a book or seen on TV. How much of this monotony before they become the burned out husks of teachers we all remember?

So many more places I could take this but I will end with a question to myself:

Can I notice the turning point? If I can what would I do?

Questions in general:

Would paying teachers more help? Does closely regulating what teachers teach help? Are there alternatives to the current system?

The last one is most interesting.

Attention

2005-04-30T00:05:00.000-05:00

I sometimes wonder what it is that I feel is missing from my life. I have good friends at home and at work. My future looks promising (even if that future happens to include Purdue :-) ), I have essentially no physical wants (food, clothing, shelter); what is it I need? Well, in a very Craigian way (i.e. over dramatic and probably wrong but I'll run with it anyway...) I think I understand now. The hard part is finding the words to describe it.

The first word I tried was companionship. I will say this is close. The fellowship of a companion if you will. Yet, what I seek is something more then this. I have (almost by design) near constant fellowship of companions. What is missing is a contract of sorts...

Haveing so failed with my first try I think I will just attempt a short sentance.

What I seek is attention, love, and the knowlegdge that there is someone always there for me.

Funny, actually, that attention made it in there. I don't consider myself a showman, most of what I do and say has purposes other then to gain the attention of those around me. I think though that there is a fundimental human need for attention. I think the greatest evidence of this is the shear happieness one can give simply by paying attention to those around you. How many times have you just been there for someone one when they were upset. The physical pressence is not the factor though. Simply try playing a computer game while attempting to comfert that person. Most wouldn't even consider it.

So how is it that attention is so important to all of us? I would think it would stem from the cooperative nature of humanity. A way to ensure that those around you truely are invested in both the common good and more importantly your own well-being is if they invest attention in you.

If you have read Dune you might remember a scene where the main character fights one of the desert people and kills him. After winning he crys for the boy he had to kill. To the desert people it was amazing that he was wasting water (tears) for someone else. The magnitude of that gesture was based on the scarcity of the tool used to express it. Paying attention to someone is a similar gesture that has a definite cost to the payer (hence the term pay attention). That time could be spent focusing on the miriad of problems vital to survival. It is the inate knowledge of this cost that comferts the object of the attention.

The expenditure of the finite amount of attention reinforces the investment that the group members have in each other, strenghening the bond. This bond is vital if the members of the group can be trusted, a key step towards effective cooperation which is central to the success of humans. It might follow then that lack of attention could cause very real stress on an individual in the form of a low level anxiety. Something aint right here and your body is letting you know it. A lack of attention could signal that you are about to be screwed by those you are cooperating with. Hence, the best scam artests are generaly excelent at making a person feel special.

So, lessons to be learned:

Remember what a difference it can make for someone just to be payed attention to...
I need more re-assurance of my continued survival :-)

POST SCRIPT
I didn't realize it when I started this but after writing about the stress that lack of attention causes stress I was reminded of a study on this. The conclusion is the same as the one I gave so lets give it up for lack of origionality!! Seriosly though, I have tried to find and I can't but I thought I would do what I could to give due credit.

TA

2005-04-27T19:33:00.000-05:00

Well, I am done TAing for some time now. It was an interesting year and one that for sure changed my life. I am positive I would be going to GE in two months if it weren't for this experiance. For the sake of posterity I thought I would write down some of the lessons I have learned.

Professorship=Hard decisions
More then I think other teaching disiplans college requires you to teach towards the top students. There is no true obligation to ensure that everyone is up to an acceptable level. In fact, some might say it is there duty to "seperate the wheat from the chaff". To force yourself to ignore the effect you are having on the bottom half of the class *shaking head* I don't know if I have the balls.

Caring=Half the battle
I am by no means a good teacher. I make mistakes, have to explain stuff three times, and quite often don't know what I am doing. But I have the feeling that just having someone "on their side" encourages them to meet me the rest of the way.

Helping=Happyness
I am tearing up just thinking about it but I don't think there is anything I have done in my life that has made me as content as holding office hours. I couldn't wait to leave case last year. I liked it yes, but still could not wait to move on. Now, I don't want to leave. That says alot to me.

I don't think I will ever forget the people I have met and the times I have had. I don't know if the next stage will end in me being a professor but no matter what I will be better for the experiance. Awesome.

Religion

2005-04-27T09:45:00.000-05:00

Walking to school today (one reason why I like walking... gives time to think) I thought of a definition of religion:

Placing trust for future events in an entity more powerful/competent then yourself.

I started out thinking that religion may be an inevitable consiquence of conciousness. The awareness of the complexity and vastness of the world would, I think, put strains on a mind capable of comprehending the whole thing. Instead of trying to fit one's mind around the problem that which is not imediatly important is placed in the hands of someone else. Originally it might have been a tribal chiefton, then kings, then god-like-kings, then gods themselves. At all stages a form of worship is necessary to ensure that this bond of trust is not broken.

If this is true then where do athiest fit in? Science, now, is fully capable of filling in the role of protector. The society built around scientific institutions and their ideas is so abstract and convoluted that it appears, even to those inside it, as a separate entity with a mind and will of its own. Sure, no personality is necessarily prescribed to it but how many times have you heard "give it twenty years and we will have _____ technology/cure/theory-that-solves-everything"?

What is my religion? Humanity. I place my trust in the overwhelming goodness of men/women as individuals and more importantly as large groups, i.e. humanity. Eventually we will find how to live well without the corrupting influence of men in power and the need to dominate all that we see. Not in my lifetime for sure but... that is out of my hands.

New Blog!!

2005-04-27T09:35:00.000-05:00

Since being put on a list of unholy attraction, I have decided to switch to Blogger and so far I am quite impressed! My old site is here, I will slowly be transfering my old stuff over. Not that anyone reads this :-D