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The Land Ironclads

Posted on 2007-03-21 at 20:15

I recently read an old science fiction work by H.G. Wells called "The Land Ironclads". While it suffers from a dated perspective (being published in 1903 does that to science fiction), it is a remarkable work nonetheless.

Rather than waste your time with my extended opinion of the work, it suffices to say I think that those who enjoy science fiction will enjoy this work. Moreover, you can read "The Land Ironclad" for free.

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LSD and the Zen of Art

Posted on 2007-01-14 at 13:28

The U.S. Government does research on it's citizens with some regularity. We know this. Some of thos experiments are on willing subjects. This is about one of those.

In the late 1950s, the government performed an experiment on an artist. Given a dose of LSD 25, the artist was encouraged create art. The result was a series of 9 drawings, with accompanying notes. The subject of the artwork was the doctor who gave the artist the LSD. Following is a journey into the mind of the artist as he moved through several stages of drug euphoria.

First drawing is done 20 minutes after the first dose (50ug).
An attending doctor observes - Patient chooses to start drawing with charcoal.
The subject of the experiment reports - 'Condition normal... no effect from the drug yet'.

85 minutes after first dose and 20 minutes after a second dose has been administered (50ug + 50ug)
The patient seems euphoric.
'I can see you clearly, so clearly. This... you... it's all ... I'm having a little trouble controlling this pencil. It seems to want to keep going.'

2 hours 30 minutes after first dose.
Patient appears very focus on the business of drawing.
'Outlines seem normal, but very vivid - everything is changing colour. My hand must follow the bold sweep of the lines. I feel as if my consciousness is situated in the part of my body that's now active - my hand, my elbow... my tongue'.

2 hours 32 minutes after first dose.
Patient seems gripped by his pad of paper.
'I'm trying another drawing. The outlines of the model are normal, but now those of my drawing are not. The outline of my hand is going weird too. It's not a very good drawing is it? I give up - I'll try again...'

2 hours 35 minutes after first dose.
Patient follows quickly with another drawing.
'I'll do a drawing in one flourish... without stopping... one line, no break!'
Upon completing the drawing the patient starts laughing, then becomes startled by something on the floor.

2 hours 45 minutes after first dose.
Patient tries to climb into activity box, and is generally agitated - responds slowly to the suggestion he might like to draw some more. He has become largely none verbal.
'I am... everything is... changed... they're calling... your face... interwoven... who is...' Patient mumbles inaudibly to a tune (sounds like 'Thanks for the memory). He changes medium to Tempera.

4 hours 25 minutes after first dose.
Patient retreated to the bunk, spending approximately 2 hours lying, waving his hands in the air. His return to the activity box is sudden and deliberate, changing media to pen and water colour.
'This will be the best drawing, Like the first one, only better. If I'm not careful I'll lose control of my movements, but I won't, because I know. I know' - (this saying is then repeated many times).
Patient makes the last half-a-dozen strokes of the drawing while running back and forth across the room.

5 hours 45 minutes after first dose.
Patient continues to move about the room, intersecting the space in complex variations. It's an hour and a half before he settles down to draw again - he appears over the effects of the drug.
'I can feel my knees again, I think it's starting to wear off. This is a pretty good drawing - this pencil is mighty hard to hold' - (he is holding a crayon).

8 hours after first dose.
Patient sits on bunk bed. He reports the intoxication has worn off except for the occational distorting of our faces. We ask for a final drawing which he performs with little enthusiasm.
'I have nothing to say about this last drawing, it is bad and uninteresting, I want to go home now.'

You can read more about the government's experimentation with LSD here.

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Nanoparticle Cancer Therapy

Posted on 2007-01-10 at 08:28

I saw this a week or two ago, and intended to blog about it but forgot. I just saw it hitting more mainstream news and figured for those of you who hadn't yet heard....

Researchers are moving into animal trials with an exciting new cancer treatment. Using hollow nanoparticles that are injected into the body, they have shown in early tests that the nanoparticles will travel the circulatory system and target the blood vessels that feed tumors---effectively cutting the blood supply to the tumor.

Two huge positives fall from this effect. First, constricting the blood supply of a tumor reduces its efficacy and could eliminate it in many cases, and second, becuase the nanoparticles are hollow and so effective at targeting tumors, they can be used to deliver highly specific chemotherapy cocktials to the tumor directly. Currently, though chemotherapy is often effective, it's essentially a form of carpet-bombing the body in the hopes that the cancer dies before the host. Using this technique, the host is minimally affected by the chemotherapy.

So, if you were planning on picking up some cancer sometime soon, I'd highly recommend that you wait about 10 years. I give it that long before our understanding of cancer treatment is revised entirely.

I, personally, have forbidden my family from getting any form of cancer until this treatment hits the streets.

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Tom, when is the future?

Posted on 2006-12-14 at 07:57

The Future? Why that would be now, my fine reader.

waiting for you to read the linked article....

For those too lazy to click the link, I'll offer some juicy snippets:

So, the natural follow up question is can you define "Human"? How might your definition be altered or attacked in a future where the biological, the mechanical, and the electrical mashup into an indistinct glob? How much of the brain can be replaced before you will consider the person affected non-human? Does your definition of "Human" distinguish humanity in that way? If a being encapsulates a human brain and organs, but was built from the ground up mechanistically rather than organically is that being a human, a robot, or neither?

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Anthropographics

Posted on 2006-12-08 at 08:13

Personalization. Individuation. Micromarkets.

The world is moving from a mass market, appeal to the crowd, nab the largest group economic model to one that seeks ever-smaller groupings. No longer is it a Good Thing to keep up with the Joneses. Now the modern consumer wants to differentiate themselves from the Joneses. Having a menu of generic product choices worked in the industrialized 20th century, but as we march further into a new economy we seek hyper-specialized products. It's not enough to buy the same album as the guy next to me. I must buy just the songs I want. Moreover, it's not enough to buy them in the same format as everyone else, I want choice. You may like your songs in AAC format (Apples lossy iTunes format) but I prefer mine in Flac (lossless encoding). The next guy might want his in simple MP3 format (a ubiquitous lossy encoding standard). It's not enough to buy a pair of Nikes. Now I can get a pair from their web site with customized colors and even words on the side! This is a radical shift in thinking and in markets. But what does it mean?

It means demographics---the study of delineations of groups of people into their respective subsets---becomes less useful to the marketer, who seeks something delineated at the individual level, something I'm gonna call anthropographics---the study of delineations of individual persons.

I have more to say about this. I'll be adding that to a later entry. I'm interested in feedback. What you you think about this "demassification" of commercial interests? What sorts of profound changes do you expect from it? Do you welcome it?

More to come....

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My inevitable march toward immortality continues

Posted on 2006-09-11 at 08:50

According to several sources online scientists in Britain have just announced substantial success in eliminating allergies from our lives.

They state that within 5 to 7 years that food allergies, hayfever, and the like could likely be eradicated. They have discovered that we are not allergic to the entire food or pollen grain but rather to certain proteins that are just a small part of them. They have identified these proteins and they are already testing a vaccine on humans. This is not an allergy shot as you may have experienced or heard of. Rather than being designed to get your body accustomed to the foreign substance over time through exposure, this method will eliminate your bodies need to attack said foreign substance.

Note that this has application in eliminating Asthma as well.

I'm achieving immortality one health discovery at a time.

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Mutations affecting the lamin A protein and the aging process

Posted on 2006-04-28 at 07:56

According to two researchers at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland (Tom Misteli and Paola Scaffidi) in an article they wrote for the journal Science (Scaffidi P. & Misteli T. . Sciencexpress, 10.1126/science.1127168 (2006).), the nuclei of cells taken from the elderly tend to be wrinkled. The DNA accumulates damage, and the levels of some proteins that package up DNA deviate from the norm of youth. This mirrors the same changes that have been previously observed in cells from children who suffer from Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome.

In short, this is caused by a mutation in the healthy formation of our lamin A protein (one of the components of the nucleus and nucleus wall).

Why should you care?

Well, that same pair of researchers say that healthy cells always produce trace amounts of aberrant lamin A protein, but that younger cells regularly eliminate the aberration. Elderly cells don't. When the production of this aberration is blocked, the cell shows none of these nucleus mutations. In other words, the cells can correct themselves if given normal lamin A protein instead of the aberration. We can make old cells young again.

The next step in this research is to develop a drug to assist the body with fighting aberrant lamin A protein and testing with animals. We are a ways off from a human trial of such a drug, but we are talking years not centuries. I can wait.

I...will...live....forever!

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To what extent is our Will free?

Posted on 2006-04-27 at 07:53

Brought up in a discussion on slashdot:

Jose M.R. Delgado, M.D. published Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society. From that book, he states:

Consider also Richard Dawkins' The Extended Phenotype (in the chapter titled "Host Phenotypes of Parasite Genes"):

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The Homo Movieseat Firewall and the Twin Prime Conjecture

Posted on 2006-04-23 at 14:28

Last night, Bryan and I went to the movies to watch V For Vendetta. Overall, a good movie. But that's not what I'm writing about right now. Nope. Right now I'm gonna talk about math and the art of not being homo in a movie theater.

You see, Bryan has this thing about movies. He doesn't like guys to sit right next to him. It creeps him out. He likes to see one seat between all male friends in the theater. He says he only wants to sit close if it's a date. He's a total freak about it. It's his homo firewall. That one seat is all that stands between him and a torrid, slathering homo-erotic lovefest with oil, candles, Spock in leather chaps, and a soft Barry Manilow song.

Well, anyway, I'm sitting there right next to him (because it is my duty to creep Bryan out) and all I can think about is the Twin Prime Conjecture. What is the Twin Prime Conjecture? Let me explain.

You see around the year 300 BC this guy Euclid noticed that prime numbers (you know, those numbers which are only evenly divisible by themselves and 1) tend to come in pairs separated by one number. Like 11 [skip 12] 13, or 17 [skip 18] 19, or 101 [skip 102] 103. Put as Euclid did: there are infinitely many primes p such that p + 2 is also prime. He proposed that prime numbers would tend to group in that way infinitely. This conjecture has never been proved, though numerical evidence---not to mention simple heuristic reasoning involving the probabilistic distribution of primes---suggests its veracity.

Well anyway, I sat there, no seat between Bryan and I, his enormous mass (he is a fat bitch!) shifting uncomfortably from the entire movie. I should have put a hand on his knee halfway through, but I didn't want any uncut fingernail getting caught in the bristly, donkey-like fur that covers his Neanderthal legs. Instead I just leaned on the arm rest between us to invade his chair-space and spent the movie thinking of new prime twins.

I'm a hopeless freak in so many core ways.

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How may we appease you, Oh Great Sun God?

Posted on 2006-03-29 at 08:31

Oh great and powerful Sun God, do not leave us to die a cold and lonely death. Come back to us to shed your warmth and your occasional firey spat of justice! Be not angry with our blasphemers who called your absence the "ultimate astronomical show".

Though your indignation lasted just three of our mortal hours as you showed your anger to Africa, Turkey and Central Asia, it was a terrifying three hours, where your faithful wept openly and sought reconciliation with you, Great Blazing One.

Know that when the Moon God's vile shadow first besmirched your red visage at sunrise on the east coast of Brazil, we prayed that she would be punished for her crime! And when the Moon God, in infinite foolishness chased your glowing face across the Atlantic Ocean to the African land of Ghana, we wailed and gnashed our teeth while the vile residents of the doomed city of Accra filled the streets to take joy in your suffering. It is said that on this day did one of the sinners of Ghana name the event "the most amazing sight" and "a must see experience". My eyes seep tears of sadness at the recounting.

As you were chased further into the deserts of southern Libya where more errant nonbelievers gathered to point and gawk at the viciousness of the Moon Bitch; Lo', the sight of your torment, which lasted four minutes and seven seconds, was as watching puppies being gutted.

As if to punctuate your torture by the Errant God of the Moon, Nasa and Britain's Royal Institute of Astronomy gathered with thousands of jeering sinners to watch your torment from a Roman amphitheatre in Turkey. Though surely not the first such audience of atrocity in a Roman amphitheatre, it was assuredly the most heinous.

Spake Jay Pasachoff---professor of astronomy at Williams College, Massachusetts---after he had observed this event, "It was more fabulous even than we expected." May he rot in that special roped off section of hell reserved for lawyers and the guy who invented the seat belt alarm car buzzer.

I only pray that you can forgive us our transgression and return to us. I vow to hold the moon in scorn forevermore. Amen.

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Happy Birthday, Einstein!

Posted on 2006-03-14 at 07:27

Albert Einstein (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist widely regarded as the greatest scientist of the 20th century. He was the author of the general theory of relativity and made important contributions to the special theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, and cosmology. He was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize for Physics for his explanation of the photoelectric effect in 1905 (his "miracle year") and "for his services to Theoretical Physics."

After British solar eclipse expeditions in 1919 confirmed that light rays from distant stars were deflected by the gravity of the sun in the exact amount he predicted in his general theory of relativity, Einstein became world-famous, an unusual achievement for a scientist. In his later years, his fame exceeded that of any other scientist in history. In popular culture, his name has become synonymous with great intelligence and genius.

In November 1915, Einstein presented a series of lectures before the Prussian Academy of Sciences in which he described his theory of gravity, known as general relativity. The final lecture climaxed with his introduction of an equation that replaced Newton's law of gravity, the Field Equation.9 This theory considered all observers to be equivalent, not only those moving at a uniform speed. In general relativity, gravity is no longer a force (as it is in Newton's law of gravity) but is a consequence of the curvature of space-time.

The theory provided the foundation for the study of cosmology and gave scientists the tools for understanding many features of the universe that were discovered well after Einstein's death. A truly revolutionary theory, general relativity has so far passed every test posed to it and has become a powerful tool used in the analysis of many subjects in physics.

Initially, scientists were skeptical because the theory was derived by mathematical reasoning and rational analysis, not by experiment or observation. But in 1919, predictions made using the theory were confirmed by Arthur Eddington's measurements (during a solar eclipse), of how much the light emanating from a star was bent by the Sun's gravity when it passed close to the Sun, an effect called gravitational lensing. The observations were carried out on May 29, 1919, at two locations, one in Sobral, Ceará, Brazil, and another in the island of Principe, in the west coast of Africa. On November 7, The Times reported the confirmation, cementing Einstein's fame.

Many scientists were still unconvinced for various reasons ranging from disagreement with Einstein's interpretation of the experiments, to not being able to tolerate the absence of an absolute frame of reference. In Einstein's view, many of them simply could not understand the mathematics involved[citation needed]. Einstein's public fame which followed the 1919 article created resentment among these scientists some of which lasted well into the 1930s.

In the early 1920s Einstein was the lead figure in a famous weekly physics colloquium at the University of Berlin. On March 30, 1921, Einstein went to New York to give a lecture on his new Theory of Relativity, the same year he was awarded the Nobel Prize. Though he is now most famous for his work on relativity, it was for his earlier work on the photoelectric effect that he was given the Prize, as his work on general relativity was still disputed. The Nobel committee decided that citing his less-contested theory in the Prize would gain more acceptance from the scientific community.

Sir Edmund Whittaker(1953) stated that David Hilbert published the theory of general relativity nearly simultaneously with Einstein.

Einstein's postulation that light can be described not only as a wave with no kinetic energy, but also as massless discrete packets of energy called quanta with measurable kinetic energy (now known as photons) was a landmark break with the classical physics. In 1909 Einstein presented his first paper on the quantification of light to a gathering of physicists and told them that they must find some way to understand waves and particles together.

In the mid-1920s, as the original quantum theory was replaced with a new theory of quantum mechanics, Einstein balked at the Copenhagen interpretation of the new equations either because it settled for a probabilistic, non-visualizable account of physical behaviour, or because it described matter as being in necessarily contradictory states. Einstein agreed that the theory was the best available[citation needed], but he looked for a more "complete" explanation, i.e., more deterministic. He could not abandon the belief that physics described the laws that govern "real things", the belief which had led to his successes with atoms, photons, and gravity.

In a 1926 letter to Max Born, Einstein made a remark that is now famous:

To this, Bohr, who sparred with Einstein on quantum theory, retorted, "Stop telling God what He must do!" The Bohr-Einstein debates on foundational aspects of quantum mechanics happened during the Solvay conferences.

Einstein was not rejecting probabilistic theories per se. Einstein himself was a great statistician, using statistical analysis in his works on Brownian motion and photoelectricity and in papers published before the miraculous year 1905; Einstein had even discovered Gibbs ensembles. He believed, however, that at the core reality behaved deterministically. Many physicists argue that experimental evidence contradicting this belief was found much later with the discovery of Bell's Theorem and Bell's inequality. Nonetheless, there is still space for lively discussions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Einstein's writings on religion are frequently associated with pantheism, an areligious spirituality that regards the natural world as definitionally equivalent to God. Although he was raised Jewish, he was not a believer in the religious aspect of Judaism, though he still considered himself an ethnic Jew. From a letter written in English, dated March 24, 1954, Einstein wrote, "It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

He also said (in an essay reprinted in Living Philosophies, vol. 13, 1931): "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity; in this sense, and this [sense] alone, I am a deeply religious man."

The following is a response made to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the International Synagogue in New York which read:

Einstein was an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association beginning in 1934, and was an admirer of Ethical Culture.

As with the article on Pi, this was taken from the Wikipedia article on the subject. The text of this entry falls under the GNU Free Documentation License.

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Happy Pi Day!

Posted on 2006-03-14 at 07:19

The mathematical constant Pi is a real number which is defined as the ratio of a circle's circumference (Greek Piεριφέρεια, periphery) to its diameter in Euclidean geometry, and which is in common use in mathematics, physics, and engineering. The name of the Greek letter Pi is pi (pronounced pie) in English. This spelling can be used in typographical contexts where the Greek letter is not available. Pi is also known as Archimedes's constant (not to be confused with Archimedes's number) and Ludolph's number.

In Euclidean plane geometry, Pi may be defined either as the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, or as the ratio of a circle's area to the area of a square whose side is the radius. Advanced textbooks define Pi analytically using trigonometric functions, for example as the smallest positive x for which sin(x) = 0, or as twice the smallest positive x for which cos(x) = 0. All these definitions are equivalent.

The numerical value of Pi, truncated to 50 decimal places (sequence A000796 in OEIS), is:

3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510

Although this precision is more than sufficient for use in engineering and science, the exact value of Pi has decimal places that never end. Much effort over the last few centuries has been put into computing more digits and investigating the number's properties. Despite much analytical work, in addition to supercomputer calculations that have determined over 1 trillion digits of Pi, no pattern in the digits has ever been found. Digits of Pi are available from multiple resources on the Internet, and a regular personal computer can compute billions of digits with available software.

Pi is an irrational number; that is, it cannot be written as the ratio of two integers, as was proven in 1761 by Johann Heinrich Lambert.

Pi is also transcendental, as was proven by Ferdinand von Lindemann in 1882. This means that there is no polynomial with rational coefficients of which Pi is a root. An important consequence of the transcendence of Pi is the fact that it is not constructible. Because the coordinates of all points that can be constructed with ruler and compass are constructible numbers, it is impossible to square the circle, that is, it is impossible to construct, using ruler and compass alone, a square whose area is equal to the area of a given circle.

The value of Pi has been known in some form since antiquity. As early as the 20th century BC, Babylonian mathematicians were using Pi=25/8, which is within 0.5% of the exact value.

It is sometimes claimed that the Bible states that Pi=3, based on a passage in 1 Kings 7:23 giving measurements for a round basin as having a 10 cubit diameter and a 30 cubit circumference. Rabbi Nehemiah explained this by the diameter being from outside to outside while the circumference was the inner brim; but it may suffice that the measurements are given in round numbers. Also, the basin may not have been exactly circular.

The most pressing open question about Pi is whether it is a normal number -- whether any digit block occurs in the expansion of Pi just as often as one would statistically expect if the digits had been produced completely "randomly", and that this is true in every base, not just base 10. Current knowledge on this point is very weak; e.g., it is not even known which of the digits 0,…,9 occur infinitely often in the decimal expansion of Pi.

Bailey and Crandall showed in 2000 that the existence of the above mentioned Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe formula and similar formulæ imply that the normality in base 2 of Pi and various other constants can be reduced to a plausible conjecture of chaos theory. See Bailey's above mentioned web site for details.

It is also unknown whether Pi and e are algebraically independent. However it is known that at least one of Pie and Pi + e is transcendental.

In non-Euclidean geometry the sum of the angles of a triangle may be more or less than Pi radians, and the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter may also differ from Pi. This does not change the definition of Pi, but it does affect many formulæ in which Pi appears. So, in particular, Pi is not affected by the shape of the universe; it is not a physical constant but a mathematical constant defined independently of any physical measurements. Nonetheless, it occurs often in physics.

The above stolen liberally from the Wikipedia article on the subject. The text of this entry falls under the GNU Free Documentation License. Now you are edified. Go forth and spread the wisdom of Pi.

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Making Progress Personal

Posted on 2006-02-03 at 16:21

Below is a snippet of something I said in an email conversation I was having with my friend, Bob. I think it's of general enough interest that I'm posting it here.

Don't worry Bob. I still agree with you that Philosophers are fags. ;-)

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Will the United States lose out to China and India?

Posted on 2006-01-26 at 20:08

We've all heard to claim.

The U.S. is slowing down on the science and technology track and China and India are nipping at our heels.

The reasons cited are numerous, but often boiled down to a few basic points. While other countries are steadily reducing rural anti-intellectualism, America is slowly being taking over by zealots who would rather the bible be our only science text book. Additionally, China and India are putting out many more engineers than the U.S. Our jobs are leaving our shores and going overseas where all these (inexpensive!) engineers dwell. And besides, isn't the Unites States showing all the signs of Roman decay and lethargy?

All these reasons are plausible, but are they true?

I submit that these perfectly plausible reasons do not represent the unfair reality of the situation.

Looking closer at America's anti-intellectual movement (as typified by those who deny such things as evolution and global warming), we can see that while these people may have the attention of the media, they do not have the attention of the researchers and developers of the country, including those funded by the government. If we set aside the media hype about fundamentalists running the country and just look at the numbers, the picture is quite different. The amount of money the U.S. spends on research is staggering. According to UNESCO's 2005 Report on Science and Technology Statistics, China spends about 1.23% of it's GDP on R&D. In the US, we spend 2.67% of ours on R&D and we have a much higher GDP. In an apples-to-apples comparison, China spends $72,014,408,000 in adjusted (ie standardized) currency on R&D (a lot to be sure), but in the U.S. we spend $275,095,956,000. If we rounded down to the nearest 100 billion dollars the rounded amount we drop would be more than China spends in total. And it's a snowball effect. We make advances in-country and those advances bring us both profit and more advances more quickly. It's hard to compete with that. China (a country I have a great affection for!) can't just throw bodies at that problem to see it solved. They simply cannot muster the technological resources to stand toe-to-toe with us in that way, and by the time they get to where we are now, we will have advanced significantly.

They don't fare much better when we look at other numbers as well. Let me start with the numbers you'll hear most often. The U.S. graduated 70,000 engineers in 2004, but China graduated 600,000 and India graduated 350,000 in the same period. Sounds dire until you hear the rest of the story. To hear the full story, we had to wait for Duke University to finish their report entitled "Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate: Placing the United States on a Level Playing Field with China and India." Rather than poorly paraphrase the conclusion of the report, I'll quote it:

In other words, these numbers that are compared head-to-head really aren't head-to-head data. Our engineers are held to a standard. We have a clear definiton of Engineer, we know what a minimum educational level should be, and we know a minimum school accredidation should be. China and India cannot say the same. Moreover, even if you accept the higher raw numbers of engineers, the number per capita favors the U.S. The report suggests that per every one million citizens, the United States is producing roughly 750 technology specialists, compared with 500 in China and 200 in India. Of those that China and India count, many come from diploma, not degree, programs. Many are little more than copy machine repair techs (technically an engineer by some standards) whereas the U.S. does not use as loose a definition.

I'd refute the outsourcing claim, but anyone who has actually worked with these outsourcing outfits understands all too well the problems with that option.

So are we going to fall behind? In truth, I admit I wish I could say the world will be a fair place where hard work and dedication will see these others join us as leaders of the technolgoy community, but the world isn't fair. The world is no respecter of diligence or equity. The race is long, and I'm not saying we are garuanteed to win, but I am saying that at this point the race is rigged by circumstance to favor us...greatly! Unfair? Yeah, it is. Sadly, the most the international community can realistically hope for is that the U.S. becomes a nation that respects the rest of the world and seeks to lift others up rather than knock them down. As Spider Man's Uncle Ben once said, "With great power comes great responsiblity." Well, we have the power? Are we going to act responsibly or keep on as we have been?

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The James Martin Institute of Oxford

Posted on 2006-01-08 at 19:20

I was speaking with an Oxford fellow this morning about science, human advancement, and the role of ethics therein and he referred me to the James Martin Institute. It seems to be in it's early stages, but plans to directly address those issues surrounding the radical polymorphing of humanness that our species is intent upon inflicting (gifting?) on itself. Fascinating.

While on the subject, if you have an interest in such things as living forever and doing so in a healthy manner, you should also check out the Biosingularity blog. It's a well done blog that---unlike my monstrosity of a personal podium---has a point, a focus, and a use.

Am I crazy to consider the possibility that I might reach 200 or even 768 years of age? No, I am not. Not only are we continually advancing the limits of medical science, we are quickening the rate of that advancement with each new advance. What took 30 years to determine a century ago can be tested and resolved in a few years, in a decade or two, it might be resolvable in a matter of weeks. All I need to do is survive until the next breakthrough. Give me 5 more years and I'll be alive to see the next advance to see 10 more years and so on. Am I certain that I'll see 768? No, but I have a far better chance than you might think. And that's no joke.

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What is your most dangerous idea?

Posted on 2006-01-04 at 07:47

"The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?"

The Edge asks one question annually to a hundred or so experts of disparate fields. These questions are engaging, insightful, and demand attention. When asked the question above for the 6th annual Edge Question, the experts' answers are fascinating. Read and think.

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Conspiracy Dave?

Posted on 2006-01-03 at 10:19

When did you get your own web site?

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Considering the success of the Intelligent Design push...

Posted on 2005-12-31 at 13:46

The state senate is considering expanding the initiative to the periodic table:

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You Are Here

Posted on 2005-12-09 at 08:01

Scientists have managed to figure out where we are in our own galaxy. Kinda neat, if you're a geek like me.

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I'm such a childish twit

Posted on 2005-11-12 at 08:01

Science Daily has a very serious article about ethical breaches in a Korean lab related to stem cell research, but all I can do is giggle.

Why, you ask? Um. Read it. Then note the name of the Korean Doctor. Hey, judge me if you want, but seriously who can keep a straight face when talking with Dr. Woo Suk Hwang (yes, phonetically that's "Who Suck Wang".

I have problems.

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Just to make a point about statistics

Posted on 2005-10-26 at 08:01

I was talking with someone about correlation and statistics today. My point is basically summed up in the absurdity of this graphic:

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How to Build a Better Brain Cancer

Posted on 2005-10-10 at 08:01

Step One: Run a high voltage line to a ceramic platter. Step Two: Let said platter bleed a power field all over the room. Step Three: Stand in the room all the time and bask in the glory of your newer, better tumor.
OK. Look it's way cool, actually, but I'm such a paranoid freak. You guys are just lucky I didn't accuse the ceramic platter of sending audio signals back to the NSA to spy on me!

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Concerning intelligence and the value of scientific inquiry

Posted on 2005-08-26 at 08:03

On a more serious note, though the study above is controversial, I find it disheartening that he is being attacked over the results. Scientific inquiry should be conducted without regard to political correctness and without sympathy to the subject. I don't know if his study is correct, but I know that the only attacks should be against the methodology of the study and the interpretation of its resultset. Furthermore, saying that women score lower on I.Q. tests really only says that women score lower when tested on that small sliver of our human intellect.

I score well on these tests, so take this from someone who has nothing to gain from attacking them. I do not believe they present a reasonable picture of human intellect. Indeed, the test is designed to measure only a small bit of intelligence: spatial and problem solving skills, primarily. What does it say about empathy, proprioception, or artistic ability? What does it say about the myriad of other skills our brains bring to the table? I'm not discounting the value of I.Q. tests. Indeed they are highly correlative to financial success and familial stability, but is that all that matters? I say "No". Even if the study is 100% correct, all it says is that there are a subset of intellectual skills that men perform better than women. Should we ever bother to study a different subet of those skills, we would likely find that there are some that women perform better.

The worst corralary to this study is not that women are stupider than men (which is not what the study claims at all) but that it suggests that men are better at some things while women are better at others. Why is this the worst corollary? Becuase there will be those who use it to justify social predestination...the old "a woman's place" argument. This argument is invalid, in that it presupposes that ability follows from predestiny, which is psuedoscience at its worst. That men are better with spatial thinking might mean that overall there will be more male than female engineers, but it does not mean that there cannot be female engineers. There will be female engineers who surpass their male collegues, even. General propensity should never determine individual rights...assuming this study is peer-reviewed and found valid.

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I'm sorry to say...

Posted on 2005-08-26 at 08:02

...that Richard Lynn, the emeritus professor of psychology at Ulster University, will never get laid again.

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One more step toward my immortality!

Posted on 2005-08-26 at 08:01

Scientists have discovered a gene that can extend a mouse's life expectancy by 30%. Currently, it has the side effects of reduced fertility and increasing risk of diabetes. The first makes sense (nature says "live longer but have fewer children") but the second is kinda serious. Still, it's a solid research gain and I look forward to seeing my 200th birthday (and eventually my 768th). You are all invited to the party in 2169. I want a pony.

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DNA Microarrays

Posted on 2005-08-04 at 08:03

...Here's another small step toward my living to the ripe old age of 768 (or at least 200!). And they called me crazy when I made the claim. Besides, if I can't do it this way, then maybe I can just decapitate myself right before death, and shoot my frozen head into orbit until my robot body has been completed. Mmmm, robot body.

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Anti-Intellectualism

Posted on 2005-07-27 at 08:01

What ever happened to our fascination with progress and science? Not too long ago, we looked eagerly ahead toward a future mirrored in Star Trek and even the Jetsons, and now it's all we can do to muster some passing interest in space exploration and scientific advance. Instead of embracing these new vistas being opened to us every day by science, we shun them, ignore them when they prove our older worldviews false.

We talk about the importance of college education, but all we really mean is the importance of a college degree. The jokes about the Liberal Arts are often funny, but underlying them is a deep-rooted anti-intellectualism---a belief that education is a fine enough means to an end, but should never be considered an end in and of itself.

That concerns me. We are slipping down the ladder of scientific leadership. Our society's attitude just implicitly and falsely confirms a misplaced fear that many working-class students and their parents have: college education is a waste of money, unless each day's lesson can be connected to something that will be needed on the job some day.

This attitude is damaging our country, our people, and our position in the world.

I look forward to a future when we all rejoice over our accomplishments, where we demand our priorities be the advancement of the human race, where progress isn't an abstract goal but a daily event. We should be shooting for the stars, living off the fruits of robotic labor, and putting an end to artificial scarcity. We should be doing something every day that makes us proud, and we should be celebrating each achievement loudly.

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I want my zombie dingoes

Posted on 2005-06-29 at 08:02

Scientists at the prestigious Safar Centre have succeeded in bringing a dead dog back to life. So. Very. Cool.

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Indiscriminate Object Fabrication

Posted on 2005-06-14 at 08:02

It's the way of the future. I look forward to a day when we all have CNC fabricators on our desks and to get a new desk all we have to do is get the binary schematic for the design and set our machines to fabricating. The elimination of scarcity will forever change the landscape of humankind. Think it's too sci-fi? Well it ain't.

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Moon

Posted on 2005-06-07 at 08:02

Gliding o'er a simple line
  and floating toward her home
The fair faced Luna, aquiline,
  Has wandered thus alone.

Breathing life in every man,
  from savage to savant.
With each wax and with each wan,
  thy visage we avaunt.

To legend, lore and mytheme all
  thy globed form gave birth.
And yet each night that form doth fall
  below the lowly earth.

Joshua, in vaunted tower,
  did bid thy bulk be still.
And shaken by thy mystic power
  "the mariner hath his will."

In Thoth, thy son, was time thus reined.
  And through thy cycling walk
was future's fortune therein gained
  ---Urania's tongueless talk.

Yet man now seeks to bind,
  through mathematics grand,
thy ellipse path as traced behind
  thy transcendental hand.

Kepler and Copernicus
  have seized thy conic course
and through the beaded abacus
  have bound thy boundless force

The sacred tales of midnight dance,
  which science did supplant,
gave thee a giant's countenance
  yet now thou seemst an ant.

Perhaps 'tis true that Thor should run
  from circling blades that sciences spin,
They've deadened Luna---her form undone---
  to deconstruct the myths within.

In days of yore thy wizard's spell
  would earth's clear waters reprimand,
enjoining tides to sink and swell
  and march unto thy stern command.

Neptune, too, then bent his ear
  to hear thy waves crash louder;
The foam and strand, afar and near,
  crushing rock to powder.

Lifting high my telescope
  and watching as you sink,
I howl a simple hymn of hope
  that man might stop to think.

For should he mull and ponder long
  about these things he's done,
then he, like me, might raise a song
  to lift thee o'er the sun.

For unlike us who'll fade away,
  as nature runs her race,
thy corpus yet will always stay
  to grant the tides their pace.

   -Tom Caudron
   -Inspired by my apathy toward humanity (it was a bad semester of college!)

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Voyager has passed the Termination Shock!!!!

Posted on 2005-05-25 at 08:01

According to some sources, Voyager has passed through the Termination Shock. This is significant in that it is the very first time that we humans have knowingly pushed something man-made out of our own tiny solar system and into the wider universe. We should be proud.

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Listerine and Gonorrhea

Posted on 2005-05-19 at 08:02

Freakonomics is a book about incentive and correlation. What does a school teacher and a sumo wrestler have in common? How about a real estate agent and the KKK? Let this book walk you through the dark underbelly of statistics. You'll love it. I did. Besides, I know you are dying to discover the connection between Listerine and gonorrhea!

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Amazonian Ants get sneak attack on flat-footed foes

Posted on 2005-05-16 at 08:01

"Using a home-made trap, a tiny species of ant is capable of ensnaring prey much larger than itself and tearing it to pieces."

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Beam Me Up, IBM

Posted on 2005-04-11 at 08:01

IBM has been doing research on teleportation of objects and people. Cool stuff, though it sidesteps the clear existential questions of selfhood and replication. Is the object that materializes in the destination existentially the same as the one that dematerializes in the source? I argue no. A perfect replica, maybe, but not the same object. It would be little comfort knowing that though I'm about to be disintegrated, a perfect replica of me will continue on in my stead. Nonetheless, quantum entanglement and leaping is just cool stuff.

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Brains, brains, brains

Posted on 2005-02-04 at 08:04

Young brains suck. Old brains rock.

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Transistor 2.0

Posted on 2005-02-04 at 08:03

HP says it has made some headway in finding a successor to the common transistor. The commercial results are way off, but early tests suggest a dramatic improvment in speed. Nice!

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Scientist's Chatter About Missing Matter

Posted on 2005-02-04 at 08:02

Some of the mysteries of what has come to be known as "Dark Matter" are being unravelled.

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Who wants to live forever?

Posted on 2005-01-21 at 08:01

I do and this guy wants to help.

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Oetzi the Iceman

Posted on 2004-10-22 at 08:01

Oetzi was a neolithic man whose mummified body was found in 1991 and who lived around the year 3300 BC. He had 57 tattoos many of which cooresponded to modern acupuncture locations that would have treated ailments he had. He used a copper ax and a longbow. He had on his person a birch fungus mushroom, a plant whose primary purpose is as an antibacterial agent. He also possessed a fairly complex fire starting kit. Evidence is inconclusive, but it appears he may have died fighting a skirmish with a rival group. DNA from four other people werre found on his person (notably the ax and an arrowhead) and he had an arrow wound in his shoulderblade. He appears to have died from blood loss. What must have gone through Oetzi's mind as he placed his equipment down neatly beside himself, laid down, and died? There is a novel in that body screaming to be written.

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Cold Fusion Claws Out Of The Grave?

Posted on 2004-09-03 at 08:04

After years of ridicule and disregard, the March '89 experiments originally done by Pons and Fleischman may be bearing fruit. Cold Fusion is still alive in the government. Cold Fusion is still alive in the scientific community. And most importantly, recent experiements have started shedding light on why Cold Fusion experiments are so damn hard to reproduce. Apparently, if the deuterium/palladium ratio drop below 100% (one deuterium atom for every palladium atom) the results start to become intermittent. I don't know if Cold Fusion is ultimately gonna work and be scalable to the degree we need it to be, but the rewards of success to the human race are so astoundingly large that we cannot ignore it.

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The Transit of Venus

Posted on 2004-06-08 at 08:02

The Transit is coming! Cool stuff. The Transit of Venus (the event whereby the planet Venus passes between us and the sun) is quite rare and used to be quite important scientifically. In fact, it was the transit of Venus that helped us in our initially calculations of the Sun's distance from Earth. though we know how far away the sun is, it is still scientifically useful. This time, scientists will be studying it to figure out of they can determine atmopspheric content by the specific muted spectra. They will use this to help them do the same to extra-solar planetary bodies! That is SO DAMN COOL!

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Cool stuff I don't have yet

Posted on 2004-05-17 at 08:02

I'm diggin' this whole progress thing. Cars get better. People get better. Sure there're some kinks to work out, but in the end, it's gonna be pretty cool.

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We is gettin' brainier an' stuff

Posted on 2004-05-13 at 08:02

According to James Flynn, we are getting smarter by 3 I.Q. points per decade. So at that rate, that average person of the 22nd century will be equal in intellect to a person who now has an I.Q. of 130. Coorelatively, the average person of 100 years ago was only as smart as a person with a 70 I.Q. now (of course all this assumes that the rate of progress is steady, which is is not). All this would mean more to me if I held I.Q. tests in higher regard. I don't, but the statistic is interesting nonetheless.

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And so it begins

Posted on 2004-05-13 at 08:01

It's a brave and scary new world we are headed into. Viruses engineered to attack other viruses is great, but what about the people that will want to sic them on other organisms? I'm all about a strain of HIV that is designed to neuter other strains of HIV, for example, but what about a strain of HIV that is designed to only seek out people of a specific race or with another specific genetic marker?

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Tom 2.0

Posted on 2004-05-04 at 08:03

We are one step closer to freezing my head and shooting it into orbit whiule I wait for my robot body to be completed.

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Ugh. Me like fire.

Posted on 2004-03-29 at 08:01

Analysis of ancient bones suggests that Human-like species living in Africa up to 1.5 million years ago may have known how to control fire. The next oldest evidence for controlled use of fire may come from Zhoukoudian in China, dating to between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago, so this is a big jump back in time and is a significant piece of evidence to help us clarify the Human timeline.

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Tir nan Og

Posted on 2004-03-14 at 08:01

I've always been fascinated with the idea of living forever. Scientists are approaching that problem lately with surprisingly positive results. Not only are people living longer, but some scientists (and not the fringe freaks, either!) are looking into ways to regenerate cells like a salamander, make any cell a stem cell, and create pluripotent genes essentially from scratch. It's a brave new world we are headed into.

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