Mathematical Humor

A mathematician doesn't come home until 3 a.m. and proceeds to get an earful from his wife.

"You said you would be home by 11:45,", she says.

"No,' he says, "I said I would be home by a quarter of 12" 

Sophisticated Humor

Is it solipsistic in here, or is it just me?

What Date is that Map?

A friend posted a link to the above today. As a lover of maps I think this is awesome!

EmDrive Possible Theoretical Underpinning

I've been following the unusual Roger Shawyer EmDrive, an on-the-face-of-it wacky notion that microwaves introduced into a tapered cavity can produce thrust without reaction mass or directional radiation. Also known as an RF resonant cavity thruster​, it appears to create thrust by violating laws of physics.

Now comes word of a possible theoretical basis in the article, "The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster​" on the MIT review. Maybe the EmDrive is linked to some curious anomalies seen in spacecraft as they flyby the Earth.

Or maybe not. Maybe it turns out to be a bust. Even then, the ride will have been interesting. Mr. Shawyer has been very forthcoming with his machine and has openly asked people to look at what is going on and help explain why it works (he doesn't claim to know) or show where his measurements are going wrong.

And that is what real science is about, openly sharing your results and misgivings, telling people what you think is going on or admitting you don't know, putting it all out there and asking for confirmation or repudiation. But all based on the facts, not opinions, not hopes or dreams, not based on the way you wished the world worked, but on the way it really does.

Personally, I'm hoping that this thing holds up, and not just for the spaceflight possibilities it could open up. Just think what it would be like for a generation of physicists and scientists to explore the ramification of a new theoretical basis for momentum. Just when we thought we had it all figured out, a new wrinkle would be very exciting.

A Lot of Dirt

The opening of SpaceX's private spaceport in Boca Chica Beach, at the far southern tip of the Texas, has been delayed until at least 2018 because of a dirt problem.

Specifically, they need to do more  “soil surcharging" than expected. You've probably seen this process taking place without knowing its name. The purpose is to raise and stabilize an area before actual construction by taking out unsuitable soil and piling up huge piles of the right stuff, letting it settle for a while, and then removing all that isn't needed.

In this case, they will be bringing in 310,000 cubic yards (237 million liters or a bit over 17 thousand truckloads), equivalent to piling dirt on an American football field as high as a 13 story building. Picture 60,000 piles of dirt like the one in shown above.

After that, the buildings and launchpads can go in and the rockets can start flying. I can hardly wait!

Adjusting to Your Circumstances

Located near the town of Kleven in the Ukraine, the "Tunnel of Love" provides passage for a private train that provides wood to a local factory. It took many years, but the trees grew around the space that the train needed to pass on its thrice daily journey, as you can see in this next picture.

Just like how a pearl is formed by a clam protecting itself from an irritating grain of sand, we too mold ourselves to fit the circumstances of our lives. Hard physical labor builds muscle, hard mental labor builds mental "muscles". Continually seeking new challenges fosters brain flexibility, while doing the same thing over and over promotes rigidity.

How are you living your life? What is your latest challenge? How are you adapting and growing?

These trees could have withered and died from the intrusion of the train, but instead they choose to adapt to their circumstances and became a thing of beauty. It takes work and perseverance, but you could be just as beautiful.

Led Zeppelin Songs

One account of how the band that was to become one of the most successful, innovative, and influential rock groups in history got its name held that Keith Moon and John Entwistle had suggested that a supergroup with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck would go down like a "lead balloon", an idiom for disastrous results."Lead" became Led to ensure proper pronunciation and balloon became Zeppelin, a word which, according to music journalist Keith Shadwick, brought "the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace" to Page's mind.

Led Zeppelin went on to sell 200 to 300 million units worldwide and become the founders of modern heavy metal music. And don't even get me started on "Stairway to Heaven".

Facing Reality

“If we wish to draw philosophical conclusions about our own existence,

our significance, and the significance of the universe itself,

our conclusions should be based on empirical knowledge.

A truly open mind means forcing our imaginations to conform to the evidence of reality,

and not vice versa,

whether or not we like the implications.”

Lawrence M. Krauss,

A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing

If there is one thing that is unique about programming, it is that you cannot convince a computer that you are right and it is wrong. It will blindly do exactly what you tell it to do, every time, without fail. (Of course there are hardware failures, but let us set that aside for now).

If there is a problem, you the programmer are responsible and the machine will not get it right until you do. It has been said that this is a big factor in the strange sense of humor that many programmers have. When faced with a machine that will unflinchingly tell you that you are wrong every time, something has to give and it will not be the machine.

So smile, check your source code, again, and keep going. Remember, we are placing our lives in the hands of these machines more and more every day and we are counting on you and your colleagues to get it right.

The Disappearing Spoon

“Never underestimate spite as a motivator for genius.”

Sam Kean

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

If you have not read it, The Disappearing Spoon is a fascinating book about the history of the form and content of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Jealousy, intrigue, love, hate, this book has it all. It is a wonderful read and I heartily recommend it to you.

Just a Spoon

Need I say more?

Raspberry Pi

Despite the mouth watering image above, the title of this post is not a typographic error (A.K.A. typo). Specifically I wanted to talk about the Raspberry Pi 3, which has just recently become available.

This little 3.3 X 2.2-inch (8.382 x 5.588 cm) printed circuit board packs quite a wallop. Since its launch in 2012, the Raspberry Pi has undergone seven revisions and at $35 this RPi 3 has an amazing set of capabilities:

• 1.2GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor
• Broadcom VideoCore IV graphic processor
• 1Gb SDRAM
• 802.11n wireless LAN
• Bluetooth 4.1
• micro-SD slot
• 10/100 Mbps Ethernet connection
• HDMI/Composite video connection
• HDMI/Headphone audio connection
• 4 USB ports

Let me put this price into perspective with the following chart:

A lot of the early prices shown are merely projections of the cost of 1GB RAM, one really couldn't build such a system for any price back in the 1950s, 1960s, or 1970s. Interestingly, just the cost of 1GB RAM in 2005  would have been more than 4 times the current cost of an RPi3. 


So, have fun computing and do it quickly before the price drops and/or the capabilities go up, again!

Some people think that the singularity will hit and poof, that is all for humans. I'm not so sure.

Don't get me wrong, I love computers. They are amazing tools and with them people can do amazing things. I just think it is a little too early to count out the human brain.

There is something undefinable inside of our heads, something that allows us to come up with the most incredible art, the most inspiring poetry, dream the most daring dreams, conceive the most wonderful ideas. Where does it all come from?

Many would say we are modeled after our Creator. Even if you disagree with that, it is hard to argue that, however we came to exist, we turned out pretty spectacular. Oh sure, we have many, many fault. Some people have turned out downright evil in fact. But the best of us lift us all up and we as a species are growing with every generation. I expect that we will soon live on the moon, and on Mars. Maybe we'll even have the flying cars and jetpacks many of us have been waiting for.

So, keep on dreaming, keep on reaching. Every time you do something good, it puts us all just that little bit ahead. 

Virtual Reality as of Today

By Underwood & Underwood,

Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Stereograph Cards collection.

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.08781, Public Domain,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1263373​

The interest in 3D viewing has been around a very long time. The above stereograph picture of a woman using a stereoscope is copyright 1901, but usage goes back to at least the 1850s.

By ThePassenger - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6487023​

The View-Master™, which my family had when I was a child, has been around since first introduced at the 1939 New York World's Fair. It even got interest from the U.S. Army as a training tool.

And let us not forget the above shown anaglyphic 3D glasses, which used color separation of a composite image to present two different images to your eyes. Many a movie goer has been thrilled to have spears, and other objects thrust at them using this primitive technology.

Of course, color separation has given way to a polarized 3D system in today's theatres. Full color is thus enjoyed, albeit at reduced resolution and intensity, by using the above shown linear polarized glasses, with one lens being vertically polarized and the other horizontally polarized.

As a further refinement, my home video system has an active shutter 3D system​, which uses the above battery powered glasses to open and close shutters alternately on each eye so that separate images can be displayed on each when properly synchronized to the display screen.

Which brings us to the latest and greatest for 2016, the Occulus Rift virtual reality headset shown above. This headset arrives in customer hands today (28 March, 2016) as the first of several different brands to ship this year and represents a 5 year effort since then 18 year-old founder Palmer Luckey hacked together a prototype in his parents garage in 2011. Crowd funded and eagerly awaited, it will be interesting to see how these work out in use by everyday users. While I'm sure we will someday look back and marvel at how crude these are, for now they represent the state-of-the-art in affordable (~$600) consumer ready virtual reality.

The Science Fiction Horror Movie Pocket Computer

Last week I posted a flow-chart about how to write a science fiction story. Little did I know that it came from the fertile, somewhat unusual mind of Gahan Wilson. Nor did I know that it was originally published in "The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 5" in 1972 (not to mention other places later on). Thanks to the extensive research provided by Art Coleman, I now share the full piece as Mr. Wilson intended.

The Science Fiction Horror Movie Pocket Computer

By Gahan Wilson

Have you ever been seized by a certainty, halfway through the second reel of a science fiction horror movie, say, when Dr. Yamamura laughs off the silly native fisherman‘s legend about a clam the size of Kyoto, that you‘ve seen it all before? Or fallen prey to an over-whelming sense of déja vu when the Zirconium robot starts eyeing the leading lady's boobs and makes lewd short-circuit noises? Or had an odd premonition when Pastor Feebley heads for the grounded saucer with a Bible under his arm, mumbling something about the Unity of All Life, and you see a creature that looks a lot like a 500-pound side order of potato salad peer out of a porthole and tuck a minister bib under its chin?

But if you're the sort of person who ends up watching sci-fi movies in the first place, then chances are that over-riding all will be the brute compulsion to sit there, glued to the TV tube or riveted to your seat; a compulsion to stick with it to the bitter end, to find out whether or not the blue rodents from Jupiter’s Rings do get Monique Van Vooren pregnant or if the Fish Sticks from Formalhaut will succumb to the Electrostatic Thermonator. Let‘s face it -- you have to see how the damned thing comes out.

Now, however, thanks to me, you can do just that, and without wasting another moment, by employing my remarkable Science Fiction Horror Movie Pocket Computer, a copy of which you will find reproduced on this page.

Properly used, the Science Fiction Horror Movie Pocket Computer can save you hours of unhealthy exposure to the dangerous radiations of your home set and cut short your stay in seedy cinemas.

How does it work?  Well, take it through a test run and see.

Talking to Yourself

Do you talk to yourself? It can help your brain to work more efficiently and keep your thoughts more organized. It can also help you step through a difficult process.

Dr. Linda Sapadina, a psychologist and success coach who specializes in helping people overcome self-defeating patterns of behavior, says that talking to yourself is a sign of sanity​ if you keep it complimentary and motivational. Positive self talk will build you up, while negative self talk will tear you down. Even Time magazine thinks that Talking to Yourself May Actually Be A Good Idea.

So, keep it down in the library and other places where it would bother other people and keep it positive everywhere else. You'll be better for it.

Talent+

We make a mistake when we tell our children things like, "You can do this, you are so talented." The mistake comes from leaving them no place to turn when they fail.

If success comes only from talent and you fail, what are you supposed to do? Get more talent?

On that other hand, if we stress hard work, passion, being prepared, going the extra mile, failure means you can work harder, be more passionate, prepare more, go two extra miles.

Of course, talent is huge plus. Talent plus hard work is fairly unbeatable.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work

Thomas A. Edison

The Essence of a SciFi Story

I have avidly read science fiction since before it was considered literature. In high school, I couldn't do a book review on a favorite sci fi novel because it "wasn't a novel". Now days it is fairly well respected (though a lot of it seems to be fantasy but don't get me started on that).

In any case, I love this flow chart. There is so much more to sci fi than this, but this is so close to whole sections of the genre that you just have to laugh. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Can You Take a Hint?

Avoiding a Dead End

Like the people that the above sign is intended for, I have to watch myself to make sure I do not get too focused on one aspect of a problem and forget to keep track of the big picture. For example, one supervisor I had was trying to get a Christmas tree to stay upright in the stand he had:

His solution was to nail through the bottom into the tree, which held it quite securely. However, it turned out to be a particularly bad solution when he filled the stand with water to keep the tree fresh and the water leaked out, giving a wet floor and a very unhappy wife.

Sometimes, we have to take a step back, look at things from a wider perspective. It also happens to have someone else take a look at your solution with a fresh pair of eyes.

Animal Puns