Carbon and Water

When I first considered the question about which would upset the existing order the most, I was thinking more locally ... specifically, life as we know it. I hadn't considered the effect of carbon on stars and the structure with higher elements.

The inability of hydrogen to bond to oxygen would eliminate water which I think is elemental to all life as we know it, right? Some life forms don't need much, but they all need some ... am I correct? I mean, in addition to the basic need of water in DNA.

Question: is possession of DNA a definition of "life?" Some things -- simple viruses for instance -- have RNA but not DNA, correct? Are they considered "life?" Do all plants and animals have DNA, including things like fungus and lichen?

The lack of carbon means the elimination of complex molecular strings, does it not? Isn't carbon one of the basic things that allow long chains?

You can tell that chemistry was not my strong suit.

So according to the Periodic Table that is stuck on my wall that is ...

You have a Periodic Table on your wall? You do? Seriously?

Geeeeeeeek!!

That's pitiful. :-)

Just kidding ... I can picture it. I'd have one too if I understood it.

* * *
I'm happy to hear you have your daughter on an extended basis. I am somewhat sad to hear her mother seems to have "other things" she deems more important. Make the most of it, I guess.

The Magic Flute

Yes I think it's the same with music score reading, for the piano your eye is reading two staves and your brain is converting the relative positions of the black notes to your hands, and as your hands are in a "well known position" it all works. If you don't know which position your hands are in on the keyboard to start with then it all falls apart. Which means it is patterns.

What would result in a more dramatic upheaval in our universe, were you to wave a magic wand and affect the change instantly:

1. The elimination of the element carbon?
2. The inability of hydrogen to bond to oxygen?

Hmm, interesting question. Very.

1) No carbon anymore. Well we are carbon based so no more humans, we'd all spontaneously combust I suppose. Carbon is a key element in the nuclear chain in stars, so without it stars would burn out quicker. In fact, all elements after carbon are based on the fact that there is stable carbon so the Universe would quickly revert to elements that are lighter than carbon - like removing the base card of a house of cards. So according to the Periodic Table that is stuck on my wall that is Hydrogen (1), Helium (4), Lithium (6.9), Beryllium (9) and Boron (10.8), the only ones that have a lower atomic weight than carbon (12 in it's non-isotopic natural form). A pretty boring Universe then.

2) No more water. Well the DNA molecule would immediately collapse - I loved the part of the BBC drama documentary "Life Story" where upon seeing the erroneous structure for DNA posited by Linus Pauling (the American quantum chemist and biologist), Francis Crick (the English physicist and molecular biologist) said "but where's the water??" There is a lot of water in DNA. So all humans would turn to pillars of salt immediately.

Note: History shows that the structure of DNA was basically discovered in the work of a woman, Rosalind Franklin. James Watson (an American) basically ripped her numbers off of some a Bragg plane diffraction slide of DNA and passed them on to Crick. They then intuited the double-helix structure with matching base pairs, using the dimensions for the molecule obtained through Rosalinds work, by trial and error. During this time, Rosalind was taking the data and doing a statistical Monte Carlo analysis on it (which took months in those days) and Watson & Crick basically innovated. Rosalind has always been my one of my heroines since I first came across her in the 1980's - you need people like Rosalind to succeed. Dot the i's and cross the t's types.

So what are your thoughts on the questions you pose?

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Sorry I have not been very active lately, I've had Katherine for at least 10 nights in a row now, her mother seems to have more important matters to attend to ! I am just about managing to keep my clients happy - and my daughter and I are getting on really well.

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And sir, should you really be discussing your wife's complex "flute trills" in a public forum !

Chess and the Brain

I'm no expert in chess -- as you well know, damn your black heart :-) -- but it would seem to me that the better one gets, the more right side brain functioning takes place. Novice chess players probably have to work the left heavily, "computing" as it were the moves and the consequences of those moves. Experts, I would suspect, "see" the board and derive options from, as you say, the pattern recognition element of it.

It's the same thing with music, isn't it? When you first learned music, you probably had to "compute" each note on the score -- perhaps determining what the note was, then translating it to the position on the guitar. Now I would guess you "see" the score and it automatically translates to finger position. That's all right-brain stuff, correct? I know my lovely bride does that -- complex flute trills just "happen".

* * *
What would result in a more dramatic upheaval in our universe, were you to wave a magic wand and affect the change instantly:

1. The elimination of the element carbon?
2. The inability of hydrogen to bond to oxygen?

Make your choice and explain. :-)

A left and right brain exercise

Play chess.

Although I would have thought this obvious .. pattern recognition on the chess board (right side) plus mathematical analysis of possibilities (left side)

http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-break-through.html

T.S. Eliot quotes

I hadn't realized he made such great quotes ! A man after my own heart.

"An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry."

"Half of the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm. But the harm does not interest them."

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."

"I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates."

"There is not a more repulsive spectacle than on old man who will not forsake the world, which has already forsaken him." (No Heather Mills jokes please!)

"We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion."

And possibly my favourite:

"People to whom nothing has ever happened cannot understand the unimportance of events."

Still, do any of them really compete with this from John Winston Lennon ...

"There's no place you can be that isn't where you're meant to be"

?

Classy Food

My father, being scottish, would assure you that the "Scotch Egg" is indeed of highland origin. I remember being fed them as a kid, I quite likeed them too. Nowadays they have got a "working class" reputation, ie. food for pubs and motorway cafes. Seafood and whelks also come to mind. Glad you liked them !

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It's school half term (semester) so I have the kids, I had Monday and Tuesday as vacation and we stayed in a hotel in Leicester (UK Midlands) where the girls enjoyed the swimming pool, steam room, sauna and jacuzzi - then visited a zoo in that area, Katherine's favourite were the monkeys.

I know she liked the monkeys the best, as I interviewed her for a podcast ! No audience other than ourselves, but a learning experience for her I think. She started out writing all the questions and answers down and then reading them out. Soon though, she realised that she sounded stilted doing this - so just answered questions naturally, and sounded much better. As a result I think that doing a podcast (aka "radio show") with your child and a microphone is a good "life skills" exercise - they learn to think under mild pressure, something that many of us are called to do now and then.

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An interesting site for a list of the top black market products:

http://www.havocscope.com/products.htm

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Minnesota. You're always on the move !

"Scotch Eggs"

I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota this week, and last night we went to an "English Pub" bar. One of the "starters" on the menu was something called "Scotch Eggs" -- hard boiled eggs, wrapped in sausage, rolled in bread crumbs and deep fried.

They were good.

Had you heard of them before? Or are they an American invention intended to only appear like they're a long-time English tradition?

Comfort in Imperfection

The T60p is still operational ... one day and counting and no signs of any glitchy-ness. I think I need to literally count my blessings. It could easily have landed hard on one corner and shattered, but it landed more or less flat.

* * *
I went on a 200+ mile ride on my motorcycle today. I discovered something that's more hazardous to me than cars -- other motorcyclists. I got sandwiched in a group of them on a curvy, twisty road and I spent 20 miles being hyper-careful not be be run into by them. They were driving way too close to me.

Man on the moon

Sorry to hear about the T60p taking a tumble, a crying shame :-(

This phenomemon is not that uncommon though, we get something new and shiny and then we go and damage it in some way at the height of our excitement over it.

I recall the father of my first wife (God rest his soul) saying that he was never happy with a new car until he had at least got a little scratch on it somewhere, until that point he was always waiting for the scratch and so was nervous. He could only relax once it was no longer pristine.

I have a friend I've known since I was 11. So that's 32 years now. In our twenties Max and I came up with the idea of "The programmers". This was a good ten years before The Matrix was released. We had noted this phenomenon of good things going bad and decided that the reason was to entertain a bunch of coke swilling pizza eating programmers who controlled all of our lives. We were annoyed that our hopes seemed to be dashed whilst others hopes seemed to be fulfilled, rather than blame ourselves we thought that there was enough evidence to support an outside influence. Could it be a lesson? Why some people would "need" to drop their T60p and others "need" to see their mulitbillion dollar company like Google succeed financially is beyond me though. We were never sure if the programmers were trying to teach us anything, but just to have a good laugh, often at our expense.

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"Man on the Moon" by REM is a song about Andy Kaufman, Latka from Taxi was his most famous character. Andy sadly died of lung cancer aged 35, Jim Carey played his life story in the movie "Man on the Moon".

I think the song is very melodic and has some great words, and I love the voice of Michael Stipe.

Mott the Hoople and the Game of Life. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Andy Kaufman in a wrestling match. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Monopoly, twenty one, checkers, and chess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Fred Blassie in a breakfast mess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Let's play Twister, let's play Risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
See you in Heaven if you make the list. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now Andy did you hear about this one? Tell me are you locked in the punch?
Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey baby, are we losing touch?
If you believe they put a man on the moon, man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool

Moses went walking with the staff of wood. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Newton got beaned by the apple good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Egypt was troubled by the horrible asp. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Charles Darwin had the gall to ask. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now Andy did you hear about this one? Tell me are you locked in the punch?
Hey Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey baby, are you having fun?
If you believe they put a man on the moon, man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up his sleeve, then nothing is cool

Here's a little agit for the never-believer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a little ghost for the offering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Here's a truck stop instead of Saint Peter's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Mister Andy Kaufman's gone wrestling (wrestling bears). Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah

Now Andy did you hear about this one? Tell me are you locked in the punch?
Andy are you goofing on Elvis? Hey baby, are we losing touch?
If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon
If you believe there's nothing up my sleeve, then nothing is cool

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Do you know the band "Mott the Hoople"? They had a hit with an all-time classic song "All the Young Dudes", written by David Bowie.

Rapid Eye Movements

Quiz: Who sung "Mr Charles Darwin had the gall to ask"? And what was the most famous TV character played by the person who that song is about?

Google tells me the answer to the first question is "REM." I would not have known that on my own. As to the second question ... I just don't know. Pray, do tell!

Yo! Grand Master D!

I think I've mentioned this before ... if you're interested in a good read -- mostly historical fact, but laced with creative license to form a "novel" -- find a used copy of Irving Stone's "The Origin." It chronicles Charles Darwin's life from teenager to death, including his travels on the HMS Beagle and the long formation of his theory on natural selection. I love the book ... it's one of my favorite Irving Stone books, and I've read a bunch of 'em.

* * *
I think your good self and the missus are a shining example to others of a couple who can recover the love after a bad patch :-)

Thanks, but hold your praise. I still carry a bucket of resentment from that ordeal. Shame on me.

* * *
Today I dropped my T60p from a height of 4 feet ... right onto a hard tile floor. A bit of cracked plastic in the rear, and the whole frame is warped a bit so that it doesn't quite sit level on my desk anymore. But it appears to still work. I ran chkdsk on it and it reported no bad sectors.

Dropping it like that sent me into a vortex of anger, humiliation and self-loathing I don't ever wish to repeat. The bile is right under the surface.

I hope the Lord forgives me my words and thoughts during that spell. :-(

"Chuck D" in da house !

The complete works of Charles Darwin online. And On the Origin of Species here:

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F373&viewtype=text&pageseq=1

Oh my.

Quiz: Who sung "Mr Charles Darwin had the gall to ask"? And what was the most famous TV character played by the person who that song is about?

Human Nature

What tool would you recommend to wipe down the hard drive of my old PC before I return it.

This is a good (free) one:

http://www.killdisk.com/downloadfree.htm

Note that The Pentagon actually shred their hard drives as this is the only fool proof method for making 100% sure your data never gets into enemy hands. That's probably a little bit too extreme for your purposes however!

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I think your good self and the missus are a shining example to others of a couple who can recover the love after a bad patch :-)

Unfortunate Matches

It sounds like you had a rough time with process of divorcing. I'm sorry to hear that. It sounds like your ex had it firmly in her mind to do theirs her way. The picture you painted of her saying nothing during six weeks of counseling was chilling. It reminds me somewhat of the time Lisa and I spent some time in counseling during a particularly bad patch eight years ago. It was clear she had no desire to be there. I've never felt more betrayed nor felt more angry than I did then.

* * *
What tool would you recommend to wipe down the hard drive of my old PC before I return it. There was some personal and financial files on there. Boot disk and format c: ? Some freeware tool that wipes it using some sophisticated algorithm?

Steve Wozniak

Old phonograph players -- did they feed an amplified signal, or was it a passive signal into the input? That's the only thing I can think of -- that the tape input is more akin to what a MP3 player outputs, where a phono is something "different."

Exactly. Our "old" amplifiers have phono inputs for connecting vinyl record players (turntables) to the amplifier. A phono input is designed to take up to few a millivolts in signal from phono pickup cartridges (remember buying those?) and then amplify it. For phono inputs the amplifier also does some equalization (changing the amount of bass, midrange and trebble in the signal) based on a standardized RIAA curve (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization) because the output from your mp3 player is already amplified and equalized, you don't need RIAA screwing it up for you.

In fact I have a Peavey RQ-200 mixer plugged into my amps "aux" input, so I can do a whole bunch of inputs, mic, guitar, mp3 etc and even mix them together. I have a vintage Marantz 1090 amp, a purchase from a summer job I had in 1980, collecting trolleys for a supermarket - the amp is still going fine, I've had no problems with it at all in 26 years!

I sometimes pull out my old Trio turntable with Ortofon cartridge to turn an old 12 inch single that just cannot be found as an mp3, into an mp3.

I find that a variable bit rate (VBR) recorded mp3 at 192kbps is now perfectly indistinguishable to me from vinyl (vinyl is supposedly "analog", perhaps "digital" if you believe in quantum mechanics). My hearing used to be pretty good, my eyesight was never that good. Now my hearing is shot from chemo so everything sounds like a mush and I can't hear the hi hats. My eyesight is now better than my hearing so if recording home played music I equalize by sight rather than by ear, which is not good. See "All You Need Is Ears" by George Martin. I have real trouble in hearing certain people speak, my 2nd line manager was talking to me yesterday and I really had no idea what she was saying, I couldn't hear her fast and low spoken voice. So I just nodded and smiled, I hope I haven't agreed to any project that I am going to regret!

My daughter and I had great fun practicing nodding and smiling when you can't hear something -- in Pizza Hut a few months ago -- she thought it was hilarious and it is now another one of "our games". We have hundreds of such games that we play and no-one knows about them except us, it's very funny.

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I went to her school parents evening on Tuesday, she's been working hard and is settling into the new school, but still says she misses her old friends. I got to look through her work and I was surprised to see two pages in her history book where the pupils had been asked to draw a timeline and put memorable events from her life on it. She started with her birth in 1997 and the second point was in 1998 called "Parents split up" with a sad face next to it. I remember going through six weeks of counselling with my ex-wife trying to save the marriage and she would not say one word to either me or the counsellor, she had made her mind up and was only doing the counselling for the legal tick in the box "counselling failed". She would not say one word, just sat there in silence with the counsellor and myself asking her questions. Still I felt guilty looking at the sad face Katherine had drawn, wishing I could have somehow saved her from all the sadness, but something tells me Alice feels no guilt at all when she looks at it. She once said "I don't do guilt".

The only interesting thing is that every other point on the timeline is something that Katherine and I had done together. Funny stuff like "2000 - Could now use a mouse and do most things on a computer", sad things "2002 - Daddy got cancer", holidays "2003 Went to Portugal with daddy", "2004 Went to Ireland with Daddy", pets "2005 Got a goldfish", "2006 Got a hamster", a few others in there that I don't recall. I wonder if Alice feels "I better pay more attention to Katherine"? I doubt it, perhaps she feels that she has nothing in common with her?

I don't wish Alice would change, I don't believe that can happen. I knew that I had some serious issues with the way she was before I decided to have a child with her, the lesson is: if there are serious problems don't carry on hoping they will mend themselves, don't bury your head in the sand, get out early to avoid hurting lots of other people. I hope that I have learned my lesson and I only hope that I can teach it to my daughter in such a way that is right for and acceptable to her. Or at least show her all sides of the debate.

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They show fashion outfits including $1500 shoes and $70 socks. And that was in the 1983 edition!! They also show outrageously expensive turntables and amplifiers, with super-sensitive shock dampening devices and vacuum tubes. $30,000 or so.I have to wonder.Why? Again, why?

There is a super-rich class of chavs, David and Victoria Beckham are the King and Queen of this set. Perhaps they buy this crap for the labels. It's a result of smart people playing off of dumb rich people, I mean, what else are they going to spend their money on if not "bling".

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I plan to read "iWoz" at some point, he's one of my heroes.

Phono Input vs. Tape Input

Initially I fed the cable into my "phono" input jacks on my receiver, but that didn't sound right ... muffled, or something. Then I swapped them to the tape input on my receiver. Much better.

Why?

Old phonograph players -- did they feed an amplified signal, or was it a passive signal into the input? That's the only thing I can think of -- that the tape input is more akin to what a MP3 player outputs, where a phono is something "different."

I debated about unplugging my tape player, but then I got to thinking ... when was the last time I played a cassette tape? Answer -- at least 15 years. Our phonograph player is still in a box in the garage. It'll never come back out.

* * *
Every year, Playboy magazine -- which I don't get or read or look at the pictures -- has a "Back to School" edition that's aimed at ... gosh, I'm not really sure what demographic it's aimed at. They show fashion outfits including $1500 shoes and $70 socks. And that was in the 1983 edition!! They also show outrageously expensive turntables and amplifiers, with super-sensitive shock dampening devices and vacuum tubes. $30,000 or so.

I have to wonder.

Why? Again, why?

Luddite Comes in From the Cold

Today I finally -- finally! -- bought a cable that would allow me to feed iTunes into my home component stereo system. It sounds terrific. Honestly -- if there's a difference in sound between what I'm hearing now and a CD, then either my speakers aren't capable of projecting the difference, or my ears aren't capable of discerning it.

Three questions:

1. Does anyone seriously complain about the quality of a good AAC or MP3 file anymore?
2. How can plastic CD sales survive in this environment?
3. How long before CD players are like phonographs -- in the back of the electronic stores, on the bottom shelf?

Presently playing: "Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones.

Growth and Life

Yeah, I heard the U.S. theoretically passed the 300M mark. A good deal of that is due, I suspect, to immigration. Americans of northern European stock aren't breeding like they used to.

There's tons and tons of empty space in the U.S. The density figure is, of course, an average. It's something like 10,000 per square mile in Manhattan; and 1 in Wyoming.

* * *
I agree with you that marriage will probably be extinct as a cultural norm within 100 years. I think the consequences of losing it will be tragic. You may be right -- it may not be "natural". But that doesn't mean it's not good and right. Lots of things about "natural" selves are not conducive to the kind of peaceful society you and I desire.

For me, I prefer marriage. I rather like the idea of having one person in whom I can invest increasing trust and confidence; one person to share the deepest intimacy (I don't mean merely sex). It's an extraordinarily vulnerable place to put oneself, however. But I would rather be married than not.

Exponential growth

The US population has hit 300 million people, just 39 years after it reached 200 million, according to US Census Bureau estimates.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6057004.stm

According to the CIA factbook entry for the USA, it has 9,161,923 sq km of land within it's borders so by my calculations the USA has a density of 31 people per sq km or 79 people per sq mile.

Not enough food left for thought soon.

Life is bigger

Kirk never actually said "Beam me up, Scotty" did he? One of those great television and movie misquotes, like "Me Tarzan, You Jane".

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On the Star Trek transporter technology:

let's not forget that Dr. McCoy was opposed in principle to the thing

Good point! But then again he was 100 Bones points and 0 Spock points, that mentality could keep one in the dark ages for sure :-)

Would the incidence of adultery skyrocket as people saw a loophole and could have sex with someone else who wasn't really someone else?

Of course, but then again I believe that marriage will become a dead institution, no-one will get married anymore so by definition there will be no adultery. I was talking to the young girls about marriage at the weekend, they were asking why people did it. I was very careful in my answer, I want to minimalize the passing on of any prejudices. I said that people have a tendency to "couple up". I also said that when I first got married I did it because that was the "done thing". Societal pressure. I never really thought about what I was doing, I just went along with the expectations of the world. I asked them to try to consider everything before taking such a step. I warned them not to get attached to the idea that you'll be with one person all of your life. I guess I want to show them the danger of all Bones and no Spock points, which is one of the reasons "we fall in love". Then we discussed "what is love" and we got back to your putting someone else's desires in front of your own in the pecking order. I just made it clear to them that things always change in this world so don't get attached to any one thing.

Between you and me I don't know why humans have a desire to couple up, if only at least for a while. I suspect it's driven out of the procreation cycle if I am honest, although I see a dependency between many men and women that I find odd, like "I couldn't live without him (or her), she/he is my soul mate" or "It's us against the world". I think that one of the reasons I never stayed married was I never thought that, or even wanted that. To me it's not natural, to me it's natural to have a lot of different "friends" let's not even call them partners, but that is not how the world or people are wired. As a parent you want your children to be happy, and -- speaking from experience -- it seems to me that the ultimate root of happiness is to not get attached to things or ideas, but don't forget to experience and enjoy life along the way, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Could people be transported and stored

This might be ultimately connected to the question of "do we live in an analog or a digital Universe?" If the former then I would say "no", like when you make a recording of a live concert to an mp3, if the Universe is analog in nature then there is always something lost in the recording, no bit rate is high enough to capture the event. On the other hand, if the Universe is digital -- quantized -- then you can make an exact recording with a high enough bit rate. Then again, is there a "good enough" bit rate where the facsimile of the person still feels like a person? But what about "you"? If you were asleep and made a copy of yourself, which one would be "you" when they both woke up? The original or the copy or both? And who would go to Heaven? :-)

I wonder, would people spread out or come together?

Well - even if it turns out that the Universe is analog and the disassembly and reassembly of a human is impossible then there is still a way that instant transportation could happen and that is through "wormholes" -- or 4D shortcuts across 3D space. If you take the 2 and 3D analogy of a table napkin, if you live on the napkin in 2D and want to go from corner to corner you trek all the way across the napkin. If suddenly you have knowledge of 3D space you can curve the napkin so that the corners are touching and just hop across "the gap". To a 2D napkin dweller you would have instantly travelled from corner to corner. If you take that analogy to 3 and 4D space (the latter which we have physical evidence for) you get a transportation device that you can travel through, which has the same effect as a Star Trek transporter, but without the disassembly of your personage.

So imagine a house where each of the rooms is in a different country, I think that would happen. Each doorway would be a 4D portal - so the living room in Texas perhaps, one of the bedrooms in Paris, a toilet in Msocow, I don't know. So people would be spread out by physical distance but we would think of physical distance in a different way, because we would all be within immediate reach of eachother, so the question might be a non-starter.

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I've been able to articulate my distress about what I see the local church doing to the kids, it's this .... "Don't trust any religion that gets most of it's converts before their brains have fully developed"

Beam Me Up

So you don't think the transporter from Star Trek will ever really work?

I have my doubts. First and foremost, let's not forget that Dr. McCoy was opposed in principle to the thing. That right there ought to give anyone pause.

But, that said, the concept of instant teleportation is fascinating. Leave aside the notion of transporting to another planet or galaxy ... being able to transport from place to place on this earth would revolutionize society. Think about it ... suddenly there'd be no reason to live where one worked. People stuck in the cities and surrounding suburbs would be free to live anywhere else but still maintain their current employment. Land values in previously depressed areas would go up; land values in previously expensive areas might go down. Hawaii land prices would go through the roof.

Note: I wonder, would people spread out or come together? America, for example, is largely an open and unpopulated land. Vast stretches of the west are empty, as are sections of the midwest and upper-midwest. I'm reminded of C. S. Lewis' "The Great Divorce," in which he portrays Hell as a place where people forever strive to get as far away from others as possible. Hell thus becomes this endless suburb.

The freeways would be rid of cars and trucks as the transportation of people, goods and materials could be done instantly. That would allow fruits and vegetables to be picked "vine ripe" and instantly transported ... but it would put hundreds of thousands of truckers out of work. The airline industry would shut down. Distribution of relief food to famine stricken areas could be done without regard to rebel forces blocking the way.

I've long pondered the ramifications of having a transporter mechanism. It's a fascinating thing to consider.

The transporter from Star Trek brings up the issues of self and "the soul". If you can transform an individual into a pattern of information and send that somewhere, possible making multiple copies along the way, what does that say about who we are and our undetected souls?

It opens up quite a can of worms, doesn't it? If one understood the bit pattern, one could tweak it and "correct" things -- diseases, personality ... self. Does the "soul" reside in the physical matter that makes us people? I really don't know. Perhaps it's like some kind of "meta-data" ... associated with our physical self but not actually in the "file" as it were.

Could people be transported and stored ... that is, not re-constituted on the other side but held in suspension in some quantum disk array? Think of the ramifications of that! Would that be murder? Would a copy of someone made from this storage array have rights? (We tread into the controversy surrounding cloning.) More importantly, could sexy Playboy playmates be copied and transported for a night's pleasures ... then simply "sent back?" Would the incidence of adultery skyrocket as people saw a loophole and could have sex with someone else who wasn't really someone else?

The mind staggers.

Yes it's the USB 2.0 (T60) speedup over USB 1.1 (T30). USB 2.0 is capable of a maximum throughput of 480Mbit/sec, USB 1.1 is 12Mbit/sec max.

There's a word for people like you ... g-e-e-k. :-)

Rubber Soul

I doubt such quantum transport (or whatever) will really ever work

So you don't think the transporter from Star Trek will ever really work?

Imagine if it could though ... Scotty getting stuck in the pattern buffer and coming back in Star Trek: The Next Generation; two Rikers as a result of the beam being partially reflected by the ionosphere of some planet.

The transporter from Star Trek brings up the issues of self and "the soul". If you can transform an individual into a pattern of information and send that somewhere, possible making multiple copies along the way, what does that say about who we are and our undetected souls?

Interesting.

+++

Yes it's the USB 2.0 (T60) speedup over USB 1.1 (T30). USB 2.0 is capable of a maximum throughput of 480Mbit/sec, USB 1.1 is 12Mbit/sec max.

Space ... the Final Frontier

I am wondering whether we will colonize the entire Universe one day and I think we will.

I'm less sure. I say that for several reasons:

• There may be other life forms already there, and they might resist our attempts. Perhaps so fiercely as to destroy us.
• We may end up destroying ourselves before we can venture that far into space.
• I doubt such quantum transport (or whatever) will really ever work

But then again, I'm as deeply skeptical as one can be.

I recall seeing the movie "2001" when I was 9 years old in 1968. It all looked so fantastic. Well, we're there and beyond, and we don't have anything remotely resembling what was shown in the movie. I'm not saying Hollywood should be held accountable for projections of technology, but I think it is illustrative of our hopeful promise of technology that never quite seems to pan out.

* * *
I can't get over how fast the web pages load on my new T60p. The network is the same 100MB as before. The difference must be in the ability to render the image on the screen.

Transfer to and from my external hard drive is must faster than before. I wonder if my old T30 had USB 1.1 and my new PC has 2.0 ... or whatever. :-)

Inanimate Objects

The very best of luck to The Tigers, you get some good memories and I hope they playoff with The Cardinals and win.

T60p and lamps etc, what is the word to describe ascribing human emotions to inanimate objects? Ah yes, Pathetic Fallacy -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy

David Hume once wrote this is why we create Gods, unexplained things happen and we have tendencies to attribute them to dieties, and the more that probability plays a role in our lives the more that we are inclinded to invent dieties. Everyone has an opinion!

Still, nice machines the T60p's.

I hope that "your other half" is home safely and not too scarred from her whipping.

I trust that your cat is getting fat and remaining happy also.

Things are good here, both girls are in the house, well outside in the street at the moment and playing happily, which is how it should be in my book :-)

+++

I am wondering whether we will colonize the entire Universe one day and I think we will. I was wondering about the vastness of it all, looking at pictures from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (http://www.sdss.org/) every inch of the sky seems to be covered by galaxies, you can see the bright stars in our galaxy in the foreground, but look deeper past them, behind then is just, well, more galaxies. It's a big Universe.

Still, as I showed in an earlier post, travelling at just 1 gee of acceleration you can get to the edge of the known Universe in just 25 Earth years ship travel time, due to the effect on time from travelling at relativistic speeds.

Imagine though if you or I could travel on a lightbeam? Then time would stop and we could go anywhere without feeling that time had elapsed. How long would it take to transmit you or I through a lightbeam? Well our consciousness is only about a petaflop of processing power (well maybe a few petaflops in your case) and a petabyte of data, so should take minutes if not seconds with quantum computing technology. When we got there we could say "hi". Going there alone might be pretty lonely at the other end however.

Go Get 'Em, Tigers!

The Detroit Tigers just secured entrance into the "World Series" of baseball. They defeated the Oakland Athletics 6-3 to take the best-of-seven series 4 games to none. Previously they beat the New York Yankees by taking that best-of-five series 3 games to one. Who they'll face in the championship is still to be decided. It'll either be the New York Mets or the St. Louis Cardinals. If the Cardinals end up winning their series, then the matchup in the World Series will be the same as it was when I was 10 years old in Detroit -- the Tigers vs. the Cardinals.

The memories flood back.

Go get 'em, Tigers!

T60p is Purring

I'm writing this entry on my new T60p, all configured up and running with all my critical applications. I have a port replicator on order so I can again use my wonderful old klunky keyboard, which makes quite a racket but takes the abuse I give it. Now I have an itch to get a 20" LCD flat-panel display!

My old T30 continues to run. The poor thing ... I know it realizes its fate.

I'm reminded of an IKEA ad that ran in the U.S. a little ways back. It showed a young lady cleaning her apartment. She put her trusty desk lamp into a box along with some other things to be discarded, and set the box on the curb for pickup. They shot the scene in low light with simulated rain. The music suggested desolation and loneliness. The purpose was to get the viewer to conjure up a sense of sadness for the lamp.

Then a man walks into the frame. He asks, "Why do you feel sorry for it? It's just a lamp. Get a new one." The scene fades to black and the IKEA logo appeared.

I love that ad ... very clever use of the viewer's emotions.

A Whole

Cox then said, "That's because you live on the other side of the planet."

That's like saying "I really wish you weren't so far away buddy".

You won't agree with me but:

The install jobs Mr C wrote have cost at least 10 times more in problems than he ever made for the company -- know this -- and don't feel too bad.

PS. Such a statement about "other side of the planet" is only valid if you assume that the planet only consists of the Continental United States. Which is not uncommon among certain American citizens and is the height of arrogance as far as I am concerned.

What is a "Chav?"

Chav is a derogatory slang term in popular usage throughout the UK. It refers to a subculture stereotype of a person who is uneducated, uncultured and prone to antisocial or immoral behaviour. The label is typically, though not exclusively, applied to teenagers and young adults of white working-class or lower-middle class origin. Chav is used for both sexes, where a male chav is sometimes referred to as a chavster and a female as a chavette. ...

Behemoths

Now you Americans are more wowed by HDTV than Brits because of the awful default resolution (first 405 then 525 lines) of your normal broadcasts and sets as opposed to our default 625 line well defined behemoths.

I wonder why my country took a different track from your country? Could it be because the UK had a single provider (BBC) and this country was more decentralized? Or was it more related to TV being adopted earlier in the US with more "primative" resolution?

* * *
What is a "Chav?"

* * *
I doubt I'll take the plunge to get a new TV any time soon. We have a 15 year old CRT TV that does quite well, thank you very much. I bought that for Lisa as a birthday present before we were married. She's since told me that when I did that, she thought "Hmmm ... that's a pretty big investment. He must be thinking he's going to get this back one day." In other words, she took that as a sign I was considering marriage. Girls ... they're so crafty.

* * *
I'm back from Orlando. I'm sitting in my home office, alone in the house except for the cat. My fair wife is in Los Angeles serving as a whipping post for another part of our common employer.

* * *
I was just on the phone with members of the WSC, one of which was Mr. Cox. At one point I mentioned that I didn't have the complete picture of what had been accomplished. Cox then said, "That's because you live on the other side of the planet." It was said somewhat in jest, but like all things there's an element of true sentiment under the covers. I've long believed that moving to Tucson removed me from the "mainstream" of work back east. This is one more piece of evidence that it's true.

Chav TV Chic

Wow Google really have taken over Writely, making a blog post is like writing a gmail email now, it is an even better editor than before.

Now you Americans are more wowed by HDTV than Brits because of the awful default resolution (first 405 then 525 lines) of your normal broadcasts and sets as opposed to our default 625 line well defined behemoths. That notwithstanding, to your questions:

Q1 -- Is it true that standard, run-of-the-mill DVDs played on a standard, run-of-the-mill DVD player will not be as eye-poppingly good on an HDTV screen as "real" HDTV?

A1 -- Yes it's true. The problem is that the DVD images on the normal DVD platter are at 720x480 resolution. So when you play them on your HTDV (which runs at either 1280x720 or 1920x1080) you're not exploiting the TV as much as you could were you showing an image that was photographed at that higher resolution. You can buy new DVD players (known as "HD-Compatible" players) that use a process called "upscaling" -- upscaling mathematically matches the pixel count of the output of the DVD signal to the physical pixel count on an HDTV, so it looks smoother on the HDTV, but it's a fudge at the end of the day. And you have to match your native resolution from the DVD to ensure you don't get the same issue you see on a thinkpad when you don't display at the correct "native" resolution, ie. fuzziness. So I would carefully match any "HD-compatible" DVD player you acquire to the HDTV that you are going to use with it -- apparently most of them do a good job. There is a better option though, read on McDuff ..

Q2 -- Is there going to be "real" HDTV DVDs coming out soon?

A2 -- They are already here among us. The first question is when are they going to make DVDs with images of HDTV resolution like 1280x720 or 1920x1080? They do already! Clearly to store a movie at this higher resolution on a disk you're either going to need more capacity that the 8.5 GB or so of a current dual layer DVD disk, which is pretty much filled up by a 2-2.5hr movie at 720x480, or better compression, or both. Thus to your next question ..

Q3 -- What the heck is "Blue Ray"? I keep hearing that.

A3 -- So we see that current DVDs cannot exploit true High Definition playback and recording capability. So two competing camps have come up with the solution: "Blu-ray" and "HD-DVD", they are direct competitors (they are INCOMPATIBLE -- remember VHS vs. Betamax? :-) There are a bunch of manufacturers behind each technology, and someone is behind both (Thomson I think). There appear to be more "big hitters" behind Blu-ray so perhaps it will win. These new Blu-ray or HD-DVD players go further than the "HD-Compatible" upscaling mob mentioned in A1 above. These new ones are called "True High Definition" players. They both use "blue" (actually ultraviolet) laser technology and higher compression algorithms for storing the images of the movie, and the disks are bigger, a single layer Blu-ray disk is 25gb, a dual 50gb for instance (I think HD-DVD disks are half that size so 15/30gb). The images on both Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks are at 1920x1080 resolution, 'cept you can get a lot more on a Blu-ray. (Note: I have a question about how they capture at this high res, I guess the manufacturers must go back to the movie masters?)

If you go out and buy a movie in Blu-ray format or HD-DVD format (yes they are different!) then expect to pay 5 bucks or so more than a standard DVD, which seems reasonable.

These new players play normal DVDs and CD's also, and they can upscale normal DVDs like those in A1.

Oh and you can buy Blu-ray drives for your PC now, I'll be putting one into my new rig when I upgrade to a quad core Intel Kentsfield around Christmas time (the Kentsfields ship in Nov!). Incidententally, Intel say they will have 80 cores on a wafer by the end of the decade. How mad is that?

Q4 -- Are HDTVs the new status rage in the UK they are in the US?

A4 -- Yeah the chavs love 'em !

The Absence of TV

I watch far less TV now than I used to. I'm not quite to the level you are. But in any given week I probably watch two or three hours. And that's usually on a spotty basis ... five minutes here; 20 minutes there.

I think it can be said without too much trouble that television has fundamentally transformed humans in a way that is not necessarily positive. I'll go further -- MTV is one of the most evil and corrosive forces in the world.

* * *
Techno-geek questions for you ... I understand that the feed coming off the standard DVD will not drive an HDTV screen to its most spectacular. I'm seeing references to DVD players that do some kind of digital enhancement that makes the DVD look better on an HDTV screen, but still not quite "real" HDTV.

Q1 -- Is it true that standard, run-of-the-mill DVDs played on a standard, run-of-the-mill DVD player will not be as eye-poppingly good on an HDTV screen as "real" HDTV?

Q2 -- Is there going to be "real" HDTV DVDs coming out soon?

Q3 -- What the heck is "Blue Ray"? I keep hearing that.

Q4 -- Are HDTVs the new status rage in the UK they are in the US?

Perils for Pedestrians

Have you ever seen a good flat screen with a true HDTV feed?

I've seen the screens but I'm not sure they were showing an HDTV feed at the time. I rarely watch TV, myabe twice a year, but I do watch DVDs - these days generally on a laptop, where the quality is very good indeed at 1600x1200 pixels (UXGA) but not quite HDTV, which is 1920x1080 at the 16:9 letterbox aspect ratio.

I've noticed that not watching TV, for 8 years now, has given me a little bit of a disconnect when talking to people, but it's one I cherish. I don't know "Lost" or "Pop Idol" from my elbow and so I hope that my responses to life are mine (or from DVDs or the internet :-) and not something that I absorbed from a TV.

Glad that you're cruising through the tough pitching down there, Mr. SOA.

$1,000,000

Me, cool? Ha! I'm a nervous wreck all the time.

* * *
By the way, I knew the answer to that question. But then again, I'm a child of that era.

* * *
Pretty good turn out here in Orlando. I'm not sure if that signifies anything. But it's a good, vibrant conference.

One presentation down, two to go ... then I go "zoooooom" back home.

* * *
I am re-reading the book "The Godfather" ... what a great read! With the movie firmly burned into my memory, the book is coming to life quite a bit. I can see where Coppola lifted key lines straight out of the book. Last night I was reading the part where they were planning the placement of the gun at the Italian restaurant where Mike was to meet with Sollozo and McClusky. As I was reading, I could see Abe Vigoda saying, "It's perfect. It has one of those old-fashioned toilets ... you know, with the pull chain."

Right now I'm into a section of the book that's going into excessive detail on Johnny Fontane (the Frank Sinatra character). Coppola wisely left most of that stuff out of the movie.

* * *
In preparation for my trip to Canada recently, I flew to Washington D.C. and stayed at the home of my former neighbor from that area. The two of us drove up together, as has been our practice for the last six years. He recently changed jobs, landing a position at a famous government intelligence agency with a three-letter acronym name. In celebration of that, he purchased a 50" plasma HDTV.

I like TV as much as the next person. But I do think there's a limit to how big someone's TV should be. These wall-sized things tend to utterly dominate a room. I think if I were to drop that kind of money on a flat-screen, I'd go for something smaller ... in the 35 to 40" range, but no more.

Those things do have remarkable pictures. Have you ever seen a good flat screen with a true HDTV feed? Remarkable.

Be Cool

Could you be THIS cool?

http://www.youtube.com/v/hr3tsMCrQgo

It's Just a Job

You know what my real problem is ... what really has me down? I'm scared. Scared to death. I can't keep up anymore. Yet I work in an area where I'm supposed to be an "expert." People come to me expecting me to know everything about everything. I am saying "I don't know" with increasing frequency lately. There will come a point in the not too distant future where people will simply stop bothering asking me anything, for it's perfectly obvious I don't have a clue.

My dream is to know enough about something so I can be truly helpful to other people. I had that for a few years. But now things are advancing faster than I can comprehend. I think I get the "big picture," but I can't possibly grasp all the details. Take SOA/ESB ... the strategy I get. How to get WID to create a workflow to drive a non-SOAP service on Broker using SIBs I don't get. And even if I spent two weeks getting it figured out, that one thing is merely spit in the wide ocean of things.

Want me to get even more fundamental than that? Here it is -- I have absolutely no idea what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm stumbling along doing what I think is right, but I have no idea if it is. I'm told to "Help drive revenue and increase customer satisfaction!" But how does that translate to what I should be doing this week? Or for the next few months? I don't know. I'm not sure many people do know. Which is why, I think, we operate in such a reactive manner.

Response to apathy

I wonder what others do when they hit this spot? Find other sources of drive and meaning? Endure silently?

My response to this is to remember why I go to work. It's because I need to pay the mortgage and give my daughter some standard of living. When I was a child I lived pretty much on the breadline which meant I missed out on things like school journeys for instance. It means a lot to me to be able to write a cheque to allow Katherine to go on holiday with her chums - so for these privileges I work. Having said all of that, I think of work as a real chore, customer calls, presentations, meetings etc YAWN.

Work itself, at the moment there seems to be an incredible amount of unecessary complexity which leads to no benefit. Like the analogy of "it takes the same time to cross London by road today in 2006 as it took 100 years ago in 1906". We make advances but get no benefit from the advance due to the way we use the advance.

I console myself that although things look bad we are living through a time of exponential technology growth. Remember the population chart of the planet? The one that had the knee in the curve? Well before the knee the growth looks almost linear, it's hard to tell that the growth is actually exponential (ie. get the next point on the curve by multiplying a constant rather than by adding a constant).

Although our industry looks like it's at best growing linearly it's not -- it's growing exponentially, the same as any evolutionary system -- and the advances we will see after the knee will take your breath away, and you are part of it my friend!

This doesn't really help I know, finding meaning in technology is not easy, I believe that technology will bring us a choice -- a choice to live as long as we wish -- but as a Christian you may not want to hear that !

Apathy

Enjoy yourself down there buddy, it looks like a comprehensive set of education.

You know what? I really, honestly, and sincerely don't care about any of this anymore.

I just don't.

There's a part of me that feels guilty about that ... that I should somehow find the reserve within my heart to think this stuff really matters. But I just can't find it.

Sigh ... I will give my three presentations and do the best I can. But I can't pretend to be excited about much of this anymore.

I wonder what others do when they hit this spot? Find other sources of drive and meaning? Endure silently?

Sunshine State

I am off to zExpo in Orlando

Enjoy yourself down there buddy, it looks like a comprehensive set of education.

+++

Ah, the T60p. I use a T43p, but I do also have a T60p, it sits underneath my flatbed scanner and runs virtual machines under Ubuntu Linux. The virtual machines are running a mixture of Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and various Linux distros under VMWare's (now free) Server product. Having a Linux hypervisor is good as you don't have to reboot it for "patch tuesday" from Microsoft, proving a level of stable uptime to your VM's.

top - 21:28:07 up 84 days, 23:16, 1 user, load average: 0.50, 0.51, 0.46
Tasks: 89 total, 1 running, 88 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.3% us, 3.0% sy, 0.0% ni, 96.7% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 2072836k total, 2024240k used, 48596k free, 24084k buffers
Swap: 3984080k total, 52332k used, 3931748k free, 1795776k cached

It's been continuously up for almost 85 days :-) (Note the SMP kernel for the Intel Core Duo in the T60p).

Why don't I use the T60p as my business laptop? Well, it's a little heavier than the T43p but the main reason is the power supply. For the last 5 years or so the power supply of a thinkpad has been interchangeable with the power supplies of earlier thinkpad models. But the T60p is such a power-hungry beast and the power supply for it is different from all those that came before. So now all my old power blocks - which seem to have proliferated to most rooms in the house - don't fit the T60p. So now when wandering around the house with a T60p laptop I also need to have it's power supply in tow. I got bored with that and leave it be now :-) Having said that the battery does last longer, but if it's on battery it runs slower to conserve power.

The other thing I noticed with it are some affinity problems, applications hanging unexpectedly being the result. I am sure these will get resolved with microcode/BIOS updates in the fullness of time however. All in all, a great machine.

McGillis

In either case, Kelly McGillis looked good in the movie Witness, all of 21 years old that film now.

Yes she did. She did indeed. :-)

* * *
I am off to zExpo in Orlando. I present three sessions.

* * *
Sorry to hear about your airport experience in the United States. I'm a bit surprised that the same treatment isn't done in airports overseas. But as I sit and reflect on it, I seem to recall that security at Beijing airport was pretty light by U.S. standards.

* * *
I saw a movie on the plane back from Canada -- Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Anniston in "The Breakup." I like Jennifer Anniston ... I think she's a far better actress than many give her credit for. Still, this movie was a bad project. The movie is fundamentally flawed. The movie never establishes any reason why we should be sympathetic to the two main characters. The film starts and almost immediately goes into the two of them bickering. I could find absolutely no sense of concern or compassion for either of them. So for me, the movie was an uncomfortable experience.

Still, Jennifer Anniston is cute.

* * *
My new T60p shipped. I'll be its proud papa in a few days. :-)

American Psycho

Yes I read about the detail in the case of the Amish girls and the reaction of the Amish community - it was in the news all of last week whilst I was in the US. There seems to have been a spate of such murders recently, I can only hope that the problem is not becoming more endemic than I thought it was in the first place.

I read that the Amish console themselves with the fact that the girls are in Heaven having the best time now with Jesus. This is well and good.

Maybe they'd like to think that the killer of the girls made it to Heaven also (having truly repented at the last moment) and that he is with the girls now and everyone is having a nice time, with all the bad stuff - the fear - forgotten. If so, then they are truly like Jesus and are perhaps a good example of what homo sapiens might be in the next stage of their evolution.

In either case, Kelly McGillis looked good in the movie Witness, all of 21 years old that film now.

The Amish ...

Perhaps you heard the news that a man in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania murdered five young Amish girls. The story behind the act is sketchy and lurid, and I'll let it pass without further comment. But I do wish to report the following, and I'll do it in bullet format:

• Charles Carl Roberts IV murders five Amish children and injures several others
• Charles Carl Roberts IV then kills himself
• The Amish community, victims of this awful crime ... attended Roberts' funeral and grieved with the Roberts' widow
  
• The Amish community has begun collecting money to assist Roberts' widow in this awful time for her
  

I find this display of true Christian faith, forgiveness and humility remarkable. I am at once impressed, envious and ashamed.

Bless them, those who forgive in the midst of such a tragedy.

EWR gate 53

I can't recall exactly how many times I have sat at this table in this airport bar opposite gate 53 waiting to get the Virgin VS02 plane home to the UK. 20 .. 30? I dunno.

US Airports embarrass me because I have to take my shoes off, which relieves me of my walking foot brace, so then I hobble around like the gimp I am and everyone looks at me, although I am getting much better at being the centre of attention than I used to be.

Whilst putting my shoes back on I thought about all of the times and years that I was fully bodily able and felt a loss. These emotions are sent to try us, to test how we cope with change and loss I think.

+++

Why would humans feel desire in the first place? Is desire a hangover from a hunger for food perhaps? The food which we need to survive but somehow the message gets short circuited so we think we need an iPod or a life-partner? Not sure.

Mid-East / Mid-West

Our calling those states "Midwest" is a veiled indication of our Islamophobia. :-)

The University of Michigan football "fight song" (song meant to rally the team) has the line, "... champions of the west." The song was written in 1901, or something like that, and at that time California was a state. So I'm not at all clear why it was still considered "the west." It probably harkens back to some ancient time when Chicago was considered the far western outpost of America.

To add to the irony, Michigan played in the first Rose Bowl football game in 1902. They played Stanford, which is in California. Go figure. Michigan won, 49-0. That was during Fielding H. Yost's tenure as coach. His teams were essentially unstoppable. They played a brand of football that would no doubt be unrecognizable today. And the worst college team of today would pulverize the best from that era. Back then, a lineman who weighed in at 200 pounds would be a freak of nature; now they commonly weigh in at 300+ pounds, are very strong and very quick, and often very tall to boot -- generally in the 6'5" range.

* * *
The world is fueled by fear and desire, not fear and hope. The statement about not seeing much hope for the world is perfectly understandable if one looks only at this world. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems to me desire is a derivative of something.

I also am struck again by how Dallas Willard very intentionally defined love and desire as two different things. Desire is a selfish thing, involving what I want. Love, by his definition, is a selfless thing, doing what is best for the other. And I'm also struck by how his definition does not include "doing what the other wants." Desire on the other's part may also be selfish and ultimately unhelpful to that person.

Yes, I know -- who determines what is "best?" etc., etc.

The Midwest

Looking at the picture of the midwestern states - shouldn't they be called the mideast?

:-)

Fishkill

Welcome back! I think we're simultaneously blogging, great photo which wasn't there a moment ago. It's 11:00 in Fishkill where I am and 04:00 in the UK. I'm looking forwards to flying back to the UK tomorrow evening (well actually I'm not looking forwards to the flight but looking forwards to seeing my daughter).

Had dinner in a steak house with a colleague from the UK, he thinks humans might be driven by fear and desire (not hope) .. didn't seem much chance for hope in his world ! I said that I needed to think about it. Thoughts?

Take it easy on the booze we're not getting any younger.

Blazing Sunset

Taken one night up north -- I can't remember which night. :-)

Back From Canadian North

I'm now safely back in Tucson, after having spent four days up in Canada. Four of us spent four full days there ... and drank 138 beers. I've learned my upper digestive system doesn't like that quantity of beer anymore ... I experienced some awful acid reflux. But I'm okay now.

* * *
I'm happy to hear the "a" has been recovered. If Neil Armstrong says he said it, then he said it. There's no chance a U.S. astronaut from Ohio of all places would make that up.

Note: In the United States, the term "midwest" refers to a collection of states that varies from 7 to 14. Regardless of the exact number, the midwest has a general reputation as being the "salt of the earth" or "the backbone" of this country. That reputation is probably waning of late, but certainly back in the 40's, 50's and 60's it held true. Ohio, being one of those states, strikes me as being the most midwest of them all, though some might argue for Illinois or Iowa. In any event, Neil Armstrong was born in Wapokoneta, Ohio ... and with a name like that you can rest assured anyone from there is as straightlaced as they come. :-)

I was born in Michigan ... also considered a "midwestern state," but I think for much of the time where "midwestern" implied steadfastness, Michigan was somewhat excluded from that. Michigan was the most heavily industrialized state in the early and mid 20th century, and I think that casts a different light than bucolic farmland.

Detroit, however, has a long-standing tradition and reputation as a) a great sports town and b) a great music town. The Detroit Red Wings (hockey) enjoyed considerable dominance in the 1950's (with Gordie Howe), and a resurgance in the last 1990's as well. The Tigers (baseball) haven't won as many "World Series" as New York, but they have a few. The Pistons (basketball) used to be pitiful, but became good in the early 1990's and again in the past few years. That leaves the Lions, our perennially awful football team. They had some success in the 1950's, but nothing since. And since about ... oh ... 1975 or so they've been simply bad.

The Tigers are currently playing the Yankees in the American League playoffs. The Tigers came out of nowhere this year to do quite well and get into the playoffs.

Detroit (and surrounding area) and music? Well, Motown, of course ... including Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder. But also Bob Seger, Rare Earth, the MC5, Alice Cooper, The Romantics, The Knack, Grand Funk (really Flint, but close), Eminem, Kid Rock ... and let's not forget the Motor City Madman himself, Ted Nugent.

* * *
I got up at 4:30am ET, which is 1:30am Tucson Time. It is now 3:03pm Tucson Time, and I am quite tired.

Man and mankind

You may think that this:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4225505.html

is completely trivial but I think I'll sleep better at nights.

+++

I have shopped at Woodbury Common New Jersey today and noticed how large people are getting. I have therefore formulated a new deep.thought law which goes like this:

"Given an almost unlimited supply of food, humans will attempt to eat it".