Expression

Sometimes words weren't enough, this one comes with a picture. If you haven't noticed yet, I have a flare for melodrama when I write, this is a pretty good example of it. I believe I wrote this shortly after someone told me we could never see each other again. Oddly, something that seems to have repeated itself a couple times for me. (some of you should keep your comments to yourselves, I know what you're thinking) It also reminds me that one time my friend Jason asked if I had ever been inspired to write something when I was happy, and the answer to that was "No, no I have not." Sometimes I would write just to be writing, but I only ever felt the need to write when I was in a dark mood. It was the ability to express that feeling in some way, to get it down on paper, that I found cathartic. It's like a release of pressure, like taking a covered pot of boiling water off the stove. I guess that makes putting things like this on the web kind of like throwing that pot of boiling water in your face. Enjoy!

Drawn/Written: Fall 2000


The Sun went out that day, as if he needed to forget, or perhaps he only followed you, as I wished to. The chill left behind is a caress, one which the skin cannot hold at bay. Like a dream that refuses to fade. A touch that lingers for a day. With a night so cold, so empty, a world made of ice that makes horrible squeaking noises as it makes it's way into the light. A mindless fight against life. A terrible desire to destroy everything which you take pleasure in. Not to take away from you, but to leave with you. That no one else should ever share that joy. It's only existence within you, a foolish connection, disconnecting me. For second best should never brush against these memories. If that is the way. That my life should not be my own, lived for another, and all based on the decisions of yet one more, which way we go. But the dream always tells true. All the dreams of you. That if you leave I shall never again speak a word that is true. To weep with every smile shown. Knowing that it didn't have to be that way. Knowing what could have been. Knowing what I used to be. I never before knew what hell was, but I have seen. It is that which makes a man betray his own life, his own self, his own love. That a sin so great could ever be, perhaps he needed to forget for a day. Never known what fear could be. A love so great that it turned in upon itself, lost of the fuel which gave rise to it. One whom the chill could never take away. To watch a life crumble in infinite minutes, and salvations but a call away. A call that cannot be made. The words forgotten lovers should never hear. The question that cannot be asked. For love, for the dawn, for you.

Pure Genius

Pets in uniform. I don't know what I could add to that.

Full Of Vagueness And Hidden Sense

There's this website called Giveaway Of The Day that offers free software. I subscribe to the rss feed, in case anything interesting shows up, and they also have a feed for games, usually puzzle games. For awhile now they've been offering games by a publisher called DoubleGames, I'm not sure where they're from, but I'm pretty sure it's not Kansas. Some of the descriptions appear to be poor translations, and some of them just seem odd. Here are some of my favorite descriptions they've given for their games, I've put my comments in [bold].

The Castle Of Cards game gives an opportunity to tickle nerves while building a Castle. Simple rules, a number of irregular determinations makes this old card game the perfect one in the middle of similar games. [Yeah, I think something's irregular.]

Not only the fans of fishing, but also those who never ever went to fishing will definitely enjoy this game in which your objective is to catch as many fishes as you can or purchase a better ammunition using profits earned from the sale of fish. Get all you need to become a real Fish Hunter. [Fishing with guns, they must be from Texas.]

In this exciting game you have to become the tower builder and your main responsibility is to build a tower as more balanced and stable as you can. [That's going on my next self evaluation. How have you improved over the past year? I am as more balanced and stable as I can.]

Get Juicy Puzzle and feed your hunger for succulent, fun and engaging games. [Uhhh...]

Not far from a holy Fuji Mountain, in a small Japanese village lives ex-samurai who is sorry for his offensive and careless behavior and who wants to be employed by a new master. Although it was sometimes considered to be necessary for the life experience of any true samurai to be a ronin, his life without lord’s stipend was getting rather difficult. He has been a target of humiliation and satire for too many years, and now you can save the ronin from his hateful life. [This game is solitaire. Seriously.]

A new remake of favorite game for a big number of users. A nice appearance with good playability and user friendly interface. In it you can choose an appearance design according to your own taste from a number of presented ones that makes the game more comfortable and nice. [This is also solitaire, now with less samurai, more interior design]

Roulette is bright and full of risk, hazard and passion. This very moment you start thinking of the way to win much money. You see nothing and hear nothing around you, because you are completely absorbed with the game! The roulette fascinates the player at the spectacle of a boll circling. There is nothing more important in the world for you than the process of playing and winning! [Superliminal advertising.]

Reading books may sometimes be very profitable! While you were idly turning over the pages of “The History of the Ancient World” encyclopedia, a little sheet of paper slipped out of it. Your amazement had no limits when you understood it was a real treasure map! Of course, you departed immediately. [I'm departing alright.]

Connect multiple wires tangled haphazardly in a one great heap to watch bewitching scenery of exploding devices! [This doesn't make me want to install your software.]

A very old spider has been spinning webs for all his life. He used to catch flies, bugs, mosquitoes and caterpillars worth $10,000 a day. But one dark summer night the poor spider failed his eyesight in an awful accident and there is no one now to visit all the traps he had set. [I'm in the wrong profession.]

Step into the challenging business of catching robots in the ultimate action game of Magnetic Bait! Navigate your ship to the accident site where dozens of cute robots are fining in the open sea and fish out all of them with the help of your powerful engine! Don’t waste time! Embark on this robbofishing right now! [I'm still not sure what "fining" is supposed to be.]

Sailing by some island you noticed two pirates, who were playing a strange game on a rum barrel. One pirate had golden doubloons, and the other - black chips. Keep your eyes skinned to get luck in this adventure for a stroke of good fortune! [Like the pirates always say, when the black chips are down, then... skin your eyes for luck... Arrrr!]

Mysterious symbols will never leave you in peace! Mysterious symbols, full of vagueness and hidden sense, will entertain you for many hours of fun and excitement! It’s up to you to get over the obstacles and find the answers to all questions. Put every mysterious symbol on its place before your opponent does it and feel a real taste of the victory! [This paragraph is full of vagueness and hidden sense. I would like to feel a real taste of the victory though.]

This tetris game is animated and features with animated color blocks, backstuff over the game screen, dancing lines of text and the beautiful music. [What a coincidence, I was just doing a Google search to find me some backstuff.]

Battle Snake it is not an ordinary snake game. Based on classical snake games Battle Snake introduce a new genres combination. In this snake game you as always control the snake which eats different food to grow. In same time you growing not for scores but with growing you gather “ammo” that you need to strike robots which levels have in myriad number.
[Designer1: I can't figure out what to add to this snake game.
Designer2: Robots, lots and lots of robots.
Designer1: It's a new genre combination!]

East or West, home is best! How many more times will you have to repeat this wise proverb to understand it? [You're asking me?] But your excessive adventurism carries you to the most dangerous corners of the Earth again. This time you’ve made up your mind to find a rear species of cactus, which blooms only once in 20 years, and set out for America in search of it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a problem to find this rear plant, and you’ve run out of water. Your mobile phone is out of coverage, so it won’t do anyway. Friendly Indians advised you to squeeze juice out of cactuses. [Are they rear Indians? That won't do anyway.]

Alex Johnson has lost his memory. He has no idea where he is or how he got there, but finding objects hidden in classic antique paintings is somehow helping him recover. [Now you're just not trying.]

It’s Boggle! The fast-paced word-making game with oodles of words and three exciting ways to play! [So that's how they write their descriptions.]

Climb aboard the Text Express for an all-new adventure that’s full of word game fun! Form letters from chunks of coal [on second thought...]

Help Mia save her home and the world from being buried under trash! Earn points and bonuses running recycling centers in exciting global locations with this puzzle and action game, all rolled into one! [Wow, that description is actually pretty good. Too bad running a recycling center sounds like the worst game ever.]

You're In My Blind Spot Woman

I realized after writing my post about the Teens Tap training session, that I may have done a poor job describing part of how I viewed the situation. When I mentioned I thought it was "polite" that Ali shared her blanket with me, that was what I thought, and I wasn't thinking anything else. When I mentioned that it didn't cross my mind to call any of the numbers I received, the reason was I assumed they just wrote those things to be polite, and there were no other reasons. I had a very naive and innocent view of things when it came to women, I usually didn't realize that there may have been another motivation involved until after the fact. That actually hasn't changed that much even now, I'm not entirely sure why that is.

There were a few other occasions when I got phone numbers when I was younger and didn't understand why they were given, usually from girls I felt I didn't even really know that well. I think it was the subtle forwardness of it that I didn't understand, what I still don't understand. It's a cue that I don't pick up on, it just leaves me confused. I once got a number from a waitress, I actually asked her what it was for. I think the conversation went something like this:

Me: "Excuse me, what is this number for?"
Waitress: "That's my number."
Me: "Why do I need that?"
Waitress: cold angry look
Me: perplexed

It dawned on me as I was driving home what had occurred, and I felt bad about it, I'm sure she thought I was a total smart ass. It really just caught me off guard, it was like lifting up the bill, and finding a frog under it. "Hmm, that's not supposed to be there." It seems foolish I know, this is pretty simple stuff, it just doesn't register with me at first. I expect people to be polite, friendly. I don't expect them to be interested.

One girl I knew once kept bringing up how she was really attracted to smart guys. I wondered why she kept repeating herself, I was pretty sure I got it the first time, it seemed like a strange topic to keep returning to, and it wasn't really one I could add anything too. I'm pretty sure she no longer thought of me as smart when that day was over.

Probably the best example I have is from when I was in school. At that time, I walked home, and there was a girl I walked with. I would often stop at her house with her to hang out on the way home, and we became good friends. I remember one time we were in her bedroom, and her father walked past and said, "You be sure to leave this door open." I thought that was really strange, did he think we were going to start breaking lamps or set the curtains on fire? Maybe he just didn't know if I was well behaved or not. Sometimes, she would come over to my house. When there, we would lie on my bed, listen to music and talk. She would often want back rubs. She also insisted on giving me a back rub, which is something I've never liked. I relented of course, and then asked her to stop after about thirty seconds. She went in the bathroom and cried. I couldn't figure out how that first event could lead to the second, and decided that this must be what people mean when they say that girls can be emotional, totally random bouts of weeping with no context. When we were in my bed she would often pull one of my arms around her, she said she was "touchy-feely" and I just took her word for it. At one point, while I was holding her in my arms, in my bed, she said "I like it when my friends kiss my ears". This was the densest moment in my life. Probably the densest moment in most peoples lives. I thought, "what an odd thing to say", and didn't take the hint. She had pretty much spelled it out for me, and I was still totally clueless. This went on for about a year. The funniest part of course was that I had a crush on her this whole time without realizing that she liked me too. Right up until she kissed me, that sort of clued me in. At that point, she was in a relationship with someone else, which just made the whole thing kind of awkward, and made for a nice punchline to the whole thing.

That, of course, was the pinnacle of my naivety. I'm not quite so oblivious these days, but I don't think the blind spot is gone, it's just a little smaller.

Extraplanetary Activities

I came across an article about terraforming Mars recently, where a plan has been laid to make Mars habitable by human beings by the end of the century. I think the article sums up the main problem with this in the last sentence.

It is not technology, nor money, he said, the pacing ingredient is marshaled will.

I know there will always be those who see any ambitious program negatively because of lack of faith in the government, or just in humanity in general. Those kinds of views towards the space program have never surprised me much. However, the people who just don't care, or view NASA as a waste of time and money, that was a view I always found shocking. To me, space programs seem like the most important things we can be working on.

I've always had a habit of taking a "big picture" view of things, and my view of the human race has been no exception. I've often wondered about our goals as a whole, as a species. How do we improve as a society? What are we ultimately striving for? Is it possible for there to only be one answer for everyone? But all the big questions fade before one question, the most important one. How do we survive? It seems that must always be any life forms first priority, sticking around. At the individual level, it's hard wired into us. But that won't be enough long term.

Eventually, our planet will become uninhabitable. Maybe we'll get hit with an asteroid the size of the moon. Maybe a super-volcano will erupt and block out all light. Maybe the molten core will stop spinning, and the magnetic field protecting us from cosmic death rays will disappear. Maybe the sun will explode. It's really just a question of time, I like the Earth, it's a nice place, but at some point, everyone on it will die. On a cosmic scale, it's a death trap.

That's why I think the space program is so important. We need to spread out a little more. Get a little elbow room. If we get off this planet, then we can survive a global event. If we spread beyond the solar system, we can survive the unfortunate star deaths that occur every now and then. If we spread beyond the milky way, chances are pretty good that's we'll be around till the end of the universe, which will hopefully give us enough time to find a new one of those too. I believe that space travel, for us, is a biological imperative.

Step 1: Mars
Step 3: Live Forever

Tell me what your favorite Extinction Level Event is in the comments.

Bunny 2.0

Apparently some people were disturbed by the giant bunny from my last post. Hopefully this much nicer bunny will make up for it.

Update 6/25: While leaving work today, I walked around the corner of the building towards my car, when a rabbit charged directly at me before disappearing into a bush only a foot away from me. This scared the crap out of me, and then made me feel ridiculous. Balance has been restored.

Probably A Bad Sign

According to Gallup, americans now have more faith in their HMOs than they do in Congress. If you follow the link and take a look at the graphic, in all but 3 of the 16 categories listed, confidence has fallen from a year ago (of those three, one had no data from last year, and the other two stayed even). Why so glum? Here is a giant bunny to cheer you up.

I Smell A New Reality TV Show

The European Space Agency is looking for volunteers for a 520 day mission to mars simulation. The entire simulation will apparently take place in a two-story house, which will be made to look like both the space craft, and the mars surface. The mars surface will not be available until halfway through the simulation. The ESA will most likely be selecting volunteers based on how closely they meet astronaut requirements, though I think they could turn a tidy profit if they did the exact opposite and put it on the tube.

Feeling You Getting Hit With A Fish

Floridians should beware the flying armored fish. Some quotes from the article:

"It's as if you were riding a motorcycle at 35 mph and someone threw a 100lb concrete block in your face."

"We fear the fish could only just be getting started"

"My entire life was changed because of a fish."

Some of you may have heard me talking about mirror neurons lately. Apparently these neurons can cause a condition called mirror-touch synaesthetes, it is thought that these synesthets (they should just call them empaths) may be common, and we just don't know about them because they think their feelings are normal. For some reason, the first thing that comes to mind when I think about this condition, is voyeurism. Apparently there are also synesthets that blend their senses and they can see music, or taste words (that's a condition called "lexical-gustatory", something I will be interjecting into ordinary conversation). That puts an interesting twist on perception doesn't it? Apart from being fascinating, I think mirror neurons may explain a number of behaviors and unlock some secrets of the brain, which is cool, because I left my keys in there.

While browsing around other parts of the Live Science website, I came across this amusing quote:

When ferrets watch the mind-bending movie The Matrix, brain activity is only slightly higher than when they stare at nothing.

I want that job. Mostly so I can have this conversation:

You: "So what do you do for a living?"

Me: "I make ferrets watch movies"

The Spiral Trial

It's been about two weeks since I first mentioned the spiral trial, but I seem to keep finding tangents. To finally get to the point of it, after my intro to philosophy, I began thinking about communication, and how we learn from each other. In the search for truth, how we gain new knowledge seemed pretty important. It seemed to me that in every interaction we have with each other, one person is attempting to pass information to another. That, of course, is the primary reason for communication. From a learning perspective, we could say that we each take on the role of student or teacher in every conversation. In fact, the conversations I felt I got the most out of I often seem to find myself in both roles. It seemed that the more apt someone was to learn something from me, the more I could also learn from them.

I found the idea of our switching relationships with each other fascinating, and I visualized it as two cones that were set base-to-base, so that their points were opposite from each other. One point was teacher, and the other was student, and line drawn around this shape formed a spiral that was large in the center and ended at the two points. That was where "spiral" came from, and "trial" because that's how it usually felt trying to communicate my ideas to other people. I summarized this as "The greatest student makes the best pupil." I began thinking about those switching roles, how well they worked in communication, and what prompted them? The easiest way to change roles, seemed to be to ask a question. In fact, the right question, to prompt someone towards a conclusion you had already reached yourself, seemed to almost fit into both roles. If someone comes up with the answer on their own, what they take away, what they learn from it, is much more than if you just give them the answer. The value of the answer goes up with the effort used to purchase it, which worked well with TANSTAAFL, another concept I had become enamored with. That brought me to my second saying, "The best teacher doesn't need to know the answers, but only the right questions." In fact, those two statements I didn't even consider answers, they were somewhat vague on purpose, as it seemed to me that any important concept would be better communicated in a riddle than in a list to be memorized. Added to "Belief is reality", I had started my own little collections of sayings, my grains of truth. What I didn't realize at the time, was that by shrouding my philosophy in a little mystery, along with my habit of naming everything, and teaching my friends the aura game I had learned at my Teens TAP training, I had created a system of symbolism and ritual. Without understanding what a powerful combination that could be, that was how I made friends in high school, it was how I portrayed myself to others. I suppose that's a whole other story though. (how's that for a non-answer?)

Being young and unwise, I had made the mistake of viewing correlation as causation, violating one of the universal truths (a thing is not equal to that which is not itself). Though I now view my underlying assumptions as incorrect, my conclusions have still influenced my current beliefs, much like my early thoughts about beliefs and reality. You may have noticed that I still ask a lot of questions in my posts. I'm still writing the way that I speak, which is something I'm working on. The irony being, that I'm not sure the web is a medium in which I can really express something effectively. I may be communicating something to you, but without that interaction, the Q&A, how much value can it have? Does an explanation of my past answer the question of who I am? If it does, how much value can it have to you when it's my answer? Can I tell a story of my past in such a way, that you ask questions about yourself, and come to understand me in that way? I'm not sure I have my own answers to these questions yet.

Phoning It In

It's my birthday, so I'm taking a few days off from the blog, I'll have a new post early next week.

Politics Tires Of Beating Science, Gives Education A Turn

I came across this article by a UK physics teacher, that I found pretty disturbing. I had recently posted about a comic that had made it into the California social studies curriculum, that I found amusing. This is not amusing. The social studies thing is amusing because political commentary probably should come up in social studies, as long as it isn't completely one sided, that would be where it belongs. However, putting social commentary into the hard sciences is just plain bad. That has nothing to do with the scientific method. Reading through the AQA Specification that he linked to, there are a number of "topics" listed under Biology, Chemistry, and Physics that for some reason, seem to talk about global warming and how human beings are destroying the planet. Now, I realize the view of human caused global warming as fact is a little more prevalent in Europe than it is here, and it probably should be covered at some point in one of those classes, but instead, it seems to be referenced throughout all three topics. Why? Well, I found this tidbit that seems to explain it:

AQA has taken account of the 1988 Resolution of the Council of the
European Community and the Report “Environmental Responsibility: An
Agenda for Further and Higher Education” 1993 in preparing this
specification and associated specimen papers.
This specification allows responsible attitudes to environmental issues
to be fostered. In particular, environmental issues can be considered
in relation to Sections 11.8, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3, 12.4, 12.5, 13.4 and 13.6

Those sections are the ones that I mentioned, biology, chemistry, and physics. That doesn't sound like science to me.

Most people don't really get science. It's not about making an "informed guess", it's about a logical structured method to find out if your guess is correct or not by observing what actually happens when you put it to the test. Don't get me wrong, theory is great, I love theory. But I don't think we should be presenting it in the class room before we've actually got some proven results. I think string theory is fascinating, but I don't think it should be taught in a beginning physics class, especially not as if it had already been proven.

Anytime journalists or politicians start talking about scientific topics, be prepared to get an earful of crap. The first time I can personally remember media and politics promoting something "scientific" was when everyone was talking about nuclear winter, and how terrible nuclear weapons were and they should all be dismantled before we destroyed everything but the cockroaches. Most people still seem to think nuclear winter is a proven fact, it's Science! Science! I said Science again! That means discussions closed right? The best minds on the planet made their declaration, and that's the way it is. Only, the scientific method requires that you make a prediction based on a Hypothesis and then test that prediction. I don't remember anyone testing any of those nuclear winter hypothesis, do you? Did someone stage a nuclear war when I wasn't looking? Oh, right, they used computer models. Computer models where they turned the sun off to simulate what a nuclear war would do. That sounds scientific doesn't it? In the simulation, we'll just make the sun disappear as soon as a nuke goes off, that should give us realistic results. If you're able to come up with verifiable tests that support the predictions you've made, then your hypothesis starts to gain some weight, and might become a theory. Even then, that doesn't mean you've invented a scientific law.

Al Gore recently testified before congress about global warming. I've heard that he stated that mankind caused global warming is one of most understood scientific theories, with the possible exception of gravity (I couldn't find an exact quote). That statement... I don't even know how to respond to that, it makes my brain stop working just to write it down. Maybe Al Gore isn't aware of this, but gravity isn't really that well understood, and it's usually considered a scientific law. You've probably heard about unification or the "theory of everything", and gravity is the reason everyone's had problems with it, gravity doesn't always do what we think it should. However, most people think gravity is completely understood, and Al Gore certainly gives that impression in his statement, and then says global warming is understood to that depth, it's reprehensible. Maybe that's not exactly what he said, but it's what other people are saying he said, which is why I cringe every time a politician starts talking about something scientific. Do you know what prediction global warming climatologists have made which has come true? Yeah, me neither. I do know that Mars is heating up at the same time the Earth is. I know that just recently it was suggested that up to 20% of global warming may be caused by black snow. And I know that on that big graph of temperature and CO2 levels that appears to match up, it's the temperature change that occurs first, about 800 years prior to the change in CO2 levels. And most political speeches and news articles don't take those things into consideration. The global warming advocates have suggested explanations for all of these things, but that's not what you'll hear from politicians and the media. And it looks like UK students who are in science classes are not going to get real science, they're going to get popular opinion, and political declarations. Science is not a democracy, science doesn't care what your vote is, science will run your vote down, back over it again, and hide the body.

I actually didn't even want to get into global warming that much in this post, there's a lot more I have to say on the topic, but this is really about the decline of real science in education. Before I start just ranting without substance, I think I'll bring this to a close, and leave you some of the more ridiculous items from the AQA subject content.

11. Biology
11.1 How do human bodies respond to changes inside them and to their environment?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to evaluate the benefits of, and the problems that may arise from, the use of hormones to control fertility, including IVF
- to evaluate the claims of manufacturers about sports drinks.
11.2 What can we do to keep our bodies healthy?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to evaluate information about the effect of food on health.
- to evaluate claims made by slimming programmes.
11.3 How do we use/abuse medical and recreational drugs?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to evaluate the different types of drugs and why some people use illegal drugs for recreation
- to evaluate claims made about the effect of cannabis on health and the link between cannabis and addiction to hard drugs
- to evaluate the different ways of trying to stop smoking.
12. Chemistry
12.1 How do rocks provide building materials?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to consider and evaluate the environmental, social and economic effects of exploiting limestone and producing building materials from it
- to evaluate the developments in using limestone, cement, concrete and glass as building materials, and their advantages and disadvantages over other materials.
12.2 How do rocks provide metals and how are metals used?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to consider and evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts of exploiting metal ores, of using metals and of recycling metals
12.3 How do we get fuels from crude oil?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to evaluate the impact on the environment of burning hydrocarbon fuels
- to consider and evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts of the uses of fuels
- to evaluate developments in the production and uses of better
fuels, for example ethanol and hydrogen.
12.4 How are polymers and ethanol made from oil?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to evaluate the social and economic advantages and disadvantages of using products from crude oil as fuels or as raw materials for plastic and other chemicals
- to evaluate the social, economic and environmental impacts of the uses, disposal and recycling of polymers
- to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of making ethanol from renewable and non-renewable sources
12.5 How can plant oils be used?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to evaluate the effects of using vegetable oils in foods and the impacts on diet and health
- to evaluate the benefits, drawbacks and risks of using vegetable oils to produce fuels
- to evaluate the use, benefits, drawbacks and risks of ingredients and additives in foods.
12.6 What are the changes in the Earth and its atmosphere?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to explain and evaluate theories of the changes that have occurred and are occurring in the Earth’s atmosphere
- to explain and evaluate the effects of human activities on the atmosphere.
13 Physics
13.3 Why are electrical devices so useful?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to compare and contrast the particular advantages and disadvantages of using different electrical devices for a particular application
13.4 How should we generate the electricity we need?
Candidates should use their skills, knowledge and understanding of how science works:
- to compare and contrast the particular advantages and disadvantages of using different energy sources to generate electricity.

Any Sucker Can Learn My Job In Five Minutes

..or at least that's what I got out of this comment I saw on an article I read about SQL Server.

I developing a system and its my first time to use SQL server and By reading your article I feel like I know everything and Is really going to secure my system

Reading one article about process delegation will teach you everything there is about SQL, including server security, I guess. Why do companies hand their databases over to any jackass off the street? You know that has all your data in it right? No one asks the mail clerk to take over the operation of the library of congress. I suspect this is the kind of person that won "participation trophies" at every event in school.

The Hidden History Of History That Was Hidden From You

This ad campaign has been going on for eight months apparently, but I just saw it.

A Patent On Living

Dr. Craig Venter of the human genome sequencing fame, has applied for a patent on a life form. It's a form of life that he's designed, and is trying to build from scratch. Fascinating! The obvious question is, "Can you patent life?" The gut reaction is "Noooooo!!!", but as usual, you have to know what you're asking, before you can answer it. Life. Seems easy, but dictionary.com has 36 definitions for life. Not all of them are relevant, but having a word that means a lot of different things can make things more confusing. The first definition seems best:

the condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.

That seems a bit different from when I was in biology, but it's fairly close. It actually seems a little short, as it's only three things:

1. Metabolism is just energy management, we'll call it eating
2. Reproduction, assuming the patent is for a specific DNA sequence, this would have to be asexual, or our patent wouldn't mean much
   
3. Power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally..... what? let's just call this one self-preservation

Now, let's not bring souls into this, we are talking about the patent office after all. Ok, so if you can make something that eats, makes exact copies of itself, and tries not to die, you've created a life form that might be worth patenting. The asexual restriction really shrinks the playing field to single cell organisms, simple multi-celled life forms like bacteria, and some plants and fungi. Mutation throws a wrench into the works, sort of like a built-in patent expiration. I'm pretty sure that the more complex the life form (the bigger the dna sequence) the more likely spontaneous mutation becomes, but I'm not sure how to work out the statistics. Nevertheless, if you sell something that can reproduce itself, your product is kind of beyond your control after you make your first sale, and you create something that can't reproduce, it no longer qualifies as life. It sees like all the patent would do, would be to keep other people from "manufacturing" your synthetic life forms, but if the life forms are doing that themselves, no one needs to. However, what happens when someone designs a creature that creates sterile duplicates of itself? Or a creature with a built in colony extinction period? Now there's a controllable product. If a creature was engineered specifically as a commodity, can that entire species be "owned" by someone? I'm leaning towards Yes myself.

I know some people will think there's no way you can "own" a living thing, but we're really blurring the line between biology and technology, and that designation is going to become more difficult to make. What we're really talking about here are biological nano-machines built for a specific purpose, like scrubbing CO2 out of the air, and they happen to qualify as life. It's possible that a self-replicating nano-machine might qualify as a life form some day given our criteria, does that mean no one can patent robots that don't want to die? A.I. of course makes thinks even more complicated, and I think that's an important question that we'll need to figure out at some point, hopefully in my life time. And I think the tone for that conversation is going to be set in the near term, in topics like synthetic life.

A Detour On The Spiral Trial

I haven't mastered the art of my digital camera yet, some of these are fuzzy.
After my stint at being a philosophy mod but before my ideas had really solidified, I did some charity work. The charity was called Teens T.A.P. (Teaching AIDS Prevention), and it was a 1-800 help line manned entirely by teenagers. Before you could volunteer, you had to go through a two day over-night training session. It was a little odd, being dropped off in an office building downtown, knowing I would be in this unfamiliar building full of strangers for the next twenty four hours.It started on a Friday night at 5 pm. After signing in I wandered into the conference room to see what the crowd looked like. There were a couple people I recognized from school, we didn't run in the same circles but it was comforting to see some familiar faces. There were also no chairs. As we would be staying there, everyone had a pillow or a sleeping bag, so the room filled up with people sitting on the floor with whatever they brought with them.
Friday's schedule was actually pretty normal. Intro to what we'd be doing, rules for manning the phones, an explanation of what HIV and AIDS are as well as some of the myths about them. At the end of the night we spent an hour getting personalized with Death, then they turned off the lights and told us to go to sleep. As this was basically a slumber party with thirty plus teenagers, the brief dark was quickly filled with chatter. I was next to a redhead girl named Ali that I had talked to earlier in the day, and she suggested that we find some place quieter. I thought this was odd. I hardly knew this girl, why would she ask me to go with her? I decided she probably just didn't want to be alone in the dark in a strange place, what else could it be right? Apparently a bunch of other teenagers had also decided to find some peace and quiet, as a number of rooms we looked into already had kids in them. Ali finally settled on a room at the front of the building that was relatively empty, though it did have the double glass doors looking out at the street. I tossed my pillow on the floor and lay down. She put her sleeping blanket on top of me, and then slid in next to me. My thought at this moment was, "Hmm, that's polite of her, she's sharing". Then a riot broke out in the parking lot. Well, ok, it was across the street, and it probably didn't classify as a riot, but it was at least a skirmish. There were multiple police cars, with sirens blaring, and what sounded like gun fire. An ambulance showed up shortly to add to the light show. I actually found this very "white noise" and drifted off to sleep.

On Saturday, things got a little strange.

We started out with "Phone Counseling Techniques". This was not strange, and was actually a little boring, post people used this time to gossip about "the murder that happened last night in the parking lot." I found it amusing to tell people that I fell asleep while it was happening. In retrospect, it would have been more amusing to tell people that I fell asleep while the murder was taking place and Ali was breathing in my ear. Ali would probably not have been amused by that. The next subject was substance abuse.
This wasn't like drug awareness week. They weren't there to tell us drugs were bad. They were there to tell us how HIV can be transmitted between drug users. They were there to tell us what to say when a you get a drug addict on the phone.

Me: "Hello, Teens TAP, this is Michael" (that's my hot-line code name)
Drug Addict: "Yes, my disease ridden friend just used our last needle to shoot junk into his veins. I would also like to shoot some junk into my veins, please tell me what I should do."
Me: "I can do that"

In case you every find yourself in this situation, you should wash that needle with bleach, twice. Then rinse it off with water, twice. Then put some junk in your veins. I even have a pamphlet on it.
After drugs, it was time to talk about sex. This was the class kids wish was taught in school, this was sex ed plus. I'm pretty sure this segment went long, and we spent about twice as long on this as anything else. After describing how to have sex safely, we got into what kinds of sex there where, all the different slang terms and what they meant.

Then we talked about what can make sex good, and how to give someone an orgasm. If I was less naive then, this is the point where I probably would have started wondering, "Who's idea was it to teach teenagers how to have great safe sex, and then set them loose in a building where the closets are full of condoms?" Oh yeah, the closets in this building were full of condoms, did I forget to mention that? The whole discussion I found quite interesting, though I would not have any need of the information for years to come.



Next on the list, was "Reaching Out In Love". That description, could of course mean almost anything. What it was really about, was auras. This was "Aura Management 101". We got training on how to feel other peoples auras, how to use your own aura to affect the people around you, and how to read other peoples minds. Cause, you know, if you're going to fill the condom building with sex crazed teenagers, you might as well make 'em psychic. I don't think I will ever be able to top that statement, but I'll sure try.

After that we talked about death again, probably to ground us before we were reunited with our parents again. We then had a "year book signing" kind of moment. I got things like this:

Joe, Thanks for feeling my energy! You were a great partner. Hope we get to work together! Luv, Kristal

The part I blocked out, is her phone number. I got the phone numbers of eleven girls. Most of them wrote things like "You're a great guy", "I really hope I'll see you again", "Give me a call". I called Krystal once. She worked at Chucky Cheese, so I went to see her at work one time. She was behind the counter, I said "Hi", then I played some skee ball. No one else got a phone call, it didn't even cross my mind. Except for Ali, I thought about calling her but never did, I've had a thing for redheads ever since.

This twenty-four hour period had a pretty big affect on my life, it was the lens through which my high school years were filtered, and I'm still not really sure how to quantify it. Although it kind of ruins all the punchlines, I do want to say that I'm not taking anything away from Teens TAP or the Good Samaritan Project which runs them. They're great charity groups, and while their training session seems strange, they covered things that we got calls on, this was training for the volunteer work we would be doing, and they did a great job with it.

Except for the stuff about auras, I never got that call.

Not Quite What It Was Before

Phase 1 of Operation Spill My Brains on Your Browser is complete. If I broke anything let me know. Phase 1 was the fun part, which means Phase 2 is the ugly baby. I still love it, but I'll probably just keep it locked in the attic where you'll never see it.

For those who don't know what the hell I'm talking about:

• I made a new banner.
• I may change the style of the rest of the site at some point, don't hold your breathe.
  

Trading Days

Still working on the next installment of my latest narrative, so I'll just do my word recycling tonight. There always seem to be repeated themes in the things I've written. This pattern is actually one of the less interesting ones, the good old standby of the frustrated teenagers, "being alone". Of course, I was more connected to other people then than I have been since. It's a shame that passed me by while I was still trying to figure it out. I realized while looking through my old notebooks that I'm going to quickly run out of things that don't feel embarrassingly personal, even if they are five or more years old. In addition, I can't tell if posting these is just a ego trip or not, I can sometimes find new meaning in the words, but it should be a question of whether you do or not.

written: Winter 1995
Facing the music. Dancing along. The place where she sits is the heart of the kingdom. From where we stand the light gets dimmer. Onward toward a destination neither known nor sought. The wind carries memories of fragrant times closer to the heart. The banners fly from the tower tops, one day I'll do the same. Will I too, be so graceful. Pointless to wander anymore, for no passage leads anywhere. Once the doors where open, now they lay encrypted within their own desires, uncaring of those wishing to proceed. Entry dream keys have become difficult to grasp. To make me whole again. Unknown causes bring unknown effects. The kingdom has fallen. We all dance alone.

written: Winter 2000
And This To Shall Come To Pass
Five years gone by and the words still ring true, as they always will. It is only the meanings that change. All the madness laid within here, surely rings true, else I know not why I've traveled this way. The long way around? Yes, I suppose so, but you were the one to write it.

California, Not Quite Like The Rest Of Us

This comic book about how awful war and America are, is apparently a history & social studies text book in San Fransisco high schools. You will notice that the comic comes with two pages of recommendations, not from historians, but from actors, musicians, and activists. Now, that's pretty funny, and I like my semi-regular dose of California weirdness, but come on, is this in retaliation to intelligent design or something? Let's get the crazy out of the schools, and put it back in the home where it belongs.

The Circle Of Hatred

Zombie is a website that I don't check regularly, but always find something interesting. Today I came across a piece about how extreme left & right wing messages seem to be have something in common lately.

I Am Not A Monster, Just A Big Dork

The Four Way Stop had a post about the nerd quiz, and I am apparently the champeen. Feel free to go there, and take my title away, if you think you are in the 92nd percentile.

The Circuitous Route To The Spiral Trial

After my first date ended in sandwich tragedy, I continued to participate on Grantchester Meadows. The administrator started a discussion forum geared specifically towards philosophy, and decided to have an essay contest to see who the moderator would be. A forum moderator is kind of like a king, a king of a small closet, or gazebo. I felt that this was right up my alley, and wrote an essay about how the perception of time was dependent upon the size of the person perceiving it. It was kind of ridiculous. Even more ridiculous, it turns out I was right for all the wrong reasons, but I don't think I'll get into relativity right now. After I finished writing down my crazy thoughts, I picked up a thesaurus and proceeded to replace all the small words with much bigger words until even I couldn't understand it anymore. No one else even bothered to submit anything and I won by default. I found it kind of disappointing, shortly after learning what "being sweet" meant, I now had first hand experience of what B.S. was all about. I'm sure other people knew there was barely anything philosophical about my junk-science word salad, but when no one wanted the job, it really didn't matter much. I did get a lot of practice however in having discussions about the usual meta-physical questions of "why are we here", "what is the point of all this", and "boxers or briefs". By the age of 16, I knew the answers to all these questions, and I let everyone know it. But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

We eventually had a couple dinners planned, so that the people that used the BBS could meet each other. The first one ended with three restaurant booths splattered in coffee-creamer and us getting kicked out. I'm pretty sure I was the youngest, and the most embarrassed of the attendees. Before we were asked to leave however, I did find it fascinating to discover that some of the people I had been talking to where quite a bit older than me, a couple were as old as my parents. But we all had at least one thing in common, we were all computer geeks. I'm pretty sure that anyone that used a BBS was a computer geek, because the dawn of the internet was geek-topia, and you've ruined it with your "instant messengers" and "pictures", but I digress. After the first meeting ended abruptly, I decided to plan the second meeting myself. I picked a park within walking distance from my parents house, because I had never heard of people getting kicked out of a park, and I still was too young to drive. The second event did last longer, and it was nice to get a chance to talk to everyone in person. I do have a memory of my brother holding a handful of half melted marshmallows and cackling with mad glee, but the reason for this escapes me.

That was pretty much the end of what I was able to learn from Grantchester Meadows. My beliefs had become truths, verified by peers that where four times my age. I of course, did not know that this probably said more about them than it did about me. One of those beliefs, involved how teachers and students interact with each other, and how we switch in and out of those roles when communicating with each other. I thought it was a pretty cool belief, and since anything cool deserves a cool sounding name, I called it the Spiral Trial. Which is where I will pick this story up next time.

Tell me what you were holding when you cackled with mad glee in the comments.

Please Stop Spamming Me

Ninety percent of the time, when I get an email at work that was sent to the whole building or the whole company, it's something I will never need. Sixty percent of the time, it's not even work related. I consider it spam, and I'm always tempted to spam them back. Actually, when I got my latest business class spam today, my first thought was to subscribe them to my blog so they could also enjoy getting emails they didn't want or ask for, but fighting fire with fire probably is not a good way to approach spam. One of the managers at my company has a habit of sending out a batch of insiprational quotes to everyone about once a month. I want an "unsubscribe" option, but you can't really ask a VP to "please stop sending me your drivel." One of the last batches was about creativity:

Subject: Thought for the Day
I liked the following quotes, so I thought
I would share them.

Creativity is like a muscle. You
either use it or lose it. – Roger Von Oech

I forwarded this to a couple of my coworkers, and added my own quote:

Subject: FW: Thought for the Day
I really liked this quote so I thought I
would share it with everyone.

"The truly creative don't quote other
people" - Joseph Cerra

My boss told me I was mean. She also laughed, so I must not have been to far off the mark.
Today I received (and so did everyone else), an advertisement for Chipotle about some charity thing they're doing tomorrower with Haresters. This came as part of a chain-email (you know "FW: FW: FW: FW: Chipotle & Harvesters". For those of you who send send out emails to lots of people in your address book, you should use Blind Carbon-Copy, it's the polite thing to do. The reason of course is that everyone who works at my company now has all 50 of those email addresses that weren't hidden. This is one way you get added to spam lists. I myself am tempted to sign these strangers up for porn. I wouldn't actually do it, I just think it's funny, but there are people who will, and they'll make money while doing it.

Logorific

Here is a preview of what I've been working on for the new site design. It's slow, but I'm making progress. It's still a bit dark, if you click on it for the larger version it's a little easier to make out.