The Epistles of a Latter Day Apostle

You can already read St. Paul's letters by picking up a bible, so I don't think that he would have minded if you were to read his email, right? Click here to check it out...

Welcome to Reality

"The process of scientific discovery is, in fact, a continual flight from wonder"
   -Albert Einstein

Sometimes the barbs of your political opponents are unfair and hurtful, and sometimes they not only right on target but very well appreciated. An aide in the Bush administration was famously quoted by Ron Suskind in a 2004 New York Times magazine article. Suskind was told that:

" ... guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality-judiciously, as you will-we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Well, the reality-based community is where I want to live. I'm sure that truly honest, thoughtful, citizens (Democrats, Republicans and the rest) would admit that decisions are best based on what is, rather than on fantasy. But there is a powerful opposing force that draws us away from reality, causing us to act based on wishful thinking and unverifiable doctrine. This force is religion and its engine is faith.

Sometimes the same concept can be spun positively or negatively by good labeling. Consider the two sides of the abortion debate. One sides calls the teams pro-choice and anti-choice. The other uses the terms pro-life and pro-death for the same two camps. Very different connotations, same reallity.

Similarly, the word "faith" can have two opposing flavors. For most of the world's people, faith is unabashedly positive, suggesting moral, upstanding individuals who battle the forces of Satan and his evil minions here on earth. But what faith literally means is the acceptance of something for which by definition there is no evidence. Religion gets a pass when it comes to the standards of reason, science and logic- standards which are rigorously enforced in bridge construction and cardiac surgery. No one wants to fly in an airplane where the engineers relied on their unwavering faith in God's love to make sure that adequate lift and thrust were on board.

It is true that some very successful scientists have held strong religious beliefs. I feel that the only way one can honestly do this - having "faith" about God while requiring rigorous proof and the scientific method in one's exploration of the physical universe - is to believe in two separate spheres of existence. The physical world is governed by one set of laws, while the spiritual world governed by others. The important caveat here is that the spiritual world must not directly influence the physical world, nor vice versa. This is, of course, not the approach of those who use religion as a blueprint for society. That urge to govern according to religious doctrine has been played out in theocracies throughout the ages - from medieval Europe to modern Islamic states, or in the very common thread of Christian politics in our own democracy.

Several authors have commented on this schism between reality and faith. Richard Dawkins, the well known British biologist and author of The Selfish Gene frequently writes on issues of humanism and atheism. Sam Harris' The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason analyzes the terrifying political and apocalyptical implications of suspending reason to make room for faith in the modern world. Comedian and author Bill Maher cites the folly of religion, referring to the September 11th attacks as a "faith based initiative" and deriding the arrogance of people who claim to know unknowables, such as what happens after death. And actress and author Julia Sweeney's one woman show, "Letting Go of God", describes her journey from religious dogma into enlightenment with humor and tenderness.

Yet these are extremely marginalized voices in our religious society, where faith is the default assumption. In much of our world, the lack of faith is seen as bizarre at best, if not out and out heretical sabotage of all that is good. Why does religion persist in this near universal popularity? Why does a species that has over and over for thousands of years been ground down by the bloody march of history - despite a fanatical devotion to God in many forms - cling to the notion that an intelligent, benevolent being is in charge of every aspect of their lives? I believe that has to do with the evolution of our own intelligence.

At some point in history, one of our ancestors had a blinding flash of insight, and realized that he or she was going to die. This epiphany, the awareness of the inevitable end of our own existence, is an awesome burden for any individual consciousness. There are three possible responses to this fact: denial of death, faith in life after death, and enjoyment of the one life that we know that we have.

Denial of death is our initial reaction, a product of immaturity. Children and teenagers notoriously believe in immortality (or at least act as if they do). Cryogenics enthusiasts and believers in near future breakthroughs in longevity research also cling to to this hope. As the old joke goes: "I'm planning on living forever." "Really? How's it going?" "So far, so good."

Faith in life after death is the big seller of the three, and is the cornerstone of most organized religion. This is a brilliant solution that society has developed to kill two birds with one stone. The claim is that there is eternal life, but you only get it if you follow certain rules. Thus, people are inoculated against the terrible truth of personal annihilation. At the same time, an incredibly powerful control infrastructure is established, allowing whoever lays claim to the secrets of faith to hold sway over the population in a way that leaders using simple force can never achieve. The most brutal dictator can be toppled or killed in an instant, but the church's power is for all practical purposes unassailable. People can be talked into risking one life for a cause if they think that paradise awaits the faithful. But very few of those people want to gamble with the big eternal payoff by challenging God.

For this reason, I do not see our society evolving en mass beyond the need for religion any time soon. It is just too much to ask for the vast majority of people to give up their oxygen, the assurance that life everlasting awaits the true believer. According to Harris, this dooms us to anihillilation at some point - probably at the corner of Faith Street and Nuclear Avenue. But some of us can chose to live free of the bonds of superstition and fantasy, in hopes that everyone else will catch on before we get around to making the rapture real. And this is the third response to our mortality.

The Church of Reality is one of the many philosophies structured along these lines. Certainly, the concept of enjoying the here and now is not original with this organization. Freethinkers, atheists, and others have stressed the importance of making the best of this incredibly wonderful life that we have, rather than spending it trying to game the system so that we get another, better one after we die. The COR takes the concept one step further, casting it as a church, keeping the good qualities of religion while dispensing with those that require "faith" (unquestioning belief in improvable, illogical postulates). In fact, faith by its strict definition could be said to be a sin in the COR - abandoning one's reason and logic. There is no god to worship, or ritual required for salvation. COR members are called Realists, and greet each other by saying "welcome to reality".

What the COR retains of religion is the concept of "sacredness" - something that is extremely desirable and therefore the goal of all its adherents. The COR considers the "tree of knowledge" to be sacred, it is the sum total of all human understanding, acquired through the objective, scientific examination of reality. Interestingly, (and presumably, deliberately) this is in stark contrast to conventional Judeo-Christian myth, in which man was punished by God for the very first sin - tasting the fruit of the tree of knowledge. What better characterization of faith can there be than that? The absolute worst thing that you can do as a faith-based person is to learn, to understand reality, to choose what is real over myth and fantasy.

What would Realists say about the concept of the traditional God of organized religion? It certainly can't be ignored - this particular myth has had more impact on our society than almost any other concept in human history. But rather than seeing God as a real actor, with which people must interact, the Realist could see God as a literary or cultural concept. God would be a fictional character just like Hamlet or Huckleberry Finn, that can both entertain and instruct. Literature isn't "real", but it is still an important part of human existence. And through example, it can have positive effects. You don't have to believe that Hamlet really existed to live your life so you don't end up like he did.

Finally, remember that the COR is at it's very base an evolving concept. Whatever is proven to be real becomes a part of the tree of knowledge, and thus, a part of church doctrine. The COR does not teach that there is no afterlife, because the non-existence of an afterlife has not been proven. Therefore, what happens after death isn't part of the tree, so there is no reason to make or believe anyone's claims about that realm. But Realists are continually exploring their environment. If there is life after death, Realists on the other side of the mortal boundary would be simply add this new knowledge to the tree and keep on exploring.

In the Matrix film trilogy, the protagonist Neo wakes to realize that the "normal" world he has been living in is nothing more than an elaborately constructed, computer generated fantasy. The real world is far more dark, dangerous, and challenging, but it's real. He is given the option at one point to choose between a return to fantasy and the acceptance of reality, with the implied possibility of making the real world better. Neo chooses reality. We should do the same.

Got a Secret...?

Post Secret is a fascinating blog. It is a community based art project, in which people mail in secrets and have them posted online anonymously. That's mail 1.0. The original, real, dead-tree, post card type. The secrets are submitted as post cards decorated with the author's words or other design elements. VERY hard to look away.

New secrets every Sunday. I collect the best ones, since there are no archives online, and the old ones are replaced each week.

The Wit of Alex Gregory

Alex Gregory is a cartoonist for the New Yorker, as well as a television comedy writer. Among other shows, he has worked on "King of the Hill" and "Late Night with David Letterman". In this interview, he talks about the importance of editing in humor, how extra verbiage can kill an otherwise funny concept. I really appreciate this point - I always edit down jokes I get through email before forwarding them on...

Some cartoonists draw their humor from wacky visuals, but Gregory's pieces are carefully draw to the point of being draftsmanlike. The comedy comes from a finely honed punchline. Anyway, I wanted to put this cartoon on my blog, and so I wrote this little tribute to the great Mr. Gregory to make it seem less contrived..!

Find the Human..!

One of the least controversial statements that you can make is to say that phone trees suck.

Certainly, the invention of the phone tree was a major breakthrough in the field of human resource management. Any time a real human employee speaks with a customer, it eats into the profit margin. In theory, the phone tree helps route your call within a large organization to the person who is most likely to be able to help you, or even answers your question without a person being involved at all. In actuality, phone trees range from useless to malignant.

The useless ones keep you picking your way through irrelevant options until your cell connection is dropped after 45 minutes of hunt and peck ("If you have trouble connecting to the Internet, check out the troubleshooting page on our Web site!") . The malignant ones deliberately try to deflect consumer traffic by getting you to hang up. Anyone with the brains to dial knows that until someone answers your call, you are waiting for an available operator. The executive who decided that a recording stating this fact needs to be played every 10 seconds for a half an hour will certainly burn in a very nasty section of hell, if there is any justice in the universe.

In any case, once again the Internet rises to the occasion. Getting to a human being is the Holy Grail of customer support, and you need to get there as quickly as possible. Here is a list of phone tree shortcuts for a whole bunch of US companies. Use these secret passcodes and your missing cheese log gift package will be on your doorstep before you can say "your call is very important to us"...

Bad News in the Big Easy

OK, what good is an online community if you can't occasionally share important links?

New Orleans. Really bad. Worse coming.

If you want to take a lesson about the pain that comes from hubris, and remind yourself that we all live in a zero-sum game, you can read this. Seems to come from a source pretty close to the wet zone (the Times-Picayune).

If you want a little backstory about the engineering involved, you can read this.

And if you want to actually do something, you can go here.

Give away your money more efficiently...

Many of us who support charities worry about whether or not our donations are doing all that they could. When the Red Cross was flooded with money after 9/11 or after the Tsunami last December, they took a lot of critical flak from pundits who second-guessed the trajectory of every dollar. And while even the most sparsely run charity needs a telephone line and a fax, many of these organizations shower their paid executives with largess that rivals that seen in corporate America.

On the other hand, sometimes paying more for strong, experienced leadership leads to an overall improvement in revenues, and therefore to the ultimate recipients of aid. Some of these organizations manage over a billion dollars a year in donations- a CEO who is a 1% more efficient fundraiser could add ten million dollars to the yearly take.

Pallota Teamworks was a for-profit charity services company (running the AIDS rides and other fundraising efforts), which collapsed in 2002 amidst allegations of high overhead and undercutting of smaller grassroots programs. However, by the time that the company went under, they had raised over 200 million dollars for AIDS and breast cancer groups. I participated in the last AIDS ride, and was incredibly impressed by the professionalism and community spirit so frequently lacking from events organized by non-profit organizations with primarily volunteere labor. Were they profiteers or saints? Maybe a little of each...

So the question is, where do you send your money? Do you look for the organization with the greatest efficiency (percentage of donations going to charity), or the greatest overall contribution to the cause? This is not an easy question, and there are a number of complicated intervening variables that make picking a charity difficult.

This is where Charity Navigator comes in. This site brings to the world of giving the in-depth data mining and "executive summary" reports typically seen on Wall Street's equity analysis Web pages. Charities are rated on efficiency, capacity, and ranked against other organizations in their areas. This type of information can really help extend your donation. You may have a favorite cause, which you have supported for years, only to find out that another group covers the same area much more efficiently.

The site is very easy to read and navigate, and the database is exhaustive and frequently updated. There are a bunch of great resources such as tax tips, personalized charity tracking lists, sector analyses, and a calculator to optimize your donations. They have a good deal of background information on charities in general, breaking news on humanitarian crises around the world, advice on how to deal with unwanted appeals, as well as some fascinating "top ten" lists- for example, the top ten highly paid CEOs at low rated charities!

This is what the Web should be- an elegant aggregation of useful data that is actually fun to use.

Is there anything you can't do underwater..?

This is just a survey of odd things that people do underwater (extending my previous post about dive cycling). Most of the links were cited by the great Willy Volk on divester.com, one of the finest dive blog on the Web. Maybe the ONLY dive blog on the Web...

Don't forget to check out the diving dog. Unbelievable.

• Ride bikes
  
• Race bikes
  
• Walk dogs
  
• Snorkel in a peat bog
  
• Iron clothing
  
• Get married
  
• Play monopoly
  
• Play the violin
  
• Have sex
  

As I Lay Blogging

As I am sure you know, Hemispheres magazine- the in-flight journal of United Airlines- has sponsored an annual literary contest over the past few years. In this contest, authors are invited to write in the styles of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. The "faux Faulkner" and "imitation Hemmingway" contest rules, along with the past winning entries, can be found here. The Faulkner contest is co-sponsored by the University of Mississippi's Department of English and Center for the Study of Southern Culture, as well as Yoknapatawpha Press.

There was apparently a bit of controversy over the winner of the faux Faulkner award this year. Sam Apple wrote a parody of "The Sound and the Fury" with George Bush cast as the role of the Benjy, the 33 year old mentally challenged narrator. So Hemispheres magazine chose not to publish the winning essay in their print version (although it does appear on their Web site). Read and enjoy.

In case you have too much free time...

On first glance, this video - widely distributed around the Internet and apparently created by the group at signs-of-the-times.org - sure seems like a classic conspiracy theory. A little background checking ties this production to French author Thierry Meyssan's claim that the 9/11 attacks were staged by our own government for nefarious purposes, and that the pentagon was attacked by some military plane and/or missile after American Airlines flight 77 was diverted elsewhere.

One obvious problem with Thierry's theory (hey, that sounds good!) is evident when you ask yourself the question: "OK, well then what DID happen to flight 77 anyway, if it didn't really hit the Pentagon?". As usual, snopes.com does an exhaustive and excellent debunking of this claim and the offered "evidence".

So why is it here? Well, for two reasons...

1) To make you aware of this claim, and it's well reasoned answer.

2) To show you the video, which I must admit, is pretty well produced..!

Shockwave and awe

A very powerful little piece of shockwave flash animation. Graphic designer Tim Klimowicz memorializes casualties of the coalition forces on a map, ten days every second. Click on the red button to start it up.

It's easy to dismiss something like this as partisan. Remember the Pentagon policy that prohibited showing photographs of the flag draped coffins, and the progressive push to release them?. There is a common perception that focusing on the costs of war undermines the administration's position- and there is some truth to this.

Nevertheless, this display really should resonate for you no matter what your opinion is of our involvement in Iraq. And as a very wise friend pointed out to me, this map would be a lot busier if it showed Iraqi casualties (they aren't all enemy combatants, you know...).

If you want to help our friends and relatives in military service, here is a good resource page from Stars and Stripes with a bunch of ideas. I have used this site before to send phone cards overseas.

And never let the right wing spin machine get away with implying that they are the only ones who "support the troops"...

Two of my favorite things!

Wow. Sign me up. But how do I get wireless Internet access while I ride? Oh, well, at least the sushi will be fresh..!


UPDATE: Looks like this idea is catching on! Well, at least now there is more than one person doing it...

...and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger...

OK, this has been out for a while, apparently. But the new Tim Burton flick has put me in the mood for a dark, twisted take on a happy childhood memory. And there are few movies that go together as well as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and "Apocalypse Now".

With text by Dave Milloway and Matt Wood, and illustrations by Stephanie Freese, Chocolypse Now really hits the spot. Milloway, Wood and Freese also publish The Dada Detective.

Mmmmmm... that's good chocolate!

Fun with Shockwave

OK, here are two random but cool little shockwave toys. One is by Aaron Clinger, and is know as "The Man Project". It's a virtual homonculus that you can drag around with your mouse.

The second one is a bit more disturbing, but very engaging for some reason. Despite extensive and exhaustive research (five minutes with google), I couldn't find an author or the original version of this thing. It is a woman (or manniquin, if you prefer) with VERY flexible joints who falls endlessly through a field of spheres. If she gets stuck, you can click and drag her out into the clear.

Have fun!

The Summer of the Shark, Part II

There is something ominous about the recent run of shark attack stories in the news over the past few weeks. And here it is: the last time we had a “summer of the shark”, if you recall, it was the summer of 2001. Later that fall, I remember several media pundits looking nostalgically back to a simpler time, when we had to rely on incredibly rare (but SCARY) natural events for our daily dose of terror.

Hey, how about that. In the year 2000, the estimated United States beach attendance figure was 264 million (yes, that probably is more than the US population, but you have to count all those tourists from the Caribbean who come to New Jersey each year). And out of that, there were 23 unprovoked shark attacks, with one fatality. 2001 certainly was a scarier year, with a 200% increase in the fatality rate (to three).

Well, we all found other things to give us nightmares that September, but now sharks are in the news again. These attacks are extremely uncommon yet very dramatic, and they dominate the airwaves when there is a lull in other stories. So I hope that this upswing doesn’t imply any fresh horror waiting in the wings.

Anyway, the point of this post is to let you know about a great Web site from the Florida Museum of Natural History. Don’t just dismiss this as a chamber of commerce, “mayor-in-Jaws” style smokescreen to get the tourists back in the water. Risk and danger are all about statistics, and this site has some good ones.

The actual risk of a shark related fatality is pretty low. Never zero (unless you stay in the beach bar), but pretty close. Certainly far lower than many other risks that we assume without a second thought. You have a one in 7,000 chance of dying in an automobile accident for each year you drive in the United States. That means, for even the worst year in the past few decades (2001, with three shark related fatalities in the US), you are about FIFTEEN THOUSAND times more likely to die in a car wreck than from a shark bite.

Between 1948 and 2003, there were 13 fatalities from alligator attacks in Florida, compared to 8 shark related deaths over the same 55 year period. There were approximately 80 times as many deaths from lightning strikes than from sharks in the country over the past 50 years, and 35 times as many people died from tornado injuries than sharks over the last decade and a half. Fatal dog bites are about 45 times as common as shark bites, and even mountain lions kill more people on average each year than sharks.

All this doesn’t mean that there aren’t activities that put you in an increased risk pool. Surface activity, especially surfing on short boards, is notorious for making a person resemble traditional shark prey (such as seals). There is a lot of good information on this site on reducing the risk of attack, and how to react if a shark does appear while you are in the water.

Happy swimming…!

This. Totally. Rocks.

What is is with Google? They ALWAYS seem to hit the nail right on the head with their little applications. Clean, quick, and incredibly useful. Check this out if you have a cell phone. In 2005, that's like saying "check this out if you have at least one lung".

Google SMS lets you get all kinds of information through your cell by sending an SMS (short message service) to their server. You simply message the phone number 46645 (yes, it works). 46645 is "googl" on your numeric keypad.

Take a look at the Google SMS home page for more details. You can get a wide range of information like driving directions, weather, business listings, restaurants, movie showtimes, etc... For example, typing "Mexican 10128" will give you the address and phone number of any listed Mexican restaurants in the 10128 zip code.

Nice. Very nice.

I'm a blastocyst, and I vote..!

Often lost in political rhetoric is a good understanding of the factual background information relating to a particular controversy. For example, I was SHOCKED to learn that Saddam Hussain actually did not use stem cells to grow a clone army from Osama Bin Laden's discarded facial hair (it turns out Bin Laden doesn't trim his beard, so the plan was foiled).

In any case, if you would like to learn a little about the issues surrounding embryonic stem cell research, through a thorough but not overly technical presentation, read Farhad Manjoo's excellent piece in Salon.

Understanding the politics involved in this debate makes it clear that the administration's stance is ethically and intellectually untenable. In the abortion debate no quarter is given by either side and conservatives find ready allies among those who feel that full, human life begins at the moment of conception, period. However, even some conservative Republican legislators have defied the president recently, supporting (and passing) a bill to increase federal funding for new embryonic stem cell lines.

The president (along with virtually all Americans) supports the very popular in vitro fertilization techniques which result in the necessary creation and wastage of some unwanted fertilized ova (or "embryonic-Americans", if you prefer). He has also not engaged in rhetoric calling for a ban on embryonic stem cell research, but has simply resisted federal funding for this line of work. Both of these stances, as Manjoo points out, are political decisions arising from a need to consolidate power, get reelected, and further the cause of the Republican party as a whole.

If Bush were truly convinced (as some on the right claim) that a fertilized egg is worthy of the same defense as any other American citizen, then these positions are illogical at best, and cynically manipulative at worst. If you actually feel that abortion is murder, you should work to stop it. Just hiding behind "state's rights" doesn't cut it if your principles are at stake. We don't say "well, arson and kidnapping are bad, so I'll oppose federal funding for them, but if the people of any given state want to support those activities, then that's their business".

The entire civil rights movement was based on the idea that it's not enough to retreat to an integrated northern state and ignore Jim Crow in the south. The Civil Rights act of 1964 spoke loudly, saying that segregation was wrong anywhere in the United States. An intellectually honest pro-life advocate would have to say the same thing about embryonic stem cell research. The current administration doesn't do this, making their principled stance ring hollow.

Do you want anchovies with that..?

OK, if you are bored with the Caribbean, consider a trip to South Africa sometime in the next few months. Between May and July, a massive migration of sardines make a trip up the coast in a shoal of billions. These mega-schools are up to 10 miles long, two miles wide and over a hundred feet deep! And they are the mother of all buffets for a wide variety of ocean predators, including sharks, birds, dolphins and whales.

SardineRun.com has all the information about booking a trip, and the site also has some of Charles Maxwell's incredible movies and still photos of the party. Thanks to Divester for the tip...!

Retro Tech

Mickey Bayard's Fotolog

Here is something very simple, beautiful and fascinating. Not only is this guy's work retro, but I actually found him OFFLINE! That's right, I went out into the real, physical universe! It was a beautiful day, and I was wandering around the outdoor market at Union Square, and found him selling his prints.

Mickey Bayard's technique is "pinhole photography", perhaps the oldest technique in imaging. It simply involves light from an illuminated scene passing through a very small hole and producing an inverted image on the opposite side. There is a ninth century reference to the technique in the writing of the Chinese author Tuan Cheng Shih. It was described more fully around AD 1000 by the Persian mathematician Alhazen Ibn Al-Haytham. It does not appear in the European literature until 600 years later, as Giambattista della Porta's Camera Obscura (guess who usually gets the credit?). Eventually, photographic emulsions were used to record the images projected through the pinhole.

Mr. Bayard uses a variety of homemade cameras which are basically light-tight boxes with a pinhole in one wall and a piece of light sensitive paper on the opposite wall. After setting up the shot, he opens the pinhole (which acts as the lens) for 5 seconds to 5 minutes.

I should point out that this guy's work is not notable just because of the clever use of film cannisters or Altiod boxes as cameras. He is also a VERY talented photographer. The pieces are, in his words, "...reminiscent of the old masters of photography". I agree.

Diving and Blogging! Now if I could only bike and surf the Web at the same time...

Divester

OK, this looks like fun. Inspires me to do a special topic blog. Then again, I can barely find the time to post HERE regularly... better leave the dive blogging to Willy Volk.

Got Writer's Block...?

Automatic Compuer Science Paper Generator

For those of us in academics, career advancement usually depends on a regular output of scientific papers, published in the literature and presented at national conferences. And once again, the World Wide Web has given us an application to make this task easier.

Some MIT Computer Science students have come up with this automatic manuscript generator, which produces beautifully written and formatted articles complete with figures and references, under whatever author name(s) you specify. Go try it out, and don't forget to save your paper as a PDF file for that professional look.

Oh, one thing... the papers? Complete gibberish. Hard to tell if you aren't a computer scientist, but they are just randomly generated, grammatically correct prose.

Oh, and one more thing... these guys submitted one of the papers to a conference- The 9th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics. And it got accepted. They are going to Orlando to present it.

In case you were worried about your own ethical standards...

Stories from the trenches

This is funny. VERY funny. Funny in a dry, sick, soulless way. But still funny. I don't know who this guy is, but he has a great ear for inner dialogue.

Once you start reading it, it's hard to stop. Hope he keeps it up...

We STILL like the moon...

OK, I'm a bit late, zeitgeist-wise, in posting this sick little ditty. I circulated it a few months ago, using email. But now it is on my blog. With a screen shot. w00t!

You know, email is SO 2004...

Oh, great Swami, show your humble student the path to the exit row...

SeatGuru.com - Your Enlightened Guide to Airplane Seating

This looks useful...

When I fly, I usually don't really look at the type of airplane, even though I guess this information is available through travelocity. I assume that all of the offered aircraft have two wings and the necessary engines, landing gear and assorted aviation dodads that I would need to safely complete my journey.

But once again, the Web makes it possible to improve the quality of our lives while wasting time at work. So check out Seat Guru. Make sure that you get a seat near a power outlet so that you can play "Halo 4 - The Journey to the Mall" on your PowerBook as you fly to Los Angeles.

If only my ancestors had been able to access the Internet, Great Grandpa Tresjanski and his family wouldn't have had to sit in steerage all the way to America.

Avast, ye scurvy counsel...!

If you- like me- just can't wait until next September 19th, click here to check out Captain Hooke Silver, Attorney at Law. He doesn't like Ninjas.

September 19th..? Well if you don't know what September 19th is, you'll just have to click here.

Apartment Listing Map

Apartment Listing Map

This is an INCREDIBLE little hack. It combines the listings on CraigsList for apartment rentals and sales, with google maps. You just pick rent or sale, pick a city and a price range, and you get a great map with flags at each of the sites, color coded for cost.

Very cool.

Even if you don't want to move right now.

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

You know, I wonder how our nation ever managed without the genius that is PowerPoint... If only our forefathers had access to this technology.

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

This is a classic essay (from 1973) by the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. The writing could probably use a little tightening up, but I do think that it is worth reading. It's so easy to fall into creationsist "traps" when arguing with them, and the fact that they are having some success pushing their agenda onto school boards should be a big red flag for all of us.

This is not about freedom of religion. While it is true that evolution is a "theory", this word is misleadingly used in creationist rhetoric. They imply that it is just as plausible as any other guess about the origin of the world, and it is only the vested interests in the scientific community that pass it off as fact.

As Dobzhansky points out, the Copernican theory is just a theory too- no one has directly observed the earth revolving around the sun. But all that we have built, discovered, engineered and learned about our world and our bodies, all of the advances of technology, medicine, meterology, astrophysics, and so forth rests on similar "theories". There is simply no justification for stating that any other guess is just as valid (and just as deserving of equal time in the classroom) as the established theories of good science.

When things are obviously critical, we don't call for "equal time" for alternative viewpoints that make no sense compared to established scientific theories. You don't want your surgeon to give equal time to viewpoints that "compete" with the theory of the circulation of the blood, or of the germ theory of disease. You don't want your military commanders to assume that since God is on our side, we don't have to bother studying the enemy or planning battles. Much of the theory of Newtonian physics has been shown to be incomplete (as the creationists point out about evolution). However, we still rely on it when trying to stop our car at a red light...

The nation went into a panic in 1957, when the Soviet Union successfully launched satellite into earth orbit. We quickly ratcheted up spending on education, made the teaching of science a priority in our schools, and probably sowed the seeds for the next generation of scientists. Among other effects, this led to America's current technological and military prowess.

When textbook manufacturers move to prepare books for our schools with unscientific, faith-based content, they do a trememdous disservice to our children and our country. And since the southern school districts tend to buy in bulk cooperatives, no publisher will be willing to risk losing such a massive order by ignoring these mounting concerns. Blue state parents may soon find their children bringing home books that give "equal time" to creationist religious doctrine, because there are no others available.

This might look like a fringe movement, but this has far-reaching implications. This is far more important than a monument to the ten commandments in a courtroom. This is our future. Don't let them get away with it.

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

If you appreciate the graphical display of information, this site is absolutely amazing. It requires the ability to run Java (free and already incorporated into most modern browsers).

The site is basically just a database of the popularity of a number of given names over the last 100 years. The width of a particular name's "band" is proportional to its popularity, with blue bands for boy's names and pink bands for girl's names. By typing a name into the site, you will see a graph of that name's popularity over the century. If you only type the first few letters of a name, you will see those names which start with those letters.

This description is boring. But the site is very cool. Go play...

Bloodmobile

Here is something you might like if you are a fan of the band "They Might be Giants", or if you just like human physiology...

Bloodmobile

Boring Boring: A Directory of Dull Things

Boring Boring: A Directory of Dull Things

BoingBoing.net is a great way to keep up with various bits of Web effluvia... this site is a pretty funny parody of BoingBoing. But then again, if you haven't read BoingBoing (or a similar site) in a while, you might not find this too funny...

The Digital Life Lab at Caltech

This is pretty interesting, it was featured in Discover magazined... helps you understand about how evolution works...

The Digital Life Lab at Caltech: "Avida is an auto-adaptive genetic system designed primarily for use as a platform in Digital or Artificial Life research. In lay terms, Avida is a digital world in which simple computer programs mutate and evolve.

Avida allows us to study questions and perform experiments in evolutionalry dynamics and theoretical biology that are intractable in real biological system."

Fn with Flickr

Flickr (actually www.flickr.com) is a very cool little Web application. It's a photo site where you can upload your own pictures, share them with other flickr community members, rate them, etc... But that in and of iteslf wouldn't be interesting enough for Mike's Blog! Flickr has some other aspects, though, that gives it a high geek score.

Flickr has a lot of the same appeal that Apple's iPhoto does... similar look, and the ability to easily use albums to organize your pictures. There is a Flickr blog (hooray!). In addition to the ability to upload pictures manually to the Web site, Flickr lets you use a very nice little uploader (or "uploadr", in Flicker speak) as well as letting you email photos to your account...

Flickr has a "badge" feature, in which it can generate a little bit of HTML code that links to a javascript application that pulls a random picture from my flickr account...Here, I put some of this code on this page. Why didn't I just put it here, on my blog? Apparently blogger won't let me do that directly.

Finally, Flicker has the ability to produce RSS feeds, meaning that you can tell your news aggregator (you do have a news aggregator, right?) to watch flicker, say, for photos of cats, and then every time someone posts one, you see it in your aggregator window. Well, you might not want to do THAT, but you get the idea...

Give it a try. It's free. How much trouble could you get into following advice like that?

Mother nature

A lot has been written about the disaster that struck the nations around the rim of the Indian Ocean on December 26th. There are exhaustive articles on the nature of tsunamis in general as well as this particular event. The blogging community of southern Asia has produced a number of riveting first hand accounts of the carnage that have an immediacy lacking from traditional journalism. The three questions that seem to be most commonly asked are "How did this happen?", "What can I do to help?" and "How can anyone prevent this from happening again?".

A tsunami ("tidal wave") is different from the surface waves that continually wash over our beaches. The difference is the mass of water that is being displaced. A surface wave is generated by weather- wind whipping up a relatively small amount of water on the surface of the ocean. Severe storms can generate waves that are very large, even larger then tsunamis when they hit land. But the total mass of water is tiny compared to a tsunami, so their destructive power is limited to the immediate shoreline, where they are quickly dissipated.

On the other hand, a tsunami is caused by a rapid displacement of the floor of the ocean, as is caused by an undersea earthquake. In this situation, the entire mass of the ocean over the site of the displacement is rapidly shifted, causing a disturbance of an immense amount of water. As this disturbance wave travels in the deep ocean, it may not even be noticed by ships at sea- the swell can be only a foot or two high. However, when it moves near land, that same unimaginably huge mass of water is now funneled into a progressively shallower space, resulting in a massive wall of water with the full weight of the ocean behind it. The term "tidal wave" is a misnomer, and its use is discouraged by scientists. Tsunamis have nothing to do with the normal process of tidal ebb and flow.

The most important thing that we can do now, here in the United States, is to send money. There is no practical way of physically helping out, but a massive financial relief effort is crucial. Financial aid is needed not only for immediate assistance, but to prevent the death toll from climbing higher due to disease that frequently follows such massive disasters.

I personally contribute through the Red Cross. This organization took a lot of flak in the aftermath of the 9/11 relief effort, which I felt was extremely unfair. Most people who complained about how their contributions were being spent had very little understanding of the complexities involved in such a massive project. I spent a lot of time working with the Red Cross at the World Trade Center site during those days, and I was extremely impressed with their efficacy, compassion and organization. Furthermore, independant charity scoring agencies (such as the American Institute of Philanthropy and Charity Navigator) have given the Red Cross their highest ratings. There are a number of charities which are helping with this disaster, if you prefer- both the AIP and Charity Navigator Web sites suggest some good ones. But don't wait, the need is real and urgent.

Finally, there is the question of how such a disaster can be prevented in the future. Nothing can obviously be done to prevent earthquakes or the resultant tsunamis. However, unlike quakes that occur on land with little or no warning, tsunamis may travel in the open ocean for several hours before hitting the shore. In the Pacific, where tsunamis are common, many nations participate in the use of early warning systems. The most common approach is an ocean bottom pressure system, which can detect massive shifts of water. Surface buoys transmit the information to shore, and may give inhabitants enough time to evacuate.

The earth tremor itself propigates much more rapidly than the water waves, and can be detected from across the planet quickly. Unfortunately, one cannot always predict whether or not a given undersea quake will give rise to a tsunami, so there would be many false alarms if seismic data alone were used to order evaucations.

One of the reasons why the death toll was so high in December was that tsunamis are extremely uncommon in the Indian ocean. The last such disaster in the Indian ocean was in 1883, after the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa, with 36,000 estimated deaths. In the Pacific, on the other hand, tsunamis occur on a regular basis. The people living around the Pacific rim, especially in Japan, are very concious of this possibility. Several minutes before a tsunami hits land, the sea recedes. Pacific coastal inhabitants might recognize what is coming and immediately head for high ground. In the Indian ocean, on the other hand, this is so rare that some people actually moved down to the shore to investigate the strange phenomenon, putting them directly in harm's way. Apparently some of the nations around the Indian Ocean are now considering the implementation of a Pacific-style tsunami warning system.

Animation from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

The fantasy of closure

There is an old joke that comes to mind when reading about the Washington governer's race. A tour guide in the Museum of Natural History takes his group past an exhibit of dinosaur bones. One of the children ask him how old the bones are. He replies "sixty million and two years old". The child's father ask him how he knows that, and the guide replies "Well, when I started working here two years ago, they told me that they were sixty million years old".

Recent events have thrown the issue of accurate voting into the public spotlight. From the Florida in 2000, to Ohio, Washington State and Ukraine in 2004, fierce partisan voices have called for recounts and revotes when the outcome is close. This is an entirely different issue than that of election reform, in which systematic sources of error and disenfranchisment are hopefully purged from the voting process.

In a winner-take-all system, tiny margins are of huge significance. A baseball team can lose the World Series becauses of a single error taking two seconds after seven championship games and a long season stretching over a year. And in sports, that's the outcome. Final. Winner and loser. Wait 'till next year.

But in politics, there are very different implications of a close election. First of all, nearly half of the electorate wanted someone else to win. And as citizens, they have just as much right to the services that we hire our president to perform as do those who voted for him. Unfortunately, the way that politics is played in this country, the winner doesn't see it that way. The concepts of a "mandate" and "political captial" speak to just the opposite conclusion- the winner is primarily the president of his supporters.

All this becomes magnified when the election is too close to call, and that is where an understanding of mathematics and the scientific method is important. Leaving aside issues such as systematic or malicious disinfranchisement, many people think that if the votes could just be counted correctly, the true winner would emerge. Unfortunately, this is not possible.

Any scientific test has a margin of error. The joke above is funny (well, I thought it was funny) because we recognize how rediculous it would be to make such an accurate measurement of such a large number. Voting is like that- no matter how carefully you look at hanging chads, almost any workable system that allows you to poll millions of people on a single day is always going to have some degree of inaccuracy. The Washington Governer's race was initially decided by a margin of 261 out of 2.8 million votes (giving the win to Republican Dino Rossi) and then 42 votes after a recount (again giving the win to Rossi), and finally after a third and certified recount, giving the victory to the Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes.

Regular readers of this column (Hi, mom!) will know what a partisan I am. However, the comment of the Democratic spokesman Morton Brilliant- "It's irresponsible to spend $4 million in taxpayer money on a new election just because you don't like losing this one."- smacks of the same kind of scientific misunderstanding that was thrown around by Republicans during the 2000 Florida recount (remember "Sore Loserman"..?).

However- and I say this in the spirit of bipartisanship- Gregoire did NOT win the election. And Rossi did not win the election. It is a tie. A statistical dead heat. If you recounted 50 times, the results would probably go one way half the time and the other way the other half of the time. This is because of the inherent inaccuracy of the process. This is different than a revote, where you are measuring a different thing, as opposed to remeasuring the same thing. By the time a vote is repeated (as in Ukraine), many factors have been in play which may change the actual outcome.

But we can't govern if we allow ties, so there has to be some process for picking a winner in a close election. This is where the state constitution and election lawyers come in. Brilliant's underlying point is true- at some point, you have to declare a winner and stop spending resources on an inherently flawed process. And those who voted for the declared loser will just have to move on.

In Defense of a Bush Administration Initiative*

*Made you look, didn't I...?

Actually, I wanted to draw your attention to an article by security expert and talented essayist Bruce Schneier. His personal site has a number of good articles on various aspects of security- online and in the real world. This pre-election piece summarizes the ways in which the fight against terror is being mishandled by the current administration, and centers on the infamous and frequently ridiculed color-coded terror alert system.

HOWEVER, being true to the title of this posting, I just want to mention one reasonable argument in favor of this system, which I haven't seen discussed anywhere else. And while I agree with Schneier's assessment of the overall approach, I have always though it important to be bipartisan and objective when implementing systems that have such vital tasks (i.e. keeping you and me alive).

The advantage of having a simple, five level, terror threat assessment is that it funnels all of the intelligence that is continually monitoring world conditions. Fighting terror is not done by huge, government funded assualts. No ICBM or space-based laser can stop a guy with a box cutter in the right place and at the right time. No armor division can rush in to save lives after an attack. To do this, your troops are all of your local first responders- police, firefighters, EMS, etc... These agencies, in every little community around the country, are constantly dealing with stuff like shift staffing, equipment availability, overtime, maintenance and vacation requests.

A terror threat has implications for all of these little details. So by having a simple one word distillation of the threat assessment from the government, all of these thousands of little agencies around the country can make appropriate adjustments on a daily basis, limiting the need for elaborate individual communication between each beaurocracy and the hierarchy above it.

Is the intelligence accurate? Well, that's another problem. But at least this approach does streamline one important link in the country's terror-response system. The problems arise- as Mr. Schneier outlines in his article- when this useful operational device becomes a public news event and a political football.

So a big shout out from me to GWB for getting something right...! As the saying goes, "Even a blind pig sometimes finds an acorn".