And the First Shall Be Last

I finished reading First Born by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter months ago, but I’m just now getting to the review. It’s the third in the “A Time Odyssey” series. The reviews of the first and second books are available. I’ll ramble on about the third one below.

First Born starts decades after the end of Sunstorm. Humanity is reaching out to the planets and stars at a furious pace. The sunstorm demonstrated how fragile and easily extinguished we are when we exist on only one sphere around one star. Also the threat of an outside force bent on our termination, the Firstborn, drives cooperation among the tribes of man as never before seen.

Our colonizers on Mars have found something under the polar ice cap and detection nets places around the solar system have found another incoming object unlike anything they have ever seen. The incoming “bomb” from space reveals that humans weren’t the first to draw the attention of the Firstborn, and under Mars’ pole is the key to our survival. Heroes and heroines from the last books, joined by new names, must race to Mars, to Mir, and who knows where else, in order to save humanity. This book reaches across time, space, and universes to expand the understanding of the Firstborn.

This one is a worthy successor to the first two books. It expands the universe and provides much more explanation, though Baxter does leave the door standing wide open for another book. It does provide a good basic understanding of that the Firstborn are trying to do and what they have done in order to achieve it. I liked it.

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Doing It Our Way

I’ve been so busy I actually finished reading A Social History of American Technology by Ruth Schwartz Cowan over a week ago. It’s taken me this long to have the time and the motivation to actually write a review of the book. I’ve actually been attempting to finish the book for some time. This was another one of those books I had to get for a class in college that I wanted to actually read all of later.

Essentially the book covers the growth and change of technology in the US due to its particular social and environmental conditions. It actually does a good job of covering the subject matter in an entertaining and informative matter. I enjoyed it, but those of the engineering bent can have peculiar taste in books like this. The earlier parts of the book are more thorough. Due to the rapid advance of technologies in the past half century, the latter part of the book covers a narrower group of technologies. This is understandable, and I dare say the book would have been too long had it covered much more. For what’s there though it provides a really good perspective on how American technology deviated from technologies originally developed in Europe and how technology altered American society in return.

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Book Smarts

After lagging back a little while, I powered through two books in a short period of time. This review is the first of those. This was another break from the 700+ pages of what I now think is 8.5 point font. I finally read The Diamond Age or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer by Neal Stephenson. Previously I have reviewed Cryptonomicon, and before I started doing reviews I had read Snow Crash at the behest of a friend. Before starting this one I had liked Stephenson’s books and had high hopes for this one. In fact this book was recommended by the same friend, but it took me to this point to get around to reading it. I’ll probably ramble on about it in my own way.

This book takes place decades into a future where the promises of nanotechnology have been achieved. The novel explores what society becomes when virtually anything is possible. Buildings are grown by a feed run into a foundation. Diamond has replaced glass in windows, because it’s cheaper. The very air is filled with microscopic machines performing duties and waging wars at their masters’ biddings. Governments fell apart after truly secure money transfers made effective taxation impossible. They were replaced by a global economic protocol and groups of people that have formed societal clans. These clans maintain claves (enclaves) in various parts of the world where they live and guard their interests.

Now I’m torn because I want to talk about the book, but I don’t want to give too much away. Well I’ll see what happens.

The fulcrum of this novel is one John Percival Hackworth (Percival was the grail knight). He is an artifex, a master of nanotechnological design. In fact I would venture to say he is as much artist as engineer. Yes I know I am a little biased for engineering elegance being artistic. John belongs to the powerful clan of neo-Victorians. After the collapse of 20^th century western society this clan eventually came to power by embracing Victorian ethics and codes of conduct. The clan tends to churn members a bit. Those that join the clan after a hard life outside tend to become the clan’s strongest members. Those born into the clan tend to be lackluster in achievements. To combat this trend in his own granddaughter, a duke commissions Hackworth to create A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. The “book” if you can call it that is a sophisticated interactive computer system that is designed to give a girl all the tools necessary and to teach her to take chances and become great. Hackworth, in probably one of his only criminal moments, steals a copy of the book for his daughter only to have it stolen and fall into the hands of Nell.

Nell, not sure if it ever says her last name aside from saying her brother’s, is a poor little “thete,” poor with no clan affiliation, girl. She cannot read, her mother seems to have little care for her, and her brother Harv acts as her protector and teacher, until Harv brings her the Primer. Nell has had a hard life for a 5-6 year old and the Primer begins her education. What happens then is a wild ride following the lives of several people and Nell as the fruits of Hackworth’s brilliant mind accidentally, purposefully, and subconsciously weaves a tapestry of events into being.

I quite enjoyed this book. It captured me like the other of Stephenson’s books and made me want to read it faster. The characters, the environment, and the politics of the time all mesh well together. Stephenson does a good job of creating the fantastical from the technical. It does a good job of explaining how experience and education create most of who we are as individuals. The 3 initial Primers each do something different for the girl to which they are given. The 100,000+ given to the castoffs do something different, but similar. In all it makes you wonder if Hackworth had any idea exactly what he was creating. Stephenson also continues to do some strange things with sex and descriptions that tend to throw me out of the world he has created. It’s probably more me than anything else. At least none of it seemed that unnecessarily descriptive, unlike a couple of scenes in Cryptonomicon. In all it is quite a satisfying read. I recommend it to anyone that likes similar types of books.

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Disconnected

The venerable DSL modem that has been used for 6-7 years, maybe longer, has finally ceased to function. Therefore my home has been disconnected from the Aether since late Tuesday evening. I have been taking it surprisingly well considering I always have a portal to the Intarweb open next to my customary place of butt parkage. I have entertained myself with various DVDs I haven't had a chance to watch, and by reading my current book. I take it as a further sign that I truly am not addicted to it. I have had no convulsions or crazed thoughts. Though I must admit I do spend all of my working hours with a rather speedy connection to it as well. However, work time use of the connection to infinite knowledge and amusement always seems different than home use. Anyway, AT&T is supposed to be sending me a new entryway to the information thoroughfare either today or tomorrow. it is more complicated then what I need, so I hope it works without much trouble. I have things that I would like to accomplish using it this weekend.

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Big Project Pictures

You know I didn't ask anyone if I could post these, but they let me take them and you can probably get a tour of the thing if you ask nicely. So I'm gonna post pictures and Ramble about them. Follow if you want, but there are 10 pics to load. I kind of started to know his project was coming about a month ahead of time. The thing was no one told me anything about it. I knew nothing about the equipment or how it was to be wired up. It's hard to prepare when you know nothing. It's not unusual for me to have no formal forewarning, but usually I get to see the equipment come in and I can figure out what kinds of connectors and cables I'll need. This is one of the first jobs where I was really blind. Plus the guy who designs this stuff kind of assumes we should keep lots of everything on hand. Yeah if I had an infinite budget and storage space.

Enough preaching and on with the show.

Well everyone wants to see the money shot first, so here it is. This is the bank of HD displays in the area. That's right there is an even dozen of the things. They are 1080p Sony Bravia sets, 52 or something inches, but I can't remember the exact measurement. I'm just glad I didn't have to put them up, but having them already up lead to a few wiring headaches. Those will become a little more apparent as the post moves on. We had to loosen the mounts, which took a 3/8 socket and 3 extensions. Of course we didn't have one of those at work, so I had to go buy them, on the University's tab of course. I kind of like being able to justify tools we should have had all along. This was a theme for the project. Since I didn't have good foreknowledge I didn't know what I needed to bring with me. I was planning on essentially packing up most of the shop to take with me, since the site was 15 minutes from the shop. But was told I shouldn't need that much stuff. After looking at the display mounts and the equipment on site, went to ACE and packed up most of the shop to take down there. I love showing people they don't know what they are talking about. Anyway, on with the tour.

Here's a pic of the control center. We started calling it Houston. Anyway there are four workstations at the back and six at the front. If you look, yes those are two 27 inch Dell monitors for each of the workstations. They are higher resolution than the Bravia displays. And those are wireless keyboards and mice for the computers. I don't know the specs for the computers, but I do know that the right hand display for each workstation in the back row is linked to a transmitter that sends it's image to the equipment in the wiring closet. What is this transmitter? It's a small black box that converts the image from the computer to a form that can be transmitted over Ethernet cable. Quite a long distance actually. Well, lets just look at the next picture.

There we go. This is a receiver on the back of one of the Bravia displays. It's slightly larger than the transmitters. It takes the RJ45 (Ethernet) cable and converts it back to VGA. Not bad considering it was taking a 1080P signal. We had to use Scotch Mounting Foam Tape to mount the receiver and the power supply to the back of the display. It worked out pretty well. Routing the cables so they wouldn't be damaged by the display mount when we pushed it back was fun, but not as much fun as attaching the VGA cable to the display by touch. Hopefully they will prove robust and won't have to be replaced. What I don't show here is another connection that comes over the Ethernet cable to the television. See they ordered these monitors before consultation with my group. They look nice, but they don't have a serial communications port. That means I had to figure out how to send an IR signal over Cat6 Ethernet cable. I'll show you that in the wiring closet.

And here we are at the wiring closet. We get the whole right rack. We were supposed to get only part of it, but Network Services didn't need all of the two racks they had. It's funny, but I think we had more equipment in there than they did. I'm not sure whose cost the most, but I bet they were ahead. On the left, you can see the computers feeding some of the displays out in the room. In the middle was a 1080P LCD display so you can see the computers while in the closet. That way you can move a USB keyboard and Mouse around for config purposes. Of course they also use a remote access system to do that from outside the room, but sometimes you need direct assess. I said was before because the display actually stopped working after a few minutes. We had to send it off for repair/replacement. Oh well, I didn't spec it.

This view is at the top of the rack. That top piece is the Crown amp that runs the overhead KSI speakers. There's no need for surround or anything here. Plus we can always upgrade the system later. The next two pieces are Crestron equipment. On top is the controller that runs the show, as it were, and below that is the final audio mixer/equalizer. On the shelf below that is the power supply for the Crestron gear and the DirectTV receiver. I don't know why they didn't spring for the HD version. I mean with those Bravia displays out there. Oh well, another future upgrade. Under that are the two Rolls mixers. Why two? The top one is for the computers in the rack next door. It dumps into the bottom one along with the DirectTV audio. The bottom mixer has a cutoff so that if the computers say something it cuts out the DirectTV audio to make sure the computers are heard. You can see my test audio cable coming down in the front. That was plugged into one of the multi-adapters I've made for diagnostic purposes. You gotta test the amp and speakers with some tunes.

This is the patch panel. The black cables carry the video out to the receivers behind the displays. The white cables combine three to one and run up to the back of the Crestron controller. That's my solution for sending IR over Cat6. On the other end behind the displays, I have a one foot Ethernet cable plugged into the wall jack. I put the IR probe's wires into an RJ45 jack. That I plugged into the short cable. Frankly I'm kind of surprised it worked so well right off the bat. It was a pain though.

Those black cables loop around and plug into the back of the Magenta Research Mondo Matrix Switcher. They plug into the outputs on the switcher. As you can tell, there is a lot of space for expansion in that thing. The inputs are filled from four cables coming from the four workstations in the back of the control center, the eight computers in the rack next door, the DirectTV receiver, and the Security camera system. However, the output from the computers next door have to change from VGA to Cat5. That happens below the switcher.

There you can see the front of the Mondo Matrix switcher, and below that is the Magenta Research Morph-It. That box is basically a backplane system designed to hold and power cards to do specific tasks. Here we are using it to run a couple of cards for skew control for the four workstations and six transmitter cards to take VGA from the computers, DirectTV, and security cameras and turn it into Cat5 for the Matrix switcher. However, DirectTV and the security cameras don't give us a VGA signal, so if you look at the bottom of the pic you can see one of the two Extron scalers we used. Those things can take almost any video signal and turn it into almost any other. This setup allows us to put any signal from any source on any and all displays.

Following those VGA cables over and you get to the back of the half dozen Mac Minis running Windows. He he that's funny. Under those are two Dell workstations. Those 8 machines put out a surprising amount of heat. If you look at the white cables leaving the Minis those are the audio cables going up to the Rolls mixer. Yeah I had to solder those 3.5 mm mini-stereo plugs on the end. Loads of fun that was, but not as much fun as the other end.


This is the other end. That's the back of the Rolls Mixer. That top row of plugs are all 1/4 inch mono plugs and there is one for left and right on each channel. One channel per computer. I had to take the one wire from the PC, strip it, double the sleeve/ground/common wire, and put the left and right channels in two different plugs. That took most of the morning right there. If I had known that earlier I probably would have tried to order pre-made cables. Oh well. So that's one of the things that kept me busy for a week.

This post ended up being a lot longer than I had intended. I'll try posting more stuff later.

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Saturday

A few interesting things happened Saturday. For one thing the continuation of the rain storms at some point during the day continued. We got some rain in the evening. I’ve been really happy that I haven’t had to water the garden in the past several days. Watering different parts of it daily was getting to be quite a chore. Now however, the grass is starting to grow. Well you can’t have everything.

I picked okra early in the morning, since I had neglected to pick it Friday. My parents went to Commerce, GA Friday and stopped by my house that morning on the trip. They picked up something I had to exchange for my Dad and a little okra as well. I had way too much for myself to be able to prepare and freeze, so they took it. As a surprise they left something in its place. They left me some corn from my Dad’s garden, and 2 small pomegranate sproutlings they got from a friend’s yard. Now I have them in pots waiting on them to get a little bigger before I decide where to put them. I’m thinking it’ll have to be in the sunnier and drier parts of the yard. Maybe in front of the garden.

I did the requisite dish cleaning and such after some breakfast and a little TV watching. I went outside to receive my self prescribed dose of ultraviolet radiation. It’s my way of fighting the kickin’ farmer’s tan I was building up in the early spring. While outside I heard something moving around and looked up from my book. Lo and behold, what may have been a Gray fox went trotting across the back yard. I’ve been looking up information about them. The animal seemed a little tall and the muzzle was a little long and thick for a Gray fox, so it may have been something else. In fact it looked a little like a young Grey wolf, leading me to believe it may have merely been a wild dog. I’m not sure, but the scat that appeared in the front yard a week ago resembles descriptions of fox scat on the web, and I have seen several dead foxes on the side of the road over the past year. I’ll keep my eyes open and see if I can get a picture if I ever see it again.

I came back in showered and decided I was bored, so I went to see a movie. I freely admit I went to see “Evan Almighty.” I enjoyed the first movie, so I figured why not. As for the review, I give it a big meh. It was ok. Rent it if you want to see it. No need to go to a theater and pay those prices. In the end it’s a sequel that doesn’t live up to its original.

I came home made some dinner and roasted about 3 dozen little Roma tomatoes. I’m trying to make a sauce so I can freeze it for later. Then I decided to do something I haven’t done in many months. I took my blender out to make a “Purple Pomelator,” that’s a “Purple Nurple” with some pomegranate juice in there. Anyway I put the mixin’s inside and the ice and fired up the blender. I heard the normal grinding of the ice and what not and then it went WHEEEEEEEEEE. I wasn’t sure what had happened. I lifted the jar off the motor and my worst fear had happened. The danged gear on the top of the motor housing had shattered. It was ruined. I had always considered that to be my greatest concern as a point of failure, and those fears bore out. Well it did last for over 5 glorious years and lots of ice and frozen beverages. I’m going to see if I can find a way to replace the gear. I hate for a piece of hard plastic to kill an otherwise fantastic piece of equipment. Anyway, so Sunday I took my trusty 20% off coupon to BB&B to get a new one. Well BB&B doesn’t sell that model anymore. They sell a new model that has a design change that specifically fixes the component that failed on my blender. The only problem is that it comes with a polycarbonate jar rather than a glass one. Polycarbonate costs less to make and ship, but it is much noisier when you start throwing ice around inside of it. So I broke down, used the coupon, and bought the blender. It works quite nicely, but it is at least twice as loud as my old one. But I haven’t given up yet. I’m going to look for a way to revive my onyx jewel. Hopefully I can.

Update: I have just placed an order for 2 blender couplings for my little black baby. They should arrive in a couple of weeks. From forum that I have read I now need to make a special wrench to hold the shaft while I take the busted one off. I like a challenge.

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No More New Timmys

I just saw on CNN.com that Don Herbert, better known as "Mr. Wizard" passed away today. I remember watching his show almost religiously on Nickelodeon. I remember it was the last cable channel we got at the time, 18. He introduced me to fascinating properties of the world and physics. He was probably the second most influential television personality at the time, no one can displace Fred Rogers. The two Misters of children's television. I salute you Mr. Wizard and thank you for all you have done.

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Showing My Ars

I haven’t posted anything about my favorite web site Ars Technica in quite some time. Well here goes.

Ars had a nice article about a project to use some knowledge of thermoacoustics to develop a inexpensive, robust, and simple device that can use such a common item as a cook fire to provide the energy needed to provide rudimentary electricity and refrigeration. For those that don’t want to look at the article the goal is to apply acoustic cooling and high efficiency thermodynamics to create essentially a highly engineered tube that when one end is heated the other end cools and electricity is generated. And all of this with a minimum of moving parts. It’s a fantastic use of modern scientific and engineering understanding to create a simple item that can change people’s lives everywhere. It reminds me of an article in the NY Times not to far back about a man who spearheaded creating a solar charging flashlight for poor people in 3^rd world countries without electricity. The flashlight left in the sun all day provides about 8 hours of illumination. It allows them to read school lessons, cook, scare away animals and thieves, and any number of other things we take for granted. It also allows them to stop using soot producing lamps and such to light the dwellings. Both of these are good examples of industrialized nations footing a large development cost for a simple item that could help millions of people.

Ars also mentions a report that the Center for Naval Analyses released in which it calls global climate change a national security issue. It’s definitely an interesting article. I like that the report states that the military most often must take action and plan for worst case scenarios when there is usually a limited amount of information. They approach the problem from a tactics and logistics point of view. It promotes that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Climate destabilization can cause governments to fail and new enemies and wars to crop up. It would be far cheaper to offer technology to the countries we can help stabilize than it would be to fight in dozens of conflicts. It’s a good smart read.

And finally Ars mentions that Illinois’ citizenry are paying a rather hefty price for defending a law that they should have known was unconstitutional. Most probably the law was seen as a way to garner votes for election time by “Protecting the children.” I hope the tax payers of the state rise up and kick their government’s collective ass. Taking money from the welfare and public health to pay bills on stupid laws. I’m actually surprised SC didn’t end up doing something like that.

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Links for the hell of it

I’m not sure if I’m going to keep doing this, but I feel like it to today. So there.

There’s an interesting ballot that popped up in Washington state. It proposes that all heterosexual marriages that do not result in a child’s birth within 3 years will be dissolved. It’s absurdity is designed to point out the absurdity that marriage exists solely to provide stable families for childrearing. It’s interesting, and thought provoking. Talk amongst yahselves.

In another short article on the NYTimes site is about Walmart, Whole foods, and other companies trying to promote sustainable fishing and grow the ocean’s fisheries back to higher levels. There are a few recommendations of fish to stay away from and some that are good choices. Personally I love farm raised catfish, which happens to be one of the best for farming with limited ecological impact. It’s something more people should know about. Expect the day to come when we have to force limitations in fishing to stop the ecological disaster that’s currently happening. In other words, Eat More Chikin.

DailyTech had an article up about a cellular book from Telecom Italia that is the closest production item to a global communicator from Earth: Final Conflict that I’ve ever seen. I want to play with one.

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Links redux

Several months posted about the FDA approving a new vaccine that I had mentioned the year before for several of the viruses that can cause cervical cancer. Well the NYTimes has an article up(signup required) about the Texas Governor Rick Perry signing an executive order mandating the vaccine shots for all girls entering 6^th grade, excluding those whose parents refuse to participate. I’m actually really surprised that Texas was the first state to do this, though the article says that Texas has the second highest number of women with cervical cancer. The executive order does offer the opportunity to bypass a lot of political wrangling in the legislature, and I don’t think there will be a big fight to eliminate it. Plus, the implementation conditions seem to be reasonable. I’m hoping Texas opens the door for a lot of other states to add this vaccine to the normal series of vaccinations women receive through their lives. Here’s hoping.

Several weeks back DailyTech had an article about a Naval rail gun test that passed the 8 Mega-joule range. I tell you I like that stuff. It bodes well for safer and longer range guns and a cheaper, more reliable plane catapult system. Where do we get those wonderful toys?

Well I spoke before about the Real ID Act, with my opinion that the security problems and ability for abuse outweigh the potential benefits. Well Ars has an article up about the growing opposition to the act. Seems more people are getting concerned about it for all the right reasons, security, abuse, and monetary. Maybe the system does work occasionally.

Oh and for friends that like the ideas of wikis and writing Ars posted about a “novel wiki” taking place. So far it looks like a situation of too many cooks in the kitchen. Should be interesting to watch.

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Deep Down in My Soul

Earlier I reviewed The Civilized Engineer by Samuel Florman. I had purchased the book for a class many years ago. After reading part of what was required for the class I decided to purchase a previous book Florman had written, The Existential Pleasures of Engineering. This past weekend I managed to finish the book. Maybe I won’t ramble on about this one as much as I did about the previous one, but I make no promises.

TCE was more a book about the rift between engineering and society’s and the Liberal Arts’ view of engineering. TEPoE is more about “Why engineering?”. The book was originally written in the 1970s during the anti-technology and counter-culture movements that defined much of the time. The book is indelibly marked by this. Though the elements have softened with age they still exist, and the points Florman makes are still as pertinent as the day he penned them.

This book could truthfully go by the name of another book, To Engineer is Human. The two books are very different, and they take different meanings from the title. Florman spends most of the book punching holes in the idea of the un-naturalness of engineering. He promotes the idea that engineering is a most basic part of being human. Florman makes sure to support himself with facts, but he takes great care to support himself with feelings and such that the existentialists deem more worthy than mere science.

To be honest with you, when I started this book I wasn’t quite sure what existentialism meant. To me it was always like the term post-modernism. It means different things to different people, and the ideas are so nebulous that their very meaning precludes definition in words. But as it turns out my basic seat of the pants feeling for the word was essentially right. Florman is primarily using the word as the deep down essential part of being human. The existential pleasures are the ones that give us our most meaningful sense of belonging and accomplishment and warm us to the very center. Florman maintains that engineering, as a basic part of human existence, provides these pleasures. And I have to agree. I personally have felt the pleasure of coming up with a fast solution to a pressing problem, and I have had the elation of realizing the answer to a question that has plagued me. I freely admit that during some machine design while I Co-Oped I had to get up and run around the engineering floor and manufacturing floor when I realized a solution to a problem or an elegant refinement of a design.

Anyway, I dearly liked the book. Florman does an excellent job in writing prose and describing the mind of the engineer. I really enjoyed reading the book and would actually recommend it to some people engineers and the like better. I think this book is more widely enjoyable than TCE. Reading this book is one of the things that lead me to write a post a couple of weeks back. Maybe it could do something similar for you.

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Snow Job Man

My brother finished reading a book for a class this summer and recommended that I read it. That’s unusual, because my brother didn’t use to read that much. However, he seems to want to ramp up his reading, and so I have offered some of the books I have. Plus he now has a job at Books-A-Hojillion that should help as well. That book was of course Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Atwood may be more familiar as the author of Handmaid’s Tale, another book that will probably end up on the “To Bo Read” shelf. I took a lot longer to read this book than normal, because it was a hardback on loan from the library. I didn’t feel like carrying the large book and risk messing it up. So I don’t want to waste any time getting to my rambling review.

The book takes place in the future, but I’m not sure how far removed. It’s probably the middle of this century, maybe a little later. At the very first you are introduced to Snowman. He begins slowly introducing you to the very strange world he lives in. Through present events and flashbacks to the past you are carried on the journey Snowman’s life. You get introduced to his dysfunctional family. The weird genetics company compounds he lives, goes to school, and works in. All this information while he reveals the empty and dangerous place the world has become. You meet Crake and then Oryx and the parts all three have played in these events. The world is essentially devoid of human life, except for Snowman. It is now the domain of the genetically engineered docile rakunks, the vicious wolvogs, the intelligent and omnivorous pigoons, and of course the Crakers. How could all of this destruction have taken place? Truthfully, Snowman is the last human on Earth that knows.

I really liked it. It was a pretty good page turner, and it kept you wondering about the answers to the questions all the way through. I mean you figure out the generalities of what happened early, but the details are what you read for. Anyway this post apocalyptic, depending on your world view, technology run amuck story reminds me of many of the similar stories. I think Atwood did a good job here and would recommend it to all those that like future tech disaster human condition stories.

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Our Place

I feel bad because I haven’t written anything in a while. I had an unusual short reprieve from work and class work that allowed me to post an unusual amount of stuff, catch up on others blogs, read web sites, and read books. Well that kind of ended. Now I have to steal time where I can. So I wanted to write something and kept thinking about it. Well in reading my web sites, listening to people, and reading two of the books I’m reading led me to this. I’m sitting here drinking a 22oz. K and decided to write. I’m not sure what it’s going to be or how long I’ll ramble about it, but follow along if you will.

One of my daily routines is to read “Noble Intent,” a journal on Ars Technica. They cover all types of scientific endeavors, but over the time it has been around they have published a large portion of evolution related posts. It stems form some of the pro-intelligent design shenanigans that occurred over the past few years. They also cover many things about human initiated global climate change, also due to rampant denial. It’s kind of their way of making a point and fighting for what the writers think is right. I enjoy it, but I digress.

I read several entries in the journal recently, and combined with the Florman and Attwood books I started thinking about my point of view. In the first Journal entry the author indicates that “Myopia is such a human trait.” I find that interesting and insulting. Humans are probably the most far sighted organisms that live on this planet. But the true question is, is it myopia if you can see forward and do nothing, can see forward and do some things but not everything, or if you can’t see forward at all. Well people can’t do everything. That’s essentially removing humans from the environment. Short of killing everyone, we can’t realistically do that. One must realize that all the organisms are opportunistic and short sighted in trying to reproduce the most and spread the farthest. Algal blooms and zebra muscles are opportunistic to the point of destroying ecosystems. That’s not far sightedness. Humans are less opportunistic than any other organism on Earth. But arguably we aren’t doing as much as reason indicates we should. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I wanted to talk about a point of view.

Shoot my K is empty. Hmm. Might have to break out the whiskey.

Anyway, both sides of this argument have a tendency to separate nature and man with this artificial barrier. I always get a chuckle when I hear people say, “these are organic tomatoes,” or some such thing. I should hope so. Silicon based tomatoes would probably be hard on the digestion. Yes yes they are talking about natural fertilizers rather than processed chemicals, but one must also realize that crude oil is organic and arsenic is completely natural. These are artificial terms placed on things that make people feel better about categorizing. Essentially one type of system adds processed chemicals and oil byproducts to plants and the other throws shit on them. You choose which you prefer, but remember, the spinach fiasco seems to have been caused by unwanted “organic” fertilizer.

So, what am I getting at here. People like to think of us as different from nature. Maybe it is my engineering side coming out, but I don’t see that there is a separation. We are part of nature. Us studying the universe is the universe studying itself. We aren’t fucking nature up. Nature is fucking itself up. We are just the primary component causing all the turmoil. Humans are natural. In their current state they are natural. They may not be doing smart things, but they are natural. We are what evolution and nature have made us.

Essentially it all boils down to information storage. For billions of years information storage and reproduction took place primarily in DNA. This information storage technique allowed it to change slowly over time to allow organisms to carry the most important information forward and still be able to change to the environment: genetic evolution. There was always a drive to make the best organism for a situation. Sometimes that meant the one that could adapt to changes the fastest. That’s where it happened. Humans and our ancestors came about. I’m not sure how, but the DNA was slowly augmented by another information storage and reproduction system, the advanced brain and communication techniques. It requires both, because a brain with no way to communicate information to others is a dead end street. This allows information and techniques to be passed down the line of progeny just like DNA. It also allows it to grow and change, much faster than DNA can, learning evolution.

Mmmm. Whiskey.

So what good is this learning evolution. It can’t change our bodies in any manner. What it does do is allow humans to take a common animal ability to an extreme. Bats nest in caves and trees, hermit crabs take empty shells as homes, and birds build nests. All of that is programmed from genetic evolution, GE. Humans use their far faster learning evolution, LE, to perform similar feats of environmental change and item manipulation. We pick up a sharp flake of rock and use it to skin an animal. We use a mass on a stick to apply blunt force to objects like nails. We cover ourselves with items that allow us to survive sub-freezing temperatures for long periods, and we use a spiral piece of metal to make holes in objects.

What nature created was a creature with conscious control over its evolution. The human became a modular animal. It became a powerful and flexible central control system that could consciously evolve modular components that it could attach and detach in order to do specific tasks. By attaching a shovel it can dig a hole effectively, a car attachment provides rapid ground transit, and a plane attachment provides even faster air transport. Essentially all of these creations, from hair curlers, to homes, to nuclear power plants are LE extensions of the human.

The problem is that our LE method of advancement far outstrips the ability of most other organisms t keep up. In fact only the fastest reproducing organisms can keep up using GE. That of course would be bacteria and viruses. That's why our LE, medical advancement, has such a tough time keeping up with them. Maybe now that we are beginning to understand the GE method of information transfer we can get an advantage.

Essentially all the technology that is lamented as a prison is a part of ourselves. It is not a prison any more than the lobster’s shell is a prison. But we have an advantage. We can control out evolution and change directions if we see we are headed to folly. It is no use to blame technology, because it is merely an extension of ourselves. The only thing we can do is recognize our mistakes and change the course of our evolution. The problem is that we are still the GE organism at the center of the LE mechanisms. We still are drawn by the lure of the quick gain and growth. Myopic growth is a basic component of all biological organisms. Our only hope is that our LE changes and teaches us fast enough to overcome that biological shortcoming. From the looks of the last link from the Noble Intent journal, education, the heart of LE, appears to be our best hope.

It’s sleepy time now. Mmmm. Whiskey.

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“I cut you so bad. You no wish I cut you so bad.”

“Those are some bad roaches.”

“I blame the schools.”

Rockstar Games has been in the news a lot over the years. They garner a lot of attention because they have published a lot of games that depict or involve the user in violence, like the Grand Theft Auto series, Red Dead Revolver, Manhunt, etc. These games received a lot of finder and tongue wagging because “Depictions of violence are bad. MMkay.” In the past couple of years there was another big uproar about Rockstar. They were stupid enough to leave some code in the game that allowed a player’s character to have badly rendered and acted sex. The code wasn’t accessible in the normal game, but there are modders out there that live to make this kind of stuff work. Apparently it was alright for little Timmy/Tammy to shoot someone in the head, but God forbid he/she has poorly simulated sex on the screen. Basically it was a stupid mistake to leave the code in there to begin with, but the situation blew way out of proportion. The game was recalled, the code was removed, and the rating was upgraded. Which if parents had been paying attention to the rating in the first place young children wouldn’t have been playing the game. It just makes me angry and when I’m angry I ramble.

That got a small number of very noisy people worked up because they didn’t have any other way to make a name for themselves at the time or justify the existence of their organizations. They screamed that the ESRB, the organization that rates the games, had failed in their job. That started a whole bunch of bad legislation to “monitor” games, whose sole purpose was to waste taxpayers’ money and make it look like someone was doing something for the upcoming elections. Why bother trying to do something good when you can just make a showing. I say that, because most people in government knew the laws were unconstitutional to begin with. Haven’t we had that document tread upon a little too much in the past 6 years already? Personally I think the ESRB is doing a fairly decent job. They recently added punitive clauses to ratings agreements that allows them to fine companies for including material not disclosed to the ESRB. And more stores are following the ratings in refusing to sell some games directly to kids below the rated age level than previously. Plus I believe that there is no complicated situation that government regulation can’t screw up even more. The focus should be keeping it private, self regulating, encouraging store adherence, and educating parents. Maybe more lobbying will fix it with a little fight fire with fire. Think of the dent we could make in the deficit with the lobbying money spent in this country.

Anyway, it’s a complicated issue, which brings me to what I wanted to say. Rockstar has a new game coming out shortly, Tuesday in fact. It’s called Bully, and apparently it’s shoved a big hornets’ nest on a long stick up a bunch of people’s collective asses. Given Rockstar’s history of violent games and the “Hot Coffee” mod lots of people drew conclusions about the game way before anyone had played it. Now that is looks like it’s coming out, and some people have played it, their hyperbole about the game had shrunk, and they appear to be grasping at stuff to say about it. Surprisingly, Jack Thompson, of Penny Arcade fame (start at the second post on the page), gave an interview about the game and was surprisingly coherent, logical and showed some valid concerns. I think they may have finally gotten his medication straightened out. Well Jack has been spearheading a court case to allow him to see the game before it is released for sale. I’m not entirely sure why he and only he is qualified to judge the game for appropriateness, but apparently he is. I guess everyone else lacks the intelligence or moral fortitude to do it. So a Florida judge had ordered Bully brought to the court so that the judge can observe and direct someone playing the game. Considering the game is dozens of hours long, this could result in severe butt trauma. The real question is what does this mean for future games and other forms of entertainment. Will law suits and judicial review become standard fair for somewhat controversial games, movies, books, plays, TV shows, newspaper articles, etc? I’m waiting on the answers and hoping they will be good ones.

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Chest Stuck Out

I just wanted to say that I’m feeling quite some level of pride that the US has been awarded 6 out of the 6 Nobel Prizes awarded so far. I wanted to congratulate them all and bask in the glow a short while.

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Freshly dead trees or ancient ones

I saw an article over at Ars technical the other day about an item that I have been awaiting the arrival of for some time. I had put a comment in reference to the technology on a friend’s blog last month, but I got busy and didn’t realize he had requested more information about it. Since both events conspired to happen at the same time I’ll ramble about it all here.

Basically Sony has finally released their new e-book reader. “What is that?” you say. For quite some time it has been easy to get electronic versions of typewritten material. You are doing it right now in fact. The problem has been that the material was almost always presented on a computer screen. While that’s fine, it makes it really hard to transport the material, like you would a book, newspaper, or magazine. Then you have the problem of the battery life of a laptop just so you can read a book. PDAs helped with the portability, and with some of the battery problems, but the screen size and readability left something to be desired. Backlit screens don’t generally read well in sunlight, and seem to cause more eye strain and tiredness during long sessions of reading inside.

Basically what was needed was an entirely new kind of imaging technology in order to combat these problems. That’s where electronic ink (e-ink, Why does everything have to have a friggin’ e or i in front of it.) comes into play. If you follow the link about it covers the reader and the technology in detail. Basically though, the display is more akin to a reactive ink. The device charges the pixels on the screen to move white or black pigments to the surface. Once the writing is done, the screen draws practically no energy until the current display is erased and a new one is written. The battery life is measured in pages turned, though batteries will slowly discharge of their own accord. Being as the screen is illuminated by ambient light reflected from the surface, it’s much closer to being like reading a printed page behind a thin sheet of glass or plastic. Plus it’s supposed to be readable in direct sunlight.

Personally I think it holds great promise. The technology is very young still, and will take many years to reach maturity. I would like to see this type of technology replace text books that students have to carry. Swapping in 20+ lbs of books for one less than a pound tablet that holds all your texts would be a welcome sight. Perhaps they will even develop color technology as well. In fact I’d bet that if the tech takes off they will break their necks to do it. Imagine every day your favorite newspaper arrives via Internet to your reader that holds the past month’s back issues as well. You keep the past year’s magazines you get on there as well. Plus you still have room for the next 3 novels you want to read.

Then there are the current limitations on the tech and system. The reader only really comes in one size. There isn’t the capability for color. The resolution is ok for it’s size, but graphics would look better at higher res. There is the $350 price, that while it’s not bad doesn’t inspire much. The biggest let down is the price of material. Sony is reporting a 20% discount on books, but places like Amazon may already be beating that. Then the big one is that it’s Sony, and Sony and I haven’t had a good relationship recently. I’ve bought a few things from them, but their more recent antics have turned me off.

So what do I think. I think the tech holds great promise, but it’ll be easy to kill it in the crib. However, something that solves this problem will eventually come about. Right now I’m waiting on more versions to come out from other manufacturers. Electronic books will probably undergo similar growing pains to the music and movie industry, but the book industry will take the trip at a more leisurely pace. People like paper books, magazines, and newspapers. Text books should be the primary initial target, but that is limited by the lack of color on the device. Hard back books are bought for the fact they are out first and are hard backs. Paperbacks won’t be impacted until there is a substantial cost benefit to the electronic book. Printing a paperback is probably of little cost. You have the writing, editing, and marketing costs that will be pretty much fixed. The primary cost that electronic book distribution eliminates is warehousing, shipping, and floor space at a store. Realistically I expect a 35-50% price difference is needed to inspire everyday paperback readers to switch to electronic text. But we will just have to wait and see.

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Storm of the Giga-annum

I just finished reading Sunstorm by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter. It’s the second book in the “A Time Odyssey” series of books. Look at the review of the first book if it interests you. Otherwise follow along as I ramble a bit.

Sunstorm begins right after Bisesa Dutt returns to Earth, the day after she was taken June 9, 2037. Five years have passed for her, but no time has passed for her home. That day an enormous solar mass ejection causes havoc on the Earth’s systems. It destroys power systems, electronics, pipelines, satellites, etc. In a world dominated by power, electronics, constant communication, and a worldwide AI called Aristotle the effect is disastrous. The one scientific genius that predicted the event bears the bad news that another event will occur in 5 years. That coming explosion of energy will make the July 9^th event look like a burp. The Sun is expected to expend a year’s worth of energy in one day, sweeping away the Earth’s atmosphere and sterilizing the surface tens of meters deep. Can the Earth and Moon combine forces to save the Earth from impending doom? And what caused the flaw in the Sun that’s causing all the problems. Bisesa thinks the First Born may have a great deal to do with it.

This is more than a fitting sequel to the first book. It’s interesting cause the books both have action, adventure, and exploration galore, but they both have a different feel because of the differences in the worlds on which they occur. In some ways the series reminds me of the Rama series of books by Clarke. Man I want to read the Space Odyssey Series.

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