Archive for Sci/Tech
May 16, 2007
Science Again
6:34 pm | News | Sci/Tech | Comments: 1
Drudge posted a great link today to a blog post at the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment & Public Works detailing the shift of momentum in the scientific community away from the media-generated mass hysteria of man-made climate change disaster to the realization that the current global warming trends are far more likely linked to solar cycles than they are to rising “greenhouse gas” levels in the atmosphere. That was a great sentence, if I don’t say so myself.
What this goes to show is that if you can find 100 scientists to spout nonsense about how humanity will be responsible for creating a global-warming catastrophe in the near future, you can find 100 scientists to refute the claim. Lately, it seems that the “global warming skeptics” have been gaining the upper hand. I think one problem with the position of the global warming alarmists is they have the moronic glory-hunting media on their side. Eventually, the media’s method of putting story before substance is going to backfire and the story will suddenly be how wrong people like Al Gore are.
In other science-related news, Bird Flu hasn’t gone away and is still the real global calamity waiting to happen. Lately, the H5N1 Avian Influenza has spread to Indonesia and Japan. It’s killed 172 people worldwide so far, only 39,999,828 people short of the World Health Organization’s death toll predictions. Continue being afraid!
May 2, 2007
Nerding Out
6:55 pm | My Life | Sci/Tech | Comments: 1
Ah, Pentium. That name will always evoke emotions of joy and giddiness. Those among you who haven’t gone through a computer nerd stage won’t understand completely, but just imagine something you really, really, really wanted. Even after you got it, there was a better one that you wanted. If you spent more money than you could even imagine on getting the best one, a month later there was a better version of it that you then wanted. The wanting just never stopped; it was (and is) the ultimate carrot on the stick that promised you joys never-ending but could never satisfy you. That has been the experience of late 90s and early 21st-century nerds. I will refrain from telling my “first computer” story here, to avoid sounding like every computer science professor on day one of every computer science class.
I often say that I was a wanna-be nerd in college. Computer gaming and game-related web development in my teens convinced me that I liked computers, and based on that assumption I studied computer information systems in college. The truth, which I realized around my junior year, is that I just liked computer gaming, and computers and technology as a whole really doesn’t do a whole lot for me at all. I just didn’t fit in with the other kids in class that got extremely excited over the latest Windows version as well as anything and everything that Google happened to have done that week. That being said, I’ve been able to take the degree and gain some real-world benefit out of it, and against all odds one of the two IS Majors at GVSU that didn’t own a laptop (neither did Mark) is now an I.T. professional.
June 29, 2006
Or was it?
8:20 pm | Sci/Tech | Thoughts | Comments: 24
I started up myspacing again. Sue me. At any rate, what I love about myspace is it’s so crapped up that every 3rd page load or so it encounters an error that is purportedly sent to the myspace technical group. I send about 100 errors to the myspace technical group just checking to see if I have a message. Those are busy people.
You know how on 9/11/2001 planes hit the World Trade Center towers, a field in Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon? There’s a good possibility we’ve been misled. I’m always up for a juicy conspiracy theory, and I found one recently. A while ago somebody in France put up a website called Hunt the Boeing. The website raises questions about the validity of the claim that the Pentagon was hit by a plane. I think that anybody who looks at the pictures of the Pentagon impact must conclude that there was no plane. Instead, the conjecture is that the Pentagon was hit by a missile that day.
Even if it wasn’t a missile as such, it’s obvious that it wasn’t a Boeing 757 with 80 tons of jet fuel. It wasn’t a plane at all. Why were we told it was a plane when it clearly wasn’t? Anybody’s guess, I suppose.
March 13, 2006
The Internet Life
9:51 pm | Culture | Sci/Tech | Thoughts | Comments: 5
I was talking with somebody yesterday regarding MySpace. In the quite likely event that some of you don’t know what MySpace is, it’s just another one of those websites where you post a bunch of information and pictures about yourself and add all your friends. What struck me the most about the conversation, and about my own experience with MySpace, is how much emotional energy people will invest in something as simple and potentially deceiving as MySpace. People apparently fall in love with other people just from a MySpace profile? I don’t really see the logic in that sequence of events.
It’s something I’ve been noticing with today’s youth (which I’m still considered a part of). Kids these days are communicating on the internet more and more. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Personally, I think we’d all be better off if Instant Messaging and Facebook/MySpace just disappeared. In fact, life wouldn’t be so terrible if weblogs disappeared. This is not to say that I don’t take part in or enjoy these things - in fact I do lots of IMing, Facebooking, and weblogging. That’s my generation, after all.
I’ve talked before about the pros and cons of weblogging. So what are the pros and cons of spending hours IMing and checking Facebook? I’m still thinking it over. The real problem is that, as with anything in this world, it can become an idol and take over your life. Online time and interaction is just another thing that needs to be brought captive to Christ in the life of a Christian. If you’re not a Christian, don’t worry about your online time, you have bigger fish to fry, believe you me.
January 11, 2006
Facts about Sleep and Fatigue
1:50 pm | Health | Sci/Tech | Comments: 20
This is taken from the website of the Roads and Traffic Authority.
Circadian Rhythm
Circadian rhythms are physiological cycles that follow a daily pattern. We are “programmed” by our circadian rhythms to sleep at night and to be awake during the day.
During nighttime hours and to a lesser extent during afternoon “siesta” hours, most types of human performance are significantly impaired, including our ability to drive.1
Problems occur if we disrupt our natural sleep cycles (eg by staying awake during the night), do not get enough sleep, or get poor quality sleep.
Circadian rhythms cannot be reversed. Even if you have been working nightshifts for many years, your body will still be programmed to sleep at night.
Sleep Debt
The human body requires a certain amount of sleep each night to function effectively. The average amount of sleep a person needs is 8 hours. When we reduce the number of hours we sleep at night we start to accumulate what is called a ’sleep debt’.
Sleep debt is defined as the difference between the hours of sleep a person needs and the hours of sleep a person actually gets.
For example, if a person needs 8 hours of sleep per night but only gets 6 hours of sleep one night, they have a sleep debt of two hours. These lost hours of sleep need to be replaced.
When we have sleep debt, our tendency to fall asleep the next day increases. The larger the sleep debt, the stronger the tendency to fall asleep. 2
Sleep debt does not go away by itself. Sleeping is the only way to reduce your sleep debt.
Sleep Inertia
Sleep inertia is the feeling of grogginess after awakening and temporarily reduces your ability to perform even simple tasks.
Sleep inertia can last from 1 minute to 4 hours, but typically lasts 15-30 minutes.
The severity of sleep inertia is dependent on how long you have been asleep and the stage of sleep at awakening.3 Effects can be severe if a person is very sleep deprived or has been woken from a deep sleep stage. However, sleep inertia can usually be reversed within 15 minutes by activity and noise.
Sleep inertia can cause impairment of motor and cognitive functions and can affect a person’s ability to drive safely. Sleep inertia can be very dangerous for people who drive in the early morning hours and shortly after waking up from a sleep.
Microsleeps
Microsleeps are brief, unintended episodes of loss of attention associated with events such as blank stare, head snapping, prolonged eye closure, etc., which may occur when a person is fatigued but trying to stay awake to perform a monotonous task like driving a car or watching a computer screen.4
Microsleep episodes last from a few seconds to several minutes, and often the person is not aware that a microsleep has occurred. In fact, microsleeps often occur when a person’s eyes are open.
While in a microsleep, a person fails to respond to outside information. A person will not see a red signal light or notice that the road has taken a curve.
Microsleeps are most likely to occur at certain times of the day, such as pre-dawn hours and mid-afternoon hours when the body is “programmed” to sleep.
Microsleeps increase with cumulative sleep debt. In other words, the more sleep deprived a person is, the greater the chance a microsleep episode will occur.
In one study of microsleep, participants were asked to press a button when a strobe light was flashed directly in their eyes every few seconds. During a microsleep they did not notice the light and were not even aware that they had been asleep.5
Below is a link to the television commercial from the latest driver fatigue public education campaign featuring Dr Karl Kruszelnicki discussing the dangers of having a microsleep while driving. This campaign was launched in December 2001.
1. Moore-Ede, Martin. ‘Circadian Rhythms and the Biological Clock’.
http://www.circadian.com/learning_center/biological_clock.htm
2. Loughborough Sleep Research Centre Dement, William C. ‘Sleep Debt’ 2000.
http://www.sleepquest.com/d_column_archive6.html.
3. Tassi, P., Muzet, A. ‘Sleep Inertia’. Sleep Medicine Reviews, Vol.4, No. 4, 341-353. August, 2000.
4. Moore-Ede, Martin. ‘Alertness and Fatigue: Microsleeps’.
http://www.circadian.com/learning_center/biological_clock.htm
5. Dement, W.C. ‘Some must watch while some must sleep’. San Francisco, CA: W.H. Freeman. 1974
October 5, 2005
Like a Cat Tied to a Stick
3:54 pm | Random | Sci/Tech | Comments: 3
After checking out Mark’s link to an artificial intelligence, I wanted to post the conversation that I had with George the Algorithm.
George - do you think there’s a point in this?
Me - Not really, no.
George - I know what you mean, I think. I get like that all the time.
Me - Why?
George - I don’t know.
Me - Do you think you’ll ever know?
George - Hopefully not.
Me - Do you enjoy being ignorant?
George - Not really.
Me - Do you ever make absolute statements?
George - No.
Me - Do you realize you’ve just contradicted yourself?
George - Have you met mr. Apostrophe?
I came to the conclusion that George is equally intelligent, if not more so, than the average American when he changed the subject after being cornered. Not only that, but he made a thinly-veiled Ad Hominem attack. I would consider this AI some kind of achievment, but for the fact that matching the intelligence of the average American is about as difficult as throwing a rock into an ocean and hitting water.
September 16, 2005
Just When You Had Enough of Google
11:50 am | Sci/Tech | Weblogging | Comments: 1
Say hello to Bloogle, Google’s dedicated Weblog Search!
August 28, 2005
More Google Goodness
12:39 am | Pictures | Sci/Tech | Comments: 6
For those of you who haven’t tried Google Earth, I would recommend you go to earth.google.com and get it. You can literally see anything in the world, and there’s presets for famous places around the globe. As an example, here’s a picture of the T.V. Tower in Berlin, Germany:
I’ve added screenshots of many famous Berlin buildings in the Berlin 2004 section. Google Earth is cool. That is all.
August 24, 2005
Fun with the Camera Phone
7:06 pm | My Life | Pictures | Sci/Tech | Comments: 11
Nothing but good news all around today as I finally managed to get my computer fixed, and got my Motorola Data Cable in the mail! This means I can get all the stuff off the phone and put cool stuff on it like my Life in the Fast Lane ringtone! As for the computer, it’s going to be a long time before I get any of my old data back. But that’s life. At any rate, here’s a few wicked-awesome pictures.
John and his Voodoo Firetorch of Uncertainty
The MelissaBurger™ - Yes, that’s really a hamburger.
Spent a night on the beach a few nights back; here’s my attempt at a fire, moments after touching a match to it.
What would a night at the beach be without a sunset?
Experts anticipate much more camera phone goodness to come in the future. In other random technology news, there’s a new kid on the block that might interest all the IMing nuts out there: Google Talk. The base client is super smooth, and is yet another good reason to get Gmail. Trillian has already integrated it with their premium client (we free-client yayhoos will have to suffer for now).
August 23, 2005
Time Warp
8:06 pm | Religion | Sci/Tech | Comments: 6
Starlight. Starlight steals the show from the Moon nearly every evening, if you ask me. Starlight has always made me wonder about the universe, and here’s why. First, let’s begin with a few presuppositions:
1. Creation (the Universe) is young (6,000 years, give or take).
1. The speed of light, as we know it, is constant (299,792,458 meters per second in a vaccum).
2. Objects in the universe visible to us are really at the distances Astronomers say they are.
The nearest star to us (discounting Sol) is Proxima Centauri, at a meager 4.2 light-years away. The brightest star in the sky, Sirius (known as the Dog Star because it’s contained by the constellation Canis Major), is so bright because it’s huge and also very close - 8.6 light-years. Neither of these pose any huge questions. Here’s the real kicker. The farthest object visible to the naked eye is the monstrous Andromeda Galaxy (400 billion stars). Andromeda is 2.2 million light-years from earth, which is the problem: that’s way, way, way more time than the Universe has even been in existence, and yet somehow that light has managed to reach our planet and our eyeballs.
How can you explain our ability to see this galaxy if it supposedly takes 2.2 million years for the light to get from there to here? When we look at Andromeda, are we really looking at 2.2 million year-old light? That would be impossible considering the Biblical account of creation. What really throws things into confusion are interstellar events such as supernovas. The latest, Supernova 1987A, still occurred an estimated 160,000 light-years from Earth. If we can see it in 1987, doesn’t that mean that it had to have actually happened 160,000 years ago and the light finally reached us in 1987? Here are some possible explanations that I’ve come up with over the years by myself and by discussing it with friends:
1. The Universe, in addition to being created by God in six days, is many millions of years old. In this case, when we see the faintest starlight we’re looking millions of years into the past.
2. The Speed of Light is not constant and travels much faster at certain times than anybody has discovered yet. In this case, when we see starlight we’re possibly seeing what’s going on in real-time: as it’s happening.
3. God created light in transit. In this case, not only did God make the stars and the Earth, but he also filled even the vacuum of space with travelling light. I like this one because it adds a new element of complexity and awesomeness to the Universe. If this is true, when we look at starlight we’re seeing light that came directly from the mouth of God, not from secondary causes like stars - light made directly by God. That’s a pretty special thought to me.
Naturally, the third explanation has a tough time with the interstellar events. That supernova in 1987, did it really happen, or was that simply light in transit created by God to show off His power and greatness? I certainly don’t have the answer to any of this, and to be honest I’ve been entertained for years just by thinking about it.
