I bought yet another video game for the PS3 the other day. It’s called Killzone 2 and it is amazingly fun. One thing that blew me away were the graphics. Now, these are good, some of the cut CG scenes look like reality… but better. Like a brighter more dramatically and visually stunning reality. I am floored by the progress in the video game industry. It’s programmers are running neck and neck with computer hardware processing power and speed. They create an incredibly complex simulation complete with physics and artificial intelligence. They are free to imagine any world they wish, any game mechanic, any situation as long as it sells. No limitations. It’s only going to get better. If I could invest, it would be in this industry. The game I bought was developed for about 30 million dollars. Someday soon, it will rival the movie industry. Even in this economic climate, the game industry has only expanded.
Anyway it got me thinking about computers and the electronics industry in general. There is just no stopping it, the progress in this field is blistering. There are no checks, it’s just the free market running like crazy. No government agency to say this or this is unsafe. No entity to monitor anything really. I mean electronics may control critical things but the electronics industry itself has no resistance from anything. Other high tech industries do… Aerospace and Medical for instance.
Over simplified maybe but that’s the idea. So what is the future full of? Doctors? Pilots? Engineers?
Programmers.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Nightmares and Dreamscapes
My most recurring nightmare is being stranding submerged in the darkness of the deep ocean. I am terrified not because I cannot breath but because I am in a strange environment. I look around and can see deep into the nothingness, there is only a faint glow of bluish sunlight . That and one other thing is there with me, the shadows. Huge shadows roam about, slow and steady below me, below me and away from light. It paralyzes me with amazing fear. They are alien. Not ET alien, ET is a known, seen it a thousand times. No, it’s not a whale or even a menacing shark but it’s something else. All I can see are it’s huge eyes, dead and unblinking.
It gets closer.
Closer and I feel it against my feet. It’s skin is thick and rough. There is nowhere to go, and I try desperately to implode out of my skin. I want to leave. There is a real world out there, and it’s full of light and smiles, not dead eyes and darkness. It’s pulling me further down. The light is gone. It is completely black around me. The blackness of space and nothingness. I wish it was space but I know they are all around me. Another bumps into me, uncaringly, unknowingly.
And I wake up.
These are my subconscious fears and terrors. But what is it really? It’s fear of the unknown. But what is really known? Think of the cuttlefish. Cute name but completely and utterly alien.
The cuttlefish looks like Martian sea life. It even has greenish blue blood. This is because it uses copper to transport oxygen instead of iron like we do in our hemoglobin. It has three hearts, two pump blood to its two gills and another to the rest of the body. It’s eye is totally different from all vertebrates, pursuing its own independent line of evolution. It focuses not by reshaping the lens (like us) but reshaping the entire eye like the focus of a camera. They can change to almost any color, mimic any pattern (even dynamic ones) and imitate even texture. They are very intelligent (by product of the brain power needed to run the skin colors) and can learn from conditioning, even through observation.
Next month we go diving in the Caribbean waters off Belize. I am both excited and terrified. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Miracles
If you think about it, the most interesting place in the solar system is… Earth, hands down. It is home to to a level complexity and organization that is simply unfathonable. I mean compared to the deserts of Mars or the clouds of Jupiter, Earth is like finding a jumbo jet full of ipods in the middle of the Sahara. (Another amazing thing is is it got there because that’s just what sand does given enough time, but I’ll talk more about that later.)
That analogy doesn’t do it justice though, not in the slightest. Biolgical diversity and complexity is.. well it’s unreal. Your brain alone has… get this.. no you can’t, and neither can I but it’s 500 trillion connections. The number is higher at a younger age topping 1*10^15 or 1 quadrillion connections at age 3. This number is over 71 thousand times the age of the universe in years. And that’s the age of well, everything. And it’s more than the number of stars in our galaxy. 10,000 times the number of stars in our galaxy.
We are each a miracle in the truest sense of the word.
That analogy doesn’t do it justice though, not in the slightest. Biolgical diversity and complexity is.. well it’s unreal. Your brain alone has… get this.. no you can’t, and neither can I but it’s 500 trillion connections. The number is higher at a younger age topping 1*10^15 or 1 quadrillion connections at age 3. This number is over 71 thousand times the age of the universe in years. And that’s the age of well, everything. And it’s more than the number of stars in our galaxy. 10,000 times the number of stars in our galaxy.
We are each a miracle in the truest sense of the word.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Science as ephiphany
Ok, I've decided to start posting to this blog again! I got a new iphone so I've been in a very social media kind of mood.
I'm a nerd and proud of it. I bought a DVD of a lecture by Richard Dawkins done in 1991. I saw the first hour of it this evening and it was very good. It's called Growing Up in the Universe and is part of an annual series of Oxford Christmas lectures given first by Faraday. He used the term growing up in the universe to refer both to humanity's evolution over millions of years and to our own personal understanding of science and nature. He does a great job in conveying the wonder of the natural world. He even starts out by using a surprisingly effective metaphor with what else but my favorite man made object... a space ship.
He says imagine stepping into a spaceship bound for some far off star system. You'd go into a freeze or sleep for millions of years and then step out onto the surface of an alien planet. But behold, the planet is brimming with life... countless plants and animals. Birds and fish and all types of extraordinary wildlife. Well, that's kind of like what has happened here, with us. We have been asleep for millions of years only to wake up to a beautiful world. It really is amazing and in all too short a time we have to close our eyes again. How lucky we are to see it, don't you think?
I'm a nerd and proud of it. I bought a DVD of a lecture by Richard Dawkins done in 1991. I saw the first hour of it this evening and it was very good. It's called Growing Up in the Universe and is part of an annual series of Oxford Christmas lectures given first by Faraday. He used the term growing up in the universe to refer both to humanity's evolution over millions of years and to our own personal understanding of science and nature. He does a great job in conveying the wonder of the natural world. He even starts out by using a surprisingly effective metaphor with what else but my favorite man made object... a space ship.
He says imagine stepping into a spaceship bound for some far off star system. You'd go into a freeze or sleep for millions of years and then step out onto the surface of an alien planet. But behold, the planet is brimming with life... countless plants and animals. Birds and fish and all types of extraordinary wildlife. Well, that's kind of like what has happened here, with us. We have been asleep for millions of years only to wake up to a beautiful world. It really is amazing and in all too short a time we have to close our eyes again. How lucky we are to see it, don't you think?
Sunday, February 1, 2009
25 Things about me
1. I could not speak until I was 3 and doctors thought I had a learning disability. When I did start talking it was in full sentences… the first being, “Mom can I have some green beans?”
2. My earliest memory is when I was 7 months old. My mom took me to a new mother’s class at the community health center and I remember the projector and images on the wall. My memory is of a giant cone of light with ghostly women and babies in the air.
3. I am the first person in my family to earn a 4 year degree.
4. The only sport I ever played in was basketball my freshman year of high school, it was a total failure.
5. I was suspected of somehow faking my grades in high school. My first year had perfect scores on every test in every class for the entire year.
6. I’m allergic to bubble bath.
7. I have a pilot’s license and would have pursued one no matter the cost or impracticality of it.
8. I read non-fiction almost exclusively.
9. I lived in subsidized housing for part of my childhood. My mom’s rent was 23 dollars per month at one point.
10. I never close the window on a commercial flight.
11. I helped my mom study for her nursing exams at age 5. I surprised her by remembering the latin names of the anatomy parts she said out loud.
12. I entered a gifted and talented program in middle school. The entrance test was unlike any I had taken and remember describing it as “fun”.
13. I have both undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT. It was the perfect school for me. I was accepted early and never considered another school.
14. I earned a phlebotomy license (technician who draw blood) and trained to be an EMT in high school.
15. I consider my curiosity to be my most defining characteristic.
16. I haven’t seen my father in 16 years.
17. I find learning to be spiritually satisfying.
18. I love NBA basketball.
19. I’ve never broken a bone.
20. I’m a big fan of horror movies.
21. I don’t understand people who dismiss the cuisine of entire countries.. ie Chinese, Indian.. etc.
22. I hate hate hate potato salad, and to a lesser extent coleslaw.
23. I’m an unabashed music snob. Life is too short for musical potato salad.
24. After talking with people at NASA, I didn’t love Star Trek that much.
25. My most common nightmares are being deep underwater or in a disabled spaceship.
2. My earliest memory is when I was 7 months old. My mom took me to a new mother’s class at the community health center and I remember the projector and images on the wall. My memory is of a giant cone of light with ghostly women and babies in the air.
3. I am the first person in my family to earn a 4 year degree.
4. The only sport I ever played in was basketball my freshman year of high school, it was a total failure.
5. I was suspected of somehow faking my grades in high school. My first year had perfect scores on every test in every class for the entire year.
6. I’m allergic to bubble bath.
7. I have a pilot’s license and would have pursued one no matter the cost or impracticality of it.
8. I read non-fiction almost exclusively.
9. I lived in subsidized housing for part of my childhood. My mom’s rent was 23 dollars per month at one point.
10. I never close the window on a commercial flight.
11. I helped my mom study for her nursing exams at age 5. I surprised her by remembering the latin names of the anatomy parts she said out loud.
12. I entered a gifted and talented program in middle school. The entrance test was unlike any I had taken and remember describing it as “fun”.
13. I have both undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT. It was the perfect school for me. I was accepted early and never considered another school.
14. I earned a phlebotomy license (technician who draw blood) and trained to be an EMT in high school.
15. I consider my curiosity to be my most defining characteristic.
16. I haven’t seen my father in 16 years.
17. I find learning to be spiritually satisfying.
18. I love NBA basketball.
19. I’ve never broken a bone.
20. I’m a big fan of horror movies.
21. I don’t understand people who dismiss the cuisine of entire countries.. ie Chinese, Indian.. etc.
22. I hate hate hate potato salad, and to a lesser extent coleslaw.
23. I’m an unabashed music snob. Life is too short for musical potato salad.
24. After talking with people at NASA, I didn’t love Star Trek that much.
25. My most common nightmares are being deep underwater or in a disabled spaceship.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
A Different Time
Sarah’s brother gave me the most interesting book for Christmas. It is entitled The Manhattan Project and is composed of various outtakes from history books, primary sources and first hand accounts. It’s all arranged in a vaguely chronological order and is incredibly readable. I even find myself remarking to Sarah after each entry in absolute amazement. My present job is arguably lacking in innovation and creativity so it’s amazing to hear about this amazing development environment. In fact many things I do have been heavily documented and done by many people for many DECADES, so it’s crazy to hear about people thinking up stuff and racing about to make hardware. This is the environment I had always dreamed I’d be in and it’s ironic that it existed in its purest form while creating the first atomic weapon. Despite any moral objections you may have to the project’s ultimate goal the sheer scale and success of the whole thing is a good study in what people can achieve. The management of the whole effort is astounding but the people themselves I think were the reason for its ultimate success. Sure they were given lots of money and political backing but everyone in particular performed outstandingly. From what I can tell everyone was given a project or task they could not immediately see how to complete.. almost everything they did was a first. There is even one story of a woman who created only finely woven quartz bands and was one day asked to work on an a wartime project in an unknown location. She had no idea what she’d be doing or where but she took it and was asked to design and fabricate a micro-measurement scale. She was scared to death, had never even designed anything much less made jigs and used metal working equip … and she did it. They all did. They went from theory in 1938 to a reacting nuclear pile underneath Stagg Field at the U of Chicago in 1942. This reacting pile was created in one of the densest parts of the country and the only assurance that it wouldn’t detonate were the calculations by Fermi himself. To go from that primitive pile of uranium to a bomb in 1945 is beyond belief. This was only after incredible amounts of ambitious and revolutionary engineering on all known fronts… be it chemical, mechanical, electrical and nuclear.
I can’t help to think how exciting the whole thing must have been.. to have been galvanized for a purpose and to work with some of the greatest minds in the country. An article by Feynman talks about how they all worked so well together. It’s funny because you’d think egos and personalities would quickly fuss things up in a room literally full of Nobel laureates. That wasn’t the case, after lengthy discussions he says the entire room would often come to the same conclusions. Self managing groups.. amazing. I guess when you have an ultimate goal in mind, and everybody can “run with the pack” so to speak, great strides can be made.
The way the all talk about it, the labs were bristling with new ideas, revolutionary ideas and they were quickly implementing them… on the scale of DAYS. I wonder if we will see a time like that again, hopefully for a more inspiring purpose.
I can’t help to think how exciting the whole thing must have been.. to have been galvanized for a purpose and to work with some of the greatest minds in the country. An article by Feynman talks about how they all worked so well together. It’s funny because you’d think egos and personalities would quickly fuss things up in a room literally full of Nobel laureates. That wasn’t the case, after lengthy discussions he says the entire room would often come to the same conclusions. Self managing groups.. amazing. I guess when you have an ultimate goal in mind, and everybody can “run with the pack” so to speak, great strides can be made.
The way the all talk about it, the labs were bristling with new ideas, revolutionary ideas and they were quickly implementing them… on the scale of DAYS. I wonder if we will see a time like that again, hopefully for a more inspiring purpose.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
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