Duck Goes Moo!

I found a neat site that can calculate your WalkScore, a term made to describe how well one can get to needed services without needing a car.

I scored a 77, which is fairly okay, but not ideal. If I had gotten that loft I was looking at four years ago in Downtown West I would have gotten a WalkScore of 95, which means I would of been able to walk to nearly everything (but probably get asked for change twenty times a day).

http://www.walkscore.com/

Whenever I look at pictures of particle accelerators and super-colliders, I am always reminded of imagery one finds in various religious texts and art.

For example, Buddhist Mandalas:

Metatron’s Cube:

Taoist I-Ching:

I find this all interesting since the whole point of particle accelerators and such is to discover the nature of the universe.

Of course, there is a chance that a super-collider could destroy the universe, not reveal its nature:

http://techfreep.com/worlds-largest-supercollider-could-destroy-the-universe.htm

While flying over the country, I have occasionally seen these humongous, perfectly round circles in the ground. From the colors of them they looked like farms, but it seemed odd to me to grow them in circles.

Some of the circles even had a mix of crops that made them look like pie charts.

I finally Googled about this and found out this is part of the Ogallala Aquifer combined with Center Pivot Irrigation, transforming the dust bowl into a lush productive land… or at least many. many circles of it.

Why did the Wicked Witch of the West melt when she was splashed with water? Here’s some hints on the matter:

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mwickedwitch.html

Devolution be damned! It appears that humanity is in fact evolving at an ever quicker pace:

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnN10432286.html

Humour aside, the above article does not quite state if all the evolution going on is in a positive direction or not, and DEVO’s ideas about devolution was more about culture than genetics.

I seem to remember reading something one time about how the human genome stopped being altered by the genes of bacteria and viruses many millennia ago. I wonder if this is related.

Neat Sciencey Stuff Here

Above is an article that discusses the nature of flocks, like flocks of birds or a troop of army ants… or perhaps like our own bodies and minds.

This is something I have thought quite a lot about in my life time. I have done simulations based around flock behavior for college when I was getting my degree. The exercise is simple, but difficult to master. You create entities, give them basic rules for movement, and then see if they form in grouping or flocks.

The rules you would set up would mostly take the form of placing weights upon the importance of a single entity following other members of the flock, keeping your distance from them, trying to face the same direction as they are, all while trying to avoid any obstacles or predators. Pretty neat stuff. My lab partner and I made jellyfish that flocked together and avoided stone pillars (remains of Atlantis) and jellyfish catching net that the user could control.

The above article applies some of the concepts of flocking to how the human body works, including our conscious minds.

I’ve been a fan for quite some time of Marvin Minski’s “Society of the Mind”, a book that tries to build an explanation for how human consciousness is possible and how it truly function. The main part in the book I was interested in was the part about how our minds may be in reality a conglomeration of many smaller minds that are built in a hierarchy.

People have sometimes wondered if collectivist critters like flocking birds or army ants can form a conscious, thinking entity when they are group together and acting as one… perhaps that is getting it backwards. Perhaps it is that our minds are like a flock of birds, each synapse acting and feeling in complete independence and ignorance of the whole, just obeying simple rules of alignment and distance.

In the “Changing Gears” comic I was planning to introduce the concept of “Pattern Sentience”. The characters Elvis and Camille were going to have an on and off philosophical discussion about what consciousness is and where it begins and ends. The main points I lined out in “The Discussion” were:

——–

All matter is energy

Different types of matter and their properties are determined by patterns of energy, therefore, everything is made out of patterns

Living things and computer programs are self-enforcing patterns

It is the ability of a pattern to grow, change, and maintain as a cohesive pattern that makes it alive

Self-awareness is essential to sentience

Self-awareness is an act of recursion

Self-aware patterns are essentially recursive, as they contain a copy of the whole pattern to figure its own place within the environment

Patterns can be sentient if they are capable of recursion.

Since patterns can be sentient, and everything is made out of patterns, sentience can occur anywhere, whether in a brain or in the patterns of ones and zeros in circuitry. All that is required is a space in which patterns can maintain, evolve, and be recursive.

——

“Excerpt from a planned scene in Changing Gears”:

Elvis: If flocks of birds can be considered alive, do they have afterlives after the birds scatter to their nests? Do dead languages go to Heaven or Hell? I want you to think about this.

Camille: So… the birds are the afterlife of a deceased flock? If this is so, what do we break into when we die? It seems when we die all the bits and pieces we are made of die too. I mean, when a flock of birds dies, the birds can go on and form a new flock with new birds. My cells won’t scatter to become parts of a new person. They will die when I do.

Elvis: But perhaps the cells of your body should not be considered part of the “flock of you”, it is more likely that your ideas, memories, and knowledge that are the birds of your soul. Language is a bridge that allows these to migrate, reproduce, and spread.

Camille: So… our ideas are our afterlife? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? That’s a real pretty thought but… are those thoughts really me? Copies of my ideas and memories are spread by language… but when I die my ideas, the real ones in my head, die with me.

Elvis: Then every time I have been deactivated and turned back on I have died and then been reborn. Do you think I am the same living entity each time? Or is a new being created each time this happens?

Camille: You have the same memories…

Elvis: Do I? Or do I have just copies of them from a previous entity? When a pattern is frozen and then reanimated is it the same pattern? Could not that rest, no matter how long, be considered part of the same pattern? what if you were frozen for five years and brought back to life afterwards… would you be the same pattern, the same conscious entity? Or would a new Camille have been born with your dead memories?

Camille: I only cut your power for ten seconds! Elvis, are you trying to tell me I killed you when I shut down your core?

Elvis: No, I am saying you may have killed someone else, I am alive, though my memories might not be my own. I am sorry I brought this up. You appear distressed. Would you like to play a game of chess?

Camille: (blank stare)

———-

Here is an excellent article on what a Quantum Computer is:

http://www.tfot.info/column/5/what-is-a-quantum-computer.html

Article here

I’ve recently noticed a common quality that both consistently happy and consistently depressed people seem to share: They are both really full of themselves.

Scientists at Cardiff University are saying that the recent studies of comets reveals them to be the most likely source of life on Earth.

The 2005 Deep Impact mission to Comet Tempel 1 discovered a mixture of organic and clay particles inside the comet. One theory for the origins of life proposes that clay particles acted as a catalyst, converting simple organic molecules into more complex structures. The 2004 Stardust Mission to Comet Wild 2 found a range of complex hydrocarbon molecules – potential building blocks for life.

from ScienceDaily.com

This is truly fascinating news. It turns the solar system into an ecosystem of its own, with little seeds of life zinging about.

More Here

There are three inventions I would like to see brought into the world:

One is a 100% efficiency solar cell. Most solar cells these days only take in only a quarter or less of the sun’s energy. By increasing the amount of energy that can be captured at once we can vastly reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn plus avoid potentially dangerous technologies involving fission, which produce nuclear waste which has to be handled with extreme care. You can’t build a dirty bomb or a warhead with solar power.

Another technology I would like to see is a “heat battery”. The idea of a heat battery is that it can absorb the radiant and conductive heat energy from environment around it and store it for later use. During the summer you would turns these on to keep your place cool, storing the unneeded heat for the winter, where you would then have them release the stored heat. This would vastly reduce the amount of energy we use to keep homes and businesses cool, and perhaps could even be used to power devices instead of just releasing the stored energy as heat.

The third technology I would like to see is a “energy to matter” device. This is of course an idea taken from Star Trek, but a device like this could end poverty and famine, end the mining and destruction of nature for precious metals, and in general end the morbidity experienced in impoverished areas and the drive for material wealth.

Now that I’ve said I’d like to see these technologies, I must add some reservations.

If humanity had these technologies and they were cheap and easy to implement, then humanity could live pretty much anywhere in as great a number as they please. In the past and present times the places people could live and the number that could be sustained there has been defined by environmental and material limits. The three technologies I just listed would remove those limits. Free energy, free heat and cool, and free materials mean that there would be no poverty, environmental harshness, or starvation to keep the number of people from growing. The end result could potentially be that every corner of the globe, even the North Pole and the driest desert, would be covered with cities and people.

Or will the world be eventually covered with people regardless of these technologies coming into existence, and they would just live horrible lives full of starvation and suffering? No matter what rules or attempts at enforcement are made on limiting human reproduction we are going to need to create the technologies and systems to keep tens of billions of people alive, and the fossil fuels and natural resources are not going to be enough.

Even beyond the issue of sustenance and human population growth, would these technologies put an end to the need for government and society? If people could provide themselves with all the power, food, and comfort they need would we need anything outside our own doors? Would these three technologies be the proverbial Shmoo that disintegrates our need to work together as a society? No need to get an education, job, or anything as all you need to survive is provided and will always be there.

I do not think that would be the true end result of these technologies, for the most part. Humans are as always a curious and explorative bunch who would not be satisfied with just surviving. With life on Earth assured they would then be free to explore more lofty goals, like space exploration and terraforming other worlds and creating new systems of life. Humanity would be no more fashion obsessed and idle than they already are. They would find plenty of things to complain about and try to change, even with having anything they could want.

So I say bring on these new technologies and lets get busy focusing on something else besides fighting over resources and good places to live.

When I first created the character “Camille Labrat”, a human/mouse chimera, I had no idea this sort of thing was gradually becoming a reality.

Chimera research is becoming more and more a common part of medical and scientific investigations and practices. I doubt we’ll see anything like an anthropomorphic mouse with an IQ of 300 any time soon, but the human genome in being infused with those of mice more and more.

I better get back to writing the “Changing Gears” comic before it’s no longer fiction.

Article Here

Scientists may have found a cure for baldness, and it involves ripping the scalp to pieces. They have found that mammals can regenerate hair follicles when an injury takes place to the skin. The theory is that a wound can “awaken dormant embryonic pathways” to being stem cells to the damaged area, which then brings about the regrowth of hair follicles.

more here

This stuff is called Ferrofluid. I can’t wait till someone learn how to take music from their iPod and use it to make a dancing dynamic sculpture.

When the Democratic party was searching for new ideas they had a site called sinceslicedbread.com, where people could log in and post ideas that could help our country become better.

I made a post on there stating a plan where there would be federal run health clubs where all the exercise machines generate electricity, and then the people who participated would get tax breaks for the amount of energy they generated of the state.

My idea was generally laughed at by most everyone at the site, but it looks like something similar is indeed taking place.

It is state run (sort of), but you don’t get a tax break, though it is indeed an exercise facility that generates power:

more here

Famed Scientist Stephan Hawking has talked much lately of humanity’s need to escape the planet to ensure its survival, and now he has taken his first step in proving anyone can make the journey into space.

Hawking has recently taken a ride in a “vomit comet”, a plane designed to make high-altitude dives to facilitate short periods of weightlessness brought about by free fall. He said the experience was “amazing” and is it is assumed he is still planing on making a trip to space.

More Here

A mathematician at Pittsburgh University has proposed that there are six dimensions: 4 in space and two in time. To be more accurate, s2 = x2 + y2 + z2 – t2 – u2 – v2, where x, y, z and s are coordinates in space and t and u are coordinates in time, which are expressed as negative coordinates. This creates an ultra-hyperbolic universe, which is different than the normal concept of space-time which is merely hyperbolic. This is much different than string theory which has nine positive coordinates and only one negative coordinate.

My work has three six-dimensional spaces which at one level are on an equal footing and which are bound together by a new transform, which I call the Xi-transform, [...] Two of these spaces can be understood at the space-time level as twisters. Then the third space can be given a space-time interpretation, but only if we have two extra dimensions: so it is the requirement of symmetry between the spinor spaces and the space-time that dictates that the extra dimensions be there.

from physorg.com

Really interesting stuff, but it takes several reads to understand what is being expressed if you’re not heavy ready of physics and mathematics papers.