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28 Dec 2009Visited my evolution poster at zazzle.com (click here
to jump to the poster) and - damn - 60 people have bought it in year since I
posted it. I get $3 royalty per poster, so I made $180, which I don't
really want: I published it as a public service to promote science.
I feel guilty about the money, because the zazzle version of the poster had huge white margins
on both sides, because I didn't know what I was doing when I posted it on zazzle
(though zazzle could have provided better instructions). I just fixed it,
so now it no longer has the huge white margins. 29 Aug 2009Read The
Language of God by Francis Collins. What a disappointment. I was
hoping to read an intelligent defense of Evangelical belief system, but instead
I got the same old irrational arguments that I hear from glassy-eyed
door-to-door proselytizers. In this book, we could expect him to address
some of the rational dilemmas posed by fundamentalist belief system. But no. He
skates around the difficult issues and so the book was a big disappointment. 28 Aug 2009Read The Book of J by H. Bloom. Great book about the Old Testament, specifically the first five books called the Torah or Pentateuch. The book explores the thesis that the Torah was written by four different authors between 950 BC and 500 BC, and compiled into a single volume around 450 BC by a person called the Redactor. This hypothesis was developed by Christian German academics in the late 1800s, notably Wellhausen, and it is called the "documentary hypothesis" or "source hypothesis". Bloom's book focuses on one of those authors, called "J", that is responsible for much of Genesis. The most noteworthy thing about this book is that Bloom claims that J was female, but I think he does that to be provocative and sell books. He has no hard evidence but does adduce some stylistic support. The book includes an English translation of J's text, taken out of the Torah and presented by itself. There are two messages from the book that are important: First, Bloom reminds us that the authors of the Torah were not writing a religious text. When they were writing, there was no Bible, and there was no established Jewish religion (there were several splinter groups or cults). Instead, the four authors were writing stories, history, laws, proverbs, poems, and legal guides. It is only after the authors' text was redacted into the Torah around 450 BC (and formally canonized around 100 BC) that it became a religious work for Jews. Specifically, the authors themselves were not intending to write religious text, and were not intending to create a Holy book. Bloom contrasts this with the Koran and Book of Mormon, which were both religious texts from the outset. Second, Bloom insists that many modern Christians and Jews mis-read the Torah. He claims that the modern interpretations of the first five books are in many cases inconsistent (usually unknowingly) with what the original authors intended. Example: J's god is lively, humane, angry, has a body, and walks and talks; yet modern faithful ignore that aspect of god and focus on the transcendental and sublime aspect of god. Example: J's text generally portrays men as foolish and error-prone, whereas the women are wiser; yet modern faithful interpret the Torah to endorse patriarchy and subjugate women. Bloom points out that these misinterpretations are partially due to the fact that J's text is confusingly interspersed with text from the other three authors, and partially due to modern faithful having agendas they want to promote. Another example of a mis-reading of Genesis is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, called The Fall. Many Christians interpret the story as the source of the Original Sin doctrine, but Bloom contends that this Eden narrative is nothing more than a simple story of child-like disobedience - initiated by an impish snake - and consequent punishment. Bloom points out that the Bible has no mention of "Original Sin" or of Satan being the snake, and Bloom points out that the expulsion from Eden is mentioned no where else in the OT (as it would be if it were so important), and that the term "Fall" is nowhere used. J's story explicitly says that the purpose of the expulsion is to ensure that humans do no become immortal by accidentally eating from the Tree of Life (not to be confused with the one the snake pointed them to .. the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). Therefore, Bloom concludes that the Original Sin doctrine (humans being sin-free before the Fall, and doomed as sinners afterwards) is erroneous and were added by later Christian interpreters. Bloom is a big fan of J, and ranks her literary achievements up there with Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, and Tolstoy. He says she is witty, insightful, wise, and humorous, and her style includes many puns and witticisms. He implies that - in the right circumstances - a non-religious text like Homer's Iliad could have become a religious text, if it were adopted by a Cult and re-formatted into a holy book. 24 Aug 2009I read an article in National Geographic about using DNA to trace the spread of humans over the globe. The latest data shows that Eve (the most recent common ancestor of all living humans) lived around 200,000 years ago in east Africa, than humans left Africa (to the Middle East) around 50,000 years ago, and people reached the Americas around 15,000 years ago. The figures seem small to me, probably because I'm used to dates of 1M to 2M years ago for non-homo-sapien ancestor species. The really amazing value is the 50,000 year figure for leaving Africa, although that makes some sense since the current date for agriculture and husbandry is around 6,000 to 12,000 years ago in the mid-east. The article also says humans did not get to Spain until 20,000 years ago. They used DNA clocks, tracing changes to DNA (mitochondrial DNA passed from mothers, and Y-chromosomes passed from fathers). Read Common Sense by Glenn Beck (well, he had a ghost writer, but at least had the idea for the contents :-). He travels the path established by Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly. Although I like the fact that he clearly delineates the unchecked growth of the federal government, his arguments are undermined by continually blaming liberals for all ills of the government. In fact, both liberals and conservatives have been going along with the growth of the federal government, yet nearly all of his examples of waste and growth are of Democrats. And, as with Limbaugh, there is a lack of balance (common to all polemics) that is disturbing because it is so misleading (for example, he talks about liberal FDR using threats of jail to prevent conservatives from opposing his policies, but he doesn't mention McCarthyism). Another problem I have with the book is that he uses the term "progressive" to denote a liberal. He is following O'Reilly who coined the term "secular progressive" to mean liberal. Do we really need to invent new terms for old things, to make them seem fresh? On the bright side, I hear that many advertisers are boycotting Beck because of his apocalyptic views and intolerance. 18 Aug 2009I read an article about fact that the Republicans have such small representation in the U.S. Congress right now. The author pointed out that there were two events that caused many moderate Republicans to desert the party:
The above two events are special because the were not vague, high-level policies, but were heart-breaking family dramas. In both cases the Republican party was going against its own "minimize government intervention" tenets (in a very cynical move to get votes) but the party's position backfired and alienated many conservatives. A similar incident is unfolding right now: teenager Rifqa Bary ran away from home because she is afraid she will be killed by her parents as an honor killing (for converting to Christianity). Even though there is no evidence that her father is malicious (most likely, she is just a confused teenager who needs counseling), the Florida courts are refusing to return her to her family, base merely on the girl's fear. Here again, conservatives are holding a view contrary to their values (that parents should be able to raise their children) merely because it is a muslim family. Only time will tell if this becomes as controversial as Elian or Schiavo affairs. 24 July 2009A recently published book is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything ... I have not read it yet, but it sounds interesting. I've often thought the same thing myself, when studying certain historical situations such as:
It is an open question whether - globally - the benefits of religion outweigh its ill-effects. Certainly one can find thousands of significant examples of charity and good works in the name of religion, but the counter-argument to that is that such philanthropic instincts would occur (and do occur) even amongst atheists. I think Dawkins examines that calculus in The God Delusion. 23 July 2009Read the book 1434 by G. Menzies. This is a sequel to his eariler book 1421 (which I have not read). They are provocative books written by an amateur historian. His thesis is that in 1421 the Chinese visited the Americas before Columbus, and in 1434 a Chinese delegation visited Italy and jump-started the Renaissance by giving Europeans detailed info on science, math, astronomy, and maps. The book reminds me of Von Daniken's book Chariots of the Gods, which was also a popular book by an amateur historian, that included astounding claims that mainstream historians disclaimed; and also Thor Heyerdahl's book Kon-Tiki. This class of books are a good read, and - since their argument usually involves putting forth dozens of artifacts to bolster their claim - very educational, even if the reader does not believe the grand hypothesis. Following up on my entry on wealth and class (18 July 2009), I'd like to learn more about the wealth-equalizing laws that were passed around 1900 in the USA. These include: - Income Tax - A progressive tax (meaning wealthier pay higher tax rates) established in 1913, although Wikipedia says there were occasional income taxes in the US before then. - Estate Tax - Established in 1916. - Anti-trust: This law from around 1890 has nothing to do with family trusts, but instead, was an anti-monopoly (or pro-competition) law that included (among other things) a prohibition against competitors joining forces using a "trust" legal structure. 18 July 2009After reading Toynbee's A Study of History, I got to thinking about how his thesis could be integrated with Marx's theory of communism. Toynbee deliberately chose the word "proletariat" to describe the not-in-power classes that eventually created a new civilization when the ruling classes become stagnant. He started writing in 1930, when communism and the labor union movement was very strong (especially in UK, where he lived). I tried to read the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, but it is very hard to read: filled with jargon and convoluted logic. One would think that they would use plain language since their audience was the working classes, but maybe they were really trying to impress their fellow intellectuals? Anyway, their main thesis is that people are divided into two classes: the bourgeois (who own the farms, factories, and stores) and the workers (who are paid wages, and own only personal possessions). The communist goal is for the workers (proletariat) to become empowered and take ownership of the means of production. No longer would the lazy owners of farms, factories and stores be able to collect profit while relaxing at home. The workers would own the farms, factories, and stores, and every one would be a worker. Marx and Engels hoped for the day when the workers, educated with these principles, would rise up and take that ownership that was due them. I didn't see Toynbee addressing that, but then most civilization-transitions that he describes happened long before Marx. Here is how I see the class struggle: On every continent, at every point in history, every society has people with lots of stuff and power, and those with less stuff and power. The people that have stuff and power want to keep it, get more of it, and give it to their kids. They figure they deserve it since they either worked hard for it, or are just innately superior. Those people with less stuff and power want more. They are envious of those with, either because they feel they are just as worthy, and are simply unlucky to be born into the lower classes, or they feel simple envy. If the discrepancy of wealth/power becomes too great, a revolution many ensue. If this possibility becomes likely, the upper classes may - consciously or unconsciously - shrink the divide by some redistribution of wealth. It may be a one time event (passing out bread or grain) or a permanent thing (progressive income taxes). Or they may try to distract the lower classes (games in the Roman coliseum). If a society tries to level out the wealth/power _too_ much, by drastic legislation, the effect can be to empower the lower classes, but perhaps at the cost of reducing initiative, creativity, and industry (USSR from 1930 to 1990). Societies may swing back and forth between the two extremes, as did China when it went from a very wide divide of rich-to-poor around 1900 to a very egalitarian distribution after the 1940's revolution (and is now returning to a point somewhere in between). The upper classes can use a variety of means to retain their wealth and power, ranging from laws, brute force, terror, threats, or trickery. Classes with a strong upper class will sometimes lend a hand to other countries that need a hand keeping their upper classes in power (the US assisting the Shah in Iran, Chang-Kai-Shek in China, etc). Likewise, Russia, China, Vietnam, and Korea help each other to maintain a more level distribution of wealth and power. Also, upper classes within a society often help each other out: the oil kings helping the railroad robber barons helping the Wall Street bankers. Without getting into moral judgments about where, in the spectrum of wild-free-market capitalism and equal-distribution-of-wealth communism, it seems clear that somewhere in the middle is the best path. I base that on a common sense application of "moderation in everything" as well as the golden rule "do unto others as you would have others do unto you". What is the middle ground? I would say it incorporates the following principles:
8 July 2009Had some time to skim the Bible. I tried to read it in a very objective, skeptical fashion, just looking at it as an archaeologist or literary expert might. The things that jumped out at me were:
Of all the issues listed above, the one that is most interesting to me is the transition from the OT to the NT: in the OT, god very directly talked to the Israelites, and made covenants with them (including hundreds of very detailed laws), and they repeatedly broke the promises. God was not interested in other ethnic groups. In the NT, god, abruptly says: Ignore all those laws and promises from the OT, and - by the way - now I'm interested in the entire human race, not just Israelites. This change seems so fallible, so incredible. Analyzing from a skeptical point of view, it is clear that Jesus had some very passionate disciples, and they were doing everything they could to ensure that the Christian church would grow and prosper. One key step was to expand the scope to all people, not limiting it to the Jews. Another step was to make the OT obsolete, so the references to "jews only" were de-emphasized. How to persuade Jews that Jesus was a true prophet? that god really was behind these changes? Merely having Jesus claim he was a prophet was not enough: a prophet's word cannot trump Moses proclamations in the Torah (first five books of the OT). So, Jesus' disciples hit on the notion of claiming that Jesus was god himself. Thus, god himself is overturning the OT. This leads to the notion of the Trinity. This is a different path than followed by Mohammed (or Moses), who merely claimed he was a prophet to whom God chose to speak. 30 June 2009With the demise of print-based newspapers, we run a risk of losing most investigative journalism. Without that: much corruption would go unreported and unpunished. Fortunately, I found a neat site: www.proPublica.org that may start to fill the void. They report on topics of public interest, doing investigative journalism. Kinda like www.CommonCause.org but with more focus on publishing articles, in fact, it looks like they get some of their articles published in mainstream news outlets (e.g. Washington Post online). Another similar site is www.OpenSecrets.com (formerly the Center for Responsive Politics). If this trend keeps up, we may end up with a dozen or so major "investigative journalism" sites, that actually research, fact-check, and publish investigations, plus hordes of lesser sites that don't have as much in-depth reporting or quality control. I say "a dozen" because it costs $$ to do the research and fact-check, and these sites will have to rely on charitable contributions, so I can't imagine many sites being able to raise the necessary funding. 29 June 2009News article: There was a muslim falsely arrested in Florida man Youssef Megahed. He was quickly acquitted by a Florida jury of any accusation. The feds just re-arrested him this week to deport him to Egypt because he is "likely to become engaged in ... terrorist activity" .. even though he legally immigrated to the US when he was 12 years old. One glimmer of hope: his jury forman (a WASP) feels this is a tragedy and personally apologized to the victim for the persecution by the USA. 29 June 2009Celebrities my age are starting to die: Michael Jackson and Billy Mays (advertising pitchman) - both born in the same year as me - died this week. 21 April 2009Reading The Study of History (abridged) by Arnold Toynbee (1934 - 1959). This is his famous study of civilizations: their life-cycles and patterns. He recognizes the following civilizations (the term "from" in parenthesis means the civilization arose from that prior civilization): Civilizations alive now:
Civilizations that are no longer in existence:
He cites several "arrested civilizations" that started, but did not grow into true civilizations:
And four "abortive civilizations" that were absorbed when meeting with a more dominant civilization:
The above lists exclude "primitive" societies that did not reach the size or sophistication necessary to qualify as a civilization. He has come under some criticism for excluding certain societies: Etruscans, Ethiopians, East African, Sudanese, Tibet, and South-East Asia. The abridged version of the book is fairly readable. He also wrote another book "Mankind and Mother Earth". Unlike J. Diamond who, in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" posited that geography is the key factor in determining the prosperity of a society, Toynbee posits that the key factor is a severe "challenge" that the society must face and conquer. The challenge must not be too severe, or too easy. The right-sized challenge (in the right circumstances) will cause a civilization to form. A "Creative Minority" will form to address the challenge, and it will cause the civilization to flourish and succeed. If the challenge wanes, and is not replaced with new challenges, the Creative Minority will become complacent, and the subordinate majority (the "proletariat") will start to chafe, eventually revolting and/or forming a new religion. The civilization will eventually die, to be replaced by a new civilization that was formed by the proletariat. 10 March 2009Neat quote from somebody on the web, not sure who the source is: "The musical emotion springs precisely from the fact that at each moment the composer withholds or adds more or less than the listener anticipates on the basis of a pattern that he thinks he can guess, but that he is incapable of wholly divining....". Google says this is from anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss. 10 March 2009Okay. I've been thinking about rotational non-inertial frames, and I think I have a theory. We'll call it "Olander's Principle": I'll explain it via some thought experiments: Imagine a universe entirely empty, except for one observers with a handful of golf balls. The observer holds a ball out at arm's length at releases the ball. The ball appears, to the observer, to remain motionless. Now add two more observers, so there are 3 identical observers, call them A, B, C, all with balls, all vertically aligned. C rotates 10 times per minute clockwise relative to B; A rotates 10 times per minute anti-clockwise relative to B. The all release balls. B perceives all balls, including his, to remain still or to travel on straight paths. A perceives all the balls to follow curved paths, in fact, the curve around him 10 times per minute (in ever expanding orbits). C perceives the balls also rotating around him 10 times per minute, but in the opposite direction of A. The frame of reference that has straight-line movement is the frame that is the "average" of all the observer's rotating frames. Remove one observer, so now there is just A and B, A rotates 10 times per minute CCW relative to B. They both release balls. For reasons of symmetry either can be "preferred" so they both perceive the ball's trajectory curving: A perceives the balls orbiting 5 times per minute, and B perceives them also orbiting 5 times per minute but in the opposite direction. Again, the non-inertial frame is the frame that is the "average" of the two observer's rotating frames. Imagine an empty universe with a single observer, A. Add a massive, large sphere centered at A and rotating 10 times per minute relative to A. A releases a ball with no initial velocity (relative to A). A perceives the ball immediately travel away from himself, and the ball appears to orbit around A 10 times per minute. Observer D, located fixed on the sphere, looking at A sees the balls moving in straight paths (after A releases them). The sphere (and observer D) are the non-inertial frame, and A is the non-inertial frame. The instant the ball leaves A's hand, the ball immediately stops the rotation it had (relative to the sphere). In addition to the trajectory of a released ball, there are other phenomena that A could observe: A spring extended outward from A with a mass on the end will stretch out when A is rotating. A's own body feels tidal forces, since, as A extends his arm away from the axis of the sphere's rotation, A's arm also wants to stop rotating, just as the balls stopped rotating with A when A released the balls. It requires a rigid structure, or great effort, for A's body to maintain its integrity while the sphere is rotating around A. From A's point of view, the sphere is pulling on A's arm, dragging things along with the sphere's rotation. But from the sphere's point of view, A is rotating rapidly, and A's limbs feel centripetal force and, if the rotation is sufficiently rapid, A will get torn apart. Observer D, at rest on the sphere, feels no such internal forces. D concludes that his frame is inertial. A perceives the centripetal forces acting on his own body, and concludes that he is rotating relative to some large masses. If the sphere were invisible to A, A would be able to conclude the existence of some large masses that have (on average) the rotational angle of the sphere. A would not know their location or densities, but would be able to compute their net rotational angular velocity. Continuing that thought experiment: add a second, large massive sphere rotating in the opposite direction, also centered on observer A: Observer A would now see released balls remain motionless. Imagine a single observer A, and a large massive sphere rotating relatively about A, and assume that the sphere and observer A are equally massive. The inertial frame would be a frame that is the net average of their angular velocities. So both observer A (at the center) and observer D (stationary on the sphere) would see thrown balls follow a curved trajectory. Also, both A and D would feel centripetal forces on their bodies. Imagine a single observer A, surrounded by a massive sphere rotating relatively about A. Assume there is a second, larger, more massive sphere also centered on A, but rotating in-sync with A. Consider observer D, at rest on the inner sphere: imagine that he is looking towards A, and does not know about the outer sphere. D throws a ball towards A, but the ball starts curving immediately, and in A's reference frame, the ball travels on a straight path. From this, D concludes that there must be large invisible masses that are more-or-less stationary in A's reference frame. D will also feel tidal or centripetal forces on his own body, from which he could draw a similar conclusion. From the above thought experiments, I conclude My Principle: Definition: Rotational effects are centripetal force, tidal forces, curved free-fall trajectories. My Principle: A frame of reference will perceive rotational effects if the net rotation of all other masses in the universe around the frame's center are non-zero. Definition: A frame is "inertial" if observers fixed in the frame do not perceive rotational effects, otherwise it is non-inertial. Corollary: The stars constitute most of the universe's mass, and so a reference frame that has the stars at rest will not sense rotational forces. Note: this principle does not establish a single absolute reference frame for the universe, because there are an infinite number of inertial frames. The key question is: Why does the rotating person feel the rotational forces, but a person on the massive sphere not feel the forces? Some answers include: - There is a special force exerted by rotating masses (pre-relativity explanation) - Special relativity suggests that the mass-points on the sphere appear to have very, very large mass to A's viewpoint. So the conventional gravitational force is tugging on a released-ball (or spring, or arm). - General relativity suggests that the rotating sphere is curving the space-time around the observer at the center, and spaces "drops off" around A, causing released balls to fall away. Furthermore, the rotation of the sphere is "dragging" space around A in a circular manner, so that a released ball also gradually receives an orbital motion (relative to A). One can imagine radial valleys emanating outward from the center of the sphere, rotating with the sphere, and causing balls to be pushed around A in a circle. Query: consider an empty universe with a single observer and a large, massive rotating sphere, but the observer is outside the sphere. Will balls released by the observer appear to travel in straight or curved trajectories? Query: Consider the observer that is surrounded by a large, massive, invisible rotating sphere. Can the observer conclude that he is surrounded by such a sphere, because he feels rotational forces? That is, if the observer "laid down" so his body axis were perpendicular to the axis of rotation of the sphere, the user would feel a tugging sensation that is different from if his body were parallel to the sphere's axis of rotation. If so, the user would be able to conclude that (1) there is a large rotating mass, and (2) what the axis of rotation is. Query: Consider a large sphere with several observers inside. The sphere is rotating around the observers. All observers notice that ball trajectories are curved. What about observers near the sphere itself (not at its center)? From the sphere's perspective, these observers are flying rapidly in circular orbits inside the hollow sphere. That is impossible. Any point mass that is not at the center of the large, massive sphere MUST travel on a straight trajectory relative to the sphere. An exception is a rigid structure, such as a ring. A ring may be rotating relative to the large sphere BUT will feel significant forces trying to cause it to move in-sync with the massive sphere. Imagine that there is a ring, co-centric with the sphere, but much lighter than the sphere, and rotating relative to the sphere. Imagine that the rigid ring instantly fragments millions of small, distinct particles. Those particles will immediately flying outward, toward the sphere. A key question is whether it matters or not which masses were at rest "at the beginning"? Does it matter which reference frame got accelerated? If there were two concentric spheres J and N, both at rest relative to each other, and sphere J has jets and ignites them, but the other sphere N does not have jets, will one or both spheres feel rotational forces? My answer is: J will feel rotational forces, but N will not. For the jet to work, mass must be ejected from J. Sphere N will feel no net rotational movement of other masses in the universe, because the rotation of J will be exactly counterbalanced by the masses ejected from J's jets. But J will fell rotational effects because there is a net rotational movement of other masses in the universe. This is analogous to the twin paradox of special relativity: two twins have same age, one travels on a relativistic space ship for 2 years and returns to the stationary twin. Which twin is older? Special relativity suggests that the moving twin's clock slowed down and should be younger upon reunion. But couldn't the roles be reversed? The official answer is: "The twin that felt acceleration forces (engines of the spaceship that he was traveling in) will be younger. The twin that did not feel acceleration forces will be older". Consider two concentric spheres J and N. They do not have jets, but do start a relative rotation by some pushing off against each other. Who feels the rotational forces? Answer: both do, in equal measure. Imagine an observer A at the center of a very large (several light year diameter) sphere, rotating relative to each other. Individual point-masses on the sphere appear, to A, to be traveling much faster than the speed of light (apparent speed = radius x rotational velocity). Doesn't this violate the special theory of relativity? I've researched the above topic a bit, and found that Isaac Newton and Ernst Mach both thought about it a lot. Newton invented the "rotating pail of water" thought experiment, and Mach thought that the stars of the universe established a fixed frame of reference, or rather that stars moving around an observer "tugged" on the observer from a distance. Site http://www.bautforum.com/space-astronomy-questions-answers/85202-machs-principle-gr-thought-experiment.html has an interesting discussion about Mach's principle. They give an example of a circular platform in space, no masses nearby. You are sitting in the center. You throw a few golf balls out onto the platform and observe if they go in straight lines or curve (relative to the platform). In this way you should be able to deduce whether or not your platform is rotating or not. Mach would say that rotation ONLY makes sense when measured relative to the stars (so if there were no stars, the platform could never rotate). General Relativity (according to this site) does NOT embrace Mach's stars explanation, but DOES distinguish between rotating and non-rotating (and does so without defining an absolute frame of reference). It looks like Mach may have posed the same questions. Here are some Wiki articles: Mach's Principle; and Frame-Dragging; and Lense-Thirring Precession; and Gravitomagnetism. 7 March 2009My house furnace (HVAC system, to use the industry jargon) broke a couple of months ago. I was able to fix it: what a joyful feeling! First, the manly feeling of rescuing your family from death-by-freezing in January. Plus, saving the $500 it would have cost to hire a repairman (which would be coupled by the teeth-grinding uncertainty that perhaps I got ripped-off since there is no way to tell if the repairman over-repaired the furnace). The fix was simply buying a new igniter: $33. Modern furnaces (this is natural gas) don't have pilot lights: they use igniters. Not the "click click" kind from BBQs, but a clever device that is made of some miracle material (carborundum?). The way the igniter works is: when the thermostat indicates that the house is too cold, the furnace's gas valve turns on, then 120V is put thru the igniter, and the igniter, in a matter of seconds gets super-hot, and the flame ignites. A flame-sensor (used to be called a thermocouple) coupled with a timer will shut-off the gas valve if the flame doesn't ignite in within 8 or 10 seconds (for example, if the igniter is broken, or there is no electricity supply). It then waits a minute and tries again. This non-pilot approach saves gas, but it comes with additional complexity and cost: first, there is the fact that you need 120V electrical supply into the furnace (old furnaces didn't need that: they could operate on gas alone). Then, you need a computerized "controller" that has the timer to shut-off the gas valve if the flame doesn't ignite after the igniter is turned on. I was just lucky. I opened the furnace (with the help of friend John Youberg) and hunted around (surprisingly, there were 3 dead birds that had come in thru a 20-foot long 3" vent pipe!) and saw a crack in the old igniter. What a great feeling! Just read some cool articles about computer design, specifically the problem of designing digital computer circuits (which want 1s and 0s) to handle the case where two input signals both turn on at exactly same time, and one or the other must be selected. This problem is called "metastability" or "arbitration" and is related to Buridan's Ass. The bottom line is that the electronics will take time, sometimes longer than desired, to settle-down and select one or the other. The settle-down time in case of these "ties" can be graphed as e**(-time), so digital circuits, which operate on fixed clocks and must move forward when a certain deadline arrives, will sometimes proceed (probability e**-t) even though the electronics have not settled into a full 1 or 0 state yet. In that rare situation, a partial voltage will be passed through into the rest of the computer circuit, with unpredictable results (almost certainly a bad thing). One of the articles below predicts that, even when the clock-wait-time is set to a reasonably long value, these partial values will get through occasionally, and on modern computers, with billions of these ties per day, a partial voltage may get through every few days, resulting in unexpected results or even crashes. Some references: Denning, Lomport, and Wikipedia.
2 March 2009Speaking of cyclical economic meltdowns: That reminds me of the even larger cyclic process of a civilization growing then collapsing. Several historians have put forward theories that try to identify patterns to this phenomenon, even going so far as to say it is an inevitable pattern. The two big proponents of that idea are Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West (1922) and Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History (1934 to 1961). Spengler's book is in German, and I have not read it. Many years ago I checked out a volume of Toynbee's book (it is 12 volumes!) but I don't think I really read it: I seem to recall it was rather dense. When you think about it, there are few questions more important than to ask: is a civilization, our civilization doomed to fail? Is there any way to keep it vibrant and healthy perpetually? I suppose that is the opposite view of Francis Fukuyama's The End of History, which posits that liberal democracy is the final and best form of civilization. 1 March 2009Update on hero Carl Malamud: not only is he forcing governments to make building codes freely available (see 2 Sept 2008 blog entry), but it turns out he is also working on lots of other fronts: SEC filings, Federal court cases, and elsewhere. 25 Feb 2009Heard a fascinating essay on television last month ... unfortunately I cannot recall who the speaker was. He was an economist, and he was talking about the current credit crisis. He claimed that the United States has had a similar credit crisis about every 50 years since the country was founded! He said that every time it happens, it is due to lax regulations (too many people get in over their head, either by borrowing, or in the stock market). He said that after every crisis, the government stepped in and imposed new regulations on the financial industry, which prevented the problem from recurring. But after 20 to 60 years, subsequent generations forgot the lesson, and in a (sincere?) desire to promote the free-market, they would undo the regulations, leading to another crisis. I cannot say if he is right or wrong. Certainly the 1929 crisis was a case in point. And I recall there was a similar situation around 1880. It certainly sounds like a very accurate assessment. Brings to mind Santanaya: "Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it". I recall that one of the big laws passed after the 1929 collapse was that banks, insurance companies, and stock brokerages had to be separate companies (e.g. a bank could not sell stocks or insurance). That was a great law, passed around 1935. But in the financial hey-day of the 1990s, that law was rescinded in the name of free market and lassez faire. Likewise, in the 1970s there used to be laws, or at least guidelines, to never lend money to buy property unless the borrower was putting 20% down AND had monthly income at least 3x the monthly loan payment. Simple common sense. But something happened in the 1990s where those rules were ignored. You can blame liberals at the federal level for threatening banks with penalties if they did not bend over backwards to lend to poor and minorities. Or you can blame the federal government for creating FannieMae and FreddieMac which horribly distorted the credit market by making it easy for banks to make bad loans, secure in the knowledge that these federal agencies would buy the bad loans from the bank. To generalize this: this seems to be yet another example of a pendulum swing: A society goes to one extreme, then the other. Morality, the wealth gap between rich and poor. Remembering how brutal wars are. A lesson gets learned, then two generations later, it is forgotten and must be re-learned. 24 Feb 2009The piano may be the bomb for most music. But there are just some pieces where you want a long note to have tremolo or vibrato, and you just can't get there on the piano. I can play a few pieces on the piano, one of them is "Prelude and Yodel" by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra, but the long notes just seem so plain when you really want them to be more interesting. What is wrong with this country? Everyone wants to get bailed out. Lose your money in a ponzi scheme? Ask the federal government for a bailout (never mind that you received 20% interest for several years). House in New Orleans get flooded? Government will buy you a new one ... in the flood plain, no less. Never mind that your house is below sea level and you declined to buy flood insurance. Kid has autism? Blame it on vaccines and beg for money from the Government's vaccine-catastrophe fund. Never mind that there is no relation between vaccines and autism. Buy a house that you cant afford? Don't worry about foreclosure: ask the governement to re-finance you loan. Never mind that your neighbors lived more frugally and make their payments. Yikes. And me? I own property in California. I have chosen to not purchase earthquake insurance. Why? I figure if there is every a big one, the government will bail me out. 23 Feb 2009Reading, for the second time, Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, a rather famous book because it was turned into a movie starring Brad Pitt. The book is relevant now because the exiled Dalai Lama is a cause celebre, especially around Hollywood. Furthermore, the recent Olympics in Beijing, China were the subject of protests by pro-Tibet groups. But the book, which documents the state of Tibet in the years 1943 to 1950, portrays Tibet as a backwards theocracy. The inescapable conclusion is that China did the right thing by invading and kicking the nobility out. Here are some basic facts that show what life was like in Tibet before China's invasion:
When China invaded, they booted out the nobility, and made most monks get jobs. Wealth was leveled out, and girls - for the first time - had career opportunities. Medicine and science was introduced. Children began going to school and learning to read. To drive the point home even further: in the same time period that this book documented, down south in India was a man named Mohandas Ghandi, who was a true ascetic, and cared about his people: he worked hard to erase the caste system, and was not concerned with material possessions. The Dalai Lama was just the opposite: Greedy, lazy, and unconcerned about the poor. Yet today we are supposed to feel sorry for the exiled Tibetan nobility: the ruthless Chinese drove them away from their homeland. Sorry, but the Chinese invasion was the best thing that happened to Tibet in centuries. Sure, they dont have democracy (they didn't under the Lamas, either) but at least they have medicine, science, and public schools. 18 Jan 2009New president Barack Obama gets sworn in tomorrow. Really a great day for our country: it reminds me of a controversial statement that his wife made while campaigning, something along the lines of: "The fact that a black man can get the party nomination makes me proud of our country" and the critics pounced on it, harping on the implication that she was not proud of the country beforehand. But I won't mince words: I am more proud of our country now: We've got concrete evidence that racism is officially (not to say actually) a thing of the past, and I'm very, very glad that all of the minorities in America must feel more hopeful, more included, today than they did last year. Read Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. Alas, another author that can't quite sustain the outstanding level of quality that he achieved in his earliest works, namely, Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon. Quicksilver is the first of a three-volume historical novel (dubbed the Baroque Cycle) set in England during the life of Sir Isaac Newton. It has lots of good history, particular focusing on the emergence of empirical science, as it gradually replaced superstition. But it is boring, and gets bogged down in sidelights and digressions and petty political intrigue. If only Stephenson were able to recreate the energy and startling pace of the first half of Snow Crash. |