The Potential of Spintronics
In this Q & A session with Physics World, David Awschalom discusses the current uses and future possibilities of harnessing the spin of electrons. This emerging field is called spintronics, and it's potential applications range from massively increased memory storage to the building of functional quantum computers.
Sean Carroll and the Arrow of Time
Why does time move in only one direction? Why are some events cyclical and some others happen only once? What is the relationship between these two experiences we have of time? These are some of the questions that Dr. Carroll explores in this lecture he recently delivered at the Quantum 2 Consciousness festival in Waterloo, Ontario. I'm really glad that they made this lecture and others available online so those of us who couldn't make it can still listen in.
Who Said Pigs Don’t Fly
I know I said I hated facebook, but I'm really impressed with how it has become such a good place to share things with friends and family. They have made the privacy controls a lot better and a lot easier to use, and there just isn't the spam or noise that there are on other sites like myspace or twitter.
That said, when I started using facebook there weren't that many Americans on it, so not many people that I knew before moving to Canada. Now there are tons, including a lot of people I haven't seen or talked to in years. Talking to them has brought back a lot of memory and emotion, which inspired me to put this up.
To all of my friends and family who live far away, or for whatever reason I don't get to see or talk to as often as I wish I could, I just wanted to say I miss you, I love you... I remember you and think about you all of the time.
World Builder
This is an extremely moving film about a possible future... there is no dialogue, so ephemeral, so beautiful.
Let’s Go to the Allosphere
A bit speechless (or would the textual equivalent be textless) after watching this video. Using visual art to represent scientific data has been going on for a while, but to make it completely immersive and add the audio dimension completely blows my mind. This may be the kind of breakthrough we need to start really getting a grip on extremely complex systems like human cognition and quantum mechanics.
File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 – Bell Canada – TN 7181
I just received this email from my ISP. After reading it over I posted a response to the indicated URL. I wanted to show the world just how manipulative and evil Bell Canada can be. I should know, I worked for one of their mutant symbionts in the states (AT&T formerly known as SBC formerly known as Southwestern Bell before the breakup of Ma Bell when they and Verizon and Bell Canada were all just parts of the biggest monopoly the world had ever seen).
**********
Dear Valued Customer,
We are writing to you today as many activities are underway to shape/reshape
Internet use as you all know it. Over the last year some of you have been
made aware and/or have seen activities on throttling in the news or in your
daily lives. Another proceeding relating to the Internet in Canada required
Telecom providers (Bell/Telus/etc.) to provide ISPs with wholesale service
speeds that match those that they offer to their own retail customers.
Specifically, Bell has been directed by the CRTC to provide matching speeds
which would allow us all to have more flexibility in our day to day online
requirements. Instead of adhering to these directives, Bell decided to take
this issue to the federal Cabinet and at the same time file a tariff
application with the CRTC proposing to introduce Usage Based Billing (UBB)
on its wholesale customer accounts.
What does this mean for you, the consumer?
Bell provides TekSavvy with last mile, wholesale DSL access services, which
TekSavvy uses to provide you with your Internet access. If Bell were to be
allowed to introduce UBB on this service, a cap of 60GB would be imposed on
all of its users, with very heavy penalties per Gigabyte afterwards
(multiple times more than our current per Gigabyte rate of $0.25/GB on
overages). This would inherently all but remove Unlimited internet services
in Ontario/Quebec and potentially cause large increases in internet costs
from month to month.
If you'd like to make your comments/concerns known about what Bell is
attempting to do, please do so here:
http://support.crtc.gc.ca/crtcsubmissionmu/forms/Telecom.aspx?lang=e
Select the word "Tariff" from the drop down list.
Add the following in Subject Line "File Number # 8740-B2-200904989 - Bell
Canada - TN 7181" and make your thoughts known!
The deadline for filing your comments is today at midnight, so hurry!
Regards,
*********
HERE IS MY RESPONSE:
Nothing less than the future of Canadian innovation is at stake with this tariff. The only party this helps is Bell Canada, and their legacy of control and manipulation. There is no way that this is good for the average consumer who will end up paying for it. Rather than becoming more competitive and implementing technology that gives consumers more choice and more value for their money, Bell Canada is seeking governmental approval for its mismanagement and abuse of technological resources.
Ten years ago 60 gigabytes a month of downloads would have seemed an outrageously high number. But then again, ten years ago a dial-up internet connection and 56 kilobytes per second was the norm. Even so, under ideal conditions it would have been possible to download over 145 gigabytes of data in a month! (56 kb/sec * 60 sec * 60 min * 24 hours * 30 days = 145152000 kb = 145.152 GB/month). So even though 60 gigabytes seemed like a lot back then it still represented less than half of the potential amount of data that could have been downloaded with that technology.
Today it would be a conservative estimate to say that most broadband services average around 2 megabytes per second download (2000 kb/sec). This represents a capacity increase of 35 times, so the potential data downloaded under ideal conditions comes to over 5000 gigabytes! The 60 gigabyte per month download represents 1.2 % of the ideal capacity of the system under current conditions. For all practical purposes we can expect information technology to continue to improve in at least a linear fashion and in another ten years for it to increase another 35 times in capacity. In other words, not only does this tariff look stupid now, but as times go by the apparent stupidity of it will increase as well, as that 60 gigabytes per month represents less and less of the total data transfer capacity of the system and Bell Canada is able to charge their customers premium prices for nearly all of the data traffic that passes through it.
A fair tariff (if there is such a thing) would at least consider charging overage fees based on some ratio between potential and actual use, and as more bandwith becomes available that specific number would increase. How Bell Canada even came up with this 60 gigabyte per month number itself is completely suspect. If we were expected to only drive 1 % of the speed our cars were capable of, then we would all be driving somewhere between 1 and 2 kilometers per hour.
To the people who will decide whether or not to implement this decision, please, please, do not give in to this ridiculous proposal from Bell Canada. Do not slow down the pace of innovation and progress that has been made possible through the internet by allowing them to put up a big toll gate at every intersection. Say "no" to the culture of entitlement and control that exists at Bell Canada and say "yes" to the future.
*******
Unfortunately, when I tried to submit that whole schpiel I was told that it exeded 2000 characters. So, I put in my calculations which were the most important part so the rest of my rantings will have to be remembered here.
An Information Interface of the Future
I found this on The Speculist. What an amazing cornucopia of speculation about future technology that website contains. I'm in awe.
The End is Near
Is America really ready for a change? I hope so. I think that the rest of the world is ready too, at least the part I live in. This will be the second presidential election that I have witnessed from the Canadian side of the border, and I'm hoping that this time I won't be so disappointed. Part of me still can't believe that "W." was re-elected but fortunately his chapter in history as "leader of the free world" will soon be over.
Since 2003 I have met only a single person in Toronto that said they would have voted for Bush if given the opportunity. I know that out west there are more Bush sympathizers, but here the opinion is that he was and is a terrible president, probably the worst president in the history of the United States. I would have to agree.
There was an article in the New York Times the other day about Bush's decision for the troop surge in Iraq. This article praised Bush for sending in more troops and credited this decision to the decrease in violence there. I agree that tactically it was the right thing to do, the results speak for themselves. What the article failed to remind us was that Bush invaded Iraq illegally. He generated false intelligence and presented it to congress. It is quite simple, really, he is a traitor. Unfortunately being the president of the United States gives him a lot of legal and political clout and it looks like he will get away with it. In the past, U. S. citizens have been executed for much lesser crimes. It would be my greatest joy to see him prosecuted after he leaves office but I think the chances of that are quite slim.
As far as I am concerned the "troop surge" is one of the few things that Bush did right, but it wouldn't have been necessary if Iraq hadn't been invaded in the first place.
I'm still a registered voter in the state of Oklahoma, and I will be voting for Barak Obama this November. If you are an American reading this please remember all of the blood that has been spilled, relations soured, reputations tarnished, and ask yourself, Was it worth it? Are we any better off? Are Americans really safer? Saddam is dead but Osama is still out there. The rich are richer and the poor are poorer. It is time for a change. Open your eyes.
The Future of Reason
The Science Studio: Interview with Daniel Dennett
This video was taken during a conference of scientists, philosophers, and other forward thinkers called Enlightenment 2.0. It is kind of long for an internet video (1hr 19min) but well worth spending the time to watch if you can. It raises many questions and suggests many answers.
I first read Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea a little over a year ago and have admired him ever since. One of the main themes of that book, which is much in line with Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene, is that Charle's Darwin's theory of evolution is possibly the most important concept invented/discovered by humans in our entire history. The reason lies quite simply in its explanatory power.
What I admire so much about Dennett is his rigorous approach to all phenomena through the lens of evolution, and his persistent optimism that reasonable explanations can be (and have been and are being) discovered along this path. He is opposed to "magical thinking" or what he calls skyhooks and consistently shows us that many things previously unexplainable to humans of the past are no longer beyond our comprehension. We need only to tap into the explanatory power of the theory of evolution.
It is not magical leaps, but baby steps, cranes that have gotten us and everything else to where we are now, i.e "the cumulative effects of incremental change over time". When the timescale is long enough, what appears to be miraculous is suddenly exposed as a natural process.
The theory of evolution itself is a magnificent key that explains and unlocks hitherto sealed mysteries and there are no realms off limits to its cypher. The impact of this is evident within so many different areas of scientific investigation, looking back, it is a hallmark of the twentieth century. How many things which we take for granted now are its fruit?
I can see a recursive process happening around the application of the theory of evolution within human civilization which is increasing our abilities in language and conceptualization, freeing us from the shrugging shoulders of our ancestors in our abilities to describe what was believed to be beyond understanding only a generation ago. We are still at an early stage in this process, though few of those who went before could have dreamed at the things we now count as knowledge.
Of particular interest to me personally, and Dennett as well (which he deals with in his most recent book Breaking the Spell) is religion as a natural phenomena. This approach finds much opposition because the very nature of religious thought places beliefs and faith beyond the pale of reasonable discourse. Fortunately, many denizens of the twenty-first century, even some who would consider themselves religious, are beginning to see the danger of this attitude: It is blindness, it is madness.
Proposition: Religion should be examined in light of the processes by which it has arisen among humans , not necessarily by the purposes it purports itself to serve. Belief for the sake of belief should be discredited in religion as it is in all other realms of human discourse.
Outcome: If this path is pursued on a large scale, the future of reason is quite bright indeed.
I believe…
A friend recently asked:
"What do you believe?"
It's not an easy question to answer.
Partly because one of the main premises of my belief system is uncertainty.
Randomness...
I believe that...
The universe is mostly random.
The universe is made up of energy.
Energy can neither be created or destroyed (The first law of thermodynamics).
Energy & mass (or matter, i.e. our physical bodies) are interchangeable. (As is stated in Einstein's famous equation e = mc², that is energy equals mass multiplied by the speed of light to the second power. It is this principle that underlies the harnessing of massive nuclear energy from tiny atoms.)
The universe is infinite...
Therefore any possible state of energy/matter that can exist does exist somewhere in the universe.
Where we find ourselves at this moment is the state in which the energy/matter in this area of the universe happens to be in.
Because energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only change state, in essence the universe is eternal.
The universe is eternally transforming into an infinite number of possibilities, one of which we happen to exist in and be conscious of at this moment.
The determining factor of what energy state that our area of the universe will change into next can be influenced by us, but is mostly random, and largely beyond our individual control.
Then there is the platonic heaven...
This is the universe of abstract objects.
Somewhere in relation to our physical universe (exactly how they are related is a matter of much debate) is the universe of abstract objects. The most familiar of which would probably be the numbers ( i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4...)
Now, there is a big difference between a numeral and a number.
The symbols "5" and "V" are both numerals representing the same number.
The number five exists in what some have called the platonic heaven, the universe of abstract objects, outside of time and space.
It is a universe of concepts...
I believe that the universe of abstract objects is just as real as the universe we are able to observe with our senses and is also full of as many infinities of possibilities as the universe that we inhabit.
----------------------
Now, my problem with God is...
He (she, it) is unnecessary to explain why things are.
Being is not of necessity derived from God. A suitable explanation is that the universe itself is eternal. The universe is. No "Let there be light" in the literal sense. The light has always existed, at one point it was electrons or frog skin instead of photons.
Everything is connected... quantum mechanics calls this phenomenon entanglement.
Events we attribute to Providence are really cases of Serendipity.
Randomness explains why good things happen to bad people and why bad things happen to good people.
Randomness explains why one person's prayers seem to be answered and another's are not.
Randomness through the lens of evolutionary biology explains why human beings have to find a reason and purpose in everything. It is a survival mechanism. It is unconscious and insipid.
As a metaphor, I am not completely against belief in God. God is that which is beyond our understanding, God is that which we cannot explain, God is the unknowable or unfathomable.
So much of what we call God though does not fit into those categories. So much of what we call God is really us just trying to make ourselves feel better or justify hiding from reality. God did it! Can't argue with God. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away...
No! God isn't a person sitting up in Heaven directing things according to his whim. Things don't always happen for a reason, most events are random and we look for a reason afterwards and the easiest thing to do is just blame it on God.
Of this I am certain: that certainty is a dubious concept.
We don't know what is going to happen next. That is why the Bible was written long after the events it described happened. That's why all religions have to retrofit their theology.
I am against superstition in all of its forms. There is no such thing as an idea or object that is beyond reproach. The greatest power we possess is to question.
I believe in Beauty, Truth and Goodness.
Let all else fade away.
