Today was a Big Day, because I moved into my own office at work. It's the first time ever that I've had my own entire room at any job. I've always worked in the room with other people there, and it's really quite amazing that just today the change happened. It has a window, and I can decorate it (nearly) any way that I want. How cool is that?
Every job I've had, from the current one to Sears to picking blueberries, has had people all over the place, all the time. When I started at my current job, my computer was literally in the middle of the lobby, ahead of the front desk. Now I have my own office - that's progress.
Maybe this wouldn't excite some people, but for me it really feels like accomplishment. And that, my friends, feels good.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Stuck in my head
Everyone gets music stuck in their heads. It's just something that happens - our neurons see something they really like, and boom, there it is. We are humming it, singing it, and playing it over and over in our heads. The great thing is that it could be an entire orchestra, just a singer, or maybe a single guitar solo of an epic song. There's no limit to what the mind can hold and play back later. For me, all last week it was the song "Welcome to Bucketheadland" by Buckethead. I could write an entire post just about Buckethead, but that's for another day.
What I'm getting at in this post is really something else: I get more than just songs stuck in my head. I get images, movies, people's names, or even just weird words I might hear off-hand. The weirdest one I think is someone's name. Last week, all week, it was Martin Dougiamas, who is the man that originally created Moodle. I'll admit, I dealt with Moodle last week at my job much more than usual, but why did this guy's name keep repeating over and over in my head? It would pop in my head everywhere - driving, sitting at the computer, riding my bike, cooking. Does this happen to anyone else, or am I just weird?
Sometimes it's a scene from a movie. Remember when Robin Williams goes to hell in the movie What Dreams May Come? There were a few scenes after I watched the film that kept repeating over and over in my head for days. The one where he's in the boat, surrounded by blackness, and all the people swam over to overturn him was especially big.
I guess sometimes our brains are in the sort of state where we just remember certain things better than others. The chemicals are just right, and the neurons are firing strong, just as we witness or think about a certain thing. That thing then sticks for a while, no matter what it might be. What was in your head last week?
What I'm getting at in this post is really something else: I get more than just songs stuck in my head. I get images, movies, people's names, or even just weird words I might hear off-hand. The weirdest one I think is someone's name. Last week, all week, it was Martin Dougiamas, who is the man that originally created Moodle. I'll admit, I dealt with Moodle last week at my job much more than usual, but why did this guy's name keep repeating over and over in my head? It would pop in my head everywhere - driving, sitting at the computer, riding my bike, cooking. Does this happen to anyone else, or am I just weird?
Sometimes it's a scene from a movie. Remember when Robin Williams goes to hell in the movie What Dreams May Come? There were a few scenes after I watched the film that kept repeating over and over in my head for days. The one where he's in the boat, surrounded by blackness, and all the people swam over to overturn him was especially big.
I guess sometimes our brains are in the sort of state where we just remember certain things better than others. The chemicals are just right, and the neurons are firing strong, just as we witness or think about a certain thing. That thing then sticks for a while, no matter what it might be. What was in your head last week?
Sunday, January 14, 2007
The Randomness
I thought I'd post today about how wildly amazing it is that we are even here. And I don't mean just that I'm sitting here in Massachusetts, USA typing this - I mean that we even exist at all. Countless events had to occur in just the order that they did, at the time they did, and in the way that they did for us to be at this point in human history.
Here's a quote from the Introduction of Bill Bryson's incredible book, A Short History of Nearly Everything:
"To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence."
A quick aside, that book is one of the best I've ever read, and I would recommend it to anyone. He goes on to say in the introduction that nobody really knows why the atoms do stick together to make us. He says (this will really make you think), "if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mount of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."
We can imagine these occurrences any way we want, and since I love "what if" scenarios, let's try a few. If the Pilgrims had never arrived in the New World and had that Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians, the United States wouldn't be as it is now. Then again, someone else probably would have come soon after, and possibly done it anyway. It seems as though, as Carl Sagan said, an event such as that was most likely inevitable.
What if we go really far back? If the animal that had originally given rise to us humans was eaten by that Tyrannosaurus instead of running away, the human race could have been quite a bit different. We might not exist at all, or maybe a different creature would have risen to the top, learned math and physics and biology, and put a person on Mars by now.
Let's get real crazy and ask what it would be like if the physical force of gravity was different. If I remember correctly, Bill Bryson mentions it in the book above. If gravity was just slightly less powerful than it is now, the planets and stars possibly would not be able to form. The entire universe would be essentially single particles flying through space.
That we exist in the form we do right now in the present is because literally all the random events and physical forces in the universe, from the first cells forming in an ancient ocean, to light traveling at the speed it does, to humans figuring out how to use fire, happened. It's quite a thought, and it really makes you appreciate the universe just a little bit more.
Here's a quote from the Introduction of Bill Bryson's incredible book, A Short History of Nearly Everything:
"To begin with, for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence."
A quick aside, that book is one of the best I've ever read, and I would recommend it to anyone. He goes on to say in the introduction that nobody really knows why the atoms do stick together to make us. He says (this will really make you think), "if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mount of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you."
We can imagine these occurrences any way we want, and since I love "what if" scenarios, let's try a few. If the Pilgrims had never arrived in the New World and had that Thanksgiving dinner with the Indians, the United States wouldn't be as it is now. Then again, someone else probably would have come soon after, and possibly done it anyway. It seems as though, as Carl Sagan said, an event such as that was most likely inevitable.
What if we go really far back? If the animal that had originally given rise to us humans was eaten by that Tyrannosaurus instead of running away, the human race could have been quite a bit different. We might not exist at all, or maybe a different creature would have risen to the top, learned math and physics and biology, and put a person on Mars by now.
Let's get real crazy and ask what it would be like if the physical force of gravity was different. If I remember correctly, Bill Bryson mentions it in the book above. If gravity was just slightly less powerful than it is now, the planets and stars possibly would not be able to form. The entire universe would be essentially single particles flying through space.
That we exist in the form we do right now in the present is because literally all the random events and physical forces in the universe, from the first cells forming in an ancient ocean, to light traveling at the speed it does, to humans figuring out how to use fire, happened. It's quite a thought, and it really makes you appreciate the universe just a little bit more.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Riding the Lines
A co-worker gave me a link to this game, which has an addiction factor of: very high. It is so fun. Check out the movies, some people have made some incredible rides. Youtube also has loads of videos.
It's amazing to me what you can make with something as basic as a bunch of lines and some simple physics simulations. I used to make drawings back in middle school that were like mazes, and you'd run through them exactly like Line Rider (mental note: scan those). There was a path you'd follow, and you'd have to choose between paths, avert spikes and lava pools, and even teleport to different places.
The News page on the site says that they are going to develop a console version - you watch, there will totally be spikes and lava pools.
It's amazing to me what you can make with something as basic as a bunch of lines and some simple physics simulations. I used to make drawings back in middle school that were like mazes, and you'd run through them exactly like Line Rider (mental note: scan those). There was a path you'd follow, and you'd have to choose between paths, avert spikes and lava pools, and even teleport to different places.
The News page on the site says that they are going to develop a console version - you watch, there will totally be spikes and lava pools.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Free Will
Hello! I thought for a while about what to say in my first blog post, and finally ended up on free will. It's something that I haven't really thought about much before, but these past couple of weeks it has come up a lot. Reading the likes of Scott Adams done this to me!
I always assumed free will existed. Regardless of your religion or belief in a god, it seemed to me just about everyone agrees that we are able to make our own decisions. We feel that our lives are in our control, and that we had a final say over what we did. I wanted to write this blog post, so I made my own decision to do it. Nothing in my brain made me do it, outside of my own control... or did it?
Tuesday's post on Scott Adams' blog gave a link to an article in New Scientist in which they speak about how quantum mechanics is related to free will. In essence, we have to believe in quantum mechanics for free will to exist. I'd say it's not that hard - quantum mechanics has been around for quite a while, and seems to explain the tiny tiny world very well.
Quantum mechanics says that everything is a probability. There's a probability I was going to post about this topic in this blog, and a different probability I would post about something else. This uncertainty means there's no way to predict what will happen in the universe. However, a Nobel prize-winning physicist has recently completed a new mathematical model that shows an underlying concrete model for quantum mechanics, allowing us to predict the movement of particles.
If someone could apply this new mathematical theory to the particles that make up my body, they could predict what I was going to do in the future. If you can predict what someone is going to do with perfect certainty, free will can't exist.
I'll agree that there's no way to truly be sure whether free will exists or not, at least not right now. Even if the math makes sense and beautifully works out, scientists have no way to test it, since the technology doesn't currently exist to actually see things that small. The same problem is inherent with string theory. One day, however, the technology will exist to test these theories, and here's hoping I'm around to see it.
I always assumed free will existed. Regardless of your religion or belief in a god, it seemed to me just about everyone agrees that we are able to make our own decisions. We feel that our lives are in our control, and that we had a final say over what we did. I wanted to write this blog post, so I made my own decision to do it. Nothing in my brain made me do it, outside of my own control... or did it?
Tuesday's post on Scott Adams' blog gave a link to an article in New Scientist in which they speak about how quantum mechanics is related to free will. In essence, we have to believe in quantum mechanics for free will to exist. I'd say it's not that hard - quantum mechanics has been around for quite a while, and seems to explain the tiny tiny world very well.
Quantum mechanics says that everything is a probability. There's a probability I was going to post about this topic in this blog, and a different probability I would post about something else. This uncertainty means there's no way to predict what will happen in the universe. However, a Nobel prize-winning physicist has recently completed a new mathematical model that shows an underlying concrete model for quantum mechanics, allowing us to predict the movement of particles.
If someone could apply this new mathematical theory to the particles that make up my body, they could predict what I was going to do in the future. If you can predict what someone is going to do with perfect certainty, free will can't exist.
I'll agree that there's no way to truly be sure whether free will exists or not, at least not right now. Even if the math makes sense and beautifully works out, scientists have no way to test it, since the technology doesn't currently exist to actually see things that small. The same problem is inherent with string theory. One day, however, the technology will exist to test these theories, and here's hoping I'm around to see it.
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