Relatively Icelandic
Posted 8:21 PM

Here's my pics from Iceland. It's a beautiful place. Reminded me of Aruba somehow. More pics of the WTC, check out the guy's T-shirt. When I got back, I went to Kim's, and the movie No Such Thing was under New Arrivals. The person I was with was a Hal Hartley fan, so we rented it. Turns out most of the film was shot in Reykjavik, crazy cooincidence! Another cooincidence. I picked up American Gods for the plane ride on the way there. The last scene in the book took place in Iceland.

My top 5 reasons for not believing in relativity.

5. Any model sufficient to explain phenomena detected using limited perception may possibly predict other phenomena which can be detected by the same limited perception. This does not render the model "factual", only "temporarily validated".

4. "Dark matter" is a synonym for "fudge factor".

3. There's a reason why it's called a "theory".

2. The fact that there's a doppler effect on light when travelling makes sense. Calling this "time dilation" and saying that this proves there are "two times" produced by that effect is an exercise in radiocentric masturbation. This is analogous to the heliocentric model of the universe being validated by retrograde motions of the planets.

1. The concept that some paradoxes (killing you own mother) are more important than others (disturbing piece of sand that was not previously disturbed), is an exhibition of man's typical self-centered folly. Another way of putting it is: time travel is fucking ridiculous.

Here's a concept of spacetime:

Each quantum particle merely acts out it's own destiny, independent of space or time. Our minds record the past and predict the future, which is why we can sense time "moving". But really it's more like frames in a film. Each frame is simply immobile. Time is our way of making sense of a changing universe, but the universe itself is timeless. Another way of looking at it is that stuff happens at it's own pace, without regard for any observer or observed. Asking whether it's possible for time to move faster or slower in different parts of the universe is moot. There is no universal "time". Things can happen faster or slower. For example: light can move faster and slower because of gravitational effects - but that's got nothing at all to do with "time". It's just gravity pushing light around - nothing so dramatic as "stretched time". Light being a chain of quantum events which happens faster in the presence of gravity's packing effect. Space is the same way. Things are next to each other, some closer than others. A ruler can be longer in one part of the universe than in another - but this is not "bent space". It's just a looser "packing" of the quantum particles making up matter in that region - usually due to gravitational effects.

You can do the math.

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RIAA Ice Age
Posted 7:32 PM

Got a picture of the new World Trade Center Cross memorial thing. Will get a closeup soon.

Also, I used congress.org to send a letter to my congressman about the RIAA.

Activist Mode:

Internet Radio is not Napster, it's legal. It's just regular radio, with a DJ, etc, broadcasted over the Internet. And all they are asking for is to pay the same/similar rate as traditional radio stations. It's actually much easier to record songs off a regular radio station than IR - that's not even an issue in the debate. The more I think about it, the more it's clear that an antitrust investigation against the RIAA is in order. Big radio is losing listeners to places like Shoutcast, and they probably have a lot of connections with the RIAA.

Some links on how to help save Internet Radio:

saveinternetradio.org/ - info site.
voiceofwebcasters.org - free autofax your elected rep. and ask them to vote for the Internet Radio Fairness Act.
congress.org/ - general site for helping you keep in touch with your elected reps. They won't represent you if they don't know your opinions on these issues.

It looks like global warming is more likely to plunge us into an ice age, than to "heat things up". This has been talked about for years, but some scientists see signs of it happening. I like to think of it this way: The earth's climate is a steady state chaotic system. There are powerful feedback systems that counteract linear climate shifts - and keep the earth in a steady state. When there's too much heat, water evaporates and cools things off. When there's too much CO2, plants bloom and generate oxygen. So when we quickly shift the earth towards warmth with our CO2 emissions, it's bound to snap back - and get cold.

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WTC Spam
Posted 10:43 PM

I took an interesting set of shots of my daily commute past the throngs of disaster tourists at the WTC, and posted them here. Yes, it's really crowded and creepy like that downtown every day. Yes, that's really the view from my office. I have some shots from when it was much worse, and we had to wear masks. You could see bodies being pulled out, if you didn't mind risking your sanity. In the interests of not being a jerk, I'm not going to publish those. The last few pages after the WTC were shots from around town, upstate, etc.

I used a thumbnail maker from http://www.v-methods.com/emh/. It works... but I'd like a few more options. The DiMAGE takes ludicrously hi-rez images by default. I need a better utility for making them web-friendly (not so big), for the zoom. Looked around for a while. It would suck if I had to write one! Email me if you know of any (sim-at-documentroot.com).

Obligatory spam rant:

Why didn't I make that email address (above) a link, or use the "@" sign? Because spammers run programs which troll the web looking for email addresses.

These people don't realize they are simply ruining the internet as something people use, and are inspiring millions of decent, paying consumers to leave the internet. If you know anyone who sends SPAM a.k.a. UCE, a good investment would be a baseball bat. When a few of them start losing kneecaps, mabe the others will will stop their destructive habits.

I run a large network for a living, and I own it. Spammers personally cost me a lot of money, time and sweat. I have had to work harder, and longer hours because of them, sometimes staying overnight at the office defending myself from "mail bombs". I cannot forgive them the lost time taken from my life, and neither should anyone else.

The best thing to do is call your ISP and insist that they use SPAM filtering software on their entire network, such as bl.spamcop.net or relays.osirusoft.com. Blame your ISP for not taking action, since you are personally not in a position to stop it from getting to your mailbox. Earthlink does it. So should everyone else. It's no longer an "option".

Labels: world trade center

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U.S. Versus R.E.M. ?
Posted 2:26 AM

Our U.S. government actually backed a federal funds request to combat "Goth" culture. Right, those soft-spoken people who rebel by wearing black and working at video stores. The request was from Missouri, and it was actually embezzled. Maybe they should just line 'em up and shoot 'em? What made this country great was that everyone had the same beliefs and have the same values and they all wore the same clothes. When did that start to slip?

Theory: The hatred of the Gothic culture stems solely from it's association with Catholics rather than Protestants. The other stuff (lots of earrings, fancy outfits, etc.), merely provides a convenient excuse for misguided Protestants to persecute them.

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DiMAGE Dancing Dogs
Posted 2:02 AM

Today's quick rundown, because it's phenomenally late. In reverse order, since that's how memory works (IMHO):

- Wrote a 'bot in tintin to hunt and farm mobs in my MUD. Takes tedium out of some of the middle levels!
- We all went to Blue Ribbon Sushi and ate some fermented soybean that tasted like garbage. Forgot the name of it, but a quick search on Google for "fermented soybean garbage" turned up the result: Natto. It's Japanese for "old soy trash". I took pictures of the chefs with my new, fancy, DiMAGE.
- Went to that trendy lounge with all the red velvet with no name in the Village. Which one? The one on Sullivan and Spring. Which one on that corner? I don't remember. Did you know that you can't have people dancing in a New York bar without a cabaret license. These are supposedly harder to get than a liquor license. We had fun counting people. I took a picture of six people dancing. Anyway, the point is, you know you live in a fucked up world when the government requires you to have a license to dance.
- The darn UV filter got stuck on my camera. I spent a while trying to remove it and then searched for "filter ring stuck remove" on Google. Guess what. The #1 link told me to take of my shoe. And I did. And it worked like a charm.
- At my suggestion, the ilectric guy took out ads for members. It's nice.
- Spent a crappy day at work patching code that I broke while adding features that no one will use, but our biggest client swears they need. Made me want to bite someone. Did you know that a deep bite from a human is more likely to get infected than a deep bite from a dog?
- Took pictures of tourists taking pictures and buying "tragedy tchochkes" at the World Trade Center. Hey... new catch phrase.
- Took pictures of my office, and one of my foot.

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Humanist Blackout : Part 2
Posted 1:44 PM

OK, so after I arrive, I immediately head over to South Street which is a bit sold out, but still has some remnants. The mosaic building at 10th is a sight to see, didn't have a camera through. Bought tickets to a concert The Vines. Ate a falafel. Made it back in time to hear the opening ceremony where they discussed the trends toward infertility and underpopulation that may cause problems in the future (i kindof like that trend). I'm a firm believer in reduced reproduction and increased longevity. It was sad to note that cultures that allow women to be abused, and who don't allow them to vote, and who don't provide them with education have the highest birth rates. IE: We're breeding a planet of immoral rapists.

The concert was cool. The lead singer kept falling down and breaking things. Reminded me of a cross between Radiohead and Greenday. Went to a nice goth club called Ulana's. They may dress fancy, but no matter what - PA people are still boring compared to NY ;P. After getting drunk and moshing with faux-supremacists who were probably embarrassed or frightened by my skinny Jewish rhythmic antics, I decided to head back to the hotel. No, not alone, and no, I'm not going into it in detail.

The second day, I went to some talks on nanotech and genetic engineering. They were OK. Note: 80% of processed food in the U.S. contains some form of genetically engineered crop - and it's yummy! Anyway, I'd rather have GE crops than chemical pesticides. Chemicals are way scarier to me for some reason. The nanotech discussions prompted me to price out a home nanotech development lab: computer with autocad ($3K), a used photolithography kit and mask ($24K), and a nanopositioner ($12K). Despite what they say, it's a still too expensive for a garage (at least my garage).

The luncheon was completely bizarre. The two speakers Joyce L. Gioia and Roger E. Herman went back and forth discussing their vision of the "corporation of the future". The content was fine, and pretty standard stuff (incentivized workforces, decentralized management, smaller corporations selling to larger, global markets, etc.). But their eerie style was reminiscent of 70's L5-society hype and was so off-putting that they prompted a lively discussion among the attendees about how *not* to promote futurist concepts (IE: not a whiny duet).

However, it dawned on me that the real goal of the society was not the promotion of futurism and thinking about the future. This was the foundation, but the ultimate goal was to use futurism and predictive methodology to guide corporate engineering in their image. IE: It was half prediction, half best-wishes, and half politics. Still, even their hidden-agenda intentions seemed so benign, with goals of equality and economic freedom, that I'm continuing to support their efforts.

Thinking of putting together a U.S. conference on transhumanism, since they're all in Europe these days.

Labels: science

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