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Friday, 30 December 2011

The Old Man

Posted on 20:37 by hony
There were times that I thought he was incredibly aged. He'd sit on the couch and his eyes would glaze and he'd slip into a nap like a senile cat. He moved so slowly. Sometimes I thought he was just being really careful, other times I thought he was just dimwitted. Either way it left me exasperated.
There was just this way about him, that timeless "you'll see" that every old man says to every young man and every young man subsequently scoffs at, that made me laugh. I knew someday I'd be him, or at least be like him, but I was neither afraid of it nor excited about it. It was just inevitable, so it was a non-issue. Sometimes his wife would tell me (with a roll of her eyes) to "learn" when he'd do something particularly despicable. Like when he'd make misogynistic jokes.
I remember one December day, we were sitting in a duck blind, about 6:45 in the morning. The first hints of sunlight were just appearing, not so much as observable light but as a decreasing concentration of stars in the sky. It was a little below freezing, and we'd had to break through ice to reach our blind. I was wearing a pair of hand-me-down waders that used to belong to the old man. Somewhere, out in the darkness, ducks were babbling to each other and I knew we were about to have a good day. The old man had leaned over, holding his coffee, and said "thanks for coming" as though me being there was his privilege, not mine.
He took me duck hunting, many times. On one occasion, we drove almost 2 hours, in the dead of night, to reach the sweetest honey-hole of duck hunting in the Midwest. We'd put our names in the draw at Bob Brown Wildlife Area and gotten a good spot. As we were breaking ice to create a hole, my waders had split down the middle. To this day, 15 years later, I remember exactly what it feels like to have 32.001 degree water fill both your wader legs up to the crotch. Out of pure love for the old man, I'd kept my mouth shut for nearly a half hour, attempting to hunt despite obvious hypothermia. The old man had been a good sport when, with blue lips, I admitted I was finished. I was 14 years old. It was one of the best days of my life.
When the old man spends time with my daughter he's like Santa Claus - at least in that I've never seen him angry at her. And boy, sometimes she deserves coal. And this is where the aforementioned "you'll see" suddenly becomes poignant. You see, there's this hilarious timelessness that makes me embarrassed: old man tells younger man things, younger man disbelieves, becomes old man, realizes wisdom, and fruitlessly passes it on again.
When I was young, the old man used to laugh and tell me how gleeful he'd be when I was a parent. How he'd look forward to me dealing with my own children, just as he had dealt with his. How he hoped I got "exactly the child I deserved" which I never really knew if it was a compliment or an admonishment at the time.

Here's the thing though: I realize now that when the old man used to say that to me, it wasn't admonishment at all. It wasn't all about the times I was being a miscreant or underachieving in school or lying to my mother or being disappointing in general. What I didn't understand then was there was a flip side. The "child I deserved" was the one that would sit completely silently with me for over nearly two hours, only four years old, during a deer hunt. The "child I deserved" would be the one that was complimented by pretty much everyone for being incredibly smart. The "child I deserved" would love me without hesitation, without qualification, without justification. Just the same way I love the old man.


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LoA

Posted on 11:20 by hony
Holidays 1, Alex Blogging Time 0


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Wednesday, 14 December 2011

Avarice, Ctd

Posted on 16:37 by hony
Look, I don't have much to add to this incredible article. I just want to point out that the American taxpayer has paid/continues to pay Lockheed-Martin $112 BILLION DOLLARS to build 166 aircraft that have never been used in combat and are already planned to be replaced by an even more expensive aircraft -- built by Lockheed-Martin.


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Sullivan for Paul

Posted on 10:41 by hony
Andrew Sullivan and I EXACTLY agree on this:
In this difficult endeavor, Paul has kept his cool, his good will, his charm, his honesty and his passion. His scorn is for ideas, not people, but he knows how to play legitimate political hardball. Look at his ads - the best of the season so far. His worldview is too extreme for my tastes, but it is more honestly achieved than most of his competitors, and joined to a temperament that has worn well as time has gone by.
I feel the same way about him on the right in 2012 as I did about Obama in 2008. Both were regarded as having zero chance of being elected. And around now, people decided: Why not? And a movement was born. He is the "Change You Can Believe In" on the right. If you are an Independent and can vote in a GOP primary, vote Paul. Of you are a Republican concerned about the degeneracy of the GOP, vote Paul. If you are a citizen who wants more decency and honesty in our politics, vote Paul. If you want someone in the White House who has spent decades in Washington and never been corrupted, vote Paul.

Honestly it is as if I wrote that. RP2012.


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Avarice, Ctd

Posted on 07:57 by hony
This is the time of the year where popular bloggers put out "holiday gift guides" and slyly link to amazon with their username embedded so they get a little kickback if you buy the products they represent as awesome. More often than not, they do not disclose this little circle jerk to the readers. I find that disingenuous and reprehensible.


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Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Lockheed Martin Shows The Raw Power of Unbridled Avarice

Posted on 13:22 by hony
Imagine you were completely crass and immoral. You wanted to extract as much money as you could from as many people as you could. How would you do it? Here's the three things I would do:
1. I'd defeat my competitors by intentionally underbidding every contract. Or I'd come in at the same cost as my competitor but make outlandish scope promises in my bid.
2. I'd make those bids knowing I could weasel contract modifications in later to get more money. This would be accomplished by "buying" Congress. How would I buy Congress? I would open offices for my company in hundreds of Congressional districts, and I'd use the jobs created as leverage. I'd use the plethora of office locations to spread my work around too, and use the capital being pushed into those districts as further leverage.
3. When I missed deadlines, my competition sued, or the client balked, I'd blame subcontractors or the Client. Then I'd use the political capital I'd earned (mentioned in 2.)  and call Congresspersons to make the complaints go away. Then I'd make campaign contributions.

At some point, my company would have offices in more than 140 Congressional districts. I'd be paying tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions. I'd be raking in tens of billions in contracts (pdf) during the deepest recession in nearly 100 years. And I'd be catching hell for missing deadlines and for hundred-billion-dollar cost overruns. But I wouldn't care, because I'm crass and immoral.

What I want to know is this: who are the engineers at these sorts of companies? How can they live with themselves? I used to think that engineers were, in general, an ethical bunch compared to average or at least compared to some, like MBAs or Wall Street money launderers. But all these companies that are, in every sense of the word, invested in warmongering and tax-dollar-hoarding seem to employ a small army of engineers. It makes me sad.


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The Falling Price of Solar

Posted on 06:23 by hony
One thing I can NOT stand about libertarians is their dogged repetition of the idea that "letting the market decide" will somehow end well for humanity. My arguments against this belief usually start with "well nuclear missiles are in high demand, as are human organs...so let's deregulate those, right?"

But seriously. Here's the thing. People (for example Megan McArdle) like to point out that even as the price of solar power decreases, it still costs more than fossil fuel-based energy. And that the price drop is being helped by massive government subsidization. Take away the subsidies, they argue, and the appeal of solar will wane immensely.

Here's my rebuttal: just because a thing is expensive doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Let me ask my libertarian friends, "which would you rather continue to fund: the war on drugs or solar installation tax subsidies?" The libertarian purists answer, of course, is "neither" but that wasn't really what I asked. My point is that if I have to pay taxes (which I do), I'd much rather pay them so that I can help decrease the rate at which our species is annihilating life on this planet, as opposed to funding bombs that are strapped to drones and dropped on children in Pakistan. I'd rather pay taxes to subsidize wind farms in western Kansas than subsidize a secret detention center for suspected terrorists.

People might counter that these sorts of decisions aren't either/or, and that I'm creating false choices. That's certainly true and I'll cop to it. But I have to ask libertarians one more question: when civil liberties are under attack from all three branches of government, the 2012 Defense spending bill allows the military to arrest U.S. citizens in America and hold them indefinitely, the President can order the assassination of a U.S. citizen with no trial or publicly-available evidence, and when protesters are being arrested all across the nation and portrayed as worthless entitled children...why are you wasting your considerable blogging talents writing about the vileness of solar subsidies?


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Sunday, 11 December 2011

Nightmare Sentence

Posted on 14:09 by hony
Gary Stix:
"If you could deduce every connection point of every brain cell, the strength with which each neuron fires, and the way these firing patterns change as the cells interact with each other, would, in fact, you be left with a copy of you?"
In Gary's defense the rest of the article is fantastic, and I am looking forward to reading Connectome, the book he is reviewing.


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Friday, 9 December 2011

It's Called Living

Posted on 21:00 by hony
Tonight I am sitting at my wife's school (The Abstracted Wife teaches art at an elementary school) on a cafeteria bench watching my wife hold my daughter. It is "pajama night" at the school. They are browsing the tables of "gifts" that kids could buy. Most range in price from 50 cents to 2 dollars. They're "shopping for a present for daddy" while I pretend not to watch. After they pick something out, I will take The Abstracted Daughter around the tables and let her choose a gift for Mommy.

I hang on to these moments. At work they're talking (very seriously) about layoffs. On TV, Presidential candidates vie for "most insane". Student loans choke me. The money we're saving for a down payment on a house takes a hit because I need work done on my truck. The holidays stress me. Trying to start my own company is a constant source of angst. My KC Star article is due Monday (the draft currently sucks) my weekly devotional is due for church (the draft currently does not exist) and on Sunday at church I get confirmed into Leadership Circle and lead the communion prayer (currently unwritten).

And yet, all of that noise is shattered like glass in this one perfect moment, watching my wife and daughter browse tables of trinkets.

There are a lot of things I admit I do not know. But what I do know is this: happiness and family are two different spellings of the same word.


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Wednesday, 7 December 2011

Revolution

Posted on 10:29 by hony
Lately, I've been toying with a number of impossible ideas that could easily and radically alter America for the better. Today's idea is this: What if stocks could be bought but not sold? Or what if they could only be sold back to the company that issues the PO?

Discuss amongst yourselves.
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Circumcision, Once Again

Posted on 09:21 by hony
Martin Robbins:
Try this thought experiment. Imagine waking up tomorrow morning to find yourself tied to your bed and rendered mute, your naked genitals exposed to the harsh glare of hospital lights. Your parents have decided that some skin should be hacked from your penis; perhaps so you can be forced into their religion, perhaps because they don't trust you to clean yourself in the shower, or perhaps simply because they think your penis should look more like your father's.

If you don't like the thought of this happening to you, if this offends your belief in self-determination or the rights you have over what happens to your body, then how can you justify this practice being inflicted on infants?

Now, try this thought experiment.
Imagine waking up tomorrow to find yourself a writer on a deadline who finds circumcision revolting. You want to write a compelling argument against it but you use citations from Wikipedia and Youtube. Then, you appeal to people's desire for "self-determination" when you try to compel them to follow your opinion.

If you don't like the thought of reading weak arguments, or if you believe that arguments that rely on using scare-words and wikipedia to compel the reader are worthless and degrade the argument in general, then how can you link to these articles on your incredibly popular blog?

Look, here's my problem with circumcision opponents, be they Andrew, Freddie, the people writing these hilariously one-sided wikipedia articles, or even members of my immediate family: mind your own damn business. It's my kid. I don't tell you that your children are screwed up by your decisions, so leave mine alone. That is, if you even have kids (I'd love to see a statistic of how many circumcision opponents are childless). The disgusting, bygone cultural practices that my parents followed and I follow cause you revulsion (I'd love to see a statistic of how many circumcised men are anti-circumcision for their sons)? The seemingly uncivilized cultural practices of Africans or Asians or people from not-your-culture cause you revulsion? Well, sorry to hear that. The diversity of cultures on this planet is one of humanity's strengths. I'm sorry that my penchant for desensitized, easy-to-clean penises frightens you, and makes you think I'm an evil scumbag. But it's my culture. It's different than yours. Deal with it.
There's this trend, (when 'modern' people write medical-ish opinion articles) to suggest that some sort of homogenous medical future could exist, where we all had the exact same top-of-the-line health care and that we'd all be better for it. Typically these people say "look how healthy people are at location X, someday maybe people at location Y and Z could have that same level of care" and then they extend that to basically attack every part of that culture Y and Z that differs from Culture X as unhealthy or unethical and therefore unhealthy.
As though every culture would be better off and happier if the people could live 85 years like we try to do. And that if we just assimilate all cultures into a giant, tapioca, planet-spanning mega-culture that does all the same things and acts in the same ways and has the exact same standards for morality and ethics the world will be a better place for it.

And yet there's a deep hypocrisy here, and it deserves to be mentioned: these people who would desire my conformity to their ethics for the sake of the children are quite happy to expose their children to any number of carcinogenic compounds, suicidally-unhealthy foods, violent behaviors and culturally-inherent risks.
All of us backwoods, violent, evil parents that will circumcise our children will end up with 117 infant deaths (per year in the US), according to some statistics.
Guess how many infants die in vehicular collisions in the US in the same period? Ten times as many. So you parents that are putting your children in cars and driving them around? You offend me by essentially attempting to murder your child. What? Putting your kids in car seats and driving around is part of your culture?
You parents that give your children pillows? You cause 900+ infant deaths a year. Good work, MURDERERS. What? Sleeping on something other than dirt and animal skins is part of your culture?

There's a solution: make circumcision safer. The arguments against it typically come in two fronts: either 1) the child is being put in unnecessary risk by having an elective procedure or 2) the child has some sort of right to defer the procedure until older. To the former, the reverse of logic is true: higher prevalence of circumcision would lead to a decrease in risk: more doctors doing it more often would make them better at it and lower their risk of error. Standardizing it as part of physician training in residency would help as well. To the latter, I have to ask: if there were clear, indisputable evidence that infant boys would grow healthier, smarter, happier, and live longer because they were circumcised...would you still argue that it is genital mutilation? Would you still find it morally reprehensible to force it upon a victim/child even though it would clearly help them? If so, I applaud your purism but are you also against Vitamin K injections? Routine vaccinations like tetanus and diptheria? Diapers? Making children take naps? Making them go to school? Making them brush their teeth? Ask me to make a list of things I've "forced" on my child the last 4 years and then bring me a ream or two of paper. Conversely, if clear medical benefits of circumcision would cause you to change your objection to it...well if I can erode your argument that easily why are you even bothering?

Look, I'm never going to convince anyone who opposes circumcision to suddenly be okay with it. Similarly, nobody is going to convince me that I was "mutilated" as an infant when I was circumcised. And that is the crux of a world with different cultures: there is no normative ethic for circumcision, just my applied ethic and your applied ethic. People don't seem to grasp that.


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Tuesday, 29 November 2011

A Post About All The Pros of the Military-Industrial Complex

Posted on 09:09 by hony
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Governor Sam Brownback

Posted on 05:56 by hony
So it turns out that Governor Sam Brownback has an internal team that works for Governor Sam Brownback that searches social media for instances of the name Governor Sam Brownback.
Now, rather than use this knowledge to troll Governor Sam Brownback's policies or bash Governor Sam Brownback personally...well...readers of this blog know that I recently applied to be a NASA astronaut.

So (operating under the assumption that Governor Sam Brownback's social investigation team will find this post) I'd like to use this opportunity to send a message to Governor Sam Brownback personally:

Governor Brownback, 
If you put in a call to Charles Bolden and/or Lori Garver at NASA and get me on the top of the pile for the astronaut job, I'll gladly be your 'yes man' from here on out. Some of your policies are not especially tasteful to me, but all that will be forgotten, instantly, Governor Brownback, if you use your limitless connections, bountiful charisma and charming good looks to help me get that astronaut job. In fact, I will personally call you, from space, to thank you for your wonderful assistance and will overtly and in front of the entire world (literally) praise you as the best Governor the state of Kansas has ever seen.
Your humble and obedient,
Alex Waller

There's no "or else" here, no "otherwise." I remember when I was in high school that getting into a military academy essentially required a letter of recommendation from a public servant. I'm sure the Governor Sam Brownback seal of approval would help with NASA! So thanks in advance, Governor Sam Brownback.



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Wednesday, 23 November 2011

The BCS system

Posted on 12:07 by hony
"Bottom line is, the BCS is flawed," [David] Shaw said. "They themselves know it, which is why they proposed a lot of changes going forward. All I've heard all year is the computers don't like Stanford. Well, the computers haven't programmed themselves.

Not yet, Dave...not yet.


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Puff Piece, Redefined

Posted on 10:06 by hony
Link.


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Rhetoric

Posted on 06:51 by hony
Against massive troop deployments (without Congressional consent) to countries where the locals hate us? You're an isolationist.

Willing to consider raising taxes to cover national debt? You're a socialist.

Not willing to universally support whatever Israel does? You're an anti-semite.

 In this country, we got right to the most extreme rhetoric we can think of, and then try to find an even worse extreme.


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Monday, 21 November 2011

Contacting Aliens

Posted on 06:46 by hony
Let me just bounce this off Hanson's post about the probability that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the galaxy, on 100 or so planets.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that this is true. The dilemma is this: if aliens live on another planet in our galaxy, and drive their alien-cars to their alien-work and read the alien-news and occasionally blast radio waves into space in hopes that other aliens (us) will detect it, and if they are 40,000 light years away (relatively close in galactic terms - the Milky Way is 100,000 or so light years in diameter) we won't detect their radio waves they are sending today for another 40,000 years, by which time their alien civilization may be long gone, or conversely ours might be as well.
So the usual end argument of astrobiologists and their dissenters is that "even if alien civilizations are a statistical certainty in the Milky Way Galaxy, its pointless to consider First Contact because it will not occur in any reasonable amount of time due to the size constraints of the galaxy."
A corollary argument is this: modern humans have lived on this planet for 200,000 years or so, and before that protohumans lived on this planet for 3 million years. Before that, life evolved in one form or another for a few billion years. And our star has existed for about 4.5 billion years. We've had the ability to broadcast radio waves for about 100 years. So if an alien race were to have looked at the Sun for our radio waves (the way the SETI program looks at other stars for alien radio waves) they would have a 1/45,000,000 chance, or 0.000000225% chance of looking at Sol during the radio-broadcast-era of our solar system. Certainly, as our civilization continues the length of time we've been barfing radio broadcasts into space increases, but it still remains a tiny percentage. So aliens, in all likelihood, have looked at our solar system in their own SETI program and simply missed us - we're too new to the intergalactic game. Flip that around and realize that the chances we will see alien radio broadcasts in our SETI programs is incredibly slim. Winning lottery ticket slim, really.

Worse yet, who is to say that humans will use radio-wave-based data transmission forever? What if the natural evolution of an Intelligent Civilization in the universe is to evolve large brains, master fire, build agriculture, harness silicon, spend a couple hundred years wirelessly transmitting via radio waves, and then discovering an even better method of wireless information broadcast and abandoning radio waves completely. The results would be that if this held true for other civilizations, searching for alien radio waves would be an even more ridiculous 1-in-a-zillion. We'd have to catch their broadcasts during their short radio-wave episode of their Intelligent Civilization.

So what communication system would an advanced civilization (either ours or an alien) use to communicate? It certainly seems logical that radio waves of sufficient strength can fulfill all the information broadcast requirements of a single-planet-inhabiting civilization, but what if humans colonize Mars? A 9.5 minute delay between every signal is a frustrating. Then imagine we send colonists deeper into space, having discovered other "M-class" planets. Radio signals to/from them would take weeks to travel through space.
So a faster-than-light communication method seems the only plausible thing.

Suspend judgement, dear reader! I understand the surreality of concepts involving "faster than light" anything, but for the sake of argument I want us to assume that sufficient advances in gravitational control as well as increasing harnessing of energy sources allows one to produce an artificial method for transmitting data faster-than-light.
So here's the thing: if we imagine that future-humans will develop some sort of FTL data transmission method, I think we need to figure out some candidate methods that would work, then try to detect the data from those. If radio transmission is a dead end, which I think it will be in a couple centuries, we need to start imagining what the next thing will be. We don't have to develop the ability to transmit data...just to hear the transmissions being sent around the Galaxy by advanced alien civilizations.
Think of it like this: we're Native Americans, sending smoke signals, and the advanced aliens in our galaxy are the Post Office riders. We do not need to build our own postal system and then exchange mail with the alien post riders: we just need to figure out what is in those riders' satchels and intercept the mail.

I dunno, ya know? It's a long shot, but then again, so is everything when it comes to the Galaxy.

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Thursday, 17 November 2011

Applying To Be An Astronaut

Posted on 13:00 by hony
Wow there's a lot of forms.

Updated: Where it asked for "relevant skills" I put "experienced in zero-g hand to hand combat" because I read Ender's Game like 50 times as a kid.

Update 2: Where it asked in what languages I was proficient, I put down "English, Russian, and European."
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Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Bundling Books

Posted on 17:58 by hony
One of the annoying things about television is summarized by the immortal phrase "hundreds of channels and nothing on." One reason for this (though not the only one) is that channels are provided in bundles. For example Discovery Channel typically comes with a cadre of other channels like Discovery Health, the Military Channel, TLC and BBC America. If a cable provider, like AT&T Uverse, wants to provide Discovery Channel to its users, it must buy the bundle from Discovery Communications, Inc. Similar bundles exist from many outlets (for example the 30 ESPN channels you get).
However it is annoying to users because by and large they only want one or a few of the channels in a bundle, but they pay for all of them.
Virginia Postrel suggests digital books should be bundled in a similar manner, where a consumer must buy a bundle of books to get the one they want. This, she argues, will help buoy sales of less popular books:
Every book is indeed different, but that’s no excuse for charging more than the market will bear. And, at least for digital copies, there’s a way around the “every book is different” problem: bundling a lot of books together, charging a flat fee, and letting customers use whichever ones they like best.
How will this solve any problems? Why should a consumer be forced to pay for books they don't want? I can only see consumer irritation from this plan, the same way consumers hate forced buying bundles of television channels to get the few channels they actually will watch.


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Conflicted, or NASA Is Hiring Astronauts And I Want To Be One

Posted on 06:20 by hony
Long time readers of this blog know that on more than one occasion I have taken potshots at NASA. I've complained that manned spaceflight, while a noble pursuit, seems perilous and without point unless a clear direction is given. For example, if manned spaceflight involves building an orbital launch vehicle to send terraforming equipment to Mars...I'm all for it. Manned spaceflight as an economic stimulus mechanism for east Florida, on the other hand, I do not like.
I've laid out on this blog a time or two what I think should happen, going so far as to say we need to completely reboot NASA. I've suggested more robotic space missions and less manned missions would further what I see as the ultimate goal of space travel: preventing humanity's extinction by increasing the number of planets we inhabit from 1 to 2+.

All that being said, this morning I found out that NASA is taking applications for astronauts. And as I type this post, I have the application open on my second monitor. I cannot lie: this is the most appealing job application I've ever come across.

But here's the conflict: clearly I have issues with NASA. Clearly I have made those public. My name is on this blog, and honestly I stand by pretty much all the things I've said (things I do not stand by are summarily redacted). So I wonder if I would really stand a chance. I easily meet all the physical and academic qualifications for the position. Two degrees in engineering, 5 years experience designing/building both large electromechanical systems as well as small electronic devices. Significant experience with electrical design and circuit boards. Great health. From the applications: "Creativity. Ambition. Teamwork. A sense of daring. And a probing mind. That's what it takes to join NASA..." I got those covered!

But I have to wonder if they would only consider ardent NASA fanboys? If that is the case, let me please quote myself, from a post entitled "In Defense of NASA":
Listen, I am a big, big fan of NASA. Their mission statement, "To improve life here, to extend life to there, to find life beyond" is succinct and brilliant. When I was barely 6 years old I saw a shuttle launch from Cape Canaveral. We were several miles away, but even from there, you could see the glowing beast of a shuttle hurl into the sky, and watch the primary rockets fall away, until the shuttle was eventually lost from view. I grew up with a father who dreamed of going to space, and then vicariously dreamed that I might go to space. I watched Star Trek and Star Wars religiously. The crazy missions to the Hubble, Mars, and the construction of the ISS have all been highlights in my life. I was one of the people who let the SETI program borrow my computer at night to process radio wave information.
I don't need to go on really. I know how much NASA, and space exploration, means to me. And that is exactly why I am so critical of it! Watching your single favorite government organization fall into bureaucratic oblivion, pandering to the whims of whatever the current President says the agenda should be, overspending their budget year after year funding elephantine projects with no clear timeline or budget, not requiring their subs to perform at a certain level, and worst of all: creating unattainable, but PR-friendly goals and then spending enormous amounts of money on not achieving them...these are hard pills to swallow
All this being said, I think I will apply to be an astronaut. "Be the change you want to see in the world," goes the oft repeated quote. I guess if I want to fix NASA, the right way to do it would be from the inside, not from the comfort of my computer at my desk in Kansas. In that post, I also wrote:
My father likes to chide sports commentators with this line: "if these idiots knew so much, why aren't they coaches?" The same could possibly be aimed at me. If I have all the answers to NASA's problems, why don't I be put in charge of NASA? Wouldn't I like that?
I guess I should stop commentating and try coaching.


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Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Things I Will Believe When I See

Posted on 06:06 by hony
Computer animations of robotic animals are pretty easy to produce. I know this because my roommate and I used to do it for fun in college.

So earlier this year when BostonDynamics robot cheetah animation came out...I held my breath.

Now we have a robot ostrich animation complete with weird render that looks like a Halflife 2 creature! It'd be neat if it was built, sure. But I'll hold my breath in the mean time.


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Thursday, 10 November 2011

Scott Adams' Cyborg Evolution

Posted on 08:13 by hony
Scott Adams thinks that health monitoring will be the first substantial step in our "cyborg evolution." Welcome to the club, Scott.

Here at TAE, the inevitable seamless integration of machine and man has been discussed too many times for me to link to. Heh.
But I want to make a point about Adams' piece, because I think he understates the ideal. His vision:
I predict that health monitoring will be the next substantial phase of cyborg evolution. I think we'll have embedded chips to continuously monitor our blood for sugar levels, cholesterol, vitamins, minerals, salt, specific diseases, and more. I think we'll also have monitors on our bodies to tell us when our brains are at their peak levels (for thinking tasks) and when our bodies are most energetic (for exercise). Perhaps our monitors will tell us when to eat and what to eat. Monitors might tell us when we are hydrated, when we have enough fiber in our diets, and when we need more sleep. You can imagine a long list of what the monitors might tell us. The embedded monitors might be powered by your body chemistry and communicate with your smartphone when it's near.
I question why we need the smartphone at all? Why not have the monitor calculate the nutrients our body needs and then simply regulate the liver to efficiently digest the right amounts of the right molecules? I don't have time to take pictures of food and record if I feel energized. I don't want to spend my time putting my diet into MyFitnessPal. I want to just have a device implanted in my liver that checks my nutrient levels and then adjusts my body chemistry accordingly.
Adams envisions a monitor that tells us when our brains are at peak performance. I envision a device that keeps my brain at peak performance all the time! Adams' envisions a device that tells me when I need more sleep. I envision a device that not only helps regulate my sleep patterns, but increases the efficiency of my sleep patterns so I get "40 winks" in 30 winks' time.

Adams imagines a world where we're enshrouded in devices which improve our quality of life. I agree this is the future...but an iterative one. I imagine a future where we aren't enshrouded by devices...we are one with them.

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Tuesday, 8 November 2011

Watching Your Friends Drink Kool-Aid

Posted on 11:04 by hony
You know, I don't have a Twitter account. I never really see the utility in it; always seems like just a bunch of white noise. People who trumpet it as an innovation usually point to its power for news dissemination, for example when the East Coast experienced an earthquake earlier this year. Others contend that Twitter was instrumental in the Arab Spring uprisings, helping to organize protests. That's a fallacious argument to me, because people have rioted and protested for hundreds of years before there was Twitter. It's just that before Twitter, people actually had to talk to each other in order to spread the word.


But for me Twitter does have one utility, namely it allows me to watch the slow decay of my peers as they helplessly fall prey to the consumerist lifestyle they've come to believe matters. I should add that the example tweets I use aren't meant to be attacks on individuals (these people are acquaintances), simply I used them because they prove my point and you people just put it out there in public so everyone can see. Theoretically I'm helping you.

There's this epidemic, and Freddie nails it, of competitive consumerism in my generation. Everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid of a capitalistic culture that says "the herd is happy" and that somehow you must fit in while simultaneously rising above everyone else in your individuality and innovative consumerism. And so you end up with a massive, generational flocking effect...everyone tries to stay as close together as possible, and a tiny perturbation - new, hip, pointy-toed shoes - causes a ripple where the whole flock massively pivots to follow that first-turning bird. And while the seemingly mindless collective flock of individuals sticks tightly together, they tweet back and forth about it.
I hate to tell you this, but your ability to pass an online quiz that proves you can tell a good pino from a bad cab really doesn't matter to anyone. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You found a 100-point cab for $16 at so-and-so's liquor store? No one cares. No one. In fact the statistically proven, temporal subjectivity of the 100-point score renders it worthless too. Your groupon deal for unlimited yoga for $30 might be impressive to you, but you're basically just wasting electricity retweeting it...everyone who would want that deal would have to already be signed up to Groupon (and already have seen the deal) or have to join Groupon to get the deal (in which case they'd immediately see the deal) so you've really done nothing but brainlessly advertise for Groupon for free. Good work.

Someday, not too far in the future, one of these people will realize things like "I actually didn't really like HealthRidge Fitness Club" but they won't tweet "ignore my tweet from three months ago. #hindsightis20/20" The 100-point cab they spilled all over the twittersphere will be long forgotten, and the cheaper, lower-ranked wine they enjoy even more won't cause them to retroactively go back and tweet "100-point wine was overrated by 7 points IMHO #iwasshortsighted". You're not going to see a tweet from the above person "@RoadID I never really use this thing, had it 5 years and never needed it, why did I waste my money?"
Because retroactive self-abasement goes against the competitive consumerist's nature. You can't look back in regret because to do so would admit weakness in prescience. And it is the illusion of indefatigable prescience that powers the competitive consumerists of my generation. It is only boldly forward, boldly onward for the competitive consumerist, in whichever direction the flock takes them.


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Thursday, 3 November 2011

One more thing about prosthetics

Posted on 07:45 by hony
Micro-sensor-embedded-fiber-optic-super-prosthetics may hold promise for future American soldiers that lose limbs...but what does that uninsured amputee in Botswana do? As medical breakthroughs become more and more expensive to develop...they become more and more disconnected from the places they are truly needed.

The counter-argument, that these technologies need to be developed in the First World and become profitable and then the patents run out and then it gets cheaper and then eventually it trickles down to the Third World...that argument falls short when you try to find a person living in the Third World that has a pacemaker.


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Prosthetics Is About Software

Posted on 07:17 by hony
First off, I applaud this effort. Amazing science in progress.

However, look at that diagram...they want to create an awfully complicated design. Tiny optical mirrors are placed along equally microscopic optical fibers, which are then wound around individual nerves. A nerve signal headed for an amputated limb is detected by these microsensors and they transmit the signal via the optical fiber to a CPU of some sort which will then move the limb. Theoretically feedback could go the other way - touching an object could fire off haptic sensors which would then send an infrared laser signal through the fiber optic cable to the mirror and trigger a nerve pulse, which would then be carried to the brain.

Okay, here's the thing. The article, and the researches in it, make brain-machine interface seem like a really crappy technology with no promise. But practical, functioning prototypes of their technology is "a decade off" they admit. They claim: "Even a bleeding-edge, brain-based prosthetic would only offer a few degrees of movement, and because electrical signals are relatively slow, you couldn’t move as quickly as someone with a real arm."
The problem with this claim is that anyone with a basic understanding of bioelectric signals knows that the transmission speed of electrical signals in copper wires is thousands and thousands and thousands of times faster than the signal transmission speed in nerves. In fact, because the transmission speed of nerves is SO slow, early multi-cellular life forms evolved myelin sheaths, which speed up the transmission rate of nerve signals, at the cost of signal strength. Myelin sheaths are spaced along a nerve fiber, and the signal shoots through them, then reconcentrates in the inter-mylin nerve fiber space, then shoots through the next one. It's all explained here.
The point is that their core argument against brain-implant prosthetics is that the slowness of them is what causes the difficulty in doing simple tasks. That is simply not true. They further claim their fiber optic method will mitigate this problem...that's probably not true....but we won't know for another decade, right?

The reason, dear readers, that brain-controlled prostheses lack mobility is two-fold. First, the electromechanical design of prosthetics is still limited by our ability to make artificial muscle. We use servos to simulate elbows and knees. In a way we do it backwards of nature. Nature puts the muscles between the joints, then pulls on the joints to move them. We put the "muscle" in the joint, and actuate it right there on site.

The second reason for the difficulties in brain-controlled prostheses is that we simply have not developed software to decode the brain. Put one of these babies on, and you can get a pretty diverse and interesting real-time electrical output from the brain. But first, no one wants to wear that, and second, the amount of data is simply overwhelming. When I think about typing the letter "t", my brain produces a very specific electrical signal. However, it's lost in the noise of me thinking about moving my eyeballs, thinking about maintaining my posture in this chair (or should I say maintaining my slouch in this chair?), and thinking whatever else I am thinking. When you have billions of signal generators that maintain trillions of interconnections...you simply get a TON of noise. And so the difficulties in moving a prosthetic with your thoughts alone has nothing to do with signal velocity and instead has everything to do with signal integrity. If I had a prosthetic arm and wanted to type the letter 't' I would have to think really really hard about it so that the software in the brain-implant-computer-whatever could clearly through all the noise see I wanted to type that letter. Thinking hard is a lot slower than regular thinking.

So I humbly submit: the hardware you use to interface with the amputee is irrelevant, mostly. As long as you can interrupt and monitor the brain's commands...either at the brain or at the stump...you can move the hardware. What matters is signal processing, which lies in the software. This is a problem, I think, for mechanical engineers like me and electrical engineers and neurophotonics researchers to accept: we're not the important part of this puzzle.

But this goes back to TAE's Law of Bionics that I submitted on this blog many times, and it bears repeating now: All You Need Is Drivers. The only thing stopping me from having a functioning USB port on my arm is that we lack the drivers for the two hardware systems to communicate. All you need is drivers. All you need is drivers. All you need is drivers.


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Monday, 31 October 2011

Retirement

Posted on 06:28 by hony
Here at work they're doing away with pensions. The change will be to a more 'aggressive' cooperative 403b (we're a 501(c)3 nfp) plan, where if you invest 6% they'll match an additional 3%.

I have to wonder: are retirement plans really just some creamy corporate milk that companies feed you to keep you placated? If I were to take my salary today, and assume a 3% pay raise every year for the next 35 years, and then take 9% of that and invest it every year, and then get a healthy 7% return on my investment every year...I'd end up 65 years old with $1.1 million in the bank. Of course, that's $1.1 million in 2046 dollars. Back track to current dollars and I'd have about $568,000 if I were doing this today. And of course this is hilariously illusory because who has managed a 7% year over year the last 15 years? No one.

At least I have the comfort of knowing that when I retire in 2046 I can rely on my Social Security checks...oh wait.
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Thursday, 27 October 2011

Engineering: A Bubble?

Posted on 08:18 by hony
One of the things about engineers that people forget (or don't) is that we have a really high employment rate, an average salary that easily puts us in the upper middle class, and typically engineers enjoy a career that can be upwardly mobile, with six figure incomes reasonable in your first decade of work.
One might argue that the above job security factors are inherent in a system where getting a diploma from a four-year ABET accredited university in some engineering field is extremely difficult, and that the massive washout rate (75%) for freshman/sophomore engineering majors is evidence of the rarity/justification for the salaries of engineers. Or that the difficulties of the profession merit the pay. I wouldn't argue either of these points are wrong. They're just not explanatory of why engineers are thriving.
A lot of other college majors are hard. Take, for instance, biochemistry - where a student must master high level chemistry, math, and biology. And yet biochemists in general do not enjoy the pay rate, nor the upward mobility, that engineers do.

The answer, I'm afraid, is simply that this is the right world and right time to be an engineer. Engineers have become the ubiquitous go-to in a world where the average Joe can barely find the reset button on their wall clock. We design everything in your life. We build it. We design and build the store where it is sold. We design and build the manufacturing facility where it is designed and built. We design the store shelves it sits on, the cash register where you pay for it. The network of fiber optic cables that processes your electronic payment - we designed that, too. And programmed the software. We designed your car, the roads, the street lights, the stop signs. Even your mailbox...somewhere there's an engineering drawing for that thing. When you climb your stairs and go brush your teeth, thank the engineers that design, maintain, and coordinate your clean water supply, and who develop the packaging for your toothpaste. When you call someone on your phone, thank the engineer that designed the phone, the engineer that designed the software on it, the engineer that designed the radio tower, the engineer that designed the electrical cables...and so on and so forth.

Let's take one specific example, to further this point: the life cycle of corn. For this case, "designed by engineers" will be shortened to DBE. A farmer drives his truck (DBE) to the co-op and buys bags of seed corn. The bags? DBE. The farmer then drives them home and pours them into his planter (DBE) that is pulled behind a tractor (DBE). Earlier, he used a sprayer (DBE) to prep the field for planting. Behind the planter he pulls a fertilizer (DBE) sprayer. The corn grows up nice and tall. At the harvest, he drives a combine (DBE) that cuts the corn plants and separates the straw and chaff from the kernels of corn. The corn is then augured into a trailer (DBE) and driven to the co-op (DBE) where it is stored in massive holding silos (DBE). Soon it is sold and ground up with other ingredients (DBE) and fed to livestock. The livestock are butchered in a plant (DBE) and shipped in chilled trucks (DBE) to grocery stores (DBE) all over the country. I think you get the point. We engineers have our fingers in every pie. And there's a good reason for this.

Technology, quite simply, is at an engineer's level. Which wasn't always the case. Engineers did important work for the last ten decades, don't get me wrong. But we didn't always have digital displays on microwaves (or microwaves at all for that matter). We didn't have wireless internet connections in our homes. Our daily lives, 50 years ago, depended on engineers to be sure. It's just that the reach of engineers was a lot narrower. People didn't need a chemical engineer to formulate toothpaste back when a box of baking soda would do. People didn't need an electrical engineer to design in-car GPS systems when a map would do. It's just that, throughout the last century if you wanted to improve people's lives in terms of economy, simplicity, or efficiency, you took an existing practice and put an engineer on it. The question is whether (more like when) engineering is a field that will reach employment saturation.

I've argued before (maybe not here but somewhere; I love to argue) that mechanical engineering is approaching obsolescence. Or maybe obsolescence is the wrong word. I think a better word would be to say that mechanical engineering is evolving into a supportive role in engineering. What do I mean? Well take for instance robotics. No longer are mechanical relays and actuators the primary driving focus of the robotic design. Instead, the electrical engineer's ability to embed circuitry, and the software engineer's ability to upload intelligence into that circuitry, has become paramount. Hydraulic pistons are hydraulic pistons. A mechanical engineer that was doing robotics 20 years ago with hydraulic actuators would still know how to operate in today's world. Only, the pistons wouldn't be controlled by pneumatic valves anymore, they'd be controlled with electrically-actuated valves with PID control architecture and feedback fuzzy logic...
Obviously this is a sensitive topic for me, as my title at work is "staff mechanical engineer" but even I see the end of the days where hordes of mechanical engineers go design cars or airplanes. Soon, instead of leading design efforts, their job will be to design packaging for electronics. Already this shift is happening. I know this because it is my job.

Combine this with the surge in engineers graduating from Universities - not so much here but in India and China. India is (by some accounts) producing 400,000 engineers a year, and that was five years ago. China is producing, depending on your source, at least that many if not 25% more. That's a lot of engineers. Add in engineers in all other countries combined and you are adding 1.5 million or so each year to the global engineering pool. Meanwhile, many economies are stagnant. The demand for engineers isn't going up as fast as the supply. Some argue that Chinese and Indian engineers do not take vacant jobs, they simply displace existing engineers from the current pool, either by literally taking their job or by making their company more capability-competitive in the market and forcing cuts at foreign companies.

So let's come back around to the original question: is engineering a bubble? The short answer is probably not. People aren't jumping into it for the easy money. Hiring engineers is a a pretty low-risk investment. But the evolution of the field of engineering has been one of broadening influence, increased specialization, increased collaboration, and an increase in project speed. It is the need for specialization that drives the current boom in engineering. No single engineer has the knowledge required to build the iPad. You need hundreds, each with a particular skill, all working in careful unison, to produce that sort of technology. Same for things like Garmin GPS. They employ hundreds of engineers to produce their products. Mechanical engineers that specialize in rapid prototyping, mechanical engineers that specialize in injection molding, mechanical engineers that specialize in PCB packaging/interfacing, mechanical engineers that specialize in packaging the device in boxes...and that's to just name the MechE's involved. Add in electrical engineers, computer engineers, computer programmers...and you get quite a cadre of specialized engineers, all working in unison on little bits and pieces of mega-complicated engineering projects.

The flip side of this is that increased specialization requirements drive a growth market in engineering, but also put more engineers at risk for sudden obsolescence. The idea of bubbles is that they grow fast and pop hard. Specialized engineering fields, on the other hand, grow slow and die slow. But make no mistake, I really believe that engineering fields will go away as technology drives them into obsolescence. My wise words to college students? Differentiate yourself from all your peers by double majoring in two different-but-related engineering majors. You'll have to work harder, obviously, but if the two majors are related then a lot of courses will count towards both degrees and you won't have to take too many extra courses. Your double major will make you doubly employable. Then, when you get hired, start learning a third engineering field on your own.
For example, I majored in biological engineering as an undergrad, then switched to mechanical engineering in grad school. As soon as I graduated, I began teaching myself electrical engineering and now I'm learning to write in C#, Java and Objective-C. Cross-disciplinary engineers are the kings of the engineering world.


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The Limits of Steve Jobs

Posted on 05:29 by hony
There were some things that were sacred to Steve:
"Every evening, he would have dinner around the kitchen table with his wife and kids. He didn't go out socializing or to black-tie dinners. He didn't travel much. Even though he was focused on his work, he was always home for dinner."


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Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Foster Care and Austerity Politics

Posted on 13:30 by hony
In an eye-opening and poignant article, Ben Dueholm writes about the state of foster care in America:

In a way that we never really anticipated, welcoming Sophia into our home led us into the wilderness of red tape and frustration navigated every day by low-income parents who struggle to raise children with the critical help of government programs. That same week, the office of the bone specialist who had treated Sophia’s broken leg at the hospital tried to get out of scheduling her for an urgent follow-up appointment. Like many medical practices, his endeavored at all costs to avoid working for Medicaid’s paltry reimbursement rates. (The office went so far as to deny ever having treated her; eventually, however, they gave in.) We went through a similar amount of stress trying to put Sophia into daycare. We had to run down a pile of government paperwork, prove our employment, and then simply wait and hope that our daycare center would accept the state’s stingy pay. And yet, frustrated as we were, we couldn’t exactly blame the doctors and daycare providers for being heartless. As the state’s stinginess pushes more of the costs of caring for foster children onto them, it’s no surprise that they start to balk.

It’s a major bureaucratic process to remove a child from her home and family. The state insures the child, pays for daycare, investigates the claims of abuse, and retains legal custody, but it cannot actually put a baby to bed at night. And so, on the other side of this most intimate public-private partnership are usually people like us, left alone with a stranger’s child and a garbage bag full of clothes and wondering what’s going to happen next. And what happens next depends, to a stomach-churning degree, on the state’s willingness and ability to keep up its half of the bargain.
I agree with him that this is an incredibly important article. I encourage all my readers to take the whole thing in, and I challenge you to do so without getting emotional. By the time I had finished it, I had resolved to open a Science/Engineering Orphanage and somehow take in hundreds of children and raise them on STEM curriculum, then send them in droves to MIT and Stanford.


Disclosure: Ben Dueholm is my brother-in-law. Smartest thing he's ever written? Obviously his wedding vows to my sister.
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Friday, 21 October 2011

Back In My Day, Things Were More Cynical

Posted on 13:14 by hony
This is just the kind of epic nonsense that makes me use profanities on my blog.

I will say this directly to Mat Honan: if you can bitch about the recession that occurred when you graduated while simultaneously telling someone else not to bitch about the recession that is occuring when they graduate, you are a hypocritical asshole. Oh, and while you are trumpeting all your insanely awesome Gen X innovations like Google and Twitter (because a whole generation of people gets credit for the work of three people) let me point out that you are writing this on your tumblr (which was founded by a Millennial). Maybe we Millennials should also get credit for Groupon, Facebook, reddit, 4chan...I mean really do we want to have this fight? I don't think we do. Oh, and while you were perfecting all of musicdom you also produced this. I'll happily give credit where it is due for that.

Honestly, more of a response than this is beneath me.


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Monday, 17 October 2011

Not-Faster-Than-Light

Posted on 10:51 by hony
Back in September, I chided people for jumping on the FTL neutrino bandwagon, though I admitted that the facts might sway even me into the "Einstein was wrong" camp.

Unfortunately for hype-beasts, it appears Einstein wasn't wrong. Faster-than-light travel continues to be impossible.


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Monday, 10 October 2011

Peter Thiel's UTTER NONSENSE

Posted on 09:20 by hony
First, let me admit that I am really upset right now by what I read in Peter Thiel's article on the stagnation of technology called "The End of the Future." I am going to discuss it angrily, I admit, but please forgive me if this seems like a direct attack on Peter Thiel - I don't know him and I doubt if I did I would dislike him. He was, and is, a brilliant venture capitalist (more on that later) but I just really, really dislike what he wrote:
The state of true science is the key to knowing whether something is truly rotten in the United States. But any such assessment encounters an immediate and almost insuperable challenge. Who can speak about the true health of the ever-expanding universe of human knowledge, given how complex, esoteric, and specialized the many scientific and technological fields have become? When any given field takes half a lifetime of study to master, who can compare and contrast and properly weight the rate of progress in nanotechnology and cryptography and superstring theory and 610 other disciplines? Indeed, how do we even know whether the so-called scientists are not just lawmakers and politicians in disguise, as some conservatives suspect in fields as disparate as climate change, evolutionary biology, and embryonic-stem-cell research, and as I have come to suspect in almost all fields?
Mr. Thiel, I have two degrees in science. Many of my friends have PhD's in science. I work at a research and development company, a not-for-profit, that specializes in not only cutting-edge research in life sciences, chemistry, and engineering, but also has several large government contracts to provide "subject matter experts" to them, which are essentially people whose specialized knowledge has no peer. At my company there are 140+ people with PhDs. There are 100+ more with at least a master of science degree.

And so with this large sample of friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and coworkers I can assure you: we are not secret lawmakers. We are not politicians in disguise. In fact, politicians make us sick. The conservative conspiracy theorists that assume intelligent scientists have an agenda are only half correct: our 'agenda' is to increase the scientific knowledge available to our species. Our agenda is to vote against politicians who suggest Darwin was a fraud. Our aim is to secure as much government revenue for ourselves as we can, because our research has a proven track record of economic stimulus. Pointless wars, half a planet away, have done nothing for the economy other than help to cause the Great Recession of 2008 upon which your thesis is based.

Thiel then writes this:
In the past decade, the unresolved energy challenges of the 1970s have broadened into a more general commodity shock, which has been greater in magnitude than the price spikes of the two world wars and has undone the price improvements of the previous century. In the case of agriculture, at least, technological famine may lead to real old-fashioned famine.
Shouldn't we also talk about the grain subsidies for corn-based ethanol, championed by many an ill-informed (or self-preserving) politician, which have completely ruined the agricultural balanced system in this country? Shouldn't we point out that while ethanol remains an impossibly tiny contributer to the overall energy portfolio in America, the commodity shock due to the scarcity of corn-based feed for livestock has caused an outward flowing ripple in the food price system in this country that has had as great, if not greater, effect than the slowdown in crop yield acceleration he blames on poor innovation?

Thiel then writes this:
While innovation in medicine and biotechnology has not stalled completely, here too signs of slowed progress and reduced expectations abound. In 1970, Congress promised victory over cancer in six years’ time; four decades later, we may be 41 years closer, but victory remains elusive and appears much farther away.
Mr. Thiel makes no mention of cancer survival rate over this period, which has gone through the roof, if you will. It turns out that a Congressional promise of cancer cures is not the same thing as a doctor's promise of cancer cures (Thiel later acknowledges the abject lack of scientific knowledge in Congress). It also turns out that politicians are full of crap on many instances, and putting all of humanity's biotechnological progress on trial for the misstatements of 70's Senators is ridiculous, and utter nonsense.

Thiel then writes this:
If meaningful scientific and technological progress occurs, then we reasonably would expect greater economic prosperity. And also in reverse: If economic gains, as measured by certain key indicators, have been limited or nonexistent, then perhaps so has scientific and technological progress.
This is a fallacious argument. Meaningful technological progress has occurred for the last 30 years in the area of fuel efficiency and power in diesel locomotives. Currently, just a few engines can pull a quarter mile long, fully loaded, string of coal cars from Wyoming to Texas at a very high speed. I know this because they go right past my house, hulking monstrosities of American engineering wonder. And yet, this coal super-train capability cannot honestly be held responsible for economic prosperity. On the contrary, stronger diesel engines means less are necessary to pull a finite amount of coal, so fewer need to be built. Longer trains means less trains, which means less engineers driving them which means fewer jobs. Automation and traffic control of train/rail systems has streamlined efficiency and driven down margins, making coal-train-operation less profitable.
And to use Mr. Thiels words, and also in reverse: in the middle of the Great Recession of 2008, Apple released both the iPhone and the iPad, Google launched their Android OS that has become prevalent on many smartphones, and both Apple and Google (and their hardware manufacturers and their shareholders) have enjoyed unprecedented economic prosperity. Further, saying "if economic progress, as measured by certain key indicators" is an unfair statement. Because it allows the writer (Mr. Thiel) or anyone else to choose whichever key indicators they want to make their point (I'll use one in a second). I could point to Apple's stock price as a key indicator. I could point to the 25% decrease in gas prices the last 3 months as a key indicator. I could point to the housing market collapse as a key indicator...of something.


Mr. Thiel then writes:
Economic progress may lag behind scientific and technological achievement, but 38 years seems like an awfully long time.
Indeed, most of Mr. Thiel's article seems to suggest that since 1973 we are no better, the economy is no stronger, and Americans are no better off. How can this be? Let's use a carefully selected key indicator, the GDP/population. In 1973 this would be $4.9 billion/ 211 million people = $23/person. Fast forward to 2010, and this becomes $42/person. According to this key indicator, every American is contributing basically twice as much to the economy, or stated a different way: the economy is twice as strong per unit of population.
Mr. Thiel then writes:
This analysis suggests an explanation for the strange way the technology bubble of the 1990s gave rise to the real-estate bubble of the 2000s. After betting heavily on technology growth that did not materialize, investors tried to achieve the needed double-digit returns through massive leverage in seemingly safe real-estate investments. This did not work either, because a major reason for the bubble in real estate turned out to be the same as the reason for the bubble in technology: a mistaken but nearly universal background assumption about easy progress. Without fundamental gains in productivity (presumably driven by technology), real-estate values could not go up forever. Leverage is not a substitute for scientific progress.
Wait, so it's technology that is to blame for the housing market crash? I cannot believe what utter nonsense this is. And if that is his point, then shouldn't he castigate himself a bit here? Thiel helped found PayPal in 1998, right in the midst of the Dotcom boom.

Mr. Thiel then writes:
The technology slowdown threatens not just our financial markets, but the entire modern political order, which is predicated on easy and relentless growth.
We are now in section six, page four of this essay and he has never given any evidence of a technology slowdown, in fact he has stated twice that a technological slowdown is nearly impossible to measure. I'm reading his article on a tablet PC, by the way. Which is receiving wireless internet from another room. Which is also connected to a flat screen TV and gives me ATT Uverse. Which is sent as photons through a fiber optic cable that can stretch hundreds of miles. Which is made of a super-pure form of glass in a clean room in a cutting edge manufacturing facility on another continent. Technology slowdown? Harumph.
Lastly, Mr. Thiel writes:
Men reached the moon in July 1969, and Woodstock began three weeks later. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this was when the hippies took over the country, and when the true cultural war over Progress was lost.
Did he really just write that? I wish I'd started with this section of his essay, because it's clearly where he saved his best:
Today’s aged hippies no longer understand that there is a difference between the election of a black president and the creation of cheap solar energy; in their minds, the movement towards greater civil rights parallels general progress everywhere. Because of these ideological conflations and commitments, the 1960s Progressive Left cannot ask whether things actually might be getting worse.
So wait, are we supposed ignore that the hippy-elected, black President recently made the news for a $535 million loan to Solyndra, a solar energy company? It's almost like the hippies elected him for more than just the color of his skin. The thing is, I don't think there are many people left in America who don't acknowledge that in many ways, things are getting worse. But this article Mr. Thiel wrote was supposed to be about technology, not the public school system or criminal justice system or mass transit system or military industrial complex or foreign wars and torture at 'black' locations or the myriad of irrelevant-to-this-discussion topics where America is struggling.
Look, I do want to quote positively one thing Mr. Thiel wrote:
Most of our political leaders are not engineers or scientists and do not listen to engineers or scientists. Today a letter from Einstein would get lost in the White House mail room, and the Manhattan Project would not even get started; it certainly could never be completed in three years. I am not aware of a single political leader in the U.S., either Democrat or Republican, who would cut health-care spending in order to free up money for biotechnology research — or, more generally, who would make serious cuts to the welfare state in order to free up serious money for major engineering projects.
Sadly he is correct. While in large I disagree with him about technological progress - in my opinion the world is an amazing place filled with wonders that someone in 1973 could not have possibly imagined without the assistance of LSD - I do think that he is right about the Federal Government by and large hampering research and development, despite the existence of entities like the NIH and NSF. Many R&D projects are going to the the same companies, over and over, and the "military-industrial complex" label becomes appropriately applied.

One last thing: Mr. Thiel, I have this really great idea for a technology that would change modern medicine (and make you a boatload of money). I've built a working prototype at my kitchen table and proven it works to a few close friends. If you would be interested, I would love to talk to you about investment. Call me shameless, but seriously...do call me.


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Thursday, 6 October 2011

Jobs Death, in his own words

Posted on 08:56 by hony
In 2005, he said:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away.


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Wednesday, 5 October 2011

Squinting Into the Glaring Light of My Own Mortality

Posted on 20:19 by hony



We make big plans for ourselves. Well, some of us do.We get an idea in high school that consists of "you know what would be cool? If I were to ______" and then we slowly evolve from there. In college we major in engineering, because the desire to solve problems is like an addiction to us. Eventually we graduate with a box of parts in the trunk of our car and a broad but useless array of engineering fundamentals. Our diploma is a gatekey into some engineering firm or some startup where we tirelessly and meticulously build the world, or maintain it, or even develop means to destroy it. We toil, we think, we create, but mostly we fill out paperwork.We live comfortably in the upper middle class, retire comfortably, and raise healthy, balanced children. At the end of our 30 year careers, we look back on an array of projects in which we were integral, but replaceable, and we murmur to ourselves that our lives were significant because we made tangible contributions. We explain the complicated things to our grandchildren. We die loved and fondly remembered.

And then there are people like Steve Jobs. He was the engineer rock star. The Freddie Mercury of engineering.

The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach tonight isn't because Steve Jobs is dead. I never met the man. I don't own an Apple product. My wife owns an iPod and I find the interface taxing. No, the sinking feeling in my stomach isn't for Jobs. It is the cry of my soul as it is reminded of its own fleeting mortality. "If the greatest engineer since Edison can die at a paltry 56 years," my soul worries, "then so too can I die one day." I'm only 29, I shouldn't have to worry about these things. But neither should a 56-year-old. The tragedy of life is that we don't get to choose when it starts, nor when it ends.

Update: What I wrote here about Steve Jobs' retirement seems particularly poignant, considering.

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Monday, 3 October 2011

AlphaBot

Posted on 05:38 by hony

The above video has been circulating amongst us engineers (and other nerd types) with awe and wonder. As is my nature (and because I am intimately familiar with many of Boston Dynamics projects) let me just drop this one grain of salt: notice the hydraulic and power lines leading up to the suspension system?
The thing is about as autonomous as a fetus. That's not to say that in the future it won't have on board power generation, compressors, hydraulic fittings, and computer systems. It just means that it won't be next week.

Some will remember BigDog, BD's last four legged robot. It ran autonomously, as this video (which inspired widespread fear of a robotic mule uprising) shows. So it certainly is possible to pack all the guts on the bot, instead of in the ceiling above it.

I guess my bottom line is "calm down, nerds! wait for 2.0!"


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Friday, 30 September 2011

Why I got two degrees in bioengineering.

Posted on 12:27 by hony
Because miracles are just one scientist away:




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I, for one, embrace our Robot Scientist overlords.

Posted on 10:41 by hony
First off, Farhad Manjoo has posted a week-long series on robots entering more and more complex (read: high-paying) job markets, like robot pharmacists and robot lawyers. Some of the articles are quite good, and they all deserve at least a skim.
But today's article about computer scientists seems to me to fly directly into the face of empirical evidence also reported today by Jonah Lehrer:
The psychologists conducted their experiments on four and five-year-olds, so they had to be pretty simple. Sixty kids were shown a boxy toy that played music when beads were placed on it. Half of the children saw a version of the toy in which the toy was only activated after four beads were exactingly placed, one at a time, on the top of the toy. This was the “unambiguous condition,” since it implied every bead is equally capable of activating the device. However, other children were randomly assigned to an “ambiguous condition,” in which only two of the four beads activated the toy. (The other two beads did nothing.) In both conditions, the researchers ended their demo with a question: “Wow, look at that. I wonder what makes the machine go?”
Next came the exploratory phase of the study. The children were given two pairs of new beads. One of the pairs was fixed together permanently. The other pair could be snapped apart. They had one minute to play.
Here’s where the ambiguity made all the difference. Children who’d seen that all beads activate the toy were far less likely to bother snapping apart the snappable bead pair. As a result, they were unable to figure out which beads activated the toy. (In fact, just one out of twenty children in that condition bothered performing the so-called “experiment”.) By contrast, nearly fifty percent of children in the ambiguous condition snapped apart the beads and attempted to learn which specific beads were capable of activating the toy. The uncertainty inspired their empiricism.


The point here, is that what the robot lacks is curiosity. It doesn't go out and look for answers. It isn't "interested" in solving problems. Maybe if I asked the future super-powered scientist/robot of Manjoo's article to "explain climate change" it would chug away at climate data for a few weeks and then barf out an explanation, God be praised. But it doesn't sit there, in a lab, and suddenly think to itself "I wonder how climate change works?" And because of that, a sentient scientist will always be required. Maybe in the future scientists will become more like philosophers, and spend more time ruminating and coming up with questions. Then they'll hand the question over to the supercomputer, it'll go all Wolfram Alpha, and then the scientists can get busy trying to sort out the implications of the answer. Less lab book time and more time for creative thinking won't diminish the work of scientists, it will elevate it. Because its not like 350 years ago scientists said "I don't understand this gravity thing" and then Newton explained it and they all threw up their hands and declared their  careers obsolete and went and became plumbers. Asking questions, finding an answer, then asking more questions based on that answer is the fundamental scientific process of humanity, and until we have a computer that can embrace ambiguity and synthesize its own curiosity...human scientists will remain pivotal...regardless of how quickly a computer can derive equations.


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Wednesday, 28 September 2011

A Quick Point about the Kindle Fire

Posted on 09:55 by hony
A lot of people are trumpeting as one of its features "that are better than the iPad 2" the fact that it weighs 14.6 ounces and the iPad 2 weights 21.6 ounces. It causes me intestinal distress to defend an Apple product, but...

Size of Kindle Fire screen: 7"
Size of iPad 2 screen: 10"
Ratio: .70

Weight of Kindle fire: 14.6 oz
Weight of iPad 2: 21.6 oz
Ratio: .68

Any questions? There is no miniaturization breakthrough here, just product shrinkage.

My personal opinion? The reason I got a Kindle was because the e-ink screen is easy on the eyes when I am reading at 1 am after a long day at the office. I wanted a tablet to replace my computer but knew it wouldn't replace my books. I wanted a Kindle to replace my books but knew it wouldn't replace my computer. The Kindle Fire is straddling a barbed wire fence, at its own peril.


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Christian Death Mongers

Posted on 06:02 by hony
Hitch hates Christianity, this much is known. But here he really takes a stab at American Christianity as the reason the Death Penalty survives in America:
The reason why the United States is alone among comparable countries in its commitment to doing this is that it is the most religious of those countries. (Take away only China, which is run by a very nervous oligarchy, and the remaining death-penalty states in the world will generally be noticeable as theocratic ones.) Once we clear away the brush, then, we can see the crystalline purity of the lex talionis and the principle of an eye for an eye. (You might wish to look up the chapter of Exodus in which that stipulation occurs: it is as close to sheer insane ranting and wicked babble as might well be wished, and features the famous ox-goring and witch-burning code on which, one sometimes fears, too much of humanity has been staked.)
Sullivan linked to it, then he got this absolutely brilliant reader response, which I am pasting in full:

In 2010, as far as I can tell, these five states executed the most people:
1. China (2000+)
2. Iran (252+)
3. North Korea (60+)
4. Yemen (53+)
5. USA (46+)
Two of the top three entities are explicitly atheist. Hitch's assertion that we can ignore Chinese executions because they are a "very nervous oligarchy" can easily be used for Iran considering, you know, they actually have a demonstrable REASON to be nervous - the 2009 protests/Green Movement, hostile relationship with the world's only superpower, etc - and because any analyst of Iran worth his salt will tell you that their government is an extremely Byzantine oligarchy, not a true dictatorship. In other words, you don't get to throw China out and retain the Iranians while making this argument. Yemen is a barely functioning state of tribes. Surprise.
As for us, maybe "God" has something to do with it. But I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest something risky: perhaps it has more to do with a very particular brand of Protestant Christian theology than it does with "God".
I didn't see Hitch accounting for ultra-Catholic South America, where Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela have explicitly abolished the death penalty. There are also a handful of countries that have de facto abolished the practice, having not carried out an execution for at least the last two decades: Dominica (1986), El Salvador (1973), Grenada (1978), Jamaica (1988), Peru (1979), Suriname (1982), Brazil (1876). Most of these nations retain the death penalty for possible use in cases like treason or crimes against humanity. Somehow one of the most religious continents in the world seems to have escaped Hitch's sight.
I get it. Hitch hates God. But this seems like a classic case of him beginning with his own very well-known assumptions and then hastily assembling the best argument he can make to support it. Religious conservatives will always point to communist dictatorships. Liberal atheists will point to religious theocracies. Both are capable of great evil. You don't need to believe in God to murder. And just because you believe in God doesn't preclude you from being a murderer. More than anything, it is just simply absolutism in something that deludes people into murder.
I don't really have anything to add to that, other than that the death penalty is expensive and ineffective, like so many other government institutions that the GOP argues should be abolished. But you almost never hear them argue for abolishing the expensive, ineffective practice of killing criminals.


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Tuesday, 27 September 2011

Terra Nova S01E01 and S01E02 Review

Posted on 06:27 by hony
Somehow a scientist has created a "crack" in the fabric of the universe that leads back 85 million years ago to a much younger Earth. Okay, so when people go through the time portal, it's apparently a one way trip, with no way back. How do they know what is on the other side of the portal? At one point they show a "probe" they sent through first, remarking (in order to silence time travel critics like myself) that after sending the probe back 85 million years, they could not find it in the present (2149 AD) which led them to believe the past was a "different time stream." Well fine, pull a Star Trek.
Nevertheless, they warn travelers about to go through the portal that "the high oxygen levels on the other side (part of the reason insects and dinosaurs could get so big was that the atmospheric oxygen level in the Cretaceous period was much higher than it is in the current Neogene period) but how did they know this? Once again I ask: how did they know what was on the other side of the portal? Remember in the movie Stargate when they send a robot through the portal and try to track where it goes?
Some of the science and background in this show has been great; they completely kneecapped time travel critics when they proposed an alternative timeline. Most of the dinosaurs I've seen in the show are contemporary; shows involving dinosaurs often make the mistake of picking and choosing neat-looking/plot convenient dinosaurs at random while those dinosaurs might have lived on different continents or millions of years apart.

But here's the problem I really had: by my count they unloaded nearly 2,000 rounds at or into the attacking carnivorous dinosaurs in these two episodes and yet not a single dinosaur died, or even showed signs of injury. Were dinosaurs effectively bullet-proof? And if they were, why bother sending the "pilgrims" back with bullet-based weapons? Why not send them with tasers, RPGs and tanks or whatever it takes to bring down a Carnotaur? At one point in the episode, two characters unloaded fully-automatic assault rifles from a range of less than twenty feet at a dinosaur that stood roughly 7 feet tall. The dinosaur turned and fled, apparently unharmed by mere bullets.
Now, I'm willing to accept for the sake of this show's admittedly absurd plot that these dinosaurs have really thick skin. But five minutes after these two characters fail to stop the dinosaur with hundreds of bullets, another character mentions using tranquilizer guns. If a point-blank-range bullet will not penetrate the skin of a dinosaur, neither will a sub-sonic tranquilizer dart.
I realize that they can't think of everything when making a show, and when it comes to scifi shows (that over the last decade have shown an increasing special effects budget at the price of good writing) its hard to vet every single bit of every single episode. Nevertheless, the seeming bullet-proof aspect of the dinosaurs really bothers me, because the hulking, slow dinosaurs would have otherwise provided the "pilgrims" with a great source of protein. As the armored vehicle was being chased across a field with a Carnotaur right behind it (let's ignore the impossible biomechanics of a 50 mph dinosaur), unloading .50 BMG rounds into it from a turret and a dinosaur finally went down, I thought "that Carnotaur is going to be DELICIOUS!" and then the Carnotaur got back up, miraculously, and continued the chase.

That kind of firepower should cut through the engine of an armored vehicle. Not killing a 2-ton dinosaur with them is pretty stupid.


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Monday, 26 September 2011

Universal Health Care For Wealthy Androids

Posted on 06:03 by hony
Let me ask you something. Consider a future scenario in which:
1) Robotics, nanotech, and human-machine-interface technology had sufficiently advanced to a point where we could upload our consciousness into solid-state memory and become Intelligent androids. This process is really expensive, and
2) Replacement parts, double redundant backup of your memory (aka brain), upgrades, etc are all readily available to enable your android self to achieve immortality. However these things are also really expensive.

In short, immortality and complete freedom from health issues is now possible...but expensive. Would you say that only the wealthy deserved the right to become immortal? Do you think that the middle class and poor should be resigned to normal mortal ills like cancer and gum disease and tetanus while the wealthy look on with timeless, perfect, robotic eyes? It seems like the right thing to do is to have the wealthy be required to subsidize the immortalization of the poor, for everyone's benefit. Right? Society would be maximally benefitted from maximum numbers of immortals; that's a huge number of productive workers paying income and capital gains taxes! Forever! So I think it's pretty safe to say that everyone - and I mean everyone except the rich - would want to tax the rich to subsidize the immortalization of the poor.

Now let's try another scenario:
1) Medicine has advanced to a point at which you can take a "universal cure pill" that, if taken once a month, will cure every ill in your body, flushing out cancer, plaque (both tooth and arterial), etc. thus maximizing your health, and
2) the universal cure pill is really expensive.

Would it really benefit society if only the rich were able to cure their ills in this convenient way? Would society really be tolerant to the idea that the middle class and/or poor would need to suffer through conventional medical treatment (or no treatment at all)? The case for immortalization was more obvious; an ethical society wouldn't let the rich live forever while the poor died in piles. But this is simply a less extreme case of the same thing. The rich would be afforded a level of health care that pushed them as close as a human could go to immortality, while the poor would be doomed to mortal ills. Ancient wealthy would go skydiving while poor people half their age suffered through dementia and died. Yet if the society subsidized the universal cure pill, everyone could achieve the stratospheric health for their entire lives. People could have 80-120 year careers, and pay income taxes that whole time!

Eventually you could imagine these scenarios backwards from the future until you arrive at present day, where a high level of medical care is available if you can afford it. If you can't, you die. And yet, the wealthy in this country seem to see their subsidization of health care for the poor as an affront to their personal liberty. And bad for the country. And an enabler of laziness in the lower classes.
But in the case of immortality via Singularity, or near-immortality via super-drugs, the argument seems pretty clear to me: the more healthy people we have in this country the more the country benefits. Why is this so hard to accept in the present tense?


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