Possibly interesting book

I got this book from the library, yesterday: "The Last Policeman", by Ben H. Winters.  There is an asteroid large enough to permanently sterilize Earth, and it is on a collision course.  There isn't enough time to prevent the collision, and society pretty much dissolves away.  No mass riots, no violent anarchy, just profound apathy.  Suicide rates have increased dramatically.  The "Last Policeman", Hank Palace, continues to investigate even though there is no point.  An insurance salesman appears to have committed suicide, but there is something strange about it.  He thinks it might be murder.  Palace is a guy who continues to do his job in a world that logically and rationally doesn't give a fuck about it.  This aught to be good...

Senile remeniscences.

I'm getting older, which means the first few twinkling of senility are are becoming apparent. Neural synapses are being destroyed, and as they do I'll get weird recollections that have nothing to do with my current circumstances.  So, right now it's Thanksgiving evening, and right now I'm thinking about the time I visited China a few years ago. 

My wife, her parents and I had visited the Forbidden City in Beijing.  Plenty of interesting ancient buildings.  They were the bureaucratic landscape that maintained the Chinese empire for centuries.  Outside the Forbidden City is Tienanmen Square, the current bureaucratic landscape of China.  No longer "forbidden" China's Great Hall of the People contains the legislative body of China.

Anyway, we had finished touring the Forbidden City, and were looking at Tienanmen Square.  My father in law was talking to one of the PLA soldiers about when the lowering of the flag would be, and if Mao's tomb was still open.  I didn't speak Mandarin, so I was just looking around like a dumb mute. 

I noticed an older, senior officer, possibly a colonel or brigadier, riding a rusty old bicycle.  He was in dress uniform, and riding roughly away from the Hall of the People, in my general direction.  He had a basket in the front of his bike, with a toddler in the basket, possibly is grand-kid.  Two of the soldiers standing guard came to attention and saluted the brigadier.  He saluted back while lazily peddling past them.... the kid saluted, too.  He didn't even look back to see if his grand-dad was saluting.  He must have thought the soldiers were saluting to him.  Grand-dad, commander of a brigade containing thousands of soldiers, decided to take his grandson to work today... And is riding his rusty bicycle back home, past the Forbidden City....

Dunno why, but that's something I'll always remember.

Funny things in movies that would never happen in real life.

While watching "Batman Begins", Bruce Wayne was attending his birthday party, when an older rich lady introduces him to "a mister RAS Al-ghoul?"

Bruce Wayne replies, "You aren't Ra's al Ghul.  I watched him die."  Ducart shows up, and says "Is Ra's al Ghul immortal?  Are his methods, supernatural?", and the scene develops... but the old lady apparently got bored with the conversation and left...  I've just always thought that was funny.  

Coffee Cream

I bought "Non Fat" Half-and-Half at the grocery story yesterday.  Non-Fat. Half-and-Half.  I shook it to make sure there was actual liquid inside it, thinking it might just be a container full of air.  What could possibly be inside?  We will soon find out....

My letter to the President.

Dear Mr. President:

I voted for you in 2008.  I will not vote for you again.  Here are the reasons why:

You have decided not to close Gitmo Indefinite Detention Center.

You have a kill list that may include US citizens.  Even if it doesn't include citizens, the disregard for due process is alarming.  Shouldn't these people be brought to justice rather than be assassinated in acts of terror?

You kill people in Pakistan and Afghanistan without due process using drones.  Often times, you do "secondary strikes" against first responders and family you come to render aid to those tried to help the wounded.  Women and children civilians are often killed as collateral damage. 

Instead of using political means to end the crisis in Syria, your State Department has been throwing gasoline on the fire.  Some parts of the resistance, and the Syrian Government have asked for political resolutions, but you decided to exclude that part of the resistance in your decision to advance the bloodshed in Syria.

Maybe if these sort of things changed I might vote differently, though I doubt it.  As a moral person, I can't in good consciousness vote for you.

Damien Mathew.

As usual, I'm sure there are typos.  I don't really care, to be honest. I have brain damage, what's the President's excuse?

Cold Dark Matter

I was reading Science magazine from a couple weeks ago and came across this quote form an astronomer studying Cold Dark Matter.  Dark matter is something that is supposed to reconcile the fact that the Universe is expanding faster than predicted by general relativity.  Nobody is smart enough to come up with a better theory for gravitation, so instead they created something propelling the Universe outward, and called it "Dark Matter."

Anyway, here's the interesting quote: "I have a huge investment in cold dark matter = my whole career and something like 300 papers- but it could be wrong." ... If you've written 300 papers on one topic, and it's still controversial and up for debate, then what exactly HAS he written? I submit that he's doing science wrong. 

Isaac Newton hardly ever published anything I discovered... perhaps the opposite extreme.  But, when he did publish something it was profound, and clearly sparked new ideas and debates.  Perhaps scientists should "write" less and "say" more...

Popular Science

I was watching this video on Gamma-ray bursts, which is pretty interesting. 

Anyway, I think as far as astronomy is concerned, most people are interested in it, even if it is in a passive sense.  If a new discovery is found in astronomy, people might listen as least on their news broadcast, or bring it up in light conversation.  It's interesting, easy to make accessible to the masses, and it helps us understand our place in the world.

Compare our interest in astronomy to that of high-energy physics.  People sort of try to understand it.  When the LHC makes an announcement we sort of listen.  Yet, we canned the Superconducting Super Collider, a physics experiment with energies about double the energies the LHC could possibly create.  I suppose you can by your kid a telescope from the toy store reasonably cheap, but you can't buy them a toy particle accelerator.  I suppose astronomy is easily accessible in that respect.  We can all look up at night and look at the stars.  We can't observe particle collisions on a whim... and particle physics is really hard.  Most particle physicists don't even understand it.

Anyway. if the SSC got the green-light, we would probably have answered the question of the Higgs Boson ten years ago, and would already be pursuing newer avenues of high-energy physics.  Not to say we would be researching warp-drive or anything like that, but practically speaking high energy physics would be Done (the standard model explains literally everything), or we are wrong in some weird way and we need to think harder about it.... Either way, it would be interesting to know.  I would love to live in a world where, at the most fundamental level we could say, "we've finally figured it out".  Chaos, naturally rules everything, and we can't possibly understand complex systems, but the underlying principles are there, and we understand it.... or not...

Instead, we shit-canned the SSC, and diverted the finding to the International Space Station, a laboratory that literally does nothing... but it's in space, and that's cool...

Loud music

Today was a nice day, so the spouse and I were driving around with the windows down.  And, then these stupid kids with there over-loud music start doing there thing.  Every red stoplight there'd be some asshole with his music blaring down at me.  The music itself was terrible, but even good music at that level would be bad.  I don't get it.  And yesterday, when I was at the used bookstore, there was some high-age school kid with music blaring through his earphones.  Why?

I sort of have a sound-track, myself, while doing my thing; music I remember in my head or though earphones at REASONABLE volumes.... I feel like it's my own personal "soundtrack."  I don't really want other people to know what I'm listening to, no do I want to hear what some asshole I've never met has on his soundtrack.

Plus, I like at be aware of the environment I'm in.  Sometimes, I like to listen to the sounds of cars while the window is down, or the wind or what-ever.  It almost feels like people with their music turn up so loud are trying to tune-out reality... A sort of half-assed form of suicide...

Drinking

I really shouldn't drink anymore.  The aspirin is already tying up my liver, and the day after I drink I have an extreme difficulty communicating.  I like alcohol, but perhaps we need to part ways.

sumpin sumpin....

I got drunk tonight, wrote a Monte Carlo integration program in Java for shits, and now I'm watching The Marx Brothers "A Night at the Opera" which is pretty funny...

The error estimate is way off.  ...  I'm drunk, so fuck it.This is a crappy way to do integrals, but it is cheap and quick (relatively speaking).  During the Manhattan Project (back when computers where people rather than machines... and women, too, even though in today's society women hate math and prefer barbie dolls thanks for shitty advertizements and gender roles based on capitalist shit), this was how you did numerical integration.

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Random;
/**
 *
 * @author discordantmind
 */
public class MonteCarloIntegration {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        /* Create program to calculate Monte Carlo Integration
         * The integrand is a separate method called 'integrand'
         */
        // create random points for integration, and sort from highest to lowest
        int numberPoints = 20; // how many points along curve should be evaluated
        int endPoint = 2;
        double[] xposition = new double[numberPoints];
        Random xGen = new Random();
        for(int i=1 ; i < (numberPoints - 1); i++) {
            xposition[i] = endPoint * xGen.nextDouble();
         //   System.out.println(xposition[i]);
        } 
        xposition[0] = 0.;
        xposition[numberPoints - 1] = 2.;


        Arrays.sort(xposition); 
        
        // check to see if points are sort-of evenly spread out
        for (double dd : xposition){
            System.out.println(dd);
        }
        
        //Create new random number generators for x and y coordinates 
        Random xtestpoint = new Random();
        Random ytestpoint = new Random();
        
        // starting stuff for Monte Carlo shit
        double testx;
        double testy;
        double interval;
        int below;
        double testintegral;
        double area = 0; // initialize integral
        int numberRandom = 100; // number of random points for MC
        double error = 0; // initialize error counter thingy
        double rho; // density of points below curve
        /* BEGIN MONTE CARLO SHIT */
        for(int i=0; i < (xposition.length - 1); i++) {
            // Taking care of end points
            interval = xposition[i+1] - xposition[i];
            below = 0;
            for(int j=0; j<numberRandom; j++) {
                testx = xposition[i] + interval * xtestpoint.nextDouble();
                testy = 2.0 * ytestpoint.nextDouble();
                testintegral = integrand(testx);
                if(testy <= testintegral) {
                    below++;
                }
            }
            rho = below/ (double) (numberRandom);
            area += interval * 2.0 * rho;
            error += interval * 2.0 * Math.sqrt((rho - Math.pow(rho,2))/numberRandom);
        }
        System.out.println("Error estimate is " + error);
        System.out.println("Integral from 0 to "+ endPoint + " is: " + area);


    }
    public static double integrand(double x) {
        // plug in whatever function you want to integrate here as 'func'
        double func = Math.sqrt(4. - Math.pow(x,2)); 
        return func;
    }
}

I can't really drink hard liquor anymore.  I'm still taking aspirin therapy, which means I can't drink to heavily or I could hemorrhage into my brain.  But, the doctor said I can stop taking Plavix, which is nice...

Mental Lists

I maintain a few lists of things in my head, for whatever reason.  I add to them from time to time.  Here are a few.

1. List of actors/actresses/celebrities that I hate.
2. List of politicians that I hate.
3. List of people who will be among the first against the wall when the Revolution comes (includes some members from list #1 or #2).
4. Movies that I like even though they are crap.
5. Movies that I secretly enjoy, though I won't confess it to people
6. Movies that I should appreciate even though I don't (also kept secret).
7. List of lists to keep in my head.... (oddly enough, this doesn't fall into a recursion)

Pi Day

Today is Pi Day.  March 14, is 3/14..... 3.14... Which is similar to pi.  Actually, pi keeps going past 3.14, it doesn't repeat and doesn't stop.  So, you could say that it isn't really a "Day" for Pi, since pi doesn't stop at 3.14.  You could take it out to 3.14159, take the 159/100 as a fraction of a day and say that tomorrow has a "Pi hour" from 3 to 4 in the morning.  Or a "Pi instant" at 3:49am... of course, pi keeps repeating, so there's no point is celebrating the infinitely short duration that would correspond to pi.  Just celebrate the whole day like a bunch of cretins ;)

Killing Afghanis

I just heard on the news that The President of the United states said the killing of 16 Afghani civilians was "outrageous and unacceptable."  Something easy to quote, and the media decided to do, as is their duty.  I imagine the President's men spent a great deal of time agonize over which two words he should express in his press conference, and  made sure to tell the White House press corps to make sure to highlight those two words.  It couldn't be "abhorrent."  No.  That might signal something about how abhorrent our troops are, and our troops are all (naturally) heroes, n'shit.  "Unacceptable" is good.  Killing those people in there homes (unarmed civilians... including children)... that's really "unacceptable."  This kid is going to get a "stern talking to."  Maybe he'll get reduced to pay-grades, for that "unacceptable" behavior.  I remember getting a B in math, once, and my mom told me something similar.  "You love algebra!  This behavior is outrageous and unacceptable!"

Yeah, that US soldier was there in support of US Special Forces who were training am paramilitary force to help reinforce US troops.... A sort of Vietnamization of the Afghan war.  What a load of BS.  I don't even know where to begin.  It's like grading a C-student's physics homework.  I'd like to help but ALL of your assumptions are wrong, to the point where I think you should just drop of out college altogether and become a firewatcher.  Yes, someone who's sole ability is to watch fires.  You don't report fires as the occur.  You don't help fight the fires.  You watch them, because that's all your fucking little brain can handle.

Killing kids is really terrible, though.  All of it is terrible, but the kids really stick with you.  How many of those kids could have grown up to be brilliant?  How many of those kids could have become mathematical geniuses like Srinivasa Ramanujan.  Or a brilliant painter or artist?  And if you think those sorts of things are rare, all human life is rare, and to be honest everyone is brilliant to some degree... And if you think its rare in Afghanistan, maybe it's because they don't have schools and a proper infrastructure to support all the geniuses clipped at the bud... And if you think that a First World country can come to Afghanistan to bring them schools and a proper infrastructure by sending in soldiers armed to the teeth, then you should really quit what you are doing right now and pursue a career as a firewatcher.

How to feed geese.

You bring a bag of bread crumbs to the pond, and throw some crumbs near a couple of geese.  The geese come closer, eating the crumbs.  You throw them a few more.  The geese eat them and come closer.  You drop a few more bread crumbs near your feet, since the geese are already there.  They eat them before they hit the ground.  You are out of bread crumbs.  The geese attack your pant legs.  You try to walk away.  The geese are birds and can fly faster then you can walk.  You run.  They fly.  You get home.  The geese shit on your car.

Religion

Getting into an argument with someone over religion is like explaining a joke to a slow person.  They'll never get it, and when you finally give up, its lost its humor.

Leap years

I hate leap years.  It isn't that every four years (with some exceptions) we get an extra day.  What I hate is that we think we have it all figured out.  We know that a year is 375.25 days.... exactly.... right?  Wrong.  It's more along the lines of 365.242199 days per year.... But, it's even more complicated than that.

And it changes periodically, depending on a number of factors. The Earth is in orbit around the sun, but it isn't really in a vacuum.  The Earth picks up matter from space, expels matter into space, collisions from asteroids of various shapes distort our orbit, slightly.

Bad Astronomy also did a blog on something similar.  It is exceptionally difficult to determine when we determine when a year is up.  It should be based on when we return to the same place in our orbit.  Ok, when is that?  How do we determine that?  Based on the fixed stars?  But, the Sun is moving through its orbit in the galaxy, so those fixed frames of reference are themselves changing.

Why do I hate leap year?  Because we think we've got the year all figured out, and that we think it is precisely 365.25 days...

Discordianism states that all the order in the Universe is an illusion.  We wish there to be order, so we impose it on all our observations.  We create rules and structures and all of science is based upon those our observations whose underlying theorem is that there is a form or order... a set of rules which we must understand....  Maybe Chaos is just plays tricks with us...

Probably won't get this job

So, yeah, I'm been working a job on a temporary basis, with the understanding that I might eventually be taken on as full time...  I wrote about this a few days ago.  Somehow, today, I really felt like I won't get get hired on. Can't say why, just a really bad feeling that I'm not needed.  The group used to have many more people in it then there are now.  The others are on temporary assignment to other divisions, and they are all experts in lots of different stuff.  I'm an expert in nothing.  I pick things up, but no expertise....  Anyway, by April (at some point) they will make their decision, and let me know.

Evolution

Forget, for the moment, the technical issues surrounding the following exercise.  I suppose, it can be run using a shell script, perhaps, but anyway...  Let's run some computational experiments on evolution.  Consider the following.  You wish to write a series of programs that do the following things to test evolutionary processes:

• Load it's own source code into memory.
• Search on the Internet (or through a large database) to find ways to make the program faster.
• Copy the new lines of code into the source code, and write it into a different file.
• Compile the new source code.
• Run the new code.

If the new code doesn't compile, then that "species" dies out.  If it does compile and run, then the new code starts repeating the cycle above again, finding new code to implement into it's source and recompiling it's new children.

Essentially, you will create a series of programs that try to reprogram themselves.  You will, in a way, create a new "ecology" populated by running computer programs.... (you could even go so far as to say that the "programming language" is the haploid part of the the life cycle and the running program is the diploid part)

You can measure how quickly a certain lineage evolves over time, how quickly it can reproduce itself, how complex (over time) the program can become.  And you could even try other variations, by adding limited resources to be shared within a community, or other needs that must be performed prior to reproduction.  

Supposed you introduced sex.  One running program encounters another running program and loads their source code as well as its own.  You could either pick out the best parts of both and load that into the next generation, or (supposedly like modern biology does it) at random, with half from the "mother" and half from the "father".

What about cannibalism?  Can a machine write code that not only makes itself more efficient, but also delete source code from other competing programs?  Initially, I would have said"no", there wouldn't be any evolutionary advantage, but what if there were something outside of the program that might cause it to compete.... an "environment" if you will....  

I'll bet someone has already done this.... I'm too lazy to search for it, though...

New Job

I haven't posted in a long time.  I don't know why, maybe there isn't much to say.  I started a new job this month, which is exciting.  I'm working as a "consultant" but with the hope of becoming a full-time employee at the new company.  The manager says "If you work hard, we could offer you a full-time job."  I'm taking him at his word.

But, to be honest, everyone there seems very friendly, including the manager.  My cubicle overlooks a river, and I'm right underneath the approach/take off pattern for the airport, so there are always interesting things to look at.  And, of course, it's not just me staring out the window, either.  There are interesting projects to work on, and I'm learning new things all the time.  For instance, I took a course in Java 8 years ago and never used it once since.  Now, I am developing Java code, so it's nice to "re"learn new things.  And, the group I'm working in is using Agile software development, so they are training me to us their method, which is nice.  Plus, everyone in the group has a PhD, and in similar fields to what I studied, so that's cool, too.

I do what I'm asked to do, quickly, which I hope is making a good impression.  But, I also sometimes screw around.  I do, sometimes, check out some blogs that I've been following (not much, but a bit) on the work computer online.  There are some sites that are blocked, such as Facebook, but that's ok.  And, I'm not surfing porn or anything.  A lot of the blogs I follow are science-y blogs anyway, so...

One person, the next cubicle over, seems to be streaming videos on his computer.  He's in a different division from me, under the same VP.  I noticed it a few times while I was going to get hot water for tea.  I thought it was funny, but paid no attention to it, except when I get up... He got fired today, for that.  Yeah, that sucks.  I mean, I can understand why since he did seem to be always streaming things.  And you have to work while you're... you know... "working."  But, still.  Did he get a warning?  He was a "temp" like I am, so maybe they just let him go rather then discipline him.  I hope I didn't screw up my chances by surfing too much.  I really like my job....