Time to Think

NEW ADDRESS

This Blog has moved to a new address:

http://4seconds.microblog.info

A note on "life and the forces of nature"

Dr. Sean Carroll has an interesting post on the life and the forces of nature. If I understand it correctly, it is claimed that since the only two forces of nature that can act at long distances are the gravity and the electromagnetism, then all phenomena known as paranormal are doomed to failure because they have no chance of being right even before we test them directly. I want to say that this is a very dangerous way of thinking which many have fallen into before. Science is very good at modeling the physical observations. However, it has been shown repeatedly that sticking to ideas that were developed using less accurate/comprehensive observations is nothing but committing suicide.

When we look at the model which Aristotle had developed for the universe, we find out how well the model matched with the observations. However, as the observations became more comprehensive (by Galileo and others) it was clear that his model had a fundamental flaw. We all know the reaction of conservative scientists and society to Galileo. Nowadays, we think we have discovered all the forces of nature and can explain almost everything using these fundamental understandings. Nonetheless, we forget that these knowledge have root in the way we observe the physical phenomena. Any limitations in these observation capabilities at our side will lead to a model that has a lower accuracy/order.

Perhaps a good mathematical counterpart example is the problem of extrapolation. The extrapolation problems are potentially very difficult. We want to use a limited knowledge of a certain function at a limited window to produce a model that can predict the behavior of the same function at other points outside the observation window. No matter how accurate we make this model, it impossible to have a perfect predication unless we have a priori knowledge about the behavior of the function (the luxury we do not have in science).

The science is sort of like this example too. We have created a model that explains many things yet there are other observations that need a new way of thinking and modeling approach. It is wrong to deny the existence of such observations because they cannot be predicted by our low order model of universe. I agree that many of these paranormal activities are fraud but many of them are not and need more investigations.

Perhaps one of the classical examples of such phenomenon is the quantum entanglement. Although it is shown that the quantum entanglement cannot be used to transmit information faster than speed of light, however, even the fact that two particles can have effect on each other at long distances without being influenced by EM or gravity forces is the proof that we need to have a more open mind about similar phenomena too.

So much for software engineering!

I just read on Spirit mission status website that the source of problem with the Mars rover has most probably been a faulty flash memory chip. The funny thing though is that the operating system software has been resetting itself continuously (for more than 60 times) because it could not check the OK status on the memory! This has drained the battery power of the rover to death.

I think this is a heck of a flaw in the design of operating system! One of the mission managers said in an interview that the software is designed in such a way that if any part of the hardware in its priority list fails to respond during the boot up process, the computer will automatically interpret it as a failure and starts resetting itself. What kind of stupid software does that? It is like programming it to kill itself. Maybe they have put Windows on the Mars rover to make it compatible with their PCs on Earth!

Change of address

I finally moved the weblog to its new location with a dot com address. This implementation allows me to use Movable Type which is much more powerfull than Blogger. Those free blogspaces are like living in a hotel for free. It is good for a while but you eventually get frustrated because the manager of hotel does not allow you to modify the room and bring new furniture inside!

I managed to transfer all the posts to the new blog but do not have time to do the same thing for the comments (because Haloscan commenting system does not have export feature-at least I do not know how to do it). I have to import the quicklinks too (it should be done manually, which is too much hassle). I will keep the content of my old blog running for a while but do not post anything new there. If you have my blog listed in your blogrolling or other bookmarks, please change its address to http://time2think.plonix.com so you can see the pings correctly.

This layout is one of the basic layouts of Movable Type and I will change it for sure. Right now, I am too busy writing my thesis and even this post is done during my break time!

Michel Strogoff

One of the most popular TV mini series broadcasted on Iranian TV just before 1979 was Michel Strogoff. I remember it very well because at that time I was very fond of Jules Verne (and I am still fond of him). Its broadcast was continued even after 1979 but with lots of censorship that eventually changed the story line completely and made it so stupid. There are many versions of this story produced for TV. The one broadcasted on Iran was a French production. The main character of the movie who played the role of Michele Strogoff was Jean-Pierre Decourt.

I think one of the strongest point of that mini series was its music which was composed by the famous French composer Vladimir Cosma. Those Iranians who are old enough probably remember that music very well. I was looking for that music for a long time until I found it recently. I put it here temporarily. Listening to music like this brings back such good memories for me. You will probably enjoy the music even if you did not see the series before. This version is only 32kbps with minimum quality to reduce the webserver loading. You will need Windows Media Player plugin for listening to the music.

On Iran Earthquake

Those lives that are lost, are lost forever, but those that are saved will never forget this tragic event. While international help is pouring into Iran, one wonders why people are so far yet so close to each other? Why should we care about each other only in times of turmoil? Why?

Please help survivors of this devastating earthquake through one of the following websites:

- Relief International
- Mercy Corps.

Wright brothers and the dilemma of invention

Last week was the centennial celebration of Wright brother’s flight as a turning point in the history of human journey toward the heavens. Wright brothers, who owned a bicycle repair shop, were able to invent powered flight while working in a small garage with very little help from some friends. To me, the magnitude and importance of this invention 100 years ago is comparable to building a space ship that can travel to the moon in less than an hour at the present time! Is it possible to build such thing today in a garage with small amount of money and help from some friend scientists? Of course not. The science and technology has advanced so much that it is impossible to have a big contribution in any part of it that can be recognized by ordinary people the way it happened to Wright brothers’ invention.

Today, all we can do in science and technology is to add bits and pieces to the existing knowledge. Look at the recently filed patents in the US patent office for example. How many big and revolutionary invention you see? Most of them are very small modifications of some previous works (and I do not say they are bad). This is natural. The breath of science and knowledge has become so vast that it is impossible to make big observable contributions any more. It seems that the easy inventions have been made by our ancestors and the difficult ones are left for us!

Lunar Solar Power

Recently, the idea of wireless power transmission commonly known as power beaming has been very hot among the scientists. One of the application of this technique is proposed by Dr. David Criswell who is the Director of the Institute for Space Systems Operation at the University of Huston (TX). Based on this proposal, solar power is collected on the surface of moon (that is always facing the earth) using huge solar arrays and the electricity generated by them is then directed toward a microwave transmitter which transform it to microwave signal at 2.5GHz. The high power radio signals are then beamed toward the earth using high gain antennas. On the surface of the Earth, very large array antennas gather the microwave signals and convert them back to electrical power. Some special satellites are also to be used for relaying the signal to the part of Earth that is not in line of sight with moon.

Of course the process is not as efficient as the wired power transmission but Dr. Criswell has claimed that the approach is completely feasible and economical too. In fact he believes that the cost will be a fraction of a cent per kilowatt electric hour. The details of this approach is available in here and here.

writing a book

I was just thinking that writing a fiction book is much easier than a nonfiction. In writing a fiction novel, you do not need to refer to many references and do much research on each individual sentence or statement that you make. You basically write everything that is in your mind. However, in writing a nonfiction or science book, you have to do so much research on each subject you want to cover in the book and provide reference to each of them. This makes the writing process very lengthy and difficult.
I think this is why there are so many novels and so many people who write novels in a very short period of time. I recently saw a project called nanowrimo in which participants tried to write a 50,000 words novel in a month. This will be a complete book that can be published and sold worldwide. Now, who can write a nonfiction book in a month?

Terrible news

I just read in a report that if we scale down the population of earth to 100, then only one person will have access to a computer and only one person will have an academic degree! This is terrible.

The Matrix Revolutions-preliminary

I saw the matrix revolutions and I did not find it as bad as people have said in their reviews. I don't want to spoil the plot of the movie for people who haven't seen it yet, so I prefer to talk about its philosophy in details later. I should only mention that the technical aspects of the movie, especially the CG and sound, were very good.

Regarding the plot, Wachowski brothers could have done a better job though. However I am not blaming them because they have touched on a topic that is potentially very difficult and controversial. While Hollywood is busy with making cliche movies, it is very good that the ideas such as future of AI is exposed to the people through such great project even if the philosophy behind it is not flawless.

University Students

I have seen 3 different types of graduate students in Canadian universities. Those who have got their undergraduate and high school degrees from North America, China, and Iran. It is interesting to see how different their approaches in research and study is (of course this is in average and cannot be extended to everybody).

In one type, the grad student finds a paper, read it in 30 minutes, put it away and start thinking and writing his/her own idea even if he/she does not have enough information about the topic. Students in the second group, read the paper over and over for days until they have understood it perfectly, then they start to do the same thing that the authors of that paper did with small modifications.

And finally the students in the last group, start reading the paper. Then come across a reference in the first paragraph. Go to the library and find that reference. Photocopy that paper or download it. Continue the original paper and do the same thing with all other references in the paper. At the end of the day he will have 20 papers on hand which have to read them all and find their references again. After one week, you have read 100 papers and exposed to many different topics and completely deviated from the original research!

I leave it to you to decide the nationality of students in each group!

Matrix

I am going to see Matrix Revolutions tonight and frankly do not know what to expect after seeing all those bad reviews about the movie. I hope it won't be a total waste of time.

The Universe's Computer

Erik Benson has had an interesting post on his website about comparing a universe with a computer, and as far as I understand his question is something like this: "How the universe is able to calculate the exact effects of each atom on the other, to infinite accuracy in even simple physical phenomena like throwing a baseball?"

There are many good comments on his weblog about this, but I want to add one more comment to those. There is a fundamental theorem in mathematics called the central limit theorem which basically states that distribution of most random variables approaches Normal distribution in the limit. For example if we drop a box of toothpicks (if you recall from the movie Rain Man!), the toothpicks on the ground will have a pattern similar to the normal distribution, i.e. more thootpicks in the middle and the numbers become less as we get farther away from the center with a rate of decay of inverse exponential. If we mark each of the toothpicks with a unique color, the outcome of the experiment will be the same pattern. There is a similar story in the baseball example too. Each of the quantum particles of the baseball can behave randomly but in average, the whole set of particles will manifest as an object we know as a baseball.

So coming back to the question of throwing the baseball, the nature does not need to do number crunching calculations on the billions of atoms and particles to make sure that the baseball will follow the same path we intended, because the effect of all particles in average is what that is important and that average comes from the macroscopic observations.

Of course, according to the quantum mechanics, there is a tiny possibility (e.g. think of 10 to the power of -1000000!) that the baseball even disintegrates in the air for no specific reason! Or simply pass through the wall! So we can never be sure about the outcome of our experiment either. If we assume that the nature always find the solution with 100% accuracy then we get stuck in the situation that Erik has explained in his weblog but the truth is that it is impossible to have a probability of 1 for anything in the physical world. This is the lesson of quantum mechanic.

TV commercials

I think those disclaimers shown on TV commercials are very stupid. They are several lines in so small fonts that nobody can read them even after recording them on tape let alone during the 5 seconds that they are shown on the commercial. What is the point of having them on the commercial when nobody can read them? I guess some companies have been sued because they did not disclaim before, so everybody tries to put such things on the commercial to be safe.
For drugs, they have to announce the possible side effects during the commercial rather than just writing them on the bottom of screen. Why not enforcing the same rule for all products. These companies are fooling people and making lots of money by false advertising and should not be let to escape by just putting small unreadable disclaimers on their commercials.

Another thing is the way they use psychology to make people believe that their service or product is a bargain. I was incidentally watching an ad for health insurance that kept repeating "it will cost you only dollars a day". Oh yeah? Is that really cheap? Dollars a day can potentially mean $300/month or $3600/year. How about that? Why don't they say "40 cents per hours"? That will sound even cheaper!! These ads are insult to the viewer's intelligence.