"Because They Work, Bitches!"

Science based medicine works. XKCD hits the nail on the head once again. Click the image to read the rest of the comic.

Wonderful Quote

From Eric Rothschild, the chief counsel for the plaintiffs in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial. During cross examination, Intelligent Design proponent Michael Behe claimed the immune system was irreducably complex and when pressed admitted he had not read the books and articles on immunological evolution. To which, Mr. Rothschild countered

Thankfully, there are scientists who do search for answers to the question of the origin of the immune system ... It's our defense against debilitating and fatal diseases. The scientists who wrote those books and articles toil in obscurity, without book royalties or speaking engagements. Their efforts help us combat and cure serious medical conditions. By contrast, Professor Behe and the entire intelligent design movement are doing nothing to advance scientific or medical knowledge and are telling future generations of scientists, don't bother.

As someone who suffers from one of those debilitating diseases of the immune system, I for one whole heartedly thank those scientists toiling in obscurity. Michael Behe and his ID brethren can suck an egg for foisting this nonsense on our school systems.

Tweeting From the Command Line

A little while ago, Twitter removed the ability to tweet using HTTP Basic Authentication. This killed the ability to use a simple call to curl with your Twitter username and password. Interestingly enough, the November issue of the Linux Journal still mentions using the basic auth method to tweet from a script.

This will not work any longer now that Twitter is officially using the OAuth specification. Fellow CLIer's take heart, however, fortunately there is a way to use OAuth from the command line, it only requires a will and a tweepy. Tweepy is a python module written specifically to allow users to authenticate via Twitter's API and fire off tweets programmatically.

I used the method described here to setup my system checks for my home server. Thus far it's working well.

"Your Silly Little Computation Requires Energy, Fool"

I hear the voice of B.A. Baracus when I repeat the title of this post in my head.

Our Universe is a quirky place (much quirkier and more interesting than your local psychic or astrologer make it out to be, but that's a conversation for another day). One of the most surprising discoveries of modern physics is the fact that energy can be neither created nor destroyed by any process.

Oh sure, we can move energy around with chemical, mechanical, electrical, physical, or nuclear processes but rest assured we cannot create any new energy from these processes. Burning a piece of firewood is a good example of a chemical energy conversion. By igniting a piece of wood, you are starting a chain of events that lead to a chemical reaction known as combustion. Combustion combines the hydrocarbons in wood with oxygen from the air; a reaction which outputs heat, light, and several elements (carbon, very little nitrogen, etc...)

Believe it or not, computers function as basic energy converters. More specifically the processor in your desktop, mobile phone, car, or about a gadzillion other electronic devices convert electrical energy into something useful like a photo of your dog. As a matter of fact, the more you push your processor to do something useful, the more energy it needs. This fact is easily demonstrated by a computer attached to an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS).

The job of a UPS is to maintain power to a device even if the source of electricity stops working. By attaching a computer to a UPS, you are able to keep using the computer even if the power goes out in your home for a few minutes. Most newer UPSs allow you to track the amount of power your computer is consuming and how much run time you have left. Run time is a measurement of how long the UPS will last in the case of a power outage and goes down when more power is being consumed by the computer.

The graphs posted below depict me forcing my computer to do some real work (encoding a home movie in x264 using 8 threads). All of a sudden, when the work (encoding) begins, the run time of the UPS drops from 14 minutes to 9 minutes and the UPS load goes up from 25% to 40%!

Basically, the processors in my computer are converting a home movie from one format to another by converting energy into work!

Neato mosquito!

Blue Jay

I finally got a picture of the Blue Jay that's been visiting our bird feeder. I never realized how much bigger he is compared to the little House Finches and Chickadees until he landed on the feeder and it started to swing a little bit.

This picture is so blurry because I took it during the low light morning hours with our point-and-shoot Canon SD850 IS. I'll attempt to get a better picture next time I see the jay.

What comes after bath time?

A rocking faux hawk, that's what!

The Backyard Project

After several months of preparation, the sod for my backyard was finally delivered yesterday evening. A couple of neighbors and I laid the three pallets from Milberger's Nursery in a little under two hours! It was a lot of work, but definitely worth it.

"What happened to all the dirt?"

Indiana

We've been in Indiana since Thursday visiting family. Also, my sister, Jenni, graduated from nursing school. I've been continually surprised at how well Alex has dealt with being away from his home and normal routine. The kid has been great to travel with (other than kicking a poor ladies' seat in front of him in the airplane).

Sunday Evening Blogging

A Simple Computer Science Quiz

Each of the people pictured below were responsible for major advances in computer science. Do you know who they are?

#1

#2

#3

Neil Tyson on NASA

Neil deGrasse Tyson speaks eloquently on how NASA relates to the future of our country. I feel exactly the same way and I'm envious of his awesome powers of communication.

2010 New Computer (#2)

Here's a quick pictorial tour through the build process:

The SuperMicro Chassis arrives from UPS! I added a standard 3.5" hard drive for scale. This chassis is big.


Various states of working through putting the system together.






Done! (somewhat)

The reason I say "somewhat" done is due to the fact that the power supply that arrived with the case does not have two 8 pin CPU connectors. Unbeknown to me, newer Intel Xeon motherboards require two 8 pin connectors for a total of four 12 volt inputs (each 8 pin has two 12 volt inputs) for dual processor machines. The PSU in the SuperMicro case only has one 8 pin connector and a 4 pin connector.

I found a molex + 4 pin to 8 pin connector on newegg that will do the trick. (Watch out for the single 4 pin to 8 pin converters. Those connectors may solve your problem but only provide 12 volts on half the number of wires. If the CPU draws too much power, the two 18 gage wires coming out of the PSU may get hot enough to burn through their insulation.)

Ultimately, I'm left with a sad (depressing) state of affairs. I can't play with my brand new new $2000+ machine until I receive a $6 cable from newegg. Grrrr.....

2010 New Computer (#1)

Here are pictures of my new computer parts. I can't start the build because the chassis and power supply have yet to arrive. I can provide, however, the list of equipment:

• 1 x SuperMicro CSE-743T-645B chassis
• 2 x Intel Xeon 5506 Nehalem processors
• 1 x SuperMicro X8DTi-LN4F motherboard
• 6 x Kingston 2GB ValueRAM
• 2 x Segate 160GB SATA drives (rpool)
• 3 x Samsung 1TB SATA drives (storage pool)
• 1 x PQI 32GB Flash drive (to create hybrid storage pool)

You'll notice no DVD drive. Only network or USB installation for me! :)

D&D & Relationships?

While browsing the local Barnes & Noble bookstore, I came across the picture above. A B&N conspiracy to poke fun at nerds? A random attempt at humor by an unknown passerby? Either way, I found it damn funny.

Liquid Water... On Mars!?

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of the coolest robots ever sent forth from Earth's warm berth into the cold deep unknown by NASA, has returned back some amazing data from it's HiRISE camera once again. MRO's primary mission is to orbit Mars and take high resolution photos in the name of SCIENCE! Luckily for us, it snapped the picture above which shows evidence for liquid water on Mars.

A billion years ago, liquid water was abundant on Mars. But now? We used to think "No way!" because there's so little atmospheric pressure and it's soooo cold. The question is, can water stick around for a few seconds or even minutes to create the channels seen above? Phil Plait over at Bad Astronomy has details.

Sunday Evening Blogging

A new diet craze has swept the inter-tubes and has been lauded as "a revolution in weight loss". The claims of this diet are pretty amazing. Specifically, the claim I came across went something to the effect of "a friend of a friend lost 3o to 40 pounds in a month". Wow, if that's true, who needs liposuction?

Since my Sunday Skeptic antenna was keen on checking the veracity of this extraordinary weight loss claim, I began to poke around and dig up references and data on this new diet. It was called The hCG Diet. hCG stands for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin and is a hormone produced in pregnant women who are, well, pregnant.

The basic premise behind the diet is that by taking HCG along with dietary modifications, you can lose a ridiculous amount of weight. Up to 1 to 3 pounds a day. HCG proponents say that during pregnancy HCG almost completely controls a woman's metabolism and that in non-pregnant persons, HCG increases the metabolism similar to pregnant females.

Now you can either inject HCG or take it orally. Wait, what? I was under the impression that injection and ingestion had very different mechanisms by which a substance enters the blood stream. Whatever, maybe two modalities were researched and two different drugs were created to meet the needs of a discerning public.

The accompanying diet modifications require the dieter to intake only 500 calories a day. The HCG folks call this a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD). Seriously, after reading this statement, my jaw dropped. 500 calories a day isn't much at all. In fact, the FDA bases their percentage daily values on those Nutrition Facts labels on a 2,000 calorie a day diet. (If you haven't read the FDA site on the Nutrition Facts labels I linked to, take a gander, it's worth it.)

At this point, I'd become very skeptical of the HCG diet claims. Mostly because anyone on a 500 calorie a day diet will most likely lose weight due to a lack of proper energy intake. By only ingesting 1/4 the amount of energy your body needs to think, walk and talk your body is going to get the energy from elsewhere. Usually it gets it from the bodies internal store of energy, fat. You reduce energy intake, your body increases energy uptake from fat and, presto chango, you lose weight.

Truthfully, there are a lot of warning signs that the HCG diet is a fraud and probably shouldn't be followed. Kevin Trudeau's push of the diet for one. Trudeau is a modern day snake oil salesman who has been convicted several times for lying about his product's ability to cure you. I have very little sympathy for this man especially since he proffers fake 'natural' cures for life threatening diseases like cancer. It's disheartening to see someone bypass chemotherapy for raw vegetables.

Also, I did a quick check of pubmed.gov (a site that collects and indexes medical citations) and found that HCG's effects on weight loss had been studied and deemed no more effective than injections of placebo.

I did, however, take a little pleasure in skimming the book "Pounds and Inches" of the HCG diet progenitor one Dr. A.T.W. Siemeons. The book is a heap of silliness with nary a double blind trial in site but this quote tickled my fancy the most "Throughout his research, Dr. Simeons noted how patients lost significant amounts of weight while their bodies reshaped naturally- without exercise, and without effort." LOL! Without exercise or effort, the telltale sign of a weight loss charlatan.

So, if you're planning to lose weight, do your research before jumping into the next internet fed craze. And always remember, caveat emptor. :)

Sunday Evening Blogging

This picture isn't very pretty. It's grainy and doesn't contain anything with sharp definition. Its content wouldn't make a good Michael Bay blow'em up showcase or a very good movie at all. Despite all of this, I find this picture to be one of the most profound ever snapped.

In February of 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft (V'ger, for all you Trekies) was nearing the edge of our solar system. With its primary science missions completed, Carl Sagan urged NASA to turn Voyager 1 around and snap a picture of the Earth from 3.7 billion miles away (6 billion kilometers).

You can see Earth in this picture by following the brownish band of color on the right down about halfway to a tiny blue dot. Sagan called this a "Pale Blue Dot" and wrote a book about it with the same name. Why do I consider this picture profound? Sagan answers this question eloquently:

Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Interestingly enough, one of the technicians that designed the command sequence to turn Voyager 1 around and snap the picture was Carolyn Porco of the University of Arizona. You've probably seen Carolyn on History Channel's Universe among other things.

Pretty neat, eh? ;)

Sunday Evening Blogging

Not too much going on at the Grafton household this weekend. I did a bunch of yard work type things. Mulching, weeding & feeding, moving stacks of firewood, etc... Though I didn't do much reading, I did find a book which proffers the idea that '0 is dangerous' and another book detailing Bertrand Russell's life. (He nearly went insane trying to prove mathematics is free of contradictions.) And it's a comic! I'll probably start it once I've completed GEB.

That's all I've got!

There, I Fixed It.

The Zalman CPU cooler I purchased for one of my computers four years ago finally bit the dust today. My computer began making a horrendous noise disturbingly similar to what I imagine whale mating calls sound like. Yet... is it more disturbing that I sit around and wonder what whale mating calls sound like?

I decided to replace the loud ass fan but I didn't want to purchase another $50 Zallman for a socket 939 mobo that's probably going to be replaced soon. So I whipped out a pair of tin snips, a (ridiculous) mess of thermal paste, and a soldering iron to cajole a cheapo 12V fan from Altex into the Zallman heatsink.

There, I fixed it.

Sunday Evening Blogging

Reality Does Not Care How You Feel

Red or Blue? I put it upon you, gentle reader, to examine both of these colors and carefully select one.

Have you made your choice? What process did you use to come up with your answer? Did you decide on red because photons humming along at the "red" wavelength are prettier than blue ones? Perhaps blue reminds you of an object you had as a child? Maybe red is the color of your hair?

Regardless of the reasoning behind making the choice, chances are that you prefer one color to the other. Most likely, you cannot defend rationally why you chose one color over the other. I can tell you that I generally prefer blue because... well I just like the way it looks.

Maybe it's because I've always been fascinated with pictures of the Earth from space. Do I like those pictures because they're blue or do I like blue because of the pictures? Unfortunately, when it comes to taste, rationality rarely plays a role in our decision making process.

However, rational decision making is one of the hallmarks of the human species (in my mind, at least). Most of the time, our decisions are automatic and don't require much expended brain energy. What clothes should I wear, what show to watch on TV, what kind of meal should I consume, etc...

Brain energy is not an infinite resource and we all seem to run at a forced deficit most of the time. We have children, work, household chores, media of all sorts, and family to distract us. All of this consumes our precious brain power. A good example; I've been attempting to get through a fantastic book, "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" for a couple of months now and I've only made it through a couple of hundred pages (600 more to go!). I find the book intellectually challenging and wonderfully written, though I routinely make the decision to not read it because (I'm to tired | I want to watch TV | The dog threw up on the sofa).

Admittedly, I need to take care of dog puke before anything else, I just don't have many excuses past the first two listed. For me, the decision is made by extrinsic forces (i.e. work was difficult today and made me tired). By putting the decision outside my rational control makes life much easier in the short term since I am able to merrily sit on my couch and watch television. Unfortunately, the longer the book sits on my desk unread, the more it taunts me with a pointy stick of guilt.

So, how does one make a rational decision? By internalizing the fact that reality doesn't give two shits about how I feel. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish for an emotionally bound, arrogant individual such as myself but the clear fact of the matter is that the book is sitting on my desk being unread.

The process for rational decision making is wholly dependent upon facts of a particular situation. Since the aforementioned daily decisions are not that complex and are generally dependent upon taste more than facts, let's create an artificial situation that requires a complex decision. Purchasing a new vehicle.

I'm not going to talk about what type of car you are going to purchase, that is mostly a matter of taste and as I've already said, taste is rarely rational. No, I'm going to talk about the thing that matters to most folks, expense. So, let's first take a look at our choice of cars via this one metric. For the sake of brevity and point making the cars we can choose from are thus:

$100 Blue

$500 Red

$1000 Purple

Rationally, what is the best car to choose based on our single metric, expense? The obvious choice is the Blue car because it's the cheapest. So what happens when the facts change and you're required to take in new information in order to make a decision?

Instead of purchasing a vehicle for yourself, you are purchasing one for your family. The situation has changed and so have the variables in your decision making process. The Blue car, while cheapest, also has the least amount of safety equipment. The Red car and Purple car have similar safety equipment. Your family's safety now plays a role in your decision making process. Their fiscal safety is not as important as their physical safety but almost so. (One tends to lead to the other.)

Choosing the Red car in this situation isn't an irrational decision even though it's more expensive. Anti-lock breaks, side impact air-bags, and crumple zones (Reds got'em, Blue doesn't) are more expensive but also safer. You make your decision based upon facts rather than simple emotion.

Does that mean emotion shouldn't be apart of any rational decision? No, of course not. If your situation gives you the fortunate benefit of not having to worry about expense, then by all means get the Purple car that you're lusting after. However, it's all too easy to allow emotion to cloud your judgement and purchase that Purple car knowing that it may be a problem in the future.

My point is that rational decision making is not based how you feel but rather how the facts fit the situation.

Sunday Evening Blogging

Since I'm feeling a bit under the weather tonight, I'm not going to write a long post on physics or math or skepticism. Originally, I had planned to write about very large numbers and how we as humans find it difficult to internalize them. This blog post does the subject much more justice than I could, however. I highly recommend you read his post and be prepared to have your mind blown (or at least a little tweaked). Also, you get to see what a million of something looks like.

The Family and I visited theMcNay art museum today. Not a whole lot to report. Alex was exceptionally well behaved (for a one year old) and the exhibits were pretty cool. I find art fascinating in a general sense but much of the subtly is lost on me. Science, robots, and computing take up too much of my brain.

Sunday Evening Blogging

After several successful attempts of ignoring and at times chastising cult members of the 'Lost' phenomenon, I found myself hoisted with my own petard this weekend. During a fit of boredom, I errantly watched an episode of Lost involving the character 'Desmond David Hume'. In the episode, Desmond turned a key and ended up reliving several painful parts of his life. As much as he hoped to change this particular portion of his life, he consistently chooses the path of pain.

Desmond's namesake, David Hume, was extremely influential in the European enlightenment. Hume wrote extensively on the nature of free will and how many of our choices in life are determined by extrinsic forces. Ultimately, Desmond accepts his fate and moves onward cautiously into a deterministic future. This falls in-line with Philo-Hume's thoughts on free will. Of course, one thing led to another and I ended up watching several episodes in a row.

The result? I am forced to stand upon the rotting carcass of my own righteous indignation and admit I've been led into the cult of 'Lost' by the Sirens of Philosophy 101.

Also, congratulations are in order for Canada!

Ghosts, UFOs, Anthropogenic Climate Change, and El Chupacabra

Cookie Monster was one of my favorite Sesame Street characters to watch on television while I was growing up (as evidenced by my quick decision to marry my wife upon hearing her eerily accurate rendition of CM's classic 'c is for cookie'). Oftentimes, during Saturday morning Sesame Street episodes, CM would put forth a puzzle made up of several items in a set. CM's set of items usually had a distinguishing feature which made it obvious why they were grouped together, except for one.

Cookie Monster's challenge to us? Tease out the one that didn't belong. To a human, this is a simple matter of intuition. You ask yourself, are there a different number of items (three plates containing two cookies and one plate with three cookies)? Is there one that is a different color? A different shape? All of these differences are easy to pick up on and most of us do it quite well.

Choosing between physical differences of objects isn't necessarily difficult, however, choosing how to interpret abstract concepts is a little tougher. Fortunately, Cookie Monster only puzzled us using simple abstracts such as letters and numbers. i.e. Which one doesn't belong in the set 1, 2, W, and 3? Obviously, 'W' is the answer since it is not apart of the larger set of items known as numbers.

In the title of this post, I put forth a similar puzzle made up of abstract ideas that are a little more controversial than letters and numbers. In some circles, each of these items is postulated to exist. Yet only one them has a large consensus of experts on the evidence to back it up. Which one is it? To find out, I suggest you read this article by Dr. Steve Novella.

Sunday Evening (belated) Blogging

Enceladus, the planetary temptress of my fascination.

So it's Monday and I didn't post a "Sunday Evening Blogging" post last night. To ease the pain of a late blog post, feel free to take your pick of any of these excuses: I was too distracted by a sick kid, the dog ate my computer, one of my robots turned sentient on me and I was forced to take immediate action (the most likely scenario), or I got lost in ABC's "Lost" (the least likely scenario). None of these excuses are true, of course. The sad fact of the matter is that I forgot. Disturbingly, I'm told this is something that happens as you get older. I'll believe it when it happens to me. Again.

Onward and upward (into space)! The picture above was taken by the amazing and surprisingly entertaining space probe V'ger.. errr.... Cassini. That picture, my friends, is one of the most interesting moons of Saturn, Enceladus. So what's so insanely great about this moon which is only one of sixty two orbiting everyone's favorite ringed planet?

A gigantic underground ocean teeming with life!

Okay, caught in a lie again. We have no proof of a gigantic underground ocean teeming with life but it sure is fun to think about. Cassini has, however, returned some evidence for an ocean under the ice crust that covers the entire surface of Enceladus but has not discovered evidence of life. Many, many Euro-Ameri-dollars will be needed to figure out if said ocean is a supporter of life. Hopefully (fingers crossed) this will happen within my lifetime (which is inversely proportional to my HoHo intake.)

So I proclaim this to NASA:

"Build some more of those non-sentient, fantastical bots and launch them into that Undiscovered Country! And soon, please, HoHo's are good."

Sunday Evening (Skeptical) Blogging

My family and I live in Texas and I’ve been following the antics of Donny McLeroy and the Texas State Board of Education for a little while now. Basically, some on the board believe that the world was created 10,000 years ago and they wish to convey this idea to our school children through public education. Sara and I do plan to put our son Alex into public schools if for no other reason than to sharpen his wits against the crazy he’ll be exposed to. Sara and I had an excellent experience in our school district as kids even though we were at opposite ends of the academic spectrum. School isn’t always about grades.

My approach is to teach Alex to think critically for himself and not automatically believe people who liken themselves authorities on any subject. Just because scientists say things like evolution and global climate change are true doesn’t mean you should believe it right away. Instead, look at the predictions made by both of these theories. Did they come true? Do they present a cogent and consistent view of the domain they claim to describe? (The answer is yes on both counts, but don't take my word for it!)

The scientific method is not the ultra clean process presented in schools. It is utterly messy and oftentimes cruel. However, it does work. Take for example multiple Nobel Prize winning chemist Linus Pauling who made significant contributions many disciplines including quantum chemistry. Later in his life, he began to study the effects mega doses of vitamin C has on preventing and curing the common cold and cancer. He successfully argued his case in the public arena (on preventing colds at least, which it does not) though other scientists and doctors were skeptical. Many clinics attempted to repeat Pauling’s results with little success. Even though no one could verify his claims, Pauling held to them tightly. His pet theory had been decimated and he was quickly moved into the realm of quackery.

The ideas of repeatability and prediction are key to the understanding the scientific process. Pauling's results could not be predicted or repeated, thus they lost traction. Global climate change, however, makes very specific predictions how human carbon production affects the acidification of the ocean, the mass of the ice shelves in the Arctic, and levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. Over the span of the last thirty years, many of these predictions have come true. Does this mean the model of global climate change is absolutely correct? No, of course not, but it does lend credibility to the idea that something is going on and humans are to blame.

A level head and a good understanding of how to think critically is all it takes to tease the truth out of any situation. Be wary of the person with an idea to sell. (Kinoki foot pads anyone?) Actual science doesn’t start with an outcome and work back like Pauling did with his belief that vitamin C cures all ills. If a scientist’s idea is crushed by an observation, the scientific community moves on and expects that scientist to move on with it. Unfortunately, some like Pauling, do not.

So here’s a wee little guide on how to think critically:

1) Be wary of the person who has an idea to sell and damn the facts. (This is so important, it’s worth repeating.)

2) Be wary of the person who can’t back up their ideas with facts and data but resorts to the “this is so obvious, only a moron couldn’t see it” defense. (Rush Limbaugh is famous for this. That doesn’t mean he’s wrong, only that he is a poor arbiter of a cogent worldview.)

3) Not all ideas are made equal. The silly notion of showing all sides of an argument leads folks in the press to present crack pot theorists on the same level as real scientists.

4) Just because you don’t like an idea, doesn’t have any bearing on whether it’s true or false. We are all human, prone to human mistakes in judgment.

5) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Why do the UFO and ghost folks hang on every tiny shred of evidence that their particular worldview is correct? Why do they push the notion that “they are out there” and “you can speak to your dead relatives through me”? Do they have solid evidence or blurry pictures and crazy stories? Is the scientific establishment “hiding” these things or did the (great many) experiments on paranormal activity all return negative?

6) Be aware of the false dichotomy. My favorite example is the Creation vs. Darwin argument. Darwin was a scientist who proposed a theory that makes very specific predictions and has been tested to the Nth degree over the past 150 years. His theory also lead to the genetic understanding of all life on Earth! Creation purports and idea which has no observable data (it’s a nice story) associated with it and makes no predictions that have come true. Setting these ideas against each other is like comparing apples to buildings, it is nonsensical and silly.

7) Last one, I swear. Be aware of the straw man. The alternative medicine people (foot pads! raw and organic foods! acupuncture!) do this all the time. They tell you that western medicine has it all wrong and Big Pharma is out to do you an injustice. This is a straw man, easy to build up and easy to knock down. No evidence, no facts, and no data generally follow their arguments.

Why is all of this important? Let me tell you a simple anecdote. I fell for the lure of alternative medicine myself a few of years ago before I honed my BS detector. I have MS and the drug I was taking is not tested for use with MS, relied on the authority of a single scientist who was fighting "Big Pharma", and claimed extraordinary results without any actual testing or data. Needless to say once my thinking became more systematic and less "woo"ifed, I dropped that drug like a bad habit and got on one that's proven.

These tools have served me very well over that past couple of years and I hope to impart them on my son. Living in this world is a whole heck of lot easier when I can keep the patrons of bullshit from invading my space.

Superbowl Sunday Evening Blogging

The Superbowl is over, Hoosiers are going home with heads low and New Orleans is lit aflame. I enjoyed the Superbowl game myself and I think Alex may have enjoyed the little part he got to see. I know a one year old can't appreciate anything past screeching toys but the TV was certainly mesmerizing to him for at least a little while.

I finished the dog physics book today and started reading Microserfs again. I read the book when it first came about 15 years ago (I was still in high school) and didn't appreciate much of the pop referenced humor in the book. Now that I've begun my 30's (31 is just a couple weeks away!) I've gained a new appreciation for the book. I found it when Sara and I replaced our aging cheepo Target bookshelves with one from the bare furniture store down the road. It's good to know that the sturdy bookshelf perched in our abode wasn't thrown together with the careless application of dowel rods and press board.

This is all I know this week. Well, that and QED is awesome! Next week... rocks, rocks and more rocks.

Oh yeah, you should also watch Richard Dawkins.

Sunday Evening Blogging

The Backyard Project is beginning to take form. And when I say 'take form' I mean I've written a plan out on paper. Sharpie + graph paper FTW! The plan consists of judiciously trimming trees, mercilessly destroying weeds, and prudently laying new sod. Our once lush backyard has become overgrown and terribly under utilized in recent months. This is due, in no small part mind you, to a lack of both sunlight and water. The trees block the sunlight (hence need to be trimmed) and my lazy butt doesn't hand water nearly enough.

Thus being of full mind and body I hereby swear that I am going to recant my lazy ways and water my backyard once it's been completely replaced. Not being one to ignore the relentless advance of lawn technology, I am also going to have a new sprinkler system installed. Thereby channeling my energies from dragging hoses around the yard to the press of a button. Maybe I'll even setup a timer? Since this site is presumably about projects of a digital nature, maybe I'll build a timer for the sprinkler system. That would be interesting...

Excitement, thy name is 'Mass Effect 2'

After playing through the original Mass Effect a couple times on the XBox, I've become very excited about the release of its sequel. The boys at IGN fawn all over this game which doesn't help tame my gaming lust.

Mass Effect 2 @ Bioware

Sunday Evening Blogging

Due to my utter ineptitude regarding taking care of anything that is plant-like, I am in need of replacing the grass behind my house. After speaking with several lawn-replacement professionals over the weekend, I've come to conclusion that:

1. This is going to be expensive
2. Sprinkler systems are the way to go in South Texas
3. Sprinkler systems are expensive

Replacing just the backyard will probably run around $3,000 to $4,000. That estimate is probably high, I'll know more when I get quotes. Morel of the story... houses are fraking expensive.

I've been working on Part Duex of the Measuring Reality post. Frankly, I am having difficulty wrapping my head around the math of wave function mechanics. I'll get it sooner or later and since no one reads this blog I've got all the time in the world.

Saints vs. Colts Superbowl! Poor Favre, I guess he'll have to console himself with his millions of dollars. I'm sure hope he'll take a dip in it ala Scrooge McDuck.

Oh and "Sharks with frickin laser beams attached to their heads."

Recommended Reading

Jennifer Ouellette wrote a fantastic book a few years ago entitled "Black Bodies and Quantum Cats". The book has been on my "To Read" list for a little while now but until Amazon Prime significantly lowered my barrier for purchasing books, I never got around to buying and reading it.

After speeding through the first half of the book, I have to say that I missed out by not getting the book earlier. It's a great read about pioneers in physics. It's not just the "Famous Guys" of physics either but a smattering of folks around the world interested in natural philosophy, engineering and mathematics. The book can feel a little broken up at times but the overall writing style is clear and easy to understand. Jennifer has a real gift and I can't wait for her next book about the calculus. I can't wait! :)

Her blog: Cocktail Party Physics

Measuring Reality

Like many folks, I'm sure you've heard of Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in popular culture. It essentially states that you cannot know the position and momentum of a quantum particle at the same time. This is probably the most widely known principle in quantum physics and the least understood at the same time.

It's understandable that people get the concept mixed up and infuse poor reasoning and strange theology into it because, frankly, the very concept of uncertainty is confusing and seems to cross the border from physics into philosophy. It arrises in quantum physics due to a wave / particle duality of the microscopic world.

The popular model of an atom looks like a miniature solar system with a tough nut of a nucleus at the center and electrons in various energetic states orbiting around it. Physicists know this model is complete bunk in terms of modeling how atoms are put together physically but it's great for mathematically explaining how they function. (Physicists are freaks for building models, most of them are abstract and represented in computers nowadays.)

Instead physicists describe physical systems (such as an atom) using what's called a wavefunction. Before discussing wave functions, a quick reminder of the properties of a wave are in order.

Let's look at a typical example of a wave (drawn with amazing detail with my favorite writing utensil, the Sharpie):

This is an example of a simple wave generated with the cosine function. Wavelength is the length between each peak (or valley) of the wave, amplitude is the measure of how large the wave is at it's peaks and frequency defines how many peaks pass a given point within a period length of time. Generally, wave functions are described using a two dimensional graph in which the Y axis represents probability and the X axis represents position.

So, lets say this wave represents a unit of matter. This unit of matter could be anything from an electron to a molecule or even a snowball. In the example above, the wave repeats an pattern with certain frequency, amplitude, and wavelength. If we over lay this wave on to a two dimensional wave distribution graph described above, several observations are able to made.

First, each point in which the amplitude (Y-axis) is at it's maximum would represent a higher probability an object would be found in a particular position (X-axis). Also, longer wavelengths directly correspond to longer positions in the same amount of time so we can infer that wavelength is a measure of momentum.

Now, imagine attempting to define a single point on this wave where the unit of matter exists. An obvious solution would be at the peaks. If that's the case, which peak do we define as the position of our unit of matter? There is an infinite number of them (remember, the wave is continuous).

Ack! Getting long and I need to go draw more graphs, therefore:

To be continued…

The Resemblance is Uncanny

My new issue of the Linux Journal came a couple of days ago and the kid on the front cover bears an uncanny resemblance to my son, Alex. I chose the picture of Alex chewing on his football because I find it funny.

TV on the Internet?

I've been attempting to get Boxee working correctly with an old AMD Athalon XP 2100 w/ a Geforce 400-MX (ancient!) and haven't had much success. I've tried both Windows XP and Ubuntu 9.04 and found the Linux version to be much more stable and usable. Even though Flash 10 is quicker on Windows, the Boxee interface and video playback is much less buggy on Ubuntu.

Honestly, just attaching the computer to our TV and mousing to hulu.com, nbc.com, and abc.com has been easier and faster than trying to use Boxee. Simple, yet effective.

Superposition

Recently, I've been reading Chad Orzel's book "How To Teach Physics To Your Dog" and browsing around the internets in an attempt to gain a better understanding of modern physics, specifically quantum mechanics. I decided to write a few blog posts about my adventures in QM to provide myself study direction.

It's difficult to convey just how unbelievably weird quantum mechanics is. Interactions of the elementry particles of reality are difficult to grasp with a classical understanding of physics.

For example, when throwing a snowball at your neighbor for stealing the day's paper (once again) you expect said snowball to rise at the angle and velocity your hand and arm put it in. You also expect the snowball to begin arcing downward according to Earth's gravitational pull (9.8 m/s^2) and finish it's flight in his face.

You do not expect, however, the snowball to be in a superposition state during the flight and only suffer a small chance of smashing into your neighbor's face. Instead, you feel you know the flight and subsequent termination of the snowball's trajectory because you've dealt with classical physical phenomena all your life.

Personally, I find superposition to be an insanely cool sounding term. Unfortunately, the concept is outside of our "normal" physical understanding and can be difficult to grasp. What makes it so different from everyday life? Unlike the simple model of an atom usually imagined as a tiny solar system, electrons don't orbit around a nucleus like planets around a star. Generally, when folks in the know refer to electrons in an atom, they are imaging something similar to a cloud of potential electron states surrounding the atom's nucleus.

You may say, "Wait a minute, what does state mean?" A particle's state refers to it's position and energy level (momentum) around a nucleus. So when you say an electron exists in all states at once, you're essentially saying that it's at all energy levels and positions around the nucleus at once. This is very counterintuitive especially considering we don't see a haze of Jupiter's, Saturn's or Neptune's when we look up into the night sky.

So, let's look at hydrogen as an example. We know that the hydrogen atom has one electron. The electron cloud surrounding hydrogen's nucleus is made up of (usually) one electron in a superposition state. That is to say, the electron exists in all possible states at once. Very strange, eh? To describe the position of the electron isn't too difficult and describing the energy level (momentum) of the electron isn't too difficult either. However, woe is the person who attempts to find both at once.

Finding both position and momentum of a particle in superposition is impossible due to constraints of not our quantum mathematical model, but reality itself. I'll explain why in my next post.

Most of the information in this post was gathered from Dr. Orzel's book and Wikipedia.

There Be Dragons Here...

A dragon crawled up on my desk this afternoon while I was working on a post about wave / particle duality. Before it ate my volt meter, Jenni slayed it with her mad balsa wood sword skillz.