Spies are kinda cool

Recent Russian Spy Tricks

I want one of these (if anyone get's me for Christmas remember this)
The real spy nickle FBI case

you can buy one here: Spy Stuff

Watson Super Computer

This will be fun to watch (or read about at least)

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepqa/

Craig Venter unveils "synthetic life" | Video on TED.com

"To live, to err, to fall to triumph and to recreate life out of life" James Joyce

"See things not as they are, but as they might be" American Prometheus, a biography of Oppenheimer

"What I cannot build, i cannot understand" Richard Fenniman


Craig Venter unveils "synthetic life" | Video on TED.com

Strange and Amazing Places

1) 27°22'49.54"N 33°37'55.93"E

2) 40°27'26.69"N  93°23'33.86"E

3) 50° 0'38.20"N 110° 6'48.32"W

4) 19°56'56.41"S 69°38'1.38"W

5) 33°44'39.33"N 112°38'3.83"W

I thought these were pretty cool satellite images.  Google Earth them (or even google maps in satellite view).  They are all pretty big...the mosaic in China is the biggest I think at a mile to a side and 100 feet on the thick lines.  Please share more if you have them and your thoughts on them.

Root Bridges

Check out this blog. These things are amazing

http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/

What would you do?

I am reading a book that touches the issue of moral dilemmas. I thought it was a very interesting read so I figured I'd recreate it here. Some of you may be familiar with these situations.

What follows is a little quiz of sorts where you answer each dilemma with a response of whether the given action is morally 1)Required 2)Permissible or 3)Forbidden.

The fun part is trying to figure out why you answer like you do. Try and answer each one without comparing to the others. I know this may be impossible, but the results will be more interesting. Go ahead and answer in comments then add whatever insight or ideas or questions you had.

OK here we go.

The runaway trolley/train
There is nobody on this trolley

Situation 1

You are at a switch and see a trolley is going to hit and kill 5 people down the track. However if you switch the track the trolley will be diverted down another fork and the 5 will be saved. Should you switch the track?

Situation 2

Same as the first but there is 1 person hiking on the other track that will die if you switch the track. Should you switch the track?

Situation 3

Same as the first but there is no switch now, however you are on a bridge over the track and if you can push a large weight onto the track you can stop the trolley and save the 5 people. The only problem is that the only weight is a sleeping fat man. Should you use him to stop the trolley?

Situation 4

Same as 3 but now that fat man is actually a villain that placed the 5 on the track and sent the trolley to run them over.


Situation 5

The track now has a loop on it that causes the train to loop around and then continue on to the 5 people. This way if you flipped the switch the people would still die but the train would travel the loop first. However there is a fat man on the loop that would stop the train but die. Should you send the train on the loop?

Situation 6

Same as 5 but now the fat man is replaced by a boulder on the track that would stop the train. However there is a random hiker that will be trapped between the boulder and the train and he will die. Should you send the train on the loop?

Situation 7

5 people are dying in a hospital. They each need a different organ to live. They will go on to live long happy lives if they get this organ. There are no organs available. However, there is a healthy man in the lobby that is a match for all 5. If his organs were harvested the 5 patients would be saved. Should his organs be harvested?


You can search these dilemmas on the internet to get more discussion on them.

Mushroom logs

Mushrooms are pretty yummy and I think that finding them wild is very cool. The problem for me is that I'm not willing to stake my life or liver on a picture in a book that says these ones I'm looking at are safe to eat. But the next best thing I think would be growing them. Aaron told me about these mushroom logs. The logs (usually oak or another hard word species) are inoculated with spawn, then allowed to grow as they would in wild conditions. Fruiting, or pinning, is triggered by seasonal changes, or by briefly soaking the logs in cool water. Shiitake and oyster mushrooms have traditionally been produced using the outdoor log technique but companies that sell them are branching out. I think this would very fun and easy especially for those living in Oregon since the conditions are perfect year round. I think it would satisfy my bonsai gene, gardening gene and mushroom gene all at once. I'm going to try it when I get the right conditions. Just google mushroom logs, you tube even has some good videos on the process.

Budoshin Jujitsu

We all know the stories about the Samurai. They were incredibly honorable, brave, and extremely skilled with the sword. However, what happened when they lost their swords. Did they just quit? Commit seppuku? (which was common in many cultures when a warrior faced defeat) or did they learn another way to fight?

During the Meiji restoration Samurai were prevented from carrying swords but that did not stop their quest for the ability to fight for those to whom they were loyal. To prevent death in battle they developed a martial arts that eventually became Judo, Karate, and Jujitsu.

Jujitsu translated means the gentle art. It is a martial arts more suited to women in my opinion because it teaches one how to defend themselves and cripple an opponent with minimal force. The movements are graceful and the combat is brutally direct. Students of Jujitsu Are subjected to these holds, throws, and restrained versions of attack techniques. The holds help increase flexibility in the wrist which can be useful in a life or death situation.

Why am I fixating on Jujitsu? I joined the BYU club and, by extension, the American Jujitsu Association. You only have to get followed seven blocks by a creepy guy at night once before you are afraid of your own shadow. A few weeks ago I was watching a Jujitsu practice and now I am practicing how to roll when thrown by an opponent and get up and face them all in one motion. Now I am learning how to block a punch and get out of danger when someone grabs my wrists.

My sensei is very patient in helping me learn my rolls, blocks, strikes, and throws. I would recommend Jujitsu to anybody but especially women because it just makes me feel safer and more confident. That would be reason enough but I am learning to protect myself. I am learning to use someone's superior strength and force against them and learning to hold my own. It is amazing. I am entry level now (not even a white belt) but I plan on working my way up to a black belt.

Now, a little known fact about many martial arts. They teach pressure points for healing as well as attack. To earn higher belt levels we are required to know how to heal various pain using massage and pressure points. Who knows, next time you all see me I'll test out my new skills :p. Anyway, for all the ladies in the family and the boys, look into jujitsu.

Circumhorizontal Arc

We saw one of these in the sky while driving through the mountains in Colorado. I've never seen one before (a little research said they are very rare).

This one is not mine as I didn't have my camera but looks the same.

These clouds are caused by light passing through cirrus clouds. They only occur when the sun is very high in the sky (more than 58° above the horizon) and the hexagonal ice crystals that make up the cirrus cloud must be shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground.
When light enters through a vertical side face of such an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, in the same way that light passes through a prism. If a cirrus's crystals are aligned just right, the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colors.

I'd add this to my short list of cool things to try to find in the sky:

Sundogs or Ice Halos (can be seen in day or my favorite at night with a full moon)
Moonbows (I saw one of these once at night with a full moon rising on distant storm)

Have any of you seen some rare natural phenomenon?

Numbers Game

I got to thinking about numbers the other day as i was falling asleep and realized that there are several numbers that are instantly recognizable by most people. Some others are instantly recognized by certain groups. Anyway here is a numbers quiz for you. See how many you can get and respond in comments. Some may be a bit ambiguous so I tried to group them together so think in themes, each theme starts with a very recognizable number. Also, units are not shown. So without further ado see what you can get with no help.

24
365
12
60
3,600
299,792,458 (perhaps better known as 3x10 to the 8th
768
5280
1; 92,855,820; 8. (This is a measurement of distance all three numbers are equal (with different units)).
98.6
100 (or 212)
-273.15
29,029 (think of Dave
88,600 (Same idea as the previous answer)
4.5 billion
14 billion
80 billion (this is a number of a certain type of thing, think BIG
3.14...
2.718...
1.618
10 to the 100
10 to the 10 to the 100
{0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34...}
{14,19,21,23,27,27,28,31,33,34,36,38} (this may be off a bit, but you should get it)
And finally...
42

Good luck.

They are so crazy

I am sure most of us have wondered why people do the things they do. Vote the way they vote, etc. Conservatives generally think that liberals have a mental illness. Liberals think that conservatives are simpletons or religious fanatics. Surely both views cannot be correct. What if they are both wrong? I saw the title of this video and though it would be interesting. I think it was. Helpful in understanding other people and why they hold the crazy beliefs they do. Discuss in comments please.

Link to Video

Parallel Universes

Here's an interesting articles on Parallel Universe theories in Quantum Physics.

Multiverse by Max Tegmark (pdf)

I think this could be a fun discussion. The article may hurt your brain a little so read it slowly.

A question to start it off:

ARISTOTELIAN PARADIGM: The subjectively
perceived frog perspective is physically real,
and the bird perspective and all its mathematical
language is merely a useful approximation.

PLATONIC PARADIGM: The bird perspective
(the mathematical structure) is physically real,
and the frog perspective and all the human language
we use to describe it is merely a useful approximation
for describing our subjective perceptions.

Which camp are you in, why?

To infinity … and beyond

click on photo to read article

Let me know what you think of this article...I don't buy it.

Mushroom Identification

So, it's still early for mushrooms round here but I found this one the other day in between some pine trees and oaks. I can't identify it with the book Michael gave me, or the internet. Here's some pictures if you'd like to take a crack at it. It wasn't slimey, or sticky feeling, only slightly moist, hollow trunk, and didn't bruise blue.

Let me know if you have any ideas on identification. Hope I'll have some better luck come mushroom season.

Audio Books & Online Libraries

Is anyone out there a fan of Audio-Books? I’m not talking about a replacement to paper books; audio will never give the same experience as paper. Personally I’m a huge fan of them for commuting to work or staying awake on a long drive or exercising (not that I do much of that). I have a huge collection of audio books (99 days worth of audio and growing) that I'm slowly chipping away at, including conference talks, the standard works and education week lectures. It guarantees that I’ll always have something that will be fun to listen to, and there’s always music if I get tired of spoken word :) Suffice it to say I’m a huge fan of iPod’s. How else could you organize all thes books and music? Who all out there has an mp3 player? I’m hooked on them. Anyway our library recently adopted online downloads for audio books. I’m sure most big city libraries have that option. It’s much better than trying to rip scratched CD’s from the Library onto yor iPod to listen to.

Along the same lines as audio books being made available at online Libraries, Google is in the process (fighting publishing companies along the way) of digitizing huge libraries of books. The project is called Google Books http://books.google.com/ and is an awesome idea for research. Imagine having the world’s greatest libraries available to goggle. Imagine being able to scour millions of books for a quote or topic. For fun go to the link above and type in "seer stone" (quotes included) and browse through some of hundreds of books available. Some books (publishers) will let you see a few pages surrounding the search string, others won't, but it’s a start. Legally I don’t see how the publishing companies are fighting Google on this, it’s definantly not illegal to quote a book in a report and that's essentially all they’re doing. Google doesn’t make the full book available just the page your information is found on, though some full books are available.

Pluto

The International Astronomical Union officially demoted Pluto from "planet" to "dwarf planet." That means that we now have eight planets (according to the scientists), three dwarf planets, and thousands of "small solar-system bodies." Out of 2,500 astronomers from 75 nations that attended the conference (where Pluto was demoted) only about 300 voted. It will be sad if 300 “scientists” can really shift cultural thinking as easily as arbitrarily redefining planets. The new definition is "a celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a ... nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." I vote we keep it and add the other 2 as well. 11 planets is better than 8.